Mosul

Ethnic composition

Mosul was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious city: Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians (also called Aramaeans and Chaldeans), Turkmen and Yazidis lived here.

Demographics have since changed in favor of the Arab population. Kurds blame this on Saddam Hussein's Arabization policy, and Christian Assyrians and Chaldeans on the invasion of the Islamic State.

Due to the insecurity resulting from the Iraq war in 2003, many people left the city. Christians in particular have left Mosul after targeted attacks. There are no exact statistics of the population living in the city today.

Religion

Most of the inhabitants of Mosul are Sunni Muslims, the majority of them being Arabs and the minority Kurds.

Mosul looks back on 1600 years of Christian tradition. The city was until recently the seat of several archbishops of Eastern churches of Syriac tradition (see also: Christians in Iraq). The cathedral of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, and also the oldest church in the city, is the Cathedral of St. Thomas, built in 640, less than 100 yards from the church of the same name of the Syriac Catholic Church, opened in 1863. However, the cathedral of the latter was the 17th-century Syriac Catholic al-Tahira Cathedral (Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception), which was almost completely destroyed in 2017 but will be rebuilt. The Chaldean Catholic Church, in turn, had its episcopal see in the medieval Mart Meskinta Church until it was moved to the 18th-century Chaldean al-Tahira Cathedral in the 1980s.

After the capture of Mosul by fighters of the ISIS group or Islamic State, the Christian inhabitants were given the choice of either leaving the city, converting to Islam or being executed. The vast majority of Christians subsequently left Mosul at the end of July, bringing the city's Christian tradition to a temporary end. According to Archbishop Louis Raphaël I. Sako, 25,000 Christians were still living in Mosul when ISIS took power; according to the BBC, the figure was as high as 35,000.

Syriac Catholic Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa, who was kidnapped on 17 January 2005, was released the following day without payment of ransom. The Armenian church building was severely damaged by an act of terrorism in 2004; in early 2006, Archbishop Avag Asadurian received a promise from President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari that the church would be rebuilt. Near Mosul, the Syriac Orthodox Church maintains the St. Ephrem Seminary for the training of priests and new church members. The current abbot is Archbishop Mar Saverius Ishak Saka (* 1931).

On February 2, 2015, Islamic State terrorists in Mosul blew up one of Iraq's largest and oldest Chaldean Catholic churches, the Church of the Virgin Mary. In April 2016, the historic 19th century Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Hour was destroyed.

Ancient

Around 850 BC, King Aššur-nâṣir-apli II appointed the city of Nimrud as the capital of the Assyrian Empire. This was located about 30 kilometers from present-day Mosul. Originating as a small village, in time Mosul took on the function of a bridge city on the Tigris, connecting Anatolia and the Median Empire. Around 612 BC, the Median king Kyaxares II, in an alliance with Babylon under Nabopolassar, conquered Nineveh and thus the city of Mosul. After the invasion of Alexander the Great and his later demise, the city became part of the Seleucid Empire, only to be conquered by the Parthians just 200 years later.

Between the 8th and 20th centuries: Changing rulers

Mosul was an important economic center since the 8th century, in the 10th century the Hamdanids ruled over Mosul and were replaced by the Uqailids in the 11th century. In the 12th century it was a stronghold of the Zengids in their struggle against the Crusaders, and in the 13th century Mongols conquered and destroyed the city. After reconstruction, it again became a regional center, without being able to resume its former importance. In 1400, Mosul was conquered by Timur Lenk. In the early 16th century, Mosul was part of the domain of the Turkmen tribal confederation of the Ak Koyunlu, and in 1508 the Safavids captured it. In 1535 the Ottomans under Suleyman the Magnificent conquered the city. Until the mid-19th century, Mosul temporarily flourished modestly under a short-lived but largely autonomous dynasty of governors (Jalilids).

The city and the surrounding area were occupied by Great Britain after the First World War. Turkey, however, continued to claim the area. During the negotiations in Lausanne, Ismet Inönü did not back down from his demand that Mosul should belong to Turkey. At the end of the negotiations, the issue remained unresolved. Subsequent negotiations between Britain and Turkey in 1924 were unsuccessful, after which Britain petitioned the League of Nations for a solution. The League of Nations, of which Turkey was not a member, set up a commission to clarify the claims, which drew up a compromise proposal. In September 1925, the League of Nations Council confirmed the outcome of the Mosul Commission and awarded the disputed oil territory to the British Mandated Territory of Iraq. Turkey's demand to hold a referendum in Mosul on its future was rejected by Britain. In the 1926 treaty between Great Britain and Turkey, Turkey was forced to cede Mosul, especially since at the same time Kurdish uprisings in eastern Anatolia were weakening Turkey.

Repeatedly, some Kurds claimed the city as part of their homeland, for example at the League of Nations in Geneva in 1938 and also at the San Francisco Conference in 1945. In April 2015, Kurdish President Masud Barzani reiterated this claim by offering the help of the Kurdish peshmerga in liberating the city on the condition that the Kurds play an important role in the administration of the city after the victory against IS.

21st century

On July 22, 2003 (during the occupation of Iraq), Udai and Kusai Hussein, sons of ousted President Saddam Hussein, were killed in a skirmish with US Special Forces in Mosul.

In December 2006, Sunni extremists of the terrorist organization Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) proclaimed the Islamic Emirate of Iraq in Mosul, of which Mosul was to become the capital. A so-called war ministry announced its orders through leaflets. Since then, terror in Mosul increased significantly: policemen, journalists and women without headscarves were threatened and murdered, as were owners of small photo studios (according to the "war ministry", the depiction of living beings was against Islam). Reports according to which, for example, "male" cucumbers should be stored separately from "female" tomatoes, however, turned out to be "urban legends".

At the beginning of June 2014, the Islamic State, which had previously been active in the Syrian civil war and had already taken control of parts of the Iraqi province of al-Anbar at the beginning of the year, launched an attack on Mosul. IS commander Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi was killed in the attack. By June 10, 2014, IS militants had the city completely under their control. The city was of high importance to the IS because of its oil refineries.

Under terrorist control, the statues of the Abbasid poet Abu Tammam (788-845) and the Iraqi musician and lyricist ʻUthman al-Mawsili (1854-1923) were destroyed, as was the statue of Mary on the tower of the cathedral of the Chaldean Catholic archdiocese. The tomb of the historian Ibn al-Athīr (1160-1223) was also destroyed. The Christian inhabitants were given the choice of fleeing, converting to Islam, or being executed. The vast majority of Christians subsequently left the city at the end of July 2014. Life in the city was governed by IS rules. Women were no longer allowed to move about unaccompanied; houses occupied by Christians were confiscated; IS demanded taxes from tradesmen. Children were fanaticalized. In February 2015, the IS began fortifying the city to ward off a possible recapture.

On 24 March 2016, the Iraqi army began its advance towards Mosul. The government forces were supported by allied paramilitary volunteer units and Kurdish Peshmerga units. In addition, the US-led international anti-IS coalition carried out air strikes against IS positions and facilities in and around Mosul. According to the army, some villages in the east of the city were recaptured at the very beginning of the offensive. Due to the fighting, thousands of civilians fled from the contested areas to the neighboring Autonomous Region of Kurdistan. After fierce fighting, the small town of Qayyarah on the Tigris River was captured on August 24, 2016. With its airbase, it was to serve as a launching pad for the large-scale attack on Mosul. At the end of August, the restoration of the airport, which had been largely destroyed by IS, the storage of supplies and the deployment of troops for the planned attack began. During this time, IS was also preparing to defend Mosul. While IS fighters counterattacked south of Qayyarah, they created a wide trench around Mosul itself, which they filled with oil. This was to be set on fire so that the heavy smoke would make air attacks by the coalition more difficult. In addition, the city was equipped with booby traps and tunnel systems.

Prior to the recapture of the IS-occupied city by coalition forces in October 2016, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan demanded that only Sunni Arabs, Turkmen and Sunni Kurds be allowed to live in Mosul in the future. During the deployment of Iraqi units, fierce disputes were fought over which units should participate in the assault on the urban area of Mosul. The use of Shiite militias al-Hashd ash-Shaʿbī (trained by Iran) was rejected by Sunni spokesmen. There was a fear of crimes against the civilian population, as was also documented by Amnesty International for the battle for Fallujah in June 2016. On the other hand, the Iraqi central government opposed too much involvement of the Kurdish peshmerga. Already the de facto annexation of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk to the Kurdish Autonomous Region led to strong disagreements between the governments in Baghdad and Erbil. The central government therefore feared an extension of Kurdish control to Mosul. Turkey also had interests in Mosul, whose former governor Atheel al-Nujahifi maintained close ties with Ankara and also went into exile there. President Erdogan therefore called for Turkish troops to participate in the offensive and threatened to take unilateral steps in that direction as well. Turkey maintained a base in Bashiqa in northern Iraq and trained Sunni volunteers there. However, the Iraqi central government rejected this and demanded that Turkey vacate Iraqi territory. The Kurdish PKK also had units in the vicinity. Their intervention in the fighting was to be expected if Turkish troops also joined the advance. Most recently, British and US units were also deployed in support. Their main task was to provide air support for the coalition forces.

As late as October 16, air forces dropped tens of thousands of leaflets over the city calling on the civilian population to cooperate with the military. Shortly afterwards, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced on television the start of the large-scale attack, in which Shiite militias took part alongside the military, police forces and peshmerga. However, Kurds and Shiites were not to enter the city itself. On July 9, 2017, the Iraqi prime minister announced the complete recapture of the city.