‘Notes and private telegram from the Viceroy regarding the future settlement of Eastern Turkey in Asia and Arabia.’ [‎86v] (20/20)

3. 215.
This document is the property of the Secretary of State for India.
SECRET.
Notes and private t( le^ram from the \ ieerov rcumdiim tlie
M. CT7 %/ ~ ~
future settlement ol Eastern Turkey in Asia and Arabia.
Note by the Si cuetakv. Poli tical and Secret I)ei > autmext, India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. .
At the beginning uf the war with Turkey, J [is Majesty's Government
gave assurances to the Sheikhs of Koweit and Mohannnera and to the
Amir of Nejd, in return for their support, that Basra would never again be
subject to Turkish authority. These notes are an attempt to indicate some
of the factors that must be considered in determining what is to be done
with it.
I. Geography. The area at present occupied by British troops is but a
small part ol the vilayet of Basra ; but in thinking of the future of the
territory that is to be removed from Turkish rule at the end of a successful
war it is necessary to consider this area in its place against a somewhat
wider geographical background. That background is the Abbasid Provinces
of Jezireh and Irak Arabi, which under Ottoman rule became the single
Province of Bagdad until it was divided into three by the separation of
the Mosul vilayet in I<S78 and the Basra vilayet in 1881,
This larger area is comprised within the mountains in which runs thc
Turco-Persian frontier to the east, the Syrian desert and the Arabian plateau
to tlie west, the foothills of the Anti-Taurus to the north, and the Persian
Gulf to the south, and it measures about 100,(J00 square miles. It is a
geographical unit, in the sense that its main characteristic is the river systems
of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and that it lias no other natural limits than
those just mentioned. For from the shore of the Gulf in hit. 30 < toNisibin in
lat. o7 0 only one lateral mountain range breaks the level of the plain between
the two rivers, viz., the .lebel Sinjar (3,000 feet) in tlie latitude of Mosul
(3(3 35') ; and from the moment that the two rivers debouch upon this
plain they pursue their course down its gentle declivity to the Gulf without
interruption save where the Tigris cuts through the Jebel Hamrin in lat. 35°.
This range ol" hills—an incongruous heap of barren mounds, composed of
sandstone and pebbles, about 500 feet high at the Tigris cutting—runs for
some 30 miles along the right bank of the river, and then, on the left bank,
bends south-eastwards in a low, but almost unbroken, line, to Ahwaz in
Arabistan. Immediately south of it began the great irrigation works of
the past (Hitter Erdkunde XI., 67^).
II. Geology.- But though the configuration of the whole of this area is
thus uniform, climate and the nature of the soil have marked it out into
three distinct zones. The northernmost of these, extending from the foothills
to a little south ol the Jebel Sinjar, being well watered by rivers and having
an adequate rainfall, is a plain of exuberant fertility, where in the spring the
rider is almost over-powered by the scent of the flowers which his horse treads
under foot. Its potentialities have just been realised, and wealthy men further
south are beginning to buy up tracts of it and take them into cultivation.
Next, and extending to a line drawn from Tekrit on the Tigris to Hit on
the Euphrates, stretches a wilderness—not, however, one in the sense in
which the Yemen and the Sahara are wildernesses, but rather a plain which
even beyond the reach of the rivers is covered with grass for some months
after the winter rains; on which, where it is commanded by the rivers or in
depressions, a considerable quantity of wheat and barley, according to Sir
VV. Willcocks, is even now raised ; and of which he says that the presence of
15 per cent, of lime in its soil makes its reclamation very easy as compared
with Egypt. Oppenheim, on the other hand, is of opinion that a good deal
of this belt, at a distance from the two rivers, will always be uncultivable owing
to the proportion of gypsum which the soil contains, and Chesney's Map
VII. and information from other sources tend to contirm this view as
regards the centre of the tract lying between Hit and Bagdad. It seems
probable that it would not repay irrigation at a distance from the rivers,
s. 2h2. a
o
even if water on a large scale could be spared for it. lUit it will always
remain pasture land for the tribes in spring.
Finn%, south of the Tekrit-Hit line to the Gulf stretches the
alluvial plain forming the delta of the Euphrates and the Tigris, whoso
potential fertility is now a matter of common knowledge—an area of [ >
million acres, of which 9 are at present wilderness and '2\ fresh -water
swamp, awaiting irrigation and drainage respectively.
III. Ethnology. —The essential unity of this great area is emphasised bv
the homogeneity of its population, which is almost exclusively Arab, except
for the strip of mountainous country lying between the Tigris and the Turco-
Persian frontier north of the Jebel Hamrin, which is rather an off-shoot of
Kurdistan than a part of El Jezireh. There is indeed a Kurdish element
on the southern section of the Turco-Persian frontier, and the towns of
Bagdad and Basra have, of course, attracted people of many nationalities,
notably Persians in the neighbourhood of Nejef and Kerbela. But speaking
generally, the Arabs form the predominant part of the population. They
consist of a large number of tribes— Loriiner enumerates over 100 in Turkish
Irak—the most important being the Northern and Southern Shammar (divided
roughly by a line drawn from Mosul to Mejadin on the Tigris) who range
over the whole area between the two rivers from north of the Jebel Sinjar to
the neighbourhood of Bagdad itself; their hereditary enemies, the Anaizah,
in the desert west of the Euphrates; the Muntitik, in the lower part of the
delta between Kut-el-Amara on the Tigris and Nasriyeh on the Euphrates;
and the Beni Lam, half in Irak and half in Persia, in tin 1 neighbourhood
of Amara. The first two named are Sunnis, as are the ruling clan of the
Muntifik, but most of the rest of the tribes are Shiahs. They are largely
nomadic in their habits, but in the neighbourhood of water they tend to
settle down into fellaheen 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. ; for their ruling passion is acquisitiveness, and
where cultivation can be demonstrated to be more profitable than robbery
they show no objection to applying themselves to it. South of Bagdad,
indeed, they are already only semi-nomadic, wandering in the desert in
spring, but cultivating the banks of the rivers during the rest of the year.
One of the first tasks of the administrator is to complete the process of trans
formation and pacification to which the Turks have never addressed them
selves, having been content with maintaining a very precarious peace by the
time-honoured expedient of playing off one tribe against another. In an
interesting note Oppenheim illustrates the task from the history ol Egypt
(Vom Mittelmeer Z. persischen Gulf II. p. 81).
Reference has been made above to the Kurds, and Kurdistan will be an
important factor in any future settlement of this region. A belt of
mountainous country, with a population of some .'>,000,000, whose charactei-
istics are well known, it lies between Armenia, which will presumably lall
to Russia, and the plain of VA Jezireh, from which no barrier separates it,
and the only pass through which Russia can emerge to the Mediterranean—
the pass of Bitlis- lies in its heart. To the Power that controls the plain
the Kurds will be, as are the tribes of the North-West frontier Region of British India bordering Afghanistan. to t e
Punjab—a constant source of inconvenience if left to themselves, a italic ing
menace if under the influence of an intriguing Power behind them.
IV. Covimiinications.-~]h\ George Lloyd in his confidential repdt on
Mesopotamia has remarked that the country has three primal \ nee s
communications, irrigation, and administrative reorganisation.
Roads. —Beginning from the south it will be noticed that not
Basra but Bagdad is the centre of trade routes; Basra being mere >
port at which ocean-going steamers transhi]> their cargo into 11U 1 s
for Bagdad. From Bagdad there are four great caravan I0Ute 1 s . i" 08t
east via Khanikin to Kermanshah in Persia the route . 1 , u | ,R M\- (rr j s
of our trade with Western Persia passes); on either side o . mar
to Mosul, that on the right bank being exposed to tit !r 11 J
and that on the left ^through Kerkuk and Erbil) to t m* ^ - ^
(Kurds); on the right bank of the Euphrates (exposed t() ne ^ on(1
to Hit, whence one branch runs to Aleppo, one to Damascus,