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IRAQ AND ITS RELATIONS WITH IRAN Relations between Iran and Mesopotamia, the core region of present-day Iraq, can be traced back to the early waves of the westward migration of Iranian tribes in the middle of the 2nd millennium B.C.E. when the Iranian peoples came under the cultural influence of ancient…

IRAQ AND ITS RELATIONS WITH IRAN i. IN THE LATE SASANID AND EARLY ISLAMIC ERAS The late Sasanid era. The late Sasanid winter capital was located at the urban complex on the Tigris river called “the cities” (al-Madāʾen) by the Arabs that included Ctesiphon, Aspānpur, Veh-Antioḵ-e Ḵosrow, and Veh-Ardašir. That…

IRAQ ii. FROM THE ʿABBASIDS TO THE MONGOLS. See BAGHDAD. iii. FROM THE MONGOLS TO THE SAFAVIDS The Mongol capture of Baghdad in 1258 came at a time when Persian influence was on the rise but the city as a whole in decline. The Persian influence had increased in recent…

IRAQ iv. RELATIONS IN THE SAFAVID PERIOD Introduction. Iraq, or ʿErāq-e ʿArab, as it is called in the Persian sources, was separated from the Persian plateau by the Zagros range and thus was not a natural extension of Safavid territory. Access routes from Persia were few in number. The main…

IRAQ v. FROM THE AFSHARIDS TO THE END OF THE QAJARS The collapse of the Safavid dynasty in the 1720s ushered in a new round of conflict in Iraq that would continue through the first half of the 18th century. After the demise of Nāder Shah in 1747, however, a…

IRAQ vi. THE PAHLAVI PERIOD, 1921-79 Between the years 1921, when Britain installed Faysal Ibn Hossein as the king of a newly formed nation-state of Iraq (formerly part of the Ottoman empire) and 1979, when the Pahlavi dynasty was swept away by revolution, relations between Iran and Iraq underwent three…

IRAQ vii. IRAN-IRAQ WAR The war between Iran and Iraq, lasting nearly eight years, commenced with the Iraqi invasion of Iran on 22 September 1980, and ended with the bilateral acceptance of the UN Security Council Resolution 598 on 20 July 1988. Considered by Iranians as “imposed war” (jang-e taḥmili),…

IRAQ x. SHIʿITES OF IRAQ Iraq was the cradle of Shiʿism, where it evolved as a political and religious movement, yet, Shiʿites became a majority there only during the 19th century. Shiʿism emerged in Iraq when the first Imam, ʿAli b. Abi Ṭāleb (q.v.), drew his supporters from Kufa, his…

IRAQ xi. SHIʿITE SEMINARIES IN IRAQ Background. The communities of learning (ḥawzāt ʿelmiya) in the shrine cities (ʿatabāt-e ʿāliyāt) of Najaf and Karbalāʾ emerged as the most important centers of Twelver Shiʿite learning during the 19th century. The system of learning in the ʿAtabāt (q.v.) was the culmination of the…

IRAQ xii. PERSIAN SCHOOLS IN IRAQ At the time of the 1905-11 Constitutional Revolution (q.v.) in Persia, local committees of Persians in Iraq created Persian-language schools with the backing of the leading, progressive religious scholars, including Āḵund Mollā Moḥammad Kāẓem Ḵorāsāni (q.v.) and Shaikh ʿAbd-Allāh Māzandarāni. The first schools were…

IRAQ xiii. PERSIAN NEWSPAPERS IN IRAQ: 1909-22 The publication of Persian-language newspapers in Iraq began with the implementation of the 1909 Ottoman Constitutional Law and continued until the formation of the new Iraqi nation-state in 1921-22 (see vi, above). During this period nine newspapers were published under 15 titles in…

IRON AGE. In Iran the term Iron Age is employed to identify a cultural change that occurred centuries earlier than the time accorded its use elsewhere in the Near East, and not to acknowledge the introduction of a new metal technology. Iron artifacts, in fact, were unknown in Iran until…

IRON IN EASTERN IRAN. The Iron Age (q.v.) started in eastern Iran later than it did in the Near East and western Iran, where its beginning is dated to the middle of the 15th century B.C.E. (Dyson, pp. 193-217). This was due to the fact that, in Central Asia, copper…