'Handbook of Mesopotamia. Vol. I. 1918' [‎88] (97/568)

88
INHABITANTS
This total includes a number of tribes which either are wholly
nomadic, or belong to that class of ' semi -nomads' in which at least
a large part of each tribe moves every summer to a considerable
distance from its winter quarters. If all the nomads and the semi-
nomads of the class described, to whatever race they may belong,
are counted in, and those who are within or just on the limits of
this area for a part of the year only are included, they may amount
to between 15 and 20 per cent, of the above total. But their
numbers are really quite uncertain, and are even more difficult to
estimate than those of the settled population. ...
In the course of the present war the population of certain districts
in upper Mesopotamia has been very considerably reduced; for
example, in those parts of the Diarbekr vilayet where Armenians
have been massacred or deported, and in central Kurdistan where
the Christian Hakkiari tribes and the Armenians south of Lake Van
have been massacred, or have been driven from their homes to
die in great numbers in the course of their flight. On the other
hand large numbers of deported Armenians have been brought down
to the upper Mesopotamian plain and the middle valley of the
Euphrates; but the rate of mortality among these deportees, who
arrived in 1915, appears to have been very high.
Irak
In Irak over 90 per cent, of the population is grouped along the
rivers and canals. The rural population is on the whole densest in
the following areas ; (a) along the Shatt el-Arab ; {h) along and near
the Euphrates, especially between Museyib and Diwaniyeh on the
Hilla branch or Kufeh on the Hindiyeh branch, and again in the
Nasirlyeh—Suq esh-Shuyukh area; (c) on and near the Shatt
el-Hai; {d) to the north and north-east of Baghdad, along the Tigris
and in the country watered by the Khalis canal between the Tigris
and the Diyaleh, and in the Baqubeh district; (e) in the country
round Amara on the lower Tigris.
Of these areas the Shatt el-Arab district contains the most closely
settled population ; here the villages and hamlets are set close along
the river-banks on narrow strips ij-2 miles wide among the date-
groves irrigated by the tidal rise of the river.
The line of the Euphrates is far more densely inhabited than the
the Gazetteer for Basra and its environs was considerably exaggerated. It was
discovered that the population of Basra, Ashar, and some outlying villages
1 could be at the outside 35,000 whereas the Gazetteer put it at 58,000. If the
case of Basra is typical, the population of the whole of Irak may be only about
900,000.