'Personalities, Arabia' [‎104] (108/374)

104
A. Northern Tribes
i . The Anazah.
The great group of the ANAZAH numerically probably the
largest group of nomad Arab tribes, occupies the triangle of the Syrian
Desert, the Hamad, which has its base on the Nefud, about lat. 30 0 , and
its apex near Aleppo, about lat. 36°. On the east bank of the Euphrates
the pasture lands N. of Deir ez-Zor and along the Khabur are also Anazah
country : while a smaller group of kindred tribes is seated round Teima,
between the Hejaz railway and the SW. borders of the Nefud. Ibn
Sa'ud is said to come of the same stock (Hasanah).
The Anazah belong to the people of the North, Ahl esh-Shimal.
Historians give their descent from 'Anazah, son of Asad, who sprang
from Rabi'ah, one of the two great branches of Nizar. The modern Anazah
tribesman will always claim descent from Wa'il, who belonged to a younger
branch of the Asad group, and relate that it is his son 'Anz or 'Anaz who
is the eponymous founder of the tribe. They are not, however, united
under one head, but are divided into several large sections which maintain
towards one another an attitude generally friendly, though it does not
exclude marauding expeditions and private feuds among the smaller
Sheikhs. The hereditary foes of the Anazah are the Shammar; indeed,
the history of nomad Arabia is dominated for the last 150 years by the
rivalry between these two.
The original seat of the Shammar seems to have been to the N. of
the Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. er-Rummah, on the pilgrim road from Basra to Medina, or even
farther south towards Yemen. One of those mysterious impulses which,
from the beginning of historic times, have set the inhabitants of the penin
sula migrating northwards—influences which may spring from an almost
imperceptible change in climatic conditions coupled with slow increase
of population in a land incapable of supporting more than very small
numbers—began to disturb the Anazah in the second half of the eighteenth
century. They followed on the heels of the Shammar into the Syrian
Desert. The Fed'an and the Hasanah pushed the Shammar before them
across the Euphrates, and established themselves in the northern steppes,
which are less arid, enjoying a greater rainfall, than the wastes of central
Arabia. The 'Amarat, Siba', and Wuld 'Ali seem to have come next,
and towards the end of the eighteenth century the Ruweilah.
Their herds have flourished and increased in a climate more beneficent
than that which they had left. The most famous stocks of horses are
found among the northern Anazah, and the greatest numbers of camels.
Bedu of the purest blood and tradition, they have remained entirely
beyond the control of the Ottoman Government ; and except for a few
palm-gardens on the Lower Euphrates, a little cultivation on the Khabur,
and a village near Damascus, their Sheikhs have given no pledge to estab
lished order by the acquisition of settled lands, nor is any part of the
Syrian Desert ploughed or harvested. Their geographical position gives