"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Chuchill’s Folly (How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq) (Christopher Catherwood, 2004)

Probably to make the book more salable, author tries to pin Iraq situation on Churchill; not that interesting as it just quotes a bunch of letters. Overall background discussion of this part of the world was useful.


  • Sunni = 80+% of Muslims worldwide.
  • Shiites = Iran, Iraq, Azaerbaijani. (Fatimids in Egypt were Shiite.)
  • Kurds tend to be Sunni, ethnically close to Iranian.
  • Arab-centered in Baghdad in 800ish? (previously in Damascus). Had been stopped by Charles Martel at Tours in 732.
  • Mongols take Baghdad in 1258; convert to Islam; center the caliph in Constantinople (Ottoman Turks) after 1453. Taking territory in Africa, Balkans, Iran. Vienna attacks fail in 1529 and 1689; Ottoman Empire weakening thereafter.
  • “Turkification” starts around 1900; WWI intervenes.
Britain sponsors kings in Iraq not thought to be legitimate; Sunnis empowered; fail to create Kurdistan (Kurds split among Turkey, Iraq, etc.)
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