Iraq officials decry demolition of 300-year-old minaret for road expansion

Officials and citizens in Iraq have expressed outrage following the demolition of a 300-year-old minaret of a mosque in the southern city of Basra on Friday.

Built in 1727 and standing at almost 40 feet, the historic mud-brick Siraji minaret and its mosque were bulldozed at dawn to make way for a road expansion in order to address a traffic bottleneck issue in the city.

Despite the site being considered as a heritage site by the Ministry of Culture, the Governor of Basra, Assad Al-Eidani, ordered the demolition on the grounds that it posed a public safety hazard, as the minaret was prone to collapse, and in response to growing complaints of traffic around the mosque.

Iraqi #archaeologists are so angry about how the local government of Basra demolished a 300-year-old minaret. The destruction was carried out at night in a #gangster way, ignoring calls by the heritage authority to keep it or dismantle it professionally to reconstruct it again. pic.twitter.com/3bpHcscfWT

— Jaafar Jotheri جعفر الجوذري (@JaafarJotheri) July 15, 2023

According to the Art Newspaper, both the Sunni Waqf (endowment) who own the land and the mosque, as well as officials from the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) said that the destruction violated a long-standing agreement with the Basran governorate to arrange a safe removal of the historic minaret and include it in a new mosque.

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The head of Basra’s Sunni endowment, Mohammed Munla, was also reportedly fired from his position on Sunday after publicly criticising the demolition, while the Director of SBAH, Laith Majid Hussein, was quoted as saying: “We are shocked by this action. The minaret was of great significance. It was in very good condition and one of the few intact minarets of its era.”

It was also one of the few historic Sunni mosques in Basra which served the community for significant occasions such as the Eid prayer. One Iraqi Twitter account, Baghdad Page, described the demolition as the biggest loss of Iraq’s Islamic heritage since the destruction of the Dome of Al-Kabri in 2021 and the bombing of the Al-Hadba minaret by Daesh in 2017.

جريمة بحق التراث الوطني حيث قامت محافظة البصرة بهدم منارة جامع السراجي التاريخية ثاني أقدم منارة في البصرة و واحدة من أقدم المنارات الأثرية على مستوى العراق بعد ان بقيت قائمة 3 قرون (1727)
هذه هي اكبر خسارة يتكبدها التراث العراقي منذ هدم قبة الكعبري سنة 2021 و نسف داعش للمنارة… pic.twitter.com/NutrRMiNM8

— صفحة بغداد (@BaghdadPage) July 14, 2023

Hussein, along with Iraq’s Minister of Culture Ahmed Fadak Al Badrani, threatened legal action. “We will take legal action against any administrative or personal overreach that works to cause harm, especially the demolition of the Al Saraji mosque [and its] minaret,” Al Badrani said.

“We demand the Sunni and Shia parties to intervene and stand firmly and punish their members in case they are allowed to overtake or falsify historical facts,” the minister added.

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