The current article aims to shed light on the way three Iraqi authors — ‘Abd al-Rahman Majid al-Rubay'i, Gha'ib Tu‘ma Farman, and ‘Aliya Mamduh — refer in their works to two main bodies of water: the Tigris River and the marshes in Southern Iraq. It begins with a review of how the Tigris River has been depicted in Arabic poetry throughout the years and then explores the functionalities of the Tigris in prose works, both as a reflection of the characters' inner world and as a means of social criticism. The final part of the article discusses life in the marshes through a short story written two decades prior to the drainage of the region imposed by Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the 1991 revolt and the Gulf War. Since the stories are rooted in the authors’ intimate knowledge of the region, they can be interpreted as having a historically informative function, adding the aspect of human emotional experience to what is usually examined through quantitative data alone.

Tigris RivermarshesIraqi literature‘Abd al-Rahman Majid al-Rubay‘iGha'ib Tu‘ma Farman‘Aliya Mamduh