Zaraniq Confederation

views updated

ZARANIQ CONFEDERATION

Tribal grouping on North Yemen's largely nontribal coastal desert, the Tihama.

The Zaraniq, the largest and most formidable tribal grouping of the Tihama, stood in the way of efforts by Imam Yahya to extend control of the imamate state and were compelled to submit to the imam only after a savage two-year campaign in the late 1920s. An important part of the history of the Tihama for many centuries, the Zaraniq were known in the past as the Maʿaziba tribe and, like other tribes on the Tihama, claimed descent from the Akk tribe.

see also yahya ibn muhammad hamid al-din.

robert d. burrowes