Hindiya Barrage

Hindiya Barrage
Location of Hindiya Barrage in Iraq
Location	Babil Governorate, Iraq
Coordinates	32°42′46″N 44°16′01″E / 32.71278°N 44.26694°E / 32.71278; 44.26694Coordinates: 32°42′46″N 44°16′01″E / 32.71278°N 44.26694°E / 32.71278; 44.26694
Construction began	1911
Opening date	1913
Dam and spillways
Impounds	Euphrates
Length	250 m (820 ft)

The Hindiya Barrage is located on the Euphrates south of the town of Musayyib in Babil Governorate, Iraq. It was designed by British civil engineer William Willcocks in response to the silting up of the Hillah branch of the Euphrates. Construction of the dam, with a length of over 250 metres (820 ft), lasted between 1911 and 1913. Between 1984 and 1989, a new dam was built several kilometres upstream as a replacement for the Hindiya Barrage.

Until 1875, the Euphrates split into two channels south of the town of Musayyib; the western Hindiya branch and the eastern Hillah branch. Due to changes in the water management of the wider Tigris–Euphrates river system in 1875, severe floodings of the Euphrates downstream from Fallujah occurred. As a result of these floodings, discharge into the lower Hindiya branch increased and the Hillah branch started to silt up. In 1909, discharge into the Hillah branch had been reduced to 300 cubic metres (11,000 cu ft) per second, compared to 2,000 cubic metres (71,000 cu ft) per second 50 years earlier. Because the town of Hillah is located on the Hillah branch of the Euphrates and depends on its waters for agriculture, a rubble embankment dam was constructed in the Hindiya branch to raise the water level of the Euphrates and increase the discharge into the Hillah branch. However, silting up of the Hillah branch continued and the dam was gradually being swept away by the continually increasing Euphrates discharge into the Hindiya branch. In 1908, the Ottoman government invited contractors to build a new dam based on revolutionary plans by a French engineer, but no company accepted the assignment.

After the Young Turk Revolution and the restructuring of the Ottoman government in 1908, British civil engineer William Willcocks, who had won recognition for his work on the Aswan Low Dam in Egypt, was tasked with the mapping of lower Iraq and the preparation of large-scale irrigation projects on both the Euphrates and the Tigris. Willcocks suggested to use the depressions of Habbaniyah and Abu Dibis, which he had recognised during his survey, as reservoirs for the excess floodwaters of the Euphrates, as well as to reconstruct the Hindiya Barrage so that the land around Hillah could be used for irrigated agriculture. Only the Hindiya Barrage would be completed before the outbreak of World War I.