Everything you need to know about Iraq
Explore Iraq from Baghdadโs bookshops and the ancient cities of Mesopotamia to southern reed marshes and the mountains of the Kurdistan Region. Learn nineteen governorates, place twenty cities and locate eighteen sights, with ten illustrated facts topics and linked Arabic and Kurdish lessons.
Read it, then make it stick
Geography of Iraq
Two great rivers connect mountain tributaries with plains, marshes and the Gulf.
Know the shape of the country
Learn all nineteen governorates, including Halabja, then place twenty cities and follow three rivers and three lakes. Zoom in for Baghdad and Halabja. Boundaries are generalised from geoBoundaries and OpenStreetMap, with Halabja separated from Sulaymaniyah. They do not resolve territorial disputes or show security control. Rivers and lake outlines use Natural Earth data and do not represent current water levels. Map sources and licences are linked below.
Sights, heritage and landscapes
Essential ยท Ancient city
Babylon
The remains of a major Mesopotamian capital include palaces, temples and city walls. Much of its best-known monumental phase belongs to the Neo-Babylonian period. Some visible walls are modern reconstructions, and the Hanging Gardens are not a surviving attraction with a securely identified location.
Locate eighteen places across Iraq, from ancient cities and Baghdadโs book quarter to the southern marshes and northern mountains. The selection includes all six UNESCO World Heritage properties, with representative pins for broad sites. Essential identifies the core learning selection. Worth a detour adds regional context. These priorities do not establish current travel safety or access. Check official advice and local permissions before planning a visit. Select a pin to read about a place, then play the map and find them all.
Take Arabic with you
Greetings and politeness
Hello, please, thank you, sorry: the ten openers everything else builds on.
Keep going one country deeper
When you have had your fill of Iraq, the countries marked guide have a page like this one, and every other has maps of its own.
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