Volume 92, Issue 1

This contribution investigates perceptions of Arab nomads in the hagiography of the Late Antique East. Over the past decades, these texts, mostly saints’ lives and episodes from church histories, have often been used to provide social and cultural historians with information on the ethnography, geography, customs and manners of those labelled “Saracens” or “Ishmaelites” in the texts. However, the historicity of the narratives is difficult to assess, and a closer inspection reveals that most of the motifs used in Late Antiquity revert to older models from Classical Antiquity. The article therefore focuses on specific aspects, such as how the writers depicted the Arabs’ manners and customs as contrasting with their own societies and constructed a dichotomy between the civilisation and the animal-like ferocity of the former. It becomes clear that Christian authors used the depiction of the Arabs’ seemingly deviant lifestyle in order to both reassure their readership and excite its curiosity. The display of God’s omnipotence in a large number of the texts discussed here offered a chance to demonstrate that Christian saints could eventually convert such people, or, when conversion was not possible, could still hope for very potent miracles.

In 1953, Werner Caskel produced a theory which he called “the Bedouinization of Arabia”. In this, he maintained that around AD 100 Arabia was peaceful, dominated by settled states, with some non-tribal nomads who were simply “shepherds near the cities”. He contrasted this with Arabia in the sixth and seventh centuries in which he claimed “the Bedouin form of society and ideo logy prevailed”. The evidence he provided for this false dichotomy consisted of errors, misunderstandings and argumenta ex silentio , as was pointed out at the time, but his theory has nevertheless been widely accepted in the years which followed. In 1959, it was taken up and adapted by Walter Dostal who tried to explain the “Bedouinization” by producing a novel definition of the Bedouin as “camel-herders accustomed to fighting as rider warriors” and said that “Vollbeduinen” were only those who used the shadād or so-called “North-Arabian” camel saddle which, he imagined, gave them a secure seat from which to fight. In fact, however, there is no evidence at all that nomads in Arabia have ever fought from camel-back if they could possibly get off to fight on foot or on horseback. Nevertheless, in 1975, Richard Bulliet adopted Dostal ’s idea and took it further by claiming that the use of the shadād made camel-riders an almost invincible force and this produced “an alteration in the balance of political power in favour of the nomads”. This gave apparent support to Caskel ’s idea that the North Arabian Bedouin were able to sweep to military and political domination of the sedentaries by the sixth century AD. The present examination of these theories shows that there is no basis to them and, in doing so, argues that what is known of nomadic life in Arabia between AD 100 and 500 suggests continuity both in its structures and in its relations with the sedentaries.

Arabic literature is exceptionally rich in references to the Bedouin component of society. The main terms used by Arabic authors to refer to the Bedouin and their ways of life reveal the significant approach to nomadism in the Near East and Arabic North Africa and expose specific concepts which changed over time. Arabic terminology, in our reading, does not support a sharp and categorical dichotomy between sedentary and Bedouin ways of life, although distinctions based on socially mediated normative contexts appear marked, and Bedouin may thus appear simply as a social category, so that their actual way of life may fade into insignificance. What we suggest is to explore the extent to which the category “Bedouin” is applied in different cultural and conceptual contexts. Various historical attitudes may be distinguished approximately, not only on the basis of the terms applied, but also in light of the semantic features determining their application. Whereas in the early Islamic period, Bedouin tribal groups ( aʿrāb ) not allied with the emerging Muslim community of Medina were regarded with contempt, particularly with respect to their political role, they gained – and to some extent preserved previous – prominence in the classical period as representatives of the linguistic and cultural Arab heritage. This position was undermined, almost parallel to the critical appraisal by Ibn Khaldūn, when a general attitude of urban-inspired distrust and exotic fantasy towards the Bedouin gained ground. This development was accompanied, and sometimes overshadowed, by the continuous ambivalence of the figure of the Bedouin, not only expressed in terms of ubiquitous stereotypes, but also reflecting specific experiences in various realms of the relationship between Bedouin and non-Bedouin Arab society.

This article examines the methods of urban Muslim scholars of the early Abbasid period in their endeavour to collect information from Bedouin informants. Analogies with the problems of modern anthropological fieldwork are investigated, and the impact of the preconceptions and assumptions that the scholars brought to the field is highlighted. It is shown that mediaeval Muslim scholars’ fieldwork might involve varying activities taking place in different settings, and the term ‘Bedouin informants’ masks quite a variety of individuals claiming some expertise in ‘Bedouin’ culture. The idealised image of a scholar heading for the Arabian deserts to visit genuine nomads and make lengthy inquiries among them might be less typical than is often implicitly thought to have been. On the basis of concrete cases of data-collection, three fundamental assumptions heavily influencing the scholars’ thinking regarding Bedouin culture are identified.

Late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources from the Homs and Hama region in Ottoman Syria present contrasting portrayals of Bedouins. Taken together, these sources offer conflicting perspectives with respect to relationships between peoples of the towns and the steppe. On the one hand, literary sources typically portray Bedouins as antitheses of urban life, as savage wanderers who lived outside the norms of propriety and who collectively posed a threat to the wellbeing and property of settled people and of travelers. But on the other hand, legal sources portray Bedouins variously as targets of exploitation or taxation by urban-based governments; or as partners with urban people in contractual undertakings; or as imperial subjects who, like any others, would seek justice in the urban Sharīʿa courts. The article explores these differing characterizations, and seeks to explain the multifarious realities that different sources convey. It concludes by suggesting that relationships between town and steppe were on their way to becoming more institutionalized in the last years of the eighteenth century. This development foreshadowed documented nineteenth-century trends in which urban civil norms and institutions became noticeable in the lives of Bedouins who lived in proximity to towns and urban centers.

This article aims to show the limits of a dynastic approach to dealing with Iranian history during the sixth/twelfth century, when the Saljuq sultan in the West was only one of the actors on the chessboard, and not even the most powerful. It focuses on the events leading up to the great battle of Qara-Tegin near Hamadan in 542–1/1147. Various struggles passed over in the sources are highlighted through a macro-regional approach. The showdown at Qara-Tegin can be interpreted as the last confrontation between Azarbayjan and Fārs for control of the resources of the central Saljuq space. It ushered in the long-lasting pre-eminence of Azarbayjan, the withdrawal of Fārs and the eventual marginalization of the province of Jibāl/ʿIrāq al-ajamī.

Coins of the Chopānid Ḥusayn struck in 740/1339–40, and of the Īlkhāns, Jūjīds, the Chopānid Ashraf and Akhījūq, struck in the last years of the Īlkhānate (754–9/1353–8) in the South Caucasus and Iran, constitute a historical source for an area little covered by the chronicles of the time. This article focuses on the anonymous coinage of 740/1339–40 struck in Shīrāz and commissioned by the Chopānid Ḥusayn or the Īnjūid Masʿūd Shāh, four coin types of the Chopānid Ashraf (struck with his name in 754–7/1353–6, and anonymously with the laqab “ al-sulṭān al-ʿādil ” in 758/1357), and two coin types of Akhījūq (759/1357–8, anonymously with the ʿalāma “ naṣr min Allāh ”). Evidence based on historical and numismatic dates is presented for the attribution of the anonymous coins of 758/1357 to Ashraf and of 759/1357–8 to Akhījūq. Localization of ten mint places are discussed and specified.