Maslawi

A Maslawi is a person who is from the city of Mosul, Iraq. A Maslawi does not indicate ones ethnicity, religion or religious sector, as a maslawi can either be an Arab, Kurd, Turkoman or Assyrian (although, most Kurds of Mosul prefer not to be grouped under the term maslawi).

Maslawi as a term is also used to show the affiliation of any person, object, concept or etc.to Mosul city.

Maslawis have also their own accent of the Iraqi Arabic dialect (the Maslawi dialect). It puts more emphases on "gh" and replace "r", in some words.

This dialect is considered to be similar to the Syrian Arabic and this can be explained by the short distance between Mosul and some of the major syrian cities.

Maslawis tend to be more educated when compared to Iraqis from Baghdad or the rest of Iraq, and that explains the presence of people with roots from Mosul in all the educational and intellectual institutions all over Iraq.

In addition to being well educated, Maslawis tend to be financially better off compared to Baghdadis and Basrawis. This has led to much prejudice against Maslawis from the rest of Iraqis, claiming people from Mosul only care about money and are very cheap. On the other hand some Iraqis praise Maslawis and tend to think of them as people who know how to deal with money.

Maslawi person is usually presumed to be Sunni Arab since the majority of people in Mosul (i.e. Maslawis) are Arabs who are Sunni Muslims. Even though a Maslawi can be Shia Arab, Assyrian Christian, Sunni Kurd, Turkoman or of any other religious and ethnic background.

The Christian community of Mosul is the largest Christian community of all Iraqi cities, with such small dominance as Syrian Catholic, Syrian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox, in addition to the large community of Chaldean Catholic and Assyrian Orthodox, bearing in mind that most of the Chaldean and Assyrians live in the villages near to Mosul or other Northern areas (see list of Assyrian villages.)

The Muslim majority of maslawis is considered religious , prayer chants from Mosques can be heard in the streets of Mosul throughout the week and women who don't wear head scarves are usually presumed to be non-Muslims. Sunni Arabs (Arabs who are Muslims and follow the Sunni branch of Islam) are in between moderate religious and far right religious. Maslawis of non-Muslim religious backgrounds tend to be less religious when being compared with the rest of Iraq, but are not close to the secularism of the people of Turkey. However, Kurds (Sunni Muslims of Kurdish ethnic background) tend to be the least religious, Assyrian Christians of Mosul also tend to be less religious when being compared with the rest of the Assyrian population of Iraq.

There used to be Jewish Maslawis as well, that resided in Mosul all the way up to 1970s. Almost all of the Jewish quarter of Mosul emigrated to either Israel or the U.S..

Recent years have shown a distinction of 2 types of Maslawis, the original group of Maslawis who come from families with a long history of being in Mosul that goes many centuries back in history, and other Maslawis who migrated to the city in the last decades from rural and sub-urban areas mainly around Mosul city.

Maslawis in Diaspora tend to form a tight and close community with each other, and they usually make a harmonized unity despite their religious and ethnic backgrounds, as the love for their city of origin unites them.

Famous Maslawis

• Kazem al-Saher, music artist
• Hawar Mulla Mohammed, football player
• Salih Jaber, football player
• Tariq Aziz, Deputy Prime Minister 1979-2003 (from Tel Keppe)
• Jamil al-Midfai, Prime Minister
• Ghazi Yawar, President 2004-2005