Page 535 - PERSIAN 1 1873_1879 Admin Report1_Neat

19
POLITICAL AGENCY YOR 1878-79.
RESIDENCY AND HU9KAT

appendix o to pabt i.

tribes theVcyli-Wand, Bakhtiari, See., as well as Khuzistdn or Pew“
Arabia properly so called, whose boundaries are, roughly, the BakhUSn
Hills, the river Kerkhah, a line drawn from Hawaezali to i.Iahamrah,
the Shat-ul-'Arah from Mahamrali to the sea, the Persian Gulf, and the

nVCTheU<Muutry between these boundaries, excepting the towns of
Skushter and Hiznul aud the vilhigo of It amis, whose populations are
hybrid, is inhabited by Arabs, either
• j. “Hadhr ” or “ Bedu.”
settled in villages or nomadic.* Its
area is about 10,000 square miles, and its present population is estimated
at 167,000 souls. Its surface is quite Hat with the^ exception of. one
narrow, rocky range o£ hills, varying from 50 to 250 feet in height,
which runs from north-west to south-east across the middle of it, and
a scries of undulations which rise gradually towards the Bakhtiari Hills.
The river Karun issues from the hills, a navigable, stream at Shush ter,
and, bisecting Persian Arabia, runs by one mouth into the Persian Gulf,
and by another into th‘* Shat-ul-'Arab at JMahamrah. A description of
this river will be fouud in the account of a trip which I made to
Shuster and Dizpul in 1876. A smaller stream, the Jerrahy, enters the
plains at Ramis, ar.d loses itself in the marshes around Felahiyah. There
is therefore no lack of water, were it utilised; but the damson the
Karan ar.d Jerrahy, which diverted their waters by canals in all direc­
tions over the country, have been swept away, and hardly a trace of any
of them, except that at Ahwaz, remains, while the canals themselves
have been filled up by drifting sand.
The soil is generally exceedingly fertile, and when cultivated and
sufficiently watered yields extraordinary crops. • The last dam on the
4“*uu vllk. wusuui.l<,-u ujl iur*. uy uic xvBu i^raus at xuana,
Kfirirn was one constructed of turf by the Kab Arabs at ^land, some
eight miles above where Mabamrah now stands. It turned the Karun
bodily towards the Kaban, then the capital of the K6b nation, and the
country through which it passed, irrigated by innumerable small canals
whose remains arc still to be seen, produced abundance of sugar, cotton*
indigo, sessame, dates, wheat, rice, &c., which were largely exported to
India, Turkey and Persia. When the Kab Arabs underwent the usual
process of internal dissension, intrigue with Turkey and Persia and decay
towards the end of last century, the dam was allowed to fall to ruin, and
the Karun taking its present course, the Kaban became the parched
desert it now is, and had to be abandoned altogether. ^.d0 mc
The Kdb moved
^^mment^to Dorak or Feldliiyah,.as it is now called on
the Jerrahy, but their decline in enterprise,*
as in numbers and power
crops as are now raised in Persian
srzzsLm
Sr
overflowing of the nver. There is still one partially efficient dam ™
on the