Australian
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Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white clip shows part of a travelogue of the Middle East made by Frank Hurley as he travelled up the Euphrates River on a paddle-steamer and observed at close quarters the life of the Ma’dan people of southern Iraq. It opens with a shot of his colleagues sipping tea in the shade before boarding the paddle-steamer. Local people, their villages and river craft are viewed from the boat. Music accompanies the clip including singing from a large group of dancing men. Hurley takes a small gondola to view the waterways more closely.

Educational value points

• This clip shows part of what is possibly the earliest film of the Ma’dan, one of the most ancient human communities on Earth. Their traditional way of life, based around fishing, raising water buffalo and building boats and houses from the reeds, extends back 5,000 years. In the 1940s when the film was made about 400,000 Ma’dan people lived in the marshlands where the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers forms an immense delta region.

• In the clip Frank Hurley (1885–1962) celebrates the life of the Ma’dan, also known as Marsh Arabs, describing them as ‘a carefree, happy and kindly people’. Included is a dance of welcome performed by men and footage of women watching the dance from a parapet. The Ma’dan people’s skill in adapting technology to suit their environment is illustrated in the mashuf, a reed canoe with an elevated prow that can push through the marsh reeds.

• Hurley uses biblical references to help his audience connect with this part of the travelogue and to add exotic appeal to the location. The area of Iraq where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet has long been reputed to be the biblical site of the Garden of Eden. By referring to an ancient trunk as a remnant of the Tree of Knowledge and describing a scene from the boat as the Garden of Eden, Hurley establishes the area’s antiquity and gives it poetic appeal.

• The music accompanying the clip combines authentic music of the region with Western music designed to suggest music of the Middle East. Orchestral music with 'exotic’ rhythms and swirling strings and woodwind provides background sound for Hurley’s voice-over narrative. Men singing, percussive sounds and ululating voices are heard during shots of a large mass of men dancing. The sound of a man singing in Arabic accompanies the final footage.

• Hardly any indication of the fact that the clip was filmed during a period of civil strife is seen in the clip. National flags hang from the deck rails of the paddle-steamer, which may also have been used for military surveillance. Britain was involved in armed conflict in Iraq in 1944, supporting the ruling regime, which gave it use of transportation and communication facilities. Hurley was in the Middle East as a war photographer.

• Ninety per cent of the marshlands shown in the clip, calculated at more than 8,000 square km, were destroyed between 1970 and 2000 as a result of damming and drainage. The huge Atatürk Dam on the Euphrates River in Turkey, Syria’s water projects and Saddam Hussein’s program of drainage have reduced much of the region to desert and forced more than 200,000 Ma’dan people to leave the area.

This clip starts approximately 14 minutes into the documentary.

This black-and-white clip shows part of a travelogue of the Middle East made and narrated by Frank Hurley as he travelled up the Euphrates River on a paddle-steamer and observed at close quarters the life of the Ma’dan people of southern Iraq. It opens with a shot of his colleagues sipping tea in the shade before boarding the paddle-steamer. Local people, their villages and river craft are viewed from the boat. Music accompanies the clip including singing from a large group of dancing men. Hurley takes a small gondola to view the waterways more closely.

Frank Hurley It is a pleasant interlude to tarry in the shade, to have a cup of chai and a cigarette with our newly found friends, a carefree, happy and kindly people. The chief object of interest and veneration is an ancient tree trunk reputed to be a remnant of the Tree of Knowledge.

We are now at the junction where the two great rivers meet. This view looks up the Tigris, and the camera swings round to disclose the Euphrates. The Euphrates River passes through the Garden of Eden and the bridge of boats linking its banks has been opened to let us pass through.

Shortly after leaving Gurnah, the Euphrates broadens out into great swamp regions known as the Hor al Hammar. As far as the eye can reach in every direction is marsh covered with tall green reeds. This is the home of the little-visited and never previously filmed marshland Arabs known as the Ma’dan. One generally associates Arab peoples with desert lands and camels. But here, very few have ever walked on big areas of dry land, and the counterpart of the camel is the mashuf, that elegant canoe with upswept bow designed for forcing a passage through the reeds.

We reach (inaudible), the capital of the swamps, and the people have turned out to give us a romping welcome. We go ashore to take a native gondola to go drifting along through this fairyland.