'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎59r] (122/862)

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DESCRIPTION OF THE LAND 73
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into which water is lifted from the Tigris between Aziziya and Kut.
Its characteristics appear to be the same as those already described
and its boundaries vary with the season and the wind. Other marshes
farther north are less permanent, and most of them dry up completely
during the summer months, leaving a hard and sometimes salt-
encrusted surface. There are several tracts of sand which are never
flooded, and occasional sandhills, but well-marked tracks traverse this
central belt from one river to the other and these are almost always
passable for light motor traffic, except after rain.
The Region on the Left Bank of the Tigris between the Diyala and the
Fat-ha gorge (fig. 21)
This region is bounded on the north-east by the Jabal Hamrin,
which is pierced near the middle by the Shatt al Adhaim, the only
perennial river besides the Tigris and the Diyala. Beyond the Jabal
Hamrin are the Assyrian foothills and plains, watered by the Little
Zab and tributaries of the Adhaim and Diyala. Very little water
passes down the Adhaim across the plains for eight months of the year,
but its liability to violent spates during the winter rains accounts for
its wide flood-bed, cut from 25 to 4° f ee t deep in the surrounding
plain. The Adhaim after leaving the Jabal Hamrin seems never to
have been used for extensive cultivation, even during the Abbasid
period, though there are ancient works near its passage through the
hills which were built to hold up water for irrigation to the north
(p. 89).
The greater part of this region is therefore desert, and the only
division that can be made is according to the utilization of the land.
There is a broad belt of cultivated ground irrigated by the Khalis
canal drawing water from the Diyala, and continuing down between
the Tigris and the Diyala to their junction below Baghdad. Above the
mouth of the Adhaim the low riverain fringe of the Tigris is irrigated
from that river. The rest is waste and desert.
The ground commanded by the Khalis canal and its subsidiaries
is closely settled and extensively cultivated. Compared with the
cultivation of other parts of Iraq the land problems have been better
solved. But no part of this belt is more than about 10 miles from the
Diyala or the Tigris, though the area irrigated by the Khahs in winter
is about 93,000 acres.
The desert slopes up very gently northwards to the Jabal Hamrin,
the foot of which is about 200 feet above sea-level near the Diyala and
about 500 feet in the north. The Jabal Hamrin presents a foothill