Al-Chibayish is a town on the

Euphrates River The Euphrates () is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Tigris–Euphrates river system, Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia ( ''the land between the rivers'') ...

Al-Chibayish District Al-Chibayish District () is a district of the Dhi Qar Governorate, Iraq, located to the east of Nasiriyah and northwest of Basra Governorate. The district capital is Al-Chibayish. The district's geography is dominated by the Hammar Marshes Th ...

Dhi Qar Dhi Qar Governorate ( ar, ذي قار, translit=Thi Qār, ) is a governorate in southern Iraq. The provincial capital is Nasiriyah. Prior to 1976 the governorate was known as Muntafiq Governorate. Thi Qar was the heartland of the ancient Iraqi c ...

governorate, in southern

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

. It is the capital of its eponymous district. Al-Chibayish is inhabited primarily by

Marsh Arab The Marsh Arabs ( ar, عرب الأهوار ''ʻArab al-Ahwār'' "Arabs of the Marshlands"), also referred to as the Maʻdān ( ar, معدان "dweller in the plains") or Shroog (Iraqi ar, شروق, "those from the east")—the latter two often ...

s of the

Beni Isad is a Japanese R&B singer, who debuted in 2004 under the Avex Trax label. In 2008, Arashiro left Avex Trax and transferred to Universal Music Japan where she started to perform as simply Beni (stylized as BENI). She was initially best known fo ...

tribe. Al-Chibayish has historically been an important hub for the Marsh Arab people and a traditional boat-building center for their

mashoof A mashoof (Arabic: مشحوف), also transliterated , is a long and narrow canoe traditionally used on the Mesopotamian Marshes and rivers of southern Iraq. It was widely used by the Marsh Arabs, or Maʻdān (معدان), as a fishing boat, water ...

canoes.

History

Al-Chibayish was the subject of a groundbreaking 1955

ethnographic Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

study, ''Marsh Dwellers of the Euphrates Delta'', by Iraqi anthropologist

Shakir Mustafa Salim Shakir Mustafa Salim (1919–1985) was an Iraqi social anthropologist who taught in the Department of Sociology at Baghdad University.Eric Davis, ''Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq'' (University of Calif ...

. Al-Chibayish was home to about 11,000 people in 1955. Al-Chibayish's population dropped to less than 6,000 by 2003 as a result of

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...

draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes The Mesopotamian Marshes were drained in Iraq and to a smaller degree in Iran between the 1950s and 1990s to clear large areas of the marshes in the Tigris-Euphrates river system. Formerly covering an area of around , the main sub-marshes, the H ...

and his associated campaign of violence against the Marsh Arabs, during which Al-Chibayish was attacked by military helicopters. However, the population recovered and quintupled between 2001 and 2009, when it reached an estimated 30,416 people.

References

{{Iraq-geo-stub Populated places in Dhi Qar Province District capitals of Iraq Marsh Arabs