Qurna
(click to enlarge)
Qurna
The following is a description of Qurna as recollected by Gavin Young from his book "IRAQ Land of Two Rivers."
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Qurna (click to enlarge) |
The date-palm groves cleave to the banks of the Shatt al Arab so that it looks from the air like a long green finger pointing north to the confluence of the twin rivers, where a small town squats on the very corner at which, in a swirl of eddies and currents, the Tigris meets the Euphrates. The town is called Qurna. Because of its strategic position Qurna has been the scene of conflicts for centuries. The Turks set up a customs post here and levied taxes on all goods passing up to or down from Baghdad. Tavernlet, in the seventeenth century, saw 'a fortress upon the point where the two Rivers meet… Upon the fort of Gorno [sic] which was well furnished with Cannon, we saw the Prince of Balsara's Son, who was governor of the Fort. And here it is that Account of the Customs is taken.' The Turkish customs officers were civil but thorough, he added. Sometimes goods were hidden between decks under bundles of wood or reeds, but 'the Customers bring a great Piercer, with which they bore the sides of the Bark quite through for the discovery of concealed goods.. .' Two centuries later, Keppel saw there 'a Turkish three-decker at anchor, commanded by a Captain Pasha. It was a rotten hulk, seventy years old, with seven men on board, though the Government was charged with the expense of the full equipment.'
Today Qurna is a pleasant little place with a good rest-house (with a bar and restaurant) at the very tip of the point where the rivers meet. The view is remarkable. The contrast of the lush south of .Iraq with the rest of a country which is often too bare can be seen very well at Qurna- and even better on side-trips up the rivers. Each river has a strongly defined character. As a modern visitor has remarked:
'the banks of the Euphrates are the more wooded and picturesque and the Tigris is the busier. The backwaters, creeks and side channels of both are exceedingly beautiful, and here one can get a glimpse of the fertility that must have belonged to Mesopotamia when it was a network of streams and when the forests abounded.'
The Tigris had become the busier of the two rivers after 1839, when four iron. steamers were put together at Basra under the command of Lieutenant Lynch. The regular river service these steamers provided was largely responsible for the growth at Qurna and even more so for that of Amara higher up.
Keppel says that 'Koorna' was once a city built in honor of his wife Apamea by Seleucus N icator I, the general who succeeded Alexander the Great on the latter's death on the Tigris. And Qurna is famous for being one of the reputed sites of the Garden of Eden. Eve's Tree - the Tree of Knowledge- stands, looking a trifle stunted, on the water's edge not far from the rest-house, wanly waiting for gullible tourists. (Another, even less plausible, site of Eden was thought by Sir William Wiilcocks, the great early twentieth-century British irrigation expert, to have been on the Euphrates between Ana and Hit.)
This area was the scene of considerable fighting in the First World War. The Turkish garrison in Qurna:
'mostly Anatolians [ according to a British eye-witness] had to fight it out or surrender.. . Before dark they had abandoned their positions by the brick kilns. There were parleyings during the night between the two camps; and among the Turks much poring over a thumb-marked and dog-eared copy of the Hague Convention in English and French. It was found next morning on the Governor's table open at "The Surrender of Townships" .. We captured Subhi Bey, late Wali of Basra, one thousand and thirty-four prisoners of war and four guns.'
The British, with a fleet of small boats and sloops Espkgle, Clio and Odin chased the Turkish gunboats Marmaris and Bulbul up the AI Azair, shelled and beached them. At this point, Arab tribal Levies who had assisted the Turks dispersed into the Marshes. Then, after long palavas in the mudhifi; Marsh Arab Sheikhs cautiously emerged to discover that the British had installed a Political Officer in Qurna whose name- for them a tongue-twister - was Crosthwaite.
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