ملف ١٩١٧/٧٥٦ الجزءان ٢-٣ "النشرات العربية أرقام ٦٦-١١٤" [و‎‎٢‎٢‎٤] (٨٣٤/٤٥٦)

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resume the struggle after Bairam and continue for ten years if
necessary, with or without our help, has preferred requests for
sea-planes (on the usual “ moral-effect” plea) and for Italian
ammunition to supply the eastern tribes (Aslam, Nashar, etc.)
who, having an Italian rifle, but little ammunition, remained, he
alleges, perforce inactive while the Turks were concentrating on
the Loheiya front. Idrisi’s prestige is fallen very low at present,
and he does not look like retrieving his defeat.
Tribes of Sinai and Palestine.
The Arab Bureau, Cairo, has in preparation, and partly in
the press, a compendium of the Arab tribes of Sinai and
Palestine, the latter to include the trans-Jordan lands up to the
edge of the Syrian desert. It will thus comprise the tribal
elements of the Sinai Peninsula, the Tih, and the Negeb, none
of which comes into the Admiralty Handbook of Arabia, while
all are usually omitted from Handbooks of either Egypt or Syria.
It is time to rescue these tribes and their chiefs from this “ two-
stools” position ! Further it is proposed to deal with the tribes
of the Gaza-Jaffa district on the one side and the Hebron-
Jerusalem district on the other, with those of the Ghor up to
lake Tiberias, and as far as possible with the other small nomadic
groups occasionally found in Samaria and Galilee. Finally it is
to include the important tribal elements of the trans-Jordan
districts from Maan in the south up to, at any rate, the Yarmuk
in the north. Should it prove possible to obtain fresh and
reliable information on the Jaulan-Lija tribes, such as the Fadl
and the Naim, the Oasis of Damascus will be the northern limit.
On the east, it is desired to exclude the great tribes of the Hamad
proper and to limit the treatment to those tribes only which
habitually come into, or have permanent holdings in, the arable
area. Thus the Beni Sakhr will be included, while the Rowalla
will not. The Jebeliyah, on which there is a little new informa
tion, will probably be taken in, but not the Wuld Ali, because,
though groups habitually tent in the Jaulan, the main body of
the tribe remains out in the Hamad and for the most part ranges
north of the proposed limit. Also it is part of the Anazeh and
had better be considered in connection with the other tribes of
that great aggregate, who lie outside the purview of the present
compendium. Lieut.-Colonel A. C. Parker, Military Governor
of Sinai, has very kindly undertaken the revision of the tribes of
his region, working over a draft originally compiled from recent
reports of the Frontier Districts Administration and the Occupied
Enemy Territory Administration. Lieut.-Colonel T. E. Lawrence
will revise, with the help of his Bedouin bodyguard, the account of
the Howeitat and other south-eastern tribes. The Kerak, Belkaa,
Salt, Ajlun and Ghor groups, including the Beni Sakhr, have been
re-done in Jerusalem by Lieut. J. P. K. Groves from careful
comparison of refugee information, with help from British political
agents actually in the trans-Jordan lands. It has proved possible