Arab, Iraqi

Iraq's Shia Arabs are the country's largest people, about half of all Iraqis, living in Baghdad and across the southern plain of the Tigris and Euphrates down to Basra. They follow Twelver Shia Islam, and Iraq holds its holiest places outside Arabia: the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, seat of the leading Shia clergy, and the shrines of Imam Hussein and his brother Abbas in Karbala. Each year more than 20 million pilgrims walk to Karbala for Arbaeen, fed and sheltered for free by roadside tents run by local families and tribes. Most southern tribes, such as the Muntafiq, became Shia only in the 18th and 19th centuries, and tribal sheikhs still settle feuds alongside the state. Since 2003 Shia Arab parties have led the government, but drought, unemployment, corruption and armed militias weigh heavily on the south.

Iraqi Arabs in Iran are mostly Shia families who fled or were expelled from Iraq under the Ba'athist government, joined since 2003 by students, clerics and traders. In 1971-72 and again in 1979-84 Baghdad deported some 100,000 people of Iranian descent from Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala, many of them culturally Iraqi Arab, and Shia opposition families followed in the 1980s and after the 1991 uprising. Most refugees went home after 2003, leaving about 12,000-28,000 registered Iraqi refugees, Arabs and Feyli Kurds together, alongside naturalised families. Their centre is Dowlatabad in southeast Tehran, a 'little Baghdad' where traders say you cannot do business without Arabic and Quds Street restaurants serve Iraqi kebab and sweets; others live near the shrines and seminaries of Qom and Mashhad.

Iraqi Arabs in Jordan are mostly Baghdad families who fled the sectarian war after 2003, when Jordan hosted close to half a million Iraqis, joined by earlier business people and professionals and later by refugees from the Islamic State. Most have since gone home or resettled in the West, and about 80,000 Arabic-speaking Iraqis now remain, almost all in Amman with smaller numbers in Zarqa and Irbid. Unlike most refugee groups they were largely urban, educated and middle-class, mainly Sunni with a Shia minority, and many lived on savings and transfers from Iraq. They keep Baghdadi Arabic, Iraqi dishes such as masgouf grilled fish and kubba, and close links with relatives scattered across Iraq, Europe and North America.

Iraqi Arabs in Kuwait are a small, cautious community of 13,000 to 18,000 people, living beside the country that occupied Kuwait in 1990-91 and whose northern border lies only a few hours' drive from Basra. Ties are old: merchants, sailors and families moved between Basra, Zubair and Kuwait for centuries, and some Kuwaiti families are of southern Iraqi origin. After the 1991 war Kuwait expelled many Iraqis and refused to shelter refugees, and suspicion has lingered through disputes over the border, the Khor Abdullah waterway and Kuwaitis missing since the occupation. Today's Iraqis are mostly professionals, traders and family members, largely Shia from Basra and the south with Sunni and Christian minorities, who speak Mesopotamian Arabic close to the Gulf Arabic of their hosts.

Iraqi Arabs in Lebanon are a small community of a few thousand, the remnant of tens of thousands who fled sectarian war in Iraq after 2003 and used Beirut as a waiting room for resettlement in Europe, North America and Australia. Those who remain are a mix of Sunni refugees who never left, Shia families drawn to Lebanon's Shia south and Beirut's southern suburbs, students, and traders, alongside a constant flow of Iraqi visitors: Iraqis are the largest group of tourists and of foreign hospital patients in Lebanon, crowding Beirut's Hamra district near the American University hospital. They speak Mesopotamian Arabic, which sounds markedly different from Lebanese speech, and keep Iraqi food and mourning customs, especially among the Shia during Muharram. When Israel bombed Lebanon in the autumn of 2024 many Iraqi residents fled overland through Syria, while thousands of Lebanese took refuge in Iraq.

Iraqis are one of the smallest Arab communities in Saudi Arabia, about 6,400 people, most of them Arabs with a few Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrian or Chaldean Christians, unusual among the kingdom's foreigners in that women outnumber men. Relations broke off when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, and the 33,000 Iraqis who fled the crushed southern uprising of 1991 spent up to seventeen years in the desert camp of Rafha before most were resettled in the United States and elsewhere or went home after 2003. Ties reopened only slowly, with the Saudi embassy in Baghdad in 2015 and the Arar border crossing for trade in 2020, so today's community is a mix of long-settled families, some living in Hafr al-Batin near the border for four decades, Iraqi wives and relatives of Saudis, and professionals in Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Province. They speak the Mesopotamian Arabic of Baghdad and the south, and are Sunni and Shia Muslims, whose Shia families keep their religious gatherings private.

Iraqi Arabs in Syria are what remains of the largest refugee community in the region: more than a million Iraqis fled to Syria in 2003-2009, filling Damascus suburbs such as Jaramana and Sayyida Zaynab, but most went home or were resettled abroad once Syria's own war began. Those left are long-term residents, spouses of Syrians, traders and some ten thousand registered refugees in Damascus and Hasakah, mostly Sunni with a Shia minority. They are recognised at once by their Mesopotamian dialect and keep Iraqi dishes such as masgouf grilled fish and kleicha pastries. The Shia families of Sayyida Zaynab, who lived off the stream of Iraqi pilgrims to the shrine, saw that trade vanish after the fall of the Assad government in December 2024, and many left.

Iraqi Arabs in Türkiye are the largest Arab community after the Syrians, made up of families who fled the sectarian war of 2006-2008 and the rise of the Islamic State in 2014, and of business people, students and property buyers who came for safety and a foothold outside Iraq. From 2015 to 2021 Iraqis bought more Turkish homes than any other foreigners, in Istanbul's new western suburbs and in Black Sea and Marmara towns such as Trabzon, Samsun, Yalova and Sakarya, where a house above a set price could bring Turkish citizenship. Most are Sunni Arabs from Mosul, Anbar and Baghdad, with Shia families from Baghdad and the south. Their numbers are falling: in 2024 more Iraqis left Türkiye than any other nationality, as residence permits became harder to renew and Iraq grew calmer.

Iraqi Arabs in the United Arab Emirates are a mostly educated, well-off community of roughly 80,000, among the oldest Arab expatriates in the country: Iraqi businesses began moving to Dubai after the 1968 coup in Baghdad, and later waves fled the Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 war, the 2003 invasion and the Islamic State. Engineers, doctors, teachers, jewellers, traders and media figures, they helped build the young federation, and many families now have children and grandchildren born in the Emirates who have rarely seen Iraq. Sunni and Shia Iraqis, with a few Arabic-speaking Christians, mix more easily here than at home, keeping Baghdadi customs such as the Friday-morning subheih gathering of friends over tea, Iraqi dolma and masgouf fish, and poetry. In October 2025 more than 15,000 of them filled Dubai's first Iraq Day festival.