MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Iraq

ONE LAND · 7 ATLASES

Iraq, on the map of history

What was Iraq before it was Iraq? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

Mesopotamia (mod. Iraq) · The Rise and Fall of Rome, 264 BC – AD 476

Mesopotamia: the wealthy river-world where Roman ambition went to be humbled — Crassus died at Carrhae, Trajan reached the Gulf and held it two years, Julian died retreating in 363. Ctesiphon, the Parthian and Persian capital, sat here: closer to Roman Syria than Rome was to Milan, a fact that governed the East’s strategy for centuries.

OPEN ROME ON THE LIVING MAP →

Iraq — Baghdad & the Abbasid caliphate · The Crusades, 1095–1291

Iraq held Baghdad, seat of the Sunni Abbasid caliph — a spiritual figurehead whose recognition legitimized the Seljuk sultans and, later, Saladin, but who wielded little real power. The distant centre of the Sunni world, its disunity in 1095 opened the door to the First Crusade; the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 ended the caliphate entirely.

OPEN THE CRUSADES ON THE LIVING MAP →

The Abbasid Caliphate (mod. Iraq) · The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294

Seat of the Abbasid caliphate, 500 years old when Hülegü’s ultimatum arrived. Baghdad fell in February 1258; the caliph was executed, the House of Wisdom scattered, and the canal country of Mesopotamia — the world’s oldest irrigated landscape — broke and was not restored for centuries. The region’s center of gravity moved to Cairo and did not return.

OPEN THE MONGOL EMPIRE ON THE LIVING MAP →

Iraq · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

OPEN THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS ON THE LIVING MAP →

Mesopotamia (Ottoman Empire) · The Great War, 1914–1918

OPEN WWI ON THE LIVING MAP →

Iraq · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

OPEN WW2 ON THE LIVING MAP →

Iraq · The Cold War, 1945–1991

OPEN THE COLD WAR ON THE LIVING MAP →