page_title: Marsh Arabs
hierarchical_section_title: Marsh Arabs
caption_attribution_description: The Al Shakamra tribe lives in the village of Al Kuthra, Iraq. The Marsh Arabs, Arab al-Ahwār (Arabs of the Marshlands), also known as the Maʻdān, are inhabitants of the Tigris-Euphrates marshlands in the south and east of Iraq and along the Iranian border. Comprising members of many different tribes and tribal confederations, such as the Āl Bū Muḥammad, Ferayghāt, Shaghanbah and Banī Lām, the Maʻdān had developed a unique culture centred around the marshes' natural resources. Many of the marshes' inhabitants were displaced when the wetlands were drained during and after the 1991 uprisings in Iraq. Madan means dweller in the plains (ʻadan) and was used disparagingly by desert tribes to refer to those inhabiting the Iraqi river basins, and by those who farmed in the river basins to refer to the population of the marshes. There was a considerable historic prejudice against the Maʻdān, partly as they were considered to have Persian or other mixed origin and partly due to their practice of wedlease (temporary marriage). Some historians and archaeologists provide circumstantial evidence to posit that Iraq's Marsh Arabs share the strongest link to the ancient Sumerians. Although this is to do with their lifestyle and culture, more than any proven ethnic link, the Sumerians disappeared as a race circa 1800 BC, long before Arabs entered the region. The Maʻdān speak a local dialect of Iraqi Arabic and traditionally wore a variant of normal Arab dress: for males, a long shirt or thawb (in recent times, occasionally with a Western-style jacket over the top) and a keffiyeh headcloth worn twisted around the head in a turban as few could afford an ʻiqāl. Agriculture The society of the Marsh Arabs was divided into two main groups by occupation. One group bred and raised domestic buffalo while others cultivated crops such as rice, barley, wheat and pearl millet; they also kept some sheep and cattle. Rice cultivation was especially important; it was carried out in small plots cleared in April and sown in mid-May. Cultivation seasons were marked by the rising and setting of certain stars, such as the Pleiades and Sirius. Some branches of the Maʻdān were nomadic pastoralists, erecting temporary dwellings and moving buffalo around the marshes according to the season. Some fishing, especially of species of barbel (Barbus sp., notably the binni or bunni, Barbus sharpeyi), was practised using spears and datura poison, but large-scale fishing using nets was until recent times regarded as a dishonourable profession by the Maʻdān and was mostly carried out by a separate low-status tribe known as the Berbera. By the early 1990s, however, up to 60% of the total amount of fish caught in Iraq's inland waters came from the marshes. In the later twentieth century a third main occupation entered Marsh Arab life; the weaving of reed mats on a commercial scale. Though they often earned far more than workers in agriculture, weavers were looked down upon by both Maʻdān and farmers alike: however, financial concerns meant that it gradually gained acceptance as a respectable profession. Religion The majority of Marsh Arabs are Shī‘ī Muslims, though in the marshes small communities of Aramaic speaking non Arab ethnic Mandeans (often working as boat builders and craftsmen) lived alongside them. The inhabitants' long association with tribes within Persia may have influenced the spread of the Shī‘ī denomination within the marshes. Wilfred Thesiger commented that while he met few Marsh Arabs who had performed the Hajj, many of them had made the pilgrimage to Mashhad (thereby earning the title Zair);[7] a number of families also claimed descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad, adopting the title of sayyid and dyeing their keffiyeh green. The Maʻdān carried out the majority of their devotions in private as there were no places of worship within the Marshes; some were known to visit Ezra's Tomb, one of the few religious sites of any kind in the area. In addition to their Islamic faith, and complementary to it, when contacted by Wilfred Thesiger the Ma'dan still held a number of pre-Islamic or extra-Islamic beliefs, from the existence of strange monsters in the marshes to that of bewitched isles such as the legendary Hufaidh, whose shores could not be broached without causing madness in the unwary boatman. Society As with most tribes of southern Iraq, the main authority was the tribal shaikh. To this day, the shaikh of a Marsh Arab group will collect a tribute from his tribe in order to maintain the mudhif, the tribal guesthouse which acts as the political, social, judicial and religious centre of Marsh Arabic life. The mudhif is used as a place to settle disputes, to carry out diplomacy with other tribes and as a gathering point for religious and other celebrations. It is also the place where visitors are offered hospitality. Although the tribal shaykh was the principal figure, each Maʻdān village (which may have contained members of several different tribes) would also follow the authority of the hereditary qalit headman of a tribe's particular section. Blood feuds, which could only be settled by the qalit, were a feature of Marsh Arab life, in common with that of the Arab bedouin. Many of the Marsh Arabs' codes of behaviour were similar to those of the desert tribes. Most Marsh Arabs lived in arched reed houses considerably smaller than a mudhif. The typical dwelling was usually a little more than 2 meters wide, about 6 meters long, and a little less than three meters high, and was either constructed at the waterside or on an artificial island of reeds called a kibasha; a more permanent island of layered reeds and mud was called a dibin. Houses had entrances at both ends and a screen in the middle; one end was used as a dwelling and the other end (sometimes extended with a sitra, a long reed structure) was used to shelter animals in bad weather. A raba was a higher-status dwelling, distinguished by a north-facing entrance, which also served as a guesthouse where there was no mudhif. Traditional boats (the mashoof and tarada) were used as transport: the Maʻdān would drive buffaloes through the reedbeds during the season of low water to create channels, which would then be kept open by constant use, for the boats. The marsh environment meant that certain diseases, such as bilharzia and malaria, were endemic; Maʻdānī agriculture and homes were also vulnerable to periodic droughts and flooding. The history of the Maʻdān is still a matter of some interest. British colonial ethnographers found it difficult to classify some of the Maʻdān's social customs and speculated that they might have originated in India. Many scholars have proposed historical and genetic links between the Marsh Arabs and the ancient Sumerians, based on shared agricultural practices and methods of house building. There is, however, no written record of the marsh tribes until the ninth century AD, and the Sumerians were absorbed by the Akkadians (Assyrians-Babylonians) by around 1800 BC, some 2700 years before. Others, however, have noted that much of the culture of the Maʻdān is in fact shared with the desert bedouin who came to the area after the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate, and that it is therefore likely that they are descended from this source, at least in part. Genetic Evidence A 2011 Study showed that Marsh Arabs have a high concentration of Haplogroup J1 for males and Haplogroup J having the highest concentration in females with Haplogroup H Haplogroup U and Haplogroup T having the highest concentrations. 1991–2003 Main article: Draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes The marshes had for some time been considered a refuge for elements persecuted by the government of Saddam Hussein, as in past centuries they had been a refuge for escaped slaves and serfs, such as during the Zanj Rebellion. By the mid 1980s, a low-level insurgency against Ba'athist drainage and resettlement projects had developed in the area, led by Sheik Abdul Kerim Mahud al-Muhammadawi of the Al bu Muhammad under the nom de guerre Abu Hatim. During the 1970s, the expansion of irrigation projects had begun to disrupt the flow of water to the marshes. However, after the First Gulf War (1991), the Iraqi government aggressively revived a program to divert the flow of the Tigris River and the Euphrates River away from the marshes in retribution for a failed Shia uprising. This was done primarily to eliminate the food source(s) of the Marsh Arabs and to prevent any remaining militiamen from taking refuge in the marshes, the Badr Brigades and other militias having used them as cover. The plan, which was accompanied by a series of propaganda articles by the Iraqi regime directed against the Ma'dan, systematically converted the wetlands into a desert, forcing the residents out of their settlements in the region. Villages in the marshes were attacked and burnt down and there were reports of the water being deliberately poisoned. The majority of the Maʻdān were displaced either to areas adjacent to the drained marshes, abandoning their traditional lifestyle in favour of conventional agriculture, to towns and camps in other areas of Iraq or to Iranian refugee camps. Only 1,600 of them were estimated to still be living on traditional dibins by 2003. The western Hammar Marshes and the Qurnah or Central Marshes had become completely desiccated, while the eastern Hawizeh Marshes had dramatically shrunk. The Marsh Arabs, who numbered about half a million in the 1950s, have dwindled to as few as 20,000 in Iraq, according to the United Nations. An estimated 80,000 to 120,000 have fled to refugee camps in Iran. Since 2003 With the breaching of dikes by local communities subsequent to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ending of a four year drought that same year, the process has been reversed and the marshes have experienced a substantial rate of recovery. The permanent wetlands now cover more than 50% of 1970s levels, with a remarkable regrowth of the Hammar and Hawizeh Marshes and some recovery of the Central Marshes. Efforts to restore the marshes have led to signs of their gradual revivification as water is restored to the former desert, but the whole ecosystem may take far longer to restore than it took to destroy. Only a few thousand of the nearly half million Marsh Arabs remain in the area. Most of the rest that can be accounted for are refugees living in other Shia areas in Iraq, or have emigrated to Iran, and many do not wish to return to their former home and lifestyle, which despite its independence was characterised by extreme poverty and hardship. A USAID report noted that while some Maʻdān had chosen to return to their traditional activities in the marshes, especially the Hammar Marshes, within a short time of reflooding, they were without clean drinking water, sanitation, health care or education facilities. In addition, it is still uncertain if the marshes will completely recover, given increased levels of water extraction from the Tigris and Euphrates. Many of the resettled Marsh Arabs have gained representation through the Iraqi Hizbullah organisation; others have become followers of Moqtada al-Sadr's movement, through which they gained political control of Maysan Governorate. Political instability and local feuds, aggravated by the poverty of the dispossessed Marsh Arab population, remain a serious problem.
context_page_description: The Marsh Arabs, also referred to as the Maʻdān or shroog —the latter two often considered derogatory in the present day—are inhabitants of the Tigris-Euphrates marshlands in the south of Iraq as well as in the Hawizeh Marshes straddling the Iraq and Iran border.
  Comprising members of many different tribes and tribal confederations, such as the Āl Bū Muḥammad, Ferayghāt, Shaghanbah and Banī Lām, the Maʻdān had developed a unique culture centered on the marshes' natural resources. Many of the marshes' inhabitants were displaced when the wetlands were drained during and after the 1991 uprisings in Iraq.
context_section_description: The Marsh Arabs (Arabic: عرب الأهوار‎ ʻArab al-Ahwār "Arabs of the Marshlands"), also referred to as the Maʻdān (Arabic: معدان‎ "dweller in the plains") or shroog (Arabic: شروگ‎, "those from the east")—the latter two often considered derogatory in the present day—are inhabitants of the Tigris-Euphrates marshlands in the south of Iraq as well as in the Hawizeh Marshes straddling the Iraq and Iran border.
  Comprising members of many different tribes and tribal confederations, such as the Āl Bū Muḥammad, Ferayghāt, Shaghanbah and Banī Lām, the Maʻdān had developed a unique culture centered on the marshes' natural resources. Many of the marshes' inhabitants were displaced when the wetlands were drained during and after the 1991 uprisings in Iraq.
caption: Marsh Arab girl from Al Kurhra, Iraq.
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