The Hindiya Barrage in the north of the district controls floods and diverts water from the Euphrates into irrigation canals on both sides of the river.

The district has been the scene of clashes with Turkish and British colonial forces, and more recently with American troops in 2003.

[4] The Hindiya district in the Ottoman era, which then covered a larger area of the lower Euphrates, was a rich source of grain.

The government lost control of the countryside and its troops were confined to towns such as Karbala, Najaf and Hilla.

[5] Writing of an 1849 expedition to explore the ruins of Ninevah and Babylon, Sir Austen Henry Layard reported that the large canal called the Hindiyah now led almost half the waters of the Euphrates into huge marshes west of Babylon.

This was in part the motive for the Hindiya Barrage proposed by Sir William Willcocks to control the water system, completed in 1913.

[11] The Hindiya Barrage, crossing the Euphrates in the north of the district, was built by British engineers for the Turkish authorities just before World War I (1914–18).

As of 1937 about 31.5% of the Euphrates water was diverted into these canals by the barrage, while the remainder continued down the Hindiya channel of the river.

[14] China State Construction Engineering undertook a project between October 1984 and April 1989 to replace the barrage and build a navigation lock, fish passage, bridges and a power station.