The nomads of the nomads,

in the deserts of the Al Murra

The bedouin Al Murrah from Saudi Arabia travel along the boundaries of the great Jafurah and Rub’al Khali deserts, raising herds of camels and herds of goats, and trading their by-products.

Jafurah is a medium-sized coastal desert. Its beaches occupy more than 40,000 km2 and it has a low rainfall that does not exceed 100 mm per year. On its edges there are several regular-sized cities, Damman, Al Hassa, Al Jubayl, Al Hofuf, Qatif, Dhahran and several smaller towns and oases.

Rub’al Khali or “Empty Quarter" is much bigger. It constitutes one of the most extensive sandy deserts in the world (around half a million square kilometers). The rainfall is practically nil and is completely uninhabited.

If we add to Rub’al Khali, the Jafurah dune fields and other bodies of wind sands such as the narrow Dahna and the Nordic Grand Nafud, the Arab deserts exceed 750,000 km2. Al Murrah simply call them "al-Rimal" (the sands).

These Bedouins are one of the most traditional tribes of the Arabian peninsula. They move continuously from well to well and from oasis to oasis looking for the necessary water and the best pastures for their herds. They are famous because they can follow traces over great distances, identifying the traces of a person or animal among many hundreds. Their expert testimonies in this matter are admitted to the Islamic courts of Saudi Arabia as valid probative elements. Members of this unique Arab race normally move in small groups forming camps with about 3 or 4 typical black tents. The size of the groups is determined by the extent of available grazing areas. In general, the water stocks in the desert are sufficient for the population of nomadic shepherds but an appropriate distribution is required not to deplete the local forage plants. The Al Murrah were studied by the American anthropologist Donald Cole in his well-known book “ The Nomads of the nomads.

I had the opportunity to share a few days with Donald Cole in a mobile home that the company we worked at that time had installed in the middle of the desert about 10 or 15 kilometers from the city of Qal'at Bishah in the valleys of the Arab Asir.

Cole, who until recently (2011) was a professor at the American University of Cairo, in Egypt (and still teaches there), related some of his experiences with the Al Murrah in the tours he had done with them some years before, that They seemed to me of singular interest and allowed me to understand this Bedouin tribe some years later. During my subsequent stay in the Eastern Province of Arabia I had several opportunities to visit or be with the Al Murrahs in their extensive domains.

On one occasion, with my son Diego and some colleagues from the University of Petroleum and Minerals (today called King Fahd University) we traveled to the town of Yabrin, an oasis on the edge of the Jafurah desert with Rub'al Khali, in full territory of the nomads. We arrived at Yabrin from Al Hofuf in two vans after crossing about two hundred kilometers of desert with the intention of loading fuel.

Yabrin is a small town of scattered houses and orchards of date palms, which at that time housed about two or three hundred people. He served as a base for the Bedouin Al Murrah when they returned from their desert outings.

The gas station, located at the entrance of the town, was a box that was closed, with a gas tank that was on top of a small rocky hill from where a hose was coming down.

We approached the population and when we saw a man walking we asked him how it was done to load gasoline.

He replied in Arabic: "We must ask the Emir for authorization" and then he pointed to a distance from the building saying: "That is the Emir's house". Upon arriving at the designated place we were met by a Bedouin wearing the typical tunic, a long beard and a kind of alfanje at the waist.

The man invited us to come and sit on some carpets that covered the floor of a wider construction. He then offered us and served the traditional "qahwa" (it is a kind of tea with coffee)

In the same building there were other people in small groups talking, drinking ‘qahwa or smoking shisha in the water pipes.

 e waited a long time drinking the repeated wells of qahwa that man served us. After about two or three hours the emir appeared. He was a young man of no more than 25 years old, who sat with us and asked us where we were going and alerted us to the dangers of traveling in Rub’al Khali. Finally authorized the loading of fuel and we were able to undertake the withdrawal.

On another occasion we went from Dhahran to the plains of Wadi Dawasir on the northern edge of Rub’al Khali where one of the main trade and grazing routes of the Al Murrah is located.

Wadi Dawasir is a gigantic ancient river that still forms sporadically with the flow of the Wadis Ranyah, Tathlith and Bishah that descend from the mountains of the Hejaz and the Asir in western Arabia. These wadis flow once or twice a year and rarely reach their respective mouths in the Wadi Dawasir. For that reason, and for all intents and purposes, it can be said that Wadi Dawasir is a dry river. (keep going)
From "Chronicles of Human Peripecia", Danilo Antón Piriguazú Ediciones