Shahran and Khath'am

Who holds it

Name

not known for 1 January 1200

Title

Shaykhs of the Shahran and Khath'am

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

• Wadi Bisha and Wadi Tathlith with their villages
• the plateau pastures east of the Asir crest

How things stand that morning

Present; no chief named.

Military

Mounted tribesmen and camel riders under their shaykhs; no fortresses.

Customs

Kin-ruled pastoralists under shaykhs chosen within leading lineages; summer camps at the wells and the edges of the oases, winter grazing in the open desert after the rains; they sell camels, sheep, butter and wool in the oasis markets, take protection money (khuwwa) from villages and caravans, and serve the sharifs or the caravan commanders for pay. The wadi villages farm palms and grain.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Tenth- and thirteenth-century geography.

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