'Gazetteer of Arabia Vol. I' [‎235] (250/1050)

'ASffi
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of tribes with fringes of unsettled clans, which roam the intervening steppes and moun
tain heights in quest of pasturage. There has always been a strong social and politica
distinction between the farmers of the lower inland wadis and those of the upper parts,
and the Main Ridge, the proper 'Asir, as well as between the latter and the men of the
'Aqabah and Tihamah. But the distinction goes further than this, and in no part of
Arabia are the tribal elements more sharply defined or their boundaries more immut
ably fixed than in 'Asir. There is an understanding, in times of peace, that members
of one tribe may pass through the territories of another when furnished with a khawi
or guide by the latter; but attempts on the part of strangers to settle in "foreign"
territory are seldom countenanced, nor does intermarriage often take place. This rule
in relaxed only in the larger places of mixed population, such as Qunfudah, Abha, and
Sabya, and in Bishah, where the Arabs from all the neighbouring tribes collect for a four
months' truce during the date season and where many of them possess their own hands.
In religious persuation, practically, all the 'Asir tribes belong to the Shafai school
of the Sunni sect. Wahabism has a few adherents in the north-east and its tenets are
regarded with a certain sympathy all over the country ; but there is everywhere a strong
antipathy to Zaidism, which has made no headway.
The tribes under the immediate influence of the Idrissi subscribe to his Tarlqah, whose
practices and tenets are akin to those of the Senussi fraternity, and are, of course, Shafai.
It is in'Asir that, proceeding through Arabia from the north, we first encounter settled
tribes as the predominant element in the population, and for the simple reason that
there, for the first time, the physical conditions admit generally of such agriculture as
returns sufficient sustenance within a convenient radius of a settlement to render nomad
ism — always a pis oiler — not necessary. Not that nomadism is unknown is 'Asir,
any more than in any district of Arabia ; agriculture by irrigation in wadis has to be eked
out by pasturage on the hills, and the climatic conditions cause pasturage to be too scanty
and evanescent for flock-owners and herdsmen to keep within easy range of any particular
settlement throughout the year. Moreover, not only do stretches of steppe, often little
better than desert, occur in the 'Asir Tihamah (as in that of Yemen, and on the southern
littoral), but the inland slopes of the Main Ridge (as again in Yemen and even in 'Oman)
rapidly thin out into steppe land and finally into sheer desert. Therefore almost all
'Asir tribes include a nomadic clan or two, although only a few units are in the main or
wholly nomadic.
Settled Arabs multiply more rapidly than unsettled, and tribes which for any reason
have abandoned wandering life for fixed agriculture have often been known to double
or treble their numbers in two or three generations. Obvious reasons for such increaee
are better quality and greater quantity of foodstuffs enjoyed in settled life, and the
easier conditions which obtain for women in pregnancy and parturition and for their
offspring during infancy. This fact has to be borne in mind when judging the high
totals given by native authorities for the population of such regions as 'Asir and Yemen.
To the former never less than about a million and a half, and often much more, are
ascribed by Arab informants ; and though we may suspect even the minimum to be an
excessipe figure, it is not an impossible one. No means of checking it exist, the actual
numbers of fighting men known to have been put in line on any occasion being no good
criterion in so divided and distracted a region.
The most numerous and powerful tribes occupy the Main Ridge with the heads of the
inland valley and the upper parts of the'Aqabah. Here we find in succession from north
to south the great units of the Zahran, the Ghamid, the Shumran, the Bui 'Uryan, the
Bui Qarn, the Bani Shihr, the four tribes of the Ahl Baraq, the Ar-Raish, Ahl Musa
the Bui Asmar, the Rabi'ah-wa-Rufaidhah, and the Bui Ahmar. With the next two
tribes, the Rijal-al-Ma' and the Beni Mughaid, the most famous and most developed
tribal organizations in 'Asir, we reach the heart of the country, the surroundings, of
Abha (Manadir), and the hinterland of Mikhlaf-al-Yemen. The strong tribes of the
Alqam-al-Hul, Bani Malik (to be distinguished from the Hejaz tribe of that name), and
Rabi'at-al-Yemen also lie round Abha ; and both behind all these and intruded among
them, in a wedge of territory which runs from the heads of Wadis Bishah and Shahran
to within twenty miles of Sabya, lies the most numerous of all' Asiri tribes, the Shahran.
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