Self-made, ambitious and successful, he forged strategic alliances with Iraqi royalty and, significantly, with Britain.

Upon signing the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty, he negotiated a deal which gave Britain control of much of Iraq’s resources, even after independence; his critics believed this brought him too close to the British Axis.

His many terms as prime minister were interrupted by military coups, royal deaths, political assassinations and forced exile. In the end, Nuri al-Said suffered a brutal death at the hands of protesters during the 1958 Iraq coup.