"كتيّب سوريا (بما في ذلك فلسطين). لندن: إدارة استخبارات الأركان البحرية، يونيو ١٩١٩" [و‎‎٢‎٩‎٢] (٧٣٨/٥٨٨)

CLIMATE AND HYGIENE
577
winter severe cold is experienced, frost and snow being
common, the latter sometimes lying to a considerable depth for
weeks. In the valleys and lower altitudes, the summer is hot
and enervating.
Industries and Trade
Agriculture .—The soil of Hauran is extremely fertile
throughout and produces the finest wheat in Syria. Those
areas which are stoneless and easily tilled are usually chosen
for cultivation, and practically no effort has been made to
reclaim the boulder strewn but fertile tracts which only
produce spring pasture for Bedouin flocks. For the most
part, the crops are dependent upon rainfall and there are
only minor areas where perennial water is available for
irrigation or where rain water catchments have been adapted
to that purpose. In such irrigated portions, the season’s
crops are frequently repeated but, in general, there is only
one crop per season.
Western Hauran and northern Jaulan are, on the whole,
fairly well watered ; the ground, which here is stony, is
almost entirely uncultivated, but produces spring pasture so
luxuriantly as to hide the boulders and even the ancient
ruins scattered everywhere. In the Nuqrah where the finest
wheat crops are raised, there is extensive cultivation and
northward along the course of the railway lines to Damascus
the soil is also widely cultivated. Elsewhere, however,
the plain is tilled only around the widely scattered
villages, the remainder being left to the Bedouin. The
fellah in these parts usually confines his energy to an
area which can be worked by one pair of oxen, known as
a fedddn (see p. 324) and moves no further from his village
than he can help. Agriculture here, as elsewhere in Syria,
has been very seriously affected by the unscrupulous opera
tions of rich merchants who practise a system of usury
to which the fellahin have fallen victims. Since railways
were built there has been a very great increase in the land
brought under cultivation; many of the villages which
SIYRIA Q Q