Mamluks were originally freed slaves who had converted to Islam and were assigned to military and administrative duties in the Ottoman Empire.
Mamluk rulers governed in the territory that became Iraq, acquiring increasing autonomy from the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople, from 1704 to 1831.
After seizing control of Baghdad Eyalet in 1816–1817, Dawud Pasha initiated modernization programmes that included clearing canals, establishing industries, and reforming the army with the help of European instructors.
Following Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, the British government had recognised the strategic importance of the Middle East in defending its eastern empire and commercial ambitions against the French (and later against Russia), and at the beginning of the nineteenth century had negotiated inter alia the establishment of a British consulate in Baghdad.
[clarification needed] Dawud Pasha is said to have established the first newspaper of Iraq, Jurnal al-Iraq, in Baghdad in 1816,[4] but this is disputed because there are no extant copies and no mention of it in the Ottoman archives or contemporary travellers' accounts.