The modern Iraqi state was established in 1920 by the British, who wrested control of it from the defeated Ottoman Empire after World War I. The war led to the break-up of the empire and the setting up of a Turkish republic.
That was also when Iraq got its name, ancient Arabic word of uncertain meaning, derived from the name of a seventh-century Arab settlement in Mesopotamia.
The country was granted full independence in 1932 as a monarchy, but a military coup overthrew King Faisal II (who had ruled from 1939) in 1958.
A republic was proclaimed but a period of political instability followed. The government in changed hands several times before the Ba’ath Party seized power through another military coup in 1968.
In July 1979, then President Ahmed Hassan Al-Bakr resigned and handed over the reigns to his chosen successor and vice-president, Saddam Hussein.
The latter’s dictatorship and control over the media had crippling effects on Iraqi culture and society.
Among other things, he persecuted political rivals, intellectuals and minorities such as the Kurds and Jews, and poured vast sums into propaganda films and plays. He built over 70palaces for himself while most of the population languished in shanty towns.
Despite its oil reserves, several wars and 12 years of recent United Nations economic sanctions have further drained Iraq of its cultural life.
Other neighboring oil-rich countries have done better. Iran, for instance, has crawled out of its revolution and war-stricken past, including eight years of fighting with Iraq in the 1980s
Although religious law governs every aspect of life in the Islamic Republic Of Iran, its capital, Teheran has trendy cafes, tree-lined promenades of fashion boutiques and an internationally-acclaimed filmmaking culture.
Baghdad in recent years has had its share of acclaimed artists and film-makers like painter Laila al-Attar, the late director of the Iraqi National Art Museum, and film and theatre Youssef el-Ani.
The latest war in the country, however, has dealt a knockout blow to Iraqi arts and culture.
Many TV and radio stations have stopped transmitting. The cinemas and theatres are deserted, if they have not already been bombed back into the Stone Age.
And looters have sacked Baghdad’s antiquities museum, plundering treasures dating back thousands of years to the dawn of civilization in Mesopotamia.
The West Wakes Up
But outside the country, other Iraqi artistes have been keeping the flag flying/
Chief among these is Iraqi balladeer Kazem Al-Saher, known as the Frank Sinatra of Arab pop music with 30 million album sales worldwide.
Based in Cairo, Egypt, he is currently recording his first album produced in the US. He sings the love songs in Iraq’s national language, Arabic, and recently recorded a duet with American pop singer Lenny Kravitz, calling for peace in his home country.
The Iraqi war has led to an interest in Iraqi culture among people in Western countries, in the same way that Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s movie titled ‘Kandahar’ caught the world’s attention at the end of 2001 because of the war in Afghanistan.
London’s British Museum, which has the largest collection of Mesopotamian artifacts outside of Iraq, says visits to its Iraqi cultural exhibits have soared.
The BBC also reported that sales of books by Iraqi authors have risen dramatically. More than 2000 people have visited a north London gallery’s exhibition of everyday Iraqi objects called Our Life in pieces.
Before the global media turned its spotlight on Iraq, one of the few Westerners to highlight its historical and cultural legacy was the celebrated author of graphic novels, Neil Gaiman.
In the comic book Fables And Reflections (1993), he wrote and illustrated a beautiful fantasy contrasting the riches of life during the time of Abbasid king Haroun Al Raschid- the king hailed in A Thousand And One Nights 0 with the rubble of modern Baghdad.
Post-colonial critic Edward Said, a Palestinian now living in the US, has noted the ignorance of Arab art and culture within the American establishment.
He argues in his book Culture and Imperialism (1993): “American attention works in spurts; great masses of rhetoric and huge resources are lavished somewhere (Vietnam, Libya, Iraq, and Panama), followed by virtual silence.”
Scattered throughout the world, a small group of Iraqis have attempted to create a more lasting awareness of their culture.
In London, a diasporas of Iraqi visual artists has banded together to form Stokes Of Genius, a collective which exhibits and publishes writings on contemporary Iraqi art.
Author Nawal Nasrallah, based in America, recently published an Iraqi cookbook after sifting through ancient recipes, including those preserved on Sumerian clay tablets and deciphered by archaeologists.
And anonymous young Iraqi, writing under the pseudonym Salam Pax, has posted on the Internet a diary of daily life in Baghdad during the current war.
His last entry was dated March 24. You can visit his website at
In small but significant ways, these individuals are protesting against being culturally snuffed out and forgotten while the world moves on to the next troubled spot.
As Mr Yassir Tabaqehali, an Iraqi advertising executive now living in Jordan, told The New Yorker recently: “What hurts most is that for the last 10 years, the West has forgotten that we are a cultured people.
“Now the word ‘Iraqi’ means “terrorist.”
Still, with Saddam’s hold on the country broken, Iraq may now have a chance to reclaim old glories and nurture new ones again.
Iraqi Culture: Then & Now
- The British Museum in London has a huge collection of Mesopotamian artifacts. These include the remains of lion figures, which were commonly used to guard the doorways of temples and other important buildings in 3000 BC.
- Babylonian king Hamurabi (1792-1750 BC) devised The Hammurabi Code, considered the earliest comprehensive legal code ever. Its “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” philosophy of social justice is still referred to today. This code also held the state as the authority responsible for enforcing the law.
- The legendary Banging Gardens of Babylon on the east bank of the Euphrates River, about 50km south of modern day Baghdad, was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. It had brightly-coloured tropical plants cultivated on top of stone arches 23m above the ground, watered from the Euphrates by a complicated mechanical system.
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Important Arab poets working in Baghdad from the 9th to the 12th centuries included Abu Nuwars, known for his love lyrics, and Ibn Da’ud. The latter helped popularize the ghazal, an amorous or mystical short poem of no more than 12 couplets, all on one rhyme. The form is still used in Arabic and English-language poetry.
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Baghdad’s bait al-hikma or the Academy Of Wisdom, founded in the 9th century, was a centre of learning for the Arab world. Books in Chinese, Indian, Greek and Latin were brought in and translated to Arabic.
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Apart from the word and concept of “algebra”, 9th-century mathematician Al-Khwarizmi gave Europe at least one other Mathematical concept. When his books were translated into Latin, his name came out as “ Algorismus”, a word which inspired “algorithm”
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Many of the tales in the anonymously penned 10th- century literary classic A Thousand And One Nights are set in Baghdad, although the tales have Indian as well as Arabic roots. Aladdin in Aladdin And His Wonderful Lamp lands his magic carpet in Baghdad, from which Sinbad the Sailor also departs on his voyages.
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A distinctive musical form is the Iraqi maqam, developed by the 19th-century composer Rahmat Allah Shiltegh. Maqam refers to the specific Arabic tone scales (as opposed to the standard 12 tone scale of Western music) with their vast range of different microtones. This creates different moods, and the Iraqi maqam has a wailing, sobbing quality.
- The first public cinema hall in Ottoman Baghdad was built in1909. Huge crowds used to be drawn to the cinemas, but after years of wars and economic sanctions, people now prefer to buy videos and watch them at home.
- When the Iraqi movie industry developed in the 1940s, it relied on directors, actors and technical crew from Egypt. The popular Egyptian romances influenced the first true-blue Iraqi film, Fitna And Hassan (1954)
- Western classical music used to have a following in the country. There is an Iraq National Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1950 as a professional orchestra but now reduced to a group of about 60 amateurs.
- The late Muhammad Shukri Jamil is considered Iraq’s greatest film director. His Al-Dham-I’un (The Thirsty Ones, 1972) is regarded as a masterpiece of Iraqi cinema, combining beautiful images with political critique.
- Name of Iraqi museum are not known for their subtlety. A museum in Basra on the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) is called The Museum For The Martyrs Of Persian Aggression. A Baghdad museum on Saddam Hussein’s life is called the Triumph Leader Museum.
- A leading light of the contemporary visual arts scene in Iraq was woman painter Laila al-Attar, the director of the Iraqi National Art Museum and a powerful force in gaining recognition for female artists throughout the Middle East. She died in a US air strike on Baghdad in 1993.
- The most bizarre work of art created in Saddam’s name is a romance novel, supposedly authored by the man himself in 2001. Titled Zabibah and The King, it depicts the love affair of a wise ruler, thought to represent Saddam, and a beautiful woman. A short-hand for the Iraqi people, she is raped by her blackguard husband on Jan 17, the dare in 1991 when the US-led Operation Desert Storm began bombing Baghdad.
- The love songs of contemporary Iraqi pop star Kazem Al-Saher, 41 are influenced by Arab classical music. The late Syrian poet Nizar Qabani wrote lyrics for some 30 of his songs, and one of Kazem’s hits, La Titnahad, was remixed by the dance fusion DJs of London’s Transglobal Underground.
- Western pop music is hot in Baghdad. A popular local band under the name Bee-Gees plays covers of Western rock, and there is an English-language radio station, Voice Of Youth. Controlled by Saddam’s son Uday, it plays everything from Lynyrd Skynyrd to Britney Spears.
- At end-2002, audiences were packing Baghdad’s National Theatre every night to laugh at themselves. A play written and directed by Abed Ali Qaed, titled Vagabonds, gently mocked Iraqis for having become a nation of beggars.
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Among the ancient Iraqi recipes collected by author Nawal Nasrallah in her new cookbook are sweet and sour salmon in almond prune sauce and mustard and kubbut halab, balls of crunchy rice dough stuffed with ground beef, currants, toasted almonds and spices. Her book, Delights from The Garden Of Eden, can be ordered online at
