1841: “Every available plot of ground is cultivated in terraces, rising one above the other, and the rocky interval that separates them is covered with fruit-trees or tall poplars for building. The system of irrigation practised on on these terraces is very perfect’ I counted twenty-five terraces sown with rice, the most common crop, all under water at the same time”

(William Ainsworth, An account of a visit to the Chaldeans, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, 1841)