Al Başrah al Qadīmah, Iraq · UTC+3 ☆

Al Basrah al Qadimah is in the Asia/Baghdad timezone (AST/UTC+3), with no daylight saving. Old Basra, Iraq’s ancient southern port, is part of a city with over 2 million people.

Al Başrah al Qadīmah, old Basra, is the historic core of a city that has been at the center of Middle Eastern history for over 1,400 years. It sits where the Shatt al-Arab waterway approaches the Persian Gulf, a position that made it one of the great trading ports of the medieval Islamic world. The city of scholars and merchants that appears in One Thousand and One Nights. Now it is Iraq’s oil capital, built on some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves.

The clock is Arabia Standard Time, UTC+3. The IANA identifier is Asia/Baghdad. Iraq does not observe daylight saving time.

Baghdad and Basra share the timezone, keeping the country’s north-south axis synchronized. The two cities are about 550 kilometers apart, but the business of Iraq, government in the north, oil infrastructure in the south, runs on the same clock.

Heat, water, and evening life

Basra’s heat is legendary. Summers push past 50 degrees Celsius. The city’s daily schedule adjusts: work starts early, pause in the afternoon, resume in the evening. The waterways of the Shatt al-Arab, and the date palm groves that made Basra famous, offer marginal relief. Evening activity extends well past midnight in summer, when the air finally cools enough to be comfortable.

9am in Basra is 6am in London during European winter.

Sources

• IANA Time Zone Database - Asia/Baghdad
• Basra Governorate