'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎335r] (672/862)

PORTS AND INLAND TOWNS
521
Army Command is 1 mile to the south on Tank Hill by the airfield.
The main bazaars are near the river. There is also a small modern
suburb called Faisaliya on the left bank opposite Mosul.
Mosul is an episcopal city and seat of patriarchates for most of the
churches of Iraq (p. 333-5). A great part is played in the life of the
Christian population by the Roman Catholic missions, with the papal
Apostolic Delegate at their head, which maintain churches, convents,
schools, and seminaries. The French Dominican Fathers have been
established longest, but Italian Salesians and the French Sisters of
the Presentation of Tours are also present.
Commerce and Industry. The local industries of weaving, tanning,
and dyeing are mainly handcrafts, but there are flour-mills, some
oil-pressing, soap and cigarette workshops, tanneries, a dyeworks,
one large weaving factory An East India Company trading post. , and three ice-plants and soda-water
factories. Outside the town there are numerous lime-kilns and much
local cement is made from gypsum (juss), which is quarried in the
hills to the west, and charcoal is produced in the province for the
Mosul market. Artisans such as carpenters, masons, blacksmiths,
and coppersmiths are numerous. The main economic activity is not
industry but trade, particularly in grain and wool from the surround
ing regions. In the extensive bazaars minor oriental crafts, par
ticularly of gold and copper work, are carried on. There is con
siderable trade by kellek down the Tigris from Turkish Armenia and
to Baghdad in general goods and also in timber and firewood, though
some of this comes on pack-ponies from the mountains. The quay
for kelleks is on the left bank below the bridge. Grain and meat are
abundant, as are fruit and vegetables in season.
Electricity is supplied by a municipal power station half a mile
above the bridge on the right bank of the Tigris. Water is pumped
from the Tigris by a municipal pumping-station, in the same com
pound, with a capacity of 1,000,000 gallons a day; its reservoir holds
500,000 gallons.
Communications
The river is bridged at Mosul by an 8 -span Hopkins steel bridge
on steel concrete-filled cylindrical piers, built in 1934* which has
replaced the former Turkish bridge. There is also a motor-boat ferry
of 6 tons capacity.
Rail. Mosul is on the standard-gauge line (Rly. 4) f rom Baghdad
which continues north-west across the Syrian Jazira to Nusaybin in