Marmara Üniversitesi, İlah!)ıat Fakültesi, İslam Tarihi ve Sanatları Bölümü

Marmara Universiry, Faculry of Theology. Department of lslamic Histoıy and Arts

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İslam Konferansı Te§kilatı, İslam Tarih, Sanat ve Kültür Ara§tırma Merkezi (IRCICA)

Organisation of islamic Conference, Research Centre for lslamic Histoıy. Art and Culture

isLAM MEbı:Nivı?:ri'NôE sACinAT . .

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(MEDINETU'S-SELAM) ULUSLARARASI SEMPOZYUM

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD (MADINATai-SALAM) IN THE ISL.AMIC CIVILIZATION

7-9 Kasım 1 November 2008 Bağlarba~ı Kültür Merkezi

Üsküdar- iSTANBUL

TÜRKİYE

PROGRAM

Ümran!}'e Beled!}'esi'nin katkılar~la

Sponsored by Umraniye Municipality

THE CULTURAL SCENE IN BAGHDAD AND

ITS SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKDROP ON

THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1958:

AMEMOIR

Wissam AL-ZAHA WIE.

In the midelle of the twentieth century, Baghdad was the scene not only of a lively cultural activity, but was alsa experiencing what may rightly be regard­ed as a veritable cultural renaissance. Those years witnessed the flowering of the talents ofiraqi artists; painters and sculptors of the caliber ofJawad Salim, Faik Hassan, Suad and Layla al-Attar, Mohmmad Ghani, Khalid Al-Rahhal, Isınail al-Turk and many others. Most of them had recently returned from their studies in London, Paris, or Rame where they had been senton govern­ment scholarships. We had musicians and compasers like the brothers Jarnil and Munir Bashir, Salman Shukur, Ghanim Haddad and Salim Hussein. In the field of poetry and literature, al-Sayyab, al-Malaika, al-Bayati, and Abdul Me­lik Nuri were true pioneers in modernizing Arabic literature. Plays, profes­sianal and amateur, were staged; concerts and recitals were well-attended. Art

exhibitions were mounted in various venues. Television was introduced to Iraq in 1954; the cultural activities were often televised, gaining a much wider audience.

I do not intend, however, to dwell in detail on the activities of those Ira­qis; they, and their achievements, are all well-known and adequately docu­mented.

Ambassador, Senior U ndersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iraq, ret.

614IINTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION

I would rather draw attention to the all-but-forgotten stream of foreign teachers and visitors who made their own valuable contributions to the elli­turallife of the city and the country and most of whom I had encountered up­on my return to Baghdad in Iate 1953 after almost fıve years of absence while studying in the United States.

Most of the above mentioned Iraqi artists, for example, were the gradu­ates ·of the Institute of Fine Arts established in the early forties, upon the invi­tation of the Iraqi government, by the great Turkish musician, composer, eel­list, and virtuoso lute player, Sherif Muhiddin Targan. Targan had given some concerts in New York in the twenties and was hailed by the critics as "The Pa­ganini of the lute." The fırst Iraqi lute players who gained international fame were Targan's students. Other Turkish musicians, like Mesut Cernil, Cinucen Tandkorur and Necdet Varol were also invited to teach at the Institute. The Western music department had Mme. Moeller from Switzerland, Julian Hertz and Sandu Albu from Romania. Maestro Momer from Germany was the lead­er of the Symphony Orchestra. The British Ian Auld and the Cypriot Valenti­no Kharalambos, both of the London Central School for Art and Design, were teaching pottery and ceramics at the Institute.

The fırst cultural event that I attended in Baghdad, after my prolonged absence, proved to be, unfortunately, a jarring experience. It was a lecture de­livered at one of the local colleges, and the lecturer was the eminent British historian, Arnold Toynbee. A dust storm was raging outside, the wind rattling the windows with broken panes. The great Toynbee had to stoop over a rick­ety table much too low for his lanky frame, his voice fıghting a losing battle with the noises from the corridor outside every time some curious passers-by opened the creaky door to peep at the proceedings in the hall. Above the usual hubbub, came the hiss of a Primus stove over which the "farrash" (doorman­cum-errand-runner) was preparing his endless pots of tea for the passers-by just outside the entrance to the hall. No one else in the hall seemed to take the slightest no te of the intolerable distractions. How could anyone responsible for arranging the lecture be so oblivious to those glaring shortcomings, subjecting the dignifıed professor to such hurniliating conditions! I felt so shocked, furi­ous, and mortifıed that I could not pay any attention to the lecture itself, what was left was only the memory of i ts deplorable circumstances.

The other great histarian who visited Baghdad in those years was Sir Ste­ven Runciman of Cambridge University, a world-renowned authority on the history of the Crusades. Runciman's lecture on Byzantine Art was delivered at a much better venue at the Spring Festival of Iraqi Art organized by a group of

THE CUL TU RAL SCENE IN BAGHDAD AND ITS SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKDROP .. . J615

Iraq i artists to inaugurate the fo unding of the Society of Iraq i Artists in 1956. I met Runciman at a reception given in his honor by a friend of mine, the Iate Suham Shawket, himself a Cambridge graduate, at the beautiful Shawket house on the banks of the Tigris.

Suham was an amateur actor-producer who had same theatrical experi­ence at Cambridge. In Baghdad, he had gathered a smail circle of friends of similar interests including members of the foreign and diplamatic community and together staged, in the same elegant reception rooms of the Shawket house, Graham Greene's play "The Living Room." The two performances were by invitation only, followed by a sumptuous buffet dinner. Anather play, George Bemard Shaw's "Man and Superman" was staged in the open court­yard of one of those old Ottoman era houses which used to dot the banks of the river and have now almost completely disappeared. The houses were a fa­vourite for many foreigners in the city, especially the British diplomats. The second story of the house, which typically had a gallery overlooking the open courtyard, was put to good use in mounting the play, enhancing the drama's action. Memories of that evening stililinger because of so me amusing remarks made after the performance by a member of the audience, Lord Jellicoe, then the assistant secretary general of the Baghdad Pact, about the play itself and the reactions of same members of the audience, teliing one of the ladies that she had the expressian of "Saint Paul on the road to Damascus." But what made the memories indelible was the tragic death, within a year, of the young British diplomat who was our host for that evening. He succumbed to polio, or infantile paralysis, to which Iraqis seemed to be immune at the time. The disease started to take its toll among Iraqi children some years later at the time when babies were, supposedly, being raised in a more hygienic environment which seems only to have weakened their natural immune defense system as compared to the more hardy earlier generations.

The American community in Baghdad had formed anather amateur group which included other English-speaking members. W e staged Truman Capote's "The Grass Harp" in the hall of the British Council with a repeat per­formance at the, then, exclusive Alwiya Club, established by the British in 1924. A number of us had to dash home after the performance to change into black tie to attend a charity ball at the Amanalı Hall for the benefit of the Iraq i Red Crescent Society.

In the spring of 1954, Baghdad was threatened by a great flood of the Ti­gris, and cultural activities came to a standstill. The whole city was mobilized; the army was on full alert and the government was debating whether to order

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISIJ\MIC CIVIUZATION

the evacuation of the city. It was the fear of creating an uncontrollable panic which dissuaded the government from taking such a drastic measure. The city was only saved by the heroic joint efforts of the army and the populace in a roun~-the-clock operation to shore up the earthen bunds protecting the east­em part of the city with sandbags and earth-movers. Beyand the bunds, origi­nally built by the Ottomans in the nineteenth century, all the land was inun­dated with the flood waters as far as the horizon. Within a fortnight, the rising water-table caused the adobe-built walls and huts to collapse; grave diggers found water seeping through the soil at the depth of a few feet. The floods were an almost annual threat to the city until the big irrigation projects and dams diverted the flood waters in to the Tharthar depression north of Baghdad later in the decade.

There were three British writers in Baghdad whose writings reflected life in the city in those years. Desmond Stewart wrote two novels which were, in fact, romans a clef, their characters thinly disguised well-known Baghdadis. But it was his book "New Babylon, A Portrait of Iraq" co-authored with John Haylock (published in London in 1956) which put an end to their stay in Baghdad. The book was highly critical of the British community behaving like the ersatz sahibs and memsahibs of the Raj in India. The British, of course, were not amused. The two offenders' contracts as leeturers at one of the col­leges were not renewed by the government. The poet and eritic Alan Neame wrote an article about the "Baghdad School of Painting," which was published in the British arts magazine "Studio" in February 1956 and had on its front cover a painting by Ata Sabri depicting a village in north Iraq. The article in­troduced the Iraqi artists to the West, raising wide interest intheir work. An­other British writer, Gavin Young, visited Baghdad in the fifties. Gavin was a correspondent for "The Observer" and later became its senior foreign corre­spondent. In 1977, he published "Return to the Marshes," a book of the marsh Arabs of Iraq and a worthy successor to the bo ok written twenty years earlier, "The Marsh Arabs" by the legendary Wilfred Thesiger. Gavin's book included stunning photographs by Nick Wheeler catching the beauty of the marshes and the, albeit prirnitive, life of their inhabitants. Gavin wrote anather excel­lent book, "Iraq: Land ofTwo Rivers" in 1980, again with photographs by Nick Wheeler; it is a first-rate portrait of the beauty and the turmail of the land through its turbulent history. As the publisher, Collins, writes in introducing the book, "Neither author nor photographer have needed to search for variety, contrast or colour- Iraq herself provides themin abundance." Peter Mansfield was anather writer and journalist who often visited Baghdad. A Cambridge graduate who had joined the Foreign Service, Peter resigned from the Foreign

617

Office, along with Anthony Nutting and other governrnent o:fficials after the British invasion of Suez in 1956. The last book Peter wrote was "A History of the Middle East," published in 1991 with a posthumous second edition revised and edited by Nicolas Pelham, in 2003, is one of the best books on the subject.

After the end of World W ar I, Iraq became a major destination for British archeologists. In the 1920s, shortly after Lord Carnarvon's discovery of the to mb of Tu tankharnun at Luxor, Sir Leonard W oolley discovered the golden treasures of the royal cemetery at Biblical Ur of the Chaldees, the capital of Sumeria in Southern Iraq. Woolley's young assistant, Max Mallowan, was later to accompany him for the digs in Nimrud and Nineveh, the capitals of the As­syrian Empire in the North. Woolley, Mallowan, Seton Lloyd and all other archeologists had to pass through Baghdad to go to the excavations in Sume­ria, Babylon and Assyria. ln 1949, another friend of mine, the Iate Palestinian­Iraqi writer Jabra Ihrahim Jabra, met Max Mallowan through his friend Robert Hamilton, another archeologist whom Jabra had befriended in Jerusalem where Harnilton was the director of the Rockerfeller Museum for Palestinian Archeology. At a dinner at the Mallowans, attended by J ab ra, Harnilton and Seton Lloyd, a professor of archeology at London University, Mrs. Mallowan took up her knitting after the meal and listened with great interest to what Jabra was saying about the news from Jerusalem; the massacres, the forceful eviction of the Palestinians and the occupation of their lands. Mrs. Mallowan kept repeating that "all this should be publicized in detail to the world. Writers should document these inhuman acts which we used to say that the war will put an end to. W e wanted the war to end all wars - but it seems that it started to sow yet again the seeds of many future conflicts. This is not the way for the British to divest themselves of their Empire." Mrs. Mallowan was not aware of the fact that Jabra, together with his friend Desmond Stewart, were regularly broadcasting in English on Radio Baghdad talks and commentaries on these same tragic events occurring in Palestine in an attempt to raise the conscience of international public opinion. The conversation turned to the ancient rela­tions between Iraq and Palestine and Lloyd's two books on Iraq, "The Land of the Two Rivers," and "Foundations in the Dust." Lloyd had spent twenty years in Iraq and was soon to leave for Ankara where he wrote his excellent books on Anatolian archeology.

During the intermission of a performance at the King Faisal Hall, which after the revolution was renamed the Peoples' Hall, Stewart saw Jabra talking to the Mallowans. He later asked his friend, "So, did you solve the murder mystery?" Jabra did not understand what Desmond was talking about. Des­ınand said, "Why, one of the murders concocted by the lady I saw you talking

61BIINTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION

to." Jabra was stili mystified. "Well, weren't you talking to Agatha Christie?" J abra had no idea that Mrs. Mallowan was in fact Agatha Christie.

Andrew Eames, in his book, "The 8.55 To Baghdad," retracing the first trip made by Christie from London to Baghdad writes that Christie had met her future second husband for the first time in Ur in 1927. She wrote the fore_word to her autobiography in their mud-brick house at the exeavation site in Nimrud. From 1949 to 1957, she and her husband spent every excavating season in Nimrud, during which time Mallowan excavated the palace of the Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II. Of Christie's 105 books (translated into 112 languages which, according to UNESCO, rank her second in the world after the Bible (translated into 171 languages), and ahead of Shakespeare, only two had Iraq for their location. The first was "Murder in Mesopotamia", published in the thirties, and the second, "They Came to Baghdad", was published in the forties. Except for their locale, their characters and their backgrounds were not very different from her other books with a British setting. lt is very strange, and most unfortunate, that while Mrs. Mallowan was so strongly urging others to publicize, in detail, the plight of the Palestinians to the world, Agatha Chris­tie, herself, chose not to write anything at all about the victims of those "in­human acts."

Baghdad in, the fifties became the site where some of the world' s most re­nowned architects left their imprints. W alter Gropius .was commissioned to draw theplansfor the University ofBaghdad. Gio Ponti designed the Ministry of Planning and Le Corbusier, the sports arena. One architect whose plans did not materialize was Frank Lloyd Wright who was commissioned to design an opera house for Baghdad. The project was deemed to be too expensive and extravagant; something like a Disneyland pleasure dome. Wright, who came to Baghdad in 1957, seems to have been inspired by the spiral minaret of the ninth century Abbasid Great Mosque of Samarra when he had designed the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue in New York. The descending spiral ramp inside the museum is very much like the spiral ramp outside the minaret turned inside and upside down. Visitors to the art exhibitions in the museum would descend the ramp as they viewed the paintings hung on the walls of the ramp.

lt was also in the fıfties that Baghdad missed the great opportunity of be­coming the home of a magnificent collection of antiquities, artifacts, paintings, sculptures and furnishings covering periods extending from 4000 B.C. Sume­ria, to Egypt, Greece, the Islamic Era, the European Renaissance all the way to the impressionists of the nineteenth century. The Gulbenkian Foundation of-

THE CUL TU RAL SCENE IN BAG H DAD AND !TS SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKDROP .. . !619

fered the calleetion to Baghdad on the condition that it be housed in a special Gulbenkian museum or a Gulbenkian wing if it were to be part of alarger na­tional museum. Calouste Gulbenkian, an Armenian entrepreneur, had played an important part in the transaction which replaced the old Turkish Petrole­um Company creating the new Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC), and ended up with 5% of the 1925 concessions. The rewarding of the concessions was totally planned by the W estern powers, and the Iraq is were not involved on any level and Gulbenkian became widely known as Mr. Five Percent.

The reason why the government refused to accept the condition attached to the o ffer was a great puzzle for me. If national pride was the reason why the conditions were rejected, then why did the government allow the building of a nondesedpt Gulbenkian Museum for mounting exhibitions of modern art? Years later, I learned that the same offer with the same proviso attached had been made to the British Museum, and the offer was turned down. There is no proof whatsoever, but I believe that Baghdad too refused the conditions on the advice of the British. Baghdad was simply not to be allawed to get what Lon­don did not. It was Lisbon which finally got the prize. Not only the Gulbenki­an Museum, but also the Gulbenkian Symphony Orchestra and the Gulbenki­an Ballet Company are now among the main attractions of the city. Leaving the dazzling museum, the visitor sees anather reminder of Iraq which had provided Mr. Gulbenkian with his 5%. Across the street, asınaller scaled repli­ca of the spiral minaret of the Mosque of Samarra looms over the walls of Lis­bon's mosque.

As for the musical scene, after the year of the flood, Baghdad became the venue for a number of outstanding performances. The celebrations which ac­companied the signing of the Baghdad Pact in 1955 brought the group of das­sical Turkish musicians led by Munir Nurettin Selcuk, the faremost master of Turkish classkal song. The group arrived with the Turkish delegation, headed by Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, and included other distinguished musi­cians like singer Mefharet Yildirm and kanun player V ecihe Daryal. Menderes himself and many other Iraqi dignitaries, including Crown Prince Abdulilah, prime ministers Nuri Said, Arshad Umari and many others were great con­noisseurs of Turkish music. It was, in fact, Munir's third visit to Baghdad. The first was in 1936, accompanied by Fahira and Refik Fersan, distinguished mu­sicians in their own right. Fahira was the virtuoso kemence player and her husband Refik, a composer and tanbur player. Their kanun player was the composer Artaki Candan. Munir's second visit was in 1952 when he and his wife Enise Hanim were our house guests. Although the Baghdad Pact itself was widely unpopular and many resented the celebrations, the publi~ perfor-

620 liNTERNATIONAL SYMPOSJUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMI C CJVILIZATION

mance given by the musicians at the King Faisal Hall was sold out and warmly received by the audience.

In 1956 and 1957, the Baghdadis were introduced to many musical firsts. The internationally acclaimed flamenco dancer, Rosario, brought her Spanish Art Ballet for four performances arranged for the benefit of the Ramzi School for .Handicapped Children, founded in 1952 by the Women' s Temperance and Social Welfare Society under the chairmanship of Mrs. Fadhil Jamali, the fonnder of the society. The ovations from the audience were as rousing as the performance of the dancers.

Anather first for Baghdad was a recital arranged, this time, by the wom­en's branch of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society. This brought the New York Metropolitan Opera's prima-donna Eleanor Steber, fresh from her triumph at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth where she had sung Elsa in Lohengrin. Alt­hough it was the first time that the Baghdadis hear an opera singer in person, the packed Khayyam Cinema audience would not let her go before she sang no less than three major operatic arias by Verdi and Puccini-for encores, in addition to the demanding programme she had already perform ed!

The visit of the Cineinnatİ Symphony Orchestra led by its conductor An­tal Dorati was a major musical event for Baghdad, but most unfortunately it came very near to ending as a major fiasco. The venue for this concert was the gardens of the Amanalı Hall on the eastern banks of the Tigris. It was a balmy evening; the first half of the programme went quite well and Mozart' s Haffner Symphony was warmly applauded. In the intermission, Dorati was visibly up­set because of the noise made by the camera filming the concert high up on the roof of the hall. Although it was only a faint, distant hiss, still the angry Dorati berated the organizers very loudly inside the hall. Little did he know what was in store for him in the second half of the concert. Half-way through the Beethoven symphony, there came from the other bank across the river the distant barks of a solitary dog. That was only the beginning; gradually, the solitary offender was joined by a growing pack of barking stray dogs. Again, that was only a prelude to what was yet to come. Anather pack soon started their own commotion, this time on our side of the river just outside the gar­den walls. The exchange of barking and howling across the river grew to a roaring cantest with each side trying to out-hark the other. The ereseenda and i ts growing intensity was building up like a raucous canine rendition of Ravel's "Bolero" competing with Beethoven's symphony. For obvious reasons, I could not remember whether it was the "Eroica" or the "Pastorale". As at Toynbee's lecture, the distractions and the commotion prevailed over the proceedings.

THE CUL TU RAL SC ENE IN BAGHDAD AND ITS SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKDROP .. . j621

The concert, somehow, finally came to an end. The chastened Dorati was simply struck speechless. The wonder was that the whole audience managed to keep its composure and did not break up in uncontrollable hilarity. The con­cert was as incongruous as the scene in Toynbee's lecture hall. They were both

eye-openers on the divide between the esoteric event itself and the harsh reali­ty of i ts surroundings in the world outside.

My most bizarre experience in those years was my encounter with an

Englishman by the name of Adrian Rivett. It was the surnmer of 1957 and one of our amateur theatre groups decided to arrange play readings or serni-staged one-act plays during the surnmer recess. As it was a large group, it was decid­

ed to draw lots to divide the gathering into sınaller groups. Adrian and I, to­gether with two young ladies, came out in one group. Adrian, who stuttered, suggested that instead of reading, he would write us a one-act play. W e wel­comed his offer as it would be a play specially written for the occasion and

certainly the most original among all the others chosen. It was about a group of rich, indolent and frivolous characters enjoying their drinks and shallow repartee on a surnmer evening when the telephone rings. The person on the line is warning them that the dam upstream is about to burst and they should

leave the house immediately or take whatever precautions necessary. The first one to answer the call thinks the warning is but a hoax and hangs up. The call­er rings again. None of those who answer take the insistent caller seriously; they dismiss him sarcastically, humorously, or angrily. But the phone keeps on

ringing. No one bothers to answer.

Adrian had invited us to his lodgings one evening for a rehearsal. It was a

decrepit building downtown. The room was simply furnished; paperbacks

filled the low shelves around the walls. As we left the place, Nancy, the Ameri­can in our group, asked me whether I thought Adrian was a spy; he was not working at the embassy, nor was he a reporter nor a teacher, so what was he

doing in Baghdad? My immediate response was that I saw no reason why the British should bother to have a spy in Baghdad; they already knew everybody and everything they wanted to know about Iraq. It never occurred to me that

an Englishman, spying for another country, could be living and roaming freely around when the British were practically running the show in the country.

It was only some years later, when I was the second secretary at the Iraqi

Embassy in London that I discovered the true identity of Adrian Rivett. In mid-1963, the London papers were full of Kim Philby's defection and sudden appearance in Moscow. The man in the pictures looked vaguely familiar, but it

was notuntil I read that his full name was Kim A.R. Philby and that he stam-

622 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION

mered that I knew for sure: Philby was none other than Adrian, our play­wright in Baghdad. His play was a curtain-raiser to what was to happen in Iraq almost exactly a year later in the summer of 1958. He was obviously signaling the impending revolution. According to Said Aburish, Kim's father, Harry St. John Philby, friend and advisor to Ibn Saud, the fonnder of Saudi Arabia, was strongly opposed to Gertrude Bell and the others who wanted to install a monarchy in Iraq; he wanted it to be a republic and "he was shrill about it." Peter Mansfield had known Philby in Beirut where they were both working as correspondents; when I told him of the play and i ts obvious connotations, he said that it was typical of Kim, he would do such things. Patrick Seale, who had written a biography of Philby, said that those were Philby's years in the wilderness when little was known of his whereabouts. He asked whether I stili had a copy of the play; I did not. Although I never sa w Philby again after that summer of 1957, he did manage to put on my tail two of his KGB colleagues. The first was Mikhall Lyubimov in London in the sixties; the second was Ab­dulkhalik Gadjiev, a decade later in New York. Gadjiev had heard that I was related to Sheikh Shamil of Daghestan and wanted to meet me on the pretext that he was translating Lesly Blanche's book, "The Sabres of Paradise," about Shamil's 30 years war against Czarist Russia into Daghestani. Both, Lyubimov and Gadjiev, were later declared to be persona non grata, in 1965 and 1975 respectively and had to leave their posts. In the mid eighties, there was yet a third KGB attempt to establish contact-during a ballet performance at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow! But all that is another story.

The seeds of revolution in Iraq were sown much earlier than the fi.fties. A strong body of public opinion was dissatisfied believing that Iraq was stili un­der British hegemony. As Fadhil Jamali writes, Iraq, though nominally a fully independent country since it had joined the League of Nations in 1932, was stili, in effect, very much under British control. The terms of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930 did not allow Iraq, inter alla, to have any foreign embassy in Baghdad other than the British embassy. The other diplomatic missions were merely allowed the rank of legations. It was not until the end of the Second World War that this particnlar article of the treaty was abrogated, in 1946 when Jamali himself was foreign minister, and Iraq was allowed, to receive and send ambassadors to whatever countries with which it chose to establish diplomatic relations as a fully sovereign state. Even so, according to Gerald de Gaury, a close personal friend of the Crown Prince, Abdulilah, would not ap­point a prime minister before consulting the British ambassador. In the ab­sence of the ambassador, he would consult Major General Ren ton, head of the British Military Mission. A series of events, the mysterious death of the popu-

THE CULTURAL SCENE IN BAGHDAD AND ITS SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKDROP ... J623

lar King Ghazi in a car crash in 1939, the return of the unpopular Regent Crown Prince Abdulilah on a British destroyer after the British suppression of Rashid Ali Al-Gailani's popular nationalist coup in 1941, and Abdulilah's in­sistence on hanging, publicly, the officers involved in the coup; the terrible injustice inflicted on the people of Palestine by the partition of their country in 1947 and the humiliation of the debacle of the ill-prepared Arab annies in their efforts to sa ve what was left of Palestine in the face of Zionist expansion and ethnic cleansing, all were leading to the demise of the monarchy in 1958.

I quote the opinion expressed, in 2003, by a respected American professor of law to give an idea of how the deep and traumatic injustice inflicted on the Arabs in Palestine in 1947 continues to infect the Arab, and Islamic, psyche to this day. Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, writing in his book, "The Great Terror W ar", states: "There is little doubt throughout the Muslim world, especially in the Arab countries but also in other parts of the world, increasingly including Europe and Asia, that the American role in supporting an unjust and illegal Israeli policy with respect to the Palestinian struggle, is a fundamental and legitimate grievance directed against US policy". Underlining "the unjustifi.ed support for Sharon's brutality toward the Palestinians as a whole," Professor Falk writes that, "The Palestini­an ordeal, as it evolves and worsens, continues to feed and intensify anti­American resentrnents and indirectly contributes to the emergence of political ex.tremism, which in certain confi.gurations can produce violent resistance and eve n lead to mega terrorism".

A series of major ex.ternal and internal events in the 1950's exacerbated the situation, hastening the end:

1- In neighbouring Iran, the rise of the fiery nationalist, Mohammed Mossadegh, and his nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian O il Com pa­ny in 1951,

2- The 1952 revolution which ended the monarchy in Egypt,

3- The revolution in Algeria in 1954,

4- Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal Company in 1956,

5- The tripartite attack on Suez in 1956,

6- The formation of the United Arab Republic merging Egypt and Syria in 1958.

All those events were closely watched by the Iraqis; the lesson was not lost, it was possible to reclaim the inalienable right of a country to control its natural resources and i ts national destiny from the colonial domination of the

624111\JTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMI C CIVILIZATION

W estern Po w ers. O il was a major factor for the W est in their scramble for the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and in drawing the artificial and arbitrary boundaries of the divided Arab countries and shaping their lead­erships.

Internally, the series of military agreements concluded in 1955 with Iran, Tu~key, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom, known as the Baghdad Pact, was bitterly opposed by the majority of Iraqis and indeed the great mass of articu­late Arab opinion. As the Pact had links with the North Atlantic Treaty Or­ganization (NATO), through the United Kingdam and Turkey, it was regard­ed as an instrurnent of continued W estern do mina tion. 1955 was also the year which witnessed the growth of the Non-aligned Movement, under the leader­ship ofNehru, Tito, and Nasser, which symbolized the efforts by the majority of the developing world to throw off the hegemony of the W est. The Baghdad Pact would also thrust Iraq in to the East-W est conflict. Above all, Iraq is sa w the Pact not only as yet anather mallifestation of British damination of their country, but also as a direct challenge to the national aspirations of the Arab people as exemplified by Nasser's Egypt. Iraq, after all, was fashioned by the British as an Arab country which was, ostensibly, the achievement attained by the Arab Revalt against Ottoman rule. The Emir Feisal, son of the Arab Hash­emite descendants of the Prophet Malıarnmed in the Hijaz, had already been installed as the, king of Syria to reward him for his role in leading the Ara b Revalt against the Ottomans, which was instigated and organized by the Brit­ish agent who came to be known as Lawrence of Arabia. But when the French expelled Feisal from Syria, which they wanted to rule as an outright colony, the British brought the Arab Emir to Iraq and enthroned him as the sovereign of the other Arab country they had carried out of the former Ottoman territo­ries for their respective spheres of influence to serve their irnperial interests. A century later, the Arab Nationalist Movement, no langer under the tutelage and control of the W estern powers and deemed to be pasing a direct threat to their strategic interests, was now to be curtailed wherever possible. Iraq is no langer to be identified as an Arab country, but a loose federation of states based on ethnic and seetarian divisions, Kurdish, Sunni and Shi'ite: a "federa­tion" based on a constitution unlike any other in existence in which regional laws are to have precedence over the "federal" law in case of a conflict between the two sets of laws; with a central "government" lacking any meaningful au­thority. The W est, now led by the United States, seem not to have considered the far-reaching consequences for the whole region; nor have they realizeci that the suppression of Arab secular nationalism has paved the way for the emergence of extremist, often violent, Islamist movements as the only resort

THE CULTURAL SCENE IN BAGHDAD AND ITS SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKDROP ... J625

available to resist Western imperialism. The Suez W ar in 1956, a year after the signing of Baghdad Pact, was the final catalyst which sparked the violent up­heaval in 1958 and ended the Hashemite Monarchy in Iraq. The Monarchy was, by then, perceived to be, by the great majority of the population, as a mere proxy for British rule. The whole system collapsed within two hours of the brutal massacre of the Royal family and Prime Minister Nuri Said along with many other innocent people.

Nuri, the inveterate ally of the British, had considered Abdul Nasser, the non-aligned leader and implacable opponent of the Baghdad Pact, as the ally, if not the outright stooge, of the communists in the region. The conflict be­tween the two men had deteriorated to a personal vendetta. When Nasser na­tionalized the Suez Canal Company, Nuri's advice to Anthony Eden was to "hit him now, hit him hard." But Nuri had also warned Eden not to involve Israel. Eden does not mention this fact in his memoirs. N evertheless, he seems to have heeded Nuri' s advice and resorted to the charade of having Israel at­taek Egypt first, and then for Britain and France to send an ultimatum to both Israel and Egypt to withdraw from the Canal Zone. Israel, as previously ar­ranged, would accept; Egypt would obviously refuse to withdraw from its na­tional territory, thus providing the British and the French with their purported justification for lannching their invasion of Suez. But the whole plot was hope­lessly transparent from the very beginning and nobody was fooled. Fadhel Ta­mali, close friend and ally of Nuri, writes that, "Nuri was shocked by the Brit­ish collusion with Israel in the attack on Egypt."

Nasser had the foresight to warn the Syrians and the Jordanians not to be involved in the Suez W ar as he knew that their arrnies would be destroyed.

Nevertheless, Syrian nationalists went ahead and destroyed the Iraqi pipeline which went through Syria. The Iraqis bitterly felt that they themselves should have cut off the oil. The best that Nuri could manage to do was to fly to Telı­ran to "consult" with the Shah, his Baghdad Pact ally. While the crowds in the streets of Baghdad were seething with anger and resentment, the local papers were devating their main articles to the Soviet invasion of Hungary - "al­Majar" in Arabic. There are two rivers in northern Iraq by the name of the "Great Majar" and the "Lesser Majar." The bitter joke among Iraqis was the question, which of the two Majars were the Soviets attacking?

Internally, too, Iraq was being tom apart; the system was riddled with corruption, rigged elections were the rule, the country was badly in need of land reforms and social welfare programmes. Triballaw, outdated and primi­tive as it was in many respects, rigorously observed and maintained by its de-

626 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION

fenders who claimed that tampering with these traditional laws would be vio­lently opposed by the powerful tribal chiefs. Y et, when the same laws were abolished overnight by the Republican regime in 1958, the move was widely welcomed and not a sign of any opposition fro anyone. The American arnbas­sadar W aldemar Gallman no tes that Nuri, although personally not corrupt, although Said Aburish writes otherwise, was surrounded with some corrupt people. In fact, Nuri not only tolerated corruption but often used it to obtain his political ends. Gallman alsonotes that, "The public, however, did not enter into his (Nuri's) day-to-day calculations. He was blind to the need for good public relations." Gallman failed, however, to notice that the situation was far worse. What was needed was a major operation, not just a tranquilizer.

In 1957, a year before the Revolution, Doreen Warriner writes, "Money does not percolate downwards. Wealth accumulates and men decay." In his book, "A History of the Arab Peoples", Professor Albert Hourani of Oxford University writes: "Jn the bidonvilles of Baghdad, it was estimated that the in­fant death rate in 1956 was 341 in every 1,000 pregnancies". The "bidonvilles" mentioned by Hourani are, of course, the mud hovels one saw stretching be­yon d the bunds which protected the eastern bank of the city from the :flood waters. Even a cursory visitor to Baghdad could sense the wide-spread discon­tent. The late Dr. Khalid Qassab, distinguished surgeon and noted painter of scenes of the Iraqi countryside and the gardens of Baghdad, writes that British labour minister, Aneurin Bevan, on a one-day visit to Baghdad in 1950, had asked the British Arnbassadar to include two items in his prograrnme. One was a flight over an agricultural project in progress on the outskirts of Bagh­dad; the other was a visit with Iraqi artists as they were indicators of the cul­

tural progress in Iraq. The meeting took place in the house of Jawad Selim. Apparently, Bevan had later warned Prime Minister Nuri to be "wary of the artists, I noticed that they were eritkal about the general situation," and that was even before the events that shook the region between 1951 and 1956.

But Nuri and his close assodates were too complacent and far from ready to believe or even to listen to such warnings. They would not brook even the most loyal criticism. Dr. Fadhel Jamali, former prime minister and foreign minister, writes that Nuri's individualistic nature made him suspicious of some of his most sineere and loyal collaborators in Iraqi politics. Saleh Jabr, himself a former prime minister, was his devoted friend and colleague. Saleh was closely watching the internal deterioration of affairs under Nuri' s rule. In June 1957, Tamali had gone to say good bye to Jabr before leaving with Nuri to attend the Baghdad Pact meeting in Karachi. Saleh said to Jamali, "Fadhel, what have you got to do with the Pact? Why do you bear responsibility when

THE CUL TU RAL SC ENE IN BAG H DAD AND ITS SOCIO-POUTICAL BACKDROP .. . 1627

you are not in office? I must tell you that things are not going well in the ar­my. There is going to be a coup and the King and the Crown Prince and Nuri are going to be killed." I asked, "Have you informed them?" he said, "Yes, but they do not listen." I replied, " I am going to Karachi because I believe in the idea of the Baghdad Pact, and I am ready to serve my idea at any cost." On the day of his returnfrom Karachi, Jamali went straight from the airport to the funeral of Saleh Jabr, who had fallen dead with a heart attack in the Senate the day before.

Yet, ironically, Jamali, so convinced in his belief in the idea of the Bagh­dad Pact and so dedicated to the service of his idea, could not, himself, see how untenable his idea was. The irony is quite striking because J arnali writing of Nuri says:

"He (Nuri) was a staunch believer in a pro-western policy and a deadly enemy of communism. But how could he win the masses to such a poli­cy? Wasn't the United States of America the close friend and main sup­porter of Israel at the expense of Arab rights to their homes? Wasn't Britain, the attaeker of Egypt as well as the first cause of the Palestine tragedy? Wasn't France the attaeker of Egypt as well as the killer of hundreds of thousands of Arabs in North Africa? Free political activity and a free press in Iraq would, in most cases, have turned anti-western and not anti-communist. Nuri's job was a thankless one. He fell, in a sense, asa victim ofWestern policies in the Arab World." Just as Philby had uncannily written in his play, the protagonists simply would not lls­ten to the warnings. In a book, "Middle East Indictrnent: From the Truman Doctrine, the Soviet Penetration and Britain's Downfall to the Eisenhower Doctrine", published in London in 1958 just before the rev­olution, the author, Arslan Hurnbaraci, writes: "The Western blunders have been Moscow's greatest asset. Had Britain not persisted in her apa­thetic paternalism, there would have been little room for the establish­ment of common causes between nationalism and communism. And particularly important, Moscow benefited from the rivalry between the W e stern allies themselves. This is se en very d early in the story of the Baghdad Pact, a story which has not yet been fully told". For the follow­ing two chapters, XIII and IX, the author chooses the titles, "The Bagh­dad Follies ... " and "And their Consequences".

The incongruous divide between the cultural scene and the socio-political backdrop in Baghdad was symptomatic of the far greater and deadlier diehat­amy in the conflict between the external demands dictated by the W est and the indigen o us demands of the people of Iraq and the Arab world at large. The ultimate tragedy of the monarchy and of "independent" Iraq from 1932 to 1958lay in the fact that the external considerations prevailed at the ex.pense of the aspirations and the convictions of the majority of the population. The

628 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMI C CIVILIZATION

West was and continues to be benton imposing its own policies and contin­ues to totally ignore public opinion, in Iraq and in the Arab world.

If there is one common trait which runs through the history of the lan d, it is the vein of violence extending all the way back to the birth of civilization in Mesopotamia. The Abbasid fo unders of Baghdad, just to the north of the ruins of Babylon, were far too optimistic when they designated their proud new cap­ital as "Dar-us-Salam"- the Abode of peace. The fabulous imperial city, which had no rival in the middle ages, inevitably came to be seen by many writers and historians over the centuries as the "New Babylon". In present day Iraq, Saddam Hussein portrayed himselfas the true successor to Nebuchadnezzar who ruled Babylon, the greatest city of the ancient world, and like him, Sad­dam had his name stamped on all the bricks used in his misguided efforts to rebuild the ruined city. But, along with that association, Baghdad also came to be considered by the extremist Christian fundamentalists as the modern ver­sion of the Bibliqı.l wicked city, synonymous with sin and marked for destruc­tion. In the Old Testament, it is not only Babylonia in the south, but also As­syria in the north shall be destroyed, in effect, the who le of Mesopotamia.

"And He will stretch out His hand against the north,

And destroy Assyria;

And will make Nineveh desolation,

A dry waste like desert."

Zephaniah 2:13

In present day America, the fundamentalist Evangelicals, assisted by their powerful neo-conservative allies in the administration, are actively engaged in expediting the fulfillment of those Biblical prophesies. Stephen Sizer, the foremost authority on the phenomenon of Christian Zionism, gives a compre­hensive overview of the movement, its roots, its theological basis and its polit­ical consequences. In his book "Christian Zionism; Road-map to Armaged­don?", he clearly showshow evangelical eschatology has now embedded itself ina modern political ideology based on what the Rev. John Rackley, President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, believes to be a profound misreading of the Bible. Ron Clemens, Emeritus Professor of Old Testament Studies at King's College, London, writes that Sizer's book demonstrates how a firm principle of Christian hope has been distorted and misapplied in a emel and destructive manner to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

In "An Alliance Against Babylon: The US, Israel and Iraq", the author, John K. Cooley, writes in 2005: " Both Biblical and secular historians have

629

provided ample fuel for the polemics of American and other evangelists­"born-again" Christians, like President George W. Bush-about Saddam Hus­sein's Iraq as a place of primeval Evil. This had to be set right by the forces of Good. There is ample Old Testament hacking for the vision of Babylon in par­ticular, as a center of sin, corruption and primal darkness. According to one typical commentary to Bible history circulated as the war of 2003 developed, "All false systems of religion began intheland of Babylon in the last days". It also records how "God came down [to disrupt the erection of the Tower of Babel], and punished the peoples' arrogance by creating a confusion of di:ffer­ent languages and possibly their racial distinctions". A German scholar, Rudolf Fischer, evokes Babylon's terrible reputation among Jews as an "anti-God state", seen by many Christians as "the mother of all harlots" and all the hor­rors on earth. The Tower of Babel episode is seen as "the original source of confusion of tongues and the dispersion of people around the world". And, according to the Bible, the place where the final battle will be fought between the forces of Good and Evil is Armageddon."

Time has shown that "the land of the birth of Civilization", was, in fact, also the land of the birth of enduring conflicts. The conflicts in Iraq today, can be traced back to ancient Mesopotamia. The Old Testament gives an account of the long struggle between Israel and Babylon, and the Jews, to this day, re­member the Babylonian captivity under the rule ofNebuchadnezzar. With the Arab conquest of Iraq, came the great schism in Islam as the result of massa­cres committed in the south of the country. After the demalition of the Abbas­id civilization by Mongol hordes, Iraq became the battleground between the Sunni Ottoman and Shi'ite Persian Safavid Empires. Then came the discovery

of oil and the western irnperial powers began their scramble to control the coveted, strategic resource. History is now repeating itself, and the conflicts continu.e-till Armageddon?

Works Consulted 1. Aburish, Said K. A Brutal Friendship: the W est and the Arab Elite, (London,

1997).

2. Ali, Tariq, Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation ofiraq, (London 2003).

3. Caractacus, Revolution in Iraq, (London, 1959).

4. Cooley, John K., An Alliance Against Babylon: The US, Israel and Iraq, (London, 2005).

S. Eames, Andrew, The 8.55 To Baghdad, (London, 2004).

6. Eden, Sir Anthony, Full Circle, (London, 1960).

7. Falk, Richard, The Great Terror W ar, (New York, 2003).

630 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION

8. Fisk, Robert, The Great W ar for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East, (New York, 2007).

9. Gallman, Waldemar, Iraq U nder General Nuri, My Recollection of Nuri

10. Al-Said, 1954-1958, (Baltimore, 1964).

ll. De Gaury, Gerald, ThreeKingsin Baghdad, 1921-1958, (London, 1961).

12. Hourani, Albert, A History of the Arab Peoples, (London, 1991).

13. Humbaraci, Arslan, Middle East Indictment: From the Truman Doctrine, the So­viet Penetration and Britain's Downfall to the Eisenhower Doctrine, (London, 1958).

14. Ionides, Michael, "Divide and Lose: The Arab Revolt, 1955-1958" (London, 1960).

15. M. Isikoff and D.Corn, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Sp in, Seandal and the Seliing of the Iraq W ar, (New York, 2006).

16. Jabra, Jabra Ibrahim, Princesses Street, (Beirut, 1994) in Arabic.

17. Jamali, Dr. Mohammad Fadhel, "Iraq Under General Nuri" (A Review ofWalde­mar Gallman's Book), (The Middle East Forum, Vol. XI, No. 7, Beirut, 1964).

18. Lan do, Barry M., W eb of Deceit: The History of W estern Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush, (New York, 2007).

19. Mansfield, Peter, A History of the Middle East, (London, 2003).

20. Qassab, Dr. Khalid, Artistic Memories, (London, 2007) in Arabic.

21. Sizer, Stephen, Christian Zionism; Road-map to Armageddon?, (InterVarsity Press).

22. Stewart, .Desmond and John Haylock, New Babylon, A Portrait of Iraq, (London, 1956).

23. Thesiger, Wilfred, The Marsh Arabs, (London, 1964).

24. Warriner, Doreen, Land Reform and Development in the Middle East, (London, 1957).

25. Young, Gavin, Iraq: Land ofTwo Rivers, (London, 1980).

26. Young, Gavin, Return to the Marshes, (London, 1977).