Lake · Iraq
Lake Hammar
Lake Hammar is a large, shallow lake in the marshes of southern Iraq, not far from the city of Basra. It is the biggest open water in the Hammar Marshes, a wide land of reeds and water.
Picture credit: علي راقي (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Lake Hammar?
Countries on its shores: Iraq.
Largest lake of: Iraq.
Middle of the lake: 30.78° N, 47.02° E
The story behind it
Side arms of the Euphrates River bring water into Lake Hammar, and a short channel carries it into the Shatt al-Arab near Basra. The size of the lake changes a lot: it covers between about 600 and 1 350 km². Even so, it is very shallow – at the deepest point about 1.8 metres in winter and about 3 metres in spring. The water is slightly salty, which is called brackish. The Marsh Arabs have lived here for a very long time. They keep water buffalo, travel by canoe and build houses from reeds, and some of their villages stand on floating islands. In the 1990s much of the marshland was drained and dried out. After 2003 people opened the embankments again, and water came back to large parts of the marshes. Today herons, egrets and kingfishers live here again, and since 2016 the marshes have been part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Iraq's even bigger lakes, such as Lake Tharthar, were filled through canals and are used as reservoirs, so Lake Hammar counts as the country's largest natural lake.
Find it on the globe
Lake Hammar is there as a small blue dot with its name, right on the water. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How big is Lake Hammar?
Lake Hammar covers between about 600 and 1 350 km², depending on how much water there is. It is very shallow: at most about 3 metres deep.
Who lives at Lake Hammar?
The Marsh Arabs have lived in these marshes for a very long time. They keep water buffalo, travel by canoe and build their houses from reeds.
What happened to the marshes around the lake?
In the 1990s much of the marshland was drained and dried out. After 2003 water came back to large parts of it, and many birds and other animals returned.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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