FACTBOX - Key facts on Basra

(Reuters) - Britain handed over security in Basra province to Iraqi forces on Sunday. A scaled-down British force will remain at their base at Basra's airport, with a small training mission and a rapid reaction team on stand-by.

Here are some details about Basra:

* GEOGRAPHY:

-- Basra is the main port of Iraq and situated on the western bank of the Shatt al-Arab (the waterway formed by the union of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) at the Shatt's exit from Lake Al-Hammar, 70 miles by water above Al-Faw Peninsula on the Gulf.

* SOME HISTORY:

-- Basra was founded as a military encampment by the second caliph, Umar I, in AD 638 about 8 miles from the modern town of Az-Zubayr. The first architecturally significant mosque in Islam was constructed there in 665.

-- By the 14th century, neglect and the Mongol invasions left little of the original Basra standing, and by the turn of the 16th century it was relocated at the site of the ancient Al-Ubullah, a few miles upstream.

-- In the 17th and 18th centuries, English, Dutch, and Portuguese traders were established there, and Basra developed considerably during the 19th century as a trans-shipment point for river traffic to Baghdad. In 1914 the construction of a modern harbour began at Basra, which previously had had no wharves.

* WORLD WAR TO GULF WAR: