ملف ١٩١٥/٣١٠٤ الجزء ٩ "التجارة مع بلاد الرافدين: المدفوعات من أصول العدو في إنجلترا إلى الشركات في بلاد الرافدين؛ دفع أرباح الأسهم في الشركات البريطانية، والتركات، وغير ذلك للمقيمين في بلاد الرافدين؛ مطالبات السادة سليم حمصي وشركاه تجاه عملاء في منطقة الموصل؛ مطالبة السادة أندرو وير وشركاه ضد الإدارة النهرية" [و‎‎٣‎٠‎٦] (٣٣٤/٢٣٧)

Minute Paper.
January 0 , 1919 THE BOARD OF
Special 3rticles.
^ MESOPOTAMIA.
[.—R JURCES AND POSSIBILITIES.
No country, not even Egypt, has made a deeper
mark in the history of the ancient world than Mesopo
tamia. For thousands of years it was the seat of the
Assyrian and Babylonian Empires. To the bountiful
resources of nature its peoples added those of art and
i science, and the country during the centuries waxed
not only in material wealth and military power but
also in culture. The ancient glory of Mesopotamia
has passed, but the glamour remains. There remain
also the natural resources of the country, which for
nearly seven centuries have been blighted by the Turk.
The dry levels of Mesopotamia, of great intrinsic fer
tility, need artificial irrigation to preserve them from
drought; the lower levels need protection against being
swamped by the overflow from the rivers. Under
Turkish rule both irrigation and river conservancy
were neglected, and tract after tract of once fertile
land fell out of cultivation. To-day a very small pro
portion of the land is tilled. Great permanent
swamps have been formed; wide deposits of salt from
the flood waters have spoiled land for cultivation
although it has not remained permanently flooded,
and hundreds of thousands of once irrigated acres have
relapsed into desert. While much of that which made
Mesopotamia a cradle of civilisation has gone for ever,
much still remains and is capable of restoration and
development. We will endeavour to give as briefly
and accurately as we can a sketch of the country in
sufficient detail to indicate its resources and future
possibilities.
NATURE OF THE COUNTRY.
Mesopotamia, as its name implies, is aland of rivers.
Its natural wealth rests chiefly in the rich alluvial soil
of the Delta between the Tigris and Euphrates, and
the future of the country depends mainly upon the
proper utilisation of the rivers for irrigation and navi
gation. There are really three rivers, for at Kuma,
in Lower Mesopotamia (Irak), the Tigris and Euphrates
meet and together form the Shatt-el-Arab, w’hich flows
thence into the Persian Gulf 107 miles away. From
Mosul, in the northern hills, to Kuma by the route
of the Tigris is 723 miles; from Meskenneh to Kuma
by the Euphrates is 1,002 miles. German writers
have estimated the rich alluvial soil between and about
these rivers at from 25 to 60 million acres in extent.
These are probably over-estimates, but whatever may
be revealed by modern surveys of the extent of the
possible area of cultivation, it is known that a very
small percentage is at present under tillage and that
from 2| to 5 million acres are continually under floods.
Little is known of the mineral resources of this country.
There has been some working of deposits by more or
less primitive methods, but, except in a few districts,
no scientific examination of mineral fields. The state
ments made concerning the existence of oil are chiefly
based upon considerations of geological structure sup
ported by some surface indications of oil and bitumen.
We will give some particulars later of the surface oil
workings on the Tigris and Euphrates. There may
be sources of wealth in Mesopotamia yet to be explored
and worked, but not enough is at present known of
minerals to compete in interest with agriculture in a
survey of the country’s possibilities.
AGRICULTURE.
The alluvial soil of Lower Mesopotamia (South of
Bagdad) is very rich and of great potential fertility.
Department.
TRADE JOURNAL. 33
SPECIAL ARTICLES— continued.
Though the greater part of it is now waste, only irriga
tion and tillage are needed to bring out its inherent
qualities. But in order to realise fully the agricultural
wealth of Mesopotamia internal communication by
river, road and railway require development. Improved
external communication by sea will also be necessary,
for since the construction of the Suez Canal Mesopo
tamia has become, to some extent, side-tracked. LTntil
quite recently no attempt had been made to develop
internal communications. Turkey was apathetic, and
as late as 1912 failed even to appreciate the import
ance of an adequate steamer service on the Tigris.
The Bagdad Railway was a German enterprise and a
part of their scheme of commercial penetration.
Cultivators of the soil have been discouraged by
almost every kind of insecurity. The Government was
not strong enough to put down feuds between tribes
or to stop incursions of Kurds from the hills. 3 he
vagaries of the rivers, unchecked by engineers, made
swamps or deserts of tracts which had once been fertile.
Land tenure was as uncertain as the land itself; not
even sheikhs had a greater security than was offered
by a five years’ lease. Land taxes were farmed out,
and extortion in their collection followed as a matter
of course. “ Publicani ’ in the East have always
been proverbial oppressors. Labour was scarce and
uncertain, and credit facilities hardly existed. Under
discouragements such as these population and cultiva-
tion dwindled together.
Methods of Cultivation.
Mesopotamia is a Fand of two harvests for arable
crops. Wheat, barley and beans are sown in the autumn
or winter and harvested in April and May; rice, peas
and maize are sown during the spring floods and
harvested betwen August and September. Cultivation
is primitive; the soil is so fertile that tickled \\ ith a
hoe it laughs with a harvest, and the Arab, whose
needs are small, is content with the simplest tillage.
The ground is lightly ploughed and never properly
broken up. Seed is often put into the giound much
later than it should be. This is because the popula
tion is in many places insufficient to look after both
the spring and autumn crops. The wheat and barley
Growers migrate to the rice tracts after the spring
harvest and do no ploughing for the spring harvest
until the work of gathering and threshing the rice crop
has been finished.
Systems of Irrigation.
The growth of all the crops is dependent upon irriga
tion, of which three systems are in operation. The
oldest system in the world—water lifted in buckets
is still used for date gardens, though not to any extent
for arable lands. In Lower Mesopotamia and also
higher up the rivers, especially along the Euphrates,
the water lifts may be seen at work. Secondly there
is irrigation by channels along which the fresh water
is forced when it meets the rising tide in the Shatt-el-
Arab. Thirdly, there is irrigation by canals. The
banks of the rivers and canals have been raised by
silt brought down during floods, so that there is a
gradual slope down from the banks to the low le\els
permanently under swamp. The high ground is dry
except at full flood; the middle slopes can usually
o-et water during most of the spring and summer; the
Tower land is always wet. So, in the absence of a
scientific distribution of flood water, we get a grada-
: tion from the land which is almost always dry to that
which is usually irrigated, and thence to the always
wet. ' The gradation in arable crops is from wheat and
barlev on the higher levels, to millfet and maize on
the middle slopes, and to rice on the wetter levels just
above the swamps.