Mawali (tribe)
The Mawali continued to be the dominant tribe of the Syrian steppe until the late 18th century when they were driven out by the Hassana, newcomers belonging to the great Anaza confederation of Arabia.
They continued to wield significant influence in the Hama Sanjak and were entrusted with policing duties to protect the villages there from Bedouin raids.
Leaders of the tribe, particularly from the Khurfan family, played a significant role helping resettle the desert fringes around Hama in the mid-19th century.
The Mawali tribe is presently settled in roughly sixty villages in the Idlib Governorate and, to a lesser extent, in the rural areas of Homs.
Their territory spanned the expanse between Hama and Homs in the west, the Palmyra oasis in the east and the Euphrates River valley in the north.
[7] Nomadic tribes of the Anaza and Shammar confederations of northern Arabia began to enter the Syrian desert and Euphrates valley in their migratory cycles by the 18th century and challenged Mawali hegemony there.
During this period (late 17th–early 18th centuries), droughts spurred frequent raids by Bedouin, including the Mawali, and peasant groups in the areas of Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus.
[11] In 1786, under their emir Muhammad al-Khurfan, the Mawali revolted, raiding numerous villages in the plains around Hama, including the eastern foothills of the Alawite Mountains.
The villages of Jabal Zawiya were devastated in the government offensive and the area experienced mass abandonment due to the tribal uprising, so much so that taxes were substantially reduced there to encourage resettlement.
The Hassana, and later another Anaza tribe, the Fad'an, were then accorded the Mawali's previous rights to collect tolls from the caravans traversing through Palmyra.
[10] While the Mawali was a diverse grouping of tribes, which included sedentary and sheepherding elements along the cultivated areas bordering the desert, the Anaza were purely nomadic camel raisers who migrated to northern Arabia en masse in the winter.
The Qibli (Southern) faction, represented by the Jamajima and Khutaba clans, did not pay taxes in the Hama Sanjak, but nevertheless frequently pitched their tents near the villages there.
[18] The Mawali's principal foes were the Turki and Hadidiyin, the latter having migrated to the Hama region from the steppe near Aleppo and the Euphrates valley in the mid-18th century due to pressures from the Fad'an.
Although the efficacy of the office waned with the rise of the Anaza in the steppe east of Hama, the Mawali serkeder continued to receive his stipend.
[19] Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, visiting Syria in 1810, noted that the provincial government of Aleppo also paid the Mawali emir there an annual stipend, though the chief's 400-strong horsemen were "reckoned treacherous and faithless" by the authorities.
The Mawali under Muhammad Khurfan were enlisted in the government's military campaigns against the Anaza tribe and once again performed policing duties in the steppe during this period.
The seasonal migratory routes of the Mawali, in contrast, were significantly shorter; the tribe encamped in the cultivated areas of northwestern Syria (the ma'mura) in the summers and the Syrian steppe in the winters.
[26] Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s the Mawali were engaged in a tribal war with the Hadidiyin, initially over watering rights and later as part of the tribes' relations with the French authorities and the Syrian nationalist cause.
In 1921 the Mawali sabotaged rail tracks in northern Syria, prompting the French to dispatch troops against them, though the leaders of the tribe avoided punitive action when they submitted to the authorities soon after.
They were blamed by the government for reigniting the war with the Hadidiyin, whose leadership was cultivating ties with the French, in 1924–1925, and allying with the nationalist activists in central Syria's cities.
