Mesopotamia is rich not only in date-groves but in cereals, wool, gums, licorice root and other products. The export of wool alone in 1897 was valued at £288,700. And the total exports the same year, for the two provinces of Bagdad and Busrah, were put at £522,960. Busrah is the shipping place for all the region round about, and ocean steamers of considerable size are always in Busrah harbor, during 1897 four hundred and twenty-one sailing vessels and ninety-five steamships cleared the port, with a total tonnage of 131,846; ninety-one of the steamships were British.
The population of the two vilayets is given by Cuinet, who follows Turkish authorities, as follows:
_Moslems._ _Christians._ _Jews._ _Total._ Bagdad Vilayet, 789,500 7,000 53,500 850,000 Busrah Vilayet, 939,650 5,850 4,500 950,000
In Bagdad vilayet nearly four-fifths of the Moslem population belongs to the Sunnite sect, while in Busrah vilayet three-fourths of them are Shiahs. The Sabeans are generally reckoned among the Christians, although these are already sufficiently divided into Latin, Greek Orthodox, Greek, Syrian, Chaldean Catholic, Armenian Gregorian, Armenian Catholic and Protestants—the last in the smallest minority possible and the others chiefly distinguished by mutual distrust and united hatred of Protestantism.
The vilayet of Bagdad is divided again into three _Sandjaks_ or districts of Bagdad, Hillah and Kerbela, and that of Busrah likewise into those of Busrah, Amara Muntefik and Nejd[38]. Of these six districts that of Bagdad is the largest in area and importance and is the centre of military power for both vilayets. The boundaries of Bagdad Sandjak go as far as Anah on the Euphrates toward the north and include Kut-el-Amara on the south with both banks of the Tigris. Hillah and Kerbela are along the Euphrates with irregular boundaries while the Muntefik Sandjak with its provincial town of Nasariya separates them from that of Busrah. The Sandjak of Amara begins a few miles north of the junction of the two rivers, and the whole frontier toward Persia is entirely undefined or at least “_in litigation_,” as the Turkish official maps have it.
The two Turkish provinces have all the involved machinery of Turkish civil and military administration. There are plenty of offices and office-holders and constant changes in both. Each province has a governor-general or _Wali_ and (outside of the governor’s sandjak) each district has its _mutaserrif-pasha_ either of the first or second class—those one has to deal with generally prove to be of the latter. Then there are _Kaimakams_ for smaller districts or cities, and finally _mudirs_ for villages. At the seat of government, called the _Serai_, there is an administrative council, including the _Näib_ or _kadi_, corresponding to chief-justice; the _defterdar_ or secretary of finance; the _mufti_ or public interpreter of Moslem law; the _nakib_, etc., etc., etc. There are several courts of justice of different rank; the custom-house administration is on the _e pluribus unum_ plan and _ne plus ultra_ system. Besides these there are the “Regie des tabacs” or the tobacco-monopoly, the post and telegraph administration, the sanitary offices, the salt-inspectors, and, at Kerbela, the Tarif of corpses levied on imported pilgrims. To describe all these satisfactorily would require a volume.