The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq

A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Ba'thists and Free Officers

Hanna Batatu

• Publisher: Saqi Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780863567711
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Freedom
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This comparative study analyses the traditional elite of Iraq and their sucessors - the Communists, the Bathists and Free Officers - in terms of social and economic relationships in each area of the country. The author draws on secret government documents and interviews with key figures, both in power and in prison, to produce an engrossing story of political struggle and change. 'A landmark in Middle Eastern historical study' Roger Owen, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 'By far the best book written on the social and political history of modern Iraq' Ahmad Dallal, Professor of Middle Eastern History, Stanford University

NOTES

1 The “Old Social Classes”: Practical and Theoretical Clarifications; Applicability of Concept; Difficulties of Analysis

¹These constituents of the landed class are identified in Book One, Part II.

²See below, p. 220.

³Ibn Khaldūn, Al-Muqaddimah (Cairo: Muṣṭafa Muḥammad Printing Press, n.d.), Book I, Sec. 3, Ch. 43, p. 288.

⁴For this concentration see Tables 5-1 and 5-3.

⁵See pp. 105-107.

⁶See Tables 7-2 and 10-4.

⁷Ibid., and Tables 5-4, 6-1, and 7-3.

⁸See pp. 352 and 354-357.

⁹Consult Chapters 17, 22, 30, and 41.

2 Of the Diversity of Iraqis, the Incohesiveness of Their Society, and Their Progress in the Monarchic Period toward a Consolidated Political Structure

¹Sulaimān Fā’iq (an Ottoman provincial governor and father of Iraqi ex-Premier Ḥikmat Sulaimān), Tā rīkh Baghdād (“The History of Baghdad”), tr. from the Turkish by Mūsa Kāḍhim Nawras (Baghdad, 1962), p. 174.

²Isma‘īl Ḥaqqī Bey Bābā Zādeh, “From Isṭambūl to Baghdād” (1910). This book was translated at length by the Revue du Monde Musulman, XIV: 5 (May 1911), For the quoted verse, see p. 255.

³“Make the Religion Triumph! O Muḥammad!”

⁴This is a clearly Sunnī slogan and was used, for example, by demonstrators on 6 October 1911, against Italy’s invasion of Tripoli; Lughat-ul-‘Arab, 9 October 1911, quoted by Revue du Monde Musulman, 6th Year, XVIII (February-March 1912), 223-224.

⁵The wilāyah was an Ottoman administrative division.

⁶See p. 77.

⁷See p. 68.

⁸Farīq al-Muzhir Āl-Fir‘aun, Al-Ḥaqā’iq-un-Nāṣi’ah Fī-th-Thawrat-il-‘Irāqiyyah Sanat 1920 wa Natāijuhā (“Luminous Facts on the Iraqi Insurrection of 1920 and Its Results”) (Baghdad, 1952), I, 22.

⁹For example, the weights of Baghdād were: the ṭghār (2000 kilos), the waznah (100 kilos), the big mann (24 kilos), the small mann (12 kilos), and the uqiyyah (2 kilos). The weights of other towns, while bearing the same names, were of different amounts. Thus the waznah of Ḥillah equalled 102,565 kilos, and of Dīwāniyyah 108.835 kilos and not 100, as in Baghdād. Similarly, the ṭghār of Baṣrah equalled 1538 kilos and not 2000, as that of Baghdād. See Dalīl-ul-Mamlakat-il-‘Irāqiyyah. . . (“The Directory of the Iraqi Kingdom for 1935-1936”) (Baghdad, 1935), pp. 59-60.

¹⁰For example, even in 1921-1922 the tax conversion rates for wheat, i.e., the rates at which the tax in kind was converted into cash, and which reflected the prevalent prices, were 250, 384, and 400 rupees per ton at the province headquarters of Baghdād, Mosul, and Baṣrah, respectively. See Great Britain, Report. . . on the Administration of Iraq for April 1922-March 1923 (London, 1924), p. 102.

¹¹Thus before World War I the Persian currency appears to have been more widely used than the Turkish currency in the Kurdish districts of Iraq. See Vital Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie (Paris, 1894), III, 38-39. In Baṣrah, Indian and Persian coinage were in large use. See Great Britain, Foreign Office, Historical Section, Arabia, Mesopotamia. . . (London, 1919), pp. 119-120. The official currency was, of course, Turkish.

¹²This government assumed power after the 1908 Revolution in Turkey.

¹³The descendants of the Prophet.

¹⁴Landlords.

¹⁵Sulaimān Faiḍī, Fī Ghamrat-in-N...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Tables
• List of Illustrations
• List of Maps
• Book One The Old Social Classes
• Book Two The Communists from the Beginnings of Their Movement to the Fifties
• Book Three The Communists, the Ba‘thists, and the Free Officers from the Fifties to the Present
• Conclusion
• Appendix One. Earliest Bolshevik Activities and Contacts
• Appendix Two. Supplementary Tables
• Bibliography
• Glossary
• Notes
• Index I: Names of Families and Tribes
• Index III: Subjects