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 one of the largest cities 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 large swathes of the country, including Mosul, 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; a report submitted to the UN Security Council in July 2025 assessed ISIS as being at its weakest in Iraq since it emerged.

On 28 February 2026 war broke out between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran and its allies on the other. Iraq has not entered it as a belligerent, but its territory and its skies are part of the fighting: strikes on bases inside the country, Iranian missiles and drones crossing it, and attacks by Iran-aligned Iraqi armed groups on US positions. A convoy of the Popular Mobilisation Forces has been seen entering Iran, and the government summoned the US embassy's chargé d'affaires after an American strike killed Iraqi soldiers at Habbaniya.

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 recognised by UNESCO as intangible heritage of humanity, 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 46 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; power cuts are common, especially in the hot summer months, public services are weak, and unemployment is high — grievances that fed the 2019 protest movement. Water shortages, as upstream dams and climate change shrink the Tigris and Euphrates, are a 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 is one of the world's largest date producers, 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. A law published in 2023 bans the import, production and sale of alcohol; arak, the aniseed spirit, is the traditional drink of the region.

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 town of Amedi on its mesa, 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 bookshops and book stalls, 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.