53 Fun Facts About Iraq

What is the capital and largest city of Iraq?

Baghdad was founded in 762 as Madinat al-Salam, the City of Peace, but that official name faded and Baghdad stuck.

Ancient Mesopotamia lay between which two rivers?

Tigris and Euphrates water let farmers grow surplus grain, and that surplus allowed Mesopotamia's early cities to form.

Which civilisation of southern Mesopotamia is regarded as the earliest known?

Sumer faded as a separate people after Amorite invaders conquered Mesopotamia at the start of the second millennium BC.

Which city was the largest urban centre in Mesopotamia around 3100 BC?

Uruk, the Biblical Erech, may have given its name to modern Iraq.

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

In the Epic of Gilgamesh the hero finds a plant that renews youth, but a serpent takes it and he goes home still mortal.

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.

Which museum displays the stele bearing the Code of Hammurabi?

The Louvre holds the basalt stele, found at Susa in Iran in 1901, where Elamite invaders had carried it as plunder.

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

Nebuchadnezzar II's gate was dug up by Robert Koldewey's German team, and its excavated bricks were rebuilt into the gate in Berlin's Pergamon Museum.

Which famous phrase sums up the principle behind many punishments in the Code of Hammurabi?

An eye for an eye could fall on a family: if a badly built house killed an owner's son, the builder's son was to be put to death.

Which fortified caravan city in northern Iraq was a temple city in the Parthian era?

Hatra's walls turned back Roman sieges under Trajan and Septimius Severus, but the Sasanian king Shapur I took and destroyed the city in 241.

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

Al-Mansur let building begin in 762 only after his astrologers declared the date auspicious.

What was the Abbasid library in the capital, later famed as a Golden Age academy, called?

House of Wisdom scholars included al-Khwarizmi, whose Latinized name gave rise to the word algorithm.

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

A spiral cone, the Malwiya minaret lost its top in a 2005 blast blamed on insurgents, after reports that US troops had occupied it.

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

The Mongols under Hulagu took the city in 1258, and its importance waned as power shifted to their new capital, Tabriz.

Which Ottoman sultan conquered Iraq in 1534?

Suleiman I's conquest lasted about 90 years: the Safavids then recaptured the old Abbasid capital, and Murad IV won it back only in 1638.

Harun al-Rashid, the Abbasid caliph, appears as a character in many tales from which story collection?

One Thousand and One Nights' tale of Aladdin was not in the Arabic original: it entered the collection in the 18th century via French translator Antoine Galland.

Which secret 1916 pact carved up Ottoman lands, including what became Iraq and Syria?

The Sykes-Picot Agreement stayed secret until Russia's new Soviet government published it in late 1917.

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

Faisal I had just lost another throne: France invaded his Kingdom of Syria and occupied Damascus in July 1920, forcing him into exile.

Iraq became independent in 1932 as a kingdom ruled by which Arab dynasty?

The Hashemites ruled Iraq until the 1958 revolution, in which the 23-year-old last king was killed.

Who ruled Iraq as regent for the boy-king from 1939?

His uncle, Abd al-Ilah, was regent until 1953 and was killed alongside the young king in the 1958 revolution.

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

Abd al-Karim Qasim, who led the coup that ended the monarchy, was himself overthrown and killed in a February 1963 coup.

Which general became Iraq's president in the 1968 Ba'athist coup, and was succeeded by Saddam Hussein in 1979?

Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr increasingly left the running of government to Saddam, who then replaced him as president.

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

The Shatt al-Arab was the issue: Saddam gave up some of Iraq's claims to it, and in return Iran stopped backing the Kurdish revolt in Iraq.

The March 1988 attack on Halabja killed thousands of Kurds with what?

Chemical weapons were used on Halabja just after Iranian troops and Kurdish fighters had taken the town, killing thousands of civilians.

On 2 August 1990 Iraq invaded and annexed which country?

Kuwait was accused of pumping oil over its export quota and stealing oil from a border field, and Saddam wanted his war debt to it cancelled.

The US-led coalition's 1991 ground offensive against Iraqi forces lasted roughly how long?

100 hours in, the coalition halted its ground offensive, and Saddam's forces went on to crush the Kurdish and Shia uprisings that followed.

What was toppled in Firdos Square on 9 April 2003?

Saddam's statue came down only when a Marine vehicle hauled it over, after Iraqis with a sledgehammer and rope could not topple it.

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.

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

Erbil's ancient citadel was emptied of its several hundred families for restoration in 2007, but one family was allowed to stay.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad, abducted by Islamic State in 2014, belongs to which Iraqi religious minority?

Yazidis were targeted by Islamic State: in 2014 its fighters massacred hundreds in Murad's village and took young women like her as slaves.

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

Basra governorate holds all of Iraq's sea ports, and Iranian forces invaded the province during the 1980s war and later tried to capture its capital.

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

The Persian Gulf saw the 1980s Tanker War, when Iran and Iraq attacked merchant ships and tankers there.

Which phrase did Saddam Hussein use in 1991 for the coming war against the US-led coalition?

The mother of all battles echoed an Arabic idiom, and the 1991 phrase popularized 'the mother of all' for an extreme example of anything.

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

Reeds built their homes, but Saddam Hussein's regime drained most of the marshes after the 1991 Shia uprising, shattering that way of life.

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

OPEC was set up so oil-producing states could negotiate over prices, output and concessions with the big Western oil companies.

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

Red, white, black frame the takbir 'Allahu akbar', which Saddam Hussein added in January 1991 to rally religious support as coalition forces massed.

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

The Council of Representatives sits alone: the constitution's second chamber, the Federation Council, had still not been set up as of 2025.

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

Najaf and Karbala are among Shia Islam's holiest cities; Karbala's holiness comes from Husayn, the Prophet's grandson, killed there in 680.

Iraqi Christians are predominantly members of which ancient people?

Assyrians make up most of Iraq's Christians, a community that has shrunk by at least half since 2003 as many families fled.

Where did US troops find Saddam Hussein hiding when they captured him in December 2003?

A hole in the ground on a farm south of Tikrit was his hideout, and troops took him without a shot being fired.

Which football trophy did Iraq win in 2007, despite violence at home?

The AFC Asian Cup final ended 1-0 against Saudi Arabia with captain Younis Mahmoud's goal, sparking mass celebrations across Iraq.

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

Belgium was the opponent; Iraq had reached those finals while at war with Iran, playing every 'home' qualifier abroad.

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

Gertrude Bell began the collection so that finds would stay in Iraq, and ran the new museum when it opened in 1926, the year she died.

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

Babylon was where Alexander died, after which his generals fought over his empire and the city later declined.

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

Ctesiphon fell to Arab armies in 637, and the new Abbasid capital built nearby later drew away its importance.

After the 1991 uprisings, which measure did Western powers impose over northern and southern Iraq?

No-fly zones were meant to shield Kurds in the north and Shia in the south from Saddam's forces, and US and British jets patrolled them for years.

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

Zaha Hadid won the 2004 Pritzker Prize although her built body of work was still relatively small.

Which country's warplanes destroyed Iraq's unfinished Osirak nuclear reactor in June 1981?

Israel struck the French-built reactor because it believed it was designed to make nuclear weapons.

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

Ali ibn Abi Talib ruled from Kufa until 661, when a Kharijite, from a faction that had turned against him, struck him with a poisoned sword.

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

Rashid Ali al-Gaylani's pro-Axis government was toppled when British troops moved in, in May 1941.

In Iraq's October 2005 constitutional referendum, which community's voters most strongly opposed the new constitution?

Sunni Arabs in Anbar and Salahaddin voted no by more than two-thirds, but vetoing the text needed a third such governorate.

Where did President Bush speak under a 'Mission Accomplished' banner in May 2003?

An aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, was the stage, but a longer phase of occupation and insurgency was still to come.

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

Kirkuk's oil, struck at Baba Gurgur in 1927, made the city a centre of Iraq's petroleum industry, with pipelines running to Turkey's coast.