Detail from a map of southern Turkey, Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia from the Baedeker 1912 travel guide 'Palestine and Syria with Routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia and with the Island of Cyprus'. The detail is of Mesopotamia from Baghdad to Basra and the Persian Gulf and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
"On November 22[, 1914], the British occupied Basra and on December 9 they forced the surrender of the Turkish garrison at Kurna. Here they entrenched, secure in the knowledge that they had established a safe barrier against a Turkish advance into India, and still controlled the immensely valuable oil fields."
British and Indian troops defeated the Turks in the November 11 to 21, 1914 Battle of Basra in Mesopotamia, part of the Ottoman Empire. The defeated forces retreated up the Shat el-Arab to Qurna (Kornah or Kurna), which lay on the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and had a population of about 2,000. Seeking to secure their position in Basra, a commercial and communications center, and the oil pipe line running from the oil fields to the east in Persia, British forces — about 2,100 men and several gunboats — advanced upriver to Qurna, defended by roughly 1,000 Turkish troops. Attacks on December 3 and 6 failed, but a third attempt on the 8th led the Turks to surrender on December 9, with the British taking 42 officers and 989 men prisoner.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 126, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
1914-12-09, December, 1914, Basra, Kurna, Kornah, al Qurna, Qurna, Mesopotamia
