'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎39r] (82/862)

DESCRIPTION OF THE LAND 4 1
every available man to heighten the embankments around their
camps, while a raised earthen causeway was built to Ur to enable the
troops to evacuate Nasiriya if the embankment broke.
At the present day, as in 1914, all the Euphrates water whic
reaches the Shatt al Arab uses the channel at Qarmat Ali, though
some that enters the Hammar lake is lost by evaporation. On the
other hand, across the old river channel from Suq ash Shuyukh to
Qurna flows some of the water which has escaped from the right
bank of the Tigris higher up its course, thereby swelling the volume
of the Hammar lake. One of Willcocks’s proposals before 1914 for
the better regulation of the water was to rebuild the right embank
ment of the old course of the river between Suq ash Shuyukh and
Qurna in order to deflect the Tigris overflow back into the Tigris at
Qurna, using the old Euphrates channel, but this project has never
been carried out.
(d) The Tigris in Iraq
The Tigris enters Iraq at Maghara (37 0 07' N., 42 0 22 E.), at the
junction of its tributary the Khabur, about 3 miles up-river of Pesh
Khabur, where the two rivers form the boundary. The current is
strong and carries a great load of sediment from the Kurdis
tributaries. Pesh Khabur is on the river at 1,160 feet above sea-level
(fig. 12).
Pesh Khabur to Mosul (direct distance 68 miles; by river 125 miles)
From Pesh Khabur the Tigris forces a passage gradually through
the low folded foothills of the Kurdish mountains. Its course to
Mosul is made up alternately of deeply cut, narrow, winding reaches
with southerly direction, where the current is swift and the river bed
enclosed by rocky walls, and of south-easterly reaches parallel to
the direction of the hills and the ‘strike’ of their rocks (fig. 15), with
broad and shingly bed and slackening current and with open country
on the left bank. On the right bank the hills are fairly steep and form
a barrier, and the open rolling slopes on the left are scored by minor
torrent-beds, mostly only carrying water during the winter rains.
Two longer right-bank spring-fed affluents, the Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. Suwaidiya and
the Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. al Murr, lying parallel to the strike, add a little water
throughout the year. The narrowest part of the river is the dithcult
Baghloja defile, about 18 miles below the Khabur junction where
the river is only 40 yards wide, the bed encumbered by rock ledges
and boulders, and navigation by raft (kellek) difficult and dangerous.