POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN EARLY MODERN IRAQ STUDIES IN SOCIAL HISTORY issued by the INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL HISTORY AMSTERDAM 1. W. H. Roobol. Tsereteli - A Democrat in the Russian Revolution. A Political Biography. ISBN 90 247 1915 1 2. Zvi Rosen. Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx. The Influence of Bruno Bauer on Marx's Thought. ISBN 90 247 1948 8 3. Marian Sawer. Marxism and the Question of the Asiatic Mode of Production. ISBN 90 247 2027 3 4. Klaus Frohlich. The Emergence of Russian Constitutionalism. The Relation­ ship Between Social Mobilization and Political Group Formation in Pre­ Revolutionary Russia. ISBN 90 247 2378 7 5. Fritjof Tichelman. The Social Evolution of Indonesia. The Asiatic Mode of Production and Its Legacy. ISBN 90 247 2389 2 6. Tom Nieuwenhuis. Politics amd Society in Early Modern Iraq. MamlUk Pashas Tribal Shayuks and Local Rule Between 1802 and 1831. ISBN 9024725763 SERIES ISBN 9024723477 POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN EARLY MODERN IRAQ Mamluk Pashas, Tribal Shayks and Local Rule Between 1802 and 1831 by TOM NIEUWENHUIS 1982 MARTINUS NIJHOFF PUBLISHERS - THE HAGUE/BOSTON/LONDON Distributors: for the United States and Canada Kluwer Boston, Inc. 190 Old Derby Street Hingham, MA 02043 USA for all other countries Kluwer Academic Publishers Group Distribution Center P.O. Box 322 3300 AH Dordrecht The Netherlands Librar~ of ('ongrt's~ Cataloging in Publication U()la Nieuwenhuis, Tom. Politics and society in early modern Iraq. (Studies in social history ; 6) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Iraq--History--1534-1921. I. Title. 110 Series: Studies in social history (International Institute for Social History) ; 6. DS77.N48 955 81-22391 ISBN 90-247-2576-3 AACR2 ISBN-l3: 978-94-009-7490-6 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-7488-3 DOl: 10.1 007/978-94-009-7488-3 Published with financial support from the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research (z. W. 0.). Copyright © 1981 by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague. Soflcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st Edition 1981 All rights reserved. No part of th is publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other­ wise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, P.O. Box 566,2501 CN The Hague, The Netherlands. CONTENTS Preface vn Glossary xi List ofmaps and figures map I Iraq xiv map II Global indication of the territories of the pashaliks of Baghdad, Mosul and Sulaymiiniyyah xv map III Important sedentary agricultural areas between Mosul and Basra. Beginning of the 19th century xvi map IV Map of the river Tigris to the North of Baghdad by Felix Jones, 1850 xvn map V Global indication of the territoria of the most important tribal formations in 1812 xvin figure 1 Primitive lift-irrigation. Tigris-banks to the south of Mosul xix figure 2 Primitive ploughing. Near Samara xix I. A LITANY OF DISASTERS II. THE STRUCTURE OF MAMLUK POWER 13 The Sa'id-Diiwiid Struggle (1815-1816) 16 The build up of Mamliik dominance 24 Aspects of Government 26 Outside Baghdad 30 Military aspects of Mamliik power 34 Revenue and Mamliik power 46 The Marnliiks and Baghdad 59 Religious leaders, military men and the role of the quarters of Baghdad 63 The political position of non-Moslem minorities 71 The Porte and Baghdad 75 The British role 81 Instability and violence in Mamliik politics 87 A short discourse on Mosul 98 vi CONTENTS III. THE RURAL WORLD 108 The sedentary areas 109 The political position of the villagers 117 The tribal world 121 The large tribal formations: migrations and territorial influence 122 Economics and tribal structure 138 The Tribal Structure 141 Political authority in the tribal world 148 Big shaykhs and the state 158 IV. RESUME. THE BACKGROUND OF IRAQI STATE FORMATION 169 State and countryside 179 The Mamliiks in the history of Iraq 181 Notes 185 Appendix I - The Mamliik pashas 207 Appendix II - Revenues of the pashalik of Baghdad in 1843-1844 and 1845 208 Bibliography 216 Index 224 PREFACE This study deals with the Mamliik 1 period in Iraqi history (1750- 1831), and more particularly with later Mamliik times (1802-1831). The year 1831 marks the watershed between an era of 'local rule' and one of restored Turkish centralization. During the Mamliik period the influence of external powers in Iraq was not excessive; after that year direct Turkish rule coincided with growing British in­ fluence, which increasingly opened the country to the forces of the world market. As an object of study the period of local rule is inter­ esting, particularly because it formed the background to, and in some aspects also the start of, the modern history ofIraq. The literature available on Mamliik rule and tribal power is scarce and unsatisfying in various ways. The best history of 'Ottoman' Iraq is still that of Longrigg, which was written in the 1920's. However, although based on an admirable range of sources, it provides the reader with little more than a political chronology. Generally, the social and political historian of early modern Iraq is confronted with a lack of information of a very basic kind - if indeed he can find any relevant information. 2 For example, there is hardly any information on the Mamliik institution. Only the most scanty evidence exists on the history of the Yanissaris of Baghdad, or on the socio-political history of the lower orders of the town. Again, almost nothing is known about the lower orders of the sedentary rural world. Interest­ ing areas of tribal history are largely neglected and many of the con­ ditional assumptions about tribal politics and society are ill-founded. Here Longrigg is a case in point. He correctly saw the tribal question as the key issue of early modern Iraqi history, but he considered that tribes had no real history for 'in heart, culture, and interests (they) varied nothing; their civilization, politics, arms were universal and static: and this, more even than his lack of records, absolves the his­ torian from a narrative of these myriad changes'. 3 viii PREFACE To go beyond the traditional historiographical approach to Iraqi history is rather an over-ambitious task for a single historian. Key questions have to be outlined, a great number of primary and second­ ary sources have to be consulted, and (perhaps the most time consu­ ming) it is necessary to make a systematic search for scattered and un catalogued Ottoman and Arab source material. This book is an attempt to set out parameters of such a project, and provides a fairly tentative analysis of some of the basic issues involved. It is based pri­ marily on the French archives, on travel literature and eye witness reports and on a great number of secondary sources. It concentrates on such themes as the sources of Mamliik power, the characteristics of provincial government and the role of the tribal complex in politi­ cal history. Special attention is also paid to such subjects as the role of plagues, the relationship between economy and politics, the in­ stability and violent overtones of politics and the character of tribal authority. In the last chapter the historical background of modern Iraqi state formation is outlined. This latter theme forms a distinctive perspective of this study. In other studies on the Arab provinces during approximately the same period (cf. Koury, Bodman and Rafeq) different perspectives are prevalent. In comparison, the negative aspects of Ottoman and Mam­ liik rule in the 18th and early 19th centuries may seem to have been overemphasized in my book, simply because the potential for modern state formation was not overwhelming. Modern state forma­ tion means the formation of nation states, and this process was sub­ stantially obstructed in Iraq's case. Some remarks about periodization and the territory under consider­ ation are necessary here. The period of local rule in Baghdad may be divided into three parts. It starts with the government of the found­ ing fathers of the Mamliik 'dynasty', J;:Iasan Pasha (1702-1724) and his son Al1mad Pasha (1724-1747). The Mamliik period itself may be divided into the earlier and the later period. The former starts with the reign of Sulayman Abu Laylah (1750-1762) and ends with the crisis years of 1773-1780. The later period starts with the govern­ ment of Sulayman the Great (1780-1802) and ends with that of Dawud Pasha (1817-1831). This is followed by the period of direct Turkish rule, which ends during the First World War, after which Iraq became a virtual British colony. Although the study covers the Mam­ liik period as a whole, it is primarily concerned with the last three decades (1802-1831) of the later Mamliik period. PREFACE ix The name Iraq refers to a territorial unit that did not exist before 1918, but for simplicity the term has been used for the geographical area which incorporates Basra, Baghdad and Mosul. (See Maps I and II). Mosul is dealt with, but the Kurdish areas are left out of con­ sideration, largely because of their fundamentally different socio­ political structure. Kurdish history connects with that of Baghdad and Mosul in many respects, some of which are touched upon, but its study is a separate task.4 A more or less uniform system of transliteration has been used, al­ though in some cases names have been spelt in the form in which they were found. Also, names of institutions or officials have some­ times been spelt in Turkish, as is the case with such words as dev~irme, nizam-l cedit or when the Porte's representatives, such as Halet Efendi, are concerned.