The Death of History

Tom Holland (0:08)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another Rest Is History bonus. And you should have at the moment four episodes on The Troubles in Northern Ireland. And I won't say I hope you're enjoying them, but I hope that at the very least you are appreciating them.

And I guess if we think about it in terms of Belfast in particular, it's the story of how a city is torn apart, in a sense by different understandings of its history. But also the strangeness for those who are living through it of seeing familiar landmarks, the familiar cityscapes of a British city turning into places that get blown up where people are left, corpses are left, all kinds of horrors are visited on the city. And it set me to thinking about a book that I have just read. And this is a city that went through far worse horrors. I mean, horrors almost beyond computation. And it's a city in Northern Iraq called Mosul, a very, very ancient city. It was once called Nineveh, the great capital of the Assyrians.

And in 2014, it was occupied by the Islamic State. And the Islamic State, they didn't just have a competing vision of history, their ambition really was to erase history. And you can imagine how appalling this would be if you are not just a Mosulie, but you are an academic historian, you are a scholar of your own city's past and the past more generally.

And such a figure did emerge during the ISIS occupation. And this was a man called Omar Mohammed, although his identity when he first became globally famous was not revealed for obvious reasons. He was known instead as the Mosul Eye. And throughout the period of the Islamic State occupation of Mosul, he was really the only reliable source of what life was like in the occupied city. And he's written a book called Mosul Eye, A Scholar's War Against ISIS. And it is a stunning book, a kind of devastating book, unsurprisingly bearing in mind what he is writing about. And I'm thrilled to say that Omar is with us on today's bonus. Omar, welcome to The Rest Is History. And it is wonderful to see you again. We last met in Paris, didn't we? When I was making a film about the Islamic State. So it is great to see you looking safe and well.

Omar Mohammed (2:51)

Tom, it's an honor to be with you again.

And I have to say that you were the first person I met with after I found the refuge in Paris. So I'm honored to be with you now, telling the story and the background story of that history of Mosul.

Tom Holland (3:09)

Yes. Okay. So this is an amazing book. You've got kind of introductions by General Petraeus and the late Pope Francis. So I mean, those are imprimatas to boast of. For those people who don't have a detailed knowledge of the history of Mosul and its context within Iraq, could you just give us a very brief sketch of its history?

Omar Mohammed (3:32)

Tom, before we start recording this, I was thinking about Mosul, and something struck me is that as unique as the identity of Mosul, it's also a city that lives with a combination of what I believe that I should call it fake identities, meaning identities that have been adopted are not necessarily the identity of the city of Mosul.

But it's a city, as the geographer Ibn Jubayr said, is large, a city that has prepared itself for the adversaries of history, but also a very fragile city. It's divided by the river, one of the ancient rivers that is Tigris.

It lies on the shore of ancient Nineveh, one of the greatest civilizations in history. And it's also the first shelter after the Assyrians were attacked by the Medes and the Babylonians. But it's also the city that the Ottomans have always brought up and developed, as this is the fortress against any attacks on the southern borders of the Ottoman Empire. It's also the city that in 1919, and I read from the records that I found, saying that it's the year of peace. But then it's the same city that I think mostly lives all forms of contradictions. It is very beautiful, but it also holds some sort of ugliness. It is a city of life, but also the city of death. It's a city that has a beautiful memory of construction, but also unfortunately a city that holds the memory of destruction, and continuously lives through that contradiction of history works. They're probably more than any other part of the world.

Tom Holland (5:39)

And in your book, you describe previous conquerors who had come to Mosul and had destroyed tombs and buildings. So you cited the Abbasids, the first great Islamic dynasty to rule from Iraq. And you cite the Mongols who were notorious destroyers. But you said that the Mongols eventually renovated some of the tombs they found. And then you contrast them with the people, the conquering army that arrived in 2014, the Islamic State. And you said of them, these men were not renovating, they were erasing.