This paper explores the relationship between naming practices, race, and tribal origins in Saudi Arabia. In so doing, it sheds light on a highly significant though little studied phenomenon in the kingdom, Saudi Arabia’s modern genealogical culture. One manifestation of this culture is the effort by Saudis of sedentary origin to affirm their attachment to prominent Arabian tribes, a process documented in thousands of books and articles over the past four decades. This process of genealogical affirmation has played out against a bleak historiographical landscape, where textual evidence for most assertions is scarce, and oral narrations have been devalued in the modern age. Drawing on interviews, manuscripts, family documents (both authentic and falsified), and ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2011 and 2012 in the northwest Arabian oasis town of al-'Ula, I plot the efforts by a Saudi micro-community to assert its connections to a prominent Arabian tribe, Harb. I show how the historical inhabitants of al-'Ula, the 'Alawna, have had to deal with a legacy of skepticism concerning their origins, one rooted in perceived racial or ethnic difference and the often unacknowledged stigma of slave origination that blots their historical reputation by Arabian tribal standards. This skepticism is compounded by the fact that al-'Ula is geographically peripheral to the dominant region of the kingdom, Najd (central Arabia), where narratives of lineal exclusivity have become measures of authentic national belonging. For those inhabitants of al-'Ula concerned with legitimating their genealogical position in the kingdom, I conclude, ridding themselves of the toponymic 'Alawna label and replacing it with a tribal nisba (i.e. al-Harbi) was the first step in establishing a basis of commonality with the kingdom’s dominant status group, Saudis of prominent tribal origin. In presenting the case of the 'Alawna, I hope to demonstrate the fluid and dynamic nature of tribal identification and affiliation in the modern kingdom, as well as the intimacy and centrality of tribal identification to the modern Saudi condition.

When several Omani employees and I were invited to a business function, one Omani male employee called a female Gibali employee to suggest that she not attend as the meeting would be held in a hotel at night and thus “not good.” I asked her if she was planning to attend and she laughed, “I was not thinking to go, but when he called to say I should not, I decided to go. If I want to go in the wrong direction, I do not need the night and I do not need a hotel.” My paper will explain how self-respect is equated to both self-control and freedom of choice within the Arab, Muslim, and tribal Gibali culture of southern Oman. Based on seven years of observations, interviews and research, I argue that the acceptability of individual decision-making, both for oneself and others, is stressed within Gibali culture. Social behavior is framed as a willing, not forced, submission to religious and/or family mandates. Deliberate attempts to control other people’s behavior are non-aggressively countered (as in the example above) or fitted into a rubric of independence by stating that one has decided not follow one’s inclination. Expats, visitors and I have noticed and remarked on how “quiet” life is in southern Oman as there are very few public displays of anger. In seven years of living in Salalah, the only raised voices I have heard in public are men arguing who will pay the bill in a cafe. None of the male Gibalis in my research group have been in a fight since arguments over football (soccer) games in their early teens. Peers who are angry or rude are teased and/ or shunned. Rudeness from strangers or those who are not peers is countered with avoidance or excusing/ ignoring the behavior. There has been very little anthropological work on the Gibali, Mahri or “town” cultures within the Dhofar region beyond Morris’ article and one unpublished dissertation: Tribal Practices and Folklore of Dhofar. Dawn Chatty has done extensive work with the southern Omani (but not Dhofari or Gibali) Harasiis tribe. The other anthropologists who have worked in Oman, including Barth, Christine Eickelman, Dale Eickelman, Limbert, and Wikan, were located in the northern part of the country. While there have been several academic publications about the Gibali language, I believe my paper would be the first academic presentation which focuses on Gibali culture.

This paper uses _Nahdat al-jaza’ir al-hadithah wa-thawratuha al-mubarakah_, a 1965 Algerian nationalist history by Muhammad Ali Dabbuz, to argue that in the twentieth century a distinctive Ibadi orientation was subsumed into an anti-colonial nationalist narrative that emphasized common goals with Sunni Algerians for independence from European control while downplaying the vibrancy of trans-regional Ibadi networks in the nineteenth century. Al-Shaykh Muhammad ibn Attafayyish (1820-1914), one of the preeminent religious scholars of his day across both Ibadi networks and throughout the educated Islamic world, became a valuable symbol of merging Ibadi and nationalist sentiments for the subsequent generation of nationalists. By portraying Attafayyish’s political concerns as integral to his commitment to religious scholarship, Dabbuz implied that this nineteenth-century flourishing of Islamic learning was both constructed by a latent national identity and formative of the pan-Islamic inclinations of following generations of national leaders. While Attafayyish adamantly opposed European imperialism and advocated cooperation across the Islamic world, he did so within a distinctly Ibadi framework, and he derived his legitimacy and acclaim by representing his sect. Dabbuz’s work is one among early twentieth-century Algerian, Pan-Islamist narratives that sought to elide the tensions in Algerian society by means of a unifying Muslim identity. Much scholarship has focused on this movement and its intersections with nationalist thought, exploring, for example, how pious practices, religious learning, and gender roles were compatible with modernist and anti-colonial conceptions of Islam in this nationalizing period. This project aimed to achieve hegemony over Algeria’s history by funneling moments of potential discord into a unifying narrative of national achievement. Algeria’s Ibadi community in the Mzab, long distinct from dominant Sunni and coastal society, represented one such potential for rupture in a supposedly harmonious Algerian past. As Amal Ghazal has argued, their historical isolation diminished in the nineteenth century as the Ibadis of the Mzab benefited from greater access to other Ibadi communities as well as to centers of Islamic learning, which allowed them to expand their intellectual networks and seek greater dialogue with their Sunni neighbors. This paper seeks to demonstrate that it is precisely this quiet opposition in the form of persistent Ibadi scholarship that later nationalist historians like Dabbuz sought to diminish by presenting Attafayyish as a pan-Islamist, while relegating his Ibadism to a mere circumstance.

This paper investigates conflict and resolution in a pastoral nomadic society. Conflicts and resolutions range from inter-lineage or inter-ethnic disputes, to disputes emerging from a civil war to changing national borders that compromise traditional territories and migration routes. In my study of the Hawazma Baggara, encompassing fieldwork data collected over a period of twenty-five years (1982-2010), several conflict types have emerged. I consider how the context of conflict changes as a result of (A) shifting population pressures that affect access to resources from competing subsistence activities; and (B) from a shift in primarily local level resolution to inclusively local, national and international level resolution. Intra-lineage disputes involve negotiation, but can also take a physical form as disputants demonstrate conflict by forming satellite house circles adjacent to the primary camp circle. Resolution of this dispute level (lineage segment) may involve rejoining the primary camp circle or physical separation by breaking away entirely. Inter-lineage disputes might be resolved by both traditional negotiations and government intervention. This paper considers two case studies. One describes inter-lineage conflict and the various traditional and legal mechanisms employed to find resolution, including government-forced physical separation of the feuding lineages. A second case study examines a dispute over land rights between Hawazma pastoralists and Nuba farmers in South Kordofan. Both groups make claims based on customary law, although the Nuba also claim the British allocated them the disputed territory. Both groups attempt to resolve the issue at the local level; both are willing to use traditional mechanisms of conflict resolution. Additionally, both groups activate national mechanisms by seeking the assistance of international conflict resolution organizations. This case reveals a number of salient problems: (1) Issues that arise from overlapping, incongruent national land tenure policies and law; and (2) Conflicting customary law and usufruct rights of multiple ethnic groups due to increasing population pressures put on scarce resources, exacerbated by massive population shifts in response to war. It reveals how, in a changing political context, local conflicts are taking on national and international implications, especially with new national political boundaries that ignore traditional migration routes. The paper concludes with a consideration of how traditional mechanisms of conflict resolution are employed to inform policy development in an emerging context of Sudan, now split into two national polities.