Talk:Ottoman Iraq

Peer review

Ottoman Iraq

I've listed this article for peer review because I want feedback before nominating it for Good Article status. In particular, I’d like comments on sourcing precision and consistency, neutral tone, and terminology standardization, as well as on prose clarity. Thanks, Thegiantofgiants (talk) 22:46, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

Comments from Z1720

@Thegiantofgiants: Comments after a quick skim:

• I have added citation needed tags to the article. In most cases, there should be a citation at the end of every paragraph, minimum.

Other than that, I don't have any concerns. This can probably go to WP:GAN once the citation concerns are fixed. Z1720 (talk) 05:30, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I’ve addressed the citations needed issue. Closing this peer review. Thegiantofgiants (talk) 18:40, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

GA review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Ottoman Iraq/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Thegiantofgiants (talk · contribs) 18:52, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: FenrisAureus (talk · contribs) 06:00, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Hello fellow traveller! I will be reviewing this nomination over the course of the next few days. If you have time, please consider reviewing an article at WP:GAN.— FenrisAureus ▲ (she/they) (talk) 06:00, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

@FenrisAureus: Hi ma'am, I just wanted to check how it's going with the article review. Was there something unclear? I noticed you haven't added any more comments since 6th October. Thegiantofgiants (talk) 18:38, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

GA review

Last updated: 00:01, 2 March 2026 (UTC) by DYKUpdateBot

See what the criteria are and what they are not

1) Well-written

1a) the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct

1b) it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation

2) Verifiable with no original research

2a) it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline

2b) reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose)

2c) it contains no original research

2a/2b/2c Combined spot check

Reference #	Citation	Y/N	Comment
2	—	2a)	—
		2b)	—
		2c)	—
18	—	2a)	—
		2b)	—
		2c)	—
34	—	2a)	—
		2b)	—
		2c)	—
50	—	2a)	—
		2b)	—
		2c)	—
15	—	2a)	—
		2b)	—
		2c)	—

2d) it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism

3) Broad in its coverage

3a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic

3b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style)

4) Neutral:

4) Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each

5) Stable:

5) Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute

LGTM! Pass.— FenrisAureus ▲ (she/they) (talk) 06:14, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

6) Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio

6a) media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content

6b) media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions

@Thegiantofgiants:The large number of contemporary maps is redundant. As all show essentially the same information, trimming the selection to one map each for pre and post Tanzimat reforms and moving those maps to Ottoman Iraq#Institutionalizing Tanzimat Reforms in Iraq (1847–1851) to provide context for their inclusion my choices for the selections would be the "1849 (Mitchell)" map and "1855, showing sanjaks" as they are of the best quality, show the most detail, and are in english, however if your opinions on those selections are different I am not averse to different choices. On hold until remediated.— FenrisAureus ▲ (she/they) (talk) 06:37, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

@FenrisAureus: Thank you for the review. I want to clarify why I've held off on including contemporary maps. The available European and Persian maps from the period don't really reflect the Ottoman administrative reality we're documenting. The reason is that European maps were looking for their biblical past and so saw any land in Mesopotamia as one. On the other hand, Persians saw part of Iraq as lost Iranian heartland and so their maps often distinguished drew distinctions that Ottomans didn't.

Using them as "a map of Ottoman Iraq" would inadvertently prioritize these external views over the Ottoman one. I'm open to including one if you think it's necessary, but we would need to cross-check it carefully with Ottoman administrative records (like a Salname) and frame it with the proper context. However, the issue here is that would be counted as own research since we would apply it to a specific map.

See Zeinab Azarbadegan’s Imagined Geographies, Re-invented Histories: Ottoman Iraq as Part of Iran for more context.Thegiantofgiants (talk) 10:52, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Comments:

@FenrisAureus and Thegiantofgiants: What is the status of this review? Z1720 (talk) 18:47, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

@Z1720: I have no idea. I tried reaching out to Fenris but I do not think they want to do the review anymore since I am not getting any responses? Easternsahara (talk · contribs) also reached out to Fenris asking if she was going to continue with the review or if they should take over but there was no response. Any idea how to proceed? Thegiantofgiants (talk) 23:49, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

I could take over, but I will not be in a state where I am capable of fully reviewing this article until about the 19th of December because of its academic and historical nature. If the original reviewer doesn't finish before then, or if someone else doesn't take over, I'll review it. User:Easternsahara_{review this} 23:52, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

GA review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Ottoman Iraq/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Thegiantofgiants (talk · contribs) 18:52, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: Easternsahara (talk · contribs) 18:52, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

@Easternsahara: Thank you for taking the time to review this. I’ve added DOIs to most of the sources and will add the remaining ones as I locate them. I’ve also addressed the writing issues you raised. Longrigg’s work is referenced because it remains a foundational study and continues to be cited by most modern scholarship on Ottoman Iraq. Thegiantofgiants (talk) 16:07, 23 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that, ping me again when you have all of the dois (or any identifier like isbn, issn) User:Easternsahara 23:30, 23 December 2025 (UTC)

@Easternsahara: I've now finished adding all of the DOIs. I've also tried converting some sources into sfn. Is it okay if I continue throughout this GA review or should I wait until it's finished before converting some more? Thegiantofgiants (talk) 01:13, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Yes, you can continue throughout the GA review, that is fine. As long as I am able to verify the content, I will pass the review and I do not want to stop you from improving the article for FA candidacy. BTW, the "optional" section of my review will be useful for FAC as well, which I'd say that this article has a fair chance at. User:Easternsahara 03:29, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

@Thegiantofgiants: I will now be taking this over, there have been a couple of edits and one rather substantial one since you've last edited the page, just making sure you're aware of this. User:Easternsahara 18:52, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

• Images have appropriate sourcing and licensing
• Most of your headers use title case, but Wikipedia uses MOS:SENTENCECASE, so change the section headers to comply with MOS
• "saw Nader Shah campaign in Iraq"→"saw Nader Shah's campaign in Iraq" while campaign can be used as a verb, it is awkward in this case (and, while not a part of GA criteria, MOS:SEAOFBLUE also applies]]
• "foundation of the campaign"→"foundation of the conquest" more specific
• "powers, Kurdish"→"powers: Kurdish"
• "1623 under"→"1623, under"
• "Administrative appointments further reinforced this linkage" I don't understand what linkage this is referring to, could you clarify this in the text?
• Please include the doi for all the journals that you have used, if that is not avaliable please put issn or isbn, it is very hard to verify the claims in the article without this information. You do this for some sources but not others
  • For example, there are some sources you accessed via JSTOR and I know most of JSTOR's works have dois
• Why is the hundred year-old source (28, 31, 41) reliable?

Optional

• I would link the first instance of emir, Kurdish, Armenian and Turcoman
  • Also, can I ask why you use Turcoman rather than Turkmen? That may be what the sources use but you can also use the more common name.
• you mention the idea of frontier and frontier province a couple of times in the article, could you link it to something, like Frontier, for those that are unfamiliar with the topic?
• The citation templates you are using have a "language=", please specify what language the source is in IF it is not in English. Most also have a "trans-title=" parameter, could you translate the title for those that are not in English.
• Unless you can further develop the infrastructure section, I would take the "Anatolian-Iraqi Railway Project" section and put it under economy
  • If you will further develop it, I would still put infrastructure as a third level header, and everything under that as a fourth level header
• Link the publishers, authors, and journals where applicable, ie. Oxford University Press
• If you are aiming for Featured article status, then you should use short footnotes so you can just cite the author, year and page number (which links to the longer citation, check out WP:SFN)

source review

citations 1, 7, 9, 17, 21, 28, 33, 49, and 58 pass. No more comments, I will be passing this now as I think it fulfills all of the GA criteria. I am sorry I did not do this before as I got blocked from editing. Wikipedia as a whole lacks a lot of content about the middle east and global south in general, so what you're doing is definitely important. I look forward to reviewing nominations from you in the future, cheers. User:Easternsahara 01:57, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. You can locate your hook here. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:24, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that Ottoman Iraq was treated as a single "Iraq Region" (Hıtta-i Irakiyye), including Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra?

• Source: Ceylan, The Ottoman Origins of Modern Iraq (2011), p. 219

• • Reviewed:

Improved to Good Article status by Thegiantofgiants (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.

Thegiantofgiants (talk) 15:06, 26 January 2026 (UTC).

• New/long enough (new GA), highly presentable, NPOV, reliably sourced, no apparent copyvio, no QPQ required. The problem is with the hook, which is not particularly interesting or unexpected. Mosul, Baghdad and Basra are all part of modern-day Iraq, so it's not really interesting that they were part of Ottoman Iraq as a single region. Thegiantofgiants, do you have any alternatives to suggest? Dclemens1971 (talk) 16:50, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

@Dclemens1971: thanks for the feedback. I’ve proposed three alternative hooks below.

• ALT 1: ... that Saddam Hussein used the 1869 Nationality Law in Ottoman Iraq as the legal basis for classifying up to two million native Iraqis as "inauthentic", making them vulnerable to expulsion?

• Source: (Saleh 2013, pp. 48–49, 55–57, 65–69)

• ALT 2: ... that between 1864 and 1900, the value of imports to Ottoman Iraq increased sixteenfold, largely due to the opening of the Suez Canal?

• Source: Hassan 1970, pp. 346–372

• ALT 3: ... that in 1902, the Ottoman government granted a 99-year concession to build a railway line connecting Anatolia to Ottoman Iraq?

• Source: T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü, 2006, pp. 8–11

ALT1 is interesting; I'd adjust it as follows if that's OK. ALT1a: ... that Ottoman Iraq's nationality law was a legal basis for Saddam Hussein to classify up to two million Iraqis as "inauthentic" and expel as many as 400,000 of them? I've verified this from the Saleh source (accessed via the Wikipedia Library) and I think it works better; the source doesn't specifically describe Saddam using the 1869 law, but it does describe the Ottoman-era law as the basis for the 1924 Nationality Law that Saddam did use. I also think mentioning the actual number expelled makes the hook stronger. It's also in the article. Since I have added a fact, though, I need to ask for a second reviewer to grant the final approval. Two quick tips for Thegiantofgiants: Please sign your comments with four tildes or else the ping of another user does not come through, and please include a brief quotation from the source that validates the hook. This makes it easier for reviewers to confirm your hooks. Thanks! Dclemens1971 (talk) 18:05, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

ALT1a is good to go. 1brianm7 (talk) 17:26, 24 February 2026 (UTC)