In the early sixteenth century, through a series of lightning campaigns, the Ottoman Empire captured the region along the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers and established control over a strategically important area in western Asia. The Ottoman Empire held onto these territories for four centuries, losing them only at the end of World War I, when the Empire itself disintegrated. In this superb study, Husain attributes the Ottoman success in capturing and controlling this vast region in part to the empire’s ability to harness the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates and manage the ecology of the area.
Husain shows that under the Ottoman control, the Tigris–Euphrates basin became the focal point of a large area extending from east-central Anatolia to the Persian Gulf and beyond. By interlinking the upper arable lands of the two rivers, the middle grasslands, and the lower wetlands, the Ottomans integrated settled farming with pastoral nomadism....