When the Emirate of Transjordan was established in March 1921, Shaykh Mithqal Pasha al-Fayiz was already on his way to attaining the top leadership position of the Bani Sakhr tribal confederacy. A few weeks later, he was recognized as their paramount shaykh, a position he kept until his death at the age of 90 in 1967. From the moment of his appointment, the elite status of Mithqal, and later that of his family and successors, was closely tied to the modern state; he was directly affected by the establishment of the Emirate of Transjordan. On the one hand, the gradual consolidation of state power inevitably came at the expense of his and the confederacy’s extensive autonomy. On the other, Mithqal took advantage of the new political structure to enhance his own political and economic position, and that of his family and tribes. By the late 1930s, Mithqal had emerged as the largest landowner and one of the richest and most influential men in the county. Mithqal’s connection to the Emirate entailed the need to modernize, as the new entity was a mandate state and was built in part on the model of the modern European state. This new political structure accelerated the pace of modernization, which had already been initiated by the Ottomans. This paper analyzes how Mithqal responded to these new developments, namely the process of state-formation over the 25 years of the mandate. It discusses the challenges Mithqal, as well as other shaykhs of his stature, had to deal with as part of the modernization process under British rule. As will be argued, Mithqal was amenable to adapt to the new modern conditions. More than any other shaykh in Transjordan, he was successful in finding new ways and resources to maintain his leadership and privileged position. Understanding Mithqal’s road to modernity entails the potential to further the understanding of the important, yet under-studied political and social functions of the tribal shaykhs in the Arab Middle East. A wide range of archival sources in Jordan, Israel and the UK, together with press reports and oral testimonies form the factual base of this study. The analysis draws on the ever-growing empirical and theoretical literature dealing with state-tribe relations and contributes to enriching our understanding of tribal societies in the Middle East in modern times.

This paper will use Khoury and Kostiner’s ‘Introduction’ and Richard Tapper’s chapter in their 1991 edited volume as the point of intellectual departure. It will examine state-society relations during periods of violent crisis, using two case studies of (neo-) colonial occupation as examples. The paper will compare the tribal policies of the British during their formal presence in Iraq (1920-1932) to the approach of the United States (2003-2011). The main focus will be British policy towards Iraqi tribes in the aftermath of the 1920 rebellion and American tribal policy during and after the ‘surge’ of 2007 and the so-called ‘Anbar Awakening’. The paper will begin by examining the ideational foundations of British and American tribal policy. How did military officers and senior civil servants at the centre of policy making understand tribal organisation? What caused a shift in policy both under the British Mandate and American occupation from ‘tribes’, once perceived as a hindrance to state building, playing a central role in cooption and pacification? The paper argues that a reified notion of ‘tribe’ dominated policy making, assigning them a role in delivering collective action and societal quiescence. They were meant to act as a nodal point to ideationally and coercively order rural Iraq. The paper concludes that this was a fundamental misunderstanding of ‘tribes’, Iraqi society and state building. This misperception sprang from an Orientalist discourse that reified tribes, allocating them a great deal more organisational and ideological coherence than they actually had. For British colonial state building this led to ‘tribal shaykhs’ used as interlocutors with rural society, fostering resentment, rebellion and ultimately the profound weakness of the Iraqi state. US policy created a series of weak collaborative elites, who temporarily delivered enough intelligence to pacify Anbar, but were swept away as indigenous state building took over from exogenous occupation. The paper will seek to explain these different outcomes by examining the role ‘tribes’ played in both pacification policies. Research for the paper will be from five major sources; fieldwork notes collected in Baghdad and Anbar in 2007 and 2008, the British colonial archive, books by key individuals involved in Mandate tribal policy, relevant US policy documents that have made it into the public domain and the copious secondary literature produced by those involved in the ‘Anbar Awakening’.

Egyptian attempts to increase state control over the Sinai peninsula have motivated fundamental socioeconomic transformations among the Bedouin of South Sinai. This transformation is leading to a convergence in “real culture” (the living habits and social norms in a society). However, instead of spurring a process of social homogenization as envisioned by the authorities, integration is strengthening identity boundaries between Sinai’s Bedouin and the expanding population of migrant workers. This is due to the increasing contact and dependence on outcomes of Egyptian development, including infrastructure and communications and the creation of local markets available to the Bedouin. The increasing friction between the state and the Bedouin results from the state’s failure to recognize that these transformations have created new pressures on the Bedouin to seek a higher level of participation in urban, nationally-controlled life. Egyptian policies have created a gap between the socioeconomic demands of the urbanizing Bedouin community and the opportunities available to them, leading to friction between the Bedouin and the Egyptian state as proximity and interaction increase. These transformations have often developed at odds with Egyptian goals highlighting a clash of interests. Activities like smuggling and narcotics distribution are made both possible and lucrative due to the existence of the modern nation-state. Furthermore, tourism has led to the economization of “symbolic culture” (symbols, values, and traditions ascribed through membership to a descent group), increasing the real value of a distinctive, Bedouin culture in Sinai. The relationship between state perceptions and policies on the one hand and Bedouin reactions including transformation and identity formation on the other is the subject of this study. This paper contends that identity formation and the emergence of the Bedouin as a social minority in Egypt is a result of state development planning that created for the Bedouin a marginal physical and cultural role in the nation. Field research in Dahab in conjunction with historical records and anthropological studies from South Sinai formed the basis for tracking these important socioeconomic changes as well as constructing a broad picture of Bedouin self-image and attitudes towards the Egyptian state and society. Social and political theory, guided by questions posed in Tribes and State Formation, provided the lens through which these observations were analyzed to arrive at a better understanding of the intended and unintended consequences of state-building, and how tribal responses are both similar and different from those of non-tribal minority groups.

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.