 An emir's main source of income were the agricultural products of his "iqtaʿ", and with those revenues, he was able to fund his private corps.In Egypt, Mamluk centralization over agricultural production was more thorough than in Syria and Palestine for a number of reasons.Among them was that virtually all agriculture in Egypt depended on a single source of irrigation, the Nile, and the measures and rights to irrigation were determined by the river's flooding, whereas in Syria and Palestine, there were multiple sources of mostly rain-fed irrigation, and measures and rights were thus determined at the local level.