"العراق والخليج الفارسي" [و‎‎٤‎٨] (٨٦٢/١٠٠)

description of the land 53
dispersed in this area west and east of the section between Amara and
Qala Salih, and only 19 per cent, passes on down the navigable
channel. Moreover, the eastern marsh, the Haur al Hawiza or Haur
al Azam, also receives almost all the discharge of the Karkheh. Thus
this whole area on both sides of the river from Amara to Qurna acts
as a vast settling tank. ,
Between Qala Salih and Azair (‘Ezra’s Tomb’) occur the Narrows
—the narrowest part of the whole river, and the most difficult to
navigate. But below the latter place the channel becomes rather
easier except at one difficult bend because water begins to re-enter
the river, particularly in the low-water season, thus increasing the
discharge and scour.
The Shatt al Arab
From about the fifteenth century until the second half of the
nineteenth, the Euphrates joined the Tigris at Qurna, and the Shatt
al Arab maintained a navigable channel of their combined waters
through the deltaic muds of the Karkheh and Karun to the Persian
Gulf. To-day the flood-waters of the Karkheh mingle with the left-
bank overflow of the Tigris and having deposited their silt enter
that river above and below Qurna. The Karkheh no longer joins the
Karun, with which it built the deltaic bar, and the Karun now joins
the Shatt al Arab independently at Mohammerah, 20 miles below
Basra. In Abbasid times the Persian Gulf had already been reclaimed
as far as Abadan and the separate mouths of the Karun and Tigris
were joined by an artificial canal, cut for navigation between Basra
and Ahwaz. As the Shatt al Arab pushed the delta seawards, the
Karun also took a more easterly course, marked in the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries by the Khor Musa, though the two
rivers near their mouths were probably connected by tidal creeks
Then the Karun forsook the Khor Musa and chose as its main bed
the old Abbasid navigation canal below Marid, a course to which it
still holds (figs. 14, v, vi; 39). 1 , . , , , , , •
From Qurna downwards the Shatt al Arab is a broad stately river,
generally not difficult to navigate for large sea-going vessels, except
at the bar near its mouth (p. 559). Groves of date-palms line the left
bank all the way to the Persian boundary below Basra and beyond,
on the right bank the groves are more scattered until Qarmat Ah is
1 This last reach is still known locally as Al Haffar, the dug-out channel, thus
indicating its artificial origin (cf. the Haffar channel below Suq ash Shuyukh, p. 39 )-