'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎246r] (496/862)

DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION 367
all the tribes between Musaiyib and the Bani Huchaim belonged to
their confederation, but many are now independent, such as the partly
nomadic Ghazalat, and farther south the Chabsha tribes. The latter
live astride the Hindiya channel, from Gharab (12 miles below Shina-
fiya) to the borders of Bani Huchaim territory; the partly nomadic
Bani Salama are their most important tribe (p. 365).
The Bani Huchaim, except for the shepherd Zaiyad (p. 365), are a
confederation mostly of settled tribesmen inhabiting the lower reaches
of the various branches of the Hilla and Hindiya channels and canals
between Rumaitha, Chamcha (17 miles above Samawa), and Darraji
(30 miles below Samawa). They number about a dozen tribes, often
mutually antagonistic and always reluctant to admit the authority of
any supreme shaikh, but took a prominent part in the 1920 rebellion
and the risings of 1935-1936.
The Fatla and the tribes associated with them, the Jaliha and
Qurait, live around the upper reaches of the Hindiya channel
between Hindiya and Kill. The Fatla are settled agricultural and
cattle-breeding tribesmen, but are warlike and played a great part in
the insurrections of 1920 and 1935-1936 under Shaikh Abdul Wahid.
Two sedentary tribes of the Hilla branch, thejubur on the right bank
and the Albu Sultan on the left between Hilla and the Daghghara
barrage, have almost lost their cohesion and broken up into separate
sections, like the Bani Huchaim.
Settled and Semi-settled Tribes of Lower Euphrates (figs. 9, 69).
The Muntafiq cover the large region from the lands irrigated by the
Shatt al Gharraf below Qala Sikar eastwards to the Tigris marshes
of the Bani Lam (p. 371) and southwards to the southern shores of
the Hammar lake west of Kabaish. They are predominantly settled
and semi-settled fellahin Arabic for ‘peasant’. It was used by British officials to refer to agricultural workers or to members of a social class employed primarily in agricultural labour. who do not readily abandon agriculture,
but also contain tribes and sections of nomadic and semi-nomadic
shepherds in the unirrigated parts of their territory. Interspersed
among them in the region of permanent marsh are the Madan or true
marsh Arabs. The Muntafiq are not a tribe or a single tribal con
federation but a group of confederations originally embracing at least
fifty tribes united and ruled by the Shabib-Sadun family (p. 261);
the word muntajiq indeed means confederated. Many tribes and tribal
groups, however, have ceased to recognize the authority of the Sadun
shaikhs and the confederacy has been gradually resolving into its
component parts since about i860 (p. 267). The last occasion when
the Muntafiq acted together under Sadun leadership was when Ajaimi
called out the tribesmen to help the Turks in 1914; even then not all