Getting To Know Bedouins

A study is being conducted on the lives, history and social impact of the Bedouin culture in Egypt.  Bedouins are nomadic Arab tribes of the Arabian, Syrian and North African deserts. They are divided into clans called ayla, further split into households called bayt. Sheikhs rule over the tribes who live independently on their own land they guard with their lives. In the past, these pastoral nomads continuously roamed the dry wadis (dried up rivers, now a part of the desert) and mountains in the Sahara.  Of all people on earth, Bedouins have surpassed all in their remarkable ability to have consistently survived in or triumphed against the most inhospitable place – the desert. Any tribal group lives encumbered by material possessions and is bound by kinship and livelihood to the desert.

In the last decades, the Bedouins have learned to capitalize on the tourism trade. They worked as desert guides and custodians of ancient sites for a salary. Some escorted Christian tourists on pilgrimage to the monasteries in the southern Sinai and Mount Moses, or Muslim caravans on their pilgrimage to Mecca. They have played a role, despite marginal, in growing Egypt’s desert tourism.

Others have bigger stakes in tourism, like the 42-year-old chief of a 500-member tribe of family Rhuwaitat originally from Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. As with other Bedouins in South Sinai, they rely heavily on tourism. Minutes away from the Sonesta Beach Resort & Casino Sharm el Sheikh in Naama Bay on Wadi al Kuroum, a valley approximately 24 square kilometers in size and 11 kilometers from the main road into the South Sinai desert, nestles Fox Rock or Sakhret al Salaab. It is a traditional Bedouin outlet operated by the Rhuwaitat tribal chief Sheikh Saied Salama. His modest Arabic caf? cum restaurant caters mainly to Western guests who visit Sharm el Sheikh.

Elaborating on the first study made on Bedouins, Dr. Amin Makram Ebeid talks about post-modern Egypt and the challenges of Bedouinization in Egypt. He said that in order to understand Bedouinization, their traits and habits need to be appreciated. “By the very nature of their lives in semi-arid deserts, Bedouin occupations have remained unchanged over centuries and millennia. Their lives consisted of goat, sheep and camel-raising and to a lesser degree, horse-breeding.”

They move their animals wherever rain falls, pasture sprout or where oases form. In order to survive in harsh conditions, Bedouins became great hunters and raiders – which explains why the hardened nomadic tribes espoused the strong belief that agriculture and most other sedentary occupations are beneath their dignity. Ebeid added that their raiding expeditions or ghazw (corrupted into razzias) which must be viewed as a form of brigandage or banditry, have been raised from the economic and social conditions of the desert into the ranks of a national institution.

By the tone of his voice, Rhuwaitat’s tribal leader expressed confidence and control. He flexed some muscles in the name of protecting his bayt and ayla after terror struck Sinai years ago. After I had an afternoon of ghawa and tea with the Bedouins, Sheikh Saied convinced me that he will do everything in his power to spread peace, to assist the government in clamping down on terrorism in the Sinai desert and to convince the visitors to return to Sharm and experience desert solace in all its grandness. “We will fight the undesirable elements of society side-by-side our government. More importantly, we will help nip crime in the bud and promote brotherhood,” Sheikh Saied said sitting relaxed amid his men in a cozy Arabic-style seat below a palm-thatched canopy. Friends Salem Musallam and Hassan Eid, who’d gathered around us, work as safari guide and diving instructor respectively. They, too, are 100 percent Bedouins who answer the call of the desert and find solace amid the golden sand.

In the Bedouin study, it relates how the ghazw tradition is ingrained in their ethos. Raiding was a way of life, explaining why the horse was special to them for its speed in their raiding expeditions.  Though the camel is the most valuable, the horse represents their desire for conquest.

Due to their history of raids, conquering clans and possessing territory, Bedouins are used to confrontation - even on rare occasions, with the aid of modern-time law enforcers. In 2005, the Al Maydan reported a group of Bedouins from the Sinai were trying to reconstruct a wrecked mosque, opposite the Anba Bishoy monastery in Wadi al-Natroun. The monks in the monastery protested and stopped them from going ahead with plans. But the Bedouins later returned with police officers. The monks still did not allow reconstruction of the mosque. Monks protested with banners and raised voice (a response including demonstrations unusual for monks and quite unthinkable). This ‘war’ ended peacefully and briefly. Certainly, Bedouins were able to display a strand of brigandage.

Ebeid added, “Their typical life alternates between relatively long periods of passivity and brief spurts of frantic activities best exemplified by recourse to razzias.”

No other folks know the desert by heart better than these tribesmen. Precise awareness of any serious issues in the community today is what most of them offer to ease the supposedly quiet bayts or to minimize the petty tribal feuds. “Should any of our own blood relative, our own brother go astray, we will be the first to abort his plans and deal with him. Since we want peace, we’ve paved the path to peace from our end of the Sinai,” Hassan Eid said when asked about dealing with keeping it safe for tourists and his men. Bedouins argue that the previous security issues sprouted from few disloyal tribesmen in North Sinai thinking nothing but of damage to the general economy of the area -- of which the very lifeblood is tourism. Disgruntled, envious of what the South Sinai clans have accomplished for themselves in terms of improving lifestyle while engaging in tourism service, they struck fear.

Without the camels, the desert could neither have been home nor a habitable place. Ebeid said in the Fertile Crescent, empires have come and gone. Great cities were built by kings and conquerors. Wisdom and intellectual discourses have flourished. Great works of art were created to glorify gods and rulers. He added, “But for the Bedouins little, if any, has changed at least until modern times. The sand and the camel continued to rule supreme over the arid desert. As it always was through the ages, the desert dwellers have not been able to build anything beyond a subsistence economy. Even the most successful razzias could never have become the basis for investment in the future.”  It’s as if life stood still in the Empty Quarters.  Scholars feel that Bedu time stopped ticking after the 6th or 7th century.

Against the winds of change and modernization, Bedouins seem to go.  With takfir, one writer likened Bedouin mentality to the hands of time going backwards.  As Saied el Qimni from Rose El Youssef put it: “Our sheikhs are still practicing takfir (the act of accusing someone of disbelief) against everything and everyone. They just want us to regress back to the customs and traditions of the Bedouins.”

What has not changed is the Bedouin’s high self esteem. To him, the Arab nation is the noblest of all nations. In contrast, the civilized man, from his exalted point of view, is less happy and far inferior. In the study, it sees the Bedu fond of prodigious genealogies and traces his lineage back to Adam, Ebeid said.

“Campaigns of takfir have always been tracing art, artists, literature, culture and science and even led to the assassination of the president (Nasser) who managed to snatch back the lands of Sinai wasted by his Arabist predecessors that reserved their place in the ash heap of history,” said Qimni. Takfir, to them, served preservation of art and culture.

This study credits Bedouins who boast of having assumed the guardianship of the purest and unaltered Arabic language. To the Bedouins, Ebeid said, the Arabic language they have proudly guarded is said to include a thousand names for the camel in terms of variety, conditions and stages of growth. This number is rivalled only by the number of synonyms used for the sword.

Interestingly, the research points out to Bedu’s aversion to physical labor. An apparently consistent trait of this culture is contempt for physical work with the obvious exception of tending livestock and raiding, considered the only fitting occupation of free men. To engage in cultivation would dishonor the Bedouin, remarked Ebeid. They don’t grow plants. Never. Not even for the sake of survival.

They feed goats on dry bushes and dried twigs for months on end. ‘Inshallah’ it rains in the winter for the animals to chew on grass that grows for a short two-week stretch. 
 

8 February 2007