'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [180v] (365/862)
The record is made up of 1 volume (430 folios). It was created in 1944. It was written in English. The original is part of the British Library: India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. Records and Private Papers Documents collected in a private capacity. .
Transcription
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HISTORY
254
took part in the Zanj rebellion (p. 244) and later formed a State in
Hasa on the Arabian coast of the
Persian Gulf
The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran.
, whence they terrorized
southern Iraq and Baghdad. From the Ismailis there sprang (about
1090) the Assassins, a free-thinking secret society whose headquarters
were in Persia. The order had its grand master, priors, and junior
agents or ‘fidais’. According to Marco Polo, ‘When the Old Man
would have any Prince slain, he would say to such a youth: “Go thou
and slay So and So, and when thou returnest my Angels shall bear
thee unto Paradise”.’ The main activities of the Assassins, so-called
from the hashish with which they drugged themselves, were in Syria
and Persia. Their greatest feat in Iraq was the murder of the Seljuk
vizir, Nizam al Mulk (p. 245).
IV. THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Mongols and Turkomans, a.d. 1258—1508
The period between the Mongol conquest in 1258 and the establish
ment of Ottoman Turkish administration in 1514 was the Dark Age
of Iraq. The background of Moslem religion provided continuity
with the past, but in political and social life and general civilization
Iraqi history made a fresh start. Though some of the II Khans
patronized the conquered civilization at their courts, Abbasid culture
had fled with the Caliphate to Egypt. The devastation of Hulagu
was renewed in an even worse form by the kindred Mongolian hordes
of Timurlang or Tamerlane in 1401. The Mongols destroyed for
destruction’s sake because they wished to erase the peasants from
the sown lands in order to create grazing-grounds for their own
nomadic flocks and herds. In Baghdad alone Timurlang built 120
towers with the heads of the dead. Not only were whole cities and
populations erased, but there was no hope of recovery, particularly
in Iraq, because the machinery of government and administration
disappeared on which the maintenance of the irrigation system de
pended; the major canals themselves seem to have been less seriously
damaged than has sometimes been assumed. But the destruction of
agriculture was completed by the immigration of fresh beduin tribes
from Arabia which occupied permanently the wilderness created
by the Mongols, and the country acquired those characteristics of
tribal domination which persisted till the twentieth century.
The early II Khans (‘tribe-lords’, as distinct from the Great Khan
of Mongolia to whom they owed allegiance) came near to adopting
Nestorian Christianity, but the seventh, Ghazan (1295-1314), became
About this item
- Content
The volume is titled Iraq and the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. (London: Naval Intelligence Division, 1944).
The report contains preliminary remarks by the Director of Naval Intelligence, 1942 (John Henry Godfrey) and the Director of Naval Intelligence, 1944 (E G N Rushbrook).
There then follows thirteen chapters:
- I. Introduction.
- II. Geology and description of the land.
- III. Coasts of the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. .
- IV. Climate, vegetation and fauna.
- V. History.
- VI. People.
- VII. Distribution of the people.
- VIII. Administration and public life.
- IX. Public health and disease.
- X. Irrigation, agriculture, and minor industry.
- XI. Currency, finance, commerce and oil.
- XII. Ports and inland towns.
- XIII. Communications.
- Appendices: stratigraphy; meteorological tables; ten historical sites, chronological table; weights and measures; authorship, authorities and maps.
There follows a section listing 105 text figures and maps and a section listing over 200 illustrations.
- Extent and format
- 1 volume (430 folios)
- Arrangement
The volume is divided into a number of chapters, sub-sections whose arrangement is detailed in the contents section (folios 7-13) which includes a section on text-figures and maps, and list of illustrations. The volume consists of front matter pages (xviii), and then a further 682 pages in the original pagination system.
- Physical characteristics
Foliation: the foliation sequence (used for referencing) commences at the front cover with 1, and terminates at the inside back cover with 430; these numbers are written in pencil, are circled, and are located in the top right corner of the recto The front of a sheet of paper or leaf, often abbreviated to 'r'. side of each folio.
Pagination: the file also contains an original printed pagination sequence.
- Written in
- English in Latin script View the complete information for this record
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Copyright: How to use this content
- Reference
- IOR/L/MIL/17/15/64
- Title
- 'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF'
- Pages
- front, back, spine, edge, head, tail, front-i, 2r:253r, 254r, 255r:429v, back-i
- Author
- East India Company, the Board of Control, the India Office, or other British Government Department
- Usage terms
- Open Government Licence