Baghdad

Geographical position

The Iraqi capital is located about in the center of the country on average 40 meters above sea level. It stretches along the middle reaches of the Tigris River, which is navigable as far as Baghdad.

The river divides the city into two halves, the eastern part Risafa and the western part Karch. The soil is very flat and alluvial in origin due to periodic flooding.

The Tigris River, on whose banks Baghdad lies, is an important trade route for the city. Several trade routes converge in Baghdad, passing through the Fertile Crescent, a high-rainfall winter rainfall area located north of the Syrian Desert and north of the Arabian Peninsula.

Together with the Euphrates, the Tigris, whose catchment area covers 375,000 square kilometres, forms the Mesopotamia, where some of the first advanced civilisations developed.

City breakdown

Baghdad is divided into nine districts:

• al-Aʿzamiyya (الأعظمية)
• Baghdād al-jadīda (بغداد الجديدة, "New Baghdad") or Tisa Nisan ("nine Nisan").
• al-Kāzimiyya (الكاظمية)
• al-Karrāda (الكرادة)
• al-Karch (الكرخ)
• al-Mansūr (منصور).
• ar-Rashīd (الرشيد).
• ar-Rusāfa (الرصافة).
• ath-Thaura (الثورة)

The boroughs are divided into 89 districts.

In 2013, Baghdad al-Jadidah, Habibiyah, Sabaa al-Bour, Kazimiyah, al-Shaab (three districts), Ur, Shulah, and Sadr City, among others, were considered predominantly Shiite districts and neighborhoods; Jamia and Ghazaliyah were considered predominantly Sunni.

Climate

The city has a dry subtropical climate and is one of the hottest cities in the world in terms of maximum temperatures. During the summer months between June and September, the average maximum temperature rises to between 41 and 49 degrees Celsius, accompanied by strong sunshine: rain is extremely unlikely during this time of year. Temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius are not unheard of, and even at night they rarely drop below 24 degrees Celsius.

Humidity is very low and is usually less than ten percent. Dust storms from the deserts in the west are a normal occurrence in summer. They occur on average 20 days a year.

In winter, between December and February, the maximum temperature averages 16 to 18 degrees Celsius. The minimum temperature in January is about four degrees Celsius on average, but also values below zero degrees Celsius are not uncommon in this season. The annual average rainfall of about 148 millimeters falls almost exclusively in the period from November to March.

Population development

Due to the high birth rate and the strong rural exodus, the population of Baghdad grew very strongly, especially in the second half of the 20th century. While in 1947 only 352,000 people lived in the city, in 1965 there were already 1.5 million. By 1977, this number had doubled to 2.9 million. In 2010, the city had about 5.4 million inhabitants.

Due to the tightly drawn city boundaries, the population increase in the city has now slowed down considerably; this is mainly taking place in the numerous suburbs, which, with a combined population of around 6.4 million, are now more populous than the city itself. The Baghdad metropolitan region has a total population of 11.8 million (2010). The population of the agglomeration is expected to exceed 15 million by 2050 and 34 million by 2100.

The vast majority of the population is of Arab descent (this breaks down into Sunni and Shia religious groups), but there is also a large Kurdish community, as well as significant numbers of Turkmen, Assyrians/Aramaeans. Some Sudanese also inhabit the metropolis of millions.

The population figures in the following overview refer to the city proper without the suburban belt.

Languages

Iraqi Arabic, a dialect of Arabic, is spoken in the capital. When "standard Iraqi Arabic" is mentioned, the Baghdad dialect is almost always meant. This can be divided into an "Arabic" (gilit) and a "Judean" (keltu) branch according to the pronunciation of High Arabic qultu ("I said"). High Arabic has been a written language since the Arab conquest in the 7th century.

Members of the Chaldean Catholic Church celebrate the liturgy in the Syriac Aramaic language. However, since a large part of the faithful speak Arabic, the Arabic vernacular of the population is increasingly used in the reading of prayers, biblical passages and some liturgical formulas, and Holy Mass is often bilingual. Religious education is taught in Arabic.

The liturgical language of the Armenian Catholic Church is Armenian. The church language of the Assyrian Church of the East is Syriac, which belongs to Aramaic. The use of modern languages in worship is controversial. The Syriac Orthodox Church uses the West Syriac liturgy of Antioch. The Kurdish minority speaks Kurmanji, Sorani, and Southern Kurdish. The most common Kurdish written language is Sorani. The foreign language is English, and in the upper class of Baghdad French and sometimes German are also widely spoken.

Religions

Muslims

The situation in the Iraqi capital after the fall of Saddam Hussein in March 2003 is complex: the emergence of new political groups, the reawakening of traditional religious movements and the birth of new formations, the return of exiled religious leaders, and the influence of neighboring countries have created a framework against which political and religious entities often overlap and within which each group seeks to secure its own place in the future Baghdad.

The increased tensions led to terrorist attacks and expulsions of Sunnis and Shiites against each other. Since the "ethnic cleansing" has largely been completed, violence between the religious groups also fell in 2007. One reason for this is that there are hardly any heterogeneous neighbourhoods left, so that attacks require more elaborate planning. Another reason for the decline in violence is the US army's barrier walls separating Shiites and Sunnis.

95 percent of the population are Muslims. Accordingly, there are many mosques in Baghdad, the most famous of which is the Abu Hanifa Mosque. Before the invasion in 2003, 65 percent of the Muslims were Sunnis and 35 percent Shiites. Due to expulsions of the Sunni population, their share dropped to 20 to 25 percent by 2007, while the share of Shiites rose accordingly to 75 to 80 percent.

Christians

During the rule of Saddam Hussein, religious freedom had a relatively high status; the government in Baghdad also included Christian ministers such as the Chaldean Catholic Tariq Aziz. About half of Iraq's Christians live in Baghdad. Their share in the total population was until March 2003 about ten per cent, fell because of the crisis in Iraq until 2006 to about five per cent. Traditional centers of settlement of Baghdad's Christians were initially in Aqd an-Nasara ("Quarter of the Christians") on the east bank of the Tigris in the district of ar-Rusāfa, later especially in al-Karrada in the district of the same name east of the Tigris and in Dora in the district of ar-Raschīd west of the Tigris. About 150,000 Christians lived in Dora around the year 2000, the majority of them members of the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church. After the "religious cleansing" by al-Qaeda, there were still around 1500.

The political tensions between Sunnis and Shiites did not open safe perspectives for the Christians. Since the beginning of the war, according to the auxiliary bishop in Baghdad, Andreas Abouna, about 75 percent of the Christian population have left the capital to seek protection in the Kurdish north of Iraq or in the neighboring states of Turkey, Syria and Jordan.

The Patriarchate of Babylon, based in Baghdad, is the ecclesiastical form of organization of the Chaldean Catholic Church. It continues the early church Catholicate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. The Patriarchate of Babylon represents the largest Christian church in Iraq, with about 63 percent. The seat of the Patriarchate was moved in 1956 from the old Mater Dolorosa Cathedral to the new Chaldean Cathedral of St. Joseph.

The Roman Catholic Church in the region is organized in the Archbishopric of Baghdad. It was elevated to a bishopric on September 6, 1632, and to an immediate archbishopric on August 19, 1848. Its longtime cathedral was St. Joseph's Church, but the new Cathedral of St. Joseph and St. Teresa of the Child Jesus took over that role in 1984. The Archparchy of Baghdad with the Cathedral of Our Lady of Nareg is an archdiocese of the Armenian Catholic Church united with the Roman Catholic Church. Founded on June 29, 1954, the archparchy has no suffragans. The Syriac Catholic Church has in Baghdad the Sayidat al-Nejat Cathedral of the Archparchy of Baghdad. This was the target of a devastating terrorist attack on 31 October 2010, but was able to reopen. The Melkite Greek Catholic Church in the Patriarchal Exarchate of Iraq with the Cathedral of Saints George and Nicholas forms only a small congregation.

Baghdad is the historic seat of the Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East. After the Assyrian schism of 1964, the Old Church of the East consecrated its Patriarchal Cathedral of the Virgin Mary here in 1984, while the Assyrian Church of the East was left with the Gewargis Church in Dora, among others. The bishops of the Syriac Orthodox Church, formerly organized in the local area as the "Maphrianate of the East", also have their headquarters in Baghdad, since 1964 in the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul. Their members, especially in the diaspora, are often called Arameans.

A very long presence in Baghdad has been the Armenians of the ApostolicChurch. The small Miskinta Church had a predecessor built in 1639/1640 and served as Baghdad's Armenian Cathedral for centuries until the new Cathedral of St. Gregory the Illuminator took over that function in 1957. The Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch has only a few hundred members and has its archbishop's seat for Baghdad and Kuwait in St. George's Cathedral.

Jews

The Jewish population, which once played a significant economic, cultural and political role in public life, has almost completely left Iraq. From 1946 to 1949, there were repeated riots against Jews. When the government declared Zionism a capital crime on July 19, 1948, there were 135,000 Jews living in the country, 77,000 of them in Baghdad - a quarter of the total population.

On March 3, 1950, the Jewish population was allowed to leave the country, giving up their Iraqi citizenship. A year later, on March 10, 1951, the government froze the emigrants' property and froze their bank accounts. Until that day, they owned almost the entire souq of Khordja, the business district in central Baghdad. The Israeli government under David Ben-Gurion took this action as an opportunity to launch Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, whereby by 1952 some 95 percent of Iraqi Jews were transferred to Israel by airlift.

Economic restrictions were imposed on the 6,000 Jews who remained in Iraq. In 1958, their status as a Jewish community was revoked and the community's property confiscated. In the coming decades, the remaining Jews also left the country. In 1968, there were 2,500 Jews still living in Iraq; in 1976, there were 400, and in 2001, there were only 100. On July 25, 2003, six of the last 34 Jews were flown out of Baghdad to Israel.