Basra

Basra (al-Baṣrah) is a city in southern Iraq located on the Shatt al-Arab in the Arabian Peninsula. It had an estimated population of 1.4 million in 2018. Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is handled at the port of Umm Qasr. However, there is ongoing construction of Grand Faw Port on the coast of Basra, which is considered a national project for Iraq and will become one of the largest ports in the world and the largest in the Middle East, in addition, the port will strengthen Iraq’s geopolitical position in the region and the world. Furthermore, Iraq is planning to establish a large naval base in the Faw peninsula. Historically, the city is one of the ports from which the fictional Sinbad the Sailor journeyed. The city was built in 636 and played an important role in the Islamic Golden Age. Basra is consistently one of the hottest cities in Iraq, with summer temperatures regularly exceeding . In April 2017, the Iraqi Parliament recognized Basra as Iraq's economic capital. The city has had many names throughout history, Basrah being the most common. In Arabic, the word baṣrah means "the overwatcher," which may have been an allusion to the city's origin as an Arab military base against the Sassanids. Others have argued that the name is derived from the Aramaic word basratha, meaning "place of huts, settlement." Timeline of Basra The city was founded at the beginning of the Islamic era in 636 and began as a garrison encampment for Arab tribesmen constituting the armies of the Rashidun Caliph Umar. A tell a few kilometers south of the present city, still marks the original site which was a military site. While defeating the forces of the Sassanid Empire there, the Muslim commander Utbah ibn Ghazwan erected his camp on the site of an old Persian military settlement called Vaheštābād Ardašīr, which was destroyed by the Arabs. The name Al-Basrah, which in Arabic means "the over watching" or "the seeing everything," was given to it because of its role as a military base against the Sassanid Empire.