ABSTRACT
THE modern history 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 Boman, 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 by the counter invasions from the north ill 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.
