'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎278r] (558/862)

CHAPTER X
IRRIGATION, AGRICULTURE, AND
MINOR INDUSTRY
T he condition of agriculture in Iraq depends largely upon two
special factors, the irrigation works and the peculiar system of
land-tenure and tenancy. These two topics are accordingly dis
cussed before the account of agriculture and stock breeding is given.
Irrigation
Origins
In the History chapter reference has been made to the great agri
cultural wealth of Babylonian and Assyrian Mesopotamia (p. 220)
and of Abbasid Iraq (p. 243) which enabled the country to become
the base of world-wide empires. This wealth depended on the main
tenance of a great system of irrigation canals which it has been the
object of recent governments of Iraq to restore, as far as possible,
particularly in the region between the two rivers south of the latitude
of Baghdad and in the Diyala region.
The maximum development of the canal system was during the
Abbasid period, but the earliest historical records show that the kings
of Sumer and Akkad were already concerned with the water-supply
of their cities and fields. Numerous documents of Hammurabi
(p. 210) refer to the clearing and repair of canals, and those of his
subject kings often name the cities to which water was brought. But
the earliest canals were not co-ordinated. Sippar, Kish, Erech, and
Larsa are known to have been on the Euphrates, and probably others
of the ancient cities were similarly situated (figs. 9, 13). When the
river changed its course a canal was dug to maintain a water-supply.
As time went on, the problems of silting and scour were gradually
mastered, the works grew in size and complexity, and gradually the
whole network of irrigation, navigation, and defence waterways was
systematized (p. 220). The earliest canal flowing from the Euphrates
above Musaiyib into the Tigris above the site of later Ctesiphon was
probably the defence work from Sippar to Opis, built in Neo-
Babylonian times—later to become the Nahr Melcha or Malik
(p. 31)—and used both for navigation and irrigation. Lower down
and taking off from the Euphrates at or near Babylon there may
have been an older waterway joining the two rivers. These canals