The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of its Communists, Ba‘thists and Free Officers

No serious study of the modern history of Iraq can be undertaken without a
period of immersion in Hanna Batatu’s massive The Old Social Classes and the
Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, first published by Princeton University Press in
1978. It is a pleasant duty to commend Saqi Books for having had the courage to
republish a paperback of 1284 pages. As one reviewer wrote in 1981: ‘Hanna Batatu
has constructed a masterpiece of historical literature that single-handedly catapults
Iraq from the least known of the major Arab countries to the Arab society of which
we now have the most thorough political portrait.’[1] Let me take advantage of the
luxury of a long review to say something about the author and his work. [2]

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