"The Ecological Bedouin: Ibn Khladun and Desert Literature" This paper compares and contrasts the image of the desert dweller as it appears in Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimma with two works of contemporary Arab “desert fiction,” by Abdelrahman Munif, Nihayat (Endings), and Ibrahim al-Koni, Naz-if Al-Hajar (The Bleeding of the Stone). I argue that while Ibn Khaldun and the two novelists all consider the environment as constitutive of the human self, the novelists go further than he does and ask How do the desert inhabitants relate to their habitat? Ibn Khadun depicted the Bedouin as a noble/ an ignoble savage, courageous and free, yet untamable and bereft of culture—a product of the desert with its vastness, harsh climate, and dearth of resources. A close reading of the two novels demonstrates a more complex and humane view of the Bedouin (Tuareqs in the case of al-Koni). At the center of the portraiture, although not exhaustive of it, is what I call the Ecological Bedouin, best illustrated in the relationship with animals. In the two novels, the Bedouin holds an animistic view of animals. He hunts them, but not more than one at a time; nor does he hunt a pregnant beast. The authors bring this image into sharp relief by contrasting his attitude with that of the insatiable hunters from the city. They accomplish this without much romanticism; both authors describe life in the desert as perilous, vacillating between the extremes of droughts and floods, with occasional respite. The contrast with Ibn Khladun could not be greater. Ibn Khaldun pictured the Bedouin as a turbulent figure menacing the city, whereas today it is the city that has conquered the desert, mining it for oil and minerals, and converting it into a tourist site and a waste dump—symbolized in the novels by the rapacious urban hunters. Not only do Mounif and al-Koni upend Ibn Khaldun’s enduring description of the Bedouin, they also rescue him from the distortions present in previous Arab fiction. The paper makes an original argument about the emergence of the new figure, the Ecological Bedouin, his location in the changing relationship between city and desert, and the beginnings of a new Arab environmental ethic. 365 words.