The only significant counterbalance to tribalism has been the economic and political power of the cities, but until modern times these were few in number and economically and culturally unintegrated with the rural hinterland. Aside from Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul, there were few cities worthy of the name at the end of the Ottoman era. Most were simply caravan stops like Zubair, fueling stations like Kut, or religious shrines like Karbala and Najaf, in which the benefits of law and order, trade and manufacture, were noticeable only against the background of poverty in the countryside. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, about a quarter of these were concentrated in Baghdad