Iraqi Martyr's Monument

The Martyr’s Monument is a memorial designed by the Iraqi sculptor Ismail Fattah Al-Turk in the year 1983, and it is located in the capital Baghdad, on the Rusafa side of the city.

The monument was built to commemorate the Iraqi soldiers who were killed in the Iran-Iraq War. However, Iraqis today generally consider it as a remembrance of all the martyrs of Iraq.

The Martyr’s Monument was built as part of a broader program by the former government, and the idea originated in the 1970s, aiming to establish several artistic works intended to beautify Baghdad's landmarks, instill a sense of national pride, and at the same time immortalize Saddam Hussein’s image as a strong and victorious leader.

It was built during the peak period in which Saddam Hussein was commissioning many artistic works and spending a considerable amount of money on monuments and statues.

This monument is one of three that were built to commemorate Iraq's pain and suffering as a result of the eight-year war.

The beauty of this monument lies in the optical illusion of the two domes: the viewer coming from the beginning of the street sees them as one closed dome, and as one gets closer, they begin to split into two halves gradually, as a sign of the emergence of something — the Iraqi flag rising upward.

The two domes sit on a circular platform with a diameter of 190 meters, and below it there is a museum. The height of the two domes is 40 meters, and the monument occupies a wide area of approximately 42 hectares.

This entire structure lies in the middle of a vast artificial lake.

The cost of building the Martyr’s Monument was about 52 million Iraqi dinars (around 45,000 USD), and the duration of the work was 600 days.

After the events of 2003, attention was directed toward removing this monument because it was built at the end of one of the Ba'ath Party government's wars, so many believed that this monument symbolized it — even though there is nothing that indicates that, because Ismail wanted his monument to be a symbol of the martyr only, in all times and places.

For that reason, Ismail made sure that the monument would not be linked to any authority, to preserve its sacredness and aesthetic value.

When the architect Zaha Hadid was asked about which Baghdad monument she would prefer to be a media symbol for Baghdad, she did not hesitate — she said it was the Martyr’s Monument, because it is the most expressive of the pride and sacrifices of the Iraqi people in contemporary history.