Basra Governorate, Iraq — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Basra Governorate known for?

This is Iraq's window on the sea. Basra Governorate carries the country's only coastline, a short stretch of the Persian Gulf at the very foot of the map, and it holds a huge share of the national oil wealth in fields such as Rumaila southwest of Basra. The city of Basra grew rich on that trade and on the date groves lining the Shatt al-Arab, the waterway that once made it a port for Portuguese, Dutch and English merchants.

Umm Qasr handles the deep-water shipping the river cannot. Oil, dates and salt water define the place.

Where is Basra Governorate?

Basra Governorate fills the far south-eastern corner of Iraq, the only one of the country's regions that reaches salt water. It covers a broad wedge of low, flat land that slides gently downhill toward the coast. Kuwait lies along its southern border and Iran across the Shatt al-Arab to the east. It sits at Iraq's lowest elevation.

That river is the spine of the whole governorate. The Tigris and the Euphrates meet upstream at Al-Qurnah, and from there the combined Shatt al-Arab runs south-east past the city of Basra to empty into the Persian Gulf. Date groves crowd its settled banks, watered twice a day by the tide that pushes up from the sea.

Marshland spreads north and west of the confluence, the drained and reflooded wetlands at the tail of Mesopotamia. The Al-Faw peninsula reaches out into the Gulf at the extreme tip of the country, hemmed by Iran on one side and Kuwait on the other. Umm Qasr stands to its west on an inlet off the Khawr Abd Allah estuary.

Salt, silt and tide shape almost everything here. No part of Iraq lies further from Baghdad or nearer the open sea.

What is Basra Governorate like?

Basra thinks of itself as a river city first. Life gathers on the Shatt al-Arab, on the corniche and the old canals that once earned the city its comparison to Venice, and on the boats that carried goods and wedding parties between the palm-shaded banks. The date palm is the emblem of the place.

Its groves fed a trade that reached the Gulf and beyond, and they thread the settled edge of the water. Learning ran deep in the early city. Basra housed one of the two great schools of Arabic grammar, and it produced the polymath Ibn al-Haytham, the writer al-Jahiz and the mystic Rabia al-Basri.

Arabic is the language of the streets and the markets. The population is mostly Shia Arab, with a Sunni minority and small communities of Christians and Sabean Mandeans, and much of Iraq's Afro-Iraqi population lives in and around Basra. To readers abroad the city is the port from which Sinbad the sailor set out in the old tales.

Food leans on the river and the sea. Fish from the Shatt al-Arab and dates from the groves anchor the southern table.

What is the history of Basra Governorate?

Basra began as a garrison. The caliph Umar founded it in 638 as a military camp near what is now Al-Zubair, and under the Abbasids it swelled into a centre of trade and scholarship on the road to the Gulf. Its grammarians, poets and scientists made the early city one of the intellectual capitals of the Arab world.

Later it passed to Ottoman rule as a provincial capital, fell under the British Mandate of Mesopotamia after the First World War, and joined the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932. War scarred it again and again through the century that followed.

What is the climate of Basra Governorate?

Basra Governorate is the hottest corner of Iraq. Summers on the Shatt al-Arab are brutal, with afternoons that climb past 50 degrees and thick humidity blown in off the Persian Gulf. Winters are short and mild, and what little rain the region sees falls in the cooler months rather than the searing ones.

The tide and the sea moderate nothing about the July heat. Dust and haze ride the wind through much of the year.

How do you get to Basra Governorate?

Most arrivals come through Basra. The city's airport is the region's main gateway, linking the south to Baghdad and to hubs around the Gulf, and the road north follows the rivers up toward the capital. Overland, Kuwait lies just across the southern border and Iran sits over the Shatt al-Arab to the east.

The deep-water port at Umm Qasr moves the freight the shallow river cannot. From Basra, roads fan out to Al-Zubair, Al-Qurnah and the Al-Faw peninsula.