MEMO : Fleuves du sultan : le Tigre et l’Euphrate dans l’Empire ottoman

« D’un point de vue historique profond, la domination ottomane en Irak – la terre de l’ancienne Babylone – était une bizarrerie politique », écrit Faisal Husain dans Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates In the Ottoman Empire.

« In its millennia-long history, Iraq was never ruled from Istanbul before the sixteenth century… among the most distant imperial capitals to ever govern Babylonia for any considerable stretch of time were Persepolis and Antioch in the second half of the first millennium BC. But Achaemenid and Macedonian rule in Iraq pales into insignificance compared to what the Ottomans accomplished from the sixteenth century, ruling from a far more distant capital and for a far longer span. »

Of central concern to the Ottomans were control and management of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Husain’s new book takes us on a tour of how Istanbul organised life in Iraq. LINK TO ARTICLE