MESOPOTAMIA CAMPAIGN (1914–1918)

world war i british military campaign in part of the ottoman empire.

In November 1914, within days of the British declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire (which was allied with Germany in World War I), the British landed an Indian Expeditionary Force (IEP) at Basra in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). Meeting scant resistance from the Ottoman Turks, the IEF moved north and, in April 1915, Sir John Nixon took command. Nixon ordered his lieutenant, Sir Charles Townshend, to advance north—up the river Tigris toward Baghdad. By November 1915, Town-shend succeeded in advancing to Ctesiphon, just south of Baghdad, but his supply lines were stretched thin, and he was repulsed by the newly invigorated Ottoman armies under the command of German General Kolmar von der Goltz. Townshend retreated south to Kut al-Amara, where he was trapped by the Ottoman Turks.

The British failed to reinforce Townshend, and after a 146-day siege, he surrendered his entire force on 29 April 1916. Lacking men and matériel, the Turks were unable to take advantage of the victory. Under the command of Sir Frederick Maude, the British again advanced north, retook Kut on 22 February 1917 and entered Baghdad on 11 March. By September, the British were in control of central Iraq, and by the war's end in 1918, they had occupied all of Mesopotamia south of the city of Mosul.

Bibliography

Barker, A. J. The Bastard War: The Mesopotamian Campaign of 1914–1918. New York: Dial Press, 1967.

Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. New York: Avon, 1990.

Shaw, Stanford, and Shaw, Ezel Kural. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976–1977.

Sluglett, Peter. Britain in Iraq 1914–1932. London: Ithaca Press, 1976.

zachary karabell

ABADAN

a city with large oil refineries and an island in the province of khuzistan in southwest iran.

The island of Abadan is 40 miles long and from 2 to 12 miles wide. The island is bounded by the Shatt al-Arab River on the west, the Karun River on the north, and the Persian Gulf on the south. The city, 9 miles from the northwestern tip of the island, was first mentioned by Muslim geographers during in the mid-ninth century. In medieval times it was of importance to travelers and navigators as a source of woven straw mats, supplier of salt, and center of shipping and navigation.

The modern city that developed after 1910 was due to the oil industry. The first oil refinery, which was opened by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1912 with an annual capacity of 120,000 tons, grew into one of the world's largest refineries by the 1960s. Abadan's population grew with its economic development. In 1948 refinery employees formed one-third of the city population of about 100,000. By the 1950s the city's population reached about 220,000, and in 1976 it was 296,000, making Abadan the fifth largest city in the country. In August 1978 more than 400 persons burned to death in a fire at an Abadan cinema. This incident became a precursor to the 1979 revolution.

The Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) heavily damaged the refinery as well as the city. Most of the population fled during the war, but some returned during the 1990s, when most of the city was reconstructed.

Because it is an industrial islet heavily influenced by foreign capitalist enterprise that uses the country's unskilled labor and raw material, Abadan's social structure is strongly segregated ethnically and economically. According to the 1996 census, the population of the reconstructed city was 206,073.

see also khuzistan.

Parvaneh Pourshariati

Mesopotamia Campaign (World War I) A British military campaign against the Ottoman Turks in Mesopotamia (southern Iraq). In 1913 Britain had acquired the Abadan oilfield of Persia (now Iran), and when war broke out in 1914, it was concerned to protect both the oilfields and the route to India. When Turkey joined the war in October 1914, British and Indian troops occupied Basra in Mesopotamia. They began to advance towards Baghdad, but were halted and suffered the disaster of KUT. General Sir Frederick Maude recaptured Kut in February 1917, entering Baghdad on 11 March. One contingent of British troops reached the oilfields of Baku (May 1918), which it occupied until September, when the Turks reoccupied the area. A further contingent moved up the River Euphrates to capture Ramadi (September 1917) and another up the River Tigris as far as Tikrit (July 1918), before advancing on Mosul. Meanwhile from Egypt General Sir Edmund ALLENBY was driving north into Palestine and Syria, aided by Arab partisans organized and led by T. E. LAWRENCE, a campaign that resulted in the military collapse of Turkey in October 1918. After the armistice of Mudros (30 October), British troops briefly reoccupied Baku (November 1918–August 1919), aiming to deprive the BOLSHEVIKS of its oil and to use it as a base in the RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR. Britain had now occupied all Mesopotamia, and for a brief while considered the possibility of creating a single British dominion, consisting of Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, and Iran, linking Egypt with India and providing a bulwark against Bolshevism.

Mesopotamia campaign (World War I) (1914–18) A campaign by British troops in Mesopotamia (now known as Iraq) against the Ottoman Empire. Its principal aim was to protect the extensive British interests in Persia (now Iran), particularly control over Iranian oilfields. Furthermore, the British and Indian troops hoped to divert Ottoman forces from other battlegrounds closer to Europe, through advancing into the heart of the Ottoman Empire itself via the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates. However, the Allied forces were stopped at Kut al-Amara, where most of the fighting of the campaign took place. Command of the operations passed from Delhi to London in 1916, but it was not until February 1917 that General Sir Frederick Maude recaptured Kut, thus clearing the way for the capture of Baghdad (11 March 1917). By the end of World War I, the British had conquered most of Mesopotamia up to the town of Mosul. As a result, after the war the area became a British League of Nations Mandate.

Faisal I

Ābādān, Iran, Turkmenistan 1. Iran: an island and city possibly named after ʼAbbad ibn al‐Hussein, a holy man who founded a garrison here in the 8th century. However, it has also been suggested that its Arabic form ʼAbbādān is derived from ʼabbād ‘worshipper’. Another possibility is that it comes from āb ‘water’ and the root pā ‘watch’ or ‘guard’ to give ‘guard post’. In subsequent years it declined, but later became the object of a long‐running dispute between the Persians and Ottoman Turks. Finally acquired by the Persians in 1847, it developed from a village after the discovery of oil nearby in 1908.2. Turkmenistan: spelt Abadan. It was formerly Bezmein.

Abadan , city (1991 pop. 84,774), Khuzestan prov., SW Iran, on Abadan Island, in the delta of the Shatt al Arab, at the head of the Persian Gulf. It is the terminus of major oil pipelines and is an important oil refining and shipping center. Abadan Island was ceded to Iran by Turkey in 1847. Abadan city was an unimportant village until the discovery (1908) of nearby oil fields. Its oil refinery (commissioned 1913) was the largest in the world by the 1970s. The refinery, together with the rest of the city, was destroyed during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. After the war's end in 1988, Abadan resumed oil production, but on a smaller scale.

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