Tribal Politics in Feisal's Area.

£37,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

One of the greatest Lawrence rarities, unnoticed by the bibliographers and in none of the great American collections (quite possibly there is no copy in America). OCLC reports copies at the University of Durham and the Bodleian, and Jeremy Wilson cites one at the Public Records Office in London. The essay by Lawrence is the fruit of his researches into the attitudes among the Arabs of the north of Palestine, made while planning an advance to Damascus led by an Arab army mounted on the 2000 camels donated by Allenby (as it turned out Feisal’s army did take part in the advance to Damascus but not in as prominent a role as originally intended). The essay considers the state of affairs in the Howeitat, Beni Atiyah, Naimat, Hejaya, Hegeish, Beni Sakhr, Belgawiyeh, Ruwalla, Fadhld, and Naim tribes with notes on the situation at Kerak, Madeba and Maan. The text is written with Lawrence’s usual mixture of clarity and precision leavened with occasional and unexpected bits of expressive writing and detached humour. How many other intelligence officers would have been content to name Metaab ibn Abtan, without the descriptive “a very intelligent, venturous, attractive boy of seventeen”? Or who else could have been as ironic as this passage: “Auda is as good as ever, but more wayward, if it be possible. He has now proved to his own satisfaction that his descent from the Prophet entitles him to equality with ordinary sherifs, if not to the actual title, and with Turkish prisoner-labour, he

• Year: 1918

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