WAR OFFICE. &
GEOGRAPHICAL SECTION, GENERAL STAFF.
Lower Mesopotamia between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf.
IMPORTANT MAP OF IRAQ, ISSUED DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR
WAR OFFICE. &
GEOGRAPHICAL SECTION, GENERAL STAFF.
Lower Mesopotamia between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf.
An excellent example of this highly important map of Central and Southern Iraq, from Baghdad to Basra. It is a rare wartime issue of the map, updated with new information supplied by the British Army, specific Political Agents and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
First published in 1907, the map was reissued several times, firstly in response to British activity (political and commercial) in the region, and then the Mesopotamian Campaign of WWI. It became the authoritative map of the area during the war, and was used by British (and British Indian) forces and, when captured, by their Ottoman and German adversaries. Evidence of German reliance on the map can be found in wartime copies of the 1911 issue, now held in the Bavarian State Library and Berlin State Library.
The map also covers Kuwait and part of Khuzestan in great detail for the period. The accurate mapping of Kuwait was partly based on Captain Shakespear’s ‘Map of the Country round Koweit’, 1910, which he made while exploring Eastern Arabia as a military adviser to Ibn Saud.
Rare. We cannot locate any examples of the 1916 issue in LibraryHub and find just four in OCLC, at UCLA, UC Berkeley, Wisconsin and the National Library of Australia.
