ḤAMAYD, an Arab tribe of Ḵuzestān, which claims descent from the large Bani Rabiʿa tribe (Bani Ṭoraf, p. 47). In the early 1900s, it dwelled mostly in the boluk of Ḥamayd, on the left bank of the Kārun river (just south of its juncture with the Āb-e Dez), its territory stretching from Naddāfiya on the Kārun to Raḡeyva, 50 km northwest of Rāmhormoz. It numbered some 6,000 individuals and comprised the following tiras: ʿAttāb, ʿAwāmer, Ḥawālāt, Ḵarāmeza, Mayyāḥ, Nesaylāt, and Sāʿed (Lorimer, pp. 620-21). The tribe subsisted chiefly on the cultivation of wheat and barley; it also owned sheep, camels and cattle (Field, p. 192). Today the Ḥamayd are scattered across a wide area, from Ahvāz to Rāmhormoz, and from Rāmhormoz to the vicinity of Behbahān and Ḵalafābād. They own some of the finest purebred Arabian horses in Ḵuzestān (Bani Ṭoraf, p. 48).
Bibliography:
Y. ʿA. Bani Ṭoraf, Qabāʾel wa ʿašāyer-e ʿArab-e Ḵuzestān, Tehran, 1372 Š./1994.
Henry Field, Contributions to the Anthropology of Iran, Chicago, 1939.
John G. Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Calcutta, 1908, pp. 620-21.
(Pierre Oberling)
Originally Published: December 15, 2003
Last Updated: March 6, 2012
This article is available in print.
Vol. XI, Fasc. 6, pp. 630-631
