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7 unusual facts about Basra


Ammar al-Basri

Not much is known about his life except that he was a native of Basra.

Batzra

It was named after Basra in Iraq, where the unit was stationed for some time during World War II.

Cecil McVilly

McVilly was picked for special service in Mesopotamia and on 29 January 1918 set out for Basra in the Persian Gulf.

Faiz El-Ghusein

He was a Sulut Sheikh from the Hauran, and a former official of the Turkish Government, who had escaped across Armenia during the war, and had eventually reached Miss Gertrude Bell in Basra.

Iraqi Special Operations Forces

The 2nd Special Operations Brigade has four commando battalions 1440-men, currently at Basra, Mosul, Diyala and Al Asad.

John Waterlow

After qualifying as a doctor, he was attached to the Medical Research Council's (MRC) military personnel research programme, working under BS Platt, where he spent a year studying heat stroke and heat exhaustion in Basra.

Kim Howells

On 22 November 2006 it was announced that on a recent visit to Iraq his helicopter was involved in an incident as it left the city of Basra with witnesses claiming shots were fired at the aircraft.


1991 uprising in Basra

Most of Basra had been retaken by mid March, but rebels in parts such as Tanuma managed to hold out until mid April.

1st Wessex Artillery

With a reformed Brigade Ammunition Column, CCXV Bde moved in October 1916 to Basra to take part in the Mesopotamian campaign, and on 8 December 1916 it joined 3rd (Lahore) Division of the Indian Army on the Tigris front.

20 Battery Royal Artillery

This new commander launched an expedition to establish a land route to the Indian Ocean via Basra.

Al Hartha

Al Hartha is a city located in the north-eastern part of Basrah Governorate on the east bank of the river Euphrates, bounded on the north to Qurna and the south province of Basra, linking Hartha, the main road, with Baghdad and the city center, Basra.

Ali Rıza Seyfi

He attended the Kasımpaşa Naval Elementary School and served at various posts in Basra, with the fleet in the Dardanelles, at the Naval Science Commission and at Tripoli as a naval officer after 1892.

Anglo-Persian War

The British then shifted their focus north up the Persian Gulf, invading Southern Mesopotamia by advancing up the Shatt Al Arab waterway to Mohammerah (future Khorramshahr) at its junction with the Karun River, short of Basra.

Arlequin Mahomet

As he is flying over Persia, he sees a young man about to kill himself because his true love, the Princess of Basra, is to be married to the Kam of the Tartars (played by Pierrot from La Foire de Guibray).

Baghdad Metro

The Baghdad Metro and the passenger train that runs between Baghdad and Basra, which resumed service in 2007, were the first two regular passenger services to resume in Iraq since the Iraq War.

Chaldean Christians

There are five archbishops (resident respectively at Basra, Diyarbakır, Kirkuk, Salmas and Urmia) and seven bishops.

Claud Buchanan Ticehurst

He served in British India, mainly in Karachi but with visits to Basra and Quetta from 23 September 1917 to 14 January 1920, a period when he became a friend of Hugh Whistler who shared an interest in ornithology.

Dan Grant

He consulted with international military forces and local leaders in Basra, Fallujah, and Mosul.

Gavin Young

Young spent two years with the Ralli Brothers shipping company in Basra in Iraq before living with the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Horseshoe route

The route was disrupted in late April 1941 due to an uprising in Iraq which meant that the stop at Lake Habbaniyah was not available and there were no flights between Cairo and Basra in early May.

Ibn Jubayr

Ibn Jubayr also travelled to Medina, Mecca Damascus, Mosul, Acre and Baghdad at Basra he saw how Indian timber was carefully used to make Lateen sail ships, returning in 1185 by way of Sicily.

Iranians in Iraq

Knowledge of Persian is widespread in cities such as Karbalā', Najaf, and parts of Baghdād and Baṣrah.

Iraq spring fighting of 2008

The clashes, soon after the start of the security operation, spread from Basra to Baghdad, mainly the Sadr City district of the capital, which was under the control of the Mahdi Army.

James Fynn

The Basra Memorial is now located 32 kilometres along the road to Nasiriyah, in the middle of what was a major battleground during the Gulf War.

Karim Khan

In 1775 Karim Khan sent an army into Ottoman territory and captured Basra, his forces held Basra until 1779 when the Ottomans recaptured the city around the time Karim Khan died, possibly of Tuberculosis.

Mamluk dynasty of Iraq

They managed to counter the Al-Muntafiq threats in the south and brought Basra under their control.

Mass graves in Iraq

The 1991 massacre of Iraqi Shia Muslims after the Shia uprising at the end of the Gulf war, in which tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians in regions such as Basra, Karbala, Najaf, Nasiriya, Amara and Al-Hillah were killed.

Minorities in Iraq

In the mid-800s, black slaves around Basra rose in a rebellion, conquering their former masters and ruling the city for 15 years before being put down by forces sent by the Caliph in Baghdad.

Mir Jumla II

Mir Jumla, who in the 1640s had his own ships and organized merchant fleets that sailed throughout Surat, Thatta, Arakan, Ayuthya, Balasore, Aceh, Melaka, Johore, Bantam, Makassar, Ceylon, Bandar Abbas, Mecca, Jeddah, Basra, Aden, Masqat, Mocha and the Maldives.

Mohan al-Furayji

In June 2007, he was redeployed from the Iraqi Defence Ministry in Baghdad to Basra to prepare for the takeover of Basra from British forces.

Nizam al-Mulk

In 1091, a group of Ismailis under the leadership of Hassan-i Sabbah sacked Basra and seized the fortress of Alamut.

Operation Before the Dawn

The Iranians dug themselves in along the entire front lines, from north to south, and although Iraq countered the assault on al-Shabeeb, it did not result in Iraq’s tactical advantage as these thousands of entrenched Iranian forces now concentrated artillery on Basra, Khanqhan, and Mandali.

Patrick Marriott

While many soldiers were complaining about the politicians who had sent them into action without enough men or equipment, Marriott took the view that the British could never have gained the trust of the people of Basra, thanks to their history.

Paul-Émile Botta

In 1855, Victor Place, Botta's successor tried to send finds from Kish, Khorsabad, Nimrud and from Assurbanipal's palace in Niniveh, 235 cases all in all, from Mosul down the Tigris and the Shatt al-Arab to Basra, where they were to be loaded on a ship bound to Paris.

Provincial Iraqi Control

As of October 2008, thirteen provinces had successfully completed transition to provincial Iraqi control: al Muthanna, Dhi Qar, Najaf, Maysan, Dahuk, Arbil, Sulaymaniyah, Karbala, Basra, Al-Qadisiyah, Al-Anbar, Babil and Wasit.

Queen's Own West Kent Yeomanry

Further deployments have been to the southern province of Basra and Al Amarah, in Iraq.

Riaz Basra

In 1996, Basra, along with Akram Lahori a.k.a. Muhammad Ajmal and Malik Ishaq was a founder of the Deobandi Sunni militant organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

Sama Raena Alshaibi

Her mother and her grandparents were relocated to Iraq at around 60 years ago, as a result of the 1948 Palestinian exodus, after meeting her father; Alshaibi and her siblings and parents left Basra in 1981.

Siege of Kut

Like Caesar at the Alesia, he prepared for an attack from Basra, using the Tigris River, by building defensive positions further down the river.

Soniya Mehra

After the release of Victoria 203 which was a commercial flop, Soniya took a long gap of three years and she is now attempting to make her comeback in 2010 with the film Basra starring Abhay Deol and directed by Navdeep Singh.

Umm Qasr

The port facilities were built by a consortium of companies from West Germany, Sweden and Lebanon, with a railway line connecting it to Basra and Baghdad.

UNGCI

After a short training period in Baghdad, the guards moved initially to Erbil and Dohuk (in the northern part of Iraq) and were assigned to serve mostly in Kurdistan under three Sectors (Dohuk, Erbil, Sulaimaniyah), though some service was performed in the south of the country, in the area of Basra city.

Wajihids

The Wajihid military moved up the Tigris River and took possession of al-Ubullah, but the expedition failed when the Baridi rulers of Basra managed to destroy much of the Wajihid fleet.


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