'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎16r] (36/862)

INTRODUCTION 5
confined to the region north of the delta lands the Jazira of the
Moslem period—and Babylonia was used for the delta lands. In
Romano-Byzantine times the term Mesopotamia was restricted to
that part only of the northern region which formed a province of the
Roman Empire (p. 231), mostly outside the modern kingdom of Iraq.
In very recent times, and for the first twenty years of the present
century, it was the commonest term in western Europe for the
country as a whole in its earliest classical sense.
The geographical terms used by early Moslem Arabs were Al lraq
(the ‘cliff’ or ‘shore’) for the delta lands, and Jazira (the ‘island’) for
the region between the two rivers north of the delta and south of the
Taurus foothills. These terms also became the administrative names
of two wider provinces, the boundary between which was a line
through Haditha and Tikrit and along the Jabal Hamrin. In Ottoman
times the terms were not used officially and among the tribesmen
they became indefinite regional terms, more or less reverting to their
original meaning. The Jazira remains so to-day, but ‘Iraq’ has been
adopted for the name of the modern state, a political creation which
includes the ‘Lower Jazira’ of some authors, the outer Kurdish
mountains, and the deserts beyond the Euphrates. The term
Iraq has thus come to have a political rather than a geographical
significance. . . . .
To avoid confusion with this political conception in the regional
description of the land, the central lowland has been divided in this
book into Lower and Upper Mesopotamia, as during the War of
1914-1918, the first including the delta lands, the second comprising
both the Jazira of Iraq and the Assyrian plains and foothills. In the
history chapter the term Mesopotamia has been used in its widest
historical sense down to the period of the Moslem conquest. From
then onwards ‘Iraq’ has been used conveniently, if incorrectly, for
the whole area covered by the modern state, southern and northern
Iraq being divided approximately by the lower Diyala and a line
westwards from Baghdad. Thus southern Iraq approximately
corresponds with Lower Mesopotamia and the southern desert,
as the terms are used in the regional description of the land, and
northern Iraq includes the western desert and Iraqi Kurdistan as
well as Upper Mesopotamia. ‘Central Iraq’ is occasionally used for
the heavily cultivated area near the dividing line.
The term ‘Jazira’ is used throughout for the region between the
two rivers north of a line from Baghdad to Falluja. Beyond the
boundary the ‘Syrian Jazira’ is used. The ‘Assyrian plains and