Marshland and sites in southern Iraq are to become UNESCO World Heritage: a world first!

28 August 2016

On 17 July 2016, the board of UNESCO assembled for its 40th session in Istanbul and decided to accede to the request made by Iraq to classify as World Heritage the Ahwar, the marshlands of southern Iraq, a sanctuary of biodiversity and the setting of three large archaeological sites.

For the very first time in its history, the international organisation has recognised a region that presents mixed heritage, both natural and cultural. Figuring among the seven components which form this system are the four marshlands that constitute one of the world’s largest inland deltas, formed by the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates, the two rivers that Mesopotamia (‘the land between the rivers’) arose from. The zone is composed of the ‘central marsh’, sitting between the two great rivers, the Al-hammar marsh, including the eponymous salt lake, south of the Euphrates, and the Hawizeh marsh, lying to the east of the Tigris.

Originally, these marshes covered an area of more than 20,000 km.² Wilfred Thesiger described the daily life of the marsh Arabs who lived on them in the 1950s.[1] However, following the first Gulf War in 1991, Saddam Hussein constructed a series of canals and earth dams and drained the marshes so as to be able to track the Shiites who had taken refuge there. When the dictator fell in 2003, almost 90% of the marshland had been drained, the result of which was the irreparable destruction of its ecosystem and biodiversity. For example, prior to the draining of the marsh, the birdlife numbered in the millions. Starting in 2003, the Iraqis destroyed the dams, and after much effort the marshes have today recovered a little more than 40% of their original surface area. Subsequently, about 40 bird species could be observed re-establishing themselves in the wetlands.

The other elements forming this large system are the Sumerian towns of Uruk and Ur, and the archaeological site at Tell Eridu, three sites which have suffered major pillaging throughout the wars that have raged over the last 25 years or so. Uruk, today’s Warka, is a huge mound, the vestige of a city founded in the fourth millennium BCE, which kept its importance up until the beginning of our era. This town witnessed the birth of writing, around 3,400 years before our time, and it was the capital of Gilgamesh, the celebrated one third human, two thirds god hero of Sumero-Akkadian literature. Ur (Tell Muqqayar) left the largest royal cemetery in Mesopotamia, with close to 1,800 tombs and some unusual funerary paraphernalia. The capital of a vast empire at the end of the third millennium BCE, Ur was a port of the utmost importance for the Mesopotamian economy. As regards Eridu (Abu Shahrain), it was a holy city in the third millennium BCE, the seat of the main temple of Enki, the god of wisdom and the subterranean waters. The classification of these three ancient sites as World Heritage by UNESCO opens the way for archaeologists expert in Sumerian civilisation to return to an area which was up until quite recently inaccessible owing to the armed conflicts that were underway.

Some other sites in Iraq are currently inscribed in UNESCO’s World Heritage register. One of these is the city of Aššur, the capital of Assyria (today’s Qal’at Cherqat), which was urgently added to the list in 2003 when it was threatened by the construction of a dam in the Makhoul region. (Apparently the said construction project has since been abandoned.) Earlier on, the city of Hatra was added to the list of World Heritage in 1985, but its ruins have been badly damaged by ISIS in recent years. The city of Samarra also appeared on the list since 2007, along with the citadel of Erbil, in Kurdistan, which was classified as World Heritage in 2014. Plenty of other ancient sites are on the waiting list. The Assyrian capitals of Nineveh and Kalhu have been extensively damaged by ISIS since 2014. After blowing up the north-western palace of Ashurnazirpal II, the terrorists then razed to the ground the temple of Nabû, the god of scribes and intellectuals (a potent symbol), as evidenced in the satellite images made last June. Today, the Iraqis dream of adding Babylon to the list, but there are many obstacles to overcome, among which the inappropriate restoration work carried out by Saddam Hussein and the palace he had built there, as well as a tourist complex built nearby. UNESCO has suggested that these buildings could be transformed into a museum and research centre. In addition, an oil pipeline traverses the archaeological site, but the Department of Antiquities has had the said pipeline shifted out of the area concerned. Let us hope that UNESCO fulfils the Iraqis’ wish and that Babylon will be the next site to be included among the jewels of World Cultural Heritage.

[1] Thesiger, Wilfred (1983), Les Arabes des marais, Plon: Paris (first edition: The Marsh Arabs, London, 1964).