Al-Shaheed Monument
Interesting facts
- The monument was conceived as part of a trio of Baghdad memorials, alongside the Monument to the Unknown Soldier of 1982 and the Victory Arch of 1989.
- Its pre-cast components were made of carbon-fibre-reinforced concrete.
- Beneath the flag, an oculus in the platform lets daylight fall into the underground museum below.
- Ismail Fatah Al Turk was born in Basra, studied painting and sculpture in Baghdad, and earned a master's degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.
- The same sculptor made Baghdad's bronze statues of the poets Abu Nuwas and Maaruf al-Rusafi.
- The monument stands on Palestine Street on the Rusafa side of Baghdad.
Why it is worth it
On the east bank of the Tigris in Baghdad, two halves of a vast turquoise dome stand apart, as if a single shell had been split open from top to bottom. Between them an eternal flame burns beneath a twisted metal flagpole carrying the Iraqi flag. The Al-Shaheed Monument, the Martyr's Memorial, is one of the most recognisable works of modern architecture in the Middle East, its blue tiles shimmering in the sun.
The monument was built between 1981 and 1983 to honour Iraqi soldiers who died in the Iran–Iraq War; today it is understood more broadly as a memorial to all of Iraq's martyrs. The concept came from the sculptor Ismail Fatah Al Turk (1934–2004), one of the leading Iraqi artists of his generation, working with the architect Saman Kamal and the Baghdad Architecture Group. Each half of the dome rises about 40 metres and is built of a galvanised steel frame clad in glazed turquoise ceramic tiles, a colour long associated with the domes of Islamic architecture in Iraq and Iran. The halves sit on a circular platform 190 metres across, set in an artificial lake, so that the dome seems to float on water. A marble slab bears verses from the Quran in Kufic script, and a spring of water symbolises the blood of the fallen.
Beneath the platform lie two levels of rooms containing a museum, a library, a lecture hall and an exhibition gallery, and the grounds around the lake are laid out with parks, walkways and bridges. The monument quickly became a national emblem: it appeared on the reverse of the Iraqi 25-dinar banknote issued in 1986, and the American magazine Art in America praised its design as among the most beautiful in the Middle East. It remains a landmark of the Rusafa side of Baghdad, a city founded in the eighth century by the Abbasid caliphs on the banks of the Tigris.
Getting there
The monument stands in the al-Rusafa district on the east bank of the Tigris, about 4 km from the centre of Baghdad. The nearest airport is Baghdad International Airport (BGW), about 22 km away in a straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Al-Shaheed Monument, also known as the Martyr's Memorial, is a monument designed by Iraqi sculptor Ismail Fatah al-Turk and situated in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. It was originally dedicated to the Iraqi soldiers killed in the Iran–Iraq War and has since grown to become generally considered to be a commemoration of all Iraqi martyrs.
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