Basra is a major Shia city, with the old Akhbari Shiism progressively being overwhelmed by the Usuli Shiism. 837,000. Corrections? These alleged abuses are to feature amongst the charges against the former regime to be considered by the Iraq Special Tribunal set up by the Iraq Interim Government following the 2003 invasion. Eleven persons were killed and fifty-nine injured. The many European travelers who passed through Basra during the 11th/17th and 12th/18th centuries described it as a decidedly Arab town, fairly prosperous, with merchants from many parts of the Persian Gulf, Arabia, and Mesopotamia gathered there, but little mention is made of commerce with the cities of the Iranian plateau. [4], The city has had many names throughout its history, Basrah being the most common. [32] A BBC survey of local residents found that 86% thought the presence of British troops since 2003 had had an overall negative effect on the province. The town was thereby drawn into the power struggles within the Buyid dynasty itself. 295-301. The ridges are extremely saline, with salt deposits up to 20 centimeters thick, and are completely barren. "[15] Ibn Battuta also noted that Basra consisted of three-quarters: the Hudayl quarter, the Banu Haram quarter, and the Iranian quarter (mahallat al-Ajam). From the ʿAbbasids to the Ottomans.The accession of the ʿAbbasid dynasty in 132/749 occurred just when Basra was beginning to enter its most vibrant period of cultural activity; during the 2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries, the city was the intellectual crossroads of the Islamic world (the cultural language of which was still exclusively Arabic), and was the home of renowned theologians, poets, Arabic grammarians, historians, and other writers. In 1930 the port installations were transferred from British to Iraqi ownership. During the time of the Abbasids, Basra became an intellectual center and home to the elite Basra School of Grammar, the rival and sister school of the Kufa School of Grammar. Sort through the facts in this quiz of Syria, Iraq, and other countries of the Middle East. The picturesque qualities of Basra have attracted a number of artists, poets and intellectuals over the years. This city was the first stop for the United States and the United Kingdom during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
After the Gulf War, which the US called Operation Desert Storm, in 1991, a rebellion struck Basra. In 1914 the construction of a modern harbour was begun at Basra, which previously had had no wharves. While such casualty numbers pale in comparison to later events, the bombing occurred one day after Arab foreign ministers, meeting in Egypt, refused to condemn four days of air strikes against Iraq in December 1998. He attributed these changes to the repression and tyranny of governors and to the annual or biennial incursions of the powerful Ḵafāja bedouins (Ebn Ḥawqal, pp. It played an important role in early Islamic history and was built in 636. After the two soldiers were arrested, the British Army raided the jail they were being held in to rescue them, killing several people from among their nominal allies – the Iraqi security forces. 205-20/820-35) seems to have had primarily social origins, whereas the uprising of the Zanj (255-69/869-83), who seized Basra and plundered it, and of the Qarmaṭīs, who plundered it in 923, seem to have had both social and religious roots. [38], Basra was scheduled to host the 22nd Arabian Gulf Cup tournament in Basra Sports City, a newly built multi-use sports complex. The city was repeatedly shelled by Iran and was the site of many fierce battles, such as Operation Ramadan and Operation Karbala 5. If the shift of the imperial center from Omayyad Damascus to ʿAbbasid Baghdad (and, after the 830s, to Sāmarrā) brought palpable economic benefits to Basra, however, it also coincided with, and may have caused, profound changes in the political and social life of the city. In 1550, the local Kingdom of Basra and tribal rulers trusted the Portuguese against the Ottomans, from then on the Portuguese threatened Basra several times to conquer it. Basran history from the late 7th century is thus one of unrest and insurrection. Section 41, Population", "British smash jail walls to free 2 arrested soldiers", "Iraqi Army's Assault on Militias in Basra Stalls", "Unrest intensifies in Iraq as Iranian consulate and oil facility stormed", "Climate: Basra – Climate graph, Temperature graph, Climate table", "Basra Climate and Weather Averages, Iraq", Les cadis d'Iraq et l'Etat abbasside (132/750-334/945), Iraq Inter-Agency Information & Analysis Unit, Muhammad and the Spread of Islam by Sanderson Beck, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Basra&oldid=989576915, Populated places established in the 7th century, Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2014, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2012, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz area identifiers, Wikipedia articles with TDVİA identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. ʿUbaydullah took over the control of Kufa. When the ʿAbbasids’ real power declined in the 3rd-4th/9th-10th centuries, Basra gradually became the political backwater it was to remain ever after—a provincial town whose political life was shaped more by local Arab tribes than by the power of the central government to which it ostensibly owed obedience.
Iraq, country of southwestern Asia. Governors sometimes directly supervised these projects, but usually they simply assigned the land while most of the financing was done by private investors. In 871, the Zanj sacked Basra. Indian Market (Amogaiz) is one of the main bazaars in the city. In 687, Musʿab defeated al-Mukhtar with the help of Kufans who Mukhtar exiled.[11]. History of Basra NPR's Lynn Neary profiles Basra, the scene of what the U.S. military says was a major battle today. 1777 - City besieged by Persian forces led by. A concise survey of Basra’s early history, with a very complete list of primary sources, is provided in Charles Pellat’s Le milieu baṣrien et la formation de Ğāḥiẓ, Paris, 1953. The Oghuz Turk Tughril Beg was the leader of the Seljuks, who expelled the Shiite Buyid dynasty. Substantial economic activity in Basra is centred around the petrochemical industry, which includes the Southern Fertilizer Company and The State Company for Petrochemical Industries (SCPI). It seemed to him that the universe was one large family which gathered together at Bassora.”. The etymology of Basra is uncertain, but some sources suggest it comes from the Persian Bas-rāh or Bassorāh meaning “where many paths meet.” In fiction, the city has sometimes appeared in novels characterised as a kind of geographic crossroads. The Great Friday Mosque was constructed in Basra.
The Zanj Rebellion by the agricultural slaves of the lowlands affected the area. While defeating the forces of the Sassanid Empire there, the Muslim commander Utbah ibn Ghazwan erected his camp on the site of an old Persian military settlement called Vaheštābād Ardašīr, which was destroyed by the Arabs. Humam Abd al-Khaliq Abd al-Ghafur was Iraqi Information Minister between 1997 and 2001. The turbulence of the Ẓoṭṭ (ca.
We have no cultivation or stock farming to provide us with our livelihood or food, which comes to us as through the throat of an ostrich. Basra (Arabic: ٱلْبَصْرَة, romanized: al-Baṣrah) is an Iraqi city located on the Shatt al-Arab. But the Zands, like the Ottomans, found it impossible to control the town without the backing of the Montafeq tribe, and upon Karīm Khan’s death in 1193/1779 the governor, his brother Ṣādeq Khan, withdrew from the city. In 871, the Zanj sacked Basra. American journalist Steven Vincent, who had been researching and reporting on corruption and militia activity in the city, was kidnapped and killed on 2 August 2005. At least 10 demonstrators died as they protested against the lack of clean drinking water and electrical power in the city during the height of summer in 2018.