XIII. Baghdad during the Ottoman Rule

As to what happened to Baghdad after the end of the Abbasid era, extant information from the region, historical and otherwise, is scarce. Still, from what we do have, and contrary to the general opinion, Baghdad apparently did enjoy a vibrant ‘cosmopolitan atmosphere’. In her rare and valuable study of the little-known Baghdadi school of painting of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Rachel Milstein tells us that Baghdad has always been an ‘important station on the way to Mecca and to Karbala, holiest of Shi’i shrines’. Economically, the region was important to the Ottomans as it gave them access to the Gulf, and thus served as a ‘main commercial link between India, Turkey and the Mediterranean’. As a result, there was a ‘continuous flow of pilgrims to the Shi’i shrines and an exchange of goods’. The markets were ‘rich in spices, gem stones and hand crafts’. The European traveler Sir Anthony Sherley, who visited the area in 1598, expressed his ‘amazement at this variety’. He said he saw ‘excellent goods of all sorts and very cheap’. As for the Iraqis themselves, he said they were ‘somewhat more abstinent from offending Christians, than in other parts’ (Miniature Painting in Ottoman Baghdad). I also find significant Milstein’s comment that ‘Despite the Mongol destruction in the 13th century and the successive conquests which followed it, Baghdad always retained its importance as a center of religious studies and literary activity,’ and of the artistic activity exemplified by the genuine school of Baghdadi painting described in the book. That is a far cry from the lackluster backwater place generally described in modern sources dealing with this period. According to Milstein, the miniatures illustrate Baghdad’s ‘great range of architectural styles, modes of dressing and useful everyday articles which [the artists] saw around them in the physical and human aspects of the cityscape and the colorful and cosmopolitan bazaars which flourished under the Ottoman regime’.