ABSTRACT
The main features of land tenure in Iraq before 1958 were the great estates in the irrigated zone and the ill-defined and chaotic nature of landholding in general. In southern Iraq, where the newly-constituted feudal structure was most dominant, the landowners' share of agricultural production averaged 70 per cent. Like Syria, Iraq had a major land reform in 1958, modelled on the Egyptian. Although the Iraq laws copied the Egyptian in most respects, the conditions in which the laws operated and the results they achieved differed considerably. Compared with Egypt's pressure-cooker tension, Iraq's agriculture is a low pressure vicious circle of extensive cultivation. Several factors are responsible for the relative economic failure of the Iraqi reform. The revolutionary reform of 1958 achieved its political aim of breaking up the large estates but, in the continuing political turmoil, progress towards the reform's social and economic goals has been negligible.
