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'Handbook of Arabia. Vol. I. 1917' [399] (408/748)
The record is made up of 1 volume (371 folios). It was created in 1916. It was written in English and Arabic. The original is part of the British Library: India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. Records and Private Papers Documents collected in a private capacity. .
Transcription
This transcription is created automatically. It may contain errors.
r
BELQA 399
by themselves ; but they rear large flocks of sheep and goats, and
live richly on their milk during the spring. The fact that they
own cultivated ground should give the Government a firm hold
over them ; they are immobilized thereby, nor do their pastoral
conditions give them the means of rapid transport. Their numbers
would make them a solid barrier between their wandering kinsmen,
who can slip through the fingers of the law at any moment leaving
no pledge behind, and the permanently settled lands. Moreover,
their geographical position makes them the first problem to be
dealt with, a problem on which the security of wide and fertile
regions, now lying to a great extent derelict, must depend.
A group of the 'Adwan, some 700 tents, is seated in Mesopotamia
at Qorinshar, west of the Khabur. Numerically the largest of the
Belqa tribes are the Beni Hasan, who are sometimes counted
among the Jebeliyah since they are an offshoot from one of that
group, the Ghiyadh. They go up into the slopes of the Druze
hills, and sometimes wander into the volcanic country to the east.
The Shawabkah, as their name indicates, come from Shobak
and are a new tribe ; but the 'Adwan are an old confederation
tracing their descent through Qeis to Mudhar, a respectable lineage.
The 'Ajarmah venerate an ancestor, Sobah, who, they relate, came
from lands farther east. His son, 'Ajram, is the eponymous founder
of the tribe.
No doubt all the Belqawiyah are, like the 'Adwan, Ahl esh-
Shimal, and though their own stories of their parentage are mere
legend and usually devoid of any historic basis, it is reasonable to
conjecture that they must have taken part in the gradual sweep
northwards of the Hejaz tribes after the Mohammedan conquest.
They displaced and even wholly obliterated the powerful Yemenite
nation of the Beni Ghassan, which held the marches for the Roman
Empire along the Hauran harrahs and in the Belqa, just as the
Ghassanids had stepped into the place of the Nabataeans and tribes
of the Safa, whose Aramaic dialects, attested by countless graffiti,
link them with the civilization of Eastern Arabia and the frontiers
of Mesopotamia. It is conceivable that the legendary origin of
the 'Ajarmah from an Eastern ancestor may have some real founda
tion in history, and that they may be connected with strata of
culture long since submerged by later migrations, which go back
to the last centuries before the Christian era.
The Sirhan, now a small tribe scattered over the Belqa, the
Jordan valley, and the Southern Hauran hills, are reckoned to be
of the best Northern Arab blood, though they have fallen to low
estate They owned the whole of the
Wadi
A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows.
Sirhan, which is
About this item
- Content
This volume is A Handbook of Arabia, Volume I, General (Admiralty War Staff, Intelligence Department: May, 1916) and contains geographical and political information of a general character concerning the Arabian Peninsula. The volume was prepared on behalf of the Admiralty and War Office, from sources, including native information obtained for the purpose of compiling the volume, since the outbreak of the First World War. Separate chapters are devoted to each of the districts or provinces of the Arabian Peninsula and include information on the physical character, as well as social and political surveys.
The volume includes a note on official use, title page, and a 'Note' on the compilation of the volume. There is a page of 'Contents' that includes the following sections:
- Chapter 1: Physical Survey;
- Chapter 2: Social Survey;
- Chapter 3: The Bedouin Tribes: A. Northern Tribes, B. Tribes of the Central West, C. Tribes of the Central South, D. Tribes of the Central East, Supplement: Non-Bedouin Nomads;
- Chapter 4: Hejaz;
- Chapter 5: Asir;
- Chapter 6: Yemen;
- Chapter 7: Aden and Hadhramaut: A. Aden and the Interior, B. Hadhramaut;
- Chapter 8: Oman: A. The sultanate of Oman, B. Independent Oman;
- Chapter 9: The Gulf Coast: A. The Sultanate of Koweit [Kuwait], B. Hasa, C. Bahrain, D. El-Qatar, E. Trucial Oman A name used by Britain from the nineteenth century to 1971 to refer to the present-day United Arab Emirates. ;
- Chapter 10: Nejd;
- Chapter 11: Jebel Shammar;
- Chapter 12: The Northern Nefūd and Dahanah Belts;
- Chapter 13: Settled Tribes of the North-West;
- Chapter 14: Settled Tribes of the West;
- Chapter 15: Settled Tribes of the South;
- Chapter 16: Settled Tribes of the Centre;
- Appendix: Note of Topographical and Common Terms;
- Index;
- Plates.
The front of the volume includes a 'List of Maps' and a 'Note on the Spelling of Proper Names'. Maps contained in this volume are:
- Map 1: Arabia: Districts and Towns;
- Map 2: Orographical Features of Arabia;
- Map 3: Land Surface Features of Arabia;
- Map 4: Tribal Map of Arabia.
The volume also contains fifteen plates of photographs and sketches by Captain William Henry Irvine Shakespear, Douglas Carruthers, Captain Gerard Leachman, Dr Julius Euting, George Wyman Bury, and Samuel Barrett Miles.
- Extent and format
- 1 volume (371 folios)
- Arrangement
The volume is arranged in chapters. There is a contents page, list of maps, alphabetical index, and list of plates.
- Physical characteristics
Foliation: There is a foliation sequence, which is circled in pencil, in the top right corner of the recto The front of a sheet of paper or leaf, often abbreviated to 'r'. of each folio. It begins on the front cover, on number 1, and ends on the last of various maps which are inserted at the back of the volume, on number 371.
- Written in
- English and Arabic in Latin script View the complete information for this record
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'Handbook of Arabia. Vol. I. 1917' [399] (408/748), British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, IOR/L/PS/20/E84/1, in Qatar Digital Library <https://www.qdl.qa/archive/81055/vdc_100037114037.0x000009> [accessed 3 January 2025]
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Copyright: How to use this content
- Reference
- IOR/L/PS/20/E84/1
- Title
- 'Handbook of Arabia. Vol. I. 1917'
- Pages
- front, back, spine, edge, head, tail, front-i, i-r:i-v, 1:381, 384:726, ii-r:ii-v, ii-r:ii-v, back-i
- Author
- East India Company, the Board of Control, the India Office, or other British Government Department
- Usage terms
- Open Government Licence