'Handbook of Mesopotamia. Vol. I. 1918' [‎160] (169/568)

160
IRRIGATION OF IRAK
Irrigation in Irak is carried on by means of water-lifts or oil-
motor pumps on the river-banks, of canals, and of earthen dams.
Water-lifts are found in Irak along the Euphrates, wherever the
banks are fairly firm and high, and in places along the Tigris,
especially between Baghdad and Samarra. The water-lift commonly
used in Irak is the cherrad, which is worked by horses. The water
is raised in leather buckets hung on a rope which passes over
a pulley.
A large number of centrifugal pumps worked by oil-engines are
in use in the country about Baghdad. The oil-motor pump may
become an important instrument for the development of the country.
Canals of all sizes intersect the country, but serve it very in
adequately. In the larger canals that are still more or less in work
ing order the flow of water has not been properly regulated ; the
arrangements for taking water from them are clumsy and wasteful;
in some of them the clearance of silt has not kept pace with the
deposit, and little or no water is carried during the low season;
others have been so widened and scoured by the rivers that they
have caused ruinous diversions of the supply; and, there being no
provision for drainage, many of them have created permanent or
temporary marshes. Thus the large canals have in part failed to
carry the water needed for the development of the country, and in
part carried water only to waste it.
The rice-fields in the marshes are flooded by means ot earthen
dams built in the channels. On the Dighareh canal and probably
elsewhere the cultivators build a series of dams, each of which holds
up the water till the fields in the neighbourhood have been flooded,
and is then broken to let the water pass on to the next dam. Dams
of the same type are also built by the Arabs to regulate the supply
entering canals ; e. g. the low supply of the Diyaleh is diverted into
canals by a dam built across the river every year.
The Hindiyeh
About six miles below Museyib the Hindiyeh Barrage bifurcates
into two great branches, the Hindiyeh and the Hilla, which meet
again two or three miles above Samaweh. It appears that from
early times some such division of the Euphrates has existed, the
main volume of the river having passed at some periods down the
western branch, at others down the eastern. Some forty years ago
the Hilla branch carried by far the greater supply, and was known
as the ' Euphrates', while the Hindiyeh was only a ' canalThen
the head of the Hindiyeh widened (partly as a consequence of the