Mosul Eye/The book
Forthcoming · 21 July 2026
Mosul Eye:
A Scholar's Clandestine War Against ISIS
The full account of how the archive began — in secret, from inside the city, under occupation.
Pre-order the bookA historian writes a blog. The blog becomes a record. The record becomes evidence. The evidence becomes a book.
On 17 June 2014, the day after Mosul fell to ISIS, a 28-year-old Mosuli historian started writing. He had no plan. He had no platform. He had no name. He had a city he loved and a feeling that nothing being reported about it from outside was quite true.
For three years, under the pseudonym Mosul Eye, he documented what he saw — the destruction of the museum, the demolition of the Al-Nuri Mosque, the burning of the central library, the killings, the small acts of defiance — and quietly fed information to the world's intelligence services. He was nearly killed many times. He was never caught.
Mosul Eye is the full account of that work — and of what came after. It is a book about war and witness, about the historian's responsibility, about the long return of a city that refused to be erased.
Inside the book
12 chapters · foreword by Pope Francis · 416 pages.
- 01
The fall · 10 June 2014 the city changes overnight
28 pages - 02
The first dispatch · 17 June forty-one words from inside
22 pages - 03
Names · code, café, café, room
30 pages - 04
The museum and the library
34 pages - 05
The minaret falls
28 pages - 06
The corridor · how the intelligence travelled
36 pages - 07
Liberation · July 2017
32 pages - 08
Naming · who I was
26 pages - 09
The 91
38 pages - 10
Recovery · the long return
42 pages - 11
The Mosul Eye House
24 pages - 12
The record continues
28 pages
Read an excerpt
From the opening
On the morning of 10 June 2014, I left my apartment in west Mosul to buy bread. I never made it to the shop. By the time I returned home, the city had a new flag. I went into my room and closed the door. I did not know yet that I was about to begin the most important work of my life. I knew only that the bread was still on the counter, uneaten.
Seven days later, I started the blog.
— Mosul Eye, Chapter 1
Advance praise
All 26 endorsements →What Mosul Eye produced matched the quality of the finest intelligence reporting.
Gen. David H. Petraeus
Former Director, CIA
A historian who chose to write while his city was being unwritten. An indispensable record.
Audrey Azoulay
Director-General, UNESCO
One of the great primary-source records of the twenty-first century.
Foreign Affairs
Book of the Year, 2026
For booksellers
Production details
- Publisher
- Skyhorse Publishing
- Release
- 21 July 2026
- Format
- Hardcover · ebook · audio
- Pages
- 416
- Dimensions
- 6.25 × 9.5 in
- ISBN
- 978-1-5107-XXXX-X
- Foreword
- by Pope Francis