Abstract Tribe and State: The case of the Bedouin of Mount Sinai (Egypt) My paper examines the changing relationship between the state and the tribe, using my field data on the Jabaliya Bedouin of Mount Sinai (Egypt) whom I studied in the 1970s. The Bedouin claimed that they belonged to two tribes. As Jabaliya they had exclusive rights to cultivate gardens and build houses in the mountainous region around the monastery of Santa Katarina. As members of the Tawara tribe they, and all the other tribes of the region, enjoyed the right to graze their flocks of goats all over South Sinai. An elected tribal chief (‘omda) mediated all their affairs with the state (at that time, the Israeli occupation administration). An informal committee of elders, of which the ‘omda was not a member, regulated such matters as the annual tribal pilgrimage and the use of pastures in the tribal area, and adjudicated internal disputes. Most Bedouin men worked as labor migrants, spending many months outside the region. Their families maintained small flocks and orchards as an economic reserve. They knew that in the volatile political conditions of the region they would sooner or later lose their jobs and would then enter the market economy by an alternative route. Visiting the area some thirty years later I found that the Egyptian state had taken over part of the Jabaliya area and established on it a town of 7,000 inhabitants, Santa Katarina City. Nearly half the inhabitants of the town were immigrants from the Nile Valley. The Jabaliya responded to the loss of their land by building permanent houses in and around the town. Most men now worked in the region and no longer engaged in migrant labor. They maintained the gardens, but gave up the flocks. The ‘government’ ‘omda was still in place, but had little work to do. The tribal elders, however, were busier than ever, settling disputes between competing Bedouin businessmen. The annual tribal pilgrimages had been discontinued and the movements of tribesmen in the region were controlled by security forces. Indirect rule had been replaced by a more direct form of administration, and the tribe had lost some functions but not entirely disappeared. On the basis of my data I argue that the ‘tribe’ among these Bedouin is a territorial division of the state that appears wherever the state rules indirectly.