Page 72 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 4,5

POPULATION 131

where the local trade is foeusccl : but the available descrip-
villages
of inland settlements suggest, rather than towns, villages
t i«»iis
chains of dependent farmsteads and groups of huts distributed
with
.don" the valley bottom and sides and often protected by forts on
■*diacent heights. In the last century Wadi Bishah is said to
t ho
• > possessed sixty villages, and the number has not decreased,
in Nejran, the Jauf of Yemen, and Hadhramaut, these settlements
nuclei of tribes with fringes of unsettled elans, which roam
-*iTVO SIS
i In* intervening steppes and mountain heights in quest of pasturage.
There has always been a strong social and political distinction
between the farmers of the lower inland wadis and those of the upper
parts and the main ridge—the proper ‘ Asir ’—as well as between
i lie latter and the men of the ‘Aqabah and Tihamah. But the dis­
■
tinction goes farther than this, and in no part of Arabia are the tribal
.
elements more sharply defined or their boundaries more immutably '
fixed tjian in Asir. There is an understanding in times of peace :
that members of one tribe may pass through the territories of
I
another when furnished with a khawi, or guide, by the latter ; but
attempts on the part of strangers to settle in ‘ foreign ’ tefritory
are seldom countenanced, nor does intermarriage often take place.
This rule is relaxed only in the larger places of mixed population,
such as Qunfudah, Ibha, and Sabia, and in Bishah, where the
Arabs from all the neighbouring tribes collect for a four months’
truce during the date-season and where many of them possess their ‘
own lands. ;

Tn religious persuasion practically all the Asir tribes belong to : :
the .Shafei school of the Sunni sect. Wahabism has a few adherents
m the north-east, and its tenets are regarded with a certain sympathy
*
:l %v.eT. country ; but there is everywhere a strong antipathy f
^’^idism, which has made no headway.
!
The tribes under the immediate influence of Idrisi subscribe ’
u his tarlqah, whose practices and tenets are akin to those of the j
’ °!}ussi fraternity, and are, of course, Shafei.

w fi 1S fhat, proceeding through Arabia from the north,
nn 1iSt .encourder settled tribes as the predominant element in the
thcPU ] 10-n’ and for the simple reason that there, for the first time,
rct Physical conditions admit generally of such agriculture as \
!
lnonrtnsf sufficient sustenance within a convenient radius of a settle-
Xot t.u f render nomadism—always a pis alter—not necessary,
I
dish-inf 1}omadism is unknown in Asir any more than in any other
eked °f Arabia : agriculture by irrigation in wadis has to be :
out
cause hy pasturage on the hills, and the climatic conditions i.
•^turage to be too scanty and evanescent for flock-owners
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4