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The Marsh Arabs ( ʻArab al-Ahwār "Arabs of the Marshlands"), also referred to as Ahwaris, the Maʻdān (Arabic: معدان "dweller in the plains") or Shroug ( "those from the east")—the latter two often considered derogatory in the present day—are indigenous inhabitants of the Mesopotamian marshlands in the modern-day south Iraq, as well as in the Hawizeh Marshes straddling the Iran–Iraq border.
Comprising members of many different tribes and tribal confederations, such as the Āl Bū Muḥammad, Ferayghāt, Shaghanbah, Ahwaris had developed a culture centered on the marshes' natural resources. Many of the marshes' inhabitants were forcibly displaced during the Ahwari Genocide when the wetlands were drained during and after the 1991 uprisings in Iraq. The draining of the marshes caused a significant decline in bioproductivity; following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, water flow to the marshes was restored and the ecosystem has begun to recover.U.S. National Aeornautics and Space Administration. 2008
Some scholars such as Ali al-Wardi have claimed they are descended from the Nabataeans of Iraq, the Aramaic-speaking people who inhabited Lower Mesopotamia in the Middle Ages, and some of their clans even follow their ancestry to Islamized Mandaeans.Ali al-Wardi 1965, pg. 151
Other scholars have proposed historical and genetic links between the Marsh Arabs and the ancient due to shared agricultural practices, methods of house-building and location. There is, however, no written record of the marsh tribes until the ninth century and the Sumerians lost their distinct ethnic identity by around 1800 BCE, some 2700 years before.Edmund Ghareeb, Historical Dictionary of Iraq, 2004, p.156 Links to Sumerian genetics can likely be traced back to the Arabization and assimilation of indigenous Mesopotamians.
Others, however, have noted that much of the culture of Ahwaris is shared with the desert bedouin who came to the area after the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate.Thesiger, pp.100–01
The Observer's Middle East correspondent Shyam Bhatia who spent two weeks with the Marsh Arabs in 1993 wrote the first eyewitness account of Iraqi army tactics at the time of draining the marshes, bombing Marsh villages and then sowing mines in the water before retreating. Bhatia's extensive reportage won him the title of International Reporter of the Year, although exclusive film footage of the time he spent in the area has never been screened.BBC news, 3 March 2003 and BBC World Service 11 Nov, 2014, Atlantis Online, House of Commons Hansard debates 2 April 1993.
Many of the resettled Marsh Arabs have gained representation through the Hezbollah Movement in Iraq; others have become followers of Muqtada al-Sadr's movement, through which they gained political control of Maysan Governorate.Cole, p.14 Political instability and local feuds, aggravated by the poverty of the dispossessed Marsh Arab population, remain a serious problem.See Cole, pp.24–33 Rory Stewart observed that throughout history, Ahwaris were the pawn of many rulers and became expert dissimulators. The tribal chiefs are outwardly submissive and work with the coalition and Iraqi officials. Behind the scenes, the tribes engage in smuggling and other activities.
Ahwaris speak South Mesopotamian Arabic and traditionally wore a variant of normal Arab dress: for males, a thawb ("long shirt"; 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.
Some Ahwari branches were nomads pastoralism, erecting temporary dwellings and moving buffaloes around the marshes according to the season. Some fishing, especially of species of barbel (notably the binni or bunni, Mesopotamichthys sharpeyi), was practised using spears and datura poison, but large-scale fishing using nets was until recent times regarded as a dishonourable profession by Ahwaris and was mostly carried out by a separate low-status tribe known as the Berbera.Thesiger, p.92 By the early 1990s, however, up to 60% of the total amount of fish caught in Iraq's inland waters came from the marshes.USAID Iraq Marshlands Restoration Program Final Report, Chapter 9
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 Ahwaris and farmers alike: however, financial concerns meant that it gradually gained acceptance as a respectable profession.
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 two meters wide, about six 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.Thesiger, p.75 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.Thiesiger, p.71 Traditional boats (the mashoof and tarada) were used as transport: Ahwaris would drive buffalo through the reedbeds during the season of low water to create channels, which would then be kept open by constant use, for the boats.Thesiger, p.70 The marsh environment meant that certain diseases, such as schistosomiasis and malaria, were endemic;Thesiger, p.85, 108 Ahwari agriculture and homes were also vulnerable to periodic droughts and flooding.]]
Young also mentions George Keppel, 6th Earl of Albemarle (1799–1891) as having spent time with the Madan in 1824 and reported in detail on the marsh inhabitants. Of the men Keppel wrote, "The Arab boatmen were as hardy and muscular-looking fellows as ever I saw. One loose brown shirt, of the coarseness of sack-cloth, was the only covering of the latter. This, when labour required it, was thrown aside, and discovered forms most admirably adapted to their laborious avocations; indeed, any of the boatmen would have made an excellent model for an Hercules; and one in particular, with uncombed hair and shaggy beard, struck us all with the resemblance he bore to statues of that deity." Of the women Keppel observed, "They came to our boat with the frankness of innocence and there was a freedom in their manners, bordering perhaps on the masculine; nevertheless their fine features and well-turned limbs produced a tout ensemble of beauty, not to be surpassed perhaps in the brilliant assemblies of civilized life."Young, pp. 54–55.
Another account of Ahwaris in English was jointly published in 1927 by a British colonial administrator, Stuart Edwin Hedgecock, and his wife.Fulanain (S. E. and M. G. Hedgecock) Haji Rikkan: Marsh Arab, Chatto & Windus, London, 1927Young, p. 69. "At the time of which I am writing Philby was the arabophile, though truculent, Political Officer of Amara. One who soon succeeded him there was S. E. Hedgecock who, with his young wife, wrote a wonderfully vivid book about the people he administered called Haji Rikkan: Marsh Arab, using (because officials are not purposed to write books when they are on the job) the pseudonym 'Fulanain'." Gertrude Bell also visited the area.See Letters at The Gertrude Bell Project, Newcastle University. T. E. Lawrence had passed through in 1916, stopping at Basra and Ezra's Tomb (Al-Azair), and recorded that the Marsh Arabs were "wonderfully hard ... but merry, and full of talk. They are in the water all their lives, and seem hardly to notice it."Thomas Edward Lawrence, Letter of 18 May 1916, telawrence.net
The way of life of the Marsh Arabs was later described by the explorer Wilfred Thesiger in his classic The Marsh Arabs (1964). Thesiger lived with the Marsh Arabs for months at a time over a seven-year period (1951–1958), building excellent relationships with virtually all he met, and recording the details of day-to-day life in various regions of the marshes. Many of the areas that he visited have since been drained.
Gavin Maxwell, the Scottish naturalist, travelled with Thesiger through the marshes in 1956 and published an account of their travels in his 1957 book A Reed Shaken by the Wind (later republished under the title People of the Reeds). The journalist and travel writer Gavin Young followed in Thesiger's footsteps, writing Return to the Marshes: Life with the Marsh Arabs of Iraq (1977; reissued 2009).
The first extensive scholarly ethnographic account of Marsh Arab life was Marsh Dwellers of the Euphrates Delta (1962), by Iraqi anthropologist S. M. Salim. An ethnoarchaeology study of the material culture of the Marsh Arabs has been published by Edward L. Ochsenschlager: Iraq's Marsh Arabs in the Garden of Eden (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2004).
Rory Stewart described the Marsh Arabs and his experiences as deputy governor in the Maysan province (2003–2004) in his 2006 book, The Prince of the Marshes (also published under the title Occupational Hazards).
In 2011, Sam Kubba published The Iraqi Marshlands and the Marsh Arabs: The Ma'dan, Their Culture and the Environment. The Iraqi Marshlands and the Marsh Arabs details the rich cultural legacy and lifestyle that survives today only as a fragmented cultural inheritance.
In German, there are Sigrid Westphal-Hellbusch und Heinz Westphal, Die Ma'dan: Kultur und Geschichte der Marschenbewohner im Süd-Iraq (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1962). Sigrid Westphal Hellbusch and her husband Heinz Westphal wrote a comprehensive study on the Madan based on research and observation obtained while living with Madan tribes. These observations outline how the Madan diverge from other Shia communities.
Reviving the Marshlands (short report), Deutsche Welle, 17 March 2015
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