Jordan Tribes and Tribalism
King Talal Dam, Jordan River Valley
Before the events of the post-World War II period thrust it
onto the center stage of international affairs, the territory that
is now the East Bank was first a provincial backwater of the
Ottoman Empire and later a small and weak desert amirate.
Straddling the transitional area between the "desert and the sown,"
it participated only marginally in the social and intellectual
changes that began sweeping the Arab world during the nineteenth
century
(see Jordan - Ottoman Rule
, ch. 1). Although ringed by the
hinterlands of such major cities as Jerusalem and Damascus, Jordan
lacked a significant urban center of its own until the late 1940s;
consequently it did not display artistically, intellectually,
commercially, or governmentally the sophisticated form of Arab
culture characteristic of urban life. The basic form of social
organization in Transjordan was tribal, and the social relations
among the various nomadic and seminomadic tribes and between them
and villagers (many of whom were also tribally organized), were
based on trade and the exchange of tribute for protection.
In 1983 Gubser classified Jordanians along a continuum:
nomadic, seminomadic, semisedentary, and sedentary. Nomads, or
beduins, were a fully nomadic group whose livelihood was based on
camel herding. Tribes and animals existed in a symbiotic
relationship; the camels supplied much of the food and other needs
of the beduins, while the tribespeople assured the animals'
survival by locating and guiding them to adequate pasturage. This
fine adaptation to an extremely demanding ecological niche required
a versatile, portable technology that was, in its way, extremely
sophisticated. It also required a high degree of specialized
knowledge and a flexible social structure that could be expanded
and contracted according to need. The beduins, however, were also
dependent upon settled communities--villages, towns, and cities--
for trading animals and their products for goods they did not
produce.
Tribal social structure, as described by tribal members, was
based on the ramification of patrilineal ties among men. In
reality, matrilineal ties also were significant in providing access
to material and social resources. The ideological dimension to
patrilineality became more apparent when endogamy, or marriage
within the group, was considered. The preference for endogamy--
historically prevalent in the Middle East, especially for paternal
cousin marriage in the first instance and then in descending levels
of relatedness--gives rise to a network of kin relations that are
both maternal and paternal at the same time. Ultimately, the
kinship system takes on many characteristics of a bilateral system.
Descent and inheritance, however, are traced in a patrilineal
fashion.
Tribes in Jordan were groups of related families claiming
descent from a supposed founding ancestor. Within this overall
loyalty, however, descent from intermediate ancestors defined
several levels of smaller groups within each tribe. Tribespeople
described their system as segmentary; that is, the tribe resembled
a pyramid composed of ascending segments, or levels, each of which
was both a political and a social group. At some point, each unit
automatically contained within it all units of the lower level.
Ideally, in the event of conflict, segments would unite in an
orderly fashion from the lowest level to the highest as conflict
escalated. In reality, the system was not so orderly; tribal
segments underwent fission, and in the event of conflict, fusion
did not necessarily follow the ideal pattern. The pattern of unity
was much more varied and complex.
Beduins traditionally have placed great importance on the
concept of honor (ird). Slight or injury to a member of a
tribal group was an injury to all members of that group; likewise,
all members were responsible for the actions of a fellow tribal
member. Honor inhered in the family or tribe and in the individual
as the representative of the family or tribe. Slights were to be
erased by appropriate revenge or through mediation to reach
reconciliation based on adequate recompense.
Beduins had specific areas for winter and summer camping that
were known to be the territory of a specific tribe. Seminomadic
groups raised sheep and goats and moved much shorter, well-defined
distances; they also practiced some agriculture. But the
semisedentary groups were more involved in agriculture than either
nomads or seminomadic peoples. Parts of a semisedentary group moved
during different seasons, while others in the group remained in
permanent abodes.
By the 1980s, these differences among beduin groups were
minimal. Substantial numbers of nomads and seminomads had
increasingly adopted a sedentary way of life. In his 1981 study of
one section of the Bani Sakhar tribe, Joseph Hiatt noted that
settlement began in the post-World War I period and expanded
rapidly after the mid-1950s. In this case and many others,
sedentarization was neither completely voluntary nor a result of an
official settlement policy. Rather, it appeared to be a natural
response to changing political and economic circumstances,
particularly the formation and consolidation of the state. In some
cases, the administrative policies of the state disrupted the
nomads' traditional pastoral economy. For example, national borders
separated the nomads from grazing lands and permanent wells. The
creation of a standing army that recruited nomads diluted labor
once available for herding. Education had a similar effect. As the
nomads took up agriculture and as private titles to land were
granted, the nomads' traditional relationship to tribal territory
decreased. Faced with these obstacles to a pastoral way of life,
nomads increasingly chose alternative occupations, particularly in
the military, and the sedentarization process accelerated.
Government policies encouraged settlement by providing
schooling, medical services, and the development of water
resources. The decrease in the number of nomads continued despite
the influx of pastoralists from the Negev Desert after the founding
of Israel. By the early 1970s, the beduin tribes constituted no
more than 5 percent of Jordan's population. That proportion had
dwindled to less than 3 percent by the late 1970s. Their small
numbers, however, did not correspond to their cultural and
political importance in Jordan.
Despite the near-disappearance of the nomadic way of life,
tribal social structure and organization have not necessarily been
transformed as drastically. Hiatt contended that tribal
organization actually was reinforced during the initial process of
sedentarization because the tribe itself was the basis for
allocation of land. Leadership patterns have changed significantly,
however, as government-appointed officials have assumed many of the
tasks formerly associated with the position of
shaykh (see Glossary).
In the end, tribal social structure was weakened;
individual titles to land, which can be rented or sold to
outsiders, and individual employment diluted lineage solidarity and
cohesiveness.
Some indication of the recent status and aspirations of beduin
groups, both settled and nomadic, was provided by a 1978 survey by
a team from the University of Jordan. Among the beduins studied,
males increasingly were engaged in more or less sedentary
occupations. Many were in the government or the army. The
researchers found that most beduin parents wanted a different way
of life for their children. Willingness to settle was contingent
upon settlement being more advantageous than the nomadic way of
life. For the beduins, settlement often meant a continued
association with livestock raising and its attendant requirements
of access to food and water. These hopes and wishes seemed to be
consistent with the government's strategy for a revitalized
livestock (sheep and goat) industry.
The beduin attitude toward education was two-sided and
reflected the difficulty of adapting to a new way of life. Early
observers noted that an army career tended to motivate beduins to
acquire an education. Some, such as the French ethnographer Joseph
Chelhod, argued that "an educated beduin means an abandoned tent."
Implied was abandonment of the entire beduin way of life. Many
beduin parents interviewed in the 1978 survey were concerned that
the education of their children beyond a certain level would
threaten the survival of the family. They feared that "an educated
child would naturally emigrate to work or pursue further studies in
Amman or even outside the country." At the same time, these parents
acknowledged that "the best future of their children lay in
education and in living and working in a settled society close to
the country's urban centers." It is not altogether clear whether
the beduins who have acquired enough education for an ordinary
career in the army have abandoned their allegiance to their
families and tribes or whether they have permanently rejected the
beduin style of life.
Jordan was unique among primarily sedentary Middle Eastern
countries in that, at least until the mid-1970s, the Hashimite
government gained its most significant political support from the
beduin tribes. Mindful of the intensely personal nature of his ties
with the beduins, Hussein visited them often, socializing in their
tents and playing the role of paramount tribal shaykh. People of
beduin origin constituted a disproportionate share of the army;
that disproportion continued to prevail at the higher command
levels in the mid-1980s
(see Jordan - The Military in National Life
, ch. 5).
The opportunity for a lucrative, secure career that also carried
high prestige and conformed to traditional martial tribal attitudes
has for over half a century drawn recruits from the desert, first
into the Arab Legion under the British and later into its successor
force, the Jordan Arab Army. Army service was an important
influence for social change among nomadic tribes because it
fostered desire for education and often provided the wherewithal
for adaptations to factors affecting the pastoral economy. For
example, army pay could permit a beduin family to buy a truck as a
substitute for or in addition to camels, or to invest in the
economically more significant sheep.
Observers in the 1980s noted that a process of detribalization
was taking place in Jordan, whereby the impact of tribal
affiliation on the individual's sense of identity was declining.
Sedentarization and education were prime forces in this process.
Smaller groups, such as the extended family and clan, were
gradually replacing tribes as primary reference groups. The
weakening of tribal affiliation and identity led to the questioning
of support for the Hashimite regime. Tribal shaykhs no longer could
guarantee the support of tribal members, particularly the younger
ones. This process was uneven, however, with some tribes displaying
more cohesiveness than others.
The term tribalism was much in use in the 1980s. The
intelligentsia proposed that meritocracy rather than tribalism be
the basis of selection in the 1984 parliamentary by-elections.
Anthropologist Linda Layne compared the intelligentsia's views of
tribalism with the electoral behavior of the beduins. Layne defined
the intelligentsia's interpretation of tribalism as "the placing of
family ties before all other political allegiances" and concluded
that tribalism "is therefore understood to be antithetical to
loyalty to the State." Layne recognized the prominent role of
tribalism in the 1984 election but stated that this was not at odds
with a modern political system. Rather, in reconstructing their
identity in a modern Jordanian state, Layne held that the beduins
were maintaining a tribalism suffused with new elements such as a
narrower role for tribal shaykhs in national politics and new
sources of political legitimacy. Beduin electoral behavior was not
homogeneous along tribal lines, evidence that tribal shaykhs could
no longer automatically deliver the votes of their fellow tribesmen
and women. In this sense, Layne found no tension between the
beduin's identity as tribesman or tribeswoman and as citizen;
rather, these were complementary forms of identity.
Tribalism and tradition also lent legitimacy to Hashimite rule.
The legitimacy of tradition, considered almost synonymous with
beduin or tribal culture, has been defended as part of the near
sacrosanct foundations of the state and as central to cultural
heritage. In the 1985 public exchange between King Hussein and
Minister of Information Layla Sharaf, Hussein responded to Sharaf's
calls for liberalizing the law, particularly lifting censorship and
diluting the influence of tribalism in society. In the 1980s, a
debate raged among Jordanians and observers of Jordanian society
over the appropriate role tribal influence and tradition should
play in a modern state. In early 1985, in the midst of this debate,
King Hussein publicly supported the role of the tribe and tradition
in Jordan's past and future by stating, "Whatever harms tribes is
considered harmful to us. Law will remain closely connected to
norms, customs, and traditions. . . . Our traditions should be made
to preserve the fabric of society. Disintegration of tribes is very
painful, negative and subversive."
Thus, the role of tribes and tribalism, although transformed,
remained a fundamental pillar of both society and political culture
in the late 1980s. Although numerically few Jordanians lived the
traditional life of the nomadic beduin, the cultural traditions
based on this life-style were hardly diminished. Indeed,
conceptions of modern Jordanian cultural and national identity were
deeply intertwined with the country's beduin heritage.
Data as of December 1989
|