The most dramatic and far-reaching changes in Iraq are associated with the introduction of the new Ottoman provincial system and the governorship of Midhat Paşa (1869–72). Midhat was one of the chief architects of the Ottoman Vilayet Law of 1864, and he had applied it with great success to a vilayet elsewhere in the empire before arriving in Baghdad in 1869 with a handpicked corps of advisers and assistants.

Midhat transformed the face of Baghdad by ordering the demolition of a section of the old city wall to allow room for rational urban expansion. He established a tramway to suburban Kāẓimayn, a public park, a water-supply system, a hospital, textile mills, a savings bank, paved and lighted streets, and the only bridge across the Tigris built in the city until the 20th century. Several new schools were opened; modern textbooks were printed on the press that Midhat founded; and Iraq’s first newspaper, Al-Zawrāʾ, began publication. To develop the economy he promoted regular steamer service on the Tigris and Euphrates and shipping in the Persian Gulf, set up ship-repair yards at Basra, began dredging operations on the Shaṭṭ al-ʿArab, made some minor improvements in the irrigation system, and expanded date production in the south. Municipalities and administrative councils were established in accordance with the new vilayet regulations, and military conscription was enforced.

But perhaps the most fundamental changes resulted from Midhat’s attempt to apply the Ottoman Land Law of 1858, which aimed at classifying and regularizing land tenure and registering land titles to individuals who would be responsible for paying the applicable taxes. His objectives were to pacify and settle the tribes, encourage cultivation, and improve tax collection. However, the traditional system of tribal and communal landholding and the fear that land registration would lead to greater government control, heavier tax burdens, and extension of military conscription to the tribal areas—combined with inefficient and inequitable administration—limited the effectiveness of the reform and produced unintended results. Most land was registered not in the names of individual peasants and tribesmen but rather in the names of tribal sheikhs, urban-based merchants, and former tax farmers. Some tribal leaders became landlords, which tied them more closely to the Ottoman administration and widened the gap between them and their tribesmen. Other sheikhs refused to cooperate. A combination of developments stemming from the reforms begun by Midhat Paşa resulted in a decline of nomadism in Iraq; the proportion of nomads fell from about one-third of the population in 1867 to approximately half that figure by the end of the Ottoman period.

Midhat’s authority as vali (governor) of Baghdad and commander of the Ottoman Sixth Army extended north to include Mosul, Kirkūk, and Al-Sulaymāniyyah. In 1871 Midhat, in cooperation with Sheikh ʿAbd Allāh al-Sabāḥ, ruler of Kuwait, sent an expeditionary force to occupy Al-Hasa (which was situated along the coast south of Kuwait), which thereby gave Midhat effective control of Al-Hasa and Basra in the south. In recognition of his cooperation, ʿAbd Allāh was appointed an Ottoman qāʾim-maqām (subgovernor), although Kuwait remained independent throughout the entire Ottoman period and acknowledged Ottoman suzerainty only as a formality. Taking advantage of divisions within the Saʿūd family, Midhat also sought to reassert Ottoman sovereignty over the Wahhābī dominions in the Najd region of central Arabia. His success in the latter effort was ephemeral, as were many of the projects begun by Midhat. Nevertheless, his brief rule set in motion developments that profoundly changed virtually every aspect of life in Iraq and tied it more closely to Istanbul than ever before.

The end of Ottoman rule

In the last decades of Ottoman rule, changes in administrative boundaries once more split Ottoman Iraq into three parts. For most of this period, both Basra (together with the subprovince [sanjak] of Al-Hasa) and Mosul (and its dependent sanjaks of Kirkūk and Al-Sulaymāniyyah) were vilayets independent of the central province of Baghdad.

In spite of the European commercial and consular presence in Iraq, it remained more isolated from European influences than the Arab lands adjacent to the Mediterranean. Iraq had relatively few Christians, and those few had had little exposure to foreign ideas. The prosperous Jewish community usually avoided politics but tended to be favourably disposed toward the Ottoman government. The tribal sheikhs and Shiʿi notables still couched their opposition in traditional terms, and many Turkish and Caucasian families enjoyed official status and other rewards as provincial administrators. Finally, a great majority of the population was illiterate. Thus, it is hardly surprising that Arab nationalism had made little impact on Iraq before World War I. In Syria, Arab nationalist and separatist organizations appeared after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. In Iraq, however, there was scant nationalist opposition to Ottoman rule, although some Iraqi Arab officers in the Ottoman army joined the secret al-ʿAhd (“Covenant”) society, which is reported to have advocated independence for the sultan’s Arab provinces.

It was the British, whose interests in the Persian Gulf and the Tigris-Euphrates region had grown steadily since the late 18th century, who ultimately brought an end to the Ottoman presence in Iraq. In the years just before World War I, the close ties between the governments of the kaiser in Berlin and the Young Turks in Istanbul were particularly troublesome to Great Britain. When Germany was awarded a concession to extend its railway line through Anatolia to Baghdad and acquired mineral rights to the land on both sides of the proposed route, heightened fear of German competition in Iraq and the Persian Gulf evoked strong protests from London. Soon afterward, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later the British Petroleum Company PLC) began production on the Iranian side of the gulf, and there were indications that oil might be found elsewhere in the area. In 1912 a group representing British, German, and Dutch interests formed the Turkish Petroleum Company, which, on the eve of the war, was given a concession to explore for oil in the vilayets of Mosul and Baghdad. A convention between Britain and the Ottoman Empire acknowledging British protection of Kuwait was concluded in 1913 but was never ratified. In view of these developments and because they feared that the Germans might persuade the Ottomans to undertake military action against them, the British had already made plans to send an expedition from India to protect their interests in the Persian Gulf before the Ottoman Empire entered the war in early November 1914. After war was declared, a British expeditionary force soon landed at the head of the gulf and on November 22, 1914, entered Basra. In a campaign aimed at taking Baghdad, the British suffered a defeat at Al-Kūt (Kūt al-ʿAmārah) in April 1916, but a reinforced British army marched into Baghdad on March 11, 1917. An administration staffed largely by British and Indian officials replaced the Ottoman provincial government in occupied Iraq, but Mosul remained in Ottoman hands until after the Armistice of Mudros (October 30, 1918), which brought an end to the war in the Middle East. Under the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), Turkey (the successor to the Ottoman Empire) gave up all claims to its former Arab provinces, including Iraq.