"كتيّب بلاد الرافدين. المجلد I. ١٩١٨" [‎١‎٩‎٤] (٥٦٨/٢٠٣)

194 AGRICULTURE AND LAND TENURE
paying tenants on lands which they regarded as their own. Many
of the new landlords were absentees and quite unconnected with the
tribesmen who cultivated their estates. How far the icipu proprietors
fulfilled their duties of canal clearance and so forth is not clear. At
any rate their claims were bitterly resented by the cultivators. Thus
when the Government's authority Was weakened after the Revolution
of 1908-9 a kind of agrarian revolution followed. The result has been
that owners of tapu estates have become unable either to collect their
rents or to undertake their responsibilities. The tribesmen look
upon the landlords as intruders who make oppressive and unjust
demands upon the cultivators and rightful owners of the soil. The
landlords appeal to their title-deeds and complain that they are
being robbed of what by law and justice is clearly theirs. Both
sides look to the Government of the country to support their claims,
which need careful consideration and adjustment.
Apart from this difficult question of the estates there were
many abuses and anomalies in the system of land tenure and land
taxation as it was at the beginning of the war. Corruption entered
into all transactions of the administration touching the land,
especially into the leasing of the lands which the State had at its
disposal and into the assessment and collection of the revenue
derived from the produce of the soil. Tnus in the Amara district,
where in theory the miri and samyeh lands paid a proportion of
their produce to the Crown, in practice the land was put up to
auction and leased for cash rents to the highest bidder. There was
intense rivalry among the tribes, and wholly fictitious prices were
bid which could never be paid but which were pleasing to the heads
of the revenue department. The highest bidder, usually a sheikh,
sublet the lands, which were again sublet to the result being
a chain of debt and extortion which the land could never support
and which was liable at any moment to bring ruin to all concerned
in it.