'Handbook of Mesopotamia. Vol. I. 1918' [‎170] (179/568)

170
AGRICULTURE AND LAND TENURE
Only a very small proportion of the cultivable area of Mesopotamia
is at present under tillage. For a considerable extension of agricul
ture in the country there would be needed : (a) the establishment of
law and order; (b) scientific irrigation ; (c) the improvement of com
munications and means of transport; the establishment of a good
financial regime, and the regulation of land tenure so as to remove
existing agrarian trouble; [e) the introduction of agricultural
machinery and the improvement in other ways of agricultural
methods; (/) an increase of population.
(а) The Turkish Government has failed to enforce the peace in its
Mesopotamian provinces. Among the Arabs tribal fighting and the
blood-feud have absorbed much of the cultivators' energies, and in
some parts of the country the Fellahin Arabic for ‘peasant’. It was used by British officials to refer to agricultural workers or to members of a social class employed primarily in agricultural labour. have suffered from black
mailing Bedawis. In the north fertile districts have been kept
unproductive by the lawlessness of the Kurds and especially by their
harrying of the non-Moslem population. So too in Arabistan agri
culture was partially paralysed, notably in the Dizful plain.
(б) It is obvious that Mesopotamia needs scientific irrigation under
Government control. The uncoordinated and crude irrigation work
of the Arab tribes has been not only inadequate, but in some ways
positively harmful. It must lie with the Government of the country
to construct and maintain scientifically planned irrigation works, to
organize the distribution of water, to prevent excessive flooding, and
to reclaim areas now rendered useless by the disintegration of the
lower Euphrates and Tigris. (See Chapter X.)
(c) In Irak, where transport has been mainly by river, the condition
of the waterways has been such as seriously to hamper the carriage of
agricultural produce ; thus wheat and barley grown in the Euphrates
districts, having been harvested in May, might have to wait until the
following spring to be brought downstream to Basra, owing to the
difficulties of navigation in the low-water season. From the Mosul—
Erbil region, the most important wheat-growing country in upper
Mesopotamia, grain was brought down the Tigris to Baghdad by rafts
[JceleJcs). Before the war pack-animals were almost the only means
of transporting produce by land. Bullock-carts seem to have been
used only locally in a few districts in the northern part of our area.
{d) Under Turkish rule there have been inequalities in the assess
ment and payment of the taxes on agriculture. A considerable part
of the agricultural population has paid its taxes irregularly or not at
all. Those who could be coerced were made to pay, and the interests
of the country as a whole suffered accordingly. Moreover it seems
that part of the revenue was wasted for the benefit of individuals
either at Constantinople or in Mesopotamia.