Iraqi

The Iraqis are Arabic speakers of the Mesopotamian alluvium, from Baghdad and the shrine cities of Kufa and Karbala to Basra; their Mesopotamian Arabic carries a strong Aramaic substrate, split between the older qeltu speech of northern towns and the gelet dialect of Baghdad and the south. Arab armies took the country from the Sasanians after al-Qadisiyyah in 636; Baghdad, founded in 762, was the Abbasid capital at its intellectual peak until the Mongol sack of 1258.

In 1337 the Jalayirid sultans, heirs of the fallen Ilkhanate, held Iraq until Timur's 1401 massacre at Baghdad; Turkmen followed, then the Safavids from 1508. Ottomans seized Baghdad in 1534, and the treaty of Zuhab in 1639 settled Iraq's provinces under Istanbul, though Basra long ran its own affairs.

From 1704 Georgian Mamluks ruled Iraq in near autonomy until 1831, when the Ottomans reimposed direct rule as the Baghdad, Mosul and Basra vilayets; in 1802 Wahhabi raiders sacked Karbala, sharpening the geography of Sunni trading towns and Shia shrine cities.