Geç dönem Osmanlı Irakında emprovizasyon ve teknoloji arasında sulama: Hindiye Barajı 1890-1914

This thesis examines the role of irrigation practices in the Ottoman centralization attempts in Iraq between the years 1890 and 1914. It questions the ways in which the irrigation infrastructures served and/or opposed the political and economic interests of the Ottoman central power in the Iraqi provinces. In doing so, the research focuses on the Hindiya Barrage which was one of the largest-scale irrigation projects across the Ottoman Middle East in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The thesis basically examines the building process of the Barrage from the point of view of the Ottoman state, benefiting from official correspondence, local petitions, in addition to some British newspapers, and the memoirs of the Ottoman-Iraqi officials in order to trace the dynamics of the center-periphery and state-society relationships. Moreover, this study aims to bring an environmental perspective to the ways in which water resources were organized and used by the Ottoman administration through the construction of the Barrage.