Page 88 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 4,5

recent r. jTORY AND PRESENT POLITICS 139

Recent History and Present Politics

Hv \sir cannot be regarded as one, except on the Ottoman
'''that it forms, as a whole, the northern sub-province or
l uf the vilayet of Yemen. In reality it falls into four parts,
plctely independent and three acknowledging, respectively,
i^'iiucMice of the Emir, or Grand Sherif, of Mecca, the Turks,
1 " |K> pp-isi. The three latter, it is hardly necessary to remark, are
<«r
instantly changing as th§ power of one or the other aspirants to
n
MipiTinacy waxes or wanes.
1 T’he number of Arabs who recognize no power but their own
i, comparatively small, and is confined almost entirely to nomad
tribes such as the Rabi‘ah Mujatirah and Rabi'at et-Tahahin, who
dwell in inaccessible mountain country on the ‘Aqabah, and to nomad
>rc •t ions of certain of the eastern tribes such as the Ghamid, Shahran,
.uid* Abidah, who wander far out to the east, where they are beyond
control. There is no cohesion or fixed purpose amongst these, and
politically they are of little account.

2. The Emir of Mecca’s influence was chiefly evident amongst the
powerful tribes of Ghamid, Beni Shihir, and Shahran, who live on the
inland side of the main ridge. He is connected by marriage with
the paramount chief of the Beni Shihir and is a personal friend of
the Ghamid and Shahran Sheikhs, but he has never made any
attempt to administer the country and, before the recent insurrec­
tion of Hejaz against the Turks (see Chapter IV), it appeared
doubtful whether he had much influence among the tribesmen.
• u 1910 he got into touch with many of the tribes between LIth and
Iblia, during his campaign against the Idrisi; but how far he had
maintained relations since then was a matter of speculation.
9. The Turks never succeeded in completely subduing Asir, and
recently they had only a precarious hold on the port of Qunfudah
;md the inland towns of Muha’il and Ibha, with a small district
lound ea°h of these places and, intermittently, the roads from one
e the other. They were in touch with the Beni Shihir and Shahran,
mt chiefly by virtue of their relations with the Emir.
, | ^-s for what remains, the Idrisi has either administered or
(-'derated it—that is, the Qahtan tribes of southern inland Asir and
Host of the Tihamah and ‘Aqabah lands from the Wadi ‘Ain in
10 /?0uth to the confines of Lith—a strip of nearly 350 miles from
el°Y sou^h by roughly 70 broad ; its home-land is in the Mikhlaf
Jeiz“1UeU with.Sabia as capital and the ports of Midi and
ail< This is a rather broad section of the Tihamah sloping up