"العراق والخليج الفارسي" [ظ‎‎١‎٨‎٣] (٨٦٢/٣٧١)

258 HISTORY
was saved first by the heroic Othman the Lame, and later by a revolt
in Persia which withdrew Nadir from Iraq. War continued and the
Iraq campaign was renewed in 1743, when Kirkuk fell to the Persians
and Mosul withstood a ferocious siege. The struggle ended in 1749
with a return to the frontiers of Murad IV. The next flare-up was
in 1774-1778, when the Persian regent Karim Khan intervened in
Iraqi Kurdistan and established his nominee at Qala Chulan, centre
of the Kurdish district between the Little Zab and Diyala. The
Persians also invaded the extreme south and after a siege took Basra,
which they held till 1779. Then internal dynastic divisions put an
end to Persian claims on Iraq, and the frontiers of Murad IV were
again restored.
In 1818 the intrigues of the Persian ruler of Kermanshah with the
Baban rulers of Koi Sanjaq and Sulaimaniya (p. 262) ended in
another invasion of Iraq through Kurdistan which nearly reached
Baghdad. Disease and tribal guerrillas rather than the regular troops
drove him out, and the status quo was restored (1823).
Internal Affairs
Ottoman government, established by Sultan Suleiman the Magnifi
cent, was at first welcomed by the inhabitants. To the Sunnis the
Sultan was the Caliph, while the Shias found tolerance. Sunni and
Shia shrines alike were restored or improved. Karbala was protected
from floods by the still existing dike; the Husainiya canal was cleared
and widened. The Turks also came to terms with the Christian
minorities by recognizing them as national groups or millets which
enjoyed communal autonomy under the jurisdiction of their religious
heads. Succeeding Pashas of Baghdad maintained this tradition of
benevolence, but Ottoman rule was foreign and military; the principle
of government was that the subject peoples were ray ah or cattle to be
exploited. The garrisons of Janissaries, slave troops who kept order
in the major towns, had no local sympathies. The country was
nominally divided into the four ayalats or pashaliks 1 of Mosul, Kirkuk,
Baghdad, and Basra, but Turkish influence outside the cities and
big towns was indirect or non-existent. The beduin tribes, who had
greatly encroached on the settled land in the past three centuries,
were independent. The tendency was for the establishment of local
dynasties, only nominally dependent on the Turks, which were more
successful than they in dealing with the tribes.
Thus when about 1600 the people of Basra expelled their Turkish
1 Pasha was properly the title, not the office, of the governor (vali) of an ayalat
(later vilayet), or number of ayalats.