'HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR BASED ON OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS. THE CAMPAIGN IN MESOPOTAMIA 1914-1918. VOLUME I.' [‎15r] (34/454)

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY 9
The staple products of the country are dates, rice, barley
and wheat, wool and goats’ hair, hides and skins. The prin
cipal date-producing areas are the banks of the Shatt al Arab,
the lower Euphrates, the Hilla-Karbala area, and on the
Tigris about Baghdad. In Iraq agriculture depends mainly on
irrigation and in Upper Mesopotamia on the rainfall. Trans
port difficulties and the attitude of some of the Arab tribes
rendered impossible the collection of local supplies in adequate
quantities. Grain, salt, ghi and straw were produced in
sufficient quantities if they could have been collected. Cold
storage is necessary to store and preserve potatoes and vege
tables for any but the shortest period. Meat could have been
obtained in ample quantities if it had been possible to induce
the Arabs to bring in their cattle or to allow sheep to come
down from the Persian hills. Grazing for horses exists in
places, but it cannot be depended upon for long and rarely
grows where it is most wanted.
In Upper Mesopotamia the plains are generally more or
less undulating, though there are several wide expanses of
flat country. Here and there they are traversed by low
ranges of hills, whose general trend is eastward to westward.
The surface of the plains is open and treeless. The soil is
generally of a better surface to stand military traffic than in
Iraq. In the north, where numerous streams carry water
for half the year, large tracts are covered in the spring with
rich grass ; but to the south, the plain becomes increasingly
arid, being in many places a hard desert. There are also
large areas in which water from wadis* collects and on evapora
tion leaves an incrustation of salt.
Northward of Baghdad, the Euphrates and the Tigris have
cut for themselves shallow valleys one to five miles wide
bordered by low hills or cliffs, where stretches of alluvium
occur, being the deposit of the rivers in flood time. Along the
banks of the upper reaches of these rivers there is often con
siderable cultivation. To the east the plains slope from the
Kurdish hills to the Tigris ; they are crossed by the Adhaim,
the Lesser Zab and the Greater Zab (tributaries of the Tigris),
and in the spring are generally clothed with grass. The
southern portion of these plains is traversed from south-east
to north-west by the rocky sandstone and conglomerate range
of the Jabal Hamrin—rising to four hundred to six hundred
feet above plain level— which is pierced by the Diyala (another
tributary of the Tigris) near Belli Abbas, by the Adhaim about
Watercourses or valleys.