It was the summer of 1982. The Iran-Iraq war had been raging for almost two years. André Raymond (1925-2011), a French historian specialising in the Ottoman cities, set off for Iraq on a research mission. His aim was to visit Mosul and Baghdad. The result of this trip, which took place in the middle of the Iraqi summer heat (temperatures in both cities were approaching 40°C at the time), is a collection of some 240 colour slides of the two Iraqi cities. The slides bear no date; traces of this trip have been found in a CV contained in the many boxes that make up André Raymond’s paper archive. On the CV, Raymond notes that he carried out a research trip in Iraq (Baghdad and Mosul), from 26 June to 11 July 1982. The historian, who did his doctoral thesis at the University of Oxford and was for many years a Professor at the Université de Provence Aix-Marseille (in 2012, the Université de Provence became Aix-Marseille Université – AMU), left a rich photographic archive assembled over the course of his career. The photographic collection comprises some 10,000 images of cities in Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya and Iraq. Almost 1,400 of these photos are currently online on the MediHAL open archive platform, and can be reused under the terms of the CC-BY open license. Of the 168 catalogued photos, 128 were taken in Mosul and 40 in Baghdad. The remaining 70 photos were excluded because they were either too dark, or were copyrighted shots and images photographed from printed books.
The northern Iraqi city seems to have held the historian’s attention far more than the capital. Had he planned a longer trip but had to cut it short due to the unstable political situation in Iraq at the time? Had he started his mission in Baghdad before deciding it would be better to get away from the capital and spend more time in the quieter north, in Mosul? In any case, he prepared his itinerary for both cities with the help of maps that he annotated with great care. A specialist in the Arab cities of the Ottoman period, André Raymond was interested in the layout of the city and in the organisation of different human activities within its districts, as well as the location of its different communities. Buildings such as mosques and mausoleums found in the various neighborhoods play a key role in his visual exploration, as do the souks and khans (caravanserais) where daily life unfolds.
In Mosul, it is the left bank of the Tigris River that interests the scholar, where the old town is located, as well as the Great Mosque, built from the 12th century onwards, with its characteristic leaning minaret nicknamed al-Hadbâ’, “the hunchback”. In his maps, Raymond highlights the main structures and axes of this part of the city as it was in the 18th century. In the centre, one can see the Great Mosque (al-Jâmi’ al-kabîr). On the right, in yellow, the merchant quarter with its various suqs, and on the top left, outlined in blue ink, the Jewish quarter (Mahallat al-Yahûd) with the synagogue.

The suq and khan districts are shown in greater detail on a separate map, with numbering and names. For the most part, these are the places Raymond visited during his stay.

In Baghdad, he explored the right bank of the Tigris, with the Qaysariyya (suq district), the mosques (such as the famous Haydar-Khana Mosque on the equally famous Rashid street) and other buildings in the Rusafah area.
On the map, the Christian and Jewish quarters are outlined in blue. In his book, Grandes villes arabes à l’époque ottomane, published a few years after this trip (1985), and in which the plans of both cities are reproduced, A. Raymond explains that the Jewish quarter was located in the centre of the old city of Baghdad, unlike Mosul, where it was located on the northern edge of the city (cf. p. 114). This information is indicative, according to the author, of the importance and influence of these communities in Baghdad as compared to Mosul.

Overall, when browsing through these photos, one has the impression that their main purpose is to serve as a visual reminder in situ of what one sees on the maps. This is all the more evident when browsing through Grandes villes arabes…, in which there are no photos of the cities, but only maps. The presence of residents of all ages seen from the back on some of the photos, immortalised while strolling along the river, or shopping, or carrying out their daily work, adds a dimension of reality and everyday life to these age-old places and buildings, which are predominant in the archive.
While cataloguing these photos, one is inevitably faced with the impermanent nature of things, all the more striking in places that have experienced war and destruction over a long period of time. While searching online for the various monuments in order to identify them, one discovers that many were destroyed during the multiple wars that afflicted Iraq continuously until 2017. Some of them have since been rebuilt, others not, or not yet. In the case of Mosul, several projects have been launched in recent years to rebuild some of its historic sites. Things are constantly changing.
The photos have been regularly consulted. They exist in parallel to the many pages on social networks in which Iraqis post similar photos of past times and places, and which have represented an additional aid to the identification of the photos taken by A. Raymond. As a testimony to this fruitful exchange, one of the photos was recently reused to draft the Arabic Wikipedia page dedicated to Mosul-born historian Saʻīd Daywahʹchī (1912-2000) posing in front of a stone arch forming part of the Bash Tabiyya fortress on the Tigris. Saʻīd Daywahʹchī was the author of several books on the history of his native city, as well as the first curator of the Mosul Cultural Museum, inaugurated by King Faisal II in 1952.
Everyone can participate in the enrichment of these freely accessible images and contribute additional information where the identification of places or names of buildings has not been possible or remains uncertain. This is one of the advantages of open science, which facilitates cooperative work: everyone is welcome to contribute.
On Iraq, see also Lucien Golvin’s images of Iraq, currently being catalogued. They are held at the Research Archives section of the MMSH Médiathèque.
Photographic credits for “front page” images :
1. Fonds André Raymond (1925-2011) – Iraq – Mosul – View of the Bash Tabiyya fortress (12th century) on the right bank of the Tigris in Mosul (1982). Held in the Médiathèque of the MMSH, Research archives sector – Phonothèque, Aix-en-Provence (hal-04613365v1) CC-BY open license
2. Fonds André Raymond (1925-2011) – Iraq – Baghdad – Rashid Street (1982) Held in the Médiathèque of the MMSH, Research archives sector – Phonothèque, Aix-en-Provence (hal-04934652v1) CC-BY open license
3. Fonds André Raymond (1925-2011) – Iraq – Mosul – Great Mosque (1982). Held in the Médiathèque of the MMSH, Research archives sector – Phonothèque, Aix-en-Provence (hal-04773130v1) CC-BY open license
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
MariaLuisa Langella (15 mai 2025). Mosul and Baghdad, frozen in time in the heat of an Iraqi summer. Archives de la recherche & Phonothèque. Consulté le 19 juin 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/13xo1