Bedouin testimonies in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (APM) do not mention the calendar year an event took place. That’s because Bedouins, having an oral culture, did not record years the way people with a written culture did. Instead, the referred to major events that took place in the those years: “The year water was sold”, “the year Ibrahim Pasha went back westwards”, “the year Saffuq Al Jarba was slain”. The latter event is mentioned on page 477: “In the year that Saffuq al Jarba was slain, a hamra mare came to us which had been captured by Musay’id, the son of my brother“. Using Ottoman archives, Wiliamson, in his “Political History of the Shammar tribe” dated the treacherous murder of Sfuq al-Jarba, leader of the Shammar, by the Ottomans to late October 1847: An Ottoman contingent under the leadership of Gange Agha left Baghdad in late October, 1847, and met Sufuq at his camp a few hours outside of the capital […]. Sufuq remained behind under the protection of his personal guard. Gange Agha, leader of the Ottoman troops, supposedly remained behind to assist Sufuq in the event of trouble. […] Gange Agha [now] had the opportunity to execute the…