Sleb

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Sleb

ETHNONYMS: Salīb, Slavey, Slêb, Sleyb, Solubba, Sulaib, Suleib, Sulubba, Szleb

Orientation

Identification. These ethnonyms are applied to a little-known, endogamous, and traditionally itinerant community practicing a variety of low-status occupations and living in large parts of the Arab Middle East. It is not clear to what extent the term "Sleb" is a generic one, but it does embrace distinct and preferentially endogamous groups. Although they perform many needful services for the pastoral population of the area, the Sleb are held in great contempt. Owing to the combination of an itinerant life-style and low status, they have often been termed "Gypsies" and have been mentioned by a host of travelers and researchers in different parts of Arabia.

Location. A peripatetic people, the Sleb live and migrate in the Syrian desert, in Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. In the late twentieth century, however, many have become sedentary.

Linguistic Affiliation. The Sleb do not appear to speak any language other than Arabic.

Demography. Around 1898, the entire Sleb population was estimated at about 3,000 individuals; another estimate, made a few years later for a part of the Syrian desert (between Palmyra and Suchne) was 1,700 individuals. Ottoman records indicate that there were about 500 Sleb in the region of Mosul.

History

Next to nothing is known about the history of the Sleb. It has been suggested that Sleb populations are descended from those referred to in Middle and Late Assyrian texts as the "Selappayu," or from the Banu Saluba, who inhabited the area of Hira and Kalwadha, as well as certain villages on the Euphrates, during the Arab conquest. Anthropological data indicate that the Sleb are of Proto-Mediterranean origin, and it is thought that they formerly drew subsistence almost exclusively from hunting.

Settlements

Sleb camps are currently small and scattered, sometimes even consisting of a single family, with one or two tents. In the nineteenth century, however, camps of fifteen to twenty-five tents, with twenty to thirty families per tent, were observed.

Economy

In addition to hunting (mainly gazelles, but also ostriches and Arabian oryx), which in the nineteenth century was the mainstay of the economy of the itinerant parts of the community throughout the area, the following activities have been reported by various authors: collection of salt from salines in the southern Jezira, breeding asses and camels, smithery and tinkering, tracking water, guiding caravans, healing animals, carpentry, fortune-telling, tattooing, music, poetry, and prostitution. The pastoral peoples of the area rely upon these services, and every group of Sleb is attached to a local tribe. In recent years many families have sedentarized in Jordan as traders, but, even in the nineteenth century, many itinerant families marketed the salt they collected in towns such as Baghdad or Mosul.

Kinship, Marriage, and Family

Everywhere, the Sleb divided into several preferentially endogamous subgroups. Marriages take place shortly after puberty and with the consent of all. The remarriage of widows and divorcées is allowed, and in such cases the bride-price is lower than that for a virgin. A woman divorcing for the first time may keep half the bride-price for herself, whereas in subsequent divorces she must return in its entirety. The bride-price may consist of hunting reserves or grazing lands. It is reported that until the middle of the nineteenth century, when polygyny was introduced, marriages were monogamous.

Sociopolitical Organization

The Sleb are integrated into the khuwa system prevalent in their area, whereby pastoral communities, which act as patrons toward politically weaker groups, exact tribute from them in return for shelter and protection.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Formally, all Sleb are Muslims. Various authors, however, have observed numerous pre-Islamic traditions among them, and some have speculated about Christian influences.

Traditionally, the Sleb had a distinctive hooded dress or shirt made from several gazelle skins; it was open at the neck and had long sleeves gathered at the wrist but extending to and covering the hands.