Caecilia Pieri. PhD in Urban History. Associate researcher, Institut français du Proche-Orient

Transcription

1 by Caecilia Pieri PhD in Urban History Associate researcher, Institut français du Proche-Orient

2 This book proceeds from a PhD thesis which was defended in 2010 at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Institute of Advanced Studies), Paris. Far from limiting itself to being an architectural monograph, it adopts a historical perspective which retraces the political and cultural context which served as a backdrop to the construction of modern Iraq. The fruit of more than ten years of on-site research and investigation led in both public and private archives from several countries Iraq and Great Britain, but also France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, U.S.A. it provides the state of the art knowledge concerning this so little known city and makes it possible to renew our understanding of it today, by providing historical depth to the contrasted dynamics at work there today. It furthermore proposes a bulk of more than 700 ancient and recent prints, plans, maps, as well as numerous archival documents most of them unpublished. Abstract With the Orientalist imagery casting Baghdad a vanished mirage, that of wars tending to transform it into a foil, and finally the "advertising policy" of a regime which functioned for thirty years as a screen between Iraq and the rest of the world, how can a clear perception of the modern city of Baghdad be achieved now? This book aims at identifying and evaluating the main stages of transformation of Baghdad s urban and architectural landscape, between 1914 (WWI, then British Mandate, Iraqi national Kingdom) and 1958 (Iraqi Revolution, end of the monarchy) within the national and the international context. The organisation of the urban space and the formation of the architectural corpus are envisioned as paradigms of a complex identity, as they embody the various mechanisms of decision at stake in the development of a modern capital city. In assessing this manifold diachronic evolution, different approaches are intertwined: an enquiry on shaping patterns and processes, within the hybridisation embedded in the modernisation of buildings; an exploration of the modernisation of a society, through the interaction between housing forms and uses, urban forms and practices; finally a study of the historical and political context, and the modernisation of the State, by emphasizing the relationship between nation-building and the construction of an emblematic city.

3 The Author Caecilia Pieri is Associate Researcher at the at the French Institute of the Near-East, Beirut, where she was the head of the Urban Observatory between 2011 and She focuses on modern heritage as a social marker and tool for politics. She received her PhD at the EHESS, Paris, on the modernization of Baghdad, where she has been conducting fieldwork for 10 years. An expert within the UNESCO World Heritage for the safeguard of the built modern heritage in the Arab World, she is the author of Baghdad Renaissance (2003, cat. ex. on contemporary Iraqi art), and Baghdad Arts Deco, (American University of Cairo Press, 2011). Calligraphy of the name Baghdad. Ghani Alani, 2009.

4 Table of Contents Part 1 From one Empire to another. Baghdad before 1921 Chapter 1The original site, from geography to history Baghdad, «a threatened city» A gigantic palimpsest 35 Chapter 2. Ottoman persistences : a glimpse of a pre-industrial city Social, fiscal and administrative principles of organization An urban organization based on the neighbourhoood unit The zuqâq : a traditional medîna Professional expertise, a domain to be explored 45 Chapter 3. The traditional Baghdadi house : Oriental, Arab or Iraqi? An introverted habitat Baghdadi variations on the centered space Self-sufficient house and households Jewish and/or Muslim house: cosmopolitan unit, composite Iraqiness?, 57 Chapter 4. The effects of the Tanzimât : contrasted results The modernization of the real-estate sector through administrative centralization Consolidation, valorisation and expansion of urban territory Professional expertise at the turn of the century (XXth) 70 Conclusion. World War I and the political scheme: Baghdad, a new colonial stake for the British 72 Part 2 The evolving city. Urban expansion and national construction ( ) 75 Chapter 1. The birth of a new state. Baghdad, a «sovereign yet assisted» capital-city Being under the British Mandate yet endowed with national sovereignty, a paradoxal coexistence From the initial alliance treaty (1922) to the Independence(1932) 79 Chapter 2. Urban and architectural policies: what is at stake Administrations and institutions : A strategy of communication and of control Marking out the real-estate sector The new actors of construction. The creation of the Public Works Department 85

5 Chapter 3. The city s formal transformation : expansion and its limits The opening of the «second site» : functionalities, strategic necessities Urbanisation of agricultural lands Elements of an initial urban rationalization Social eclectism in the new neighbourhoods Hybridization of domestic/vernacular uses/ practises 103 Chapter 4. Transitional habitats The neo-traditional habitat The standard allotment/plot The first centered plan, hall and courtyard middle-class city cottages First city cottages opening out on the street, with a garden 117 Chapter 5. Public architecture : «New-Delhification» or «Arab Renaissance»? National land planning and control: an aborted utopia? Teaching : Development without a future The new British strategy : Stay Apart and Rule 135 Conclusion The wavering imprint of modernisation 138 Part 3 Forms/figures of «westernization». Political debates and formal transformations ( ) Chapter 1 Contrasted forms of national appropriation The army and the civilian society, new political actors at the center of unsettled times A heterogeneous/mixed society 149 Chapter 2. A regular city? The «Roads and Buildings in Iraq» law/act of October A belated re-enactment of the Tanzimât? A new socio-functional organisation The Baghdadi «urban cottage» The evolution of the centered space: the first lateral circulations 162 Chapter 3. The making of a local eclectism Ornementation : a specific hybridity Technical eclectism Cross-breeding, hybridity, appropriation and re-creation : Eclectism seen as intertextuality 174

6 Chapter 4. New horizons, new elites, The professionalization of architecture : the first University graduated architects A centrifugal type of development Migrations and the urban fringes 186 Conclusion The initial stages of national construction.. Colonial type architecture and increasing urban hybridity 189 Part 4 The city s fragmentation. Spatial and social dichotomies ( ) Chapter 1. Fragmented powers, dysfunctional structures Divisions and violence, markers of urban space City-dwellers/rural inhabitants, centre/periphery dichotomy: 202 Chapter 2. Formal transformations and demographic upheavals Urban fringes are overswept by worker s allottments The Jewish emigration : a major impact on the capital s identity 210 Chapter 3. «International modernism» makes its appearance in ornementation The elites exposure to the international sphere New types of spaces, new modes of habitat? The end of stylistic eclectism Functional centrality and individualisation of space Public architecture and public sphere, British«syncretism» vs Iraqi«modernity» 228 Conclusion A dual/quartered, «dystopic» capital-city 284 Part V Modernity as horizon and strategy. The national scene and international visibility ( ) Chapter 1. Oil, an ambivalent image at stake Modernization and contestation : figures of domestic policy divergences When the economy works for the nation s identity : a restored greatness Implementing the Development Board : the IBRD s crucial role 245 Chapter 2. The first town planning scheme : Modern Baghdad takes shape The opening of the «third site» International expertise face to face with locality 253

7 Chapter 3. Rupture effects in the urban landscape : Modernity between fantasy and implementations A dual social identity, an explosive ferment Hygienism and modular urbanism : from social housing to a new urban order The state cooperatives : a double-edged device Urban verticality and modern eclectism : Iraqi preambles 272 Chapter 4. Architecture and public commission : Iraq as sovereign sponsor Prestigious commissions and worldwide international contests The city s equipment for daily life : an international Iraq? Creating a new Iraq? Past and Future in the official rhetoric 300 Conclusion Aesthetic debate and social debate, or how to be both modern and «authentic» in the 1958 Iraq? 303 Epilogue New construction grounds for an Iraqi identity 308 Annexes 318 A general chronology 331 Iraqi governments ( ) 340 Preliminary notes on archives 319 Texts in Arabic321 Diverse archival documents Portfolio (around 100 plans) Bibliography 344 Small glossary 368 Index of names Preamble. The reasons behind a choice. In the Western world, Baghdad s image still recently oscillated between two extremes which are also two enormous voids : the vanished universe of The thousand and one nights, as was deplored by French author Maurice Honoré as of 1929 and, at the other pole of its history, the concrete-clad grandiloquence and communication policy of a regime which for nearly thirty years functioned as an opaque screen between Iraq and the rest of the world.

8 Having seized an opportunity to go to Baghdad in June , I discovered, took long walks through and began taking pictures of a «sea of houses» (Schwarzenbach 1934 : 129) dating back to the mandate and post-mandate eras. This modern vernacular built work heritage remains to this day (but for how long?) important in terms of quality and, still today, in terms of quantity. Instead of the black hole of information and of desolation to which the city s name was associated, I discovered a modern city which possessed a human shape, whose brickwork and concrete architecture revealed a civilian life, a subtle, rich and sophisticated sociability, a creativity at the antipodes of the caricatural military imagery which had enclosed them and crushed them for the last decades Is Baghdad no more than a name? I decided to dig deeper into the question in order to demonstrate the opposite by attempting to understand, and to help make understand the urban form and city life of a city too often perceived through either uninformed or deforming lenses,- that is to say, of a too little known.city. This book, which proceeds from a thesis maintained in2010, is the fruit of an intellectual curiosity born from the shock of my senses. It asks the following question : what are the main forms of expression of modernity against a backdrop of national construction and with regard to an international context in Baghdad s implementation, an Arab capital-city, through the transformations of its architectural and urban landscape between1921 (Fayçal the First s accession to the throne one year after the beginning of the British Mandate) and 1958 (the Iraqi Revolution, the end of the monarchy)? Seeking as of 2003, on returning from my first trip, to document my first photographs, I immediately was confronted with the following fact: contemporary Baghdad was, as Pierre-Jean Luizard had already written at the time of the embargo, «almost absent from the domain of publication» (Luizard 1994 : 225). As concerns the built work, critical literature is especially devolved to the archaeological periods, and Islamic eras and cultures (Abbassids, Persian) as well as to a lesser extent, to the Ottoman era. The modern era, as the term is understood by historians, has practically not been studied.. Between June 2003 and May 2010, I traveled to Baghdad 13 times for onsite research, stays of two to three weeks each -- eleven of which were personally organized and funded, and two of which took the shape of missions I was invited to. This is how I progressively built a solid network of on site correspondents. Each of these stays was made use of as if it were the last, so as to, as far as was possible, lead investigations in the administrations potentially possessing graphic documents, as well as skimming through bookshops, «skimming» being the appropriate word, since I accessed only what was left,the fundamental layers having partly disappeared, as well as conducting interviews and reports in private homes, the core subject of my research, and making further investigations of other types of constructions which had never been the object of systematic front cover colour photographic representation. I have also sought to build ties with the constellation of Iraqi scientists and families living abroad. This effort is made indispensable because of the dispersion of the source material and even of the information on these sources, and results are proving conclusive, for, as always in such cases, many of the exilees left with archives in their possession. Yet, today one would still practically have to travel around the world in order to gather an exhaustive collection of written and graphic traces on modern Baghdad : which is to say that my intent here is mainly to plant the stakes for ulterior, and deeper levels of research. My work takes the shape of an initial stage in the constitution/reconstitution of a documentary landscape, through which I hope to make perceptible the reality of a still standing urban landscape. Still standing but for how long? I have returned to Baghdad approximately twice a year since 2010, and each time have realized to what extent its heritage is threatened by the hazards of a reconstruction obliterated by violence and uncertainties as to the futur This book provides an amazingly rich and unpublished documentation, of more than 700 items. Some examples follow below. Modern pictures from the author, one of the few foreigners able to go on the ground and take pictures of the real Baghdad far from the medias spots. 1 In oder to organize a meeting with contemporary Iraqi painters which was to lead, in the following October in Paris (Galerie M), to an exhibition and the publication of a catalogue, Bagdad Renaissance, Art contemporain en Irak, Jean-Michel Place publication, Paris, 2003, 96 p.

9 The banks of the Tigris at the center of Baghdad. The Madrada Mustansiriya (1258) in the foreground, and the first high-rise building erected in Baghdad, Abboud Tower, by Abdullah Ihsan Kamil and Rifat Chadirji (1955) Eclectic house in Aywdhiya neighbourhood, Disfigured in November 2015 by being covered with Turkish Alucobond.

10 Traditional urban landscape at the centre of Baghdad. Mural after a picture of the Iraqi photographer Abdulkarim, on a series of Twall concrete slabs, facing the Mansûr-Melia Hotel, in the Karkh neighbourhood, West Bank, December 2009 Old pictures ranging from engravings, old photographs to postcards Café in Baghdad. Eugène Flandin, «Voyage en Mésopotamie», in Le Tour du Monde, 1860

11 Baghdad in Libray of Congress, Washington. The Monument of Liberty, Tahrir Square. Postcard, Satar al Kutubi, 1961

12 Coca-Cola near the Haidarkhana Mosk, Rashid Street. Postcard, Satar al Kutubi, 1961 Unpublished or redrawn maps and plans Map of the new circulation axes, Drawn by the author after Ahmad Sûsa, Infographics: Yaseen Raad.

13 After Constantinos Doxiadis, 1958 : preliminary socio-housing survey for the building of Madinat al-thawra, which became Saddam City and is now Sadr City. Source : Ashab 1974 (unpublished). Projects of low-income cooperative housing for Dawra oil refinery workers Archives Qahtan Madfai, 1953 (unpublished).

14 New construction grounds for an Iraqi identity: detail of the Mustansiriya University, by Qahtan Awni, 1964.