'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎342v] (687/862)

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PORTS AND INLAND TOWNS
534
stores and khans often contain as much as 10,000 tons of barley and wheat
retained in store for a rise in prices. Export is by river and rail to Baghdad
and Basra. There is an extensive covered bazaar containing about 1,000
stalls, in which are sold saddles and felt rugs manufactured in the town.
Apart from commerce a great number of the population are employed in
cultivation as fellahin Arabic for ‘peasant’. It was used by British officials to refer to agricultural workers or to members of a social class employed primarily in agricultural labour. . The town also has its complement of absentee land-
owners and money-lenders. Hilla is a military depot, the barracks being
outside the town on the left bank near the railway station.
Water is still apparently taken direct from the river and irrigation chan
nels, the only storage tanks being at the railway station. Electricity is sup
plied for lighting by a private plant (55 and 25 kW., 440 volts D.C.).
Communications
Rail: The railway station, on the left bank miles north-north-east of
the town, is on the Basra-Baghdad line (Rly. 1).
Road : Main motor-road [2] north direct to Baghdad, the last 28 miles
of which have a tarmac surface, and south-east unmetalled on right bank to
Diwaniya, Samawa, and Basra; alternative route on left bank east-south
east by Daghghara barrage to Diwaniya. Unmetalled roads [za] [zb] south
to Kufa and Najaf and north-west to Tuwairij (Hindiya) and Karbala; both
are well graded, embanked above flood-level, and well bridged where
necessary.
Air: Landing-ground three-quarters of a mile north of the town.
33 39 N., 42 5 0 E.; alt. c. 200 feet. Pop. 6,000. Nahiya cap.,
Dulaim Liwa.
Hit is a small town on the right bank of the Euphrates about 58 miles in
a direct line above Falluja, at the edge of the desert plateau and at the point
where the riverain strip begins to widen out as the Euphrates enters its
delta. The ground rises slightly to the plateau on the right bank (photo. 205);
opposite, the Jazira plain is flat. The town is built on a ruin mound or tel
and is famous for its bitumen wells. There is cultivation and a number of
walled date-groves with outlying hamlets among them, dependent on Hit.
The inhabitants are Sunni Arabs derived mostly from the Dulaim tribe,
except for a small colony of native Jews.
The bitumen wells of Hit (anc. Is or Id) were exploited in the earliest
recorded times. The Egyptian monarch Thothmes III received tribute
from them, the Assyrian Tukulti-Enurta II camped near them in 885 b.c.,
bitumen from Hit was used for the building of Babylon, and the Greek
Herodotus (c. 425 b.c.) knew of them. The town was sacked during the
Roman and Persian wars in the fourth century a.d., when it was at the head
of a great dike dug by Sapor II which ran south across the desert plateau
for the protection of Mesopotamia against beduin raids. In Abbasid times
it flourished as a walled town with a castle, the capital of thirty villages