Since the 1980s a large volume of literature on tribes and the Bedouin has appeared in Jordan. It was the outcome of the expansion of the educational state system and the spread of literacy to the tribal countryside and prompted by the construction of 'official' Jordanian nationalism -- all developments of the 1970s. This literature includes studies of tribal customary law, works of poetry and folklore as well as tribal genealogies. In addition, in recent years local and foreign anthropologists and historians have collected oral testimonies from tribespeople. In order to assess the potential value of this new source to the writing of tribal histories, this paper revisits several episodes in the history of the Bani Sakhr tribal confederation during the mandate period. This tribal confederacy was the most important political power in areas which would become part the Emirate of Transjordan in 1921. As such the confederacy and its leaders played a crucial role in shaping the history of the emirate during the 1920s and 1930s. By exploring the case study of the Bani Sakhr, this study shows that in order to make use of the recent tribal literature and oral histories it is necessary to contextualize them not just once, but twice: a first context is historical, namely the Emirate's state-formation process steered by Emir Abdullah bin Hussein and the British authorities. This can be done by weighing the evidence from the tribal literature against a wide range of written sources as well as employing theoretical insights from the scholarly literature The second context is the that of the socio-political environment in which this material was produced. In contemporary Jordan, the issue of tribal history is politicized and sensitive. Since many of the leading families from the mandate still form an important part of the current elite, their histories need to be seen as part of their competition for Hashemite favors. In addition, tribal history emphasizes, by definition, division (along kinship and tribal lines) rather than uniformity and may undermine the hegemonic Hashemite narrative of nation-building. Although this new source should not be consulted independently, it can surely offer some important leads to be pursued and substantiated by other sources. Therefore, employing local perspectives promises to enrich our understanding of the history of tribes as well as to shed new light on the current political structure of the kingdom and its cultural foundations.