Hanna Batatu
Hanna Batatu (born 1926,
Jerusalem â€" died
24 June 2000,
Winsted, Connecticut) was a
Palestinian historian specialising in the history of the modern
Arab east. His work on
Iraq is widely considered the pre-eminent study of modern Iraqi history.
Born in
Jerusalem in 1926, Hanna Batatu emigrated to the
United States in 1948, the year of the
Nakba in
Palestine. From 1951 to 1953, he studied in
Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He gained his doctorate in political science in
Harvard University in 1960, with a dissertation entitled
The Shaykh and the Peasant in Iraq, 1917-1958. From 1962 to 1982 he taught at the
American University of Beirut, then from 1982 until his retirement in 1994 at
Georgetown University in the United States.
Batatu started studying Iraqi history in the 1950s, taking a particular interest in the revolutionary movements which were then prominent in that country and especially in the
Iraqi Communist Party. From the late 1950s on he travelled to Iraq several times, and succeeded in having access to communist political prisoners and secret police files before the revolution of 1958. He was allowed access to security service archives from various periods of Iraqi history, up until the 1970s, and used this and his considerable range of personal contacts with figures from different political movements to compose his study of political change in Iraq,
The Old Social Classes and New Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (published in 1978). This work, while it focuses most strongly on the Iraqi Communist Party, also provides a wealth of information about the other revolutionary movements in the country as well as the ruling classes prior to 1958, and is considered one of the fundamental works on modern Iraqi history. Batatu's methodology is grounded in political sociology and considers in detail the social factors for the developments he covers, and even more so the social composition of the movements in question.
Batatu also undertook a similar study of Syria,
Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics (published in 1999).
*
Brief article on Hanna Batatu from cafearabica.com*
The Old Social Classes and New Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, Hanna Batatu, London, al-Saqi Books, 2000. ISBN 0863565204
Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics, Hanna Batatu,
Princeton University Press, 1999. ISBN 0691002541
