Traditional irrigation in Mesopotamia

The modern experience

Today, history is repeating itself. Once again, the traditional irrigation system is breaking down under the pressures of centralisation and agricultural intensification. In the modern period, that breakdown first began under Turkish rule and was further exacerbated by the British.

Both Colonial administrations increased the power of the local shaykhs in order to transform them into their own ‘agents’ within the different tribal areas. The shaykhs were thereby “forced to assume roles that they either did not wish to perform or (which were) carried out to the detriment of their people”. [28]

Among other things, their relationship with the other members of their tribe underwent a radical transformation, thus, the shaykhs ceased to be ‘first among equals’ and became instead landlords – their fellow tribesmen now reduced to mere tenants. Tribal land – which previously had been held communally – thus became private property. As a result, many shaykhs simply sold their land to speculators, while others moved to the cities to become absentee landlords. The story is a familiar one. Ester Boserup, for instance, notes:

“When (large-scale irrigation) regions are left in the uncontrolled possession of a landlord class, which is either of foreign origin or partner in a precarious alliance with a foreign conqueror, rural investments are in danger of being neglected, because the landlords inevitably go for quick profits and liquid assets. In extreme cases, the result is starvation and depopulation.” [29]

As we shall see, this seems to be true even if the government of a centralised state is an indigenous one.

The British further increased the power of the landlords. Moreover, as more and more peasants were drawn into the market economy, so they were forced to pay rents, taxes and interest on loans which they found increasingly difficult to meet. Fallow periods were violated and, eventually, only the large land-owners had “sufficient acreage to shift tenants around in order to reduce losses due to poor land fallowing”. [30]

The reduction in fallow also meant a reduction in pasturage and hence a decrease in livestock. Moreover, the introduction of the new system of land-tenure together with the gradual disintegration of the tribal system meant that the shaykhs ceased to observe their traditional obligations: instead of acting as custodians of the tribe’s land, they acted “increasingly in their own family interests”. [31]

Discussing the overall effects of government policy under British and Turkish rule, McGuire Gibson has few good words to say. Thus, he writes:

“By supporting and keeping one family in a position of power, by changing a chief to a landlord; by concentrating wealth while inducing individuals to take up small, fixed plots; by imposing yearly taxes and encouraging rents and debts, the central authority brought about widespread violation of fallow. Eventual selling out by small holders to large landowners did not lead to a reversal of agricultural decline because debt-ridden farmers often did not stay on the land as sharecroppers, but became nomads or fled to the cities.” [32]

To alleviate the labour shortage, the landlords were forced to obtain their tenants from elsewhere. Since the latter had no experience of living in the special conditions of the area, they proved to be far less effective than the tribesmen whom they superseded.

Those problems were further compounded by the water development projects initiated by both colonial regimes. Here, the experience of the tribes in the Daghara region – over which the Turks never exerted effective control – is instructive. Thus, in 1870, Midhat Pasha, the progressive Turkish governor, ordered the construction of a dam across the Saqlawiyah canal, at its source on the Euphrates near Felluja.

Its object was to prevent the flooding of Baghdad. Its effect, however, was to impose “a much greater burden of water upon the barrage at Hindiyah” which was “the critical divisor of water allowing a flow to go into the Hilla channel and thence into the Daghara canal”. [33] The Saqlawiyah dam eventually gave way; it was repaired but continued to function badly. As a result, “in the last part of the nineteenth century the Daghara area suffered crises of water shortage”.

In 1903 the dam collapsed again. H. W. Cadoux, who travelled by stage coach down the middle of the dry Hilla bed, described the effects of the catastrophe. Whole sections of the countryside, he reported, were deserted; the former residents having been forced to move to the area around the Hindiyah channel. Only a few forts, deriving their water from wells sunk in the middle of the canal beds, were still inhabited. All the vegetation, with the exception of palm trees, had withered. [34] The dam was restored in 1914.

Elsewhere, other water projects were initiated. The British administration embarked on a vast scheme to build a major new canal in addition to upstream storage basins and dams designed to store the water throughout the dry season. The effect of those developments was perhaps predictable: soil salinity was increased and agricultural yields fell dramatically. Indeed, McGuire Gibson notes, somewhat sardonically;

“Directly, through engineering that promoted water-logging and salinity, the central government acted to undermine agricultural productivity.” [35]

The end of colonial rule brought no improvement to the slow decline of Mesopotamia’s irrigation agriculture. In the last 20 years more and more smallholders have sold their land to the shaykhs and have been forced to seek work elsewhere. The waterways are now administered nationally, and the water is supplied by pipe from a government canal. In the meantime waterlogging and salinity have rendered a third to a half of the land of the El Shabana uncultivable. [36]

The lessons of Mesopotamia

For many years, historians of irrigation agriculture in Mesopotamia have explained the rise and fall of state-run irrigation schemes in terms of what has become known as the ‘Wittfogel model’. Wittfogel argued that irrigation agriculture is only possible when run by a centralised bureaucracy and, consequently, that the collapse of irrigation agriculture results from the breakdown of that bureaucracy. Jacobsen, a well- known adherent of the Wittfogel thesis, writes,

“When government controls weaken and disturbed conditions come to prevail, the great disastrous abandonments of land take place.” [37]

Our brief review of the Mesopotamian experience argues for a very different interpretation. To be sure, a state bureaucracy is undoubtedly necessary in order to administer a vast centralised irrigation system. But the evidence makes it quite clear that the collapse of that system comes about as a result of the inevitable social and ecological destruction it causes.

Small wonder, then, that the great survivors in the history of irrigation agriculture in Mesopotamia are precisely those societies which have escaped being drawn into the orbit of the State. Far from irrigation agriculture falling into decline when bureaucratic controls relax therefore, the opposite is the case: as McGuire Gibson puts it,

“In Mesopotamia, the intervention of state government has tended to weaken and ultimately destroy the agricultural basis of the country.” [38]

For his part, Fernea does not regard a tribal society as being the only type of society capable of managing an irrigation system without violating fallow and thus incurring problems of salinisation.

“If a landlord with a large holding were to allow fallowing (as he could afford to do with that much land) and be satisfied with the yield, without pressing his tenants for greater production; if an external government were to refrain from excessive taxing of the tenants, or if the landlord, pressed for taxes by the government, were not to squeeze his tenants; if the landlord with restraint were to re-invest his return only in his land, canals, and the like; if he were, in short, to be a good landlord and act like a shaykh, it would be possible to carry on productive agriculture without violating fallow and causing increased salinisation.” [39]

Nonetheless, Fernea is adamant that, historically, irrigation agriculture has been most successful in tribal societies – a phenomenon he explains by “the congruence of fit between tribal methods of cultivation and land tenure and the nature of land, water and climate”. This brings us to the crux of the matter. Throughout history, state-run methods of cultivation and land-tenure arrogantly defy “the nature of land, water and climate”. [40] Indeed, they are based on the illusion that there are no natural constraints on man’s activities. As we have seen, the result has been catastrophic.

Looking towards the future, then, it seems almost inevitable that the pattern of the past will be repeated. Already, the large-scale irrigation schemes of modern Mesopotamia are causing untold ecological and social damage. Catastrophe can undoubtedly be postponed – but it cannot be averted. If the past is anything to go by, we will then see the re-emergence of a traditional irrigation agriculture. As Adams puts it,

“An extensive system, whose cultivated areas and balance with animal husbandry have been continually adjusted as salinity and other conditions make necessary, has repeatedly confirmed its viability over a span of more than six millennia. It would require not an act of judgement but of faith to proclaim, on the basis of the very brief recent experience to date, that this oldest and most flexible of the agricultural configurations that Mesopotamia has known, will shortly disappear without trace.” [41]

References

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