Shatt al-Arab Corniche

The Shatt al-Arab is one of the great geographical features of the Middle East — the wide, slow waterway formed by the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, flowing south to the Persian Gulf. The Corniche in Ashar district runs along the western bank and is the best vantage point to appreciate the waterway. In the evenings, locals walk here and small boats cross back and forth. The opposite bank is Iran.

The walk is most atmospheric at sunset, when the light turns the water gold and the minarets of the city's mosques appear in silhouette. By day the waterway is busy with commercial shipping and smaller craft. The date palms that once made this stretch famous are largely gone — casualties of the long Iran-Iraq War — but the setting retains a melancholy grandeur. The Corniche is the social centre of Ashar and the best place to understand the old city's relationship with the water.

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A story
The Shatt al-Arab — the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates — was once lined with date palm plantations stretching for hundreds of kilometres. The Iran-Iraq War destroyed most of them, and what was considered the largest date palm grove in the world became a battlefield. In the 1970s, Iraq produced 80 percent of the world's dates; today the number is a fraction of that.