Fact Sheets
Fallujah, Iraq
Oct 16, 2007 - 2:03:04 PM

Fallujah, Iraq (Arabic; sometimes transliterated as Falluja or Fallouja) is a city in the Iraqi province of Al Anbar, located roughly 69 km (43 miles) west of Baghdad on the Euphrates. Fallujah dates from Babylonian times and was host to important Jewish academies for many centuries. The city grew from a small town in 1947 to a pre-war population of about 350,000 inhabitants in 2003. The current population is unknown but estimated at over 350,000, with approximately 300 new residents arriving monthly. Within Iraq, it is known as the "city of mosques" for the more than 200 mosques found in the city and surrounding villages. The war has reportedly damaged 60% of the city's buildings, with 20% totally destroyed including 60 of the city's mosques.

History

The region has been inhabited for many millennia. There is evidence that the area surrounding Fallujah was inhabited in Babylonian times. The etymology of the town's name is in some doubt, but one theory is that its Syriac name, Pallgutha, is derived from the word division. The city's name in Aramaic is Pumbedita.

The region of Fallujah was a part of the Sassanid Persian province of Anbar. The word anbar is Persian and means "warehouse". This region was considered to be the warehouse of the Sassanid troops. The city of Fallujah itself was called Misiche at that time.

The city played host for several centuries to one of the most important Jewish academies, the Pumbedita Academy, which from 258 CE to 1038 was one of the two most important centers of Jewish learning worldwide.

Under the Ottoman Empire, Fallujah was a minor stop on one of the country's main roads across the desert west from Baghdad.

In the spring of 1920, the British, who had gained control of Iraq after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, sent Lt Col Gerard Leachman, a renowned explorer and a senior colonial officer, to meet with local leader Shaykh Dhari, perhaps to waiver a loan given to the sheikh. Exactly what happened depends on the source, but according to the Arab version, Gerard Leachman was betrayed by the sheikh who had his relatives shoot him in the leg, then stabbed him to death.

During the brief Anglo-Iraqi War of 1941, the Iraqi army was defeated by the British in a battle near Fallujah. In 1947 the town had only about 10,000 inhabitants. It grew rapidly into a city after Iraqi independence with the influx of oil wealth into the country. Its position on one of the main roads out of Baghdad made it of central importance.

Under Saddam Hussein, who ruled Iraq from 1979 to 2003, Fallujah came to be an important area of support for the regime, along with the rest of the region labeled by the US military as the "Sunni Triangle". Many residents of the primarily Sunni city were employees and supporters of Saddam's government, and many senior Ba'ath Party officials were natives of the city. Fallujah was heavily industrialised during the Saddam era, with the construction of several large factories, including one closed down by United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in the 1990s that may have been used to create chemical weapons. A new highway system (a part of Saddam's infrastructure initiatives) circumvented Fallujah and gradually caused the city to decline in national importance by the time of the Iraq War.