Iraq

Southern Iraq is where urban civilisation began. The Sumerians built the first cities — Uruk, Ur, Eridu — and invented writing, the wheel, and monumental architecture; the Akkadians, Babylonians (Hammurabi's law code, Nebuchadnezzar's walls), and Assyrians (Nineveh, Nimrud) followed. It was here, by tradition, that the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel were placed.

After Alexander and the Persians, the region became, from 762, the centre of the Abbasid Caliphate: Baghdad grew into the largest city in the world and a hub of science, medicine, translation, and poetry until the Mongols sacked it in 1258. Four centuries of Ottoman rule followed.

Modern Iraq was assembled by Britain after the First World War from three Ottoman provinces, with a Hashemite king. The monarchy fell in 1958; a series of coups brought the Ba'ath Party and, from 1979, Saddam Hussein — the Iran–Iraq War, the gassing of Kurds at Halabja, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War, and a decade of sanctions. The 2003 US-led invasion toppled Saddam and was followed by occupation, insurgency, and a Sunni–Shia civil war. ISIS seized a third of the country in 2014 and was defeated by 2017, leaving Mosul in ruins. Since then Iraq has had a fragile, corruption-plagued stability, with powerful Iran-aligned militias and periodic mass protests.

Iraq is majority Shia Muslim, with a large Sunni minority (both Arab and Kurdish) and historic communities of Christians (Chaldean, Assyrian, Syriac), Yazidis, and Sabian-Mandaeans, several of them badly reduced by recent violence. Najaf and Karbala are among the holiest cities of Shia Islam, and the Arba'een pilgrimage to Karbala draws some of the largest crowds on Earth.

Hospitality is a deep obligation — a visitor will be pressed to eat, drink tea, and stay — and the coffee house, backgammon, and poetry evenings are social staples. The maqam, a classical Iraqi vocal tradition, is on UNESCO's list, and the culture of the southern marshes, where Marsh Arabs live in vaulted reed houses and herd water buffalo, is a distinctive survival, partly restored after Saddam drained the wetlands.

Kurdish culture in the north has its own language, dress, music, and the spring festival of Newroz, marked with mountain bonfires. Decades of war have also shaped a culture of endurance, dark humour, and strong extended-family and tribal ties.

Around a fifth of Iraq's roughly 44 million people live in Greater Baghdad, a sprawling city of concrete blast walls, checkpoints, markets, and river-front cafés slowly reopening. Basra in the oil-rich south, Mosul in the north, and the Kurdish cities of Erbil and Sulaymaniyah are the other main centres. The population is young and heavily urban.

Iraq holds some of the world's largest oil reserves, and oil provides almost all government revenue, but the wealth has been hollowed out by war, corruption, and a bloated state payroll; electricity is rationed even in summer, public services are weak, and youth unemployment is high — the trigger for the 2019 protest movement. Water shortages, as upstream dams and climate change shrink the Tigris and Euphrates, are an growing crisis.

Daily life runs on the extended family, the mosque or church, the market, and — for many — a government or militia-linked job, against a background of checkpoints and the ever-present memory of the past two decades.

Iraqi cooking blends Mesopotamian, Persian, Turkish, and Levantine traditions. The national dish is masgouf — river carp butterflied, seasoned, and grilled upright beside an open fire, then finished over the coals — eaten by the Tigris in Baghdad. Kubba (bulgur or rice shells stuffed with spiced meat), dolma (stuffed vegetables and vine leaves), tashreeb (bread soaked in broth), and biryani are staples.

Iraq was historically the world's leading date producer, and dates appear everywhere — eaten fresh or dried, pressed into syrup (dibis), and served with geymar clotted cream at breakfast. Amba, a tangy pickled-mango sauce, is a national condiment, splashed on sandwiches and grills.

Tea, strong and sweet in small glasses (istikan), is constant, along with cardamom coffee. Alcohol is legal but its sale has become more restricted; arak, the aniseed spirit, is the traditional drink where it is served.

The Kurdistan Region is where most independent travel happens. Erbil's Citadel — an inhabited tell rising above the modern city, claimed as one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in the world — anchors a walkable old centre with a covered bazaar. Beyond it lie the Rawanduz gorge and Bekhal falls, the mountain resort of Amedi on its plateau, the Yazidi holy valley of Lalish, and Sulaymaniyah with its excellent museum and the former secret-police prison, Amna Suraka, now a memorial.

Federal Iraq holds the great ancient sites, visited on tours and increasingly by independent travellers: the reconstructed walls and Ishtar Gate remains of Babylon near Hillah; the towering ziggurat of Ur near Nasiriyah; the spiral Malwiya minaret at Samarra; and the Assyrian remains around Mosul, damaged by ISIS and being restored. The southern Marshes, explored by boat from Chibayish, are a UNESCO-listed landscape of reed islands and buffalo herders.

Baghdad itself, for the confident traveller, offers Mutanabbi Street and its Friday book market, the rebuilt National Museum with its Mesopotamian treasures, the shrine of Kadhimiya, and the riverside. Najaf and Karbala, with the vast gold- domed shrines of Imam Ali and Imam Hussein, can often be visited respectfully outside the peak pilgrimage periods.