Sassanian Period

Meanwhile the development of international communications had brought Mesopotamia and especially 'Iraq into the sphere of European politics. Great Britain sought a rapid route to India through a country where her Indian traders prospered and her consuls at Baghdad had been almost ambassadors since 1807. Cap tain Chesney brought the first steamer down the Euphrates from Birijik in 1836. A Turkish steamship company for river naviga tion was formed in 1855 and in 1861 the Lynch Company ob tained a concession for the maintenance of two steamships on the Tigris, though the idea of the Euphrates line as a mail-route to India had been abandoned. The telegraph was introduced be tween 1861 and 1864; railway schemes, first mooted in 1842 and temporarily abandoned owing to the opening of the Suez canal were revived by the Germans, who in 1899 obtained the original concession for a railway to the Persian gulf. The subsequent effect of this great scheme upon international politics and particu larly upon the relations of Great Britain, Germany and Turkey is described elsewhere (see BAGHDAD RAILWAY; TURKEY). The section from Baghdad to Samarra was completed on the eve of the World War. Schemes for the revival of prosperity by the repair of the old irrigation works began to interest the Turks, and the Hindiyah Barrage was completed by Sir W. Willcocks in 1913.

But though the latest Turkish rulers were more efficient in some respects than those of the 19th century they were equally unpopu lar. Their ideas on education went no further than the conversion

of Arabs and Kurds into indifferent copies of the Turkish effendi; their justice was still venal; their customs officials were still cor rupt and the accessible taxpayer still paid for those whom the tax-collector dared not assess or was bribed not to see. Hopes disappointed by the Turkish revolutionaries of 1908 began to turn to Arab nationalism and the outbreak of the World War found the Arabs of Mesopotamia with few exceptions either hostile to the Turk or, more often, indifferent to what might befall him.

(For subsequent history

see 'IRAQ.) (P. GR.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-For the conditions since the Arab conquest, Guy le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate (1905), is especially useful. For the Mongol invasions, Leon Cahun, Turcs et Mongols (1907), is good. Of recent works the following are valuable: M. v. Oppenheim, Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf (vol. ii. 1889) ; D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East (19o2) passim; Sir M. Sykes, Dar ul Islam (1904) and The Caliphs' Last Heritage (1915) and, above all, S. W. Longrigg, Four Centuries of Modern Iraq (1925). The annual consular reports most nearly bearing on Mesopotamia were those for Aleppo, Mosul, Baghdad and Basra.

M.APs.,--The following deserve special mention: v. Oppenheim op. cit., a most valuable large scale map in pockets of volumes; Sir M. Sykes, Geog. Journal xxx. op. p. 356 and xxxiv. op. p. 1 20 ; Hogarth, op. cit., Longrigg, op. cit., tribal map.