The rubʿ al khali (2)

An exploration of the social governance of the UAE before the establishment of borders and introduction of mechanized militaries in Arabia.

1. The Rubʿ al-Khali
An honor society policed by word of mouth and tracks in the sand



This paper is an attempt to reconstruct the governing structure of the Rubʿ al-Khali prior to technological
and bureaucratic advances made possible by the exploitation of oil in Arabia allowed the state to efficiently project
power into the desert, perhaps for the first time in history. I will argue that the Bedu who lived in the Rubʿ al-Khali
were governed primarily by a set of norms; that these were enforced through the oral repetition of failure, success, or
excellence in maintaining them; and that reward and punishment operated through the concept of honor. A very
serious limitation of this paper is that I do not have access to the very orality at the heart of the structure I wish to
describe. As a result, this paper must remain to some extent conjectural. That is, this effort represents a best guess as
to how governance could function in this desert, without a state, based on the materials immediately available, and is
intended to function as a guide for future oral research. I rely primarily on the accounts of British explorers as
intermediaries, as a means of tapping the oral culture of the Rubʿ al-Khali secondhand. These explorers alone
witnessed life in the desert and wrote down their observations in English. The use of these sources, however, raises
some issues and I will discuss these at length.

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

09/28/2013

2. 1

Introduction
The Rubʿ al-Khali comprises the largest sand desert in the world. From the beginnings of
European contact with Arabia in the 16
th
century until the crossings of Bertram Thomas and H.
St. John Philby in 1932-1933, Europeans believed it to be a wasteland which could not be
traversed by land. Indeed they might, for even into the early 20
th
century, the long arm of state
power held no sway in the desert. Nevertheless, perhaps since the centuries following the
domestication of the Bactrian camel in the late 2
nd
millennium BCE, there existed a pastoral
camel culture exploiting the scarce grazing and scattered wells of the great desert for a
livelihood. These nomadic camel pastoralists, the Bedu, possessed extremely specialized
knowledge and skills, allowing them to cross vast expanses of desert in search of grazing for
their camels. For them, the Rubʿ al-Khali was not a great monolithic wasteland, but was rather
composed of distinct regions associated with geological features, wells, and zones of different
kinds of grazing. They did not wander aimlessly about the desert – to do so would have been
suicide – but moved in flexible patterns dictated by the spotting of rainclouds and other means of
predicting future grazing. They developed a sophisticated oral culture which enabled them to
spread news of rain, of war, of alliance and peace across vast expanses of desert. But this oral
culture was not limited to the carrying of such weighty content. It was also a channel for the
communication of intimate news of relatives and of strangers. One’s reception at another’s tent,
the tracks of an acquaintance’s camel which has come into milk, the price of ammunition or rice
in a far-flung market, marriages, circumcisions, births and deaths, dalliances and failures of
character – all these were newsworthy to the Bedu; all these were remembered and repeated and
argued over for generations in the course of long journeys across the sea of sand. And above all,

3. 2

it was these stories, these exchanges between passing travelers, which governed the lives of the
Bedu. For there were said to be no secrets in the desert, and honor was a precious commodity.
Nor was honor a concept limited to the individual. Rather, the concept of honor operated
at the level of the family and tribe as well, and tribes were responsible for the honorable behavior
of their members. In fact, I will show that punishment for wrongdoing was often directed to the
tribe, rather than the individual responsible, a point to which I will return. But first, the use of the
term tribe itself merits discussion. I use the term tribe here to refer to institutions of political,
social, and economic organization organized according to real or fictive kinship ties. Though the
term has been used by other authors to imply political backwardness in the past, I use the term in
rejection of these connotations, and I hope that this paper will show some of the political and
social complexity of this institution. Nevertheless, the term presents practical difficulties due to
its lack of specificity, as it has been used – and will be used in this paper – to describe
organizations which vary greatly in size, in political organization, and in the degree of perceived
kinship ties. For example, I will refer to the al-Rashid as a tribe, even as I use the term for the al-
Kathir, of which al-Rashid is a branch. I do so because the transliteration of the Arabic terms
(qabilah, fakhithah, a’ilah) would be confounding to most readers; because the source material in
most cases does not distinguish between tribes and sections of tribes, rendering it exceedingly
difficult to determine which Arabic term would apply; because in many cases the Arabic terms
themselves are applied inconsistently or there is disagreement about which term would apply to
which group; and most of all because this level of specificity is not necessary for the purposes of
this paper.
British Explorers as Sources

4. 3

The explorers of the Rubʿ al-Khali spent years in the region and provide some great
information, but the accounts they left behind can only document their travels in the region.
Their experiences reflect genres appropriate to travel and the entertainment of guests. The
limitations of the authors’ experiences extend to constrain almost any topic of interest to the
historian – save, perhaps, an account of Western travelers in the region. For example, with all the
detailed stories in Thesiger’s account of his time with the Bedu, there is very little information
about their day-to-day lives. It must be remembered that his journey was unusual. While there
are anecdotes of the Bedu travelling long distances, for what seemed to British narrators to be
little gain – one example comes to mind of a Bedu who travelled from Hadhramaut to the court
of Ibn Saud hoping to receive a gift of a few Maria Teresa dollars – one can scarcely imagine
them undertaking such a dangerous trip for no reason at all; and most journeys would surely have
been from grazing to grazing, in larger groups than the dozen or so men Thesiger preferred to
travel with, more homogenous than Philby’s group. And unlike the journeys of any of these
travelers, seasonal migrations would have included women and children. The normal pattern
seems to have been to spend months at a time in a particular area of grazing, as well, living off
milk while the camels get fat. Travel was frequent, therefore, but far from the whole of Bedu life.
And British explorers understandably have little to say about these periods of settled life among
the Bedu.
In addition, each of these explorers experienced the oral culture of the Bedu they
interacted with in a specific context, and with particular motivations. Bertram Thomas, the first
European to cross the Rubʿ al-Khali, travelled as wazir of Sultan Taimur bin Faisal of ʿOman, his
top advisor. He would have been perceived not only as a Christian, but as a representative of the
Sultan’s government. He made efforts to maintain a distance from his travelling companions as

5. 4

well, preferring to sleep apart from them. He insisted on using the heavier saddle common to
northern Arabia, to the consternation of his companions who were constantly concerned with
their camels’ burdens “for the camel is her master’s dearest dear, and he will cease fighting her
battles only with his latest breath.”
1
By implication, he maintained himself as not only apart, but
somewhat above them. Likewise, Abdullah Philby was an advisor to King Ibn Saud, the most
powerful figure in the desert at the time and much feared; he travelled with his blessing and
under his protection.
2
Thomas and Philby also travelled with personal servants, slept apart from
their companions, and Thomas even slept with a pillow (unthinkable). He, at least, knew enough
to leave his tent behind.
3
Thesiger is the exception amongst this group, in that he travelled
without official sanction and sought to minimize any sense of distance between himself and his
companions; his account is all the more valuable for the fact. He was not associated with any
ruler and he took pains to travel as his companions did, adopting the light southern saddle,
though he was unfamiliar with it, and sleeping on the bare sand.
4
But Thesiger’s approach was
not perfect. While Bertram Thomas and Abdullah Philby may have created distance between
themselves and their companions through their positions, or by implicitly reinforcing status
differences, Thesiger could be outright argumentative and irritable. His very closeness with his
companions could cause problems as well. When, as a show of affection, he placed his hand on
his companion bin Kabina’s neck, the latter “asked furiously if I took him for a slave.”
5


1
Bertram Thomas, Arabia Felix: Across the “Empty Quarter” of Arabia (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932), xxiv-xxvii,
116, 193.
2
H. St. John B. Philby, The Empty Quarter: being a description of the Great South Desert of Arabia known as Rubʿ al-Khali,
(New York: Henry Holt and company, 1933), xviii-xxiv.
3
Thomas, Arabia Felix, 119-120; Philby, The Empty Quarter, 5-6, 10, 13, 17. Philby traveled with a sizeable baggage train and
his entire party slept in tents. He seems to have had his own.
4
Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands. London: Spottiswoode, Ballantyne and Co Ltd, 1959, 36, 38-39, 106-107. Thesiger also
compares the journeys of Thomas and Philby – Philby took the more difficult route, but Thomas was the first and Thesiger
credits him with gaining personal acceptance from the al Rashid tribe.
5
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 147-148.

6. 5

Additionally, Thomas, Thesiger and Philby paid these men generously to lead them
across the desert and, universally, the Bedu did most or all of the essential work of the journey –
packing, gathering firewood, grazing the camels, gathering the camels in the morning, making a
fire, cooking the food, grinding the coffee. A recurring complaint early in each explorer’s
journey is that their companions make excuses to stop after a few hours’ march to allow the
camels to graze. To a man, they would later learn the necessity of these short marches – which
ensured that camels entered the Sands healthy – when their camels nearly died from the scarce
grazing in the Sands.
6
The very fact that these Bedu – expert as they were in desert travel and
engaged specifically for their expertise – felt the need to justify the early halts at all shows their
consciousness of distance and a power dynamic between themselves and these explorers. This
had an impact on explorers’ experiences of oral culture. For example, in the early stages of
Philby’s journey, travelling near the Gulf coast, he asked his guide ʿAli the name of a distinctive
depression: “It has no name…it is one of the jiban but it has no name.” Doubting that such a
prominent feature could be nameless, Philby pressed his companions, loudly questioned the
competence of his guide, and started a heated argument. When the situation cooled down, a
group of his companions took him aside and told him the name – Jaub al Hirr. Hirr was a vulgar
term for a vagina, and his guide had not wished to offend him. It had seemed inappropriate to his
status to mention it.
7
Each of the travelers describes his companions as initially reserved, even
mistrustful. As their journeys progressed, however, these distinctions broke down. Within a
couple weeks, Philby’s companions were regaling him with tales of his other guide Salih’s

6
Thomas, Arabia Felix, 118-119; Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 50.
7
Philby, The Empty Quarter, 41-42. This is Philby’s interpretation, at any rate. But it is plausible, as his companions had been
living in and around Dammam, Ibn Saud was much feared, and Philby was known to be among his favored counselors.

7. 6

impotence, of circumcision practices, and which tribes had the most beautiful and lustful
women.
8

In these trends, which are not always so explicit, we encounter as well the issue of Arabic
proficiency. This was a non-issue for both Philby and Thomas, each of whom had lived in Arabia
for years prior to their journeys. Thomas worked as wazir for the Sultan of ʿOman and dabbled in
linguistics, while Philby had converted to Wahhabism and lived closely with the Arabs in Saudi
Arabia.
9
Thesiger, however, was admittedly a poor linguist. He refers in several places to the
mental strain from so frequently communicating in Arabic and he complains on later journeys
that his Arabic had improved to the point that he could no longer tune out his companions’
constant bickering and talk, explaining that previously it had taken a conscious effort to
understand them.
10
This is reflected in his book Arabian Sands, as the content of speech is
glossed over on his first couple journeys. He reported the fact of their speech, but not the details
of the subject. He focuses, in these passages, on the journey itself, the landscape, and his own
state of mind as he struggled to adapt to the cultural context of a traveling party in Arabia. It is
his later journeys that are rich with details of daily life as they traveled across the desert or rested
after a voyage and it is at this point in the book, near the midpoint, that it becomes truly valuable
to the historian.
Another key issue in assessing these traveler’s accounts is what purpose these were
intended to serve. It should be evident, given the extraordinary difficulty and danger of these
journeys, that each of these men was extremely motivated to undertake this expeditions. Their
motivations differ, however, and these differences impacted their attitude toward their

8
Philby, The Empty Quarter, 81-82, 110.
9
Thomas, Arabia Felix, xxiv, 47-48; Philby, The Empty Quarter, xix-xxii; Thesiger, Arabian Sands,33.
10
Thesiger, Arabian Sands,37, 233-234.

8. 7

companions, their conduct on their journeys, and ultimately their experience of Arabian orality.
If there is a common denominator for these three men, it is the challenge presented by what they
perceived as one of the last unexplored frontiers in the world at that time – meaning it was
unexplored by Europeans, a blank spot on their maps. Bertram Thomas and Abdullah Philby
were planned their trips when many European scholars of Arabia did not believe the desert could
be crossed without the benefit of machines.
11
From this common motivation, however, the three
diverged noticeably. Thesiger’s time in Arabia was about escape and self-discovery. He despised
civilization, machines and settled life. He saw the Great Desert as a place where he might escape
these annoyances and that needed to be explored in full before it was spoiled by the inevitable
advance of civilization. He was not interested in scientific study, in preserving stories, or in
cataloguing the plant and animal life he encountered – though he did so, as part of his agreement
with the Locust Research center that sponsored his trip.
12
His account feels intimate, literary, and
he was far more interested than his predecessors in the way of life of the Bedu. Thomas, in
contrast, saw himself as advancing scientific knowledge and this was a central concern for him in
his travels. The same can be said to some degree of Philby. Among Thomas’ concerns, for
example, was establishing whether the Arabs south of the desert truly belonged to the same race
as northern Arabs. He theorized that they were more closely linked to Abyssinians and he passed
time by measuring the heads of people he encountered in his travels.
13
He paid his companions,
and anyone else he encountered, to gather local plant specimens and catch local animals, which
he catalogued meticulously, skinned, and preserved. In addition to course traverses and the like,
he very carefully measured the altitude wherever he was, in attempt to establish the relative slope
of the peninsula as a whole. He alone of the travelers recorded the stories told to him, and the

11
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 259-260; Thomas, Arabia Felix, xxiv-xxv; Philby, The Empty Quarter, xviii-xix.
12
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 41-42, 181-182, 203.
13
Thomas, Arabia Felix, 22-27, Appendix I.

9. 8

songs his companions sung as they marched or cleared a well, supposedly verbatim, and
translated these into English in one of several appendices in his book.
14
His approach conformed
to the scientific methods of his time and focused primarily on anthropological observation and
geographical concerns. He was thorough and systematic, but he must have seemed odd and this
surely would have colored his interactions with the Bedu. Nevertheless, over the great distances
travelled and time spent with their Bedu companions, many of his quirks were overcome, or at
least the Bedu were willing to look past them. Thesiger reports that Thomas’ travelling
companions, one of whom travelled with Thesiger, thought him a worthy companion, if a little
eccentric. Their only complaint was his heavy saddle.
15
Likewise, contemporaries of Thesiger
confirmed the remarkable closeness of Thesiger to his companions.
16

Perhaps the most significant shortcoming in the accounts of these desert explorers is the
almost complete absence of women from the story, and this is a limitation too pervasive to be
overcome in the present study. Each explorer encountered women occasionally – as they met
some Bedu living with his wife in a small tent, or saw a woman as they watered camels at a well
– but there was very little interaction and these encounters yield no more than a passing remark.
Rather, to the extent that we learn anything of women, it is when the authors report the talk of
their Bedu companions about women – and if there is one thing I am confident is universal to all
cultures, it is the unreliability of this sort of talk – or when the authors ask about some detail of
women’s lives. Thus we get Abu Ja’sha explaining, partially as a friendly dig at Philby’s
Manasir guide, that the Manasir “let their women come to puberty with clitoris intact and…make
a feast for her circumcision a month or two before the wedding….Thus their women grow up

14
Thomas, Arabia Felix, 59, 105, 146, 226, 293Appendices II-VI. Thomas narration of animal catching and plant collecting is
too exhaustive to go point-by-point. One cannot read five pages without some mention of it. Likewise, he was preoccupied with
his aneroid.
15
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 38-39.
16
Henderson, Arabian Destiny, 75-76.

10. 9

more lustful than others, and fine women they are too and that hot! But then they remove
everything to cool their ardour without reducing their desire.”
17
Likewise, we have Thesiger’s
guide al Auf explaining how to approach desert women “Next time, Umbarak, you see a girl that
pleases you, sit down next to her in the dark, push your camel-stick through the sand until it is
underneath her, and then turn it over until the crook presses against her. If she gets up, gives you
an indignant look, and marches off, you will know that you are wasting your time. If she stays
where she is, you can meet her next day when she is herding goats.” Of course, this was
uncommon amongst the women of his own tribe. There are other small clues as to the status of
women, or the affection men felt for them. Among bin Kabina’s purchases after the first crossing
of the Rubʿ al-Khali is twelve yards of deep-blue cloth, for his mother.
18
Some of the Bedu used
their sisters’ names as battle-cries.
19
But this tells us little of their lives.
There is a real issue, a central issue, of access here. These authors had very little access to
women. Thesiger points out that Bedouin women were not secluded, but were expected to herd
goats, fetch water, and perform other chores, and that the Bedu lived under trees, and in tents
with one side always open. Nevertheless, it was customary for them to eat separately, to sit
somewhat to the side when coffee was being taken and men were speaking.
20
In short, it was
customary for men and women to have at least nominally separate social spheres, and it would
have raised more than a few eyebrows for the European explorers to seek out the company of
women to gather their talk. Moreover, Thesiger states bluntly that he is not interested in

17
Philby, The Empty Quarter, 81.
18
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 202.
19
Thesiger, Arabian Sands,
20
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 177-178.

11. 10

women.
21
To form a complete picture of Southeast Arabia at midcentury, therefore, oral histories
conducted within the lifetime of living memory are absolutely essential.
As a final note before turning to the topic of governance, I use the account of Wilfred
Thesiger with great frequency in illustrating my arguments and largely omit that of H. St. John
Philby. In most cases, there are examples illustrating my points in all three accounts. Thesiger,
however, goes into greater detail, his examples are therefore more instructive and, for that
reason, I use his account more frequently for illustration – but not necessarily in the formation of
my analysis. Philby’s account, in contrast, has some special limitations. The men accompanying
Philby were from the northern tribes – al-Murra, al-Manasir, al-‘Ajman – and most of them had
been living a relatively settled life. That is, while his guides especially had experience in the
desert, they had been living in and around Dammam.
22
And Philby alone among these explorers
resorted to threats and passive-aggressive sulking to gain the cooperation of companions, who
were loathe to cross the Empty Quarter.
23
Much of his account is of limited utility for these
reasons, an unfortunate side effect of which is that the present effort probably reflects the
southern tribes like al-Rashid disproportionately. Many of the norms and practices I discuss are
mentioned throughout the literature on Southeast Arabia, however, and were probably quite
widespread.
The Physical Environment of the Rubʿ al-Khali

21
There has been debate about Thesiger’s views on women, and Thesiger’s sexuality (I’ve only scratched the surface of the
debate). He has been accused of being a misogynist and some believe he is a homosexual, due to his vivid descriptions of male
beauty. I will not delve too deeply into this here, as I have not read his other work, but his expressed views in Arabian Sands are
not misogynist, and I find it equally likely that Thesiger was simply not interested in sex and preferred male company (ie the
topics of conversation, their pastimes, etc). He seems to recognize the beauty of women, young men, and landscapes alike in this
book. It is plausible that he was attracted to men, highly implausible that he acted on any such attraction while in the desert, and
therefore almost irrelevant.
22
Philby, The Empty Quarter, 5-12. Both Wilfred Thesiger and Bertram Thomas travelled primarily with members of the al-
Rashid, with elements of the Bait Kathir (another section of al-Kathir, to which the al-Rashid belonged), al-Manahil, and other
southern tribes.
23
Philby, The Empty Quarter, 250-270.

12. 11

To discuss governance in the Rubʿ al-Khali, one must first establish the physical,
geographical realities that so greatly impacted the exercise of political power. To begin with,
navigation of the desert required a detailed knowledge of its geography. Prior to exploration of
the desert by Bertram Thomas, H. St. John Philby, and Wilfred Thesiger, there were no maps of
this desert. Rather, Bedu learned to navigate by accompanying their elders on journeys, relying
on a highly developed spatial memory to locate wells and grazing without recourse to navigation
aids like compasses. Moreover, groups of Bedu had specific areas of the desert with which they
were familiar. A tribesman of the ʿAwamir, for example, would typically be lost in the desert to
the North of the Hadhramaut – though individuals did travel with other groups, at times, and gain
a familiarity in this manner with otherwise unknown areas.
24
Parts of the steppe were the
exclusive preserve – dirah – of individual tribes, while other areas were shared between a
number of groups.
25

The desert was not an undifferentiated mass of sand. In parts of the desert, wells were
fairly common. In others, one might travel weeks between wells. There were bands of gravelly
plain within the desert, which offered poor grazing and represented an obstacle for camels with
soft feet. Likewise, there were horizontal bands within the desert of different types of grazing,
and zones in which grazing was richer or poorer.
26
These grazing areas were known to the Bedu
who frequented them, and named according to the color of the sands, the wells within them -
themselves often named after the man who dug the well - or the grazing within. There were
deeper and shallower wells, wells which were more or less brackish, wells which always had
water, only had water seasonally, or had water only in a good year, wells which produced water

24
Philby, Thesiger and Thomas were all accompanied, for example, by members of several tribes and this was necessary to gain
access to certain areas. This will be discussed more later.
25
Henderson, Arabian Destiny, 37.
26
Bertram Thomas, Arabia Felix, 229-230, 263-266.

13. 12

in a trickle or a torrent, and wells which were regarded as the property of a particular tribe –
though this was less common. Deeper wells required more labor and skill to excavate; shallower
wells were generally less potable. In stretches of the desert in which the water was nearer to the
surface, the water might be suitable only for camels, and the camel served as a mobile
desalination plant. Men survived off the milk and urine of their camels in passing through these
regions. On an especially long journey, however, and with poorer grazing, camels would produce
less milk, or even cease to produce. Travel was thus limited by the economics of transporting or
locating sufficient water for the journey, without overburdening the camels. This was in turn
dictated by grazing. A camel may survive without water indefinitely with the right grazing, and
might do so in good health with occasional access to water. Without grazing, however, a long
journey was altogether untenable, as the death of one’s camel in lieu of an extra was certain
death. And if grazing was sparse, only a small group might survive. Thus the environment
imposed limits not only on who might gain access to the desert – a point to which I will return –
but on how many might gain access.
27

Nor were all camels the same.
28
There were camels bred to the desert, with soft soles on
their feet, which could maintain balance in the loosest sand. Again, these struggled in the hard
steppe; its sharp stones that cut their feet.

There were also camels bred to the mountains, or the
steppes, milch camels, camels suited to long, dry voyages and camels bred for speed or beauty.
29

These latter were a source of status for more settled peoples, but could not have endured the
long, waterless journeys achieved by the desert camel, nor could they tolerate the salty water and
shrubs these camels survived on in the most barren expanses of desert – which gave even these

27
Henderson, Arabian Destiny, 39.
28
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 84.
29
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 267.

14. 13

specially bred desert beasts near-continuous diarrhea.
30
Most tribes in Southeast Arabia preferred
female camels, slaughtering male camels soon after birth, for the milk they gave, though at least
one tribe bred more male camels as the transport trade in well watered areas became profitable.
Nor was breeding the only factor. Even a desert camel which had become too accustomed to
green, leafy, sweet herbage and sweet wells would turn up its nose at salt bush and brackish
water – and vice versa. Rather, they had to be acclimated to travel, force-fed and water poured
down their throats until they would accept whatever was available. All these factors and more
made it nearly impossible for state authorities to penetrate the desert, a place in which one could
not only escape the power of the state, but also that of other tribes within the desert. And these
same factors made the enforcement of punishment on the responsible individual impracticable in
intertribal governance.
The Social Function of Tribal Solidarity
Relative peace and order in the desert was therefore maintained through a system of
reprisals and restitutions at the level of the tribe, the primary political unit in much of southern
Arabia before the organization of politically and technologically modern states in the region –
that is, before oil exploration necessitated the establishment of fixed borders and before oil
wealth and technological advances enabled states to project power into the desert – a process that
took place from the 1950s through the early 1980s. Thesiger relates a story in which his
companions encounter a Rashidi boy who has been shot in the hand in a raid on the Bani Kitab.
One of his group promised the boy they would find a Bani Kitab boy, “hold his hand over a rifle,
and blow it off” as soon as Thesiger returned home.
31
Here, of course, the unfortunate boy they
hope to find is completely innocent of any offense, but this is unimportant. Likewise, it is

30
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 165.
31
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 268.

15. 14

unimportant that this harm occurred in the course of a raid initiated by the al-Rashid, in which
the injured boy was presumably a participant. The body of the tribe was harmed and intended to
inflict the same harm to the tribe that caused this harm. At a later date, after accidentally
knocking out bin Ghabaisha, one of his closest companions, he asks bin Kabina, his closest
friend in Arabia, what would have happened if he’d accidentally killed bin Ghabaisha: “I should
have killed you.” It would have been an accident, but “That would have made no difference.”
32

Thesiger notes that this was a lighthearted exchange, but speculates that the response is accurate
nonetheless. Once again, the harm is what is significant, and the harm must be avenged or
compensated. As a final example, one of Thesiger’s companions narrated a story in which his
son Sahail was shot in the chest during a raid against the Saar and slowly died in his arms as they
rode away. At daybreak, they found a small Saar encampment where a woman was churning
butter, a boy and a girl were milking some goats, and there were some small children under a
tree. The boy fled, but they cornered him. “He was about fourteen years old, a little younger than
Sahail, and he was unarmed.” When they surrounded him, he surrendered, and asked for mercy.
“No one answered him. Bakhit slipped down off his camel, drew his dagger, and drove it into the
boy’s ribs….and Bakhit stood over him until he died.” Thesiger was moved by the story but
“realized none the less that it alone prevented wholesale murder among a people who were
subject to no outside authority…for no man lightly involves his whole family or tribe in a blood-
feud.”
33

It is not hard to imagine how this identification with the tribe could have functioned as a
deterrent to certain types of violence. In fact, Bertram Thomas encountered a group of people
living in the mountains of southern Dhofar known as the Shahara who vividly illustrate the

32
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 267-268.
33
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 107-108.

16. 15

importance of tribal solidarity in the social order of Southeast Arabia. The Shahara as a group
were considered daʿif, weak. That is, they were not tribesmen and were not capable of the sort of
corporate, retaliatory violence of their neighbors. Thomas reports that they could be killed with
relative impunity, that they were subject to frequent raids, that no tribesmen would intermarry
with them, and that they were seen as little better than slaves – “no better than cattle, under God.
They are afraid to shed blood.”
34
To kill a member of another tribe almost certainly meant that
one of your own would be killed in retaliation. And worse, war was a realistic possibility as well,
if the retaliations spiraled out of control. For this reason, outright murder was uncommon in the
desert. Rather, violence was largely contained to feuds or wars between specific tribes, which
could have roots many generations in the past. In this pattern, there were periods of war and
negotiated peace between tribes,

and conflict could break out anew over any dispute.
35
The
relationship between the supra-tribal factions known as the Hinawi and Ghafiri, or ʿAdnani and
Qahtani was an example of this sort of tension. But this sort of relationship existed between
individual tribes as well. During Thesiger’s time in the desert, the Dahm had recently broken a
truce with the al-Rashid with whom Thesiger travelled, massing between one hundred and three
hundred men and raiding the scattered al-Rashid, Bait Kathir, Bait Imani, Manahil, and Mahra
along the desert steppe of the Hadhramaut and Dhofar. Shortly after his first crossing of the
Empty Quarter, Thesiger witnessed a gathering of more than one hundred tribesmen from these
group, gathered around his camp debating whether to negotiate with the Dahm for the return of
looted camels in keeping with the truce or to retaliate.
36
After a long, animated argument, they
agreed to send a representative to the Dahm who did, in fact, negotiate a truce for a period of two

34
Thomas, Arabia Felix, 67. It is not clear, however, how common such violence against the Shaharah was in practice.
35
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 171.
36
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 185-188.

17. 16

years.
37
Meanwhile, the al-Rashid were at war with the Bani Kitab in the Dhahirah, Thesiger’s
companions raiding them, taking many camels in his absences.
38

Thesiger theorized, in his time in Arabia, that it was this constant state of war or constant
potential for war that allowed tribal law (sic) to function. With no central authority to enforce its
decisions, Thesiger reasoned, a Bedu was free to ignore any decision he did not agree with – but
the normal conditions of desert life this would mean a loss of all security for him, since he could
be killed by a member of his own or another tribe with relative impunity. There would be no one
to avenge him and no one to force his killer to pay blood money – of course, personal feelings
would still be a factor, and his heirs would still be owed blood money, but outside the tribe there
would be no power behind any desire for retribution. He cites the breakdown of tribal life in
northern and central Arabia at this time as evidence that tribal authority breaks down in the
presence of enforced peace and of law.
39
Nor is Thesiger’s position without merit.
But there are questions that go unanswered. The only example of someone leaving their
tribe in Thesiger’s account and the other source material is of a member of the Dahm living with
the Yam, as he had a blood feud with his own tribe.
40
No details are given. It is unclear,
therefore, how speculative is Thesiger’s idea of what happens to a tribesman who is ostracized
for refusing to acknowledge the decision of the group. Certainly, a man in this situation could
have sought work in one of the cities along the coast, or in the interior of ʿOman or the Trucial
coast. Likewise, one can speculate that it is possible to seek refuge with another tribe, as the
unnamed Dahm tribesman did, in certain circumstances. But, as no mention is made of
ostracization in other accounts of the desert, it remains unclear how common it was and what

37
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 280.
38
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 281.
39
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 94-95.
40
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 245.

18. 17

circumstances would warrant such a decision. Certainly, a great deal of autonomy was respected
within the tribal framework, as evidenced by a member of the Duruʿ tribe who escorted Thesiger
through his tribe’s lands in open defiance of several of the sheikhs of his tribe. But here again,
there was an established norm that one could travel in a tribe’s lands provided one was
accompanied by a member of the tribe (rabia) – and that this rabia was honor-bound to protect
his travelling companions, even against his own tribe.
41
It may or may not be the case that this
was allowed to pass because the decision of the sheikhs was in violation of a widely accepted
norm.
It is likewise not at all clear that individuals were motivated by a calculated assessment of
self-interest in adhering to this system of tribal governance and solidarity. Indeed, Thesiger is
right to point out the practical necessity of adherence to the norms of tribal solidarity and respect
for tribal authority, but the reported actions of the tribesmen he encounters hardly give the
impression of people constrained by necessity to participate in this system. Rather, it is likely
that these norms and values were internalized to the extent that it simply felt right to avenge a
killed or maimed tribesmen, to rush off at a moment’s notice to intercede on behalf of an
imprisoned man from a distantly related tribe – as Thesiger reports bin Kabina and bin
Ghabaisha did during their time in Dubai.
42
Moreover, it seems that tribal governance was far
from authoritarian or intrusive. Tribal leaders were typically elected, led by establishing
consensus, rather than through decree, and were subject to being replaced if they were ineffective
or unpopular.
43
By and large, these were men with an established reputation within the tribe,
respected as warriors, leaders and trackers, men who were seen as honorable. No mention is
made in any of the source material of any tax paid to tribal leaders; tribesmen who followed

41
Thomas, Arabia Felix, 83, 104; Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 171, 173, 175, 184, 196.
42
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 327.
43
Henderson, Arabian Destiny, 93.

19. 18

them on a raid could expect a share of the spoils – though the leader of the raid got extra shares –
and there were no prisons or jails. In fact, the role of the tribal leader in Southern Arabia seems
to have been primarily concerned with the foreign relations of the tribe and the settlement of
internal disputes through mediation, rather than the enforcement of law. Participation in one’s
tribe was not only an ingrained cultural assumption, backed by strong advantages, but compared
to other systems of governance, it provided little against which to rebel.
Orality and Personal Honor in the Normative Society
The tribe, then, was the unit of responsibility for offenses like murder and the theft of
livestock between tribes in the Rubʿ al-Khali – in much of Southern Arabia, in fact – and was
implicated to some degree in other sorts of violations as well. These sorts of violations, however,
were not punished with violence. They would not start a war. Rather, these were normative
violations and reflected on individual, familial and tribal honor. To the extent that the source
material is representative, these norms appear to be the most salient feature of governance in the
Rubʿ al-Khali and much of the surrounding area before the technological modernization of the
states of southern Arabia. These norms included things like the hospitality one extended to
travelers, the generosity one exhibited with others, the fairness with which meals and profits
were shared among travelling companions, manners, performance in battle or other civic duties,
bravery and other personal excellences one was expected to embody. Both adherence to and
violations of these norms are reported with great frequency by travelers and in fact, the
preoccupation of the Bedu themselves is reported, directly or indirectly, in nearly every
traveler’s account. I will argue that these norms and others in fact formed the basis for
governance in the Rubʿ al-Khali, that they were enforced through the oral repetition of failure,
success, or excellence in maintaining them, and that reward and punishment operated through the

20. 19

concept of honor. Nor was honor as intangible as we like to imagine. Rather, honor affected
social relations at every level and had a real bearing on economic well-being in a society in
which every transaction was based on personal interaction. Buying a camel, finding a wife and
negotiating a bride-price, asking to graze on a neighboring tribe’s dirah in a period of extended
drought – these were entirely commonplace occurrences which would have been effected by
one’s individual reputation, and the reputation and prestige of one’s tribe. Above and beyond
these practical concerns, however, honor translated directly into status – the underlying medium
of human exchange.
Turning to the oral culture, the key element was the exchange of news between travelers
whenever and wherever they meet. The ubiquitousness and importance of this practice is
reported by Wilfred Thesiger, Bertram Thomas, H. St. John Philby and Edward Henderson, each
of whom spent five or more years in Arabia. Through examples scattered throughout Arabian
Sands, Thesiger provides the most complete picture of the practice as an institution that at once
tied the desert together, enforced the social and moral code, protected the traveler from raiders,
guided him to healthy grazing and water, passed the time, and forged bonds between people.
44

As early as his first journey along the Southern fringes of the desert in 1945, Thesiger reports
with frustration that Bedu, attracted by reports of fresh grazing, were thick along the northern
slopes of the Qarra Mountains and that “everyone had heard that the Christian had great
quantities of food with him.” This attracted visitors to his camp every night, who shared in their
meals, which he had planned meticulously based on the size of his party – Thesiger was not
acclimated to the customs of Arabia at this point.
45
Later on the same trip, Thesiger hints at the
connection between orality, the landscape, and the skills of the Bedu themselves, as one of his

44
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 80, 170.
45
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 49-50.

21. 20

traveling companions read some old tracks – Thesiger was not even sure they were camel tracks
– and theorized that six Awamir had raided the Junuba in the South. They had come from
Sahma, watered at Mughshin, and passed by that spot ten days ago. “We had seen no Arabs for
seventeen days and we saw none for a further twenty-seven,” Thesiger narrates. But on his
return, they exchanged news with some Bait Kathir who “told us that six ʿAwamir had raided the
Junuba, killed three of them, and taken three of their camels.” He goes on to explain that every
Bedu knew the tracks of his own camel, some “of nearly every camel they had seen,” that the
camels in different regions had different feet, leaving different tracks and that Bedu likewise
knew the politics of every tribe on the desert inside and out, and could guess who would raid
who.
46
Thus we see the connection, at least in Thesiger’s mind, between the orality, the tracking
skills of the Bedu, and politics. Thesiger generalizes: “No Bedu will ever miss the chance of
ʿexchanging news with anyone he meets, and he will ride far out of his way to get fresh news.”
This is confirmed by examples later in the text.
47

There was a specific protocol for exchanging news, a formula: ‘Your news?’ ‘The news
is good.’ ‘Is anyone dead? Is anyone gone’ ‘No! – don’t say such a thing.’ As Thesiger reports,
this formula held whatever the actual news might be.
48
They would then sit down to drink coffee
and eat dates. When this was finished, the real news was exchanged. In the example given by
Thesiger, the actual news was that the Dahm had raided the Manahil; the Manahil had raided the
Yam; the Saar had raided the Dawasir. They went into specifics of who led what party, who had
been killed and who wounded, how successful this or that raid had been. They said there had
been good rain in the steppes – North of the Qarra Mountains, South of the Rubʿ al-Khali – but
the seven year drought held in the Jiza. Then there were specific questions and answers between

46
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 52.
47
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 169-170.
48
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 102. Henderson, Arabian Destiny, 27.

22. 21

the groups, a conversation, and it was over. This sort of news, moreover, traveled widely.
Thesiger relates an example in which his guide, Al Auf, tells him of some successful Bu Falah
raids. He had received the news from some kinsmen who had participated, making their way
seven hundred miles across the desert to return to the steppe with three camels and a rifle. He
then travelled four hundred miles to meet Thesiger’s party in Mughshin, where some of the Bait
Kathir with Thesiger would carry the news two hundred miles to the coast, and whoever they
met would likely carry it into ʿOman.
49
But these were certainly not the only vectors for
transmission of the raids, as there would have been other witnesses. Just as the al-Rashid were
connected with the Southern steppe, any Manasir who might have participated would have
connections in the Hasa in eastern Saudi Arabia. Any Manahil or Murra who received the news
there would have transmitted it across Saudi Arabia. This is informed speculation, but the
significance is that such news would be disseminated to the edges of the desert within months.
The Bedu were also said to have remembered the most trivial details and passed them
along. They had impressive memories, and the examples given by Thesiger give some clue as to
why that was. At one point, he relates that his companions would constantly argue as they
traveled, about some minor thing, and they would tell the same story to the same person, many
times over, as a way to pass the time – in one example, Bin Kabina and Amair argued an entire
day about whose grandfather was best, until Bin Kabina said “anyway, my grandfather never
farted in public.”
50
Thesiger chided them when the same argument began the next day, to which
they answered “but it passes the time.” And they had a great deal of time to pass, with precious
few ways to do so, travelling for weeks at a time across a desert. So, not only were the smallest
details repeated, but they remained in the collective memory. And it may be the very fact that

49
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 109.
50
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 252.

23. 22

memories were so frequently repeated and argued about that allowed them to be maintained.
They were living memories, embodied in an active social context of exchange. So ‘the news’
was not only life or death, raids and feuds, rain and grazing. It was also a social institution and
covered topics we might consider gossip. As Thesiger says on exchanging news with part of his
party that had stayed behind before the desert crossing: “They were Bedu, and no mere outline
would suffice either them or my companions; what they wanted was a detailed account of all that
we had seen and done, the people we had spoken to, what they had said, what we had said to
them, what we had eaten and where. My companions seemed to have forgotten nothing, however
trivial.”
51

One might well ask what the significance of the repetition of these stories is. What
function would these stories have served that could be of interest to a historian? As mentioned
above, one function may have been the maintenance of the moral order and social code of the
desert, the enforcement of its norms. Though he was discussing a technique with very different
goals which emerged from a very different society, as a strategy of control, one can imagine this
oral culture functioning in much the same way as the panoptic society described by Michel
Foucault.
52
The central relevant insight is that people act differently when they know they might
be monitored. And it is clear that the Bedu of the desert knew what sort of behavior was
expected, that their behavior could be reported, and that they desired a good reputation amongst
their peers. The conduct of daily life was regulated in this way, as one’s actions, for better or
worse, would become public knowledge, known not only locally, but across the desert. An
inhospitable host, a sheikh who hoarded silver instead of distributing gifts, a man who failed in
combat in some way, a flatulent man – these would find their shortcomings common knowledge.

51
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 162.
52
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Random House, 1977), 195-240.

24. 23

Bin Turkia, one of Thesiger’s companions, told the party of a circumcision he witnessed among
the Mahra, in which “Ali’s son made a fuss when they cut him. He cried out like a woman.”
53
At
the same time, a leader like Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi could build a reputation for justice and
generosity that stretched across the desert. The Bu Falah as a group could build loyalties with
tribes as far afield as the Hadhramaut. Individuals who exhibited great military prowess, like the
famous raider Bin Duailan (“the cat”) of the Manahil, could be known across southern and
central Arabia – as indeed he was.
54
This sort of publicity of one’s deeds may well underlie the
hospitality and generosity that so impressed visitors to Arabia. Indeed, Thesiger met a penniless,
decrepit old man named Bakhit who was apparently quite famous and much loved in
Hadhramaut – there is no indication of how widespread his reputation might have been – as
someone who had been very rich but lost all his wealth through generosity. “No one ever came to
his tents but he killed a camel to feed them. By God, he is generous!” Thesiger’s companions
were reportedly even a little envious.
55
Given the source material, of course, it is beyond the
scope of this paper to definitively link the circulation of these stories with the maintenance of the
norms they illustrate. But the connection between such a pervasive orality, a culture with such
strong norms in the absence of any state or mass media, and behavior that consistently
approached the very extremes of the ideals for which the Bedu were known, is too obvious,
makes too much sense not to have a degree of truth. Returning to the example of the panoptic
society, however, it is important to remember that this was a very different institution than what
Foucault described. Where the panopticon and the discipline it strove to achieve were
dehumanizing and unnatural, the oral culture of the Bedu was an inherently human structure and

53
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 124.
54
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 187-188, 243-245.
55
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 71. This is not the same Bakhit from the earlier story.

25. 24

it will be obvious that the norms it maintained were more or less intuitive, informed by values
and impulses that are nearly universal – though these values were expressed to the extreme.
A second function of the exchange of news, equally obvious, must have been the
formation and maintenance of social ties over vast distances. Were the news merely a practical
instrument for the acquisition of information, Bedu would not have exhibited such anxiety when
they had to forgo the exchange – for example, when Thesiger and his party were traveling in
secret past Liwa.
56
Moreover, while no direct examples are given of the word-for-word content
of these exchanges, passages like the following, in which Thesiger asks al Auf if he had ever
ridden from Wadi al Amairi to Bai, bear this out (as well as illustrating the recall of the Bedu):
“Yes, six years ago.”
“How many days did it take?”
“I will tell you. We watered at al Ghaba in the Amairi. There were four of us,
myself, Salim, Janazil of the Awamir, and Alaiwi of the Afar; it was in the middle of
summer. We had been to Ibri to settle the feud between the Rashid and the Mahamid,
started by killing Fahad’s son.”
Musallim interrupted, “That must have been before the Riqaishi was Governor of
Ibri. I had been there myself the year before. Sahail was with me and we went there
from….”
But al Auf went on, “I was riding the three-year-old I had bought from bin
Duailan.”
“The one the Manahil raided from the Yam?” Bin Kabina asked.
“Yes. I exchanged it later for the yellow six-year-old I got from bin Ham. Janazil
rode a Batina camel. Do you remember her? She was the daughter of the famous grey
which belonged to Harahaish of the Wahibah.”
Mabkhaut said, “Yes, I saw her last year when he was in Salala, a tall animal; she
was old when I saw her, past her prime but even then a real beauty.”
Al Auf went on, “We spent the night with Rai of the Afar.”
Bin Kabina chimed in, “I met him last year when he came to Habarut; he carried a
rifle, “a father of ten shots,” which he had taken from the Mahra he had killed in the

56
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 169-170.

26. 25

Ghudun. Bin Mautlauq offered him the grey yearling, the daughter of Farha, and fifty
riyals for this rifle, but he refused.”
Al Auf continued,”Rai killed a goat for our dinner and told us…”, but I
interrupted: “Yes, but how many days did it take to get to Bai?” He looked at me in
surprise and said, “Am I not telling you?”
57

By inserting themselves into the narrative, and establishing connections between themselves and
the people in al Auf’s story, Thesiger’s companions here are reinforcing their own relationships
in much the same way one can imagine two travelers exchanging the news might have. In the
course of the exchange would be opportunities to establish personal connections, to hear news of
distant relatives, to establish hierarchies – if any existed – to find common ground and connect.
For a traveler who had spent several weeks in very limited company, or a Bedu alone with his
family grazing his camels – as many of the people Thesiger’s party met were – the opportunity
for social interaction must have been valuable for its own sake. And it is significant that the news
was exchanged even before a heated argument between two hostile tribes, as when Thesiger and
his Rashidi companions sought to cross Duruʿ land with a rabia from the Junuba.
58
But perhaps
the most important aspect of this is that the establishment, maintenance and reinforcement of
relationships across vast expanses of desert enabled a sense of community to develop despite the
distance, despite the mobility of the Bedu themselves, and despite animosities between some
groups. And this community extended beyond the boundaries of the desert and into agricultural
areas and towns along its rim, and along the Indian Ocean and Arabian Gulf coasts as Bedu
traded with people here, purchased some date palms there, or as individuals or even sections of
the tribe would become more sedentary. And it was this community that enabled the
development of such strong norms. The perpetuation of this community through the exchange of
the news and other oral forms enabled the enforcement of the norms, the regulation of daily life.

57
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 141-142
58
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 299. The Duru were Ghafari.

27. 26

And the segmentation of the community into tribes allowed for the containment of violence and
social mobility, the regulation of the less routine aspects of life. But what were these norms,
specifically, and what sorts of practices did they encourage?
The Normative Code of the Rubʿ al-Khali
As a function of the source material, many of the norms and practices discussed here
relate to travel. This aspect of their lives may thus be overrepresented, but the Bedu living in the
desert were a mobile people, and travel would have been an important factor in their lives. The
strong norms governing the treatment of one’s travelling companions and the reception of
travelers reflect his fact. After the sharing of news, one of the most prominently reported
practices in southern Arabia is accompaniment by a rabia from the tribe whose lands one wished
to cross, or an allied tribe. As Thesiger narrates: “A rabia took an oath: ‘You are my companions
and your safety, both of your blood and your possessions, is in my face.’” He goes on to relate
that travelling companions, as a rule, were obligated to fight to defend one another, even against
one’s own tribe and kin, and that “If one of the party were killed, all the party were involved in
the ensuing blood-feud.” In this way, travel through otherwise hostile areas was possible, so long
as one could find a vouchsafe from an appropriate tribe. Which tribes could act as rabia for one
another, and in which circumstances, was a matter much discussed amongst Thesiger’s
companions – and their lengthy, detailed discussions indicate that the politics of the tribes
arrayed along the desert frontier were well known.
59
This practice has obvious implications for
commerce and peace-making, but its true significance may be the emphasis it places on personal
relationships over political ones and personal conscience over the discretion of tribal leaders.
60

This is borne out when the leaders of the Duruʿ seek to prevent Thesiger from crossing their

59
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 171.
60
Thomas, Arabia Felix, 232.

28. 27

lands on what would be his last journey in Arabia. Thesiger had travelled through Duruʿ country
previously – undercover as a Syrian – and made friends with a Dara’I name Staiyun, who spoke
for him here: “Why do you make all this trouble, bin Kharas? There is no harm in the man. He is
known among the tribes and well spoken of. I know him; you don’t….He is my friend.” Another
interposed that he is Sheikh Zayed al-Nahyan’s friend as well, to which bin Kharas replied “Then
take him back to Zayid (sic). We don’t want him here….and don’t bring him this way again or
we will kill him.” Staiyun came back, “You have no right to talk like this. God Almighty! I
myself will take him through our country in defiance of you and all the other sheikhs. You can’t
stop me.” And Thesiger was ultimately allowed to pass.
61
In this exchange, the relative
importance of individual judgment and sheikhly authority is clear – and when he was turned
back, it was ultimately due to the authority of the Imam in ʿOman, whose influence, more so than
authority, was strong enough to compel the tribes around the Jabal al-Akhdar to turn Thesiger
away. Another practice, reported by Bertram Thomas in the context of a comparison with British
laws on murder, would seem to outline emphasis on the individual conscience. One of
companions, Salih, is reported to have said: “But with us, sanctuary is honored unless there is
shame in the murder, such for instance as a rabia who has betrayed his companion; what good
man is there, who would withhold sanctuary to one who has killed his enemy?”
62
And a chorus
of agreement ensued. This practice, however, is not reported by Thesiger or Philby and receives
no further comment from Thomas. But perhaps the best examples of the Bedu attitude toward
authority are the following exchanges between Thesiger and members of al-Rashid. He asked a
small group who’d visited Riyadh how they had addressed ibn Saud – the King and most feared
man in Arabia at the time – “We called him ʿAbd al-Aziz, how else would we call him but his

61
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 299-300.
62
Thomas, Arabia Felix, 276.

29. 28

name?” When Thesiger suggested ‘your majesty,’ the response “We are Bedu. We have no king
but God.”
63
In another instance, his guide Al Auf was discussing a civil war taking place at the
time between Dubai and Abu Dhabi and relating the al-Rashid’s ties to the Bu Falah from Abu
Dhabi: “The bin Maktum of Dibai (sic) would have to pay for our service; we owe them no
loyalty. The Al bu Falah are different; if one from that family, even a child, gave me an order it
would be awkward to refuse.” But, “[grinning] Being a Bedu I expect I should, unless it suited
me.” Even in the context of a statement intended to outline his loyalty to the Bu Falah, he felt the
need to emphasize his complete independence of action.
64

Another lynchpin in the facilitation of travel, trade, and inter-tribal relations was the
detailed requirement general to Arabian society – but perhaps more pronounced in and around
the desert – of providing hospitality to passing travelers. The concept of hospitality is, of course,
related to the more general ideal of generosity, and together with the oral culture of the desert
and surrounding areas they must have contributed to a sense of community, but the two concepts
are distinct in function. That is, the effect of hospitality is different from that of generosity.
Turning to hospitality, the travel accounts of Europeans throughout Southeast Arabia are replete
with examples of a sort of hospitality that stunned them and struck them as unique to Arabia – in
the extremes to which it was taken, if not its general intent. Whether or not this is so, hospitality
was important to tribesmen in the region generally, and Bedu in particular, for they went to great
lengths to entertain their guests, despite having very little. In one example, Thesiger and his
companions came to an encampment of some Bait Imani who bade them drink all the camels’
milk they’d collected for the night – though they had no other food or water.
65
In another, the
tables were turned, as Thesiger and his group had to give up the first meat they had found in

63
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 93.
64
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 124. .
65
Thesiger, Arabian Sands,136.

30. 29

many weeks to some travelers who’d passed their fire.
66
Moreover, one of the difficulties in
travelling under cover was that they were often unable to convince other Bedu they met (in a
somewhat busier section of the Dhahirah, as they could not survive another desert crossing) to let
them pass without eating, and Thesiger could never pass for long as an Arab.
67
Even a fatherless
child insisted the travelers accept his hospitality – though in this case, they were able to send him
away.
68
The extreme emphasis on hospitality, of course, is not surprising around a natural feature
like the Rubʿ al-Khali where, occasionally, such hospitality may in fact have been the difference
between life and death, and in any case served to alleviate the extreme hardship of desert travel.
It would have strengthened bonds between settled and nomadic peoples as well and, at one time,
might have protected the former from raiders outside the reach of the state. Moreover, in line
with the rabia and hospitality norms, Thomas reports a practice he refers to as “thamn-al-batn”
or “stomach price” which protected the provider of hospitality for four days and nights after a
man has ‘eaten his salt.’ This is not mentioned elsewhere, but seems a fitting counterpart for the
protection of travelers by a rabia and may hint at the importance of hospitality as a protection
from travelers.
69
To return to generosity, there are numerous examples of the extremes of
generosity in southern Arabia, in every first-hand account. In Thesiger’s account alone, bin
Kabina gives away his loincloth, and on a later journey his shirt, to someone admiring it. Sheikh
Zayed al Nahyan allows Thesiger use of a famous camel named Ghazalah when we wished to
travel in Liwa, and again for his trip to Sharjah.
70
This emphasis on generosity, sharing among
companions and certain forms of hospitality had an additional function as social equalizers. Not
only did they redistribute material goods, presumably to the benefit of the less wealthy, but these

66
Thesiger, Arabian Sands,166-167.
67
Thesiger, Arabian Sands,168-169. This was repeatedly an issue, one man even threatened – perhaps hyperbolically – to divorce
his wife, if they did not stop, and proceeding to slaughter a camel for them.
68
Thesiger, Arabian Sands,308.
69
Thomas, Arabia Felix, 84.
70
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 136-7, 315.

31. 30

practices helped establish social closeness, even in circumstances a disparity in wealth existed
and between members of more and less prestigious branches of tribes.
If, as mentioned earlier, companions were expected to protect one another, even against
their own kin, they were also expected to share the hardships and pleasures of travel equitably,
and to decide collectively on matters of concern to the group. Both Thesiger and Thomas report
that on occasions when one would reach a well or stopping point before one’s companions, no
Bedu would touch food or drink until their companions were caught up and could share equally.
Thesiger, likewise, reported that food would always be divided evenly, down to the blackened
crusts of the bread. Even the tiny liver of a hare needed to be sliced into pieces for everyone.
71
In
fact, at one point Thesiger’s companions became distraught when they realized that they had
neglected to bring back food for the ferryman who had taken them across Dubai creek. When
Thesiger explained that the customs of the town were different and this would not be expected,
bin Ghabaisha replied, “We are Bedu. He was our travelling companion. Did he not bring us
here? and we have forgotten him. We have fallen short.” Likewise, decisions were undertaken as
a group.
72

Of course, the spoils of a raid were shared amongst the party as well. In this matter,
camels were divided equally among the members of a raiding party according to value, with the
exception that an important sheikh or the leader of the party might get an extra share. Weapons
confiscated from surrendered enemies were likewise split equally, but a dead man’s weapon
belonged to the man who killed him. A man who escapes from the party, only to be captured by
one individual ceded his camel and weapons to the individual and a man could choose to keep a
camel he captured and surrender his share of the rest “but he will only do that if he has a fast

71
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 151. In the event, the entire liver was given to Thesiger, but this was an exception.
72
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 161.

32. 31

camel.”
73
This equity in the division of spoils would have helped with the recruitment of a
raiding party. More to the point, however, it may speak to the purpose of raiding in the context of
the desert tribes. While Thomas’ assertion that the purpose of raiding was economic – “Men kill
and are killed in the fight for camels” – may be overly simplistic, it seems likely that the practice
of raiding served as a redistributive mechanism, allowing young men an opportunity to gain the
wealth necessary to marry and start a family and livelihood – camels are a source of wealth that
is self-reproducing and that grows naturally over time – while increasing the strength of one’s
own tribe in relation to its rivals.
74
One need look no further than Thesiger’s youngest and most
favored companions, bin Kabina and bin Ghabaisha, who made a nuisance of themselves in his
absence, establishing themselves as feared raiders in the Dhahirah near the borders of Abu
Dhabi, ʿOman and Saudi Arabia. They were penniless when they first joined Thesiger’s party.
By the end, with the camels they bought with the money from Thesiger, and using the rifles he
gave them as gifts to gain more through raiding, they were well-off – bin Kabina would have six
camels after the first crossing, before he took up raiding. Indeed, when Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud
forced peace on the tribes of the Northwest Rubʿ al-Khali, they were said to be chomping at the
bit to be allowed to raid once again. One can imagine that generational conflict might have
played a role in this – without raiding, the elder tribesmen would have had a monopoly on the
wealth of the tribe – but this is admittedly speculation.
Conclusion
Many of the norms and practices common to the Rubʿ al-Khali then reflect a broader
concern for independence, social mobility, and a roughly egalitarian social order. The extreme
generosity discussed above, raiding and the division of the spoils of war, certain forms of

73
Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 287-288 ; Thomas, Arabia Felix, 235.
74
Thomas, Arabia Felix, 231.

33. 32

hospitality, the strong tradition of consultative decision-making, dissent and independent action,
the selection of leaders by senior males, and the ease with which leaders who failed to maintain
consent together with a generally egalitarian social ethic and the broad acceptance of solicitous
behavior
75
combined to produce a social and economic order that was thoroughly redistributive,
in which wealth and poverty were seen as transitory, and in which hierarchical behavior was
strongly resented.
However, while the social order of the desert can be described as anarchic and egalitarian
in a strict sense, due to the lack of central authority and the apparent lack of an established
system of law, the argument of this paper is that it was in fact a thoroughly governed society.
Widely accepted norms took the place of formal laws; social pressure and the concept of honor
took the place of the state in legitimizing and enforcing conformity; orality, tracking skills and
the threat of violence from competing tribes took the place of institutional means of surveillance,
violence and control. This begs the question of how coercive this social order was. Certainly the
potential for coercion was present. A tribesman who seriously transgressed the established order
was certainly at risk of being ostracized, being excluded from marriage and family life, and was
defenseless against potential violence from other tribes. But there is little information now
available to indicate how common this was. Moreover, and more to the point, coercion is a
slippery, subjective state. Ultimately the only measure of the coerciveness of a social order is
how coerced people feel. Certainly, there is little to indicate that the Bedu felt their society to be
coercive. But the best written sources in the most thoroughly documented episodes in history
typically fail to communicate this aspect of human experience. The present study is thus
incomplete, as is our understanding of the way of life of the nomadic peoples of the Rubʿ al-

75
Here, one struggles to find an English word without a negative connotation, as the behavior is so thoroughly denigrated in
British and American societies. But I am referring to the practice of asking for things outright – gifts, money, food, etc. It is
reported by every visitor that the Bedu saw no shame in this behavior whatsoever.

34. 33

Khali. The only recourse available to a researcher looking for a more complete picture, then, is
oral research amongst those surviving Bedu in the states arrayed along the frontier of the great
desert. And such research would be fraught with difficulties ranging from the now-archaic
dialect these men and women speak, to the decades of rapid social transformation that have
shaped the greater portion of their lives and cannot help but color their memories of events – let
alone their subjective perception of their lives before the advent of mechanical transport and state
control.