The Abbas Pasha Manuscript (APM), in its English translation, has nineteen mentions of a Bedouin community named “the people of the north”. These mentions are often associated with names of tribes that seem to form part of this “people of the north”, such as the tribes of al-Sirhan (pages 501, 508, 511), al-Sardiyah (page 311, 449), and al-Issa (page 369). It turns out that these three tribes formed the core of the “People of the North”, a loose alliance formed around 1750 by tribes long established in the areas of al-Balqaa (northern Transjordan) and the Hauran (southern Syria), to fend off the relentless advance of the ‘Anazah tribes from Central Arabia towards the north. The alliance was first led by the Sardiyah, a small but very noble tribe that is an offshoot of the Bani Lam and which the Ottomans had put in charge of securing the pilgrimage route from Damascus to Medina. The “People of the North” alliance also included the smaller al-Issa, al-Sirhan, and al-Fuhailiyyin tribe, as well as the larger Bani Sakhr tribe, itself then a newcomer from Central Arabia but an enemy of the ‘Anazah. The alliance first succeeded in pushing the first Anazah waves, led…