Ghosts of the gates of Baghdad: Monuments, colonialism and spatial transformation in early twentieth-century Iraq.

This article explores the transformation of Baghdad's monuments and urban spaces under British rule in the early twentieth century. Baghdad's identity has long been shaped by the remains of its historical monuments and literary references to its past Abbasid glory. The city was described and visually represented as a shadow of its former self, reflecting a recurrent trope of nostalgia in elegiac Arabic poetry and descriptive travel accounts, such as those of Ibn Jubayr and Ibn Battuta. The British incursion and occupation led to significant changes in Baghdad's distinctive urban landscape and its social dynamics. This aspect is particularly reflected in the fate of the renowned Seljuk-era city gates, an episode that historians of architecture and archaeology have left unexamined. At the time of the British entry into Iraq in the First World War, four monumental gates were still standing; by 1936, only one remained. Using historical images and archival sources, this article relates the fate of the gates and argues that if colonial strategies involved the appropriation of antiquity and the generation of racially charged narratives of the past, they also relied upon the reconfiguration of urban spaces for military and administrative purposes. The visual and spatial changes that took place during the British Mandate and the years immediately after had a profound impact and social implications, disrupting traditional urban practices. The colonial rhetoric of liberation contrasted sharply with the realities of occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]