International Journal of Engineering Technology, Management and Applied Sciences www.ijetmas.com April 2016, Volume 4, Issue 4, ISSN 2349-4476 14 Omar Khasro Akram, Sumarni Ismail, Daniel José Franco The Significant of Tourism Heritage of Najaf City in Iraq Omar Khasro Akram 1 , Sumarni Ismail 2 , Daniel José Franco 3 1 Master Science in Architecture at Faculty of Design and Architecture, Universiti Putra Malaysia 2 Lecturer at Faculty of Design and Architecture, Universiti Putra Malaysia 3 PhD in Computer Networks at Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technologies, Universiti Putra Malaysia ABSTRACT This study adopts the case study of Najaf City, Iraq, to address the problematic of the urban form incorrect transformation and heritage loss. Focusing on the Najaf city, located near to the cities of Baghdad and Babylon, it is an ancient biblical city that was founded in 791 by the Abbasid Caliph HarounAL-Rashid . The city has a large number of historical and heritage values and it’s the destiny for religion purposes, visitors and tourists. However the consecutive changes applied to the urban fabric, due to the lack of regulations and legislation, led to its destruction and to the isolation of the shrines, like the Imam Ali Mosque (PBUH), as buildings not integrated with the rest of the city. There are also present other types of issues regarding the buildings and the projects applied to new structures, where they are not integrated to rest of the city, as well as the buildings deterioration and the lack of maintenance. This paper focus mainly the issues present in the city developments, identifying them, like for instance the skyline changes. As conclusions, it is clear that the several development attempts were not well planed, resulting in a loss of great heritage and heritage values. Restoration and preservation are now processes that must be done in order to present even more losses. INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The city of Najaf is located in Iraq, at about 160Km in the south of Baghdad City (Figure1), 30Km to the south of the ancient city of Babylon and around 400Km to the north of the ancient biblical city of Ur. It is believed that the city itself was founded in the year of 791, by the Abbasid Caliph HarounAL- Rashid, as a shrine to Ali IbnAbiTalib(PBUH). Figure 1 - Najaf City Location (Source: http://ancientroadpublications.com) Historical facts show that the city is also an ancient city that was created even before the birth of the Islam. In archaeological studies it was discovered the existence of a populace dating back to Jesus era. Najaf city owns one of the biggest burial grounds in the vicinity of Christians. Studies also show that the city has had a multicultural population, with different religions and believes. In the Ottoman Empire, the city of Najaf experienced austere difficulties, related to the repeated attacks done by the Arab desert tribes and the Persian army, causing a severe lack of reliable water supplies and resulting on a huge decrease of the population number.Consequently, the number of inhabited houses by the start of the 16 th centuryhas also decreasedfrom 3000 to 30. It is related that when the Portuguese cartographer called Pedro Teixeira passed through the city, in 1604, Najaf was in ruins, being inhabited by just 500 people. The small population number was caused due to the change of the Euphrates river course, eastwards in the direction of Hila (Babylon) and leaving Najaf and Kufa completely dry. The lack of water led to the destruction of the place and the local formerly rich agriculture, where the palm groves and orchards have died and the underground water got salinized due to the evaporation process. The Holy city of Najaf and its history present several developmental attempts, however, due to the non- conscious and lack of knowledge about their heritage values, resulted in the destruction of the urban fabric and the lost of great architectural heritage. Consequently, the urban fabric does not reflect to the city identity and there are many different architectural styles with no rules or justification for their existence. Heritage is part of the cultural tradition of any society and consists on the embodiment and expression of a specific culture for a group of people