Heritage boats returned to the city of Basra in southern Iraq, to replace the country’s rivers, within the framework of a local initiative called the “Navigational Heritage Project”, aimed at reviving the navigational heritage that has been associated with the civilizations of Mesopotamia for thousands of years.
Volunteers and local residents have led new traditional boats using al -Majalb, in a review inspired by designs dating back to the Sumerian and Babylonian ages, as part of cultural activities aimed at highlighting this forgotten heritage.
“This place was chosen to highlight the importance of old navigational boats, and to revive them after they have been disappeared long ago. These boats used means of transportation during the Sumerian and Babylonian periods, but we no longer see them today. Hence the initiative came to introduce people to them again and enhance awareness of old transport forms.”
The project was established in 2017 with the aim of rebuilding models of boats used in ancient Iraqi civilizations, based on historical manuscripts and texts that were documented in a number of museum and research sources.
Some of these heritage models are displayed in the Basra Civilization Museum, formerly known as the National Museum in the city, while other boats that were actually restored in the activities of the Al -Morshi Navigational Club in Basra are used, where they are available to those who want to go through the experience of heritage navigation.
Heritage return to life
Al -Basri citizen Nawfal Abdel -Hassan expressed his pride in this project, saying: “I am in a visually Iraqi citizen – I am proud of seeing such heritage projects that return to life. Once we ascend on a boat of a kind, we feel overwhelming happiness, as if we live in the time of the Sumerians. To restore this date again. “
To this day, the project produced about 100 heritage boats in various Iraqi governorates, with the support of several international cultural institutions, including the Heritage Preservation Fund, the British Council, and the International Alliance for Heritage Protection in conflict areas, and in close cooperation with the Center for Manuscripts and visual heritage.
The Iraqi plastic artist Rashad Nizar Selim, the project supervisor, said: “The boats in the civilizations of the Rafidain Valley played a role no less important than agriculture in the emergence of civilizations, whether in the areas of trade, communication or daily life. But due to wars, these boats disappeared and absent from popular memory.”
He added: “Since 2017, we started recording and inspection of the remainder of this heritage, and we discovered that there are those who are still working in this field, or descended from families known as the boat industry.
Boats in Mesopotamia civilizations
For his part, Majed Al -Braikan, Director of the Center for Manuscripts and Optical Heritage, explained that “some types of boats used today are due to their roots to the Sumerian era, but they gradually disappeared over time, while other types appeared later that were common in southern Iraq, but they in turn disappeared.”
He continued, saying: “Through this initiative, we try to revive these boats first in the form of mini artistic models, then in their natural sizes. For example, some Sumerian panels show different types of boats, including the pads, and it is still used today in the marshes areas, and some tribes and southern tribes that have developed their own patterns in its industry. The crushing is attributed to the names of those tribes. “
