The "Lord of the country-side" who owns the land, assigns a certain district to a village. It is his business to provide seed-corn; and in this particular case he built the houses as well, though usually that is not necessary. The villagers then pay him, instead of a money rent, a proportion of the crop, varying from a third to a half of the corn grown. Vineyards pay the same proportion; but if you desire to grow melons, you must ask leave and pay a special rent; for this is a crop that is exhausting for the land, and still more for the water. A big landlord will often own many villages; and in such cases he places a steward in charge of each, to compute the amount of produce due to him and to receive his proper share. It is easy to understand from this the method by which the "unjust steward" of the parable proposed to defraud his lord: neither is it at all difficult to sympathize with that lord's "commendation," in a land which still believes implicitly in the policy of "setting a thief to catch a thief," and where it is recorded that Ahmed the Calamity and Hassan the Pestilence were made captains of the watch at Baghdad for no other reason than that "they excelled all men in villainy and tricks of cunning." Both sides profited by the arrangement in the Mejid-es-Sultaneh estate; the owner getting a good supply of labour for a previously unproductive property, and the villagers a new home in the land. They were of course in some danger from Kurds; and it was to meet this that the new type of village was evolved by the English administrator--a type which is much to his credit as an amateur military engineer. In ordinary villages the flat-roofed shielings are huddled together without plan or defensibility. But in these, a square space of perhaps 2 acres was enclosed by a wall of mud brick some twelve feet high, with projecting towers at the corners and one good strong gate. Then the houses of the village were built against this wall on the inner side; their flat roofs forming an excellent "banquette" for the defence of the battlemented wall, while the towers provided a flanking fire. The central space was left clear, except for the village church, and provided ample accommodation for the flocks. The Kurds came and reconnoitred, and cursed the inventive and innovating Englishman up hill and down dale. Half a dozen men with flint-locks could keep thirty of the best of them outside such a place; and we believe that no village built on this pattern has ever been seriously attacked.