Identity and difference in the work of Sunni historians of eighteenth and nineteenth century Iraq

In: International journal of contemporary Iraqi studies, Volume 3, Issue 2, p. 205-216

Abstract

This article looks into how and why depictions of region, borders, identity and nation change in the writing of Iraqi scholars in the late Ottoman period. Another aim of this article is to critique the notion that divisions between Sunna and Shi'a, Turks and Persians, and Arabs and
Kurds were rigidly set in stone. This article argues that as socioeconomic and political situations changed, feelings of resentment, antagonism and disenfranchisement rose correspondingly. However, these feelings also tended to subside or change when the situations that allowed them to emerge
in the first place changed as well, so that, at the end of the day, those innate prejudices can be seen as nothing more than momentary lapses, dynamically introduced under SPECIFIC conditions that do NOT become universal over time.