The Environmental Origins of Ottoman Iraq

with Faisal Husain

hosted by Chris Gratien

| The Ottoman conquests of the 16th century represented a watershed moment in many senses. Our guest Faisal Husain explains the most literal of these senses: the unification of the Tigris and Euphrates basins under a single political authority and its ramifications for the history of Iraq. In our conversation, we explore how Ottoman rule in Iraq created new ecological possibilities and realities, setting the stage for momentous interventions in the rivers detailed in Husain's recent book Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire. We also reflect on what Iraq reveals about Ottoman history writ large and the empire's dualist historical identity as an agrarian empire on one hand and flexible one on the other, in which accommodating local ecological difference was critical to governance.

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The Ottoman conquests of the 16th century represented a watershed moment in many senses. Our guest Faisal Husain explains the most literal of these senses: the unification of the Tigris and Euphrates basins under a single political authority and its ramifications for the history of Iraq. In our conversation, we explore how Ottoman rule in Iraq created new ecological possibilities and realities, setting the stage for momentous interventions in the rivers detailed in Husain's recent book Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire. We also reflect on what Iraq reveals about Ottoman history writ large and the empire's dualist historical identity as an agrarian empire on one hand and flexible one on the other, in which accommodating local ecological difference was critical to governance.

Contributor Bios

	Faisal Husain is Assistant Professor of History at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Rivers of the Sultan and a member of the editorial boards of Marmara Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi and Global Environment.
	Chris Gratien is Assistant Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. His first monograph entitled The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier is forthcoming with Stanford University Press.

Credits

Episode No. 504
Release Date: 27 June 2021
Recording Location: Charlottesville, VA / State College, PA
Sound production and composition by Sam Dolbee
Music: Chad Crouch - Pacing 

Bibliography and images courtesy of Faisal Husain

Further Listening

	Dina Khoury	178 11/7/14	Society and Politics in Ottoman Iraq
	Emrah Safa Gürkan, Joshua White, Daniel Hershenzon	446 1/28/20	The Mediterranean in the Age of Global Piracy
	Bathsheba Demuth	439 12/6/19	An Environmental History of the Bering Strait
	Fahad Ahmad Bishara	383 10/5/18	Islamic Law and Commerce in the Indian Ocean
	Michael Christopher Low	501 4/7/21	Ottoman Mecca and the Indian Ocean Hajj
	Suja Sawafta	414 6/14/19	The Environmental Politics of Abdul Rahman Munif

Images

Navigation on the Tigris River, 1673. Source: Ambrosio Bembo, “Viaggio e giornale per parte dell’ Asia di quattro anni incicra fatto.” Courtesy of the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota.



Historical pattern of pastoral movement along the lower Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Credit: Meredith Sadler, 2021.

Select Bibliography

Adams, Robert McC. “Historic Patterns of Mesopotamian Irrigation Agriculture.” In Irrigation’s Impact on Society, edited by Adams, Theodore E. Downing, and McGuire Gibson, 1–5. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974.

Christensen, Peter. The Decline of Iranshahr: Irrigation and Environments in the History of the Middle East, 500 B.C. to A.D. 1500. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1993.

Cole, Camille Lyans. “Precarious Empires: A Social and Environmental History of Steam Navigation on the Tigris.” Journal of Social History 50, no. 1 (2016): 74–101. 

Göyünç, Nejat. “Dicle ve Fırat Nehirlerinde Nakliyat.” Belleten 65, no. 243 (2001): 655–660.

Murphey, Rhoads. “The Ottoman Centuries in Iraq: Legacy or Aftermath? A Survey Study of Mesopotamian Hydrology and Ottoman Irrigation Projects.” Journal of Turkish Studies 11 (1987): 17–29.

Orhonlu, Cengiz, and Turgut Işıksal. “Osmanlı Devrinde Nehir Nakliyatı Hakkinda Araştırmalar: Dicle ve Fırat Nehirlerinde Nakliyat.” Tarih Dergisi 13 (1962–1963): 79–102.

Yılmaz, Ali. “16 ve 17 Yüzyıllarda Fırat’ta Nehir Nakliyatı.” In Osmanlı Devleti’nde Nehirler ve Göller, edited by Şakir Batmaz and Özen Tok, 1:591–611. Kayseri: Not Yayınları, 2015.