BANĪ TAMĪM

 

BANĪ TAMĪM, an Arab tribe of western Ḵūzestān, both settled and nomadic, raising sheep and camels. Their range lies between Howayza and Ahvāz, where they are also known as the Banī Mālek (Persia, pp. 378, 380; Field, pp. 198-99). Their numbers were estimated at 10,000 persons before World War I, when they also extended south on the Kārūn as far as Qājārīya (Lorimer, Gazetteer II, pp. 123, 1858), and in the 1940s at 2,200 families (Oppenheim, IV, p. 25). They are Shiʿite, and organized in sixteen sections.

Their earlier history, and in particular their relation to the classical tribe of Tamīm, some of whom had emigrated to Ḵūzestān even before Islam (EI2 I, p. 528b), and to the several groups of Tamīm in present-day Iraq, is not clear. Some Banī Tamīm occupied Dawraq early in the 10th/16th century, but were ousted ca. 1000/1591-92 by Sayyed Mobārak, the Mošaʿšaʿī wālī of ʿArabestān (Ḵūzestān); in the 1760s they were identified as subjects to the Montafeq confederacy of southern Iraq (Niebuhr, p. 388; Oppenheim, IV, pp. 45-47).

There are also groups of Banī Tamīm along the Gulf littoral, in the dehestāns of Ḥayāt Dāwūd, Šabānkāra, Rūd Ḥella, and Angalī (Fasāʾī, II, pp. 81, 82).

 

Bibliography:

(Great Britain) Admiralty, Persia, Geographical Handbook Series, Oxford, 1945.

H. Field, Contributions to the Anthropology of Iran, Chicago, 1939.

C. Niebuhr, Beschreibung von Arabien, Copenhagen, 1772.

M. Freiherr von Oppenheim, Die Beduinen, ed. W. Caskel, 4 vols., Wiesbaden, 1967.

Search terms:

 بنی تمیم bani tamim  bane tameem bany tamim

 

(J. Perry)

Originally Published: December 15, 1988

Last Updated: December 15, 1988

This article is available in print.
Vol. III, Fasc. 7, pp. 695-696