| al-Shaitat الشُّعَيْطَاتُ | |
|---|---|
.png) 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 membership numbers 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.