"تقرير عسكري عن بلاد الرافدين (العراق)" [و‎‎١‎٠] (٢٢٦/٢٤)

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maintains no settled population, but furnishes the nomad
Tai, Jubur, Shammar, Chechens and Milli with excellent
grazing ground. In times of stress both ranges form
ideal havens of refuge for outlaws and rebels against the
government.
Northern Jazirah is drained by two rivers, viz., the
Balikh and the Khabur, each of which receives the waters
of numerous small tributaries and eventually enters the
Euphrates. The Khabur and Balikh are useless as
regards navigation, but in their provision of irrigation
for an otherwise barren desert may fitly be termed the
life-blood of the western portion of Northern Jazirah.
Numerous small perennial streams rising in the Jabal
Sin jar flow south into Southern Jazirah and support a
tolerable cultivation in Sinjar plain.
Towns and Villages .—There are only five places which
have pretensions to the name town. As a rule the settled
population lives in mud hovels or tents which offer no
facilities for quartering troops.
Balad Sinjar.— Balad Sinjar lies about 76 miles west
of Mosul. The town with its dilapidated qishla huddles
along and over the slopes of a spur from the Jabal Sinjar,
dominating the valley to the south, and in its turn
dominated by the main mountain mass to the north.
West of the town a stream that rises from four sweet-
watered springs flows in a southerly direction and
separates the town from a suburb and the ruins of old
Sinjar. On the stream lie extensive fig gardens. The
streets with one exception are narrow depositories for
filth. The one exception is a road that climbs the hill
from the south, strays for 50 yards through the town as a
respectable street and tumbles by a cobbled pavement into
the stream. There are several large houses—all the houses
are of stone—notably that of the Rais Baladiyah and
Hammu Shiru, the Chief of the Yezidis. The chief public
buildings are a dilapidated “ qishla ” or barracks set on
the southern edge of the spur. Beside it is situated a
modern school which provides good accommodation for
stray travellers. The bazaar is small, but is growing
daily under the energy of an enterprising Christian
merchant, who hopes to make it an emporium for the
desert tribes.
Modern Sinjar has little of the odour of antiquity
about it, although it was a famous city in bygone days.
According to Le Strange, “ This in the 4th ( 10 th) century
was a walled town surrounded by a most fertile district.