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River

Gharraf Canal

River

Gharraf Canal is a mapped river in the YearMaps hydrographic index. River courses organise settlement, agriculture and frontier-making more durably than any political boundary, and this reach is indexed against the dams, lakes and cities within its catchment.

Feature Class
River
Coordinates
31.82°, 46.09°
7.0
Coordinates: 31.8228° N, 46.0903° ECountry: IraqOpenStreetMap ↗
Gharraf Canal, Iraq
Gharraf Canal. Image via Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on the file page).

About Gharraf Canal

The Gharraf Canal, Shaṭṭ al-Ḥayy (Arabic: شط الحيّ), also known as Shaṭṭ al-Gharrāf (Arabic: شط الغرّاف) or the Hai river, is an ancient canal in Iraq that connects the Tigris at Kut al Amara with the Euphrates east of Nasiriyah. As an Ottoman (Turkish) position lay along the canal, it was one of the objectives of intense military action during the First World War, especially the siege of Kut (December 1915 to April 1916).

Between 1934 and 1939, the Kut Barrage was constructed in the Tigris to control the water level of the river and to provide a constant inflow of water to the Shatt al-Hayy.

Encyclopedic summary adapted from Wikipedia: Al-Gharraf River (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Major River Dossiers

Hand-written studies of the great river systems of history.

Connected Reaches

Nearby watercourses in the same drainage network.

Water Bodies in the Catchment

Settlements Along the Reach

Hydraulic Infrastructure Nearby

Surrounding Terrain

Gharraf Canal: Quick Answers

Where is Gharraf Canal?
Gharraf Canal is located in Iraq, at 31.8228° N, 46.0903° E.
Are there dams on the Gharraf Canal?
No dam on the Gharraf Canal is recorded in the YearMaps dam index, which covers major structures only.