The two instructors at the College of Arts at the University of Basrah, Dr. Nazem Rashm Maatouq and Dr. Hani Obaid Zubari, published a book entitled (Chapters in the Modern and Contemporary Political History of the Arabs).

The book contains (279) pages distributed over eleven chapters, and is a collection of research that covers different periods of modern and contemporary Arab political history, starting from the nineteenth century and ending with the second decade of the twenty-first century.

The book dealt with studying aspects of the prominent political developments and events that the Arab world witnessed, as well as explaining its foreign relations with various powers that were linked to the Arabs in special relations, whether through direct occupation or political relations, because the Arab region enjoyed great importance due to its strategic and economic position, which made it a center of attraction, and global powers competed to control it throughout the past centuries until the present time. This importance increased after the discovery of oil, its production, and its export to the major industrial countries. This was accompanied by the increasing importance of its geographical location, which forced those powers to pay attention to it and try to dominate it by various means.