This paper seeks to examine the Iraqi Nahda within the context of the Ottoman reforms, and to highlight the multiple synchronous modernities made possible by Iraq’s multilingual peripheral location within the imperial domains within the years 1869 - 1914. Of course these collective efforts of cultural and intellectual production, as well as linguistic preservation, were linked to other Arab cities and even Arab literary clubs in Istanbul. However, this paper underscores the cultural producers and their oeuvres, which comprise a distinct Iraqi tone. This unique multilingual reality, away from the proliferation of foreign missionary activity along the Mediterranean coast, manifested itself in both the form of bilingual cultural artifacts and in the persons of cultural mediators. State- and privately-owned newspapers and journals comprise the bulk of these bilingual cultural artifacts. It can be argued that the bilingualism of the state press is pedagogical, whereas the bilingualism of the private press is practical. Thus, here this paper inquires into the phenomenon of the bilingual private press in Iraq at the turn of the twentieth century, in order to reveal a more nuanced understanding of the Iraqi Nahda, in which a “one language, one nation, one modernity” model does not seem to apply. As for the cultural mediators, here this paper will examine Ma‘ruf al-Rusafi and his Arabic dictionary of 1912, Dafa‘ al-hajna fi irtidakh al-lukna (The Refutations of the Shortcomings in Speaking Arabic with an Accent). Better known for his poetry, here, Rusafi asks, since there are many Arabic words and a basis of Arabic grammar in Ottoman Turkish, why are there so many Arabs mispronouncing and misusing Arabic? Rusafi’s project uncovers the response of one who felt responsible to take the preservation of Fusha (Formal Arabic) into his own hands, and provide a medium for the community-at-large. Moreover, the specific linguistic nature of Rusafi’s project reinforces the idea that cultural and intellectual trends thrive in regional and transregional environments, such as the Iraqi Nahda in the Ottoman periphery.