'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎306r] (614/862)

IRRIGATION, AGRICULTURE, AND MINOR INDUSTRY 473
Nine-tenths of these factories are concentrated in Baghdad, prin
cipally because this is the focus of communications and the market
centre of the whole country. Power is provided by an abundant
supply of cheap fuel oil from Khanaqin (p. 497), either burnt in
steam-engines or converted into electricity, and there are adequate
supplies of water from the rivers for industrial purposes. Small
electric power and lighting plants exist in nearly all towns, but in
formation is incomplete and no general survey can be given.
Apart from brick manufacture for housing, the industries are
mainly concerned with the conversion of cereals, dates, tobacco, oil
seeds, cotton, wool, and hides into food or clothing.
Milling. Except for two or three hour-mills at Baghdad, flour is
milled in very small plants or by domestic appliances (fig. 77, photo.
i8 3 )-
Distilling. Four distilleries (3 near Baghdad, 1 in Mosul) together
produce 330,000 gallons of proof spirit from 4,000 tons of dates a
year under government supervision; the bulk of this is converted into
araq, the national drink.
Cigarettes. About half of the 2,500 million cigarettes smoked
annually are made by hand in the bazaars of every town and village,
and there are five factories in Baghdad with a combined output of
1,300 million cigarettes a year.
Vegetable Oils and Soap. There are five principal oil-crushing
plants in Baghdad. Four have primitive machinery badly maintained
and an annual production of about 100-500 tons each, but the fifth,
new in 1943, has an annual capacity of 1,500-1,750 tons a year of
castor, cotton, sesame, or linseed oil.
The local vegetable oils are all soft, and hard oils (copra) are im
ported for soap manufacture. There are three large soap factories at
Baghdad each capable of producing 3,500 tons a year, and eight small
factories with a combined capacity of 5,000 tons a year. This is more
than enough for local needs. There are also local bazaar soap-plants.
Cotton. There are now (1943) three ginning factories in Baghdad,
which prepare the whole cotton crop for export. None is spun in
Iraq.
Wool and Textiles. The exportable surplus of wool is pressed and
baled by five plants in Baghdad, each with a daily capacity of 100
bales.
Three spinning and weaving factories in Baghdad represent
90 per cent, of the total factory An East India Company trading post. spinning capacity; the number of
hand-looms in houses and workshops is unknown, but must be