Iraq is where civilisation was born 7,000 years ago. Chris Lloyd looks back on the country that gave us time, mathematics and books

WHILE we are bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age, it is worth recalling that the country is the cradle of civilisation.

More than 3,000 years before the birth of Christ, writing, the wheel, mathematics and even time were invented in the country. And here, where the great rivers of the Tigris and the Euphrates join and flow into the Persian Gulf, is the small dusty town of Al-Qarna, where a blasted collection of twigs called Adam's Tree struggles for life.

Once Al-Qarna was an oasis in the middle of the desert. Once it was so lush with vegetation that it was known as the Garden of Eden. Once upon a time, it was here that Adam and Eve were tempted to eat an apple.

It is because of the two rivers that Iraq is so old. In ancient times it was known as Mesopotamia - "the land between rivers". It was a flood plain which, when irrigated with canals and ditches, became remarkably fertile. With agriculture established, it became wealthy.

It was the Sumerians who first irrigated Mesopotamia, in 5000BC. They went on to found the world's first city, at Uruk, in 4000BC, and had the first attempts at hieroglyphics and mathematics. The earliest book in the world dates from about 2500BC and was found in Iraq.

And it was the Sumerians who were so obsessed by the number 60 that we still have 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour.

Sumerian culture subsided to be replaced by the Assyrian Empire about 850BC. Its capital city was Nineveh, which was captured in 612BC by the Babylonian Empire at the start of its rise.

The Babylonians' heyday came under King Nebuchadnezzar (605-562BC). His greatest feat was to rebuild the Sumerian city of Babylon. At its centrepiece he created the legendary Hanging Gardens - one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Saddam Hussein is so taken by this period of Iraqi history that he too has rebuilt Babylon and, just like Nebuchadnezzar, he has had his name stamped on every second brick.

Following the fall of the Babylonians, Mesopotamia passed through the hands of the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Persians once more before ending up as part of the Ottoman Empire, based in Turkey.

It was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War that sowed the seeds for the current conflict.

In 1918, the British Army found itself occupying three Ottoman provinces in Mesopotamia: the Kurdish province of Mosul in the north, Sunni Baghdad in the middle, and Shia Basra in the south. In 1920, the League of Nations decided that France should look after Syria and Lebanon and Britain should take care of Palestine and Mesopotamia.

Britain's first act was to send 60,000 troops to Iraq to put down a rebellion by angry Arabs, who claimed the British had promised them independence before the start of the First World War.

Britain's second act was to find a monarch. It settled upon Faisal, son of an Arabic king, whose brother had just been installed as king of Transjordan and whom the French had annoyed by rejecting for the vacant post of king of Syria.

Faisal had another thing going for him. In the words of Winston Churchill, he was "the best and cheapest solution".

But he quickly proved otherwise. Faisal wanted independence and kept bothering Churchill. Churchill ordered an underling: "Explain to Faisal that while we have to pay the piper, we must expect to be consulted about the tune. Six months ago we were paying his hotel bill in London and now I am forced to read day after day 800-word messages on questions of his status and his relations with foreign powers. Has he not got some wives to keep him quiet?"

Britain soon wanted to leave Iraq, but it had business to attend to first. As David Lloyd-George said: "If we leave, we may find a year or two after we have departed that we have handed over to the French and Americans some of the richest oilfields in the world."

The Iraq Petroleum Company was formed in 1926; the first oil was struck in 1927. Britain was able to leave, secure in the knowledge that Iraqi oil fortunes would flow in her direction through the Petroleum Company.

Iraq became independent in 1932; the monarchy lasted until 1958, when Faisal's grandson, also called Faisal, was murdered and replaced by President Abdel Karim Qasim.

It was now that Saddam Hussein became politically active, attempting to assassinate Qasim in 1959. When Saddam's Ba'ath Party succeeded in wrestling control of the country in 1968, Saddam became the second in command.

20/03/2003