Page 91 - Arabian Studies (I)

Bayasirah and BayadTr 77

Hadrarm origin to them. Lorimcr estimates their number in Oman as
10,000 and describes how many of their groups are organised along
tribal lines.
With the help of a former colleague in Oman, Mr Hugh Massy, the
writer also collected a certain amount of information about the
bayasirah. It is hard to tell how far their position has changed as the
result of the official abolition of slavery but the following account
describes what the writer believes is their traditional status in interior
Oman.
The bayasirah belong to their own clans each of which bears a
group name (usually of the form aw lad fulan). These clans are
attached in client status to an Arab group as may be seen from the
following table of the bayasirah of IzkT:
Arab group Client Bay sari group
Awlad Bahian! al-Khuwaytirlyln
Awlad Rashid Awlad GhawT (about 100 in IzkT) and
al-Sha‘mal
Awlad Munir Awlad al-Mutajahhadal
Ban! Tawbah Awlad Qanza’il
Ban! Riyam (unspecified) Awlad Rlh (originally belonged to
the Manadhirah).
Awlad Bil-Riqaysh Awlad Mahram (n.b., Mahram is the
name of the main centre of the
Riqaysh before they came to IzkT)
and Awlad Alf! (originally clients of
the Hawashim, the shaikhly clan of
the Ruwahah descent groups)
They are not slaves Cabal) and cannot be bought or sold, yet they
are not free (ahreu*). They are maw la li-banT fulan and an individual
baysari is designated fulan b. fulan mawlci li-banT fulan: as Thomas
points out they refer to their shaikhs as al-habab. In the stratified
society of southern Arabia this last appears to be a standard mode of
address by a member of an inferior class to his senior (cf. Bujra
1971). They act as servants (khudddm) to the leading Arab families
to which they are attached and, like slaves, carry out domestic tasks
like shopping in the suq. They sit at the lowest places in a majlis and
serve coffee if no slave is available. On the other hand, and unlike the
da'Tf classes of southern Arabia, there is nothing to stop them bearing
arms. Some groups appear to be considered more respectable than
others. The bayasirah of Nakhl, for example, are mostly well off,
belong to clans with rather different forms of name from those in
IzkT (e.g. ‘UbaydanT, ‘Abdall, JamaT: cf. the names of Izk! groups)