Iraq

The land where cities, writing and law were invented, assembled into a modern state out of three Ottoman provinces that had little reason to be one. Sumer, Akkad, Babylon and Assyria all rose between the Tigris and Euphrates; cuneiform is the oldest known writing and Hammurabi's code among the oldest surviving legal texts. Baghdad under the Abbasids was probably the largest city in the world and its House of Wisdom translated and extended Greek, Persian and Indian learning until the Mongols sacked it in 1258. Britain took the provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul from the Ottomans and joined them under a mandate in 1920, installing a Hashemite king from Arabia and putting a Sunni Arab minority over a Shia Arab majority and a Kurdish north that had expected its own state. Revolt against the mandate began immediately and was suppressed partly from the air. The monarchy fell in 1958, the Baath took power in 1968, and Saddam Hussein's rule brought war with Iran, the gassing of Halabja, the invasion of Kuwait and sanctions. The American-led invasion of 2003 removed him and produced insurgency and sectarian war. Kurdistan holds autonomy. Oil is almost the whole economy. The country has about forty-six million people. Arabic and Kurdish are both official. Baghdad is the capital and Basra the main port on a very short coastline. Six of its sites are World Heritage listed, including Babylon and the Ahwar marshes drained by Saddam and partly restored. Summer temperatures in the south regularly exceed fifty degrees.

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