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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Saudi Arabia
Index
The word beduin is derived from the Arabic word
bawaadin (sing., baadiya), meaning nomads, and is
usually associated with a camel-herding life in the desert. The
word, therefore, describes an occupation and is not synonymous
with the word tribe (qabila), despite the fact that
the two are often used interchangeably. The word bawaadin,
furthermore, refers not only to camel-herding but is an elastic
term that is understood in relation to hadar, or settled
people. People from the city, for example, were likely to view
villagers as part of the bawaadin, but the villager would
consider only the nomadic people as bawaadin. Villagers
and nomads, on the other hand, would make a distinction between
shepherds who tend sheep and goats, staying close by the village,
and the beduin who raised camels. "While the physical boundary
between the desert and the sown is strikingly sharp in the Middle
East . . ." notes Donald Cole, "the boundary between nomadic
pastoralist and sedentary farmer is less precise." Beduin and
farmers were united in a single social system. Each relied on the
other for critical goods and services to sustain a way of life;
they shared substantial cultural unity. Tribal loyalties
transcend differences in livelihood; many tribes had both
sedentary and nomadic branches.
There is a nomadic-sedentary continuum; at one extreme are
completely settled farmers and merchants, at the other are camel
herders who produce primarily for their own consumption and have
little recourse to wage labor. A host of finely graded
distinctions exist between the two extremes. Wealthy beduin
frequently established a branch of the family in an oasis with
commercial and agricultural investments. Individual households
moved along the continuum as their domestic situation changed.
Part of the family might settle to attend school, while others
maintained the family's flocks.
Beduin father and son
Courtesy Saudi Aramco
Beduin driving camels
Courtesy Aramco World
Among nomads there is a dichotomy--as well as a status
differential--between those who herd sheep and goats and those
who herd camels. Because sheep and goats are more demanding in
their need for water and thus more limited in their migrations,
their herders migrate shorter distances and have greater contact
with the oasis population. Camels, on the other hand, can endure
much longer periods without water, and camel herders are thereby
able to range much more widely than other pastoralists.
Camel-herding tribes were usually the most powerful militarily
and had more status than other herders.
Alliances between beduin and townsmen have historically been
a defining feature of the politics of the peninsula. Just as
beduin could opt out of raiding a particular town, the town could
pay an agreed khuwa, the payment being the exchange of a
portion of their surplus production for a guarantee of peace.
At the same time that town and village relied on nomad
protection, nomads themselves relied on the sedentary populace
for sustenance and diverse services. Nomadism has never been a
self-contained system. Even camel-herding beduin relied on the
oasis population for a variety of needs. Their diet was
supplemented with dates, grains, and, more recently, processed
foods; the sedentary population provided medical care when home
remedies failed, education, and religious practitioners, tent
fibers, and tent pins. Farmers who owned animals entrusted them
to nomads' care and the nomads in turn received the animals'
milk; beduin left their date palms in the farmers' hands in
return for a portion of the harvest.
Development policies in Saudi Arabia have encouraged the
sedentarization of most nomadic groups in the kingdom. The
percentage of fully nomadic people is unknown, but it was
certainly declining in the early 1990s. Those who continued to
maintain their livestock faced economic difficulties in spite of
government assistance. The rise in the cost of living in Saudi
Arabia, coupled with the decline in the commercial value of
camels and other livestock, occasioned a need for greater cash
income. Consequently, beduin men had begun migrating to the
cities for wage work, often as drivers of cars, trucks, and
tractors. They frequently left their families behind to tend the
animals.
A study among Al Saar beduin shows that urban migration of
men resulted in increased work for women and, at the same time,
denied them the economic benefits of government programs designed
to improve the welfare of nomadic families. With the family
together, women generally tended only the sheep and goats; men
herded the camels. In addition to caring for animals, producing
food, and caring for the household, nomadic women also engaged in
crafts, primarily weaving household textiles, such as mats, tent
cloth, tent dividers, and sacks to contain their belongings.
The women in the study were left alone with children and had
total responsibility for caring for all the animals, camels as
well as sheep and goats, while their husbands remained in the
towns as much as six months at a time. However, because they were
not entitled to a separate citizenship card, being listed as
dependents on their husbands' citizenship cards, they were unable
to apply for livestock subsidies or for land or home loans issued
through government-run service centers near their summer grazing
areas. Similarly, women were denied use of the pickup truck, now
ubiquitous among nomadic families and indispensable for
transporting wood and water and for transportation between the
encampment and the herds as well as to government service
centers. Although the burden of labor was left to women, the
truck could only be used by women in the desert where they could
not be seen by government authorities because women were not
allowed to drive.
One result of the increased burden on women has been the
social reorganization of labor based on the combined efforts of
women. Women with infants tended to carry out traditional female
work of child care and food preparation, whereas older women,
widows, and women without infants cared for the herds and also
sold their animals at the service stations, another task
traditionally the responsibility of men.
Data as of December 1992
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