All About World Heritage Sites
Make traveling more meaningful
The Erbil Citadel is under the risk of collapse due to a lack of budget for rehabilitation as well as heavy rains that have recently damaged the monument.
Source: Lack of revitalization budget puts historic Erbil Citadel at risk of collapse, official warns
They were clearly skilled glass-makers.
Source: A palace-city in Iraq produced its own ornamental glass a thousand years ago
The maverick cleric’s surprising election victory prompted this question in Baghdad, Washington and Tehran: Who is the real Moqtada al-Sadr?
Source: Public enemy or savior? An Iraqi city could reveal the true Moqtada al-Sadr
The 1,200-year-old minaret of the Great Mosque in Samarra is in dire need of restoration, which the Iraqi authorities and UNESCO have started working on.
The Malwiya Minaret, an impressive tower at a height of 52 meters (171 feet) with a spiral ramp, still recalls the past glory of the Great Mosque of Samarra, which had been the largest mosque in the world during the Abbasid Caliphate.
However, the spiraling structure of more than a thousand years now runs the risk of crumbling because of the many attacks it has suffered, according to Iraqi media reports.
Its external stairway is unstable, with some stones missing, and the minaret has shaky walls that have the names of visitors carved into them. There is no security at the site, and a young man fell from the minaret and died on March 29, 2017, after having attempted to climb it.
Malwiya is known for its spiraling structure; it does not look like any other minaret in the world. It is one of the many historical landmarks of Samarra, which was put on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2007.
Source: Will Great Mosque of Samarra and its minaret survive?
CHABAISH, Iraq (AP) – In the southern marshlands of Iraq, Firas Fadl steers his boat through tunnels of towering reeds, past floating villages and half-submerged water buffaloes in a unique region that seems a world apart from the rest of the arid Middle East.
The marshes, a lush remnant of the cradle of civilization , were reborn after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein when residents dismantled dams he had built a decade earlier to drain the area in order root out Shiite rebels. But now the largest wetlands in the Middle East are imperiled again, by government mismanagement and new upstream projects.
ERBIL, Iraq — There are two ways to consider the imposing Erbil citadel, a huge mound 100 feet above the flat plain on which this city of one million sits.
One. The citadel is one of the oldest continuously occupied human settlements on earth, a Unesco World Heritage Site, and Kurdish officials have gone to great lengths to restore and preserve it despite a severe financial crisis.
The warren of alleyways in the old town had become overcrowded slums as the historic buildings crumbled from neglect, but in 2006, the authorities relocated the more than 500 families elsewhere, in what was one of the Middle East’s most ambitious preservation projects.
Two. Six thousand years or more of human civilization have come to this: In the citadel’s central square is a tall metal pole with a Kurdish flag the size of a boxcar.
We recently visited the Kurdish region of Iraq and, maybe because of news reports, it was nothing like we expected. It’s not Arab. It’s not a war-torn desert wasteland. It’s safe. It’s peaceful. It’s green and mountainous, graced with abundant waterfalls and hilly, fertile farmland. Plus, Arabs, Kurds and foreigners all vacation together. No wonder Iraqi Kurdistan has been called “The Other Iraq.”
Westerners have no idea what they are missing.
A little about the Kurds
The “cradle of civilization” gave birth to the Kurdish peoples, yet they still dream of their own nation. Their homeland has been occupied by various empires for millennia. Medes, Assyrians, Sumerians, Parthians, Persians and others have ruled over them. Now, they are separated by political borders, but whether they live in Iraq, Syria, Turkey or Iran, they always consider themselves Kurds first.
Erbil Governorate
The Islamic State on Wednesday destroyed an iconic 840-year-old mosque and its minaret in Mosul, continuing to leave its trail of destruction even as the push to oust the IS from the city has intensified.
The al-Nuri mosque, which is also known as Mosul’s Great Mosque, is where IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a ‘Islamic Caliphate’ in 2014 shortly after Mosul was overrun by the militants. The minaret, called al-Hadba, which had a leaning look like that of Italy’s Tower of Pisa had stood for more than 840 years.
IS fighters initially attempted to destroy the minaret in July 2014.
UNESCO Director-General welcomes the liberation of Hatra and will send Emergency Assessment mission “as soon as possible”
Following several reports and discussions with the Iraqi authorities, UNESCO has confirmed the liberation of the archeological site of Hatra, located in the Governorate of Nineveh in Iraq.
The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, has reiterated her support to the government and people of Iraq and expressed the readiness of UNESCO to help protect and promote Iraqi heritage as a force for national cohesion, peace and recovery for the country.
“The liberation of the ancient city of Hatra, a UNESCO world heritage site, is good news for Iraq and beyond. For two years, Hatra has been one of the symbols of the cultural cleansing plaguing the Middle East” declared the Director-General.
Dictators are colorful people, to put it mildly. It must be something about being constantly alone, maybe being a little paranoid all the time, or maybe they just get on a non-stop high from absolute power.
Hitler thought eating meat was abhorrent, but had no qualms about methamphetamine. Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier sent someone to collect the air around JFK’s grave so he could control the dead president’s soul. Muammar Qaddafi had a crush on Condoleezza Rice that rivals the one I have on Nicki Minaj.
It seems like every dictator has some bizarre personality quirks or aspirations that may seem out of character. And Saddam Hussein was no different.
The book, “Zabiba and the King,” was originally published anonymously in 2000.
