Two Azd tribes of the high Sarat round al-Baha, with their terraces, juniper forests and fortified stone villages, and their lands running down to the Tihama.
They are recorded here from early Islam (Ibn al-Kalbi, al-Hamdani) to modern times; nothing is recorded for 1200.
Who holds it
- Name
- not known for 1 January 1200
- Title
- Shaykhs of the Ghamid and Zahran
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not pinned
- Family
- not pinned
- Confidence
- low
No chief of this people is named for the winter of 1199-1200 in the sources read.
What it holds
- the Sarat round al-Baha and Baljurashi and their Tihama slopes
How things stand that morning
Present; no chief named.
Military
Village levies of the mountains.
Customs
Terrace farmers and herders under lineage shaykhs; tower houses; weekly markets.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Continuity of location.
On the map: Rough.
Primary sources for The Bedouin
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- History of the Observant Traveller (A Traveller in Thirteenth-Century Arabia), Ibn al-Mujawir (Jamal al-Din Yusuf ibn Ya'qub) (about 1226 to 1232). A merchant-traveller's description of western and southern Arabia a generation after 1200: Mecca and the Hijaz ports, the Red Sea crossing, Zabid and the Tihama, Aden with its customs and tariffs, the Hadramawt coast, Dhofar and Oman, Socotra, and the opposite African shore at Zeila and the Dahlak islands. Read online
Sources and studies
- Ghamid (English Wikipedia, citing Ibn al-Kalbi, Jamharat al-nasab)
- al-Hamdani, Sifat Jazirat al-Arab (tenth century), the standard description of the tribes and places of the Sarat, Najd and the Hejaz, as used in the Wikipedia tribal articles cited here
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.