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Shafaq News
2 days ago
- Shafaq News
Discover Iraq: Karbala, where memory breathes and future beckons
Shafaq News Few places wear their history as openly as Iraq's Karbala. Each year, during Ashura and Arbaeen, the city fills with black-clad pilgrims mourning the martyrdom of Imam Hussein ibn Ali, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, who was killed there in 680 CE while standing against tyranny. His death cemented Karbala's place at the core of Shiite identity as a lasting symbol of sacrifice. Yet Karbala's story didn't end on that battlefield. Under Abbasid, Safavid, and Ottoman rule, Karbala grew into a center of scholarship, art, and pilgrimage. Foreign travelers noted its wealth, with British explorer Austen Henry Layard once describing Karbala as 'one of the richest cities in Mesopotamia.' Periods of violence did not halt the city's evolution. After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in 2003, Karbala's shrines reopened to international pilgrims. In the years that followed, terrorist attacks frequently targeted the gatherings, but the number of visitors continued to grow. In 2024, the Arbaeen pilgrimage drew an astonishing 22.5 million visitors, according to Iraq's Ministry of Interior, making it the largest annual religious gathering on the planet, surpassing even the Hajj (annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia). As historian Abbas al-Saidi put it, 'In Karbala, history is not behind us. It walks with us every day.' Heartland and Humanity Karbala, located about 100 kilometers southwest of Baghdad, spans roughly 5,034 square kilometers where desert meets fertile plain. The Euphrates River cuts through the province, offering a narrow lifeline in a landscape dominated by arid conditions. Summers routinely push temperatures above 45°C, while annual rainfall often falls short of 100 millimeters. The province is home to around 1.4 million people, predominantly Arab Shiite Muslims. A small Turkmen minority remains, and remnants of a once larger Christian community are still visible in stone churches nestled within the older parts of the city. Arabic is the main language, though Persian influences persist in local expressions and traditions. In Karbala's rural areas, daily life follows a slower rhythm shaped by tribal customs and longstanding social structures. In contrast, the city center moves at a faster pace, fueled by a younger population seeking to balance religious tradition with new aspirations. 'We live between two worlds,' said Zahra al-Janabi, a university student. 'Our faith defines us, but our future demands we innovate.' Growth and Grit In Karbala, pilgrimage is not just a sacred act, it is the heartbeat of an entire economy. According to the Iraq Central Statistical Organization, religious tourism fuels over 62% of Karbala's GDP. During Ashura and Arbaeen, the city swells with millions of visitors, creating a massive seasonal economy, injecting an estimated $1.5 billion into the local economy. According to the Karbala Chamber of Commerce, hotels and guesthouses during peak seasons achieve occupancy rates above 95%, while small businesses, from mobile vendors to taxi drivers, see revenues spike by up to 300% compared to regular months. The scale of hospitality is staggering. In 2024, more than 14,000 Mawkibs (volunteer service tents) were registered with Karbala's Provincial Government. These tents distributed an estimated 95 million free meals over the 40 days leading to Arbaeen, according to official tallies. 'We don't serve pilgrims for profit; we serve them for honor,' explained Haj Jassem al-Sultani, a Mawkib organizer whose family has offered free meals on the Najaf-Karbala route for three generations. Yet this monumental system is also Karbala's greatest economic vulnerability. The COVID-19 pandemic offered a harsh lesson: When borders closed and pilgrimages were suspended, Karbala's religious tourism revenues collapsed by 78% in 2020. Thousands of hotels, restaurants, and vendors shut down, and unemployment spiked by an estimated 30% province-wide. Even today, local economists like Professor Hadeel al-Azawi warn that over-reliance on pilgrimage remains a 'single-crop economy risk.' 'If Arbaeen is disrupted, whether by pandemic, political unrest, or regional war, Karbala's economy could face catastrophic contraction within months,'' she stresses. Beyond the spiritual roar of Karbala's shrines, a quieter but crucial struggle plays out in its fields and factories. Historically, Karbala was famed for its agricultural bounty, particularly in areas like Ayn al-Tamr, revered for its dates, and the al-Hindiya district, known for wheat and barley. In the 1970s, Karbala produced approximately 250,000 tons of wheat annually. Today, wheat production has shrunk dramatically, dropping from 180,000 tons in 2018 to just 110,000 tons in 2024, a 39% decline driven by water shortages, desertification, and outdated irrigation techniques. Water scarcity has become existential. According to Iraq's Ministry of Water Resources, water allocations to Karbala's farmers fell by 43% between 2019 and 2024, forcing many to abandon traditional crops. In Ayn al-Tamr, once the cradle of Iraq's finest dates, palm tree numbers have declined by 17% over the past decade due to pests, heat stress, and neglect. "Palm trees were our pride," lamented agricultural engineer Samir al-Rubayi. "Now, you walk through dying groves where there was once an ocean of green." Efforts to modernize agriculture are underway. Drip irrigation systems are being introduced under the Smart Farms Karbala project, funded by the Ministry of Agriculture and a United Nations grant. The initiative aims to convert 5,000 hectares to water-saving technologies by 2027. Meanwhile, the industrial sector provides a critical buffer, if still an underdeveloped one. The Karbala Refinery, operational since 2022, refines 140,000 barrels of oil per day, meeting about 30% of Iraq's gasoline needs. The project employs over 5,000 people directly, and another 12,000 indirectly in supply chains ranging from transportation to chemical industries. Smaller factories in cement production (like Karbala Cement Plant) and food processing, especially date syrup and tomato paste, collectively employ about 18,000 workers, according to the Provincial Directorate of Industry. Nevertheless, challenges abound. A 2024 government audit revealed that 65% of Karbala's industrial facilities operate below 50% of their capacity due to chronic power outages, weak infrastructure, and competition from cheaper imported goods. Vibrant Canvas Karbala remains a global epicenter of poetry and lamentation arts, where traditions of eloquence continue to flourish. Each year during Ashura, the city draws poets from Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon to its renowned competitions. In 2024, Karbala hosted the International Marsiya Festival, gathering more than 400 poets and over 8,000 attendees for readings that wove together centuries-old elegies and contemporary interpretations, affirming the city's enduring literary spirit. The creative energy extends into education and youth initiatives. The University of Karbala, now home to more than 27,000 students across 16 colleges, including law, engineering, medicine, and fine arts, has become a vital source of cultural dynamism. Within its Department of Media and Fine Arts, a new wave of projects is taking shape, encouraging short filmmaking, digital storytelling, and visual arts. These programs offer young creatives fresh platforms to articulate their narratives, moving beyond the traditional confines of religious expression. This growing momentum culminated in 2023, when Karbala launched its first independent film festival, the Karbala Short Film Days. Featuring 22 films crafted by local talents, the festival brought forward stories of women's empowerment, environmental struggles, and social change. Film director Noor al-Tameemi described the moment as a breakthrough for the city's evolving identity. 'For the first time, we showed that Karbala can tell its story in many voices, not only through mourning, but also through dreams, struggles, and hopes,' she reflected. Religious education, long a cornerstone of Karbala's identity, is also evolving. The Hawzas (traditional Islamic seminaries) that continue to attract students are beginning to reshape their curricula. Within the Najaf-Karbala theological corridor, new courses in social sciences, economics, and environmental ethics are being introduced, aiming to bridge traditional faith teachings with contemporary challenges faced by modern society. Intellectual life outside formal institutions is thriving as well. After a decade-long hiatus, the Karbala Book Fair returned in 2022 and has quickly reclaimed its place in the city's cultural calendar. By 2024, the fair drew over 80 publishing houses and welcomed 45,000 visitors, reflecting a growing appetite for broader literary engagement. Bookseller Haidar Karim observed the transformation first-hand, remarking, 'There's a thirst for new ideas in Karbala. Faith here is strong. But minds are opening too.' Challenges on the Horizon Karbala's path forward is anything but straightforward. Environmental degradation casts an ever-deepening shadow over the province's future, reshaping landscapes and livelihoods alike. A 2023 report by the Ministry of Water Resources exposed the scale of the crisis: 43% of Karbala's land now suffers from desertification, fueled by the Euphrates River's decline and inefficient irrigation methods. The consequences are no longer confined to dry soil. Dust storms, once rare, have become an unsettling norm. Today, they sweep across the city more than 20 times a year, triple the frequency recorded two decades ago, clouding the skies and choking daily life. Farmers, already struggling with parched fields, face even graver warnings. According to the Directorate of Agriculture, without urgent reforms, Karbala could lose 30% of its farmland by 2030. In a province where the identity of entire communities is rooted in agriculture, such a loss would ripple far beyond economics. Meanwhile, economic fragility mirrors the environmental strain. Over 70% of Karbala's workforce depends directly or indirectly on religious tourism, according to a white paper by the Iraqi Economic Forum. Economist Ali al-Dulaimi urged a dramatic pivot toward sustainable sectors like green energy, education, and high-tech agriculture. 'Karbala must prepare for a future where tourism alone is not enough,' he emphasized, highlighting the urgency behind his call. Large-scale infrastructure projects, once envisioned as lifelines, have also struggled to materialize. The Karbala International Airport, launched in 2017 with grand expectations, remains incomplete. Runways have been laid, but political disagreements and funding shortages have kept the airport dormant. If completed, Provincial Council Member Fadhil al-Issawi explained, it could handle up to 3 million passengers a year, relieving mounting pressure on Baghdad's overburdened airports. Yet even against this backdrop of environmental, economic, and political obstacles, new currents of hope are beginning to stir. More than 60% of Karbala's population is under 30, and a growing number of young residents are charting their own future, untethered from the limitations of the past. Start-ups in renewable energy, environmental protection, and digital innovation are slowly reshaping the economic landscape. One symbol of this emerging spirit is the Green Belt Project, an ambitious grassroots campaign aiming to plant one million trees in Karbala within five years. It is not merely about greenery; it represents a collective determination to reclaim the future. As activist Ali al-Khafaji put it, 'We carry the memory of Karbala in our blood. But we also carry the future in our hands.'
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
‘Everyone is digging for gold now': Desperate Syrians resort to scouring ancient sites
Spotting a rare foreigner in the southern Syrian city of Nawa, Khalil approaches with a business proposal: bring him a 'very good metal detector from abroad' with 'very good sonar' and he promises 'very good results ... pure gold coins'. He grins. The white-haired 62-year-old is wearing sunglasses and a Nike-branded black bomber jacket, a cigarette hanging between his fingers. He is a veteran gold digger who has been searching for 40 years. 'I once was lucky,' he recalls wistfully. A decade ago, Khalil – who is only being identified by his first name – says he discovered 840 silver coins in a sealed jar. He believes they were from the Abbasid period, which lasted from about 750 to 1258 AD. This booty fetched Khalil $50,000 (€43,000), money he says he shared with others working for him. READ MORE He pauses, considering his previous proposal. He is also looking for foreign traders: people who could transport any discoveries abroad and sell them for a good price. Here is another way we could enter business together, Khalil suggests. Syria is in the midst of a gold rush. While gold-digging – where people search for coins and other old, buried artefacts – took place under the Assad regime, the opening up of movement and something of a security vacuum across the country has turbocharged it. As omnipresent regime checkpoints and the all-seeing tentacles of intelligence branches were shut down, more Syrians have taken to digging for gold, motivated by a catastrophic economic situation that leaves people with few other options. 'Everybody is digging now. Children. Women,' says one gold digger, who, like many others, declines to be named. But this looting of artefacts is raising widespread concerns. While it is deemed illegal by the new government, these rules are taking time to be implemented or respected. The Syrian Civil Defence, commonly known as the White Helmets, may be better known for life-saving work during the war, but now they have been drafted in to map heritage sites across Syria over the next two years. They are fundraising for help with efforts including surveying and assessing damage; removing explosives and mines from historic sites; and installing protective infrastructure. Syria has a rich history, including six Unesco-recognised World Heritage Sites, all of which Unesco says were destroyed or badly damaged during nearly 14 years of civil war. 'By helping us safeguard these sites, you're helping Syrians reclaim their cultural roots and rebuild what war has tried to erase,' the White Helmets appeal says. Khalil says he once earned $50,000 after finding hundreds of silver coins in a sealed jar. Photograph: Sally Hayden On the ground in the southern Daraa governorate, any idea of safeguarding seems far away. Dotted across a hill that a local historian says used to be a Roman, Byzantine and Greek village, men search for gold from 7am to 5pm, six days a week. They cover their faces in scarves to protect their skin from the scorching sun, stopping occasionally for tea breaks, the water poured out from a jerrycan. At night, they hide their equipment in holes under stones so they are not spotted walking with it through urban areas. I lost 13 colleagues because the Syrian regime used to shoot on us A metal detector costs $4,000, and can detect buried items up to one metre below the surface, they say. Pieces of seemingly ancient pottery litter the ground around them. One 23-year-old says he has been searching for gold since he was a child, making a discovery 'sometimes every day, every two days, every month'. He did it 'even under the regime ... I lost 13 colleagues because the Syrian regime used to shoot on us'. Regime forces would claim they were terrorists digging tunnels, he says. 'It's like a hope,' says another man, behind him, who explains that they form 'workshops': five members in their workshop operate together, pooling anything they find. 'I never found gold, I only found small coins,' says a third searcher, who still earns an occasional $100. His dream is to discover a jar of gold. A short walk away, another set of apparent gold diggers are going to more extreme measures, using a €45,000 mechanical digger to lift up huge chunks of earth. Though a metal detector and shovel lie close by, when asked what they are doing, one responds that they are 'fixing' something. Another deflects, beginning to talk about how many nearby historical sites the Assad regime destroyed instead. Though gold diggers are easy to find in this part of Syria, they try to maintain secrecy around the specifics of their work. Those who set off in the morning, with a shovel and pickaxe, may drive in the wrong direction to confuse anyone observing them, before turning back to enter their chosen site for the day. History and archaeology researcher Nadal Muhammad Saed Sharaf: 'The Syrian regime destroyed all archeological sites with aerial bombings and later with bulldozers.' Photograph: Sally Hayden Someone who gets lucky will be reluctant to disclose to anyone, except for a trader, what they have found. 'If I find 10 gold coins and tell my neighbours, the same night they will come and rob my house,' one local said. This is a lesser risk than what came before: military intelligence would detain and 'disappear' searchers, a gold digger said. This was despite the regime itself being accused of selling antiquities to raise money. Opposition forces, during the lengthy war, also reportedly sold artefacts to buy weapons. They call it 'shaghlat yali malah shaghle' – the job of the jobless The gold diggers open tombs and crypts, sometimes finding skeletons still wearing jewellery, bracelets, rings and a necklace, with a kohl applicator nearby. 'When a young girl died they buried her with all her jewellery,' one man says. Chambers underground can be booby-trapped, with a stone or spear falling down when they are opened. One superstition is that the graves are monitored by demons, and if you want to enter you have to slay an animal and drop its blood at the entrance. Weapons have also been discovered in graves. A man describes finding eight small statues made from malachite. He sold them for $12,000 in 2011 to a businessman near Damascus. They later turned out to be worth $100,000. This is a common theme: Syrians feel they are being ripped off by traders with access to foreign markets. Nadal Muhammad Saed Sharaf says the destruction of Syria's history makes him feel like he is 'suffocating'. Photograph: Sally Hayden They call it 'shaghlat yali malah shaghle' – the job of the jobless, says Abu Khaled (56), who describes himself as an 'expert' and agrees to be identified only by his nickname. 'This is the only way the people can get money. There is opportunity now.' The main issue is 'the metal detectors aren't very advanced'. He says stones in Daraa can contain metal oxides because it's a volcanic area, confusing the machines. Other people just use a shovel and pickaxe to search. Abu Khaled used to own a factory, but it closed down because of the difficulties of transporting goods through regime checkpoints. His hobby is 'archaeology and archaeological sites ... I like to preserve history. I feel sad if someone writes on the wall of an ancient building, for example'. He partly educates himself through YouTube videos and Facebook pages, though many of the opinions shared online are wrong, he says. In his livingroom, he displays what he called 'samples': coins he found himself – dozens in total. They would fetch about $150 inside Syria, but up to $3,000 outside, he says. He believes they came from the Islamic period, Roman period and Byzantine period. Coins collected by Abu Khaled are pictured at his home in Daraa, Syria. Photograph: Sally Hayden 'Of course, taking artefacts out of the country is not good for the heritage of the country, but we have to go back to the source of the problem ... The Syrian regime bombed the towns here with barrel bombs, fighter jets ... Daraa is full of artefacts ... We cannot blame one or two poor people,' he says. He says Syrians from Daraa used to travel to Lebanon or Jordan to find employment, but Lebanon has suffered a devastating financial crisis and a residency is required to work in Jordan now. Local agricultural work has been decimated by drought related to climate change. 'So people were stuck here' and needed to find something to do. If someone gets lucky they will 'go to Mars', Abu Khaled says, using a phrase that means getting very rich. 'In an ideal world' the new government would 'protect the sites' and encourage tourism, but to do that the government would also need to improve the country's infrastructure. Daraa could be an unlikely destination for tourists, too, not least because it is regularly affected by Israeli incursions and attacks . But the apparent loss of history is being mourned by some. 'I feel like I'm suffocating,' says history and archaeology researcher Nadal Muhammad Saed Sharaf (62) about the feeling he experiences looking at the photographs of historical sites and artefacts spread out on the floor in front of him. Photographs taken by researcher Nadal Muhammad Saed Sharaf, who says about 90 per cent of what is pictured has been destroyed. Photograph: Sally Hayden There are dozens including an Aramaic water spring, a 'temple of sun' from the Greek period, a stone cross from the early Christian period, Roman roads, Byzantine stones and an 'ark of victory memorial of battle' between a Roman and Persian army. Sharaf took these photographs in 2002. When he was displaced from Nawa for three years during the war, he buried the pictures in his back garden, digging them up again upon his return. Some 90 per cent of the actual sites are destroyed now, he says. It causes him 'grieving, pain'. Poverty is not a justification to do this stuff because this is our identity and we have to preserve our history Daraa, Sharaf says, was a very important historical trade route throughout 'all the history of mankind', set – as it is – between Baghdad, Amman, Beirut and Damascus. It was inhabited as far back as 10,000 BC. In 2006, he accompanied visiting European archaeologists when they came to study this area, but in the years since, he says, those seeking to preserve its history have not received support or funding. 'The Syrian regime destroyed all archeological sites with aerial bombings and later with bulldozers because they didn't want the rebels to hide in them,' he says. Now Sharaf would like to see a collaboration between the new government and Unesco to protect what remains and to restore what they can. 'There's extreme poverty here and the state doesn't have a grip on the ground, so the poor people are going to search [for gold and artefacts],' he says. But 'poverty is not a justification to do this stuff because this is our identity and we have to preserve our identity and history'. Additional reporting by Hani Alagbar and Nader Debo
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Enslaved Africans led a decade-long rebellion 1,200 years ago in Iraq, new evidence suggests
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Around 1,200 years ago in what is now Iraq, enslaved people who were forced to build a vast canal system defied authority and rebelled, a new study indicates. Between A.D. 869 to 883 a group known as the Zanj, many of whom were enslaved people taken from Africa, rebelled against the Abbasid Caliphate (ruled from 750 to 1258) and disrupted its control over the region, according to historical texts. The records also suggest that during the Middle Ages, the Zanj helped build a large system of canals spanning nearly 310 square miles (800 square kilometers) that was used to irrigate agriculture near the city of Basra. These canals are no longer used, but their earthen remains, including 7,000 human-made ridges, are still visible across the landscape. While researchers have long known about the canal system, no one had ever dated the ridges to see if they were constructed during the ninth-century Zanj rebellion. To investigate, the researchers collected and dated soil samples from within four of the ridges in an effort to learn more about who built them. Using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating, a technique that estimates when soil was last exposed to sunlight, the team determined that the ridges were built sometime between the late ninth to mid-thirteenth centuries A.D., they reported in their study published June 2 in the journal Antiquity. "The close dating between some of the ridges and the time of the rebellion makes it very likely that people who were involved in the rebellion were involved in the creation of some of these features," study first author Peter J. Brown, an archaeologist at the Radboud Institute for Culture and History in the Netherlands and Durham University in the U.K., told Live Science in an email. The results also indicate that construction of the ridges continued long after the rebellion ended. "We have a more limited understanding of exactly what happened afterwards and whether large numbers of slaves continued to work across this field system or whether 'free' local peasant farmers took over," Brown said. The fact that the work on the ridges came to an end during the mid-thirteenth century could be related to the Mongol invasion of the region, which resulted in the sack of Baghdad in 1258, the authors wrote in their paper. The ninth-century revolt was not the Zanj's first rebellion. They also revolted in 689 to 690 and 694 to 695, according to historical texts. However, both of these insurrections were quickly suppressed. In contrast, the third revolt ended up "sparking more than a decade of unrest until the Abbasid state regained control of the region," according to the study. Life as an enslaved person digging canals was brutal, and medieval texts provide some clues as to what life was like for the Zanj. Before the rebellion, the textual sources describe work camps distributed throughout the canal region, with groups of 50 to 500 enslaved people in each camp, Brown said. "They seem to have been in a servile situation with 'agents' or 'masters' who were in charge of them, and the historical sources suggest they were treated poorly but we don't have details about the conditions in which they lived," Brown said. The labor they had to perform was backbreaking. "The workers who built this system would have had to dig out the canals and pile up earth into the large ridge features we can see on the ground today, " Brown said, noting that the slaves may have used animals such as donkeys to help with transporting sediment. After the canals were built, they needed to be cleaned frequently "to keep them functional as water carries silt that would be deposited within the canal beds," Brown said. "Over time, [the silt] would lead to them becoming unusable if they were not routinely cleaned." RELATED STORIES —14 wrecks that expose 'what life was like on slaver ships' identified in the Bahamas —Origins of enslaved Africans freed by British, then abandoned on remote Atlantic island revealed by DNA analysis —Plantation slavery was invented on this tiny African island, according to archaeologists Adam Ali, an assistant professor of Arabic language at the University of Toronto who has a doctorate in Islamic history, said that the study is interesting but cautioned that the samples come from just four of the ridges and more work is needed to verify the study findings. "I think that this study opens an avenue for further the discussion and examination of these ridges and what they can tell us," Ali, who was not involved in the research, told Live Science in an email. The possibility that slaves from Africa kept being used on the canals after the rebellion is important, Kristina Richardson, a professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian languages and cultures and history at the University of Virginia, told Live Science in an email. "The findings are extraordinary and surprising, because they upend the historical consensus that Middle Easterners stopped using East Africans as agricultural slaves after the suppression of the Zanj Rebellion in 883."
New Statesman
04-06-2025
- Business
- New Statesman
Have we reached peak humanity?
The spectre of decline is a seductive narrative. How easily nostalgic laments find their own straplines: late capitalism; the eclipse of the West; the collapse of public discourse; the atomisation of society; the impoverishment of the public square; and, as a niche addition, I can't resist including the downward trajectory of Test cricket. Perhaps the narrative arc of societal decline is weirdly in step with the individual ageing process, and we find a perverse personal consolation in believing that the world, or our framing of the world, has also peaked. Even allowing for that tendency, we seem particularly convinced about decline today. Every discipline has its theory about why – economists, for example, tell us that a generation will be miserable if it feels poorer than its parents' demographic. But I wonder if there is something here more fundamental than money. The privileges that are supposed to make us fulfilled and happy (such as leisure and choice) can be seen as reversing back into themselves. If modern capitalism gives you the time and freedom to become addicted to vapid and ephemeral digital technology, for example, then humanity becomes further detached from the most important anchor of all: the conviction that something of lasting value will be left behind. Decline takes many forms, and perhaps we are well tuned to understanding the impoverishment of grand ambition. It's an opportune moment for the writer and historian Johan Norberg to choose seven golden ages and interweave their rise and fall into a history of human progress: Athens, Rome, the Abbasid caliphate, Song China, Renaissance Italy, the Dutch Republic, and the Anglosphere. The authorial challenge is bringing it all together. And yet this highlights reel of world history won me over. As with any well-edited montage, we certainly know what side we're on. 'History casts long shadows,' Norberg concludes, 'but also light.' And it is light, in his history, that more often has the last word. The heroic threads are established at the outset and constantly remain in focus: innovation, openness, liberty, commerce, learning, assimilation, enquiry. You always get the point, sometimes a little too bluntly. After introducing classical Greek drama, Norberg adds: 'Netflix would not have been the same without it.' Is he exemplifying or parodying the popular historian's trait of linking everything to the here and now? But if Peak Human is the kind of muscular broad-brush storytelling that academic historians look down on, it is engaging and persuasive. Peak civilisations, of course, are portrayed as constantly in conflict with dark-age duds. First up on the wrong side of history are the Spartans, who Norberg gives such a mauling that you begin to feel sorry for them. Not only did the Spartans leave us 'no literature, no poetry, no art, no architecture and no innovative body of thought', but Norberg then adds the sucker punch that they weren't even any good at fighting. The Spartans, he concludes, 'are the most overrated warriors in ancient history; they just had very good PR'. Step forward the Athenians, who run the first leg in the civilised relay race. 'Only a regime as open, innovative, energetic, pragmatic and meritocratic as democracy,' we are told, 'could have followed the policy that won at Salamis.' The book's pattern is set, with each great golden age explained in the style of a business journalist charting the development of a superstar company. Military victories gave the Athenians 'proof of concept', so they 'doubled down on democracy and trade'. The sleight of hand required by any episodic world history is navigating the leap from one chapter to the next. Getting from ancient Greece to classical Rome, however, probably didn't cost Norberg much sleep, especially as Horace gave him the line 'Greece, the captive, took her savage victor captive'. In Norberg's summary of Rome's 'melting pot of marble', the definitive engine of greatness was the empire's strategic tolerance. 'The Romans did not embrace tolerance because they were enlightened,' Norberg concludes, 'they did it in order to beat everybody else and take their stuff. They wanted to integrate people to benefit from them.' Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe After pointedly lingering on the creative and economic hiatus after the fall of Rome – 'pitch dark' despite 'the heroic efforts of revisionist historians' – Norberg picks up the story in the 9th-century Abbasid caliphate. In AD 892, there were more than a hundred bookshops in Baghdad, which had become the new cradle of learning and free markets. Baghdad emerges as a nexus of social mobility and commerce, with successful businessmen achieving not only wealth but also corresponding status. So this Islamic 'bourgeois revolution' extended beyond the marketplaces of Athens and Rome, where commerce had still been seen as a necessary evil. (You won't be surprised that Norberg follows his Cato Institute colleague Deirdre McCloskey in recasting 'bourgeois' as an explicitly positive concept.) Norberg's next leaping off point for laissez-faire liberalism is Song dynasty China, where a 12th-century poet observed that 'great ships sail only for profit'. Marauding Mongol hordes rudely interrupt the flow of progress by shrinking the Song state. But with a little help from Marco Polo – who described the old Song capital of Hangzhou as 'the greatest city which may be found in the world, where so many pleasures may be found that one fancies oneself in paradise' – the flame is kept alive in a new cultural and trading crossroads: Venice. When the pope complained to the Venetians about their economic relationship with Syria and Egypt, they replied: 'We are Venetians first, only then Christians.' Open, secular, undogmatic: the book's firmly established heroic template. The Netherlands, despite its remarkable military exploits in the Eighty Years' War, is revealed as 'a bourgeois society that wanted to make money not war'. And the same openness is found at the heart of Britain's 18th-century ascent. Norberg cites Voltaire's description: 'Go into the London Stock Exchange – a more respectable place than many a court – and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt.' Finally, Norberg reaches America, completing his distilled histories of elevated cultures, lovingly interleaved into a unified history of enlightened humanity. Although Norberg never hides his strong ideological convictions, he often finds room for the counter-view, while also being unfailingly courteous in crediting other historians. Though it's unclear whether the book is meant as an introduction or a refresher, I ended up thinking it didn't matter either way: one would have to be an incredibly erudite reader not to find anything new and surprising at every turn, no matter how familiar the terrain. Books such as this are feats of engineering, rather than style or originality. Can the narrative structure survive the conceptual weight it is being asked to support? That's where the intelligence of Norberg's book is found. Norberg frequently revisits a familiar objection to his thesis: slavery. To what extent did that inhuman and unpaid debt enable these so-called golden ages? Very significantly. But Norberg argues that slavery was seldom the definitive causal factor in the growth stories he admires. Other societies indulged slavery, Norberg stresses, not only the celebrated and economically successful ones. A similar question has obvious resonance in our own context today. Hyper-globalisation delivers cheap fast-fashion clothing, for example, churned out by child-labour sweatshops in Asia. When growth is driven by wilful blindness, are 'rise' and 'decline' appropriate concepts? The approved stamp 'artisan' might be an overused cliché today, but you can see what the concept is being defined against. I finished Peak Human unsure about something even more fundamental: the influence of mass digital information on our subliminal attitude towards knowledge. In Norberg's sunny enlightenment world-view, the exchange of information is the engine of progress. Assimilators thrive and the curious win. But the digital age – in which information is exchanged without any friction – now overwhelms us. We often feel defeated by information rather than excited by it. TS Eliot's aphorism feels truer than ever: 'Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?' If a part of us wants to switch off – literally and metaphorically – we are not necessarily turning away from the kind of creative human interaction that Norberg celebrates, but instead trying to salvage a more textured human experience. Today's ceaseless exchange of mostly meaningless pixelated 'content' seems to be undermining our higher instincts rather than supporting them. AI and the manipulation of digital information adds an extra layer of underlying disquiet. Our brilliance at manufacturing information is becoming inversely correlated with our confidence that the information is trustworthy. For all our material advances, there's a feeling of being tossed around on digital seas that we don't quite understand. For that reason, Peak Human feels incomplete. Norberg's spectrum charts 'peak-human' relative to 'declining-human'. But aren't we facing an even bigger question today: 'actually human' vs 'non-human'? When the sizeable chunk of human experience is reduced to watching rotating adverts on an iPhone, what Norberg wrote about Sparta leaving 'no literature, no poetry, no art, no architecture' becomes just as applicable to our vacant technological age as it was to Sparta's closed and military one. Norberg might counter: new technology is always unsettling but rarely turns out frightening. I'd say: this time could be different. We'll see. It's only a hunch, but I think this underlying anxiety about our place in the world is seeping into political restiveness. The paradox, of course, is that intellectual loss of confidence and bewilderment manifests itself as a yearning for childlike simplicity. 'Hard times create strongmen,' Norberg warns us near the end of the book, 'and strongmen create even harder times.' He's writing about the decline of the Dutch Republic, and the prince of Orange. But of course the shadow of America's own prince of orange, Donald Trump, falls across the page. The next peak for humanity feels distant. Ed Smith is director of the Institute of Sports Humanities Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages Johan Norberg Atlantic, 512pp, £22 Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from who support independent bookshops [See also: Dickens's Britain is still with us] Related This article appears in the 04 Jun 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Housing Trap
02-06-2025
- Science
Archaeologists find new evidence of ancient slave labor in southern Iraq
BEIRUT -- A system of thousands of ridges and canals across a floodplain in southern Iraq has long been believed to be the remnant of a massive agricultural system built by slave labor. Now an international team of archaeologists has found new evidence to support the theory. The team undertook testing to determine the construction dates of some of the massive earthen structures and found that they spanned several centuries, beginning around the time of a famous slave rebellion in the 9th century A.D. The research findings were published Monday in the journal Antiquity. The enslaved people from that era are known today as the 'Zanj,' a medieval Arabic term for the East African Swahili coast, although there are different theories about where in Africa most of them actually came from. They carried out a large-scale revolt in Iraq in 869 AD under the Abbasid state, known today as the 'Zanj rebellion.' The rebellion lasted for more than a decade until the Abbasid state regained control of the region in 883 A.D. Many descendants of those enslaved people now live in the southern port city of Basra in modern-day Iraq. While they are part of the fabric of modern-day Iraq, 'their history has not been actually written or documented very well in our history,' said Jaafar Jotheri, a professor of archaeology at the University of Al-Qadisiyah in Iraq, who was part of the research team. Researchers from Durham and Newcastle universities in the U.K., Radboud University in the Netherlands, and the University of Basra in Iraq also took part. 'So that's why this (finding) is very important, and what is next actually is to protect at least some of these huge structures for future work. It is minority heritage,' he said. The researchers first reviewed recent satellite imagery and older images from the 1960s showing the remains of more than 7,000 massive manmade ridges across the Shaṭṭ al-Arab floodplain. The size and scale of the network indicate the 'investment of human labour on a grand scale,' the report in Antiquity said. Sites were selected across the system to be analyzed with radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating. All four of the ridge crests sampled date to the period between the late ninth to mid-13th century A.D., situating their construction during the period when slave labor was in use in the area — and providing evidence that the use of slave labor likely continued for several centuries after the famous rebellion. Their findings demonstrate 'that these features were in use for a substantially longer period than previously assumed and, as such, they represent an important piece of Iraqi landscape heritage,' the researchers wrote. The finding comes at the time of a resurgence of archaeology in Iraq, a country often referred to as the 'cradle of civilization,' but where archaeological exploration has been stunted by decades of conflict that halted excavations and led to the looting of tens of thousands of artifacts. In recent years, the digs have returned and thousands of stolen artifacts have been repatriated.
