Iraqi literature or Mesopotamian literature dates back to Sumerian times, which constitutes the earliest known corpus of recorded literature, including the religious writings and other traditional stories maintained by the Sumerian civilization and largely preserved by the later Akkadian and Babylonian empire.[1] Mesopotamian civilization flourished as a result of the mixture of these cultures and has been called Mesopotamian or Babylonian literature in allusion to the geographical territory that such cultures occupied in the Middle East between the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.[2]
As of 2024, the Iraqi Writers Union reported having 3,496 registered members, up from 2,006 in 1998, including 123 older members whose membership cards were renewed during the same period. Its activities included at least 300 books and magazines published annually, 1,000 literary sessions held per year across Baghdad and the provinces and at least 10 major literary festivals organized annually [3]
The Sumerian literature is unique because the Sumerian language itself is unique in its kind because it does not belong to any known linguistic root. Its appearance began with symbols of the things denoting it, then it turned with time to the cuneiform line, and later spread during the third millennium BC. All of them were in Mesopotamia, but they were affected by historical events, so they lost much of their importance, and became the language of religious rituals, after the Semitic Akkadian language overcame them. However, there are texts that date back to after the advent of Christianity. The two languages coincided, and they coexisted for many decades, and written traces appeared in each of them. Including the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was originally classified in Sumerian and reached the Akkadian.[4]
The Sumerians wrote many mythical and epic texts dealing with creation issues, the emergence of the world, the gods, descriptions of the heavens, and the lives of heroes in the wars that broke out between the nomads and the urbanites. They also deal with religious teachings, moral advice, astrology, legislation, and history. In this same line Akkadian literature also proceeded, so that the two languages converged, and sometimes they shared the same subject.[4]
In the late 1970s, a period of economic upturn, prominent writers in Iraq were provided with an apartment and car by Saddam Hussein's government, and were guaranteed at least one publication per year. In exchange, literature was expected to express and galvanise support for the ruling Ba'ath Party. Under Ba'athist governance, cultural production and publishing in Iraq were largely centralized under the Ministry of Culture and Media, which oversaw broadcasting, cinema, theatre, and a network of state publishing houses, including the creation of specialized publishing bodies which produced books, magazines, and newspapers. Children’s publishing formed a distinct part of state cultural output. Dar al-Thaqafa lil-Atfal published 110 children’s books between 1975 and 1979, rising to 324 titles during the second half of the 1980s. Available figures indicate a substantial volume of state publishing: between 1975 and 1979, the Iraqi government published 5,279 books, followed by 5,837 books from 1980 to 1984. Output expanded further between 1985 and 1989, with 7,309 books published, and reached 1,875 books in 1990 alone, the highest annual total recorded during the period. Official reports also stated that total publication circulation increased from 25 million copies in 1974 to 240 million in 1981. Prior to the imposition of international sanctions in 1991, Iraq exported books valued at approximately 1.5 million Iraqi dinars and newspapers worth 500,000 dinars, and participated in numerous international book fairs.[7]
The Iran–Iraq War (1980-1988) fuelled a demand for patriotic literature, but also pushed a number of writers into exile. According to Najem Wali, during this period, "[e]ven those who chose to quit writing saw themselves forced to write something that did not rile the dictator, because even silence was considered a crime."[8] According to human rights documentation, over 500 journalists, writers, poets and intellectuals were executed or killed by the Ba'athist regime and its security apparatus between 1968 and 2003, and hundreds more were forced into exile.[9] From the late 1980s onwards, Iraqi exile literature developed with writers whose "rejection of dominant ideology and [whose] resistance to the wars in Iraq compelled them to formulate a 'brutally raw realism' characterized by a shocking sense of modernity".[8]
In the 21th-century, following the 2003 Iraq War, the novel genre "flourished and produced hundreds of novels within a short period", concentrating on issues such as invasion, sectarianism and other social issues affecting the country.[10] In a polarized context, some militant groups had made lists of more than 1,000 writers who had to be targeted, even killed, because they had supposedly collaborated with Saddam Hussein.[11]
↑Morison, Stephen (14 July 2011). "The Humpbacked Minaret: An Interview with Mahmoud Saeed". Fiction Writers Review. Archived from the original on 29 January 2026. To illustrate this reality, the writers who support the current ruling religious parties in Iraq issued a list of more than thousand writers who should be killed because they cooperated with Saddam's regime. As a result of this, some were indeed killed, while others fled.
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