Shammar

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The house of Shammar (Arabic: شمّر‎) is one of the largest tribes of Arabia. They sprout from the Ta'ee tribe that had origins in Yemen, where they had practiced a sedentary lifestyle. They became camel herders and horse breeders and lived a nomadic lifestyle in northern Najd for centuries and expanded north into Iraq during the seventeenth century. Many of the Shammar in Iraq gave up nomadism to settle in the major cities, especially Mosul. Those that remained in the Najd began to be challenged by the rising House of Saud. In 1921 the Shammar heartland of Jebel Shammar was annexed to Saudi Arabia and the Shammar were subordinated to the Saud. The Shammar remain powerful in Saudi Arabia and have grown extremely wealthy from oil revenues.

In Iraq the Shammar became one of the most powerful tribes, owning vast tracts of land. They were important supporters of the Iraqi monarchy of the House of Hashem. Shammar power was threatened after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958 by Abdul-Karim Qassem, and the Shammar welcomed Ba'athist rule. With the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Saddam Hussein, the House of Shammar lost favour in Iraq, due to their close links to their Saudi fellows. After the overthrow of Saddam, the leader of the Iraqi Shammar Ghazi al-Yawar was appointed interim president.

A person belonging to the Shammar tribe may append the identifier al-Shammary (Arabic: الشمّري‎) (variant transliterations: al-Shamari, al-Shamery, Alshamary, etc.) to their name. Although Arabs traditionally do not have surnames in the Western sense, Arabs living in the West sometimes adopt their tribal name as a surname.