Iraq is one of the richest lands, home to many archaeological treasures and holy sites. It is the land of many prophets and Imams who rejected tyranny.
The site attributed as the birthplace of the holy prophet Ibrahim is one of the sites that best reflect the bright history of Iraq. It dates back to early antiquity and lies 10 miles outside the city centre of the province of Babylon. Its ruins tell us the story of the prophet Ibrahim and it is known as ‘The land of the burning’. It includes many Aramaic inscriptions and ancient depictions.
The site includes a green dome above ‘the light cave’ where it is said that the prophet Ibrahim was born. The cave itself is covered in marble and there is a wooden grille above the reputed place of the birth.
The pilgrim to this shrine will come across a stone inside the wooden grille, of which it is said that this stone was used by the prophet’s mother to lock the cave, as Nimrud ordered every infant to be killed after his astrologers informed him that a newborn would destroy his kingdom.
Eight hundred metres from the birth-site of the prophet, the pilgrim will encounter a hill and a group of large stone boulders, which have been ascribed as the place where the prophet was thrown into the fire by the autocratic Nimrud. This place was the city centre of Burs, or Bur Sebia, and the headquarters of king Nimrud. When Nimrud refused the call of the prophet to worship the one God, and instead insisted that he was god himself, the prophet asked him to raise the sun from the west if he were indeed a real god. When, Nimrud couldn’t raise the sun from the occident, he ordered the prophet to be thrown into the fire. This event is alluded to in the Quran, in the verse, ‘We said: O fire, be cold and peaceable for Abraham.’ (Q. 21:69).