'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎324v] (651/862)

PORTS AND INLAND TOWNS
5°4
City Life
Baghdad is Essentially a commercial and political capital. Most of
the inhabitants are supported directly or indirectly by these and
allied forms of activity. There is also a large class of absentee land-
owners, some being men of wealth. Industry is only beginning to
intrude. The commerce of Iraq centres in Baghdad, and businesses
are on every scale from the large firms with modern offices on Bank
St. and Rashid St. to the small retailers of the extensive bazaars.
Many merchants still retain the habit of disguising their wealth by
conducting affairs from a single room in a back street. The largest
wholesale firms are British and Italian, but commerce is generally
dominated by the numerous Jewish and Armenian merchants, with
whom Arabs find it hard to cope, though these predominate in the
smaller bazaars. The Christian communities provide many of the
best clerks and managers.
Educated Iraqis are occupied in administration and politics
and the allied callings of journalism and law, and also in medicine
and teaching. Baghdad contains the national institutes of these pro
fessions, which are attended by numerous students.
Baghdad is less of a religious centre than the Shia cities, though
the shrines of Abdul Gailani and Abu Hanifa draw Sunni pilgrims
to their tombs and theological students to their madrasas. Many
Shia pilgrims bound for Kadhimain lodge in the khans of Adhamiya.
Baghdad is the centre of such modern industries as exist in Iraq,
described on p. 472 ff., of which the railway establishments are the
most considerable. There are a host of minor trades and crafts
pursued by individual artisans, important only in the aggregate, and
there are many small concerns ancillary to the city’s life. Only
three or four garages are capable of major repairs. The best products
of the bazaar workshops are hand-made abas and izars of brocaded
silk (p. 345-6), and the work of the gold- and silversmiths.
There are 13 hospitals, of which the chief are the Royal (625 beds),
the Isolation (250 beds), the Karkh (195 beds), the Mar Elias (142
beds), the Children’s (89 beds), and the Eye Diseases (21 beds).
Supplies
The food-supply is brought in daily by rail, road, and river from
the country districts. Numerous native bakeries produce indifferent
bread, and European tinned and bottled foods and drinks are
obtainable from British and Indian stores. Wood fuel is rafted
down the Tigris and stocked in the bazaars. The Rafidain Oil