'Military Report on Mesopotamia (Iraq)' [‎70v] (145/226)

Early in the second century after Christ, three Arab
tribes from the Yemen, compelled by the periodic
pressure of over-population and lack of grazing in
Central Arabia, migrated to Northern Jazirah. The
first, under Bekir ibn Wail, settled round the town of
Amed, now called Diarbekr; the second, by name the
Itabiyah, pitched their tents between Nisibin and
Mosul; while the third, the Mathri, from whom the
modern Tai trace their descent, settled in the country
between Itaqqah and Seruj.
The Tai appear to have remained in the vicinity of
Raqqah until the middle of the seventeenth century,
when the great Shammar invasion occurred. In common
with other weaker tribes the Tai were forced to find a
dwelling-place in the middle or eastern portion of
Northern Jazirah. The alteration in habitat and the
nature of their new conditions wrought a material
change in the character of the Tai, who, from a settled,
agricultural tribe, degenerated into so many nomadic
herdsmen. The attacks of marauding Shammar from
the west and Kurdish tribes from the north rendered
the peaceful tillage of cornlands impossible.
In recent years the Tai have begun to regain some
of their primitive power in Northern Jazirah. A series
of weak chieftains, unable to exercise adequate control
of the various sections, had brought tribal prestige into
a low condition. The advent of Muhammad, the present
paramount Shaikh, who has shown himself to be
possessed in a high degree of Badawin diplomacy, has
rendered the tribe of some importance in questions
affecting the Iraq-Turkish frontier. During the war
the Tai contented themselves with replenishing their
stock of arms and ammunition either as a price for their
goodwill from the Turks or from Turkish convoys. At all
times the Tai, who pay no tribute to the Shammar Jarba,
have lived on comparatively good terms with the latter,
but have never aspired to rival them in the scope of
their looting or levy of tribute. At the end of 1919 there
occurred an incident which was only satisfactorily
settled in the closing days of 1920. A1 Asi, the para
mount Shaikh of the Shammar Jarba, accused
Muhammad of the Tai of an infringement of Shammar
grazing rights. As a result of the quarrel that super
vened, two sections of the Tai, the Jawalah and Bashid,