Al-Shatrah

Al-Shatrah is a town in southern Iraq, located northeast of Nasiriyah. It is the administrative capital of the al-Shatrah District, a part of the Dhi Qar Governorate. Al-Shatrah is situated along the Gharraf Canal at the intersection with Highway 7. It is 22.35 km west of the ancient city of Lagash. In 2009, it had a population estimated 254,000. Al-Shatrah was founded in 1872 during the Ottoman era in Iraq when the town was part of the Basra Vilayet. Not long afterward, the town established a strong trading relationship with Baghdad and became a hub of the grain trade in southern Iraq. Shatrah became the most important town along the Gharraf Canal and gained the nickname Little Baghdad. It served as the administrative center of a qadaa subdistrict of the same name,

which was part of the Muntafiq Sanjak of the Basra Vilayet. The town's original official name was "Shatrat al-Muntafiq, but it was simplified by local residents to al-Shatrah" to distinguish it from the nearby town of Qal'at Salih, which was officially known as "Shatrat al-Amarah by the Ottoman authorities. In the summer of 1889, al-Shatrah experienced an outbreak of cholera, which caused the deaths of around 700 of its inhabitants, including the qaimaqam lieutenant-governor of the town. Prior to the outbreak, the population stood at around 5,000, but al-Shatrah was largely and temporarily deserted after the outbreak.