🇮🇶 Iraq

National Flag

Geography & Borders

IranJordanKuwaitSaudi ArabiaSyriaTürkiye

Introduction & Background

Iraq,a officially the Republic of Iraq,b is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and Kuwait to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest and Syria to the west. The capital and largest city is Baghdad. Iraq is home to diverse ethnic groups including Iraqi Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Armenians, Yazidis, Mandaeans, Persians and Shabakis with similarly diverse geography and wildlife. The vast majority of the country's 44 million residents are Muslims the notable other faiths are Christianity, Yazidism, Mandaeism, Yarsanism and Zoroastrianism.122 The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish; others also recognised in specific regions are Neo-Aramaic, Turkish and Armenian.13

Starting as early as the 6th millennium BC, the fertile alluvial plains between Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, referred to as Mesopotamia, gave rise to some of the world's earliest cities, civilisations, and empires, including those of Akkad, Babylon, Assyria and Sumer.14 Mesopotamia was a "Cradle of Civilisation" that saw the independent development of a writing system, mathematics, timekeeping, a calendar, astrology, and a law code.151617 Following the Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia, Baghdad became the capital and the largest city of the Abbasid Caliphate, and during the Islamic Golden Age, the city evolved into a significant cultural and intellectual center, and garnered it a worldwide reputation for its academic institutions, including House of Wisdom.18 The city was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258 during the Siege of Baghdad, resulting in a decline that would linger through many centuries due to frequent plagues and multiple successive empires.