University of Baghdad

The largest university in Iraq, and second in the Arab world to the University of Cairo, the University of Baghdad was formed in 1957 by the amalgamation of a number of existing institutions in the city, of which the longest-established was the College of Law, established in 1908.

It missed by a year the distinction of being Iraq’s first modern university, trailing the Jesuit Al-Hikma University, which it took over following the Baathist coup of 1968. Baghdad’s more recent univesity affiliations include the universities of Basra and Mosul.

Its stated vision is to be "a pioneering and productive cognitive university that competes with other universities internationally". Al-Jadriya is the oldest and most significant of its campuses, It is located on an isthmus in central Baghdad bounded on three sides by the River Tigris and is characterised by a distinguished architectural heritage. Initial constructions in the 1960s were designed by a group including Walter Gropius, while the extensions of 1982 were under the care of Hisham Ashkouri, a 1970 Baghdad graduate.

Other campuses are located at Bab al-Muadham, Ali Wizariya and Nahda Cross Road which are used all day long with around one third of the student body taking their courses in the evening.

The nine research centres include those devoted to Palestinian studies, scientific Arab heritage and market research and consumer protection, while journals published by the university’s eight colleges of science include the Iraqi Journals of Science (founded 1959), Physics (2002) and Tropical Diseases (2004), each appearing four times a year in English and Arabic.

Much was destroyed by military action in 2003 with the College of Fine Arts for instance losing 70,000 books. A proportion of these were replaced, from a wish list provided by the college in 2018 by those attending an artist’s installation of empty shelves and blank books in Toronto.