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Iraq in History, Part One: The Mesopotamian Civilization |
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Sunday, 19 December 2004 |
THIS is the first issue of the Hanoudi letter, a weekly email to my American friends in which I will be discussing some aspects of few very interesting topics namely, history, geopolitics, ethnic-religious conflicts, and the situation in this currently very turbulent country. The following is the first installment of a four part essay on the history of Iraq, the second part is called Islam and the big rift, the third will be from golden age to the monarchy and the fourth part is Iraq the turbulent century.
THE history of modern Iraq as a separate entity began with the joining
of three provinces from the Old Ottoman Empire following its defeat and
dismemberment after the 1914-1918 war, but this country has a much
older history which dates back to Sumer were humanity started its march
into history more than 5000 years ago. Man was able here to achieve
some astonishing accomplishments, the invention of writing and the
ability to control the water supply to the lands and start a real
revolution in agriculture which allowed him to create a very advanced
society and inaugurate man’s first civilization.
IN the narrow sense Mesopotamia is the 180,000 square miles area
between the Tigris and Euphrates this was the name it was given in the
5th century BC by Herodotus. Only from the latitude of Baghdad were the
two rivers become at their nearest points do the Tigris and Euphrates
become truly twin rivers and continue to do dos so until they meet at
the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab which empties into the gulf. Most of the
southern part of this area is nowadays dry barren and very hot in most
of its expanse, it is very difficult to imagine that this piece of
harsh geography was the womb and the cradle of man’s first civilization
and this is the legacy of the Sumerians who were able to invent an
extremely successful system of dikes, dams and canals which allowed
them to make excellent use of the surplus water during times of
flooding and produce agricultural products mainly grain which was used
to feed an increasingly growing population with the surplus used in the
service of the higher interests of the state and this is were and how
man’s civilization was born.
CIVILIZATION was born, cradled and nurtured in Mesopotamia, but this
birth was not a sudden chance eruption out of vacuum, it was the
culmination of a long period of evolution. Here was born some of the
earliest philosophies, religions and myths of mankind. Here were built
great cities were very complicated political and legal systems evolved
and extremely advanced science medicine and art developed all inside a
strict code of morality and law, but their most important contribution
was their invention of writing. Writing is one of the greatest
contributions of the Sumerians to humanity, history began with writing
which gave us our first solid ideas about the story of man. History
began with writing. History began at Sumer.
THE Mesopotamian civilization lasted for almost a three thousand years
with a striking cultural unity. From UR its first center it radiated
over the entire near east and was kept alive in other major centers,
towns like, Babylon, Assur and Nineveh all situated on or near the
Tigris and Euphrates within the boundaries of modern Iraq remaining
fairly uniformly throughout though repeatedly shaken by political
convulsions and recurrent incursions by its neighbors which led to its
gradual decline and final disappearance alas some of its cultural and
scientific achievements were salvaged by the Greeks and became part of
recent western heritage, the rest either perished or were buried for
centuries in the sand awaiting the picks of archeologists.
A glorious past was forgotten In Man’s short memories of these opulent
cities, of their powerful gods, of their mighty monarchs only a few
often distorted names survived. the dissolving rain, the sand bearing
winds, the earth splitting sun conspired to obliterate most of the
material remains, and the desolate mounds which since concealed the
ruins of Babylon and Nineveh offer perhaps the best lesson in modesty
that we shall ever receive from history
Dr. Najeeb Hanoudi
Baghdad, Dec, 19, 2004
email:
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