Page 74 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 4,5

132 ASIR \

and herdsmen to keep within easy range of any particular settle­
ment throughout the year. Moreover, not only do stretches of
steppe, often little better than desert, occur in the Asir Tihamah
(as in that of Yemen, and on the southern littoral), but the inland
slopes of the main ridge (as again in Yemen and even in Oman)
rapidly thin out into steppe-land and finally into sheer desert.
Therefore almost all Asir tribes include a nomadic clan or two,
although only a few units are in the main or wholly nomadic.
Settled Arabs multiply more rapidly than unsettled, and tribes
which for any reason have abandoned wandering life for fixed
agriculture have often been known to double or treble their num­
bers in two or three generations. Obvious reasons for such increase
are better quality and greater quantity of food-stuffs enjoyed in
settled life, and the easier conditions which obtain for women
,j
in pregnancy and parturition and for their offspring during infancy.
This fact has to be borne in mind when judging the high totals
given by native authorities for the population of such regions as
;
Asir and Yemen ; but, at the same time, it is generally safe to
divide such totals by two, if not by a higher divisor. In any case
no means of checking the Asiri figures exists, the actual numbers
of fighting men known to have been put in line on any occasion
being no good criterion in so divided and distracted a region.
The most numerous and powerful tribes occupy the main ridge
with the heads of the inland valleys and the upper parts of the
‘Aqabah. Here we find in succession from north to south the great
units of the Zahran, the Ghamid, the Shamran, the BaVarydn, the
Bulqarn, the Beni Shihir, the four tribes of the Ahl Barak, the
jReish, the Al Musa, the Balasmar, the RabVah wa Rufeidah and the
Balahmar. With the next two tribes, the Rijdl el-M‘a and the Beni
Mugheid, the most famous and most developed tribal organizations in
Asir, we reach the heart of the country, the surroundings of Ibha
(Manadhir), the hinterland of Mikhlaf (or Makhlaf) el-Yemen and the
region of Wadi Bishah. The strong tribes of the ‘Alqam el-Hul,
Beni Malik (to be distinguished from the Hejaz tribe of that name),
and RabVat el-Yemen also lie round Ibha; and behind all these
and intruded among them, in a wedge of territory which runs
from the heads of Wadis Bishah and Shahran to within twenty
miles of Sabia, lies the most numerous of all Asiri tribes, the Shahran.
Finally, in the south-eastern interior of the region live the six
Qahtan tribes, each an autonomous unit, and none of them to be
confounded with the nomad Qahtan of the south-western region
of Central Arabia.
The Tihamah tribes are, as a rule, smaller units and less vigorous.