My home only celebrated its centennial as a U.S. state when I was 20 years old, so it's quite a thing to contemplate a land with over 5,000 years of recorded, settled history. So for me to read Bartle Bull's extensive and exhaustive history of Iraq was to regard our planet's oldest civilization from one of its youngest.


Then, too, while I am slightly knowledgeable or in a few cases fairly so about certain periods of the region's long history -- chiefly the Sumerian and Alexandrian eras -- I've been largely ignorant of great swaths of it between then and my first personal awareness of Iraq, when the modern nation fought a war against Iran in my childhood. And, of course, when my college campus erupted in "No Blood for Oil" protests when the U.S. took it upon itself to rescue tiny little Kuwait from its big, bad neighbor.

And then when the second President Bush and his ilk maneuvered us into "finishing" the fight the first one didn't, of course.

And I've read the Koran (in an English translation, of course; I have the merest smattering of Arabic, chiefly picked up while studying Urdu in grad school when I should have been doing my actual course work) long ago, always meaning to read it again sometime as a more mature and better informed adult, but my grasp of the origins and nature of, say, the Sunni/Shia schism was tenuous at best.

It's always bugged me, this barely-more-than ignorance of mine, so when I saw Land Between the Rivers: A 5,000 Year History of Iraq available on Netgalley, I gladly grabbed it, thinking it would serve my purpose well.

I had underestimated just how well it would serve, though. Or how compulsively readable it would be. Bull, I knew, is chiefly a journalist, rather than a historian, so I expected a better than average narrative out of this book, but what I got was a truly exceptional as well as informative read! There's something that feels very illuminating about a history that takes in all of the great figures, all the different peoples and cultures, who had an impact on this part of the world, in a single big narrative, Ur to Babylon to Baghdad.

There's a section where Bull makes a choice I find peculiar, though. When it comes time to discuss the Ottoman Empire, sometime opponent of the then-Persian/Iranian powers that held most of Iraq and sometimes that power itself, he chooses to do so thorough the lens of one Ogier de Busbecq, the Hapsburg Empire's marginalized ambassador to the Ottoman court of Suleiman the Magnificent. Heretofore mostly devoid of explicitly European perspectives in favor of sources much closer to the experience of the actual denizens of Iraq and its many conquerors, it seems weird to me to do so at this point in history, where surely a modern scholar has access to more direct sources about life in this fascinating period, especially since Busbecq never visited Iraq. But I am just a humble blogger who's never been anywhere, so who am I to pick this nit?

Except it happens again in later chapters, which are more about European archaeologists digging up the ruins of cities we visited earlier in this history. This is less jarring since it is through their efforts that anyone even knows a lot of what we do about places like Mosul and Nineveh, and this figures like Sir Austen Henry Layard are quite legitimately figures in Iraqi history. But Busbecq?

Anyway...

After years kicking his heels in Constantinople, Layard finally gets funding for a proper dig in what was then Ottoman-controlled Iraq.What Layard encounters as he approaches the likely site of the ancient, Old Testament city of Nimrud is very much the kind of information I hoped to find in these pages:
"The tiny party alit in the gloaming and made their way on foot to the local village. It was empty, deserted, a "heap of ruins," without even the dogs that Layard was used to seeing in Arab villages. Then, through "the entrance to a miserable hovel," Layard saw the glow of a small fire.
Inside the ruined house was a sight typical of the devastated country around. An Arab family - a father, three wizened wives, some half-naked children, and "one or two mangy greyhounds" - had taken shelter in the abandoned village. When Layard entered, the family cowered, thinking he and his party were "Osmanlis." Seeing that the newcomers were not Turks but Europeans, the Arabs relaxed. Layard heard their story from the father. "Plundered by the pasha," their sedentary tribe had dispersed across the countryside. This family had taken refuge alone in the abandoned village.
One man's archaeological site is another man's refuge, and the father of the family becomes the nucleus of the European's workforce. How very colonial.

And so begins a long history of locals being employed to dig up amazing artifacts, possibly the work of their own ancestors' hands, to be exported to fill Western Museums and private collections (Hi, Hobby Lobby).*

As I've said, this is an exhaustive work of historical writing, including biographical details of figures from Cyrus the Great through Alexander the Great through Suleiman the Magnificent and King Faisal I of (first) Syria and (later) Iraq in plenty of context. This may be more than most readers are looking for, who want to understand the modern nation of Iraq and its ancient ancestor states a bit better, but I suspect that most readers will not notice that while they're reading. I found no point in this book when I got exhausted and wanted to know how much further I had to go, for instance.

This was a particularly illuminating read in concert with Emmanuel Carrere's V13, in which some of the West's sins with regard to this region of the world were forcibly brought home to roost, meaning this is also an excellent book to which to refer when trying actually to understand "why they hate us" or how Islam can both claim to be a religion of peace and inspire brutal terrorism; indeed, it is the best exploration of many of the divides and schisms in that religion that I have yet found.

Bartle Bull has done us all a great service in producing this outstanding book.

*Of course, it is only due to this colonial extraction that I have ever been able to look at such things with my own eyes at places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.

Very well researched and intelligent writing. I will say this is definitely better read in spurts instead of trying to read as much of it as you can in one sitting. Lots of information to take in.

Odds are your ancient or world history class began with a study of the Sumerians and thus in Mesopotamia. You may have spent a day or two learning about the Assyrians and Babylonians. But then your study of history would have been directed elsewhere. Yet the land of Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq, would continue, and often would prove of great importance to world affairs and events.

In Land Between the Rivers: A 5,000 Year History of Iraq, Bartle Bull attempted to tell the long story of the history and heritage of Mesopotamia and Iraq by means of major characters in its history.

Thus he would begin with Gilgamesh and the early days of Sumerian civilization in the southern marshes of the land, and yet so much of Gilgamesh and his epic would redound through the ages. Abraham and his journey to Canaan are described, with the long-term influence of his descendants on Mesopotamia noted. Ashurbanipal and Nebuchadnezzar feature prominently as the greatest kings of the last great native Mesopotamian empires. Persian kings, Greek soldiers, and Jewish exiles are then described.

With Alexander the Great we begin a long period during which we learn comparatively little about Mesopotamia/Iraq itself, and more about the imperial powers, centered in Syria and Rome to the west or in Persia to the east, which would dominate from 333 BCE to 630s CE: Alexander, the Seleucids, the Romans, the Parthians, the Byzantines, and the Sassanids. Then there was Khalid ibn al Walid, the “Sword of Allah,” who would bring down the great empires; the author’s description of the Umayyad state along with Ali and his son Hussein in the latter part of the seventh century is the best description of the Sunni/Shiite division and differences between the Sunni and Shiite ideologies I have yet come across. And for good reason: the story of Iraq would strongly feature the divisions between the Sunni and the Shiite.

Much is then made of the Abbasid period from 750 to 1258 since it was centered at Baghdad. With the destruction by the Mongols there is the recognition of the devastation of Mesopotamian irrigation and thus its population which would only really see reverses in the last century. The story again shifted away from Mesopotamia proper, and this time to the northwest, as the Ottomans ruled over the land from 1520 until 1918.

The author then dived in with rich detail regarding the elevation of Faisal I as King of Iraq and the development of the Kingdom of Iraq from the British Mandate. The work ends with a discussion of the period of independence from 1932 until the coup of 1958, with the aftereffects of the coup, and especially Saddam Hussein and all which came after him, reserved for the afterword.

Thus the history of Iraq over a 5,000 year period is covered, but rather unevenly. This is mostly a “big man” historical work: you learn much more about the major characters and players and far less about what life was like for the average person in Iraq at any point in its history. Nevertheless, this is a great work for anyone interested in the history of Mesopotamia and Iraq, especially if you would like to better understand why and how Iraq is as it is today.

This history non-fiction book covers five millenia and focuses not only on the territory of modern-day Iraq but also in the historical region of Mesopotamia.
Passing from the Sumerians, the Assyrian Empire, the spread of Islam, the battles among different groups, and so many events until the beginning of the 21st century.

Opening with Gilgamesh epic poem and the Summerians, it highlights the similarities and differences of the historical information in the poem with the Bible.

Land Between the Rivers is well documented. The information about groups of Muslims and their history is very extensive, so if someone would like to learn how it started, this book would be very useful and practical. I think there were things missing because the information about Iraq's minorities was slightly mentioned, but despite that, this work can resume hundreds of other books, and it is presented in an approachable way. It is informative, interesting, and very recommendable.

Thank you Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for the digital-ARC.

Fantastic history of the land now known as Iraq. Written by a journalist rather than a historian, this book is a refreshing and enjoyable read, with interesting personal anecdotes about the authors time covering the region. Most histories of the region only cover ancient times or the Saddam/post-Saddam era — this book does an admirable job of bridging the two and helping us understand the challenges facing Iraq and appreciate the resilience of its people.

I have always deeply appreciated curiosity about foreign lands, and Iraq is certainly a land with a rich history behind it, one that not everyone knows about or is truly interested in. When I found this book, I was honestly happy to be able to read it and gain new insights into Iraq, both past and present.

Five thousand years is a long time, and of course, many things have happened during this period, some better, others less positive. Summarizing all of those events in one book is honestly a task that certainly requires great care and passion.

I found the entire book extremely well-researched, paying close attention to the events of various eras and maintaining a broad perspective, though at times this led to a certain loss in readability. In some sections, the tone became overly omniscient, and it felt like I was conversing with someone who positioned themselves as an authority on everything, claiming to possess an enormous and complete knowledge on the subject, and therefore, infallible. This resulted in some annoying phrases because they weren’t fully supported by historical reasoning but were instead presented as a simple mix of opinions and facts that "had to be that way because, for the author, they were the logical outcome of certain other events."

Overall, I consider this to be the most meticulously researched and attentive work on history that I’ve had the chance to read. It’s certainly rich in details—sometimes even too many for a reader who thinks they can absorb them all at once—which pushes you to read the book multiple times and in intervals, making it easier to digest the information. My advice is to read it in small doses, a little at a time, and focus primarily on the historically verified information, leaving aside those conclusions that seem like they're "made by" the author alone.

This book isn’t really a 5000-year history of Iraq. It’s a book of great moments in the history of Iraq. It really gets down into the weeds of those great moments, going into far more detail than I wanted. The book is full of misogyny and homophobia, perhaps simply reflecting the era, but it showed no sensitivity in dealing with those subjects. It just was not a pleasant read.

I gave up when I reached the infighting after the death of the prophet Mohammed. I felt like this book took a bunch of familiar topics available from other sources, and bundled them together into a single book. There was no sense of continuity, no real analysis of why things happened. In that sense, it’s more biography than history. Maybe other readers will find it interesting, but I just found it wearying.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC.

I loved this book. Frist the cover is stunning, it's what really pulled me in. I loved the maps and it was a good overview of the history of Iraq

ARC received through NetGalley.

Mesopotamia, the eponymous Land Between the Rivers, is a region of the world I have to admit always took a back seat in my interest in historical reading. The Egyptians were a childhood obsession, astounding with architectural feats still standing proud to this day and giving me the name of my dog - Anubis. The Greeks and the Norse excited my teenage imagination with colourful myths and legends, and their stories of exploring foreign lands (in more or less friendly ways). My early twenties saw a somewhat hipster-ish disinterest in all things Rome, and a budding love-affair with Genghis Khan's Mongolia, pre-British Raj India, Warring States and Three Kingdoms China, Sengoku Jidai Japan, pre- and colonial Southern Africa, the Khazar Khaganate, and many more. And of course my student years were spent studying (and partying) the European

Middle-Ages and early Modern Era. But throughout all this, the lands of Sumer, Babylon, Akkadia, Assyria and and the whole of the Middle-East were typically absent. Sure, these lands would make a guest appearance in other peoples' shows - the Hittites as enemies of the Egyptians, the Persians as the eternal enemies of the Greeks and the Eastern Romans, the Zoroastrians as part of my general interest in religious history and syncretism in Eurasia. Yet they never stuck. And this is doing the "cradle of civilisation" a great disservice, one which Mr. Bartle Bull remedies through out the book.

Covering the 5000 year-ish history of what is now Iraq and its surrounding regions, from ancient Sumer to the 1950s, "Land Between the Rivers' is not an in-depth paper written with academic rigour on a highly specific historical topic. It is a summary of highlights to peak the interest of people who know little of the region and its cultural weight in history. I was especially intrigued by the sections on the region's relationship with religion, namely the Abrahamic faiths.

Well written, and rather familiar in styling, "Land Between the Rivers" is an easy read, but it needs to be said that this is an easy read because it avoids a lot of the pedantry inherent to proper academic historical writing. This means that at times the author skips over a lot of the detail, which often colours the reader's understanding of what is being discussed at any time.

The amazing and detailed story of Mesopotamia, the land of the Bible and the root of Western Civilization.

This book is excellent well researched and very readable. I would say it is a little confused at times, especially in the sections dealing with the origins of Islam, it jumps about a bit. Regardless I really enjoyed this.

It's hard to decide what to say about this book. One word I would use to describe it is 'baggy' - I am very familiar with the desire to find a way to include EVERYTHING YOU KNOW whether it's necessary or not! but there were times when I wasn't sure I really needed as much of the exhaustive history of Islam as Bull provides, for example - there are whole books about this, and some are actually written by Muslims as opposed to the many early 20th century British authors who seem to have been a main source of information. I particularly noted one comment as typical of the omniscient tone the author assumes throughout the book no matter what epoch or subject he is addressing: "The heterodoxy and humanness of the Greek pantheon reflected the independence of mind at the heart of the classical outlook." Really? How do we know this? It's rather a sweeping statement, and this book isn't really about classical Greece anyway although classical Greece impinged on the part of the world where the nation of Iraq was created. Here's another one: "Blood-and-soil nationalism was an entirely new notion. No one had ever been a 'Turk' or an 'Arab' before, just as in Europe until recently nobody had ever been an 'Italian' or a 'German.'" In the second sentence, he carefully chooses his examples to be true (Italy and Germany had been forged into nations from little warring principalities), but that does not make the first sentence true; ask Shakespeare's Henry V or John of Gaunt about nationalism, just as one example. Things like this kept me feeling wary about what else might be going on here that would be similar, but that I didn't have the background to notice.

There is a lot of interesting material in what might properly be called these "episodes in the history of the area from Turkey to Iran." The actual focus on what was going on in Mesopotamia was more or less maintained from section to section, frequently less - I can understand why, as there was always some external force sweeping across the area and attempting to own it, but at times it was easy to lose sight of Mesopotamia itself as we spoke in detail of what was going on in Alexander's Macedonia, or in Mecca and Medina, or Constantinople.

Bull believes that the nation of Iraq as created by the European powers in the early 20th century had a previously existing identity, with only minor squabbles about specific borders, and thus he refers to it as Iraq throughout the book. I have not read deeply in this area but I know this is debatable. And he does seem to feel that the Shia/followers of Ali and the imams were always marginalized and suppressed by the Sunni Arabs throughout the region. He makes the interesting assertion that the Judaean population who were taken in captivity to Babylon formulated a religious outlook and body of scripture there, and returned to Palestine as a new phenomenon called Jews; again I do not have the background to have an opinion about this. And the idea that the Persian emperor Cyrus was essentially a liberal humanist was also new to me...

The context he places around the defeat of Rommel in north Africa in World War II, and Hitler's choice to invade Russia, was striking. If Hitler had invaded the Levant, which was poorly defended, and moved east to take ownership of Syria and Iraq, he might well have become undisputed master of Eurasia because he would have had control of all the oil in the region and kept it from the allies. As it was, he continued, energy-poor, north and east, and failed there.

The narrative of the three Hashemite kings placed upon the throne of the newly created Iraq, and their eventual destruction at the hands of the Baath party, was a sad story of people mostly trying to do their best with the nation they were handed. (Editing needs to clean up the two different birth years given, a few pages apart, for Faisal I.) Thankfully Bull places the 21st century invasion of Iraq by the US led forces in an epilogue. He seems to feel that the invasion was justified, although he does not touch at all upon the aftermath and how it might have been better handled if people understood the history he'd spent 500 pages telling us. His final summation makes a handful of important points concisely: "The nostalgic Sunni revivalism of Al Qaeda, the modern secular national socialism of the Baath: these two outlooks were fundamental enemies. Shia Iran was an even bigger foe for each. And then there were the foreigners from the world to the west. There was nothing new about any of it."

In sum, a flawed book with a lot of important information as well as the occasional assertion that made me go ???? Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read an advance proof of this book.

Inspired by extensive reporting from the region to spend a decade delving deep into its history, Bull chronicles the story of Iraq from the exploits of Gilgamesh (almost certainly an historical figure) to the fall of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958 that ushered in its familiar modern era. The land between the rivers has been the melting pot and battleground of countless outsiders, from the Akkadians of Hammurabi and the Greeks of Alexander to the Ottomans of Suleiman the Magnificent. Here, by the waters of Babylon, Judaism was born and the Sunni-Shia schism took its bloody shape.

Central themes play out over the millennia: humanity’s need for freedom versus the co-eternal urge of tyranny; the ever-present conflict and cross-fertilization of East and West with Iraq so often the hinge. We tend to view today’s tensions in the Middle East through the prism of the last hundred years since the Treaty of Versailles imposed a controversial realignment of its borders. Bartle Bull’s remarkable, sweeping achievement reminds us that the region defined by the land between the rivers has for five millennia played a uniquely central role on the global stage.

This is a wonderful overview of thousands of years of history. I've always been interested in learning more about this part of the world, and with all the unrest in the Middle East recently (okay, ALWAYS), I was excited to see a book that condenses the main points of history in the area. If you are looking for details, this might not be the book for you, as it paints a fairly broad picture. I am so glad I had a chance to read this!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced digital reader's copy (ARC) in exchange for an honest review!

I LOVED TO READ THIS BOOK. I RATED THIS 4 STARS BECAUSE EVERYTHING IN THIS BOOK WAS FANTASTIC. 4/5... SO GOOD...

This is a very thorough but not incredibly dense read of the history of Iraq. I need a hard copy of this as soon as it comes out.

It is chronological with each chapter focusing on a different time period and feels complete telling its own story. Starting with focuses on individuals like Gilgamesh, Abraham, and Alexander the Great, before going into the civilizations that dominated the area and then eventual Iraqi independence.

I want my own hard copy now so I can mark this up for historical references. I loved this so much. Also, I am a huge fan of all the maps. This was so good.

I am a history junkie and had been meaning to get my hands on a good history of Iraq/Mesopotamia for a while. This one does the trick.

Trying to fit a 5000 year history into ~600 pages is a daunting task and, invariably, some topics will get covered more than others. However, it satisfied my curiosity and I really liked the book. Just remember, this is a "starter" history book.

While I am quite a history nerd, this era and region has always been elusive to me. The author has the daunting task of laying out the history of Mesopotamia in all it's complexities.

I will say that while this is a great introductory read to someone who only knows the broad strokes of Mesopotamian history, this won't be something a versed scholar will want. As long as you know that it's an overview of over 5,000 years of history, I think this will be an enjoyable read!

This is an extremely daunting task that the author embarked on. To write a 5,000 year history of Iraq, with all the complexities and nuances is no easy task. The author has done a great job of doing this and providing the reader the knowledge needed to explore these major events in more detail.

This isn't a book for me.

Who this book IS for: the person with an interest in history who doesn't have much specific knowledge about the history of Mesopotamia/Iraq, and is after a broad-sweep understanding of that area and how its history has had an effect on its neighbours. You're not too worried about historiography and questioning sources at this time, you just want to know the main players and events and issues. If that's you, this is likely to be a very good book for you! I'm glad it exists.

That's not me, though. I already have a broad-sweep understanding of the area. I'm also impatient these days with writers who seem to take ancient sources largely at their word, with only the occasional "here's how these two differ." My other main issue is that this is basically a Great Man history. I understand that the sources for the time do often concentrate on the dudes, and that skipping from Cyrus to Alexander is the straightforward/easy/exciting option. But for me, this is also the boring option, when it's not made more complex by questioning or further exploring the issues.

So: I read 1/4 of the book before deciding I wouldn't continue. Overall, it's well written and accessible; the author is a journalist, rather than an academic historian, and he reflects on his personal experiences in reporting from Iraq, which generally adds to the accessibility. Whether this book works for you will depend on what sort of history you're looking for.

This book takes on a big challenge in condensing 5000 years of history into 600 page, and for the most part does a good job of it. Though some things felt a bit surface level, that’s bound to happen with so much time to cover. I do think the multiple chapters on the founding of Islam and it’s early years could have been condensed significantly as very little of it took place in Mesopotamia, and I find it highly unlikely that anyone picking up this book doesn’t already know that story quite well.