Page 96 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 3

90 THE BEDOUIN TRIBES

MANAslR
Sub-Tribe. Clan.
Mundhir. Ka'abarah.
Mdm\
Marashid.
Metawa'ah.
Medahimah.
RahamaK Khail.
Tareif (or Janub).
Tararifah.
WoZfran.
Sha'ar, Ghuweinam.
Rasheyyid.
Thuweibit.

i! -X.
SUPPLEMENT

Non-Bedouin Nomads

1. The Sherdrdt
• «
The SHERARAT are not reckoned among the Arabs as Bedu,
that is to say, they do not spring from either of the great nomad
families, Qahtan or Nizar. They are said to be of one stock with
the Huteim who, like the Sherarat, are not asil, of known race, and
the true Bedouins will not intermarry with them.1 Nor is there any
definite area over which they exercise acknowledged rights of-
possession ; they have not their own dlra, but camp with other
tribes. Their tents are scattered from Jebel Duruz in the north
to Teima in the south, and east from Kerak to Jebel Shammar.
They are to be found among the Sukhur, the Huweitat, the Ruweilah,
and the Shammar, either in the encampments of the big Sheikhs,
or by preference khaldwi, i. e. solitary, in the wilderness. In summer
!
small numbers of Sherarat gather round the fast-drying water-holes
and the permanent wells, when the big tribes have moved off with
their herds towards the Hejaz Railway and the Jordan valley, or
out into the depths of the Hamad. At Hausa in the Jebel Tubeiq,
and at Imleih and ‘Obeid on the edges of the Nefud, they find
enough water for their slender needs, and the hard surface of the
desert is covered with the circular marks of their threshing floors
where in August they harvest the wild semh.
The Sherarat honour an ancestor called Suleim, who is buried in
the Wadi Mujib, but they seldom visit his tomb. They have a cult
for ‘Aqil Weled 'Azzam, whose tomb is in the Jebel Tubeiq. They

1 They are sometimes reckoned, however, as descendants of the Beni Hilfli,