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NOVEMBER, 1921 ]
THE MARSH ARABS OF LOWER MESOPOTAMIA.
293
All the encampments of Marsh Arabs which we have seen have been well supplied with canoes; these are long, narrow, shallow, light, wooden, bitumen-covered, boats. Such a boat is known as a mash-hûf. Occasionally amongst them, but drawn up on to the bank to dry, could be seen outside a particularly small and squalid hut, the chalalia (pl. chalabiât). This is a cylindrical raft of reeds, eight to ten feet long, and tied tightly at the ends, so that it assumes a cigar-shape. It is widely used amongst Marsh Arabs, but, after a comparatively short time in the water, it needs drying on the river bank, because the reeds, when thoroughly wet, lose their buoyancy. A bundle of reeds, less cunningly made than the true Chalabta, is often used by others than the true Marsh Arab simply for crossing the Tigris.
Bulrushes are of use to the Marsh Arab chiefly as fodder for his buffalo, but are also useful for binding together bundles of reeds, for fuel, and for keeping out the wind from the huts. They are floated down to the brick-kilns of Başra, where they form almost the only fuel for brick-making in the district. They are used also for the same purpose in all the towns on the edge of the marshes.
The March Arabs Themselves.
The name of the Marsh Arabs in Arabic is Ma'dân. It is not uncommon for the real, desert Arabs of eastern Arabia to call the Arab of Mesopotamia disparagingly Ma'dani, and for the Mesopotamian Arab, who has but recently come to live in the land of the two rivers, to use that name in describing one of his fellow countrymen whose ancestors immigrated at an earlier period; but the word as generally used has come to mean a dwell. er in the marshes. As these people are the least civilised of the people of 'Iraq, the word is often used in the sense of "boor" or "rustic," in the same way as in India the word "jangli" is employed.
It should be understood clearly that it is only the inhabitants of the actual marshes and not the rice-cultivating Arabs of the marsh edges who are referred to in these notes as "Marsh Arabs". The rice cultivators in the district which we are considering chiefly belong to the great Albu Muhammad, Ázairij, Soow'âd, Bani Ásad, and 'Amaira tribes, and are quite distinct from the real Marsh Arabs. This distinction, however, is considered by Major Marrs to be occupational rather than ethnological, and he regards the buffaloowners as offshoots of the five tribes of rice cultivators just mentioned. The buffaloowners, whom we designate as "Marsh Arabs," are in turn divided into sub-tribes. The best known is the Fartus; others are the Shaghamba, Albu Nawafil, Albu Ghannam, Bait Nasralla, and the Bait Fatla.
The Marsh Arabs are by no means self-supporting. Not only the few luxuries which they enjoy, but even the very necessities of life must be obtained from the surrounding country-side. Their rice (Ar. shilib-paddy; timan-rice) and their great millet (Sorghum vulgare, Pers., Ar. idhra) are obtained as payment for working in the fields of these crops at harvest, and the little barley which they consume is sometimes obtained in a similar manner, though more often it is bought in the markets of the small towns on the edges of the marshes. Their black canoes (Ar. mashahif) and their rifles (Ar. tufka, pl. tufuk) and their ammunition (Ar. fishka-a cartridge, pl. fishak) are purchased from the Sabaeans (Ar. Sabi, pl. Sabi'on), a few of whom are to be found in most of the small towns surrounding the mar shes (e.g., Halfia, Nazil Muḥammad, Nazil 'Araibi, 'Azair, Majar), and who are to be found in larger numbers in 'Amâra, Sooq Ash Shoyookh, Qalat Sâlih, and Qarna. The March Arabs also buy in these small towns their clothes (Ar. hadum), for they possess no goats, sheep, nor camels, nor do they cultivate any textile crop, nor, indeed, any crop at all, and they
