'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎182r] (368/862)

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the OTTOMAN EMPIRE 255
a devout Moslem and restored the religious supremacy of Islam. It
was Timurlang who broke the strength of the Nestorian Church by
ferocious massacres which left only a pitiful remnant of Nestorian
communities in the Hakari mountains of Kurdistan, whither they
are supposed to have fled for refuge from the plains of northern Iraq.
Thus the Mongolian invasions put an end to more than the con
tinuous development of Islamic civilization. They caused an absolute
rupture in the material organization which had existed unbroken for
five millennia, since the days of Sumer and Akkad.
Politically Iraq was a province of Mongolian or Turkoman empires
with capitals usually in Persia at Tabriz. The II Khans were suc
ceeded by the Jalair (1339-1406), who were displaced after Timur-
lang’s great raid by Turkoman dynasties known as Black Sheep, Kara
Koyun (1411-1467), and White Sheep, Ak Koyun (1467-1499),
nominal vassals of the Timurids of eastern Persia. Government
remained that of an occupying army throughout and the dominant
way of life was still nomadic, though a Mongolian Amir had restored
the walls of Baghdad in 1405.
This state of affairs was ended by the emergence of two stable and
efficient powers, the Ottoman Turkish empire in Asia Minor and the
Persian Empire of the Safawid dynasty. This latter was founded by
Ismail, a fervent Shia who traced his family back to the seventh
Imam. In 1499 Ismail overthrew the Turkoman White Sheep who
had become masters of all Persia, at the battle of Nakchawan,
occupied Tabriz and was proclaimed Shah. The White Sheep still
held out in Iraq, but by 1508 Ismail had taken Baghdad.
External events in Europe also tended to the ruin of the old civiliza
tion. Portuguese seamen opened the Cape route to the Far East, and
the importance of the great transit routes from Asia to Europe by
Iraq declined (p. 233). By 1514 Albuquerque’s fortress and trading
station at Ormuz (Hormuz) closed the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. to shipping other
than Portuguese, and diverted Indian and Far Eastern trade, for which
Ormuz was the entrepot, to the Cape route. Trade and agriculture,
the twin pillars of prosperity, were broken, and the continuous
history of the ancient Babylonia reached its final stop.
Ottoman Rule from a.d. 1514 to 1831
In 1508 Iraq might have become a permanent part of the new and
civilized Persian kingdom. But contemporary with the revival of
Persia was the establishment of the aggressive Ottoman Turkish
Empire in Asia Minor. Iraq was the borderland between the two