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 camp. He would ride there on it and would lend his own camel to his acquaintance, a settler from Maʻân, who had been proceeding on foot. The Šarâri made no objection to this arrangement, happy in the thought that he would not lose his animal. From 6.08 to 7.35 our camels grazed (temperature: 16.8° C).

The negro Mḥammad recounted to me how the chief ʻAwde abu Tâjeh had plundered the Šarârât early in May. During the rainy season he had been encamped with his clans at Ṭubejḳ al-Ḥamar and Ṭubejḳ al-ʻAfar; that is, in the territory which belongs to the Šarârât, with whom he was on the most friendly terms. When all the ponds of rain water dried up at the end of April, ʻAwde with his Ḥwêṭât proceeded northward into his own territory. The Šarârât, who had been his friends hitherto, desired to go with him, but ʻAwde attacked one of their divisions, robbed it of all its herds, and proclaimed war on the whole tribe. When I remarked that I should not have expected such conduct from ʻAwde, Mḥammad replied: “The Šarârât are our magazine, maḫzan, which we empty whenever we please. If we want war, then we have war with them, if we want peace, then we force them to make peace.” At the time of my journey several clans of the Šarârât had remained at aṭ-Ṭubejḳ; others had made their way to the šeʻîb of Ḥedreǧ and the depression of Sirḥân, whence they were making inroads into the territory of the Ḥwêṭât, robbing the latter of their flocks.

The majority of the Ḥwêṭât clans were encamped between Maʻân and al-Bṣejra—that is west of the railway—and only three clans with ʻAwde abu Tâjeh were still grazing their herds southeast of Maʻân. Even they were already on the march westward to the territory of the settlers who till the soil, where they desired to obtain grain necessary for themselves and their horses. Within the next fourteen to twenty days they wished to strike out toward the southwest and west of Maʻân, so that after that time the region between Maʻân and the depression of Sirḥân would be stripped of all camps and would form the seat of war between the Ḥwêṭât and their enemies. The latter included the Beni Ṣaḫr as well as the Šarârât. The Beni Ṣaḫr and the Ḥwêṭât have no strictly defined frontiers, and when