Page 10 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 4,5

100 HF.TAZ

Railway, but are often violated by their perpetual enemies, the
Harb and the Fuqara (Fejr).
The Harb, the first to be encountered of the greater western tribes,
hold the whole centre of Hejaz, and a subsection, the Zobeid, not
only occupies the central coast from Yambo‘ to Serum below Jiddah,
but reappears in strength farther south below Lith. The main body
lies right across the province from the Yambo-Jiddah littoral to
the eastern Medina-Mecca road, and extends beyond Hejaz into
North-Central Arabia, one of its sections, the Beni ‘Amr, being in
the main non-Hejazi though it owns the date-groves of Fur‘. As
a whole the Harb count for more in Hejaz than all other tribes put j
together.
The other great tribe of the central west, the Ateibah, normally j
foes of the Harb, hardly enters into our present consideration since j
their proper dlra lies almost wholly e>ast of the Kheibar-Mecca-Ta’if
line ; but one of their main sections, the Ruqah, cannot-be left
altogether out of account since it not only supplies part of the
population of Ta’if, but is attached politically to the Sherif of
Mecca. So Also, though less closely, is the other section, the
Berqah.

In and about Mecca itself are found fourteen out of the twenty-one
small Ashraf clans, which trace descent from Hasan, the Prophet’s
grandson. Two of these, the Dhawi Surur and Shenabrah, are
nomadic, ranging south of Mecca, while two more, the Dhawi
and Dhawi Barakat, are now regular tribes, located outside Hejaz
in NW. Asir.
South of the Harb limit Hejaz is parcelled out among several
minor tribes, of which the Juhadlah, who occupy the coast from
Serum to near Lith, are by a good deal the most important. Their
centre is Sa‘diyah, about a day’s march inland, and they range north
almost up to the Jiddah-Mecca road and east nearly to Jebel Qora.
Inland of them lie, first a very small nomad tribe, the Beni Faham,
then the Hudheil on and about the Mecca-Ta’if road, and to the
south of them the Beni Thaqif in and south of Ta’if itself. Below
these last again, toward the Asir boundary, range the Beni Nasri,
Beni Sa‘d, and Beni Malik (roughly in that order from east to
west), with the small Al Mahdi tribe of fishermen dividing all from
Lith, and from the northernmost of the Asiri-Tihamah tribes
(Dhawi Hasan and ZobekHHarb).