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, “the Island of the Arabs”, the name given by the Arabs to the Arabian Peninsula. ¶ (i) preliminary remarks Although the Peninsula may not be the original cradle of the Arab people,, they have lived there for thousands of years and regard it in a very special sense as their homeland. For students of Islam, Western Arabia occupies a unique position as the land in which the Prophet Muḥammad was born, lived, and died. It was there that the inspiration of Allāh descended upon the Prophet, and to this Holy Land come ma…

, the birthplace and still the spiritual centre of Islam, is the north-western part of the Arabian Peninsula. As the site of the Kaʿba, as the home of the Prophet Muḥammad and the scene of Allāh’s revelations to him ( manzil al-waḥy ), and as the capital district of the early Islamic state, al-Ḥid̲j̲āz is for Muslims as much the Holy Land ( al-bilād al-muḳaddasa ) as Palestine is for Jews and Christians. Muslims are, in fact, even more zealous in guarding the inviolate character of their chief shrines; the areas surrounding Mecca (Makka)…

a town in Ḥaḍramawt under the eastern wall of Wādī al-Kasr, just north of the confluence of the three valleys of ʿAmd, Dawʿan [ q.v.], and al-ʿAyn. The town is dominated by a large castle and a watchtower on the heights above. The population, reckoned by Ingrams to number 1,500, has a strong Indonesian infusion. The leading citizens are of the family of Bā Wazīr; there are also descendants of Badr Bū Ṭuwayriḳ, the founder of Kat̲h̲īrī power in Ḥaḍramawt. Ḥawra is, nevertheless, a Ḳuʿayṭi enclave in Kat̲h̲īrī territory,…

, the name of a number of towns in Arabia, the more important of which will be cited here. Those lying in the southern part of the peninsula contain the shrines of famous saints (see the article immediately preceding). Ḥawṭat al-Ḳaṭn, under the south wall of Wādī Ḥaḍramawt some 20 km. west of S̲h̲ibām, belongs to the Ḳuʿayṭī sultanate of al-S̲h̲iḥr and al-Mukallā, the paramount state of the eastern British Protectorate of South Arabia, and the palace there has served as the residence of the Ḳuʿa…

, a tribe which has played an important role in the history of the Ibāḍiyya [ q.v.] in ʿUmān. Descendants of Yaḥmad, a branch of al-Azd [ q.v.], members of the tribe migrated to ʿUmān in pre-Islamic times and established themselves in a valley which came to bear their name. Wādī Banī K̲h̲arūṣ runs down from the heights of the western mountain range of al-Ḥad̲j̲ar to join Wādī al-Farʿ before debouching on the plain of al-Bāṭina and then ¶ into the Gulf of ʿUmān. On the right bank not far below the juncture of the two valleys is the famous Ibāḍī stronghold of al-Rustāḳ [ q.v.]. Yaḥmad provided most of…

is properly the name of a pariah tribe with its main centre in northwestern Arabia, but Hutaym is also used imprecisely at times as a designation for any of the pariah tribes in the eastern Arab lands. The definite article prefixed to the name Hutaym in some Arabic and Western sources is incorrect; the initial radical is h, not ḥ as in EI 1, iv, 512; the usual pronunciation in Arabia is ihtēm ; and the plural is Hitmān rather than the forms given in EI 1, ii, 348. None of the many versions explaining the origin and lineage of Hutaym seems particularly plausible. About the only state…

, a large confederation of tribes in the highlands of northern Yaman. For well over two millennia the confederation has kept its identity and territory with little change. The article on the confederation by J. Schleifer in EI 1, based in the main on al-Hamdānī’s survey (4th/10th century) and on E. Glaser’s visit to the land of Ḥās̲h̲id in 1884, sets forth many details not repeated here. Since the dawn of history the confederation has occupied a large part of the region between Ṣanʿāʾ and Ṣaʿda, with Ḥās̲h̲id generally established on the western side and Bakīl …

(also Barahūt or Balahūt), a wādī in Ḥaḍramawt, in one wall of which is the famous Biʾr Barhūt, now known to be a cave rather than a well. The wādī, which lies east of the town of Tarīm, empties into al-Masīla, the lower stretch of Wādī Ḥaḍramawt, from the south. At the mouth of Barhūt is Ḳabr Hūd [see hūd ], the most sacred shrine in southern Arabia, which is the object of a ziyāra every S̲h̲aʿbān. Early Islamic traditions describe Biʾr Barhūt as the worst well on earth, haunted by the souls of infidels. Barhūt probably came to be known throughout Arabia because of its …

, a dynasty based in al-Aḥsāʾ [ q.v.] in eastern Arabia in the 9th-10th/15th-16th centuries. The Banū D̲j̲abr descended from ʿĀmir b. Rabīʿa b. ʿUḳayl. The founder of the dynasty was Sayf b. Zāmil b. D̲j̲abr, who supplanted the D̲j̲arwānids of ʿUḳayl [see al-ḳaṭīf ]. Sayf’s brother and successor Ad̲j̲wad was born in the desert in the region of al-Aḥsāʾ and al-Ḳaṭīf in Ramaḍān 821/October 1418. Ad̲j̲wad in his fifties was strong enough to become involved in ¶ the politics of Hormuz on the other side of the Gulf. He told the Medinan historian al-Samhūdī how he had visited …

a colloquial variant of the classical ik̲h̲āwa (“brotherliness”), is a term formerly used in the Arabian Peninsula for payments made in return for the right to enter alien territory and for protection while staying there. Whenever there was no central authority strong enough to guarantee freedom of transit for all, travellers or wanderers coming into the dīra or range of a powerful tribe would hand over k̲h̲āwa , which usually consisted of livestock such as g̲h̲anam , or foodstuffs such as ghee, in amounts determined by negotiations. Refusal by merchant caravans to pay k̲h̲āwa could lea…

(sometimes Dūʿan), one of the principal southern tributaries of Wādī Ḥaḍramawt. Dawʿan, a deep narrow cleft in al-D̲j̲awl, runs c. 100 km. almost due north to join the main wādī opposite the town of Haynan. The precipitous walls of Dawʿan are c. 300 m. high; its towns nestle against the lower slopes with their palm groves lying in the valley bed below. The valley is formed by the confluence of two branches, al-Ayman (pronounced layman ) and al-Aysar (pronounced laysar ), with al-Ayman often reckoned an integral part of Dawʿan proper. Among the cluster …

, the central district of Nad̲j̲d. Originally applied to the long mountainous, barrier Ṭuwayḳ [ q.v.], the name al-ʿĀriḍ is still very commonly used in this sense. In a more restricted sense it refers to the central part of the barrier, the district between al-Ḵh̲ard̲j̲ to the south and al-Maḥmal to the north. On the west al-ʿĀriḍ is bounded by the western escarpment of Ṭuwayḳ and the district of al-Baṭīn below it, in which lie Ḍarmā, al-G̲h̲aṭg̲h̲aṭ, etc. On the east Wādi ’l-Sulayy, the escarpment of Ḏj̲āl Hīt, and the land of al-ʿArama separate al-ʿĀriḍ from al-Dahnāʾ. The district is tra…

(“the Brothers”), Arab tribesmen joining a religious and military movement which had its heyday in Arabia from 1330 to 1348/1912-30 under the rule of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ¶ Āl Suʿūd, popularly known as Ibn Suʿūd [see suʿūd, āl ]. The movement, inspired by a resurgence of the Wahhābiyya , bore a strong resemblance to the original welling up of Islam among the tribes of Arabia in the t/h century. In both cases the strength of tribal ties, the amazingly rapid spread of religious fervour in an attempt to f…

, the name of a wadi, a port, and a muḳāṭaʿa (district or province) on the Red Sea in south-western Saudi Arabia. The classical form, D̲j̲āzān, is still often used, especially by writers from the province itself. Variant pronunciations are Ḏj̲ē-Ḏj̲ī-, D̲j̲ō-, and rarely Zē-(among the tribe of the Masāriḥa). ¶ The form Qīzān, which occurs on many maps, is spurious; it is said to be the plural of ḳawz (sand hill), whereas the plural of this word is actually aḳwāz . The name appears to have belonged originally to the wadi, which rises in D̲j̲abal Rāziḥ and the territory of K̲h̲a…

( al-Hawās̲h̲im ), the dynasty of Ḥasanid S̲h̲arīfs who ruled Mecca almost without interruption from the 4th/10th century until 1343/1924. After the First World War the dynasty provided kings for Syria and Iraq, which later became republics, and gave its name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (see following article). The eponym of the dynasty was Hās̲h̲im b. ʿAbd Manāf [ q.v.], the great-grandfather of the Prophet. The majority of the S̲h̲īʿa recognized as their Imāms descendants of ʿAlī’s martyred younger son al-Ḥusayn. Descendants of the elder son al-Ḥasan f…

, a well in the environs of Mecca. Although the well was famous in early Islamic times, the name no longer occurs in the Meccan area. Available sources fail to show whether Biʾr Maymūn has been abandoned or is still in use under another name. The location of the ancient well is also uncertain. Much of the evidence places it between the Great Mosque and Minā, somewhat closer to the latter. The account given by al-Ṭabarī, iii, 456, of the death of the Caliph al-Manṣūr at Biʾr Maymūn in 158/775 indicates that the well lay inside the Sacred Zone ( al-Ḥaram ) and suggests that …

(pl. Ḥawās̲h̲ib), a South Arabian tribe and sultanate. The land of the tribe, north of Aden in the western British Protectorate of South Arabia, is a rough quadrilateral with one of the shorter sides abutting on the Yaman, whence the land extends southeastwards to the Faḍlī sultanate [ q.v.], which cuts it off from the sea. North of the Ḥaws̲h̲abī sultanate are the ʿĀmirī and ʿAlawī states [ qq.v.], while to the south lies the ʿAbdalī state [ q.v.] of Laḥd̲j̲ with its dependent Ṣubayḥī tribe [ q.v.]. The Ḥaws̲h̲abī sultanate is of strategic importance for its command of the main r…

, banū (sing. K̲h̲aḍīrī). a generic term in Nad̲j̲d [ q.v.] for Arabs of dubious ancestry, i.e. not recognised as descendants of either ʿAdnān or Ḳaḥṭān [see d̲j̲azīrat al-ʿarab. vi. Ethnography]. The derivation of the term is uncertain. ¶ In any case, it is not to be taken as the name of a tribe, though there are sections of Banū K̲h̲aḍīr in various towns of Nad̲j̲d (see the tentative list in Lorimer, ii, 1004). Many of Banū K̲h̲aḍīr are tillers of the soil for Arabs of pure descent who own the land they work. Rarely is a K̲h̲aḍīrī himself a landowner. Banū K̲h̲aḍīr …

(singular: Dawsarī), a large tribe based in central Arabia. The Dawāsir are remarkable for the way in which many of them have spread abroad and won success in areas and endeavours remote from their original environment, while at the same time even the settled elements among them have retained an unusually strong sentiment of tribal solidarity and attachment to the mores of their Bedouin forebears. Whatever the origins of the tribe, the Dawāsir became primarily identified with Wādī al-Dawāsir in southern Nad̲j̲d (the closest of the populated districts there to…

, a valley in Nad̲j̲d, the northernmost of those cutting through the western wall of the cuesta of Ṭuwayḳ. It is a true wādī with a strong flood whenever there is enough rain. The valley forms the dividing line between the district of Sudayr to the north and the district of al-Maḥmal to the south. Its head ( farʿa ) is in the low ground west of Ṭuwayḳ in the vicinity of the oasis of al-Ḳaṣab, south of which there is a large salt pan ( mamlaḥa or sabk̲h̲a ). After passing north of the hills of al-Bakarāt (pl. of bakra=she-camel 3-5 years old), the valley goes through the escarpment of Ṭuwayḳ by…