"العراق والخليج الفارسي" [و‎‎٢‎٣‎٧] (٨٦٢/٤٧٨)

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PEOPLE
349
.1
Life in the Towns
One main distinction between the life of the towns, especially the
smaller towns, and that of the countryside is that their inhabitants,
whether Kurds of Ruwandiz or Arabs of Hilla, have usually no
tribal organization. The towns house an upper class of absentee
landlords, beneath whom are the ejfendis —government officials,
lawyers, doctors, schoolmasters, clerks, and those who live by the
pen and their wits (p. 301). Somewhat apart are the clergy, Moslem
and Christian, who may be very numerous. The third stratum
contains the shopkeepers, merchants, and transport agents, owners
of camels, mules, and donkeys. But a large part of the population
of the smaller towns is agricultural and labours daily in the fields
often at a fair distance from the towns. A particular feature of Iraq
is the number of towns which are holy cities built around and de
pendent on sanctuaries, holy places, and religious establishments,
whether Moslem, Christian, or Jewish.
Social life is organized by means of coffee-houses and tea-houses
where all who can afford to be idle spend the day ‘talking gossip and
plotting against the government’. The town coffee-house takes the
place of the village guest-house in southern Iraq, but in Kurdish
towns the town aghas have elaborate guest-houses which they
maintain in great style for the entertainment of their country kinsmen.
For hotels there are khans which are balconied caravansarais built
round a courtyard with the rooms on the first floor. Here the travel
ling merchants put up and store their goods, buying in exchange the
wares offered in the booths of the suqs, covered markets containing
long alleyways of little stalls and workshops. Public life is represented
by the sarai, usually a large modern building, which contains the
government and municipal offices, and religion by mosques and
churches; it is only in the towns that the mosques have domes,
minarets, and spacious courtyards. The great shrines in the holy
cities are extensive buildings; mosques of several domes contain the
holy tombs and are enclosed within a great precinct usually with a
madrasa or college attached, and the whole is elaborately adorned
with coloured tiles and precious metals usually in the Persian style
(photos. 142, 144, 207).
Private houses are generally built around a courtyard and may be
large though not tall—two or three stories at most. They usually
contain a cellar or sunken room (sirdab) for use during the heat of the
summer days, while their flat roofs are used for sleeping during the