BEDOUIN

The Bedouin are nomadic peoples of Arabia known in Arabic as bedu, ?arab, and a?rab. They are especially known for keeping camels, whose domestication in the third millenium made trade and raiding—their main occupations—easier. In addition, they keep flocks of sheep and goats, and more recently, engage in seasonal agriculture and work in state armed forces. Living in long, low-lying black tents made of camel and goat hair and wooden poles, the Bedouin migrate on a seasonal basis in search of pasture for their animals. The tent and its contents are individual property, but water, pasture, and land are the common property of the tribe.

Every tent represents a family, and an encampment of tents—hayy— constitutes a clan, or qawm. A group of kindred clans forms a tribe, or qabila, and ?asabiyya is the unconditional loyalty of a clansmember to his or her tribe. A weaker tribe buys protection by paying the stronger tribe a price—khuwa.

Bedouin have been characterized historically by urban Arab writers as vengeful and destructive, finding the agriculture and craft of sedentary life distasteful. In his al-Muqadimma, Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), the Tunisian philosopher-historian, hypothesized that civilizations have a predetermined life cycle; they fall prey to the nomads in the frontiers whose bonds of solidarity (?asabiyya) are strong. However, others have described Bedouins by their well-known values of generosity and hospitality and high standards of poetic compositions.

As state power has infringed on Bedouin areas of control, moves to settle the Bedouin, to provide schools for children, and to employ adults in wage-labor have met with mixed success in Egypt, Jordan, Israel/Palestine, and the Arabian Gulf states. Bedouin strive to maintain their culture, social mores and traditions, while at the same time enjoying the benefits of technology, education, and health standards.

See alsoArabia, Pre-Islam ; ?Asabiyya ; Ibn Khaldun .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abu Lughod, Lila. Veiled Sentiments. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Abu Lughod, Lila. Writing Women's Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Baily, Clinton. Bedouin Poetry from Sinai and the Negev: Mirror of a Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Lancaster, William. The Rwala Bedouin Today. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Lewis, Norman. Nomads and Settlers in Syria and Jordan,1800–1980. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Shryock, Andrew. Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Rochelle Davis