IRAQ

13th of April

Today, we arrived in Iraq! Yeeeey???? …

We were only staying here for one day because it’s not safe here for us.

Our guide, Theo, who is also from Belgium, will be with us the whole time when we are here in Iraq. Just for our safety, he already planned our trip in Baghdad. We will visit a mosque, the Swords of Qādisīyah and the National Museum of Iraq. Theo also arranged our sleeping place.

By bus and under high security, we visited the Spiral Minaret of the Great Mosque in Samarra. We climbed the stairs with Theo and enjoyed the wonderful view.

The Great Mosque of Samarra is from the 9^th century. It is one of the most important Islamic architectural monuments.

The mosque was at one time the largest in the world. It was built entirely of brick within a wall flanked with towers, its minaret is a spiraling cone 52 meters high and 33 meters wide, the minaret is called the Malwiya Tower.

The mosque had 17 aisles, and its walls were paneled with mosaics of dark blue glass.

Before we planned our trip to Iraq we looked up some things on the internet about the Great Mosque of Samarra. We founded that the mosque was destroyed after an invasion of Iraq. The only things that remain after the explosion is the outer wall and the minaret. It is very sad that the mosque is damaged, because if you look at the pictures of the mosque from back in the days, it was amazing!

After our visit to the Great Mosque we went back, by bus and again under high security. Because it was a long drive (120km) and because it was not safe here we didn’t go out and stayed in our hotel.

14^th of April

In the morning our guide, Theo, who also slept in our hotel, took care for our little breakfast.

For lunch Theo got to know us the Iraqi cuisine. It was sober but it was delicious.

We ate Qeema. Qeema is a flavorful meat dish. It’s minced lamb or goat with mostly peas or potatoes but for us it was served over rice.

After our lunch we went to see the Swords of Qādisīyah.

It’s a huge pair of triumphal arches. They celebrate the alleged victory over Iran. Because of our safety we just passed by with our bus. The swords were huge and I think it would look nice if we could take a picture with it but unfortunately..

After seeing the swords we wanted to visit the National Museum of Iraq.

So we tried, but unfortunately the museum was only open for special occasions. While we were standing in front of the museum Theo told us everything about it. Before the Iraq war, the museum had a huge collection. It tells the history of all human civilization, the show the development of everything like hunting, art, law, …

Theo also showed us some pictures. We were really disappointed that we couldn’t visit the museum because it looked very interesting!

So, after that we drove to the airport were we took an airplane to Syria.

We will keep you posted! See you all soon!

XOXO Céline Delbecq