Dawūd Pasha of Baghdad

The reemergence in Iraq of the Mamluks, who begin asserting authority apart from the Ottomans in the early eighteenth century, temporarily reverses the cycle of tribal warfare and of deteriorating urban life in Iraq that had begun in the thirteenth century with the Mongol invasions.

Extending their rule first over Basra, the Mamluks eventually control the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys from the Persian Gulf to the foothills of Kurdistan.

The Mamluks are able administrators for the most part, and their rule is marked by political stability and by economic revival.

The greatest of the Mamluk leaders, Sulayman Pasha the Great (1780-1802), makes great strides in imposing the rule of law.

The last Mamluk leader, Dawüd Pasha (1816-31), initiates important modernization programs that include clearing canals, establishing industries, training a twenty-thousand-man army, and starting a printing press.

Iraq's Mamluk period ends in 1831, when a severe flood and plague devastates Baghdad, enabling the Ottoman sultan, Mahmud II, to reassert Ottoman sovereignty over Iraq.

Ottoman rule is unstable; Baghdad, for example, will have more than ten governors between 1831 and 1869.

The Ottoman army under Ali Riza Pasha marches from Aleppo into Iraq in 1831.

Baghdad, devastated by floods and an epidemic of bubonic plague, capitulates after a token resistance.

Daud-Pasha, facing opposition within Iraq on the part of local clergy, surrenders to the Ottomans and is treated with favor.

He will end his life in 1851 as custodian of the shrine at Medina; the remaining Mamluks are exterminated.

The arrival of the Sultan’s new governor in Baghdad in 1831 signals the beginning of a direct Ottoman rule in Iraq.

Iraq at this period is nominally part of the Ottoman Empire but in practice largely autonomous.

Mamluk rulers have governed in the territory that has become Iraq, acquiring increasing autonomy from the Sultan, from 1704 to 1831.

Mamluks were originally freed slaves who had converted to Islam, and were assigned to military and administrative duties in the Ottoman Empire.

The history of modern Iraq’s boundaries can be traced to 1749, when the Sultan extended the authority of the Mamluk vali (governor) of Basra to include the eyalet (province) of Baghdad, initiating a period of Mamluk rule that lasts until 1831.

After seizing control in 1816-17, Dawud Pasha had initiated modernization programs that included clearing canals, establishing industries, and reforming the army with the help of European instructors.

The political and economic policies of Dawud Pasha have united these eyalets, although their external borders are ill-defined.

Following Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, the British government had recognized the strategic importance of the Middle East in defending its eastern empire and commercial ambitions against the French (and later against Russia), and at the beginning of the nineteenth century had negotiated inter alia the establishment of a British consulate in Baghdad.

Dawud had reduced the influence of the British Consul, and, perhaps more controversially, had compelled the British East India Company to begin paying duties on imported goods.

It was at the instigation of the British government that the Sultan seized back control of Baghdad, facilitating a resurgence of British influence in the region.

In 1830, the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II decreed Dawud Pasha's dismissal, which is enforced the following year by an army under Ali Ridha Pasha, which ousts Dawud and reimposes direct Ottoman rule on Iraq.

Ali Rıza Pasha still has to deal with the Mamluks who remain in Baghdad.

In order to preserve his power and pacify the Mamluks, he gives many of them positions in his government.

In the days following his conquest of Baghdad, Ali Rıza Pasha publishes a firman, or decree, that makes him the governing authority over the cities of: Baghdad, ...