"ملاحظات ميدانية: بلاد الرافدين. هيئة الأركان العامة في الهند. فبراير ١٩١٧". [و‎‎١‎٢] (٣٥٠/٣٠)

CHAPTER H.
GEOGRAPHY.
Boundaries.
The tract of country to be dealt with in this report com
prises the locality commonly known as Mesopotamia.
Mesopotamia as a whole is the lowland portion of the basin of
the ancient Asiatic rivers Euphrates and Tigris, in contradis
tinction to the Armenian and Kurdistan hill country, which
forms the high-lying portion of the basin, the dividing line
between the two being found in the neighbourhood of Diarbekr.
Mesopotamia itself can again be subdivided into Upper and
Lower Mesopotamia, the former, Al Jazirah (the island between
two rivers) extending south as far as Baghdad, and the latter,
’Iraq-i-’Arabi continuing to the Persian Gulf. Our boundaries
then for this report are Upper Mesopotamia, similar in character
to Lower Mesopotamia on the north, and the Persian Gulf on
the south. The eastern boundary is the Turco-Persian frontier,
which was demarcated in 1914. The approximate line, emer
ging from the watershed of a belt of high mountains east of
Baghdad, runs along the foothills about 40 miles east of the
Tigris to a little west of Muhammareh, where Persian terri
tory adjoins the Shatt-al-’Arab.
As regards the country on the west, we have the Arabian
tableland, rising very gradually from the lowland, Euphrates
country and without any definite line "of demarcation between
the- authority of the Turkish Government and the spheres of the
various independent or /semi-independent Arab tribes and
chieftains.
Geographical peatures.
Between this western desert tableland, rising to 1,000 feet
at about 100 miles from the Euphrates, and the Persian hills
on the east, nowhere is the country more than 100 feet above
sea-level, and the whole Mesopotamian zone may be regarded
as a northern extension of the Persian Gulf, which at one time
probably reached almost to the Mediterranean. The country
has in fact gradually been filled in by the alluvia of the great
rivers and the advancing sands of the desert, and owing to this
i ( 15 )