59 Fun Facts About Iraq

What is the capital and largest city of Iraq?

Baghdad is Iraq's capital and largest city; founded as the Abbasid capital in 762, it is home to several million people, roughly a fifth of the national population.

Ancient Mesopotamia lay between which two rivers, both of which run through Iraq?

The Tigris and Euphrates rise in eastern Turkey and flow south-east across Iraq; the Greek name Mesopotamia means 'between the rivers'.

Which civilisation, which emerged in southern Iraq around 6000-5000 BC, is recognised as the world's earliest?

Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia, built the first true cities and devised cuneiform, the earliest known writing system, by around 3200 BC.

Which Mesopotamian city may have had 50,000 residents at its peak around 3100 BC?

It gives its name to the Uruk period and led the early urbanisation of Sumer.

Which Mesopotamian poem is the world's oldest surviving example of narrative literature?

The Epic of Gilgamesh grew from five poems of around 2100 BC into a combined Akkadian epic, best known from tablets found at Nineveh; it includes a great-flood story.

Which British archaeologist led the 1920s–30s excavation of the Great Ziggurat of Ur?

Leonard Woolley directed the joint British Museum and Penn Museum excavation at Ur from 1922 to 1934, clearing the ziggurat and uncovering the Royal Cemetery and its gold treasures.

The stele bearing the Code of Hammurabi, composed around 1753 BC, is displayed in which museum?

The Louvre in Paris holds the basalt stele; French excavators found it at Susa in Iran in 1901-02, where an Elamite king had carried it off as plunder some 600 years after it was made.

The Ishtar Gate, with its blue glazed bricks, was ordered by which king?

Nebuchadnezzar II had the Ishtar Gate built around 575 BC as the eighth gate of his capital; its reconstructed facade, with bulls and dragons in relief, stands in Berlin's Pergamon Museum.

Which Biblical structure was the ziggurat of the ancient city near Hillah said to inspire?

The Tower of Babel story in Genesis is widely linked to Etemenanki, the great ziggurat of Marduk in that city, a stepped tower roughly 90 metres tall.

Which fortified caravan city in northern Iraq is the richest archaeological site of the Parthian Empire?

Hatra, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Jazira desert, flourished in the first and second centuries AD as a fortified caravan city before the Sasanian king Shapur I destroyed it in AD 241.

Which Abbasid caliph founded Iraq's present capital in 762?

Al-Mansur, the second Abbasid caliph, founded the city in 762 as Madinat al-Salam, the City of Peace, laying it out as a walled circle about 2 km across.

What was the Abbasid academy that made the capital an Islamic Golden Age hub called?

The House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) was a library and translation centre where Greek, Persian and Indian works were rendered into Arabic; it peaked under al-Ma'mun in the early 9th century.

The Great Mosque of Samarra is famous for a 52-metre minaret of what distinctive shape?

A spiral cone, the Malwiya minaret has a ramp winding anticlockwise up a tapering tower; caliph al-Mutawakkil built it in 848-851, when the mosque was the world's largest.

Who captured and sacked the Abbasid capital in 1258, ending the dynasty's rule in Iraq?

The Mongols under Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan, besieged the city for under two weeks in early 1258, executed the caliph al-Musta'sim and slaughtered much of the population.

Which Ottoman sultan conquered Iraq in 1534?

Suleiman I, the Magnificent, took the city from the Safavids in 1534 during his first Persian campaign; the Safavids retook it in 1624 before Murad IV won it back in 1638.

From 1749 to 1831 Iraq was ruled with great autonomy by a Mamluk dynasty of what origin?

Georgian by origin, the mamluks were Caucasus-born slave-soldiers converted to Islam and trained in the pasha's household; the Ottomans ended the dynasty by deposing Dawud Pasha in 1831.

Which three former Ottoman provinces did Britain merge into the mandate that became Iraq?

Mosul, Baghdad and Basra were the three Ottoman vilayets; Britain took the capital in March 1917, and the San Remo conference assigned it the mandate in April 1920.

Whom did the British install as king of Iraq on 23 August 1921?

Faisal I, son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca and Britain's ally in the Arab Revolt, was crowned after a plebiscite; he reigned until his death in Switzerland in 1933.

In which year did Iraq gain formal independence and join the League of Nations?

Iraq was admitted to the League of Nations on 3 October 1932, the first former mandate to gain independence; the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty had kept British bases and oil rights.

How old was the boy-king who inherited Iraq's throne in 1939?

Faisal II was 3 years old when his father Ghazi died in a car crash; his uncle Abd al-Ilah served as regent until the king came of age in May 1953.

Who became prime minister after the 14 July Revolution of 1958 overthrew Iraq's monarchy?

Abd al-Karim Qasim, a brigadier in the Free Officers, took the premiership after the coup in which the king, the crown prince and Nuri al-Sa'id were killed; the Ba'ath toppled and shot him in February 1963.

Who became president when the Ba'ath Party seized power in the 17 July Revolution of 1968?

Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a Ba'athist general and kinsman of Saddam from Tikrit, held the presidency from 1968 until Saddam formally replaced him on 16 July 1979.

The 1975 Algiers Agreement between Saddam and the Shah settled a dispute over which waterway?

The Shatt al-Arab, formed where the two great rivers meet, was the issue; Iraq accepted the thalweg (mid-channel) line as the border, and Iran in return ended its support for the rebellion in Iraq's north.

The Halabja attack of 16 March 1988 killed thousands of Kurds with what kind of weapon?

Chemical weapons, including mustard gas and nerve agents, were dropped on Halabja by Iraqi aircraft, killing an estimated 3,200-5,000 people in the largest such attack on a civilian area.

On 2 August 1990 Iraq invaded and annexed which country as its "19th governorate"?

Kuwait was overrun in two days; Saddam accused it of overproducing oil and of slant-drilling into an Iraqi field, and wanted its loans from the war with Iran written off.

The 1991 Gulf War coalition's ground assault against Iraqi forces lasted roughly how long?

The ground war lasted about 100 hours: it began on 24 February 1991 and President Bush declared a ceasefire on 28 February after Iraqi forces had been driven out.

On what date in 2003 did the US-led coalition invade Iraq?

The invasion began on 20 March 2003 with air strikes on the capital; the city fell on 9 April, when the statue of Saddam in Firdos Square was pulled down.

In which Iraqi city did the Islamic State's leader proclaim a caliphate in July 2014?

Mosul fell to the group in June 2014 after Iraqi army units collapsed; its leader then preached from the city's al-Nuri Mosque, and some 500,000 residents fled.

How many governorates does Iraq have alongside its single federal region?

Iraq has 19 governorates after parliament voted in April 2025 to carve Halabja out of Sulaymaniyah; four of them together form the federal Kurdistan Region.

Which city is the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan Region?

Erbil, whose ancient citadel mound is a UNESCO World Heritage site, is the seat of the Kurdistan Regional Government and its parliament.

Alongside Arabic, which language is official throughout Iraq?

Kurdish became a national official language alongside Arabic under the 2005 constitution, which also makes Turkmen and Syriac official in areas where their speakers are concentrated.

Which governorate is the only one in Iraq with a coastline?

Basra governorate holds Iraq's entire short coastline, including the deep-water port of Umm Qasr; its capital city regularly records summer temperatures above 50 °C.

The waterway formed where Iraq's two great rivers meet at al-Qurnah empties into which body of water?

The Persian Gulf receives the roughly 200-km waterway at the port town of al-Faw; the river forms the Iran-Iraq border along its lower course.

Cheekha Dar, at about 3,611 m the highest point in Iraq, has a local name meaning what?

Black Tent is what the name means; the summit lies in the Zagros on the Iranian border and is only a few metres higher than neighbouring Halgurd, long thought Iraq's highest.

The Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq traditionally live in villages built of what material?

Reeds cut from the marsh are bundled into arches to build houses and the mudhif guest halls, often on artificial islands reachable only by boat; the community may have numbered 500,000 in the 1950s.

Which organisation was founded at a conference in Iraq's capital in September 1960?

OPEC was founded on 14 September 1960 by five oil exporters meeting in Iraq's capital; the organisation's headquarters moved from Geneva to Vienna in 1965.

What is the currency of Iraq?

The Dinar was introduced at par with the pound sterling and is nominally divided into 1,000 fils; after 2003 the Coalition Provisional Authority issued an entirely new series of notes.

Which currency did Iraq's own money replace when it was introduced in 1932?

The Indian rupee had been official since the British occupation in the First World War; the new unit replaced it at 11 rupees to one and stayed pegged to sterling until 1959.

What are the three stripe colours of Iraq's flag, top to bottom?

Red, white, black are the pan-Arab Liberation colours shared with Egypt, Syria and Yemen; the 2008 version keeps the green takbir in Kufic script on the white band.

Masgouf, often called Iraq's national dish, is what?

Grilled carp is what masgouf is: a freshwater carp split along the back, seasoned with tamarind and salt, and cooked slowly beside an open wood fire, traditionally on the riverbank.

What is the name of Iraq's unicameral parliament under the 2005 constitution?

The Council of Representatives is Iraq's single-chamber legislature; it elects the president, who then asks the nominee of the largest bloc to form a government.

Which two Iraqi cities are among the holiest places for Shia Muslims?

Najaf and Karbala hold the shrines of the first Shia imam and of his son Husayn, killed in battle there in 680; the Arba'een pilgrimage draws millions to Karbala each year.

Iraqi Christians are predominantly members of which ancient people?

Assyrians, speakers of Neo-Aramaic dialects, make up most of Iraq's Christians, divided mainly between the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, whose roots go back to the 5th century.

What is the nickname of Iraq's national football team?

Lions of Mesopotamia (Usood al-Rafidain) is the nickname; the team won the 25th Arabian Gulf Cup on home soil in January 2023, beating Oman 3-2 in the final.

In which year did Iraq win the AFC Asian Cup, despite the chaos at home?

In 2007 Iraq, coached by Brazilian Jorvan Vieira for barely two months, beat South Korea on penalties in the semi-final and won the Jakarta final 1-0 with a Younis Mahmoud header.

Iraq scored its first-ever World Cup goal in 1986 against which team?

Belgium conceded Iraq's first World Cup goal, a header by Ahmed Radhi in a 2-1 defeat in 1986; Iraq lost all three group games at that tournament, its first finals.

The Iraq Museum's collections were begun in 1922 by which British traveller and intelligence agent?

Gertrude Bell, Oxford-educated traveller and wartime political officer, served as honorary director of antiquities and opened the museum's first room in 1926, the year she died in the capital.

Which Iraqi city did Alexander the Great intend as his capital before dying in 323 BCE?

Babylon was where Alexander died in June 323 BC after a fever, having planned to make the city his imperial capital; Seleucia later supplanted it.

Which city on the Tigris merged with Seleucia to become the Sasanian capital, later called al-Mada'in?

Ctesiphon is famous for the Taq Kasra, a brick vault about 37 m high that is the largest single-span unreinforced brick arch in the world; Arab armies took the city in 637.

After the 1991 Iraqi uprisings, the US, UK, France and Turkey established what over Iraq?

No-fly zones were declared north of the 36th parallel in 1991 and south of the 32nd (later 33rd) in 1992; Western aircraft patrolled them until the 2003 invasion.

Which Iraqi-born architect designed the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics?

Zaha Hadid, born in the Iraqi capital in 1950, won the Pritzker Prize in 2004, the first woman to do so; her London Aquatics Centre opened for the 2012 Games.

An Arabic folk etymology gives the name "Iraq" what meaning?

Deeply rooted, well-watered (and so fertile) is the traditional Arabic gloss on al-'Iraq; scholars instead link the name to an ancient city name or to an Arabic word for a shore or escarpment.

How long is Iraq's coastline on the northern Persian Gulf?

Just 58 km long, the coastline runs around the al-Faw peninsula at the head of the gulf; Iraq's main port, Umm Qasr, sits on the Khor Abdullah inlet beside it.

Which 1639 agreement confirmed Ottoman control of Baghdad after decades of Ottoman-Safavid wars?

Zuhab, also called Qasr-e Shirin, ended the Ottoman-Safavid war in 1639 and drew the frontier that broadly survives as the Iraq-Iran border; the city had fallen to Murad IV the year before.

Which Rashidun caliph moved the seat of the caliphate from Medina to Kufa in Iraq?

Ali ibn Abi Talib moved to Kufa in 656 during the first Muslim civil war and was assassinated there in 661; his tomb a few miles away is one of Shia Islam's holiest shrines.

Who staged the April 1941 coup that installed a pro-Axis government and triggered the Anglo-Iraqi War?

Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, backed by the 'Golden Square' colonels, took power in April 1941; Britain, fearing for its oil and its base at Habbaniya, defeated him within a month and he fled abroad.

What share of voters approved Iraq's new constitution in the October 2005 referendum?

78% voted yes on 15 October 2005, but Anbar and Salah ad-Din returned two-thirds 'no' majorities; one more such governorate would have vetoed the text.

Which supergiant field in southern Iraq is the country's largest oil producer?

Rumaila, discovered in 1953 and lying in the far south near the border, is among the world's largest oilfields; since 2009 a consortium led by BP has operated it.

Oil was struck at Baba Gurgur in 1927 near which northern Iraqi city?

Kirkuk's Baba Gurgur gusher of October 1927 opened Iraq's oil industry; the field's 'eternal fire', a natural gas seep, has burned for thousands of years.