"العراق والخليج الفارسي" [و‎‎٦‎٤] (٨٦٢/١٣٢)

8i
DESCRIPTION OF THE LAND
and Sassanids in the second and third centuries a.d., until it was
captured probably by Sapor I about a.d. 245 and destroyed. Never
theless it played a not insignificant part in the final campaign in
October 1918, which once more illustrated the geographical advantage
of its site. As the British closed on the Turkish position astride the
Fat-ha gorge and turned the eastern flank through the Ain Nukhaila
pass over the Jabal Hamrin (p. 285), a brigade of light armoured cars
took station among the ruins, and using Hatra as a base swept across
the plain north-west of Qala Sharqat to raid the Turkish communi
cations with the north.
The Desert by the Syrian Boundary
The drainage of the western part of the Jabal Sinjar and of the Jebel
Jeribeh is collected by a number of wadis which empty into a depres
sion known as the Wadi Ajij. In many respects it resembles the
Wadi Tharthar, but it crosses the Syrian boundary about latitude
35 ° 38', and its terminal depression, the saline lake Roda, is in Syrian
territory. South of the Roda there are other saline depressions, the
sabkhas Bwara, Barguth, and Boghars, the last-named reaching to
within 14 miles of the Euphrates at Abu Kemal and almost wholly
inside Iraq territory. East of the escarpment which borders the Wadi
Ajij and this line of sabkhas, bare open desert stretches uninter
ruptedly east towards the Wadi Tharthar, featureless except for occa
sional mounds, tombs, and sabkhas. The water of wells is almost
invariably brackish from the gypsum in the soil; but after a winter of
good rainfall grass springs up for a brief period. The whole of this
desert is the grazing-ground of the nomadic Shammar.
(b) The Assyrian Plains and Foothills
This transitional region between Lower Mesopotamia and the
Kurdish mountains is divided into three parts by the Little and Great
Zabs. Southern Assyria includes the rectangle of country south-east
of the Little Zab below its exit from the mountains near the Hab-es-
Sultan Dagh. It is bounded on the south by the Jabal Hamrin and on
the east by the Persian frontier (fig. 23). The northern boundary
is less easy to define, but is taken as the first continuous mountain
barrier which is formed by the Bazian ranges—Qara Dagh, Sagirama
Dagh and Kani Shaitan Hasan Dagh. Central Assyria is the land
between the Tigris and the two Zabs, and northern Assyria is the
triangle of country between the Tigris, the Great Zab, and the Jabal
Bakhair and Aqra Dagh (fig. 24). Structurally this whole region is