'Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society, from September 1850 to June 1852. Edited by the Secretary. Volume X.' [‎102] (235/458)

COMMANDER F. JONES.
102
district. In an hour's fast walk passing many herds of antelope, we
came again on the banks of the fine old conduit the Izhaki ivliicti
keeps onwards as far as the eye can see in the same unswerving
line that has been noted before. Its dry bed has been a breadth
of some 15 yards, with banks elevated much above the country.*
On the East side, the line of the modern Ferh&tiyeh, now also aban
doned since the great plague of 1831, is seen to run parallel to the
course of the ancient duct, whose breadth contrasts strongly with
the attenuated, one yard wide, watercourse of the present day.
Between the Izhkki, and the ancient course of the Tigris, a complete
system of irrigation is seen to have been in force, for five other
considerable canals, extending like radii from a bend of the old
channel of the Tigris, above the ruins of Harbeh, carried the waters
of the river over the intermediate space. In two hours from the end
of the Chilli Batikh, we had reached the bridge of Harbeh, near which
in the spaces between the canals above mentioned, were several
camps of the Majummah, whose inmates had not agreed with the
Zabit of the Dijeil on the terms demanded by him for the possession
of land within the territory of irrigation, and were therefore expelled
the limits. These however, comparatively rich in fiocks, and in the
* Appendix u. The Izhaki has the character of a first class canal, and though AMil-feda
relates in a notice of Tekrit in the Taqniraal Buldan, taken from Ibn S’ayed, that it Y as Jv u ^
in the time of the Khalif Matawakkel, A. D.850 by Izhak-ibnlbrahim the chief of the kna-
lifs guard; we may presume that he repaired or re-opened it only ; it subsequently taking nis
name, after the usage of Mahomedans, whose principal aim seens to have been the erasure o
all records of the past, so as to refer every thing to the immediate era of their own times.
At present even, the admission of water into an old duct by an opulent individual, is a su •
ficient cause for its baptism by the name of the party, which it retains until re-excavated y
another. In Mahomedan countries, in fact, such a system of nomenclature points more
the era of decline than to the period of construction of public works, and the Izhaki may there
fore be considered as but dragging out an existence ten centuries ago, for, had it been i
operation at a more advanced period than we have mentioned, it would not have per p
borne its present name, but the appellation of its last restorer, as these irrigants require perio
dical dredgings, which in canals of the extent of the Izhaki, could only be done by a ^ ov . '
ment, through a favorite minister, such as Izhakibn Ibrahim. Indeed we find in the same no >
on the authority of Ibn Hokul, who wrote in the tenth century, that the Dijeil as 1 bav®
marked in the description of that canal—then severed the Izhaki in two, and it further s <
that Izhaki was the most northern of all the canals, (derived from the right bank oi *
Tigris), which watered the territory of Irak-Abulfeda. It is therefore certain that it c
not have been in Izhak’s day, opened to its full extent, that is, from a little below >
and reaching to the neighbourhood of Akrkuf and Baghdad. The Kitaba i‘ ha fi re ti
corroborates this in a measure, by describing the Izhaki as reaching only to k
or Matiret, as it is various y spelt—on the old course of the Tigris, the ex ^ ( i llS i n
tion of which (unless it be at Harbeh,—p. 26), I cannot define, but in the catalogue or i
the same work, it is represented as standing next in order to Al’Alth, which position i ^
tified in the present paper. Though I have not as yet traced the Izhaki along the who ^
course, I feel all but convinced that the Nathriyat canal p.21—and Serakha duct P* .^j ie
emanations from it, if one, or the other, be not the trunk stream itself. The n ^ lia ,
Arabic is written Ishaki (Isaac) but I have placed a z. in lieu of s. before the ne I ■>
render the pronunciation by the European less liable to error.