978-1-4222-3442-6

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I RAQ

ject to Ottoman discrimination. Most of the government officials in Baghdad and officers in the army were Arab Sunni Muslims, and they were determined to maintain their control over the region by resisting the British. By mid-1920, central Iraq was in the hands of the Sunni Arabs; however, by the end of October 1920 the British had brought the revolt under control. But when Britain created a new government for Iraq, most of the government officials and the officers of the new Iraqi army were members of the Sunni Arab families that had held power under the Ottoman Turks. The British, though, chose the king of Iraq—36-year-old Prince Faisal, who assumed the throne on August 23, 1921. King Faisal did not have much support from the leading families and tribes of Iraq, who saw the king as a foreigner (he was a mem- ber of the Hashemite family of the western Arabian Peninsula) and a puppet of the Western powers. Faisal’s goal was to develop Iraq

Though he had never even visited Iraq, Faisal I, a member of the Hashemite family, was the British choice as Iraq’s king.