Two books by Gerald De Gaury

I just received two books in the mail. I am super excited about them. The first one is a previously unpublished “Review of the ‘Anizah Tribe” by Gerald de Gaury, the British explorer of Arabia (photo below).

Bruce Ingham, who wrote the very informative “Bedouin of Northern Arabia” about the Dhafeer tribe, discovered this manuscript by chance in a London bookshop in 1995, and edited it for publication.

I also bought De Gaury’s more famous “Rulers of Mecca“. I hope it will allow me to identify which of the Sharifs of Mecca was the “al-‘Ajuz” (the elderly) after which all the Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz are named, according to a persistent Shammar tradition. This tradition was told by Ibn Sa’adi told to Hazaim and I in 2005 or 2006. Jadu’ Ibn Saadi was the ‘arifah (Bedouin horse judge) of the Shammar. His account made so much more historical and linguistic sense than the silly story of the old woman rescuing a foal.