Current Time in Al ‘Amārah, Iraq

Al ‘Amārah is a city in south-eastern Iraq and the capital of Maysan Province. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris, roughly halfway between Baghdad and Basra and close to the Iranian border, on flat alluvial land where the river begins to break into channels feeding the great marshes of southern Mesopotamia. Date palms line the waterfront, and the surrounding countryside is a mixture of irrigated fields, reed beds and open water.

The city has a population of around four hundred thousand. Its importance is regional and increasingly economic, since the province holds substantial oil reserves and the Halfaya and Buzurgan fields have been developed with international investment, making Maysan one of Iraq's producing regions. Agriculture, particularly rice, wheat and dates, and the ancient trade in reeds and buffalo herding also support the population.

Al ‘Amārah is a relatively young city by Iraqi standards. It was founded in 1861 by the Ottoman authorities as a garrison and administrative post intended to control the tribes of the marshes and to secure river traffic on the Tigris. The regular grid of its older quarters and the surviving Ottoman government buildings reflect that origin. British forces occupied the town during the First World War after a celebrated riverine advance, and it changed hands again in later conflicts. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s was fought heavily in this province, and in the 1990s the draining of the marshes by the government devastated the traditional way of life of the Marsh Arabs, many of whom fled or moved into the city.

The Tigris waterfront, with its bridges and tea houses, is the centre of civic life, and the older bazaar streets still show Ottoman brickwork and shaded arcades. The greatest attraction of the region lies beyond the city in the Mesopotamian Marshes, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, where reed houses called mudhif are built without a single nail, water buffalo wade among the reeds, and birdlife is abundant. Since 2003 significant areas have been reflooded and the marsh communities have partially returned, and boat trips from the villages around Al ‘Amārah are the way to see them.

Culture in Maysan is strongly tribal and strongly Shia, with the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala central to religious life and the commemorations of Ashura observed intensely. Marsh Arab traditions of poetry, reed craft and hospitality persist, and the region has a long reputation for producing musicians and singers in the southern Iraqi style.

Transport depends on the highway running between Baghdad and Basra, on a railway link, and on Maysan's small airport. River traffic, once dominant, has declined but has not disappeared.

The University of Maysan, founded in 2007, together with technical institutes, has given the province its own higher education for the first time.

Al ‘Amārah is significant as the gateway to the Mesopotamian marshes, one of the most remarkable wetland landscapes on earth, and as a city whose recovery is closely tied to the revival of that ancient environment.