ABSTRACT
IN Moslem countries, particularly those that have been under Ottoman rule, the population seeks to avoid registration and census because they are the prelude to conscription and taxation, and the officials tend to rely on estimates made by the local administration or by the shaikhs themselves. It is only when the people begin to realize that benefits in the form of schools, agricultural relief, and irrigation schemes may follow the accumulation of statistics that these begin to be reliable. The data for Iraq have been greatly influenced by these tendencies. In certain divisions of the country, particularly the Kurdish provinces and those of the Middle Euphrates region, there has been remarkable fluctuation in the estimates published between 1930 and 1943. In other parts of the country, which have had a less turbulent history, the figures show less variation, particularly when the administrative provinces are grouped in their natural units. It would seem that in 1935 and in 1943 more effective counts were made than had hitherto been possible and that these figures may be taken as a rough guide to the size of the population; in two provinces, Sulaimaniya and Diwaniya, the 1935 estimate may be more reliable than that for 1943, and in a third, Baghdad, the 1943 figure shows a vast increase which has not yet been explained (p. 360).
