Work always gets in the way. Thankfully, my work intersects with my interests. I am sure it does for you as well.

I am looking forward to your posts. Right now I am preparing a top down analysis of the Iraqi tribal system by province, region, Qadha', and Nahiya. While the source data is somewhat dated, I am interested in evaluating it to see where it supports events on the ground.

I just finished translating 'Abd 'Aun Al-Rudhan's encyclopedia of iraqi tribes - it has 14193 sub tribes in total - with locational data included. However, this work will be misunderstood and misinterpreted by those who don't understand how Iraqi scholars study and analyze their own tribal system. That's why I wrote the book.

It's not "my method," but rather, is my attempt to describe theirs. I think it is much more intuitive than our western attempts, having studied those extensively.

The Brits, God bless them, produced a lot of tribal data, but they over emphasized the role of "confederations" and super confederations. At the local level, the major tribal entities are almost dead identities. Sub tribal identity is much more cohesive, but those are much more numerous.

A British scholar with great understanding said that it was their most important yet most difficult challenge to understand and interpret Middle Eastern Tribal systems. He didn't have the benefits of database software, unfortunately. Our challenge is to first understand the nature of the tribes themselves, and then somehow incorporate this into an analytical system that allows for some degree of predictive power such that we can at least identify the myriad of most likely short, intermediate, and long term futures with respect to how the tribal system will interact and react with the governments that purport to represent them.

Again, I am looking forward to your input.
Very Resepctfully,

Tribeguy