ABSTRACT
The question of reform in Iraq was raised, shortly after Abdülhamid’s accession, in the debates of the first Ottoman Parliament, which met between March 19 and June 28, 1877. The necessity of reform in Iraq, in particular in the fields of land tenure and taxation, was urged in the Chamber of Deputies (Meclis-i Mebusan) on several occasions by the representatives of Baghdad.1 The outbreak of war between the Ottoman Empire and Russia in the spring of 1877 precluded any further discussion of the issue, but in the summer of 1878, shortly after the war’s conclusion, Abdülhamid invited the British Ambassador, Sir Henry Layard, to furnish him with a general report on the prospects for reform in the Empire.2
Layard had personal experience of Iraq, where he had conducted archaeological excavations, and he devoted a section of his lengthy report to the region, lamenting its current backwardness and decay, but also stressing its considerable potential for development, particularly if it could be linked to the Ottoman capital by a railway:3
