Al-Shaheed Monument

The al-Shaheed Monument (Arabic: نُصب الشهيد‎), also known as the Martyr's Memorial, is a monument in the Iraqi capital Baghdad dedicated to the Iraqi soldiers who died in the Iran-Iraq war. The Monument was opened in 1983, and was designed by Ismail Fattah al-Turki. During the 1970s and 1980s, Saddam Hussein's government spent a lot of money on new monuments, which included the al-Shaheed Monument. The monument consists of a circular platform 190 meters in diameter in the center of an artificial lake. On the platform sits an enormous 40 meter tall split turquoise dome, which resembles the domes of the Abbasid era. The two halves of the split dome are offset, with an eternal flame in the middle. The shells are constructed of a...