Basra

Basra, city, capital of Al-Baṣrah muḥāfaẓah (governorate), southeastern Iraq. It is the principal port of Iraq. Basra is situated on the western bank of the Shaṭṭ Al-ʿArab (the waterway formed by the union of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) at its exit from Lake Al-Ḥammār, 70 miles (110 km) by water above Al-Fāw (Fao) on the Persian Gulf. The adjacent terrain is low-lying and deeply intersected by creeks and small watercourses.

Basra was founded as a military encampment by the second caliph, ʿUmar I, in 638 ce about 8 miles (13 km) from the modern town of Al-Zubayr, Iraq. Its proximity to the Persian Gulf and easy access to both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and the eastern frontiers encouraged its growth into a real city, despite the harsh climate and the difficulty of supplying the camp with drinking water. The first architecturally significant mosque in Islam was constructed there in 665.

Basran troops fought the Sāsānian Persians at Nahāvand (642) and conquered the western provinces of Iran (650), while the town itself was the site of the Battle of the Camel (656), an encounter between ʿĀʾishah, the Prophet Muhammad’s widow, and ʿAlī, Muhammad’s son-in-law and fourth caliph. In the years during and after ʿAlī’s caliphate (656–661), Basra was a focus of the political strife that arose between the competing religious factions in Islam. This political friction was intensified by a volatile social situation. Whereas the Arab army constituted an aristocracy in Basra, the local and various migrant peoples who had settled there (Indians, Persians, Africans, Malays) were merely mawālī, or clients attached to Arab tribes. Basran history from the late 7th century is thus one of unrest and insurrection. The city was seized briefly by the forces of a claimant of the caliphate, ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr (died 692), then became the centre of Ibn al-Ashʿath’s revolt in 701 and al-Muhallab’s revolt in 719–720.

Conditions did not improve under the ʿAbbāsids, who took over the caliphate in 750. The uprisings continued: the Zoṭṭ, an Indian people, rose up in 820–835; the Zanj, African blacks brought into Mesopotamia for agricultural slave labour, rebelled about 869–883 (see Zanj rebellion). The Qarmatians, an extremist Muslim sect, invaded and devastated Basra in 923, and thereafter the city declined, overshadowed by the prominence of the ʿAbbāsid capital, Baghdad. By the 14th century, neglect and the Mongol invasions left little of the original Basra standing, and by the turn of the 16th century it was relocated at the site of ancient Al-Ubullah, a few miles upstream.

Basra had been, however, a brilliant cultural centre in its own right throughout the 8th and into the 9th century. It was the home of noted Arab grammarians, poets, prose writers, and literary and religious scholars. Islamic mysticism was first introduced in Basra by al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, and the theological school of the Muʿtazilah developed there. Basra is perhaps best known to Westerners as the city from which Sinbad set out in The Thousand and One Nights.

Basra was taken by the Turks in 1668. In the 17th and 18th centuries, English, Dutch, and Portuguese traders became established there, and Basra developed considerably during the 19th century as a transshipment point for river traffic to Baghdad. In 1914 the construction of a modern harbour was begun at Basra, which previously had had no wharves. During World War I the British occupied Basra and used it as the port whereby communications were maintained between Mesopotamia and India. Under the ensuing British mandate, many improvements were effected in the city, and both the town and port grew in importance. In 1930 the port installations were transferred from British to Iraqi ownership. During World War II the Allies sent supplies to their Soviet allies through Basra.

The growth of Iraq’s petroleum industry in the postwar decades turned Basra into a major petroleum refining and exporting centre. Before the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), petroleum was pumped from Basra to the town of Al-Fāw, on the Persian Gulf, and loaded on tankers for export. Basra’s refinery was much damaged in the opening months of the Iran-Iraq War, however, and many of the city’s buildings were destroyed by artillery bombardments as the Iranians advanced to within less than 6 miles (10 km) of it in 1987. The city again suffered extensive damage in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War and in subsequent fighting between rebel factions and government troops.

Basra was also affected by the Iraq War, which commenced in March 2003. The city’s garrison was deemed too great a threat to the U.S.-led coalition’s supply lines, and, shortly after the onset of the war, British troops engaged in a methodical siege operation against Iraqi army and paramilitary forces in and around the city. After two weeks of fighting, Basra fell. British armed forces occupied and governed the region until December 2007, when security responsibilities were returned to the Iraqi government.

The modern city of Basra is an agglomeration of three small towns, Basra, Al-ʿAshār, and Al-Maʿqil, and several small villages. Around these settlements are extensive palm groves intersected by drainage canals and minor inlets to a width of about 3 miles (5 km) from the Shaṭṭ Al-ʿArab. Basra is situated in an area that is very productive agriculturally despite its large swampy tracts, many of which were drained in the early 1990s. Crops grown include dates, corn (maize), rice, and millet. Pop. (2005 est.) 837,000.