Samawa

Samawa stands on the Euphrates in southern Iraq, where date gardens border the river and dry country extends to the west. The settlement began as a village beside a fortified government post in the late fifteenth century. Its position on the river made the town dependent on the changing course and flow of the Euphrates. A historical study of its walls records that an early settlement was abandoned after the river dried up in the late seventeenth century; later Samawa grew again along its banks.