Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates Vol 2 - The Search For Mecca

CHAPTER XXIV.
Desert History—The Shammar and Anazeh invasions— Destruction
of civilisation in the Euphrates Valley—Eeconquest b}-- the
Turks—Their present position in Arabia—List of the Bedouin
Tribes—An account of the Sabteans.
The modern liistoiy of Northern Arabia may be
considered as commencing with the conquest of that
country by the
Shammar Bedouins of Nejd, under
their leader Faris, about two hundred years ago.
Until that time the Ottoman Empire, inheriting
the traditions of its predecessors Eoman, Greek,
Saracen and Tartar, had maintained its southern
frontier at the line of the Euphrates and the military
highroad connecting Bagdad with Damascus,
Within this limit, the inhabitants of the desert were
the Sultan's subjects, and the common law of the
Empire prevailed. Mesopotamia and the Upper
Syrian Desert were at that time inhabited by various
shepherd tribes, some of them Arabs of the first
invasion under the Caliph Omar, others of Kurdish
origin, pushed forward hj the counter invasions
from the north in the 13 th and 14th centuries, and
one of mixed race, the Moali, which owes it existence
according to tradition to the following curious
accident.