Coll 6/72 'Saudi Arabia: Relations with the Yemen. Delimitation of the Saudi-Yemeni Frontier.' [‎9r] (17/50)

pretty well due east from the sea.
(h) The order of the highland tribes on the Saudi side is
now given in block letters as corrected by Fuad.
(c) Fuad thinks that the existing maps put the Nazran
system as a whole too far north. Thus he locates Badr due
east of Dhahran and identifies "Waila” with the Beni Wail tribe,
shown well to the south in the 1/253,440 map.
As regards (c), Fuad may well be right. What he says
fits in with Philby f s view that the country from Jebel Razih to
Najran forms a well marked salient in the frontier. Incidentally,
the placing of Baqim is very uncertain, being based on the
assumption that it is on one particular road and the statement
that it is eleven hours walk from Sa f ada.
Fuad r s information shows how much the Imam’s claims to
several tribes rests on real or alleged ancestry rather than on
geography. The three great names of original stocks appear to
be Khaulan, Hamdan, and Qahtan. It appears to be held that the
frontier tribes from the Bil Earth to the Beni Malik are of the
Khaulan stock; that the tribes whose administrative centre was
Haraja are of Qahtan (Of Handbook of Arabia Volume I page 441);
but thai: the Beni Wada’a are, like many admittedly Yemeni tribes,
of Hamdan. The Imam no doubt claims all ’As£r in principle,
but he seems to have made a more particular claim to all tribes
of the three stocks named.
The conclusion of peace may make all this unimportant
for some time to come but (a) we want to give you the best sketch
we can in substitution for that sent in our letter of the first
March and (b) it is only too possible that the parties will fight
another day, perhaps when the heirs of the present rulers come
into their own.
Yours ever,
CHANCERY.