Under Threat: Baghdad’s ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ Houses

There are ways around this: “It was the only way I could sell my house,” says another local who said he wished to remain anonymous before admitting that he had to burn his house down to get around heritage orders and sell his land.

Another owner of a historic Baghdad building, Abdul-Jabbar al-Sudani, points out that bombs and conflict in Baghdad have also damaged older constructions and that attention needs to be paid to foundations and to sewage leaks. “There are hundreds of buildings like this in Baghdad,” he told NIQASH. “A lot of them are under threat because of bombing from the first and second Gulf wars.”

One local said he and his family had simply deserted the home they and their family members had lived in for over 150 years. “I became desperate,” he says. “I was waiting for promises made by the Ministry of Culture to be fulfilled but nothing happened.”

Centres for the preservation of culture and various civil society organisations have also called upon the state to recognise the importance of Baghdad’s ancient buildings and to maintain them.

And in fact there is already a law that stipulates they do exactly that. Heritage Law Number 55, of 2002, “talks about financial resources that should be made available to the owners of historic buildings,” says Marwan al-Atroushi, a legal expert.

“This law also protects historic buildings against demolition or destruction. It penalizes any person who deliberately destroys a historic building and the punishment is up to six years in prison.”

However as Hakim Abdul Zahra, director of media and relations at Baghdad’s provincial council, says, the city lacks the money to resolve this issue. “The municipality of Baghdad had prepared many plans for the heritage buildings,” Abdul Zahra said. “But most of them require a lot of money or some kind of joint venture between the city and private investors.”