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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iraq
Index
In the early years of the thirteenth century, a powerful
Mongol leader named Temujin brought together a majority of the
Mongol tribes and led them on a devastating sweep through China.
At about this time, he changed his name to Chinggis (Genghis)
Khan, meaning "World Conqueror." In 1219 he turned his force of
700,000 west and quickly devastated Bokhara, Samarkand, Balkh,
Merv (all in what is now the Soviet Union), and Neyshabur (in
present-day Iran), where he slaughtered every living thing.
Before his death in 1227, Chinnggis Khan, pillaging and burning
cities along the way, had reached western Azarbaijan in Iran.
After Chinggis's death, the area enjoyed a brief respite that
ended with the arrival of Hulagu Khan (1217-65), Chinggis's
grandson. In 1258 he seized Baghdad and killed the last Abbasid
caliph. While in Baghdad, Hulagu made a pyramid of the skulls of
Baghdad's scholars, religious leaders, and poets, and he
deliberately destroyed what remained of Iraq's canal headworks.
The material and artistic production of centuries was swept away.
Iraq became a neglected frontier province ruled from the Mongol
capital of Tabriz in Iran.
After the death in 1335 of the last great Mongol khan, Abu
Said (also known as Bahadur the Brave), a period of political
confusion ensued in Iraq until a local petty dynasty, the
Jalayirids, seized power. The Jalayirids ruled until the
beginning of the fifteenth century. Jalayirid rule was abruptly
checked by the rising power of a Mongol, Tamerlane (or Timur the
Lame, 1336-1405), who had been atabeg of the reigning prince of
Samarkand. In 1401 he sacked Baghdad and massacred many of its
inhabitants. Tamerlane killed thousands of Iraqis and devastated
hundreds of towns. Like Hulagu, Tamerlane had a penchant for
building pyramids of skulls. Despite his showy display of Sunni
piety, Tamerlane's rule virtually extinguished Islamic scholarship and Islamic arts everywhere except in his capital,
Samarkand.
In Iraq, political chaos, severe economic depression, and
social disintegration followed in the wake of the Mongol
invasions. Baghdad, long a center of trade, rapidly lost its
commercial importance. Basra, which had been a key transit point
for seaborne commerce, was circumvented after the Portuguese
discovered a shorter route around the Cape of Good Hope. In
agriculture, Iraq's once-extensive irrigation system fell into
disrepair, creating swamps and marshes at the edge of the delta
and dry, uncultivated steppes farther out. The rapid
deterioration of settled agriculture led to the growth of
tribally based pastoral nomadism. By the end of the Mongol
period, the focus of Iraqi history had shifted from the urbanbased Abbasid culture to the tribes of the river valleys, where
it would remain until well into the twentieth century.
Data as of May 1988
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