Customer Reviews

A Historical Atlas of Iraq (Historical Atlases of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East)

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An atlas lacking accurate maps is a truly pathetic thing. Add a few biased cracks from out of nowhere, and you have this waste of paper which makes me shudder every time I think that taxpayer money paid to put this in my library.
You deserve a few examples, so lets go, beginning with this doozey from page 37 - "Baghdad's calm and prosperity was about to end. Jews and Christians began to persecute Muslim groups." The somewhat slippery text implies that this was before the Buyid era, but gives no date and can't because it never happened!
One of this booklet's many non sequiter paragraphs (v. page 38) starts with a throwaway statement about how for centuries (no time referent supplied) "the Islamic Empire" (specificity without referent) battling "Western (sic) Christian kingdoms"; no mention that this was caused by Moslem expansionism - that in it self remarkable since that was how Islam entered then previously (and unmentioned) Jewish and Christian Iraq. Right on its heels is an equally inaccurate slop of words claiming a "united nations of Europe under the leadership of the Holy Roman empire . . ."
The entire text is this bad.
On page 44, the current division of Cyprus shows on a 1920 map, which also features then non-existent Jordan and Saudi Arabia as well as the 1948 UN green line in Palestine and the erstwhile Persia labeled Iran.
If you want dumbed-down, accuracy starved and biased children acquire this book

The "Historical Atlas of Iraq" provides a good, brief High School level overview of Mesopotamia and Iraq that concentrates as much on history as on maps. It covers the history of the area from about 3000 BC until 2002 AD, just before the current American involvement in Iraq. There are about 20 maps and also very nice illustrations, pictures, and text boxes on various topics.

There are some minor disconnections between text and maps. For example, the text makes reference to the Zagros Mountains but these are not labeled on any of the map so that if you did not already know where they were you would need to look them up. Also, the book covers the period from Alexander the Great (about 320 BC) to the Arab conquest (about 650 AD) in just a few sentences, though to be fair this is the period of Mesopotamian history about which we know the least.

There is a brief chapter for each of the major periods of Mesopotamian history along with accompanying illustrations and maps. One of the nice things about this book is that it does a good job discussing the modern history of the area, from about World War I forwards. So that any student looking for the background to current events can find a brief but balanced discussion here (it even includes a map of the First Gulf War). In the back of the book are suggestions for further reading and a listing of a few related websites. The publishers, perhaps realizing how quickly events were changing in the region, also include related links on their website.