'Personalities, Arabia' [‎106] (110/374)

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with their close allies the B. 'Atiyah, are their enemies. The Aida, who
are the Sheikhly clan of the southern Wuld 'Ali, have charge of a section
of the Hejaz railway south of Meda'in Salih.
In summer the Ruweilah draw into the Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. Sirhan or go with the
Wuld 'Ali towards the fertile Matkh plain, watered by the Barrada;
but the volcanic Harrahs east of Jebel Duruz are inhabited by tribes
hostile to the Anazah, the Serdiyah, a branch of the Beni Sakhr, and the
Jebeliyah, composed of Ghiyadh, Beni Hasan, Masa'id, and others, all
allied with the Druzes. With these and with the Druzes themselves
the Anazah have always been at enmity.
The paramount chief of the Ruweilah is of the house of Sha'lan
and the sub-tribe of Mur'idh. The present representative is Nuri esh-
Sha'lan. His own sub-tribe, the Sha'lan, together with the Nuseir,
who come directly under him, consists of about 1,000 tents, but over
all the Ruweilah he is unquestioned autocrat, and his authority is recog
nized by the Wuld 'Ali and the Muhallaf. He is probably the most
powerful of all purely nomad chiefs, and, since his capture of Jauf, has
shown himself a successful rival of the Shammar. His son, Nawwaf, a
convinced adherent of the pan-Arab party, is his representative at Jauf.
Though more colourless than his father, he is better educated and is
considered by the Arab Unionist party in Damascus, among whom he
is well known, to be the most advanced political thinker in the desert.
He has the inherited interest in the Turkish question which those of his
house can scarcely escape, since it touches their own future so closely.
Nuri himself bears a bitter grudge against the Ottoman Government by
reason of his having been invited to Damascus by Sami Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. in 1911,
and there held a prisoner for almost a year. The grievance was aggra
vated by the fact that he had previously offered his assistance to Sami
Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. for the subjugation of the Druzes. He dreads any extension of
Turkish authority towards the desert, and strongly opposed a scheme
set on foot in 1913 to carry a branch of the Hejaz railway from Jizah to
Qasr el-Azraq, and thence down the W. Sirhan to Kaf. In 1914 he
refused to collect camels for the Ottoman Government, who were in
need of transport animals for the Egyptian campaign, thereby greatly
enhancing their difficulties. He removed his people into their eastern
pasturages, where the Turks had no hold over them, and he is said to have
acted similarly a year later and, in 1916, to have joined the Sherif of Mecca.
E. of the Ruweilah and the Wuld 'Ali, the Syrian Desert up to the
Euphrates is held by the 'Amarat and by the two great subdivisions of
the Bishr, the Fed'an and the Siba' (Sba), who claim descent from various
mythical heroes of whom Wa'il was the progenitor. The 'Amarat country
is the SE. corner of the Syrian Desert bordering on the Euphrates from
Kerbela to above Hit. The tribesmen touch the N. edge of the Nefud
and go down SE. into Shammar territory if pasturage is lacking else
where, maintaining a truce with the Sheikhs of that dira. The early spring
finds them in a wide depression, the Qa'rah (Ga'rah), two days' journey