File 756/1917 Pt 2-3 ‘ARAB BULLETIN Nos 66-114’ [‎376v] (761/834)

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ensure the behaviour of these tribes, and to keep them under his
control, he induced his religious leaders to issue a Fatwah that
it was necessary that the Ikhwan should build themselves cities
and till the soil, this being incumbent on them from a religious
point of view, and a necessary measure to divide them from the
jahl (ignorant ones), the term given to those Bedouin who had
not adopted Ikhwanism. The order appears to have been
responded to with enthusiasm in most cases, and I understand
from Ibn Saud that there are already sixty-three new cities in
Nejd, all of which have come into being within the last four years.
The progress of the movement step by step has been most
cleverly managed, and Ibn Saud has showed great genius in
working out his scheme without estranging his people. He has
been able to instil a wonderful enthusiasm for Ikhwanism among
the Bedouin, until to-day all are anxious to join the movement.
It has now become a matter of pride with a Bedou to call him
self a Hadhar, or town-dweller, as opposed to the term jahil
(ignorant one). The skill with which the tribes have been forced
into the movement and compelled to settle down and plough
without feeling resentment at the change shows Ibn Saud to
be no ordinary leader. He has given the wandering tribes a
stake in the land, and has definitely made them “ settled ”
tribesmen, while he has left the system sufficiently elastic to
allow of portions of each tribe to remain throughout the year
in the desert tending their camels. The selection of the site for
each new town is made entirely by Ibn Saud himself.
The reason why the Ajman tribe has been so long in joining
is because they know of Ibn Sand’s determination to “ bring
them to heelthoroughly and in a fashion all his own. This
is to take more or less the following form and, to one who knows
the Bedouin, is a really harsh punishment. The Ajman are
to be transferred to Nejd as a whole, and are there to be broken
up, each of the twenty different sections of the tribe being split
up among the different new townships of the Ikhwan. In this
manner their power for doing evil will be broken. Ibn Saud
says tiiat they twice played the traitor to him : once in the fight
with Ibn Rashid near Majma' in March 1915, and again in
1916, when they attacked and nearly overcame him in Hasa.
Since then they have been successfully playing fast and loose
with him, sometimes living in Kuwait territory and sometimes
in British. They are now near Zubair, and have practically
come to terms. As a matter of fact, from subseouent conversa-
ment, as he realizes that he could perhaps carry "severity too far.
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