One of the primary reasons for initiating the campaign in Mesopotamia was to defend the oil refinery at Abadan at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab.

Adopting a forward defence policy, the British army under General Townshend fought off a series of small Ottoman forces.

Then after a year of a string of defeats, the Ottoman forces were able to halt the British advance in two days of hard fighting at Ctesiphon.

The commander in the field for the previous nine months was Lieutenant General Nureddin also called Nur-ud Din Pasha, but the Ottoman army was as of October under the command of Marshal Baron von der Goltz, also called Goltz Pasha, a well known German general, military historian and, for 12 years, a modernizer of the Ottoman army.

Baron von der Goltz was old but he was an expert on military matters and had a deep understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the Ottoman army.

This may have been a factor in the course of events as the British – with considerable justification based on previous experience – thought poorly of Nureddin's skills as a general.

Some British troops had been left behind to garrison the recently captured town and river junction of Kut.

The advance was supposed to be supported by river gunboats, however two things prevented the gun boats from becoming a factor in the battle.

At the beginning of the battle, C-Column, the one closest to the river bank came under heavy small arms and artillery fire and failed to reach the first trench line.

Here again Nureddin committed his reserves, in this case the 51st Division, to great effect, halting Townshend's flanking attack.

[8] By the end of the day the 6th (Poona) Division had captured the first line of trenches, but the British sustained heavy casualties.

On the British side, General Townshend concluded he needed to retreat because his losses had been too great to continue the effort to take Baghdad.

[11] The Ottoman Army had sustained casualties of 6,188, but they had short supply lines and were able to get reinforcements from Baghdad and the northern provinces.

Ctesiphon and its aftermath revealed a key British weakness in this campaign: an inadequate supply line.

Lieutenant General Nureddin had taken an army that had been beaten a number of times, put it in a carefully prepared defensive position, and held off the British and Indian forces.