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Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba‘thist Iraq, 1968–89 pp 97–111Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Changing Features of the Past: Re-writing History

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Part of the book series: St Antony’s/Macmillan Series ((STANTS))

Abstract

In coaxing the people of Iraq into viewing themselves as somehow related to Mesopotamia’s ancient inhabitants, the Iraqi media were confronted with a difficulty. Since important sections of the country’s intellectual community did not consider Babylonians and Assyrians to have been Arabs, any outright identification of the Iraqi people with the ancient Mesopotamians could be construed as undercutting the Arab character of the former. While such an interpretation was of no concern to the Qasim government, it was a different matter for a pan-Arab regime. Consequently, so long as the ancient Mesopotamians were not Arabized — a process initiated only in the late 1970s — proponents of the new trend usually resorted to equivocal allusions. But despite this intentional blurring of the issue, some outlines did emerge, exhibiting a continuum that extends between two extreme poles. One of these is the conservative view which justifies Iraqis in taking pride in their country’s past, but only insofar as it served as a cradle for a succession of great civilizations. At the other pole, one finds the conviction, expressed with varying degrees of clarity, that modern Iraqis are the offspring, and sole legitimate cultural heirs, of the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians and their civilizations. Between these poles lies a broad range of shades and hues, of which we will deal here only with the most coherent.

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Notes

  1. Jamal Baban, Afaq ‘Arabiyya, March 1980, p. 98; Th, Weekly Supplement, 15 December 1979, p. 16. See also Jum, Weekly Supplement, 16 March 1969, p. 1; Jum, 14 March 1969, p. 3; 30 March 1970, p. 11; Dr Isa Salman, ibid., 16 January 1969, p. 5; 23 July 1970; Th, 31 May 1972; 14 July 1978; 10 December 1979; Dr al-Khatib, Th, 29 April 1980; on the treatment of Mesopotamian history in the new concise Iraqi Encyclopedia, Th, 23 November 1980; Dr Fawzi Rashid, Afaq ‘Arabiyya, July 1979, pp. 92–9; Dr Ahmad, Baghdad Observer, 6 August 1979.

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  43. For example, Information Minister Latif Nusayyif Jasim, The Baghdad Observer, 7 September 1987.

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  44. Sa‘d al-Bazzaz, Gulf War, The Israeli Connection (translation from the Arabic Namir Abbas Mudhaffar) (Baghdad, 1989), pp. 17, 19, 23, 28, 33. In reality the Iraqi Jewish community in Israel has no set political views in regard to contemporary Iraq. Some of the more prominent Israeli politicians of Iraqi descent were in fact very active in trying to find an Israeli-Iraqi modus vivendi.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of the History of the Middle East, Haifa University, Israel

    Amatzia Baram (Lecturer)

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© 1991 Amatzia Baram

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Baram, A. (1991). The Changing Features of the Past: Re-writing History. In: Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba‘thist Iraq, 1968–89. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21243-9_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21243-9_9

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