Al-Shaitat

al-Shaitat الشُّعَيْطَاتُ
Flag of al-Shaitat (unofficial)
Ethnicity	Arab
Location	Upper Euphrates river basin (mainly Deir ez-Zor Governorate)
Population	70,000–90,000
Language	Arabic

Al-Shaitat (Arabic: الشُّعَيْطَاتُ, romanized: aš-Šuʿayṭāt), in Standard Arabic al-Shuʿaytāt, is a Sunni Arab clan which lives in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate in eastern Syria. Its members number between 70,000 and 90,000 and it is led by Sheikh Rafaa Aakla al-Raju.^[1][2] In the local Arab dialect, the "u" is not pronounced and since the ʿayn sound often is not transcribed, the name is written Shaitat, Shaytat, Sheitat, Sheitaat and the like. The last vowel is long, therefore sometimes it is written with a double "a". Henry Field identified the Shaitat as a clan of the Aqaidat.^[3] They were the target of the Al-Shaitat massacres committed by the Islamic State in 2014.

See also

• Albu Nimr

References

1. Toddler 'Pulled From Bomb Rubble In Syria', news.sky.com.
2. Massacre And Media: ISIS And The Case Of The Sunni Arab Shaitat Tribe, Alberto M. Fernández, MEMRI, June 23, 2015
3. Field, Henry (1940). The Anthropology of Iraq. The Upper Euphrates. Chicago Field Museum. p. 225.