RESOURCES(1968): 143-69; and 'I. Shahid, "al-J:lira," EI(2) Ill: 478-79. For the
Kinda confederation, see G. Olinder's The Kings of Kind a of the Family
of Akil al-Murar (Lund, 1927).
The literature on pre-Islamic Arab pastoralism is extensive in itself.
It is best to start with H. von Wissmann and F. Kussmaul et aI.,
"Badw," EI(2), I: 872-92. AI-Bakri's Mu'jam was partially translated
by F. Wiistenfeld as "Die Wohnsitze und Wanderungen der arab.
Stamme," AKGWG 14 (1868-69): 93-172. The most important gen-
eral studies are M. von Oppenheim's four-volume Die Beduinen (Leipzig
and Wiesbaden, 1939-1968), the last two volumes of which were
edited by W. Caskel, and F. Gabrieli's (ed.) L'antica societa beduina
(Rome, 1959). The best recent study of the tribes along the Iraqi-
Arabian border is F. Donner's "The Bakr b. Wa'il Tribes and Politics
in Northeastern Arabia on the Eve of Islam," SI 51 (1980): 5-38.Arabs: Immigrants
Arabic biographical and genealogical literature is a rich and exten-
sive source of information which remains virtually unmined for early
Islamic social history. One type of work consists of collections of
individual biographies arranged by generation or in roughly chrono-
logical order according to the date when the subject died. Two such
works are particularly useful for early Islamic Iraq. One is the Kitab
at-fabaqat, ed. S. Zakkar (Damascus, 1966), ed. A. al-'Umari (Bagh-
dad, 1967), of Abii 'Amr Khalifa ibn al-Khayyar al-'U~furi (d. 2401
854), which contains biographies of Muslims who lived in early Basra
and Kufa. The other is the Kitab af-fabaqat (Leiden, 1904-40) of
MUQammad ibn Sa'd (ca. 168/784-230/845), of which volume VI
(1909) concerns Kufa and volume VII (1918) concerns Basra. Dis-
cussions of the origin and significance of this type of literature are
available in O. Loth's "Ursprung und Bedeutung der Tabaqat, vor-
nehmlich der des Ibn Sa'd," ZDMG 23 (1869): 593-614, and I. Hafsi's
"Recherches sur le genre Tabaqat dans la litterature arabe," Arabica
24 (1977): 1-41, 150-86.
A second type of literature is organized according to a genealogical
framework, but the content tends to be biographical and sometimes
historical in nature. The earliest surviving such work seems to be the
Jamharat an-nasab of the Kufan Hisham ibn MUQammad al-Kalbi (ca.
1201737-204/819 or 206/821), which has been published by W. Cas-
kel as Gamharat an-Nasab. Das genealogische Werk des Hisam ibn
Mu~ammad al-Kalbt (Leiden, 1966). For an evaluation of the author