8vo. xvii, 94 pp., 1 folding table of Tribal Divisions and sections of 'Anizah, edited by Bruce Ingham, hard back in d/w, New, Kutub, Beirut, 2005.

Synopsis

Previously unknown work by the author published here for the first time. Gerald de Gaury served in Iraq and Kuwait from 1924 to 1941 as army officer, political agent and charge d’affaires to the Iraq Regent. His writings on Arabia are well-known, but this previously unpublished work dating from 1932 is on a subject not usually associated with him, namely the Arabian Bedouin. It concerns the Iraqi branch of the ‘Anizah, probably the most numerous of Bedouin tribes, so numerous that the Bedouin saying runs “Any enemy, but not the ‘Anizah.”
The ‘Amarat are less well documented than their Syrian cousins, the Rwallah. So this Review is interesting, as it contains details of tribal divisions, pedigrees, wells and grazing grounds, economic life, customs and language. The name of the Hadhdhal, the line of the ‘Amarat is a name with a long history and still much respected in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.