Friday's Read: The Old Social Classes and New Revolutionary Movements of Iraq

Batatu, Hanna.  The Old Social Classes and New Revolutionary Movements of Iraq. (London: Al-Saqi, 1978)
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Hanna Batatu's (حنّا بطاطو‎) monumental 1300-page 1978 work - whose full title is The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of its Communists, Baʻthists, and Free Officers - remains the standard work on modern Iraqi history. Batatu, (1926-2000) a Palestinian American who earned his doctorate in 1960 from Harvard, provides in The Old Social Classes an insightful sociologically-driven introduction to class hierarchy in Iraq from the monarchy up through the 1958 coup, as well as an in-depth study of Iraqi communism up until 1958. Researched and written over the course of twenty years, it is an encyclopedic volume, filled with charts, graphs, and analysis. In fact, one of the few, fair criticisms consistently leveled at the book is that it is so chock-full of copious amounts of undigested data that it can cause the reader to lose the main thread.  

The Old Social Classes is divided into three main sections, each of which is a study in societal organization and political transformation. The first section details the class hierarchies and social stratification that existed during the era of the Iraqi monarchy. The second section traces this same period, following the rise of Iraqi communism and other major political parties, including the Istiqlal (Independence) Party, the Ba'ath Party, and other leftist nationalist organizations. The final section examines post-independence Iraq up through the time of the book's publication.

Batatu has been criticized for allowing his own political proclivities - he was a devout Marxist - to influence the amount of focus he placed on Iraqi communism, causing him to overstate its importance.