Page 6 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 3

I
NORTHERN TRIBES 45

A. Northern Triuks

1. The, Anazah

'I'hc great group of the ANAZAH {‘Anazah), numerically probably
largest group of-nomad Arab tribes, occupies the triangle of the
I lie
Svrian°Desert, the Hamad, which has its base on the Nefud, about
lat 30°, and its apex near Aleppo, about lat. 36°. On the east
ha nk ofr the Euphrates; the pasture lands N. of Deir ez-Zor and
.,|(,n(T the Ivhabur arc also Anazah country ; while a smaller group
of kindred tribes is seated round Teima, between the Hcjaz Railway
and the SW. borders of the Nefud. Ibn Sa'ud is said to come of
die same stock (Hasahah).
The Anazah belong to the people of the North, Aid csh-Shimal.
Historians give their descent from ‘Anazah, son of Asad, who
sprang from Rabl‘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 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 peninsula migrating northwards—influences
• - • •* . .
which may spring from an almost imperceptible change in climatic
mm9
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 ‘Amariit, Siba‘, and Wuld
Ali seem to have come next, and, towards the end of the eighteenth
century, the Ruwcilah.
Their herds have flourished and increased in a climate more

• •. ••• ; •• • • •
*.s