"العراق والخليج الفارسي" [ظ‎‎٢‎٨] (٨٦٢/٦١)

28 GEOLOGY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE LAND
close in on either side and are often less than 5 miles apart. Much
of the low ground near the river is cultivated, especially near Haditha
where water-wheels (noria) are used for irrigation. Here the banks
are lined with defensible farm settlements with small watch-towers.
Haditha island is about 1 mile long by 200 yards broad; the main
village with defensible wall washed by the river stands on the island.
There are fine date-groves on the right bank and good grazing in the
spring.
Haditha to Hit (direct distance 42 miles; by river 70 miles)
Haditha has grown in recent years as a station on the Iraq Petroleum
Company’s pipe-line to Palestine and Syria, which crosses the river
about 3 miles south of the island. The area between the river and
the escarpment bluffs is cultivated. Beyond the island and village
of Alus the river bends eastwards and the desert escarpment is
broken by the deep course of the Wadi Hauran, a formidable obstacle,
though without much water except after rain. The Euphrates bed
is generally of shingle, sand, or mud, but the banks are steep and there
is much tamarisk bush. From Haditha to Khan Baghdadi cave
dwelling is a marked feature of the life of the people. Between Khan
Baghdadi and Sahiliya the river makes another wide sweep to the
east and the plateau edge is more dissected. There is considerable
cultivation near Sahiliya with irrigation by water-wheels. The river
banks throughout this section are often 200 feet high, the broken
surface of the bare plain above sloping gradually upwards to 1,000
feet 35 miles west of Hit.
Hit to Falluja (direct distance 58 miles; by river 82 miles)
Below Hit, which is on the right bank of the Euphrates, the river
enters its delta at about 173 feet above sea-level in September.
There is a rocky sill across the bed, which impedes navigation, but
thereafter the river flows unobstructed except by its own sandbanks.
Hit is noted for its bitumen seepages, which are reputed to have
been worked for 5,000 years. Throughout history the town has
been important as a route centre, and boat-building has long been
an industry. There are also naphtha and sulphur springs.
Ten miles below the town the river takes a more easterly direction
as though to join the Tigris near Baghdad, and passes through flat
scrub-covered plain about 10 miles wide to Ramadi, a small town
standing among palm-groves. This was its prehistoric river-mouth,
where the escarpment on both sides, the ancient coastline, falls away
from the river. For the first time the Euphrates, here at about 150