The Bedouin in History or Bedouin History?

Abstract

Abstract Approaches to the Bedouin's importance in the history of the Arab Middle East regularly confl ict on whether outside or inside infl uences are paramount. In particular, have their political structures and activities been a secondary response to processes that stemmed from the polities of sedentary people, or have primary agency and rationales from within their own milieu been pivotal? For the fi rst time, this issue is to undergo methodical diachronic analysis. Distinguishing major periods of Bedouin political development from antiquity to the present, with an emergent focus on northern Arabia and the Fertile Crescent, a constant set of seven key features is assessed period by period in order to compare historical variations. Period-specifi c and consolidated results show that periods characterised by intrinsic factors differ clearly from periods marked by extrinsic ones, and that they alternate. Even as the Bedouin engage in interaction with the sedentary people, their own dynamics prove persistent and irreducible in themselves.

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