[ Baghdad Carbine ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we have the privilege
of taking a look at an original Iraqi Baghdad rifle.
This may look exactly like an Egyptian Rasheed
and it does in fact look exactly like an Egyptian Rasheed,
but it is just subtly different in a couple of ways.
And it was made in Iraq instead of outside Cairo in Egypt.
So the basic story here is that Egypt manufactured the Rasheed,
which is a ... semi-automatic direct gas impingement rifle evolved down from the Swedish Ljungman,
but redesigned, scaled down to 7.62x39mm.
Egypt made it from 1966 until 1968, and at that point they realised
they were really just a lot better off making AKs so they ceased production of it.
Now ... at this time relations between Iraq and Egypt were pretty friendly.
There was a big Pan-Arab movement that was still kind of going on.
And so in 1974 Egypt actually sold the tooling for the Rasheed to the Iraqi government.
This is pre-Saddam Hussein.
Why exactly the Iraqis wanted it is a little bit unclear.
There has always been a thing in Iraq about prestige from having locally made firearms.
That's certainly something that Saddam Hussein took seriously,
manufacturing Tabuks and Al-Qadisiyahs and other domestic production guns
for the sake of being able to say that he made them
even though they were far from a majority of actual Iraqi military issue firearms.
And perhaps the Baghdad here is the same sort of thing.
Now this comes from George Layman's recently published book on the SKS.
This is of course not an SKS but the Rasheed is included in the book.
According to one of Layman's Egyptian sources
in 1974 Egypt sold 300 sample guns and also all of the tooling to Iraq.
So let's take a look at how this actually differs from the Egyptian Rasheed.
Let's start with the markings on the receiver here.
From the back to the front we have "Made in Iraq" right there in Arabic.
And then essentially the same thing in English.
It's actually pretty common for Middle Eastern weapons in particular to have English markings.
English is sort of a prestige language, it's an international language
of diplomacy and education etc. etc. and so this is not an uncommon thing to find.
Anyway, "Made in Iraq", 7.62 because it is 7.62x39mm and the name: Baghdad.
And then up a little further we have the serial number of the rifle, and that's in Arabic digits.
This one translates out to 107,908.
And the year of manufacture here, this particular one is 1978.
And we have, ... it's called a Jihm, it's an Iraqi military property symbol there.
And if we compare the markings here on the Baghdad and an Egyptian Rasheed,
you can see everything is in exactly the same place.
The fonts are the same for the text, we have our Arabic marking here then English.
Calibre, name, serial number and then up on the top of the receiver here, the year of manufacture.
Now when it comes to the serial numbers here, one of the things to note
is that all of the recorded Baghdad serial numbers are in the 100,000 range.
So the lowest one that I've seen recorded is 103,875 and that was dated 1975.
The highest one I've seen recorded is 108,962 and that was a 1978 gun.
So it appears that production ran from either '74 or '75 until 1978.
With total production almost certainly being about 9,000 guns, maybe 10,000.
There's no way they made 100,000 of these,
just from even the limited number of serial numbers that are known and recorded.
They started at ... almost certainly 100,000 or 100,001 and went up from there.
And they don't appear to have hit 110,000.
Fundamentally the Baghdad is the exact same rifle as the Rasheed,
wood stock, milled receiver, clearly made on the same tooling.
We have the same 1,000 metre rear sight.
We have the same charging handle adaptation.
The same folding bayonet, front sight, gas adjustment etc. etc.
So if you're interested in seeing exactly how this works,
I would recommend that you take a look at my Rasheed video.
I have ... disassembled this completely
to see if there are any differences internally, there are not mechanically.
Parts appear to be completely interchangeable with Rasheeds.
There is however one visible difference.
And that is on the back end of the gun.
The Baghdad has a trapdoor and a storage compartment in the buttstock, the Rasheed does not.
And if I open this up we have a cleaning kit,
basically the same as you would find on an AK or an SKS.
So cleaning [container], ... so if I open this up
inside there we have our typical stuff.
You have a cleaning jag holder, a pin punch, and a bore brush,
and (I'm sorry) and a screwdriver right there.
So that is for adjusting the front sight.
There you go, that right there ... and the fact
that the wood is different on the two guns, the actual species of wood,
those are the only two differences between the Baghdad and the Rasheed.
Information on the Baghdad is really scarce, there's just not much out there on them.
And they've never been imported in any commercial quantity into the US.
There are only a handful that are known and documented as it is.
Iraq being a war zone for the last 20 years has
made it very difficult to do commercial firearms importation.
But if we look at the numbers that we appear to have,
it seems like Iraq may have actually manufactured more Baghdads than Egypt did Rasheeds.
We're looking at ... it looks like somewhere 9-10,000 of these
compared to, I suspect, about 7,400 Rasheeds.
So it's possible that there are more of them out there in warehouses or somewhere.
And who knows, maybe they'll show up on some surplus market
at some point, should certainly be really cool.
Anyway, a big thanks to the owner of this Baghdad who wishes to remain anonymous,
but very cool of him to send it to me so that I can film it and show it to you guys.
Hopefully you enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.