15 Most Famous Iraqi People

15 Most Famous Iraqi People

*Originally published by Lillian in October 2022 and Updated by Vanessa R in November 2023

Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia. The capital and largest city are Baghdad. Iraq is home to diverse ethnic groups including Iraqi Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Armenians, Yazidis, Mandaeans, Persians, and Shabakis with similarly diverse geography and wildlife.

The vast majority of the country’s 44 million residents are Muslims the notable other faiths are Christianity, Yazidism, Mandaeism, Yarsanism, and Zoroastrianism. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish; others also recognized in specific regions are Neo-Aramaic, Turkish and Armenian.

Here are some of the most notable Iraqi people.

1. Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein in 1998 by Iraqi News Agency – Wikimedia Commons

Saddam Hussein was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. 

He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba’ath Party and its regional organisation, the Iraqi Ba’ath Party, which espoused Ba’athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.

Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup, later referred to as the 17 July Revolution that brought the party to power in Iraq.

2. Taha Baqir

Taha Baqir was an Iraqi Assyriologist, author, cuneiformist, linguist, historian, and former curator of the National Museum of Iraq.

Baqir is considered one of Iraq’s most eminent archaeologists. Among the works he is remembered for is his Akkadian to Arabic translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh, his decipherment of Babylonian mathematical tablets, his Akkadian law code discoveries, and his excavations of ancient Babylonian and Sumerian sites; including the ancient Sumerian city of Shaduppum in Baghdad.

3. Layla Al-Attar 

Layla Al-Attar by Eng Omer Akram – Wikimedia Commons

Layla Al-Attar was an Iraqi artist and painter who became the Director of the Iraqi National Art Museum. Through her art, al-Attar expressed ideals that attempted to recognize the importance of women in all spheres of society.

Al-Attar held five one-woman shows in Iraq, and took part in all national and other collective exhibitions held in the country and abroad. 

On 27 June 1993, Al-Attar, her husband, and their housekeeper were killed by a U.S. missile attack on the Iraqi Intelligence main building which was just behind her house, ordered by U.S. President Bill Clinton. 

The building was hit by 24 rockets. Two misfired and hit their house accidentally, per her son’s testimony. The attack also blinded Al-Attar’s daughter. There are some rumors the misfire was intended due to an unflattering mosaic of President George H. W. Bush, designed by Al-Attar, laid onto the floor at the entrance to the Al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad.

4. Wafaa Bilal

Wafaa Bilal reading at Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, Georgetown University by Slowking4 – Wikimedia Commons

Dr. Wafaa Bilal is an Iraqi American artist, a former professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and currently an art professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

Bilal’s current work 168:01 brings awareness to cultural destruction and promotes the collective healing process through education and audience participation. He is best known for his work, Domestic Tension, a performance piece in which he lived in a gallery for a month, which details the horrors of living in a conflict zone and growing up under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

5. Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid in Heydar Aliyev Cultural center in Baku in Nov 2013 by Dmitry Ternovoy – Wikimedia Commons

 Zaha Hadid was a British-Iraqi architect, artist, and designer, recognized as a major figure in architecture of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Hadid was born in Baghdad, Iraq. She was described by The Guardian as the Queen of the curve, who liberated architectural geometry, giving it a whole new expressive identity.

She became the first woman to be individually awarded the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects.

6. Majid Jafar 

Majid Jafar speaking at the World Economic Forum by Alexandre Raffoul – Wikimedia Commons

Majid Jafar is a UAE businessman of Iraqi origin and the CEO of Crescent Petroleum, the Middle East’s oldest privately held oil and gas company.

Jafar is vice-chairman of the Crescent Group and managing director of Dana Gas. In 2014, he was named one of the world’s 50 most influential Arabs by Middle East Magazine.

7. Abdul Jerri

Abdul Jerri by Saadmiami – Wikimedia Commons

Abdul Jerri is an Iraqi American mathematician, most recognized for his contributions to Shannon Sampling Theory, Its Generalizations, Error Analysis, and Historical Reviews.

In particular his establishment in 2002 of the journal Sampling Theory in Signal and Image Processing with over thirty top international experts as its editors, besides establishing its Sampling Publishing, also his contribution to the general understanding of the Gibbs Phenomenon. 

He also wrote the first book ever on the subject, published by Springer – Verlag, then he followed it by editing another book on Advances in Gibbs Phenomenon published by Sampling Publishing.

8. Dunya Mikhail

Dunya Mikhail is an Iraqi-American poet based in the United States. Mikhail worked as a journalist, as editor of the literary section, and as a translator for The Baghdad Observer. 

As a liberal writer during the time of dictatorship and censorship, Mikhail fled Iraq in 1995, going first to Jordan and then eventually to the United States, where she became a U.S. citizen.

Mikhail’s honors include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Knights Foundation grant, the Kresge Fellowship, the United Nations Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing, and the shortlist of the Arabic Booker Prize. She is the co-founder of the Michigan community-based Mesopotamian Forum for Art and Culture.

9. Jim Al-Khalili

Jim Al-Khalili by Duncan.Hull – Wikimedia Commons

Jim Al-Khalili is an Iraqi-British theoretical physicist, author, and broadcaster. He is a professor of theoretical physics and chair of public engagement in science at the University of Surrey. 

He is a regular broadcaster and presenter of science programs on BBC radio and television, and a frequent commentator about science in other British media. In 2014, Al-Khalili was named a RISE (Recognising Inspirational Scientists and Engineers) leader by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)\. He was President of Humanists UK between January 2013 and January 2016.

10.  Kadim Al Sahir

Iraqi singer Kazem Al-Sahir by Benchmark ksa – Wikimedia Commons

 Kadim Al Sahir  is an Iraqi singer and composer. He typically performs with an orchestra of twenty to thirty musicians on Arabic percussion, oud, qanun, nay, and a full complement of strings, violin, cello, and bass. 

While some of his work makes use of electronic musical sounds, he avoids the use of synthesizers to imitate acoustic instruments. His work frequently features Iraqi folk instruments, rhythms, and melodies.

11. Charles Saatchi

Photos in the Saatchi by Anthony O’Neil, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In the 1980s, British billionaire and art collector Charles Saatchi co-founded Saatchi & Saatchi, the largest advertising firm in the world. Before leaving in 1995, his brother Maurice successfully ran the agency. Afterwards, the brothers Saatchi founded M&C Saatchi, another successful advertising business. The Young British Artists (YBAs), who transformed the contemporary art landscape, are well-known for their support of Saatchi and his collection of artwork. Though his outspokenness and scandals drew criticism, his business skills and unfailing support for the arts won him love. His impact on advertising and art is still indisputable in spite of these challenges.

12. Muhammad al-Mahdi

Twelver Shī‘a Muslims believe Muhammad ibn Hasan al-Mahdī is the Mahdī, the ultimate savior of humanity and the final Imām of the Twelve Imams. Born in 869, he assumed Imamate at 5 years old after his father’s death. During his early years, he only contacted his followers through The Four Deputies.

After a 72-year period known as Minor Occultation, he declared the beginning of Major Occultation in a letter sent by his fourth deputy, Abul Hasan Ali ibn Muhammad al-Samarri. Sunni Islam and other minority Shias believe the Mahdi has not yet been born, and his exact identity is only known to Allah. Sunnis accept many of the same hadiths as Shias about the Mahdi’s emergence, acts, and universal Caliphate, but also have some Mahdi hadiths not found in Shia collections.

13. Ovadia Yosef

Ovadia Yosef was a renowned Talmudic scholar and Jewish religious law authority, serving as the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973 to 1983. He was highly respected in Haredi circles, particularly among Mizrahi communities.

Yosef founded the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party in 1984, advocating for the interests of religious Jews from North Africa and the Middle East. Despite his less active role in party politics, he remained the party’s spiritual leader until his death. Critics criticised Yosef for controversial statements, leading supporters to claim he was misquoted or taken out of context.

14. Ahmad ibn Hanbal

Bin Hanbal, Ahmad bin Muhammad Abu ~Abd Allah al-Shaybani, was a prominent theologian and thinker in Islam. The Hanbali school of Islamic law is attributed to him as its founder. Often referred to as “Sheikh ul-Islam,” a title given to the most prominent doctrinal authority in the Sunni faith,

The theological beliefs of the early orthodox scholars—among them the founders of the five recognised schools of Sunni fiqh—were symbolised by Ibn Hanbal. Hanbal was a vocal supporter of the application of hadiths.

15. Al-Kindi

See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Known as “the Philosopher of the Arabs,” Abu Yūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn ʼIsḥāq aṣ-Ṣabbāḥ al-Kindī was an Iraqi Muslim Arab philosopher, mathematician, physician, and musician. Because of his synthesis, adaptation, and promotion of Greek and Hellenistic philosophy in the Muslim world, he is regarded as the “father of Islamic or Arabic philosophy”. Al-Kindi, who was raised and educated in Basra, rose to prominence in the House of Wisdom and was given the responsibility of supervising the Arabic translation of Greek philosophical and scientific works.

He wrote hundreds of original treatises on a wide range of topics, including metaphysics, ethics, logic, psychology, medicine, pharmacology, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, optics, and practical subjects like perfumes, swords, jewels, glass, dyes, zoology, tides, etc. His intellectual development was greatly influenced by the philosophy of the ancients.