Iraqi literature

[3] 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.

[4] As stated by Ibrahim al-Durubi in Al-Baghdadiyun, Akhbaruhum Wa Majalisuhum the important figures in the founding of 20th-century Iraqi literature included Ma'ruf al-Rusafi, Daisy Al-Amir and Anastas al-Karmali.

[5] 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.

"[6] 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".

[6] Late 20th-century Iraqi literature has been marked by writers such as Saadi Youssef, Fadhil Al-Azzawi, Mushin Al-Ramli, Salah Al-Hamdani, Abdul Rahman Majeed al-Rubaie and Sherko Fatah.

Al-Mutanabbi , an Iraqi poet
Epic of Gilgamesh , an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia , regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature, British Museum .
An Akkadian inscription
Scholars at an Abbasid library. Maqamat of al-Hariri Illustration by Yahyá al-Wasiti , 1237
Jamil Zahawi was a prominent Iraqi poet and philosopher