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'Gazetteer of Arabia Vol. II' [‎1357] (412/688)

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The record is made up of 1 volume (341 folios). It was created in 1917. It was written in English. The original is part of the British Library: India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. Records and Private Papers Documents collected in a private capacity. .

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NAJD
1357
west, penetrate Nafd except on occasional raids. The settled folk are, however, almost
all of oritrinal Bedawi stocks — Bani Tamim in Qasim ; southern 'Anazoh Tamim and
Dawasir ; in central Najd and Dawasir and Qahlan in the south-west. If other tribes
men come in, it is to &3ttle. It is to this constant homogeneity of its society that Najd
owes its common adherence to Wahha-bism, its unification under one sceptre, and its
comparative stability and strength.
Domestic Apparatus and Manufactures.
These are as simple and primitive throughout Najd as in any other Arabian region
where there is settled life. At the top of the very narrow scale stand the citizens of
'Anaizah in Qasim ; at the bottom the Daw a sir and Salaiyil villagers.
All buildings are of sun-dried clay, with walls thinning upwards, except in the southern
most villages, where the construction material is palm-branch. Roofs are flat, and made
of clay laid on palm-fronds or tamarisk branches, which are supported by palm-beams.
Windows are represented only by triangular light or smoke-holes. Each house has a
court or yard used for keeping domestic animals, depositing dung, etc. Privies are very
rare the yard, roof, street, or even a room being used. Two-storeyed houses are ex
ceptional. Furniture — even a fitted divan frame — is virtually unknown. Men sit
and sleep on palm-fibre mats, and half the floor will be bare and deep in dust. A shallow
depression with a clay rim services as a hearth. For dishes and plates small palm-leaf
mats are used. No implements for carrying food to the mouth ar; known. Artificial
light is seldom provided ; only rich men possess badly-made petroleum lamps, imported
from the Gulf.
Cooking utensils are of copper, badly tinned, and of very simple forms. Except in
Qasim these are seldom of native manufacture. Only v. ry rude " kitchen " pottery is
made in Najd. Bread is baked in flat pancakes either on the ashes themselves, or, in the
richer houses, on an iron tray. Except in Qasim towns, and the largest urban centres
of S. Najd, there is no metallurgy : and even in those, cooking pots of copper, and other
very simple vessels and necessaries alone are made. Coffee-pots come from Hasa, dagg ; rs
and knives from Hail or the Gulf, and firearms exclusively from abroad. These last are
adapted by the owners to their use by knocking off the sights, paring down the stock
hammering in decorative nails, etc. They soon become foul, and are seldom or never
cleaned.
As for clothing materials, all are imported except the coarse woollen cloth used for
abbas, and the woollen head-cords. Camel hair cloth for tents and saddle-bags is manu
factured locally, but with only a monochrome stripe. Better calss ahbas come from Hasa.
No underclothes except a cotton-shirt are worn. Foot-covering is only known to the
rich, and leather articles are almost all imported, except the simplest utensils of ill-tanned!
hide, c. g., water-skins and buckets (used in irrigation), skin robes of some nomads, and
rude saddles, sandals, holsters, etc.
Very little basket or reed-work is produced besides mats and fans. There is some-
improvement on this standard of production in Qasim, especially in 'Anaizah ; but even
there the technique and output are much below those of Gulf ports, e. g., Kuwait; and the
apparatus of the household is of the simplest. Throughout Najd the foodstuffs do not
go beyond milk, ghi, dates and bread, as staples ; and rice and mutton as luxuries..
Trade.
There is almost nothing to treat under this head, except in respect of one district.
This produces a superfluity of dates and ghi (butter), but in the last commodity trades
more as middleman than producer, collecting from the Bedawi herdsmen of the western
and northern steppes. At one time it used to breed horses for export, but (as also in
central Najd Washam and 'Aridh) the production of these has almost ceased as a result of
the wars between Hail ahd Riyadh during the past half century. But if Qasim does not
produce much, it trades in the products of others more than any other Arabian district.
Doughty heard in 1878 that more than a third of its population acted as carriers, and
hirers-out of camel -transport. Hence the society of the whole district, and especially its
towns, has an exceptionally commercial and cosmopolitan character.
In the rest of Najd comparatively little caravan traffic seems to go on. Leachman
heard in 1912 that trade had declined to almost nothing in Riyadh; but Shaqrah,
though not what it was, seems still to be a trading centre. There is said to be regular

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Content

Volume II of III of the Gazetteer of Arabia. The Gazetteer is alphabetically-arranged and this volume contains entries K through to R.

The Gazetteer is an alphabetically-arranged compendium of the tribes, clans and geographical features (including towns, villages, lakes, mountains and wells) of Arabia that is contained within three seperate bound volumes. The entries range from short descriptions of one or two sentences to longer entries of several pages for places such as Iraq and Yemen.

A brief introduction states that the gazetteer was originally intended to deal with the whole of Arabia, "south of a line drawn from the head of the Gulf of 'Aqabah, through Ma'an, to Abu Kamal on the Euphrates, and to include Baghdad and Basrah Wilayats" and notes that before the gazetteer could be completed its publication was postponed and that therefore the three volumes that now form this file simply contain "as much of the MSS. [manuscript] as was ready at the time". It further notes that the contents have not been checked.

Extent and format
1 volume (341 folios)
Physical characteristics

Foliation: This volume's foliation system is circled in pencil, in the top right corner of the recto The front of a sheet of paper or leaf, often abbreviated to 'r'. of each folio.

Written in
English in Latin script
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'Gazetteer of Arabia Vol. II' [‎1357] (412/688), British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, IOR/L/MIL/17/16/2/2, in Qatar Digital Library <https://www.qdl.qa/archive/81055/vdc_100023727634.0x00000b> [accessed 28 March 2024]

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