'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎254r] (511/862)

DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION 383
Mosul city among nearly 25,000 Christians there are many Chaldeans,
Syrian Catholics, Jacobites, and some Nestorians and Armenians,
and there is a similar but much smaller community at Kirkuk. At
Baghdad there is even greater variety with Latins and Greek Catholics
added, and a much larger number (21%) of urban Christians. Basra
contributes some 6 per cent, to the total, and another 6‘5 per cent, are
apparently townsmen of Erbil and Kirkuk in the main. The negli
gible number of Christians in southern Iraq outside Baghdad and
Basra (3 / 0 of the total) is mostly confined to the larger country towns
such as Amara.
At the time of the disturbances of 1933 there were reckoned to be
about 4,000 families of Nestorians in Iraq, of whom only 400 belonged
to the Mosul vilayet before 1918, the majority being Hakari Assyrians.
Their principal settlements were in the districts of Dohuk (650 fami
lies), the Barwar regions of Amadia district (1,660), Shaikhan and
elsewhere in Mosul plain (160), in the plain west-north-west of Aqra
(400), and in the Harir plain south-east of Aqra (400). Another 700
families were urban in habit and dispersed in towns. The distur
bances of 1933 directly affected only the Dohuk and Shaikhan colonies
though eventually 2,318 families migrated to Syria. At least the pre-
1918 Nestorians of Barwar-i-Zir (Amadia district) and also the
Assyrian colony in the Harir plain are still cultivating their lands.
A great part of the remainder have taken service since 1941 with the
British forces and are at present scattered through the country around
military establishments, but it seems that they have retained their
villages.
The number of Nestorians now in Iraq is estimated at 20,000.
But it is worth noting that the 2,318 families which migrated to Syria
after 1933 (over half the estimated total of families) were counted and
found to contain only 8,838 persons, barely 4 per family instead - of 5,
the figure generally assumed. Hence it is unlikely that before the
exodus there were more than 20,000 Nestorians in Iraq, and possibly
the true figure was even lower, while there can hardly be over 16,000
Nestorians in Iraq to-day.
The chief tribes of the Hakari Assyrians are the Upper and Lower
Tiyari, Tkhoma, Shamsdinan, and Jelu, names derived from regions
of the Hakari mountains. 1 The Shamsdinan are in the Harir plain.
Most of the Jelu and many others migrated to Syria.
1 The modern Turkish spellings are Tiari, Tkuma, Semdinan, and Cilo.
CHAPTER VIII
ADMINISTRATION AND PUBLIC LIFE
HISTORICAL ORIGINS
T he framework of the Iraqi State is so recent a creation and owes
so much to the activities of the first British administration that
a semi-historical method of description has been employed in this
chapter in order to make clear the peculiar features of the Constitution.
The description of the present Constitution and administration will
be found on p. 390. Iraq had been a dependency under Ottoman ad
ministration rather than an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, and
the system of administration used in the central lands of the empire
was unsuitable to Iraq. The efforts to apply it made during the
nineteenth century (p. 265) were not in any degree successful. This
was patent when the British took over the administration of the
country. For the most part, therefore, there was no attempt to adapt
the Turkish system, and the new-comers had a relatively clear field.
Military Administration
The first phase, as the country was occupied step by step, was the
setting up of the usual form of military government, with military
governors, assistant political officers, and deputy governors and a
few commissioners for special purposes, all responsible to the Chief
Political Officer, who was himself responsible to the general officer
commanding the forces. The difficulties of administration were
increased by the departure of practically every Ottoman official who
had held a responsible position, and by their removal of all the most
recent records on which administration depended. There remained,
however, a fair number of Arabs who had served in the Ottoman
administration and who could be employed in the less important
offices.
By international law, until the status of the country was definitely
changed, the military officials had to administer the country as far as
was possible on the basis of the laws hitherto in force. But in Basra
vilayet in the early years of the war this was not possible. Almost all
of the judicial officers had withdrawn with the Ottoman armies and
those who remained were unwilling to act. The administration of
the Ottoman law was therefore impracticable and it was decided
to introduce a code, known as the Iraq Occupied Territories Code,