'Reconnaissances in Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, North-West Persia, and Luristan from April to October 1888. By Lt F R Maunsell, Intelligence Branch. In Two Volumes. Volume I: narrative report, description of larger towns and routes leading from them. Simla: Intelligence Branch, Quarter Master General's Dept, 1890' [‎13r] (30/312)

The Shatt-’l-Arab and the Tigris from Busra to Baghdad.
The Euphrates and Tigris form one tidal channel from Korna to the sea
called the Shatt-’l-Arab.
Above Busra the banks are low and fringed with date plantations, with some
intervals through which bare stretches of sandy desert can be seen. A few
villages, clusters of mud huts, are scattered among the trees, and large herds
of cattle, sheep, and water-buffaloes graze along the banks. Large stretches
of rice is grown between Busra and Korna.
The Shatt-T-Arab has an average width of 600 yards and a depth of 21 feet,
with a current of knots during the flowing and 3 knots an hour during
the ebb tide. Sea-going gunboats can ascend as far as Korna.
Korna.
Korna is 4 hours by steamer (40 miles) above Busra, and is a place of
some 700 houses on the right bank of the Tigris on the spit of land at its
junction with the Euphrates.
There are some two-storied brick houses on the bank, surrounded by
gardens and date plantations. A kaimmakam and a few zaptiyahs are quartered
here, and a Turkish custom-house.
There is a telegraph office, at which a junction is made between the two
lines from Baghdad, the first or original line following the Euphrates, and the
second or new line the Tigris. From Busra to Korna there are two wires car
ried on iron standards.
Several native river craft were building and repairing along the bank.
The date plantations extend some 4 miles above Korna, and then entirely
cease. North of this nothing but a few solitary clumps of trees are to be
seen on either bank until Baghdad is reached.
The Tigris Marshes .—Soon after Korna, we entered the great marshes of
the Tigris and Euphrates which extend across the whole of the land between
the rivers to the west and as far as Hawaizah to the east.
In spring, when the river is in flood, the country is under water with
nothing visible but tall reeds and sedges. The country in the triangle be
tween Korna, Amara, and the Euphrates end of the El-Hai canal is one large
sheet of water then.
Another sheet of water extends parallel to the Shatt-T-Arab from the
Euphrates at Suk-es-Shyukh, and enters the sea by an outlet to the north of
Bubian island, and making Busra into a sort of island in the flood
season.
The marshes on the left bank from Korna to Amara and eastward to
Hawaizah are formed by the overflow of the Kerkhah, the Tib, and Duwarij
rivers from the Pusht-i-Kuh, which lose themselves in these marshes.
One outlet of these marshes, called the El Hud Canal, runs into the Tigris
just above Amai’a.
Another, called theSwaib river, which may be taken as the main outlet of
the Kerkhah, flows into the Shatt-T-Arab, 6 miles below Korna. The marshes
are navigable for native craft as far as Hawaizah, but the Beni Lam and
other Arab tribes make the route unsafe, and it is little used.
A great masonry dam or bund once existed near Hawaizah, and controlled
the course of the lower Kerkhah, irrigating a very large tract of country;
this has long been carried away, and this large marsh has since formed. The
ruins of cities can be distinguished through the water. The marshes are almost
dry in the hot weather.
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