round them in order to rejoin each other. The same thing happened to the other chiefs who joined ʻAwde.
FAWZÂN ON THE ḤWÊṬÂT
Seeing that it would be impossible during the march to talk to ʻAwde undisturbed, I joined a camel merchant named Fawzân as-Sâbeḳ, who was followed by his servants driving more than two hundred animals that he had purchased. This herd, as well as the servants, protected us from the troublesome Ḥwêṭât.
Fawzân, a man about forty years of age, had a good-natured, dark face, with expressive eyes, and he conducted himself very quietly and modestly. He had bought the camels on behalf of an acquaintance of mine, the rich camel-dealer Mḥammad eben Bassâm, by whom he had been warmly recommended to me. When I expressed my surprise that the Ḥwêṭât observed no order either in camp or on the march, Fawzân said that the Ḥwêṭât were not genuine camel-breeders but that they belonged to the Ahl ad-Dîre, who breed sheep and goats, and that, in fact, many of them were mere tillers of the soil. The Ḥwêṭât, he declared, had no head chief, so that any chief who was in charge of more than ten tents acted in complete independence, declared war, and concluded peace with whom he liked, regardless of the other clans and families. This independence was supported by the Turkish Government in the case of all the tribes encamped along the railway between Damascus and the Ḥeǧâz, as the authorities considered that it was easier to subjugate scattered tribes and mutually warring clans, than if they were subordinated to a single head chief. But this policy was not altogether correct; for if any move was set on foot against the Government, all the scattered clans would unite at once and rally round the chief who happened to be acting against the Government. If, on the other hand, the Government wished to obtain something from the tribes, desiring, for example, to count their herds so as to fix the amount of their taxes, or if it was searching for flocks stolen from the settlers, it had nobody to support and assist it in carrying out its intentions. There was no head tribal chief, and the numerous petty chiefs would take flight with their flocks, or join the chiefs of neighboring tribes who were under no obligation
