Garden of Eden

986 Words4 Pages
Garden of Eden: A Restoration of Paradise “When God created the first human beings, God led them around the Garden of Eden and said: Look at my works! See how beautiful they are – how excellent! For your sake I created them all. See to it you do not spoil and destroy My world; for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it (R. Kohelet). The Garden of Eden is located in modern day Iraq; it was then destroyed by former dictator, Saddam Hussein and then brought back to life by Azzam Alwash, engineer and environmentalist. In Iraq’s lower third, going north of Basra up the waterway, Shatt al-Arab, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, you will find the Marsh Arabs. These marshes are vast wetlands nestled into the crook of the two rivers (Harte p.5). The Garden of Eden is the birthplace of civilization and an environmental miracle (New Internationalist p.1). Marsh Arabs or ‘Ma’dan’ built homes known as ‘mudhif’ without nails, wood or glass in under three days, along with the land these houses are built on, it is made up of compacted mud and rushes (MessyNessy p.2-3). The Garden was a home for escaped slaves and serfs. This area of desert gives home to an oasis filled with reed-beds, water buffalo and 66 different bird species. Most birds migrate between Siberia and Africa by way of the wetlands. For about 5,000 years, back to the Sumerian ancestors there has been a huge wildlife sanctuary and refuge for the human Marsh Arab culture (Richardson p.1). The “cradle of western civilization” nearly covered 15,000 km. All together, there are three main marshlands. The main marshland is located north in Al-Hawizeh along the Iran-Iraq border. The other two are found west and south in the Central and Al-Hammar. The Al-Hawizeh marsh had very healthy reed vegetation and had non-saline, salinity concentrations. On the other hand, the Central marsh and the Al-Hammar

More about Garden of Eden

Open Document