8vo. xiii, [1], 288pp. With a photographic portrait frontispiece, a further 11 photographic plates, and a sketch map. Original publisher's light blue cloth, ruled and lettered in black to spine. Without dustwrapper. Lightly rubbed and marked, spine sunned. Foxed.

The first edition of a vivid account of the tribes of the Albu Mohammad and the Bani Lam, hailing from the region north of Basra, compiled by the civil servant Stuart Edwin Hedgecock and his wife Monica Grace Hedgecock, and issued anonymously due to administrators being permitted from writing books whilst engaged in official activities.

'During the last year I had read what I could about the Madan. It was little enough. The only book seemed to be Haji Rikkan: Marsh Arab by Fulananain..., a sympathetic description of a Marshman's life at the end of the First World War...Certainly the Madan had a bad name with Arabs and Englishmen alike' (Wilfred Thesiger, The Marsh Arabs, p.49).