The Pasha's Bedouin and Tribes and State in the Egypt of Mehmet 'Ali 1805-1848 (Middle East Studies: History, Politics & Law)

The Pasha’s Bedouin Egypt’s history is interwoven with conflicts of Bedouin, governments and peasants, competing over the same cultivated lands, and of migrations of nomads from the deserts to the Nile Valley. Mehemet Ali’s era represented the intense integration of the Bedouin elite in the rural elite and of tribal leaders in the provincial administration. The bedouin in general were more and more regarded as part of the overall rural sector. Providing a new perspective on tribal life in Egypt under Mehemet Ali Pasha’s rule, The Pasha’s Bedouin examines the social and political aspects of the Bedouin from 1805 to 1848. By highlighting the complex relationships which developed between the government of the Pasha and the Bedouin, Reuven Aharoni sets out to expose the Bedouin as a specialized social sector of the urban economy and as integral to the economic and political life in Egypt at the time. This study aims to question whether the elements of bureaucratic culture which characterized the central and provincial administration of the Pasha, indicate special attitudes towards this sector of the population. Subjects covered include: • The ‘Bedouin’ policy of Mehemet Ali • Territory and identity, tribal economies • Tribe and state relations • Tribal leadership Benefiting from the author’s extensive fieldwork experience among Bedouin in the Sinai and the Negev, as well as using a range of archival documents and manuscripts both in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish, this highly researched book provides an essential read for historians, anthropologists and political scientists in the field of the social and political history of the Middle East. Reuven Aharoni, has a Ph.D. (2001) in Middle Eastern History from Tel-Aviv University. He currently teaches the history of the Middle East at Haifa University and at the Open University of Israel.

Routledge studies in Middle Eastern history 1 The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840–1947 Gideon Biger 2 The Survey of Palestine under the British Mandate, 1920–1948 Dov Gavish 3 British Pro-Consuls in Egypt, 1914–1929 C.W.R.Long 4 Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey Who is a Turk? Soner Cagaptay 5 Mamluks and Ottomans Studies in honour of Michael Winter Edited by David J.Wasserstein and Ami Ayalon 6 Afganistan Political frailty and external interference Nabi Misdaq 7 The Pasha’s Bedouin Tribes and state in the Egypt of Mehemet Ali, 1805–1848 Reuven Aharoni

The Pasha’s Bedouin Tribes and state in the Egypt of Mehemet Ali, 1805–1848

Reuven Aharoni

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX 14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2007 Reuven Aharoni All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-00723-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-35036-0 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-00723-9 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-35036-5 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-00723-5 (ebk)

Contents Preface

vii

Note on transliteration, dates and references

ix

Introduction

1

PART I Historical and social perspectives

14

1 Tribal history in outline

16

2 Tribal society and the tribal elite: approaches and concepts

33

3 Territoriality and identity

64

4 The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin

89

5 A trinity of competition and cooperation: ‘Mamluks’, bedouin and fellahin in the Egyptian society PART II Governing the state

114 133

6 Tribe and state in Egypt: coexistence in conflict

135

7 Office-holders

154

8 Military service: the Pasha’s bedouin

166

Conclusion

191

Notes

199

Bibliography

237

General index

254

Index of names and tribal groupings

263

Preface My interest in the bedouin’s life and culture stems from the years I spent among them in the Sinai during the 1970s. At the beginning it was more a romantic fascination. I was attracted by their hospitality and tales. At that time, I met Professor Emanuel Marx, who was engaged in fieldwork among the Jabaliyya bedouin of the mountainous region of South Sinai. I soon learnt from him that the bedouin society is not based on a subsistence economy, but is a specialized sector of a large and complex society; the shaykh is not a tribal leader but rather an agent of the government; the tribe is both an administrative division of the state and an organization that controls a home territory. These insights of his have accompanied my research ever since. In the course of my years among the bedouin my romantic fascination gradually gave way to a more realistic appreciation. This experience led me to write an MA thesis on the bedouin in Egypt. My superivisor, Professor Michael Winter, a mentor and a friend, suggested that relevant documents for doctoral dissertation could be found in the Egyptian National Archives. It was the beginning of several subsequent visits to the Egyptian National Library and the Egyptian National Archives during the 1990s. Professor Joseph Kostiner introduced me to the intricate world of tribe and state relations; Professor Ehud Toledano made valuable comments and shared with me his theories about the Egyptian society and its OttomanEgyptian elite. To a large extent this study rests on foundations that they put in place. In the process of gathering archival materials I became aware of the problematic character of studying the history of bedouin societies. Since the bedouin were unlettered until the middle of the twentieth century, all the available literature was written by nonbedouin, and consists of ethnographies, chronicles and travelers’ accounts. So this book presents a revisionist view of tribe and state relations in Egypt of the first half of the nineteenth century. My view is based on an attempt to understand the past through the findings of modern fieldwork among bedouin in various parts of the Middle East. Since the beginning of my work, nearly a decade ago, I became familiar with anthropological and sociological theories and models, which helped me to arrive at a better understanding of the archival documents. I am also indebted to many others for encouraging words and deeds, and for their contribution to the current version of this book. Among them are Professor Israel Gershoni, Professor Gideon Kressel, Professor Sasson Somech, Professor Joseph Ginat, Dr. Clinton Bailey, Dr, Zvi Elpeleg and Professor Henry Near for adorning the text with excellent English attire. I owe a very special debt to the staff of the Egyptian National Archives, especially to Mr Ibrahim Fathalla and to Madame Sawsan Abd al-Ghani and the staff of Dar al-Kutub, Cairo.

I gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance given me by the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo and by Professor Shimon Shamir, the incumbent of the Mendel Kaplan Chair in the History of Egypt and Israel, at Tel Aviv University. Last, but in no manner least, I wish to offer my deepest thanks to my family who have given me all their care and support, and who encouraged me throughout my academic course.

Note on transliteration, dates and references Arabic words, when used in citations and titles of Arabic literary sources, are transliterated according to the system of the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Names of the Ottoman-Egyptians and Turkish terms are transliterated as if they were ). Turkish; e.g. divan, müdür (Arabic—dīwān, mudīr), Ömer (Arabic— Names of individual bedouin and tribal groupings are transliterated in keeping with the bedouin pronunciation. The Arabic ‘q’ appears as ‘g’ and pronounced as in ‘give’. The letter ‘q’ is used for in words appearing outside the context of bedouin pronunciation—for example, in the names of persons and locales (Shuqayr, Aqaba). In names and words in the bedouin vernacular and in the context of bedouin pronunciation, the diphthongs appear as ‘ay’ (for ‘i’ as in time; e.g. ), and ‘ē’(for ‘a’ as in may; e.g. shēkh). The long vowel ‘ī’ with a tashdīd appears as ‘iyy’; e.g. The hamza after a long vowel in the middle of a word appears as ‘ye’ ( not ). Names of Egyptian locales are transliterated using the Egyptian-Arabic pronunciation and omitting all diacritics, retaining only the single open quotation mark (‘) for the ayn and for the alīf in the middle of a word and the hamza.

The Ottoman abbreviations for the names of the months, which were used in the archival records and documents, have been adopted here as follows: M: S:

Muharrem Safer

Ra:

Rebiülevvel

R:

Rebiülahir

Ca:

Cemaziyülevvel (Jumādā al-Ūlā)

C:

Cemaziyülahir (Jumādā al-Ākhirā)

B:

Receb (Rajab)

Ş: N: L: Za: Z:

Şaban Ramazan Şevval (Shawwāl) Zilkade Zilhice

Materials from Dār al-Qawmiyya (The Egyptian National Archives), are either from sijillāt (bound registers) or (boxes). References from the sijillāt use the system in the mimeographed subject heading list of Sijillāt al-Dār. Accordingly, sijill is given the code S. Most of (Viceregal Department)—given the code S/2 the references are from MS; Dīwān Khedewī (Department of Civil Affairs) is given the code S/3. The are referred to in the notes by the box number and document number. Most of the documents in the sijillāt and the were Ottoman and references are made to these originals.

Introduction This book is a study of the bedouin in Egypt under the state established by Mehemet Ali Pasha in the first half of the nineteenth century. It deals with the complex of relationships that developed between the government of the Pasha and his agents in the provincial regions and the bedouin tribes and their leaders, and with the part played by the bedouin in the economic and political life of Egypt. It focuses on the interaction between the bedouin and the state established by Mehemet Ali and the nature of his policy towards the bedouin, its modus operandi, and its implications for bedouin society. At a fairly early stage in the research it became clear that it is impossible to draw a clear line between the nineteenth century and the period of the Ottoman conquest. Mehemet Ali only speeded up the processes of economic, social and geographic change among the bedouin which had begun before his time. Part of the work is, therefore, devoted to a short description of the social, economic and political world of the bedouin during the Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman conquest. In this context, this study shows that, in the case of the bedouin, the ‘modern period’, which dates from Mehemet Ali’s accession to power at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was more a continuation of the previous period. Issues The historiography of the period of Mehemet Ali (1805–1848) has dealt mainly with his personality, his deeds, his conquests, his ideas and his reforms. Previous studies have virtually ignored the structural aspects of the subject, the constraints under which local economies functioned, and the reactions of society—particularly the fellahin and the bedouin—to his policy. In Henry Dodwell’s study, for instance, one can discern a colonialist viewpoint and Turcophobic tendencies which do not reflect Mehemet Ali’s real attitude to the Ottoman régime.1 Afaf Lutfi Marsot sees him as a Mamluk ruler whose policy was no different from that of his predecessors in the eighteenth century; but, in general, the criterion by which his personality and his regime have been judged, particularly by Egyptian scholars, has been his contribution to the creation of the modern Egyptian nation-state. Later research, and recent studies such as those of Gabriel Baer, Robert Hunter, Ehud Toledano, Kenneth Cuno, LaVerne Kuhnke, Afaf Marsot and Khaled Fahmy, deals with broader social issues, and with the reaction of the populace to Mehemet Ali’s policy.2 One of the objects of this study is to examine the reactions of the bedouin to Mehemet Ali’s policy, and the part they played in the state which he created. I have attempted to examine the question of whether the elements of bureaucratic culture which characterized the central and provincial administration established by Mehemet Ali, including their methods of supervision and the way in which the bedouin were

The Pasha's Bedouin

2

integrated into the administrative set-up, indicate special attitudes towards this sector of the population. Mehemet Ali Pasha was the first Egyptian ruler who succeeded in transforming himself from a vali, the governor of a vilayet, to the sole ruler of the whole of the province of Egypt, and thereby initiated the process of state-formation. This process created a distinctive dynamic whereby the presence of the state was broadened from the inner public space of the elite with which the Pasha surrounded himself to the institutional sphere—the army, the bureaucracy, and office-holders in the rural areas, and to the outer scope—markets, mosques, courts of justice and other institutions. The bedouin were forced to adjust to this presence within the tribal territories and organizations. The state which Mehemet Ali established was not a calm and passive body: on the contrary, it employed every possible means in order to ‘penetrate’ the public, external and institutional spheres, and to permeate the consciousness of as many social groups as possible. The development and spread of means of transport and arms technology, and the growth of variegated bureaucratic machinery gradually made it possible for the state to widen its dominance over the desert periphery. Many works on the relations between nomads and the state have been published in recent years, and they put forward several approaches to the question. They generally speak of the contradictory and incompatible nature of tribe and state, propose a typology of states and tribes, and then go on to discuss the complex reality which contradicts the traditional typologies. Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner sum up this point well, and claim that, contrary to the typological assumptions, tribes and nations have created each other and maintained each other’s separate existence, though in an unstable fashion.3 Just as the strength or viability of the state, that is, its ‘stateness’—its ability to rule, to implement the laws and to maintain social solidarity—may change, so tribes also change in the course of time, and create different social categories within the state. The degree of ‘stateness’ is usually gauged by the existence of centralized institutions or machinery, social hierarchy and leadership. In Egypt, categories of nomad bedouin, farmers and townspeople were created. As ‘stateness’ changes, the state incorporates tribes in various degrees of social integration and political participation. The tribes, on the other hand, have different degrees of autonomy and subordination. Thus, tribes and states create a dialectical symbiosis. They are simultaneously interdependent and separate. The nature of this dialectic springs from the fact that the tribe possesses political organization, tribal values and various ways of influencing society; indeed, it may be said that as a collective unit it possesses a cultural essence, even though there is no accepted definition of a tribe. In the case we are discussing, the state was not created by tribes, and the bedouin did not play a significant part in its establishment and construction. Therefore, our study deals not with the transformation of tribes into states, but the dialectical symbiosis of the relations between tribes and the state over a period of time. The most distinctive manifestation of the relations between the bedouin and the state created by Mehemet Ali was, on the face of things, the dominance of contradictory forces and trends in this relationship. They grew up as a result of the ostensibly conflicting ideologies of the two sides, and the clash between contradictory dynamics of location and space: the centrifugal force which motivated the bedouin’s actions was opposed to the centripetal force which characterized the state.4 This constituted a clash of rotatory forces, both unitary and divisive, which acted simultaneously within the framework of the

Introduction

3

state. Tribalism, rooted in itinerancy or nomadism, continued to be one of the most dynamic centrifugal forces acting at this period. But it also appears that the bedouin and the central authorities shared a similar tendency: the bedouin, to take part in the actions of the government; and the government, to exploit the skills and relative advantages of the bedouin in various spheres. This tendency created a balance between the rotatory forces from the centre to the periphery and from the periphery to the centre in this particular case. The most important question in our discussion is that of spatial dynamics—the place of the tribal groups as a factor influencing the components of the tension and balance between the extrusive forces within the tribes and the forces of the state which opposed them from without. In this period, the rural sector of Egypt already included some quite large groups of pastoral nomads, particularly bedouin who, though they were partly settled, still considered their spatial wanderings to be the justification for their existence. This ideology compelled them to preserve and manage environmental resources, which involved a wide and dynamic deployment of the population, while at the same time safeguarding the tribal territories in the more arid regions. This centrifugal force was ranged against the centripetal force of the state. In the earliest stages of its crystallization the concrete expression of the centripetal ideology of the Pasha’s regime was centralism. The disagreement between the bedouin and the state was focused on the management of the pastoral resources and land which the state aspired to control. Although the processes of permanent settlement of the bedouin under Mehemet Ali Pasha were, in the main, voluntary, they continued to check the state’s increasingly centripetal tendency, and thereby to preserve the option of spatial dynamism. Although these two ideologies were the expression of a struggle between the bedouin and Mehemet Ali’s state for power and freedom of action in their traditional territories, the bedouin did not seek to destroy and take control of the state: they allied themselves with the state or with forces hostile to it, in accordance with their own interests. The bedouin were to be found in the center of the skirmishes and violent conflicts which took place until 1811 between the Mamluk and Ottoman-Egyptian emirs and beys and Mehemet Ali’s regime, and among the various rival factions and royal houses. They were one of the causes of the perpetual unrest in the provinces which resulted from the continuous clashes with the village-dwelling fellahin. Similarly, the bedouin were the source of violent inter-tribal clashes, which necessitated the intervention of the authorities and led the Pasha to contend with the bedouin on two levels. The first level was the political struggle with the bedouin as nomadic and seminomadic groups. As early as the end of the eighteenth century many of them were tax farmers (multazims), with the right to lease land, who had succeeded in establishing semiindependent chiefships in Upper Egypt and the Delta area, until they were eliminated as a result of the military actions of Ali Bey al-Kabir, the de facto ruler of Egypt (1760– 1772). Mehemet Ali’s policy towards the bedouin was complex: he weakened them by fomenting inter-tribal conflicts; but, at the same time, he formed alliances with dominant groups, and granted land to the bedouin shēkhs, in the framework of his new agrarian policy, which replaced the tax farming (iltizām) system. On another level, he dealt with the bedouin as a social organization with its own value system founded on the traditional tribal structure in tribal territories, and on an economy of animal husbandry and seasonal agriculture. True, he had to injure this structure in

The Pasha's Bedouin

4

order to weaken the tribes; but, nonetheless, he was impelled to mollify and strengthen it, particularly in order to avoid impairing internal security and harming the agricultural population and trade routes. As a result of the growth in the power and effectiveness of the state which Mehemet Ali created, the relationships between the bedouin and the state became even more complex than the relatively simple pattern which had characterized them in previous periods. The Ottoman authority was able to exercise only limited control over peripheral areas. Thus, the territorial marginality of the nomads in the western, eastern and southern desert regions of Egypt afforded them a considerable advantage: they were able to determine the nature of their relationship with the permanently settled villagers and, in this sense, with the state. These relationships were marked by gradual encroachment on the villagers’ agricultural lands. Moreover, groups of nomads were enabled by their tribal structure to increase their income by the provision of services, and as administrative agents of the government.5 Scholars have frequently maintained that the central events which foreshadowed the modern era were the French invasion and conquest (1798–1801), and the reforms instituted by Mehemet Ali Pasha during his period in power. Of these two events, the Pasha’s agrarian and military reforms had the more decisive influence on the nature, the structure and the composition of tribal society. The Pasha’s innovation was a different conception of the relationships between the state and the tribes, a conception which led to the acceleration of the processes of change which bedouin society had already been undergoing. Now, for the first time, the central authority dealt with the nomad population by means of special machinery created for the purpose. Mehemet Ali appointed officials with the rank of department supervisor (nazιr) to deal with bedouin affairs in the provinces, and special officers (başιbozuks) to command bedouin units in the army. Just as Mehemet Ali’s policy changed the face of the provincial areas, it also contributed to the change in bedouin society, and its transformation into a more stratified and heterogeneous community. Even so, Mehemet Ali’s government, as did its Ottoman predecessors, continued to see in the bedouin a troublesome element, a source of instability and a danger to the security of the villages and trade routes. This change was noticeable even earlier, as a result of the influence of the economic and administrative developments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bedouin society was more clearly divided into its different categories: nomadic bedouin who continued to move around in the broad desert regions and on the margins of agricultural areas, and who led nomadic and semi-nomadic lives based on animal husbandry and arid agriculture; rural bedouin who had settled permanently in the neighbourhood of the fellahin or in their own villages; and urban bedouin—shēkhs and heads of clans who lived with their families and followers in urban settlements and villages, and built their homes there, after receiving grants of land from the Pasha. The nature of Mehemet Ali’s markedly centralist regime strengthened the tendency of tribal society to crystallize into a stratified, hierarchic community containing groups with different economic and social status. It is particularly important to consider this division because of its implications for the bedouin’s relations with the state. Though many of those in the first category—the nomads and semi-nomads—were far from the centers of power, their influence on the economy was considerable. Their economic power lay in the breeding of livestock, and

Introduction

5

their political power in their ability to control the main trade routes and, from the point of view of the authorities, to disrupt the normal tenor of life. Those in the second category were at the stage of transition to a sedentarized culture characterized by fixed borders and an economy based on permanent sources of livelihood. They were connected with the powerful clans of landowners who dominated the economic and social life of the tribes and villages, and it was they who made their mark on everyday life in the tribal territories and, together with the landowning notables of rural society, on the provincial areas in general. Those in the third category represented their tribes vis-à-vis the authorities, and acted in their interest. The fact that they lived in urban and rural centers strengthened their status in the tribe, and helped them in the fulfilment of their functions. In addition, they held positions in Mehemet Ali’s administration, and played an active part in Egyptian socio-political life. Thus, we cannot treat the bedouin of Egypt during this period as a homogeneous or uniform group. Moreover, they differed in their modes of behaviour and did not constitute an undifferentiated force united under one leadership: they consisted of variegated tribal groups, spread over different areas, with different aims and attitudes to their problems, and led by shēkhs with conflicting interests. Treaties and cooperation between tribal groups were arranged within the tribal confederations—their territorial organizations. There were two main processes which affected bedouin society during Mehemet Ali’s reign. The first was the reduction in their power as a strong independent element, as against their status in the second half of the eighteenth century. This was the result of their exposure to the close administrative supervision of the regime. This process was also expressed in the social and economic changes in bedouin society: the acceleration of permanent settlement, the break-up of tribal structures, and the assimilation of seminomadic populations into rural society. During this period, the transition from a pastoral, agrarian, homogeneous and autarkic community to one linked to outside society and to local politics continued apace. The second process was the crystallization and consolidation of clans based on households and dynasties, headed by dominant shēkhs with greater strength and bargaining power than had previously been the case. They supplied horse and camel cavalry, as well as various services, to the new army established by Mehemet Ali, and, in return, received generous allocations of land. As a result, Mehemet Ali became more dependent on these shēkhs. Research has revealed an important error made by several scholars who have dealt with the question of the bedouin in Egypt at this period. In his pioneering work on the settlement of the bedouin in Egypt during the nineteenth century, Gabriel Baer maintained that Mehemet Ali settled the bedouin by means of force.6 The Egyptian claims that he used force against the bedouin, and scholar drafted them into the army in order to bring about their permanent settlement. In fact, however, Mehemet Ali did not force them to settle: his aim was to limit the territory from which the bedouin derived their livelihood within certain areas. There were several tribes with which he had no contact, and their way of life within their own territory remained unchanged. He knew how to exploit the nomads’ need for allies in the ‘outside world’ in order to survive under conditions of uncertainty such as those created by life in the desert. The result of his policy was a decline in the possibilities and profitability of nomadism,

The Pasha's Bedouin

6

and a growing tendency to remain in permanent areas of livelihood. It should be noted that the settlement of nomads is a long-term process, influenced by economic and social considerations, and is not subject to rapid change. Thus, despite the Pasha’s efforts, most of the bedouin continued their nomadic way of life for some seasons of the year, just as they had been accustomed to in previous years. Many of the bedouin who settled permanently and lived an agricultural way of life had begun to do so even before the period of Mehemet Ali, primarily for economic reasons, when they had the opportunity to cultivate land which yielded a better profit than pasture. The concept of the tribe employed by the scholars referred to above is also mistaken. They use the traditional, outdated model of classification of nomadic society by the criterion of itinerancy, dividing the bedouin into nomads, semi-nomads and permanent settlers, and devoting considerable parts of their work to the geographical division of the tribes.7 Modern research has shown that nomads tend to exploit the ecological characteristics of their environment and to combine agriculture with animal husbandry. They engage in a variety of occupations such as wage labor and other economic activities; thus, they may belong simultaneously to all of these categories. In the eyes of modern research the concept of the tribe may mean an administrative unit or a territorial organization or a part of the tribal confederation of the tribes in a particular area. It appears that the bedouin population in Egypt in our period was divided in this manner. It seems that the authorities used the tribal framework for administrative purposes, and thereby ‘created’ a new type of ‘tribe’.8 In such a case, the administration decides on the borders of the territory within which it permits the development of ‘tribal’ entities—first and foremost leaders dependent on the existence of the regime, rather than those who emerge naturally within the tribe. Such entities may be similar to the ‘chiefships’ known to us from Egypt in the second half of the eighteenth century, in which a tribal group headed by a shēkh (‘chief’) effectively controlled a large area of land. In Egypt, political alliances based on different types of tribal identity were often changed. They were based on agreements concerning land use and grazing rights, political and other demands, marriage strategies, etc. Mehemet Ali intervened, not necessarily intentionally, in the creation of bedouin tribal frameworks and political alliances. He supported certain clans which amassed strength and political power by providing from their ranks the powerful shēkhs who were associated with the regime and were the leaders of the tribes.9 Since this book’s structure is not linear—that is to say, it does not present the events in chronological order, but according to subjects such as the social world, the economic world and the political world of the bedouin in the state of Mehemet Ali—it is advisable to describe the relevant period in general terms. Legally, Egypt was a province of the Ottoman Empire from the conquest in 1517, and remained so during the reign of Mehemet Ali and his successors, until the outbreak of the First World War. However, local elites attained influence from the seventeenth century onwards. The localized military elite of the grandees (known as beys), effectively ousted the Ottoman regime in the second half of the eighteenth century, but the grandee’s division into factions prevented the establishment of a stable regime. The end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth were marked by continuous warfare waged by French and British forces, together with the Ottomans and the localized military elite. In 1805 Mehemet Ali succeeded in maneuvring himself into a position of

Introduction

7

supremacy over Egypt; his origins were in Macedonia, where he was second in command of an expeditionary force composed of Albanian Ottoman forces. It took him seven years to conquer the remnants of the beys and establish his rule over Egypt. Mehemet Ali came to power at a time when the Ottoman provinces in the Eastern Mediterranean were beginning to feel the influence of European economic expansion, and the European powers were building up their power in the region. In this politicoeconomic environment he endeavoured to realize his ambition to found an independent dynasty, and to create a new empire in the Eastern Mediterranean. He tried to develop trade with Europe by complete control of production and trade—the ‘monopoly system’, as the Europeans called it. Mehemet Ali conducted a series of foreign wars in the Hejaz, the Sudan, and bilad alsham. His program of independence and expansion was supported by internal reforms. From the winter of 1813–1814 he abolished the system of iltizām, which had existed since the sixteenth century, in the rural administration. In its stead he created a system of direct, centralized assessment and taxation of land. As well as the centralized state, he created a new army on the French model. He made major investments in higher education, industry and agriculture, and the area of cultivated land grew steadily. This study shows that rural and tribal society and economy also underwent similar processes of change, as a result of the Pasha’s agrarian policy. Kenneth Cuno’s research has shown how closely these two societies were linked. Social stratification had been built into the bedouin tribal organizations as early as the eighteenth century, no less than in the society of the fellahin. During the first half of his rule the condition of the provincial regions improved, and agriculture was expanded as a result of the improvement in security which resulted from the ‘bedouin policy’ of the Pasha, as well as his policy of encouraging agriculture. But from the mid-1820s many of the fellahin amassed debts as a result of the Pasha’s demands. Many of them fled, abandoning their land, which was confiscated and given to others who were able to pay the taxes. Land was granted to the richer class—mostly the notables—even before the Pasha granted extensive estates to his entourage. These developments added considerably to the power of the shēkhs and heads of the large clans, who now became more prosperous landowners. The new army created by Mehemet Ali was an expression of his innovative approach to the bedouin population, and was no less important than land distribution. Khaled Fahmy claims that the army served as a means of fostering Egyptian national consciousness, and indeed, in bringing about the foundation of the modern Egyptian state: not by defining the nature of the ‘nation’, but by creating new methods of control, supervision and management which altered radically the nature of the administration in Cairo and effected a basic change in its methods of dealing with the Egyptian population. The army was also an essential factor in altering the ethnic and linguistic structure of the middle and upper classes, since it unintentionally brought about an increase in ‘national’ sentiments among the soldiers, most of whom were Arabic speakers but were under the command of an arrogant Turkish-speaking military and bureaucratic elite.10 The bedouin did not participate fully in the ‘national’ awakening described by Khaled Fahmy. Unlike the fellahin, they were already accustomed to bear arms and solve disputes by violent means, and were not subject to conscription. They constituted an important branch of the regime in executing its new techniques; and the Pasha was extremely dependent on the

The Pasha's Bedouin

8

bedouin cavalry. Even so, the feeling of Egyptian fraternity also spread among the bedouin soldiers, particularly those who served in non-bedouin units. This was clearly exemplified in the revolt of 1881, when the bedouin of al-Sharqiyya province joined the camp of Urabi.11 Sources and methodology This book relies mainly on the material collected in the Egyptian National Archives (Dār al-Qawmiyya) in Cairo. These are mainly registers (sijills) of orders and correspondence between the office of the Pasha’s court, and the principal bureaus (divans) and the district administration on various subjects. Some of the discussions and aldecisions in the divans were published in Mehemet Ali’s official journal, Misriyya. There are also books of records (defters) of the Department of Treasury (ruzname), which contain records of payment of land tax. At the time the material for research was being collected, a smaller amount of material—the sijills of the courts, and personal files of officials in the official system—was in Dār archive in Cairo, or in transition to Dār and could not be consulted. The archive also contained the land tax records of various villages. Also used in the course of the research were collections of laws and ordinances from the period in question which were published at a later date (for instance: edited by Yacoub Artin); biographical dictionaries, such as contemporary historical accounts, such as al-Jabartī’s and documents collected by Amīn Sāmī and published in the volumes of Taqwīm al-Nīl. I have found that the viewpoint of the foreign observer is particularly valuable. Such perspectives may be found in publications such as the surveys of the members of Napoleon’s scientific expedition (Description de l’Egypte); memoirs of European observers such as the French physician Clot Bey; reports of British diplomats, to be found in the Public Records Office in London; collections of letters of foreign consuls, which have been published in Cairo; and travelers’ accounts (for example, of John Lewis Burckhardt, who died in Egypt in 1813). The travel diary genre was dominant in such works; in dealing with nineteenth-century Egypt they included information about the bedouin in accounts of their travels, describing ethnographic details along the route. Thematic articles dealing with particular subjects are much scarcer. The members of the French scientific expedition collected a great deal of information based on oral testimony, and concerned themselves with the versions of history preserved by the bedouin. Their surveys constitute a detailed corpus of profound ethnographic information, but they are eclectic, and lack a central theme. Since the bedouin did not create any written material, these accounts were the only source of information on which later Egyptian writers who devoted part of their research to the bedouin could rely. Chroniclers and historians of the period, both Egyptian and European, based their attitudes and writings on observations and anecdotes about bedouin life. Many of them speak of a series of typical bedouin characteristics: they are deceptive, cruel, greedy, wild, and swift, have a weak and superficial understanding of the Islamic faith, and are proud and inhospitable. Those who

Introduction

9

wrote about the state of Mehemet Ali did not provide details of their research methods, and presented an integrative narrative of the period of the Pasha’s rule. In relation to the bedouin, authors of this genre speak of a period rich in alliances, treachery, plots and conspiracies, against a background of a weak Ottoman regime followed by alienation from the state. The great importance and unique character of the sources which I have used in my research present special challenges. Many official documents deal with bedouin affairs, and this fact bears witness to their importance in the policies and plans of the regime. But most of the information in these documents is of a single type, and deals with a limited variety of subjects—mainly the appointment of shēkhs, land allotments to shēkhs, treatment of unruly bedouin, recruitment to the army, and the services provided to the state by the bedouin. Therefore, I was compelled to examine as many allusions to the bedouin as possible, especially in order to decipher the codes of the authorities’ relationship to them. It is certainly possible to follow social, economic and political developments with the help of these documents. But in order to understand the processes that bedouin society underwent during this period it is of great importance to use the accumulated results of recent anthropological and social research. Taken together, the documents and other sources which I have used, such as travelers’ accounts and contemporary chronicles, present a clear picture of the economic life of the bedouin and the mutual relations between nomads and villagers in the provincial regions—a picture which has not been depicted in the few studies of the bedouin in this period that have appeared up to now. Moreover, there is little possibility of tracing a particular group of bedouin over a period of time in order to reach conclusions about its status, its location, and the processes of change which it experienced. In my view, this is because the officials and other authors had little knowledge of the structure and composition of such groups. Nor does the existing documentation furnish sufficient information about methods of tribal organization. On the other hand, we do learn that the administration influenced the creation of tribal structures and political alliances among the bedouin. What is to be seen in these sources corroborates the models and the approach to the nature and structure of the bedouin tribe developed by such modern social anthropologists as Emanuel Marx, Dale Eickelman and others. For this reason they are extremely important. An even greater advantage of these sources is that they present a clearer picture of the relationships between the bedouin and the administration, and of the structure of the administrative machinery which dealt with the bedouin. These documents contain important information about the bedouin element, including various aspects of the relations between the central government and the administrative apparatus in the provinces, and between the various groups of bedouin, as well as the standpoint of the government and its attitude to the bedouin. In this context, it appears from our sources that, as they are nowadays, tribal confederations and tribes were organized under the influence of ecological factors and the activities of the authorities in the areas where the bedouin lived. It may be assumed, therefore, that at that period too, the tribe did not constitute a purely social or cultural unit, but was also a community whose continued existence was influenced by considerations of economic profitability, and the individual decisions of its components. The bedouin settled in places where they found sources of livelihood rather than in accordance with their tribal organization. Territorial

The Pasha's Bedouin

10

considerations appeared only when resources were scarce, or when the authorities attempted to intervene. Another challenge for the scholar of tribal society arises from the fact that since the bedouin lacked formal education they were among the communities which left no written evidence, and there are no original documents attesting to their attitudes, their aspirations, and the motives for their activities and forms of organization. The official documents bear witness to the apparent motives for their behaviour and patterns of action, and even to their viewpoints on certain subjects. But the content of these documents reflects, with almost no exception, the policy, approach and administrative arrangements established by Mehemet Ali. Therefore, the narrative presented is mainly that of the state. Nonetheless, this material affords an opportunity to interpret the bedouin’s viewpoints on various issues, the way they related to different questions, and their reactions to current events, from the point of view of the local officials. Travelers’ accounts and the works of contemporary chroniclers and observers are of help in completing the picture, especially because of the direct, authentic contact with the bedouin population that many of them maintained. A further challenge arises from the nature of the documents in the Egyptian archives. The foreign scholar, who has to deal with texts written in more than one language, and classified according to more than one system, faces many difficulties. In this case, the text is a complex cultural product, and it must be read as a product of the period and culture in which it was produced—for instance, the written language in which Turkish words are intermingled with Arabic. The officials of Turkish origin were not fluent in Arabic, while the local officials—Copts, Armenians Jews and others—did not know Turkish well. Their language is ungrammatical, and is interspersed with colloquial bedouin words and expressions. The officials of the ruzname used a special script—khatt al-qirma—to register areas of land and amounts of taxes in the defters. This constituted a sign language difficult to decipher, and intended to prevent the information reaching the wrong hands.12 As I have pointed out, in order to meet some of these challenges I have found it best to make use of ethnographic studies about the past and modern anthropological research which provides insights into the social structure of the bedouin, their economic life, and their attitude to the administration. With their aid one can understand the social and economic processes experienced by tribal society during the period in question. These studies show that in our own time, too, governments relate to nomad populations in a stereotypic fashion. Even today, rulers are accustomed to maintain contact only with shēkhs appointed to represent their groups, and governments attempt to restrict the area in which they move for reasons of security, and try to make them settle permanently. Land ownership is problematical, since in our time states do not recognize tribal rights over territory. The concepts of modern political and social anthropology, which study the relationship between tribe and state, can help us understand how bedouin society contended with the central process in Mehemet Ali’s Egypt—the process of nationbuilding. In this study, the historical discipline serves as a general framework for the gathering of documentary material which gives an overall view of the period, while anthropology is essential in order to explain social structures and relationships within them. It affords sociological significance to ‘tribal’ social relationships, and serves as a tool for

Introduction

11

understanding the cultural bases of the social identity and the conceptual world of the bedouin, and of their social organization during this period. In the words of Clifford Geertz, it allows us to reconstruct their ‘curve of social discourse’. The scene of action Egypt is a unique geographical and ecological entity. Its inhabited area, the Nile Valley and the Delta, consists only of a narrow strip of land between extensive deserts, with an area of about 38,000 square kilometres—less than a twentieth of the whole geographic area of Egypt. The Nile flows for more than 1,600 kilometres, from Wadi Halfa in the south to the Mediterranean, with no tributaries. Some distance north of Cairo the river breaks up into channels, creating the Delta which eventually flows into the sea between Rosetta (Rashid) in the west and Damietta (Dumyat) in the east. One of the most heavily populated agricultural areas lies between the two main branches of the river. The border between the populated area and the desert stands out in the Egyptian landscape. Nonetheless, the border between the green agricultural area and the yellow desert has always been somewhat blurred as a result of intensive human activity along the dividingline—activity which has led to harmonious intermingling of the populations. Were it not for this activity, whose aim is to increase the agricultural area, the Nile Valley would have remained narrow: the farmers living in the Nile Valley would have been trapped in a narrow strip, just 8–40 kilometres wide, with arid deserts on either side—the Arabian Desert to the east and the Libyan Desert to the west—and would have been condemned to a constant struggle to extract their livelihood from the soil. Their dependence on the river and its waters was absolute. They therefore invested their best efforts, at their own initiative and that of their rulers, in developing irrigation works, channels and dams, in order to increase the area of agricultural land. The bare, level landscape, scored deeply by the Nile Valley, exposed the settled population, urban and agricultural alike, to the wilderness. They rarely saw rain, and the desert always aroused terror in them. Over and against them they saw the inhabitants of the deserts, bedouin tribes in various stages of nomadism, who competed with them, the village-dwelling fellahin, for the same agricultural lands. The sharp but undefined divide between cultivated land and wilderness was a cause of constant friction among the rural population. Thus, throughout its history Egypt has constituted a unique phenomenon—a symbiosis between nomads and permanent settlers. The arid deserts left the nomads no alternative but to seek pasturage and water close to the villages. This state of affairs turned them into a vulnerable population, far more exposed to the pressures of the authorities than is usually believed; but, on the other hand, it gave them the opportunity of gaining control over thriving agricultural regions, and thereby strengthening them in their struggle with the authorities. Thus, the ‘tribal’ history of Egypt is rife with struggles between the bedouin and the authorities, with military actions against this phenomenon, and with immigration of nomads to the Nile Valley and their permanent settlement close to the existing villages. Settlement of nomads in Egypt is not a special characteristic of the modern period, nor was it the result of Mehemet Ali’s policies, as certain scholars believe. There is evidence that it existed in the seventh century, when the tribes entered Egypt in the wake of the Arab conquest. Ecological conditions led the bedouin to develop

The Pasha's Bedouin

12

a distinctive economic system which was deeply influenced by the conditions of the areas in which they lived. The arid deserts yield means of livelihood for only a few months each year, while the green and fertile Nile Valley cries out for settlers, but compels those who desire to settle to fight for control of the land and contend with the pressures of the authorities. Egypt, which was always a land of peasants, developed a tradition of coexistence between them and their neighbors, the nomad and semi-nomad bedouin.

Part I Historical and social perspectives

1 Tribal history in outline The early confederations and groupings The Arab conquest of Egypt in 641 brought in its wake the first waves of migration of Arab tribes from the Arabian peninsula. The first settlers were tribes that had originated in southern Arabia ( or Yaman), and in the eighth century there began the or Qays). They were longsettlement of tribes originating in northern Arabia ( standing rivals, so the northern tribes settled for the most part on the western bank of the Nile, and the southern tribes on the eastern bank. Some of the tribes that arrived in Egypt settled permanently shortly after their arrival, and very soon began to resemble, and become integrated into, the veteran peasant population. This was chiefly because they settled in the agricultural areas of the Nile. The chronicler al-Maqrīzī wrote at the opening of his work: Know that the Arab who took part in the conquest of Egypt have disappeared with the passing of time, and most of their traces have disappeared. In the land of Egypt there remain only remnants of these Arab.1 al-ladhīna shahadū qad abādahum aldahr wa-jahalat akthar wa-qad baqiyat min baqāyā fa man baqiya The migration of bedouin tribes to Egypt never ceased. After the Fatimid conquest in the tenth century, tribes of Berber descent from North Africa began to arrive, and they underwent an arabization process in Egypt. The major event of this century was the beginning of the migration of the Banī Hilāl tribes from the Najd region in the centre of the Arabian peninsula; until then they had not been significantly involved in the centrifugal expansion of many of the Arab tribes in the course of the early Arab conquests. There is no doubt that several of the waves of migration were voluntary, but a significant number of the Banī Hilāl tribes were exiled to Upper Egypt by the Fatimid Caliph of Cairo, as punishment for their participation in the rebellion and their plundering of al-Madina. There still exist residents of Upper Egypt and the Sudan who claim descent from the Banī Hilāl.2 In the second half of the eleventh century the Banī Hilāl left Egypt and, at the urging of the Fatimid Caliph crossed the Libyan Desert and took North Africa by storm.3

Tribal history in outline

17

On the eve of the period of the Mamluk Sultanate there still existed in Egypt some groups which had apparently belonged in the past to the great tribal confederations that existed at the time of the beginnings of Islam and even earlier, and therefore bore the names of tribes of that period: Judhām, Lakhm, Juhayna, Sulaym, and others. The Mamluk period saw the decline of these earlier confederations. Some disappeared Qaysi grouping of Sulaym disintegrated, and the completely: for instance, the only group identified with Sulaym at the time of the Ottoman conquest was the and the Lakhm grouping disintegrated and disappeared as a result of internal disputes. Other structures disintegrated, or broke up into sub-groups which became dominant, and more important than the grouping to which they belonged. For example, the Juhayna, of origin, to which most of the bedouin of Upper Egypt had belonged, shrank to a small group; and the Judhām, a group from southern disintegrated, and in the period of Mehemet Ali’s rule only the bedouin of remained as witness to their origins from this grouping.4 The great confederative tribal units, which included a number of tribal groups or large clans, and in earlier times also chiefships, disintegrated, and in the political arena there remained mainly smaller tribal groups, mostly composed of one central clan headed by a shēkh who represented the group vis-à-vis the authorities, surrounded by smaller and weaker clans with no independent representation. These groups had no political influence, and no longer constituted a threat to the central regime. By the second half of the eighteenth century the age of tribal leaders who had established independent dynasties, and succeeded in uniting round them large groups of tribes, was past. As has been noted, the disappearance of the great confederative groupings in the course of the Mamluk period, and the rise of new groups with different names, is an indication of the unstable social structure of the tribes, and of the basic attribute which characterized bedouin society: division and reunification. For this reason, too, we encounter new bedouin groups at different periods of Egyptian history. True, there still existed groups which had arrived in various waves of migration; but many of them grew up as a result of seceding from a bigger group or from a long-established federation. The division was generally the result of a dispute or competition over land, or the demographic growth and increase in political and economic power of particular groups which decided to split off and become independent. Sometimes this was done with the encouragement of the authorities. On the other hand, groups which had become small and weak banded together to form larger, more defensible tribal units. The information we possess in this field is unclear, since our sources draw no exact distinction between types of groupings and their tribal affiliations. We have no way of knowing either the nature of the group in question, or its genealogical connections with other tribes. All that can be said is that there were no large nationwide tribal organizations, only local or regional tribal groupings. In the course of the period there took place changes in the bedouin tribal population as a result of fission and unification of various groups: some groups shrank or disappeared, and new ones were created. Sources from the Ottoman period in Egypt frequently mention the erstwhile division 5 of the bedouin tribes into two camps, and These were ancient bedouin groupings based on a myth of common origin, though they were almost entirely political and ideological in character. These groupings did not rule over territory, they

The Pasha's Bedouin

18

had no overall leadership, and there was no division of authority among them; nor, indeed, did they function as political factions. They served mainly as a means of recruiting military forces when they were required. By the end of the seventeenth century the historical origins of the two factions had been forgotten and only myths and trappings remained. David Ayalon showed that this division related to the historic conflict between and Kulaybī, and, at a later date, to the struggles between Yamanis and Zaydis, 6 and, finally to the struggle between and The chronicler Damurdashi wrote: The Egyptians were divided into two factions, the Zughbī and Hilālī, and Kulaybī, and and, in the Ottoman period, Faqārī and Qāsimī. The Faqārī’s flag was white and the Qāsimī is red. This is so to this very day, among the bedouin and the fellahin in the Qibli and Bahri regions of Egypt. He added: wasumiya min dhālika al-yawm qāsimī.7 Was named from that day

faqārī wasumiya faqārī and

qāsimī.

Our sources also mention this as the distinguishing mark between different groups of bedouin. The chronicler al-Qinali wrote: The flag of the bedouin of al-Beheirah is red, they are always with the Qāsimiyya. He added: Until the time of the Ottoman House, Allah will grant him victory, since the Faqāriyya became and the Qāsimiyya became 8

The inter-tribal political alliances and the alliances between bedouin and the OttomanEgyptian households (the so-called Mamluk households) between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries were based on these camps. It may be that this was because of the close relationships between bedouin shēkhs and the local military elite and grandees (especially the beys and the other households’ chieftains), and the affinity which grew up between the households and these tribal factions, even without bedouin from either camp actually joining them. As for the grandees, they recognized the bedouin’s commitment to these bodies, and identified their political allegiance accordingly. Therefore, when in 1105/ 1703–1704 the Qāsimi chieftain, Ibrahim Bey Abu Shanab, appointed his follower

Tribal history in outline

19

9

as governor (sancak [bey]), he sent him to al-Beheirah province ‘since it was always his [Qāsimi jurisdiction] and because its bedouins are 10 completely.’ Since and were groupings of tribal peoples, the significance of their accession to these factions was the ability to recruit large groups of supporters and large numbers of soldiers, over and above the normal tribal groups; hence the military and political benefit they afforded. Bedouin and grandees alike recognized the mutual advantage which stemmed from this mythological identity. The grandees wanted to improve their military ability in the struggles between the sects, while the bedouin were interested in ensuring the possibility of raids on other tribes under the aegis of their allies, not to mention their shared identity. Official records from the time of Mehemet Ali’s rule do not mention this division. It appears that the reason for the disappearance of the division into camps is the disappearance of the Egyptian-Ottoman beys and their households from the military and political scene, following the massacre of their leaders by Mehemet Ali in the citadel of Cairo in 1811. Naum Shuqeir Bey, who collected information about the bedouin tribes in the Sinai peninsula in the first half of the twentieth century, gives additional confirmation of the loss of the original meaning of the division between and He was told that at that time they were in the camp of in Sinai the tribes of Tiyāhā, Sawārka, Rumēlāt, Sinai), while the camp of included the

Akhārisa, and (of (confederation of the bedouin of

and But south Sinai), formerly the shēkh of the bedouin, confessed that he had forgotten which of the camps his tribe was supposed to support. Migrations The nomads and semi-nomads of Egypt traditionally used the parts of the desert area contiguous to the cultivated lands round the Nile Valley. On the one hand, over the centuries they had gradually moved and settled, mainly in the area of al-Hawf.11 From there they moved to other regions in the Delta and to areas in Upper Egypt, and there they were absorbed into rural society. On the other hand, the tribes of the Western Desert, such as the looked towards Jabal al-Akhdar (part of Tripolitania, now Libya), whereas the bedouin of the Sinai peninsula and the Eastern Desert were closer to the nomads of the Arabian peninsula. The Baja of north-east Sudan underwent a process of arabization due to their proximity to Egypt, a process which was accelerated from the end of the nineteenth century as a result of Mehemet Ali’s conquest of the Sudan. The Bagāra bedouin, animal breeders from north Sudan, had close ties with the bedouin of the Nile Valley, though their cultural and ecological patterns were different. The fact that the Nile flows through a desert makes for cultural unity along its banks. There is variety within this unity. In the southern regions, close to the border with Sudan, camel-breeding

The Pasha's Bedouin

20

nomadism is replaced by cattle-breeding nomadism, because of the environmental conditions and the climate. The Nile and the desert have a decisive cultural influence. When the Ottomans reached Egypt in 1517, they found semi-nomadic bedouin tribes some of which had already settled permanently, mainly in Upper Egypt. During most of the Ottoman conquest permanent settlement persisted in Egypt with no intervention by the authorities, in addition to settlement of nomads on their own land. These processes were the result of waves of migration and changes in the geographical distribution of tribal groups. The principal areas in which Bedouin migration concentrated were alBeheirah province, which was influenced by the penetration of tribes of Berber and Maghrib origin, and al-Sharqiyya province, which absorbed bedouin tribes from southern Arabia. For many years bedouin also settled in some of the regions of Upper Egypt, mainly because of the activity round the commercial route between Qenah and al-Quseir. The biggest waves of migration came from the Maghrib (North Africa), and they reached their peak towards the middle of the eighteenth century. This migration set its hallmark on the bedouin population of Lower and Middle Egypt. It was the second wave of tribes of Maghrib origin which entered Egypt in the seventeenth century and returned to Cyrenaica, and of tribes of Arabic origin who arrived in Egypt at the time of the Moslem conquest, but were sent by the in the Fatimid period to help ensure the victory of the Arab conquest of North Africa. Some consider that the invasion of al-Beheirah in 1689 by the Banī Sulaym, under the leadership of Shēkh Abū Zēd ibn Wāfī, was the beginning of this wave of migration. The Banī Sulaym were repulsed by the Hawwāra bedouin, and thereafter reached Upper Egypt.12 In their wake there began a massive wave of migration of groups of arabized bedouin of Berber origin belonging to the

and of groups of

dominant groups were Arab al-Maghārba (Ibn Wāfī), al-Juhama, and the confederation of the

origin. The most

tribes, including al-Jabāyra, al-

13

and al-Hanādī. Shawādī, Banī Salām, The Hanādī bedouin, one of the biggest and most dominant groups, became a central factor among the Maghārbī bedouin in western Egypt over the coming century. The Hanādī were apparently a confederative unit composed of a cluster of tribes, which functioned as a territorial organization. They exploited a common North African origin in order to dominate a broad area. Their invasion drove out the who were at that time in an advanced stage of assimilation into rural society. The who were tenant farmers under the tutelage of the remained in the region, and waged a stubborn struggle against the Hanādī in the 1770s. They enlisted the help of the who lived at this time in Jabal al-Akhdar in bedouin would make a profound impact on the Cyrenaica. In the future, the map of the Egyptian tribes, and play a central role in the development of the relationships between Mehemet Ali and the bedouin. Following the call for help they began to enter Egypt, and settled in al-Beheirah and along the shores of the Mediterranean, as far as Alexandria.14 The war between these two powerful groups, al-Hanādī and continued until the accession of Mehemet Ali. In 1798, on the eve of the French invasion, the Hanādī bedouin, then living in the Beheirah province and led by

Tribal history in outline

21

Yadim Sultan, head of the faction, fought an unsuccessful campaign against During the French conquest attained the leadership. the According to a contemporary witness, they had 300–400 horses, and, together with their allies, 900–1,000 horsemen.15 Other groups arrived in the wave of migration from the Maghrib. One of the most dominant was the Barāghīth, a confederation of tribes of Berber origin. Their leader was Yūnis bin Mirdās al-Silmī, and the important groups within the confederation were alFawāyed and al-Jawāzī, bedouin of al-Firjān who also belonged to the Banī Sulaym, and began to be involved in tribal wars on their arrival from the Maghrib, until they eventually settled in the provinces of al-Minieh, al-Fayyūm and al-Gharbiyya. The of Berber origin, settled on the border of the desert close to Manfalut, and maintained links with the Juhama and tribes. A group of 4,000 led by and his two sons and had entered Egypt at an earlier stage, at the time of Vali Pasha (1711– 1714).16 The massive migration of tribes from the Maghrib, particularly the Hanādī, the Barāghīth, and the altered the map of the distribution and settlement of the bedouin. In addition, new alliances between groups of bedouin were formed, and this influenced the relationships of the bedouin with the central Ottoman regime. A coalition of the tribes of Khuwēlid, Bahja, al-Najama, Salālma, al-Hanādī, and under the charismatic leadership of Shēkh Ibn Wāfī, participated in clashes with the Ottomans several times during the eighteenth century.17 Other bedouin groups that reached Egypt during the eighteenth century were the who came from the Hejaz and divided into seven sectors which settled in different places: Jabal al-Tur, al-Qaliubiyya, Wadi al-Arab (in the Nuba region), came from Transjordan and the Adandan, Balana, and also in the Sudan.18 The Hejaz after being expelled by the There was also bedouin migration from the Arabian peninsula to the region between Qenah and al-Quseir in Upper Egypt, both because of its proximity to the Hejaz and because of the opportunities of escorting the commercial caravans which passed through this region. During the period of the Ottoman conquest other groups migrated to Egypt from various places in the Arabian peninsula, as well as from the Libyan Desert.19 One of the biggest and most prominent tribes was the which arrived in the course of the seventeenth century in several waves and settled in the Eastern Desert, between the Nile Valley and the shores of the Red Sea. Some of the immigrants brought with them the consciousness of their ancestry in north or south Arabia, and found their place in the traditional groupings; others disregarded their origins, and made use of them only for political purposes when necessary. Mehemet Ali’s regime brought to an end the great tribal migrations into Egypt, and the bedouin population remained stable. True, there were incursions from Cyrenaica, but this was a limited phenomenon. Small groups also came to find refuge from blood feuds or to seek booty. They were generally returned to the place from whence they came.

The Pasha's Bedouin

22

The Mamluk Sultanate The mamluks were not accustomed to employing the bedouin in the army of the Sultanate, but they held the leaders of the bedouin groups accountable for internal security and the safety of the roads. This was a continuation of the policy of their predecessors, the Ayyubids. The mamluks exploited the rivalries between the different groups of bedouin, so that there were always groups which cooperated with them against others, or even took part in punitive expeditions against rebellious groups. There was a large bedouin population spread over the border regions of Egypt—in the deserts on the eastern, western and southern boundaries—and it was in the interest of the regime to reach agreement with them. Their loyalty was procured by means of the grant of the title of emir and other benefits to the leaders of the groups. Mamluk emirs with knowledge and experience of contact with the bedouin were given responsibility for bedouin affairs in the Mamluk administration. The exile of the tribes of Banī Hilāl by the Fatimid caliph as punishment for rebellion was mentioned above. They were a strong confederation of tribes who succeeded in taking most of North Africa by storm in the eleventh century, and apparently created chiefships in the wake of their conquest. The Mamluks faced a similar phenomenon when they achieved power in Egypt. According to Igal Shwartz, the revolt of the bedouin led by the which began in 1249 and met the Mamluks when they arrived in Egypt, was a turning-point in the relations between the bedouin and the Mamluk regime. The revolt also had other repercussions. The antagonism between the bedouin and the Mamluks became more acute, and turned into one of the basic elements in the relationship between them at later periods, too. The bedouin did not attempt to repeat their unsuccessful attempt to unite; they accepted the authority of the central government, and from then on acted according to the individual interests of the separate groups. The organized a widespread revolt which spread to Upper Egypt and to the provinces of al-Minufiyya, al-Gharbiyya and al-Beheirah. According to the accounts of contemporary Moslem writers, several large groups of bedouin were involved in the revolt against the Mamluk threat: they feared for their future status if the Mamluk regime were to become permanent. The bedouin also made contact with the Ayyubids in alSham, and sought their cooperation. Al-Maqrīzī quotes the the leader of the revolt, as saying that towns and villages belonged to the bedouin, and that the Mamluks were inferior, since they were the slaves of khawārij—rebels—whereas the bedouin, under the leadership of a descendant of a branch of the family of the prophet Muhammad, considered themselves superior to the Mamluks, and more worthy to be the rulers of Egypt. This revolt was marked by cooperation between three bedouin confederations which acted in two centres: in the west of the Delta in alMinufiyya, al-Gharbiyya and al-Beheirah in the east, where the Sinbis and Lawāta groups took part; and in al-Ashmunin and al-Manfalut sub-provinces of Upper Egypt, where groups of Quraysh and Lawāta origin participated in the revolt. The began to subdue the revolt in 1253. Al-Maqrīzī maintains that the failure of the revolt sealed the fate of the bedouin in Egypt, since the Sultan Ibak gave orders to rule with a firm hand and impose substantial taxes on them. This was the only instance in this period of a revolt against foreign rule initiated by the bedouin comprising

Tribal history in outline

23

quasi-nationalist elements. Over the coming centuries, the Egyptian bedouin never initiated similar events of so wide a scope. According to Shwartz, the revolt and its failure affected the Mamluk system of rule in Egypt and the relationships between Mamluks and bedouin. He defines these relationships as ‘the need for co-existence, despite the inclination to alienation and antagonism.’20 Nubia was another area in which the bedouin played a significant role. They were the main element in the Mamluk force which defeated the Christian kingdom of Nubia in 1276. Eventually Nubia disintegrated in the fourteenth century as a result of the penetration and settlement of the Juhayna bedouin.21 The revolts of 1353, led by the leader of the in Upper Egypt, and of 1377, led by Badr ibn Salām, leader of the tribal bedouin of coalition of Zanāra in al-Beheirah, marked the beginning of the decline of the Bahri Mamluks, and speeded the rise of the Circassian Mamluks.22 Though the Mamluk regime defeated the revolts, it lost control over the outlying border areas in Upper Egypt and alBeheirah, and the bedouin became the dominant element there. This was also the case throughout the period of the Ottoman conquest. Towards the second half of the fifteenth century, the weakening of the Mamluks’ hold on Upper Egypt led to an increase in the political, military and economic power of the bedouin leaders. The Circassian Mamluk sultans began to appoint them to various administrative offices. In the time of Sultan Barquq, a bedouin leader, the shēkh of the reached the rank of emir tablhaneh in the Mamluk military hierarchy. In 1386 he was appointed kâşif-i Jusūr in the province of al-Sharqiyya.23 On the eve of the Ottoman conquest in 1517 the emirs descended from his son the leaders of the Hawwāra, enjoyed virtually complete autonomy.24 The Ottoman state For more than 350 years from 1517, Egypt was the biggest province of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman conquest brought with it no innovations, either in the social and economic spheres or in its attitude to the bedouin. When the Ottoman sultan Salim the First conquered Egypt at the beginning of 1517, he pledged himself to continue the Mamluk system, which also included its relationship with the nomads. The Ottomans recruited high-ranking Mamluk leaders to help them, particularly in the provincial administration. They allowed a certain number of the defeated Mamluks who agreed to cooperate with the new regime to join the Ottoman administration. Very important offices, such as that of commander of the convoy of the Hajj the custodian of the treasury (defterdar), and the official in charge of transferring the annual taxes to Istanbul (hazinedar) were identical with those which existed under the Mamluk Sultanate. The rank of those who held these positions was equivalent to emir or sultan. The relationships between the bedouin and the new Ottoman regime were based on the fact that the Ottomans were an imperial power, and did not, therefore, abolish tribal values, but superimposed their own values and apparatus of government on those of the tribal groups. They recognized that there were bedouin leaders who ruled large groups. Most of them received estates

in exchange for preserving internal security and

The Pasha's Bedouin

24

providing services for the authorities. Those who had received the title emir from the Mamluks retained their status. The bedouin won the sultan’s esteem through their support for the regime. On the eve of the conquest most of the tribes forsook the Mamluks, and were prepared for the dissolution of the Mamluk Sultanate. The leader of the Ghazāla bedouin, and his brother Salām took part in the battle with Tuman Bay, the last of the Mamluk Sultans, and ordered him to leave Egypt. the shēkh of the gave him refuge, but surrendered him to the Ottomans. In the early years following the conquest, the bedouin were involved in a series of revolts and serious disturbances of public order. In 1518 organized a revolt which was joined by the bedouin of al-Beheirah. In the same year leader of the in al-Sharqiyya, rebelled. The Swēlim bedouin created severe disturbances in the same region in 1520. The bedouin played a key role in the revolt of Ahmad Pasha, the governor of Egypt, known as (the traitor) in 1524: the emir of the Hawwāra in Upper Egypt and Nijm, the shēkh of in al-Sharqiyya, declared their support for him, and the shēkh of the in al-Sharqiyya gave him shelter. The bedouin’s influence was military rather than political: they succeeded in wearing down the Ottoman army. The influence of the rebellion was far-reaching. These were the stormy years which culminated in the visit of the Great Vezir, Ibrahim Pasha, who arrived in Egypt on 9 April 1525, in order to restore the authority of the Ottoman regime. He arrested the three most prominent leaders of the bedouin at the time: and of al-Minufiyya province. In his Qanun Nameh-i Misr the functions and rights of the bedouin shēkhs were redefined. Despite their rebelliousness, it was clear to the Ottomans that there was no substitute for the bedouin in the defence of roads and border areas; so they included them in the administration with the same standing as they had enjoyed at the end of the Mamluk Sultanate. This was effected by appointing the shēkhs who led the biggest and strongest groups to the post of kâşif. Thus, the bedouin leaders attained senior military rank in the Ottoman military and administrative hierarchy; they were treated as army officers or governors of districts and regions.25 It should be mentioned here that the bedouin preserved their independent tribal framework, and cooperated with the authorities only as far as was necessary. However, groups of bedouin were always to be found in the service of the emerging Ottoman-Egyptian households which required military allies in their struggles against the central regime or in disputes between the factions. The period of calm after the promulgation of the law did not last long. The years 1686–1687 marked the outbreak of the great revolt of the Banī Wāfī clan of the Maghāriba bedouin, led by He was joined by the and al-Najama bedouin in al-Beheirah, Beni Suweif, and al-Fayyum provinces. The eighteenth century was marked by the ascendancy of the military and administrative grandees—beys and Ottoman regimental officers, who managed to acquire effective control of various parts of Egypt. One of the most prominent was Ali Bey alKabir.26 His rule came to an end in 1772, but not before he had succeeded in one year, 1769, in abolishing the independent rule of the only prominent bedouin leaders who had

Tribal history in outline

25

succeeded in gaining autonomy in their regions, and reigning over chiefships: Shēkh Humām ibn Yūsuf al-Hawwārī, the leader of the Hawwāra, who ruled Upper Egypt, and the leader of the who held sway in alMinufiyya, al-Qaliubiyya and al-Jazira in Middle Egypt.27 Their chiefships controlled these territories, and were capable of independent action. These groupings were fostered by the tribalism maintained by the Egyptian bedouin, which was the kingpin of their social organization and their relations with the central government and the local Ottoman elite. In Upper Egypt there was a confederation based on a loose alliance between tribal groups and other groupings and on common genealogical origins. It included bedouin groups, fellahin of ancient bedouin origin, and groups co-opted on the basis of blood relation or tutelage, among them protégés such as the village Copts. Shēkh Humām, the leader, was the head of the strongest clan. Round him he gathered nomad and seminomad bedouin who engaged in the traditional forms of bedouin livelihood: animal husbandry, dry seasonal farming, highway robbery, and fighting on behalf of the Ottoman-Egyptian factions and households. They had ties with sheep-rearing bedouin villagers who belonged to the tribal framework of the Hawwāra. The was a looser confederation, based mainly on agreement between its constituents—tribal groups without common genealogical ties. This agreement was based primarily on territorial dominance. The phenomenon of a successful combination of interests between bedouin of different origins, fellahin, and the local Ottomans was unique, and never to be repeated. The end of the Hawwāra and chiefships led to far-reaching changes in the social, economic and political standing of the bedouin. In the last 25 years before the French conquest, less than half of the outstanding taxes on produce reached their destination. Rebellious bedouin raided the fields which were now held by warring local grandees in rival households and factions. There were no longer strong alliances of bedouin to counterbalance them, as there had been in the days of Humām al-Hawwārī in Upper Egypt and in Middle Egypt. The ascent to power of Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey, in the service of Mehemet Bey Abu Dhahab, in 1775, revived the tension between the beys and the central Ottoman government. As a result, the bedouin threat on the regular supply of agricultural produce increased.28 Now, too, though the bedouin were not organized in great federations, they did not cease their warlike operations. The deep divisions between the tribal groupings led them to seek support and alliances among the emirs, and the emirs exploited this in order to foment rivalries between bedouin groups while they sought allies among the tribes. Murad Bey was one of the people most deeply involved with bedouin affairs for most of his years of activity in the Egyptian political arena. He succeeded in gathering round him many bedouin from different groups who gave him military support. But he mistreated his bedouin allies. In June 1779 he murdered one of the last of the dynasty of Shēkh Humām, confiscated his lands in the area of Qus and Qenah in Upper Egypt, and divided them among his emirs.29 He also killed, with his own 30 hands, the sons of Shēkh Humām in Farshut, in the The Hawwāra were exhausted, they no longer constituted a military power, and they could no longer give support to rebel emirs and beys. The bedouin gave much assistance to Murad Bey in his

The Pasha's Bedouin

26

fight against the French, who invaded Egypt in 1798, primarily in the defence of Cairo and the Throughout the period of the Ottoman conquest the tribes preserved their strength, used the tools provided by the state, and kept the balance between the trading and agricultural sectors. The nomads continued to be a factor that the authorities had to take into consideration. On the other hand, in face-to-face battle their military strength was inferior, and the government forces were usually victorious. The bedouin, for their part, had to respect the imperial system and not take too extreme action against it, for fear of reprisals which might destroy them. They had enough strength to be taken into account, but not enough for the central government to use its resources against them. They possessed military and economic power, the like of which was not to be found in the towns or under the direct control of the government, even in the provincial centres. Their dominance as caravan escorts afforded them a central function in the Ottoman administration. Their advantages in the economic sphere made them an alternative to the rural economy. To sum up, in Ottoman Egypt tribalism was preserved first and foremost in a number of peripheral areas, some of which would play an important part in the period of Mehemet Ali’s rule: al-Sharqiyya, al-Beheirah and the as long as their interests coincided with those of the central government. There they continued to have a profound influence on social and economic life. The French conquest: beginning of an era On 1 July 1798, French troops of Napoleon Bonaparte’s army landed on the coast west of Alexandria. Immediately after landing they began digging wells and filling water-skins in order to ensure their water supply. Special units guarded against bedouin attacks.31 This was the beginning of a further period of political and social unrest in Egypt, a period which lasted, in effect, until Mehemet Ali’s rise to power in 1805. The bedouin were not indifferent to the political developments in Egypt on the eve of the French invasion or during the short years of the French conquest. Various bedouin groups supported rival Mamluk factions in their internecine struggles, helped the beys in their war against the French, and simultaneously aided the French in their efforts to conquer Egypt. Bedouin also supported the British in their short-lived attempt to expel the French in 1801. Egyptian historians are inclined to describe the Egyptian resistance to the French conquest as a popular national struggle in which the bedouin participated. Egyptian historians, among them and have emphasized the ‘national’ role of the bedouin. They claim that the bedouin damaged and filled up wells, attacked French patrols and blocked their lines of supply, spied against the French and collaborated with the British, even quotes the instance of the execution all out of national consciousness.32 by the French of shēkh al-balad in Alexandria, shortly before the end of the conquest, because of his ties with the bedouin of alview they were nothing more than Beheirah.33 On the other hand, in armed nomads whose only aim was to loot and pillage and who had no national

Tribal history in outline

27

sentiments at all.34 There is no evidence that the bedouin formed part of an Egyptian national movement, or that they supported the resistance to the French for nationalist reasons. They supported all of the sides involved in the struggle out of pragmatic considerations based on tribal interests: control of economic resources and expansion of tribal territories. This emerges quite clearly from the reports quoted in the chronicles of who was an eyewitness to these events.35 The French viewed the bedouin as a social grouping with common characteristics which aroused feelings of insecurity and deep suspicion—as did every Egyptian government. The difficult desert terrain and the bedouin’s unique method of warfare created sensations of uncertainty, and even sowed panic among the French forces; so their attitude to the bedouin was stereotypic. This attitude is expressed in the memoirs of officers in the French expeditionary force, and in the work of French historians. The French doctor Clot Bey quotes Bonaparte as saying that untroubled and successful government of Egypt was conditional on control of the bedouin, and that this was by no means an easy task.36 Bonaparte had far-reaching plans with respect to the bedouin, at least according to the evidence of his emissary to the bedouin tribes of Greater Syria, Iraq, Persia and the Arabian peninsula, whose goal was to persuade them to join a proFrench alliance.37 Immediately after the landing of the French vanguard west of Alexandria, it was attacked by bedouin of the great al-Hanādī tribe and others. The bedouin were armed only with swords, spears and muskets. Therefore, they retreated and dispersed in the face of the superior French firepower, and adopted hit-and-run tactics. The French also learnt that they were facing a force different from those they were used to, and did not know whether the bedouin were in their rear or to their front (according to the account of the French officer J.Miot). After the conquest of Alexandria the French underwent the harrowing experience of shortage of water as they made their way from Alexandria to Cairo through the desert. There were few wells, the water in them was undrinkable, and the bedouin attacked them as they advanced. Bonaparte said in his memoirs that the army suffered at the hands of the bedouin. They made several attacks on Napoleon’s camp and seriously undermined French morale. In one of their surprise attacks they succeeded in killing General Mireur, a member of Bonaparte’s bodyguard. In Damanhur, on the way to Cairo, the bedouin again attacked his camp. Bonaparte ordered Colonel Croisier to repel them from outside the camp, and even shouted at the troops in order to speed their advance. The bedouin continued to harass the French. Bonaparte was bewildered and embittered, and said that he was prepared to die rather than sacrifice his honour. Bedouin also captured Major Deneno, one of Bonaparte’s staff. Bonaparte asked for his release, and sent an envoy to the bedouin with a letter and a ransom. While the emissary was still conducting negotiations, the shēkh of the group shot the prisoner, and returned the ransom to Bonaparte. And, indeed, the French themselves pointed out that they had no allies among the bedouin.38 In one of Bonaparte’s speeches he accused the bedouin of terrorism, incitement to rebellion, and collaboration with the British in order to despoil the country.39 and Although 30 shēkhs from the tribal confederations of al-Hanādī, signed an agreement with the new regime on 4 July 1798, the left wing of the Ottoman army which faced the French in the battle by the pyramids of Giza on 21 July was composed of 800 bedouin, who disappeared as soon as it became clear that the

The Pasha's Bedouin

28

battle was lost.40 On 21 October the used similar tactics in attacking a French guard unit. While the French commander, Reynier, was pursuing them, 2,000 bedouin of the Bilī tribe attacked them from the rear.41 The French responded with acts of reprisal. The French commander took bedouin from the Belbeis region to Cairo as hostages; among them were the brother of Suleiman Abāza, the shēkh of the They attacked and al-Munir, and took the villagers’ cattle. On the same day the French executed the bedouin Shēkh Suleiman al-Shawāribī from al-Qaliubiyya, and three bedouin from al-Sharqiyya. They were taken from the Cairo citadel and decapitated, and his clients took them to Qaliubiyya for burial.42 Shortly afterwards a French guard unit was attacked by a large force of fellahin and bedouin, and all the soldiers were killed.43 The possibility of bedouin attacks perturbed the French. So when they conquered alFayyum they posted a substantial force in Damanhur in order to defend al-Beheirah from the bedouin of the Western Desert. Only after this did they establish bases along the coasts. Bonaparte himself mentioned in his memoirs that it was imperative to establish fortresses in El-Arish, Qatya, al-Salihiyya and in order to prevent bedouin attacks on Cairo from the east.44 Cairo was in a state of turmoil. The French had advanced towards the city after the conquest of Alexandria in July. Al-Jabartī reported that the city was congested, and there was a shortage of food. The bedouin exploited the situation, and held up travelers on the roads leading to Cairo. Those who fled, taking with them whatever possessions they could, encountered the bedouin, who robbed them of their bedding, their clothes and the rest of their baggage and left them without a stitch to wear. Murad Bey took command of a force which included 2,000 bedouin. In order to defend the area south of Cairo he recruited a force composed of bedouin from the regions of Upper Egypt alBeheirah and Giza, and the tribes of al-Hanādī, and In the battle of Shubra Heit, which lasted three days, Murad Bey was defeated.45 At the same time his ally Ibrahim Bey defended the north of Cairo. Outside Bab al-Nisr a force of bedouin was confronted by a French army under the command of the Polish colonel Solkowsky. The colonel and his soldiers were all killed. In the decisive battle both Murad and Ibrahim were defeated and fled. Ibrahim escaped to Syria, but Murad reached the where he recruited a force of bedouin who consolidated their in the Hejaz, positions with his. They were joined by a force of bedouin from commanded by Shēkh al-Gīlānī. The French colonel Louis Charles Dessaix reached Upper Egypt in order to do battle with Murad Bey, and succeeded in defeating him. In a fierce battle in al-Lakhun the Murad’s forces were defeated, and fled to the hills together with the Hawwāra bedouin.46 In the course of the campaign against him Murad employed bedouin spies, and made grave difficulties for the French.47 The French general Bertrand wrote in his memoirs that, in addition, the bedouin of al-Beheirah harassed the French lines of communication in the campaign against Murad.48 Peace with Murad was achieved only when he reached an agreement with Jean Baptiste Kléber, the commander of the French expeditionary force in Egypt. Kléber agreed that Murad should govern

Tribal history in outline

29

Upper Egypt under French tutelage. Thus the conquest of Egypt was completed within three months. Now the French were free to consider ways of dealing with the bedouin, though they continued to keep the peace. They created a special unit of cameleers to put down the bedouin’s revolts and highway robbery.49 They were most successful, capturing a good many bedouin camels and much property. In 1799, however, the unrest reached aland al-Hanādī joined the Beheirah province. In April, the bedouin of supporters of a man who declared himself a saint and preached resistance to the French. They attacked a French force in Damanhur, and from there advanced to al-Rahmaniyya and al-Rashid, fighting and looting on the way.50 They were supported by two highranking beys, Murad Bey and Mehemet Bey al-Alfi, whom the bedouin had aided during their struggle against the French. The bedouin supported the revolt of Mustafa Kethüda, whom Bonaparte had appointed to the post of and attacked the French communication lines, so that the French were forced to strengthen their defences.51 The bedouin’s attacks led the French to try several methods of operation. Bonaparte tried to reinforce his army with a unit commanded by General Dumuy to protect the lines of supply and communication between Alexandria, Damanhur and Rashid. This force failed to arrive, however, since the bedouin succeeded in blocking the route. In the words of Georges Douin, ‘une poigne d’Arabes Bedouins suffit a l’arrêter à Damanhour et le force a rétrograder sur Alexandria (a handful of Bedouin Arabs was sufficient to stop them at Damanhur, and the force retreated to Alexandria).’52 The French forced some groups of bedouin in certain areas to sign declarations of surrender and loyalty so that they could live in peace. They also hired camels from the bedouin to carry supplies to Cairo, or confiscated them when they blocked the passage of supplies to the city. So the Hawwāra disappeared from the political scene in Egypt, but the the Hanādī and the became prominent during the French occupation. These groups would play an important role during the period of Mehemet Ali. In contrast to the Egyptian bedouin, tribes living in the Sinai and the northern Negev displayed hostility to the military local grandees, and aided Bonaparte’s troops when they made their way to Jaffa and Acre through their tribal territories. Bedouin served as guides to Bonaparte when he left Cairo on 10 February 1799 on his way to El-Arīsh, a seven-day journey on camels supplied by the bedouin. On 21 February, Bonaparte left for Shēkh Zuwēd with his troops, accompanied by bedouin guides. The bedouin led them too far south, and the French soldiers suffered from dehydration and sank in the soft sands. From there Bonaparte and his bedouin escorts proceeded to Gaza, which surrendered with no resistance, and thence to Jaffa and Acre. After his failure to conquer Acre he returned to and on 3 July to Cairo, leaving in the fortress a small force meant to prevent the Ottomans advancing in the direction of Sinai. In Qatya he established a guard post in order to maintain the link with the Nile Valley. The German traveler Ulrich Jaspar Seetzen stopped in the Negev in 1807, and was told by his guide, that ‘during the French invasion his tribe (al-Tīyāhā) supported the French, as an act of vengeance on the Mamluks.’ He thought that they ‘apparently received much money for guiding the French army.’53 The of the Sinai also bore a grudge against the Ottoman-Egyptian factions, and supported the French; and, indeed, Bonaparte

The Pasha's Bedouin

30

said that the ‘have a positive attitude, and they can be relied on.’ He also mentioned with approval other Sinai tribes—the Bilī and the On the other and the and said that they should be hand, he was hostile to the treated as enemies.54 Clinton Bailey maintains that the confederations of the Tīyāhā and the used the sympathy of the French regime in order to move from the Sinai to the richer lands in the region of Gaza and the northern Negev under the aegis of the French army, and to expel the Wuhēdāt tribes from there. On the whole, the dominant bedouin tribes in Egypt cooperated with the emirs and the beys, though they lost no opportunity to make a profit, mainly by aiding the French took advantage of their power and their location in the Western troops. The Desert to enter al-Beheirah province from time to time and take booty, and the French were obliged to devote troops to repelling them.55 The Maghārba bedouin were also considered hostile to the French. Its people gave refuge to Mehemet Bey al-Alfi, a highranking bey, when he passed through al-Sharqiyya on his way to the to join Murad Bey at his base there. He gathered round him large groups of bedouin from the Jazira area and from the Bilī, al-Hanādī and tribes. Menou initiated hostilities, sending the cameleers’ force which had been specially created to fight the bedouin, as well as other troops, to the isthmus of Suez in order to block his passage. And, indeed, al-Alfi fled, and eventually reached Murad Bey. The Hanādī bedouin, too, fought the French, but they also sold them food when they were entrenched in Alexandria after the battle of Abu Qir.56 At that time they had been living for a long time in stone houses in al-Beheirah—which proves that part of the tribe settled permanently of their own free will; it was presumably the shēkhs and their families who lived in houses. Many shēkhs were multazims of land, living on estates which they managed, and levying taxes for the central government as early as the eighteenth century and even earlier.57 Al-Jabarti gives a graphic description of the destructive actions of the bedouin in rural areas and on the roads at this period: Many of the refugees returned to Cairo from the villages because of the scarcity of commodities and means of livelihood, and also because of highwaymen, bedouin and marauding bands roving by night and day, and acts of murder. The shops remained closed…and all were harassed; and if one wanted to flee to a distant place in order to save one’s life, there was no way of escape, mainly because of the accursed bedouin who are the most dastardly race, and mankind’s greatest blight. He gives a detailed description of the state of the fellahin in the villages: The bedouin took up positions and cut off the roads in every region: The Lower Egypt, Gharbiyya and Sharqiyya, Minufiyya, Qaliubiyya, Daqahliyya and all the rest. Even if the road was defended, they blocked it, prevented travelers from passing through, and plundered travelers and merchants. They held sway over villages, peasants, town-dwellers and artisans, confiscated and impounded property and livestock—sheep and

Tribal history in outline

31

goats, cattle and mules—and ruined cultivated fields and pasture. As a result, the villagers could no longer take their flocks out of the village to pasture and water them, because of the bedouin’s ambushes. Some villagers attacked others with the help of bedouin. The bedouin coveted the villagers’ property, took ransoms from them, and made fraudulent demands for outdated taxes. During the harvest season the villagers were compelled to make their peace with them because of their lack of unity.58 Bonaparte left Egypt and returned to France on 22 August 1799, leaving the army under the command of Kléber. There now began to appear indications that the bedouin were becoming accustomed to the new regime. On 29 June 1800 some bedouin tribes from the Asyut region signed an agreement with Donzelot, the governor of Asyut, in which they agreed to pay taxes. In the same year Kléber was murdered in Heliopolis, and on 1 January 1801 Abdullah Jacques Menou, who converted to Islam and took over Kléber’s position, also signed an agreement with the bedouin permitting a group of bedouin from Syria to settle on the Egyptian border.59 This was typical of the way in which the regime dealt with the bedouin. Bedouin settlement in border regions and peripheral areas was always considered to be either a threat or a way of ensuring the security of the borders and trade routes. It was, therefore, vital either to fight the bedouin or to espouse them. The French hoped that in this way the supply of grain to the enemy would be prevented, the value of land in the region would rise, and more taxes could then be levied. In this period a number of shēkhs, who rose to prominence on the strength of the large and powerful clans that they headed, succeeded in forging links both with emirs and beys and with the French administration. As early as 1785 the shēkh of together with Murad Bey and Yusuf Kasab, the multazim of the customs, signed agreements limiting the duty to be paid on French goods originating in India and destined for France, and ensuring their safe passage from Suez to Cairo.60 The dominant shēkhs of the tribe were members of clan. Al-Jabartī pictures him as an opportunist. During the conquest of Egypt he rebelled against the French, but as they strengthened their regime the shēkh sought ways of expressing his loyalty to the new government; so much so that at a later date the French repaid him by allowing him to escort a caravan bearing flour and rusks destined for the French army in al-Sham. Al-Jabarti writes that he always endeavoured to be on the side of the victors; he was, therefore loyal to Murad Bey and Ibrahim Bey, the rulers of Egypt before the arrival of the French. Later, he served the French regime, and his men acted as informers and couriers. After the French left, Ibn Shadīd supported the emirs and the beys in the subsequent period of disorder and, when Mehemet Ali rose to power, became his ally.61 With the help of his tribesmen, controlled the Nile waterways and the canals which connected Dumyat, al-Salhiyya and Belbeis in the Delta area with al-Sharqiyya. The bedouin used small boats to cross Lake Manzala to Dumyat. The French were forced to send a punitive expedition, but it was ineffective. It took a strong force under General Dugua to capture village, where, according to Nikola Turc’s report, 40 Arab shēkhs accepted his authority, and thus were ‘paralysed’. had to flee and he took shelter by Ahmet Jazzar in al-Sham.62

The Pasha's Bedouin

32

of the was another important shēkh. He, confederation. The too, was the head of one of the strongest clans in the clansmen who gathered round him constituted a fighting force which afforded him a degree of independence and ability to manoeuvre. He decided to support the British, and tried to assist the naval unit of the British expeditionary force which, with the help of the Sultan, reached the Egyptian coast, intending to expel the French. The shēkh gave them information about the movements of the French army. In a letter which he sent to Sir Sidney Smith, the commander of the British naval task force, he wrote: Yesterday the French army entered Damanhur, leaving none of them in Cairo. They are planning to attack you during the night; so you must reinforce your outposts, and we shall attack them from the rear.63 was inclined to support the British—even though they failed to conquer Egypt—apparently because of his favourable impression of their performance in the battle of Alexandria-Abu-Qir.64 But the British distrusted the bedouin, even though, as they admitted, they received them with open arms, sold them food at low prices, and enabled them to make contact with the interior of the country. R.T.Wilson, who was a member of the British expeditionary force, wrote: ‘The Bedouins who furnished the French with the means of longer resistance would gladly have put them all to the sword.’65 On the eve of Mehemet Ali’s rise to power, bedouin groups were still supporting the beys in their fight for supremacy, and transferring their allegiance from one faction to the other. Mehemet Bey al-Alfi won a good deal of support among the bedouin because of his special connections with them, and most of them joined him. When the Pasha came to power in 1805, the bedouin gradually ceased to play a central political and social role, and were driven to the margins of the province of Egypt. In the provinces of al-Sharqiyya and al-Beheirah and in certain regions of Upper Egypt they still possessed enough economic power to have some influence in the political sphere; but there, too, Mehemet Ali generally managed to define the rules of the game, and dealt with them instrumentally to serve his own purposes. It seems, therefore, that various groups of bedouin, from the great confederative groups which arrived with the Arab conquest to the clans headed by paramount shēkhs, were involved in the central events in the history of Egypt. In the next chapter we shall discuss the nature and composition of the different groups, and the processes which led to the growth of tribal leadership.

2 Tribal society and the tribal elite Approaches and concepts The term ‘tribe’ is a most problematic notion, with a long history. The accepted view used to be that a tribe is a territorial organization headed by a leader (chief, shēkh) with its own culture, and sometimes also its own religion. It has also been claimed that the tribe is a society in miniature, a framework which provides all the needs of the people it embraces. But bedouin belong to many types of organization, of which the tribe is one. For example, an individual tribesman belongs to a nuclear family, to an extended family, to a descent group and to many different networks of kinship and trade. In addition to all these, he also belongs to the organization known as the tribe, an organization which controls territory and can exist without formal leadership. The tribe does not comprise a complete society, nor does it reflect the essence of the solidarity between its members. Tribes are only certain types of organization among several to which the bedouin belong, and within which their identity is created. Every individual belongs to a corporative descent group, to networks of relatives and friends, to communal migratory camps, and to partnerships in trade, in means of production, in pasturage and the like. None of these types of organization encompasses the tribe; they are neither part of it nor subject to its control. They are not arranged in a hierarchic order, and some of their activities, such as trade, take place far from the borders of the tribe. Sometimes the authorities or other outside observers even identify a specific organization with a particular activity, and this overshadows tribal affiliation to the point of complete separation. For our purpose here, it is important to relate to three major issues: political organization and leadership of the tribe; the tribe as an administrative unit of the government; and the nature of tribal identity. The object of our discussion will be to examine which forms of political organization and leadership existed in Mehemet Ali’s Egypt, whether there were tribal administrative and territorial units, and how they influenced the development of the relationships between the tribes and the authorities and the policy of the authorities towards the bedouin. Social structure and tribal leadership For many years it was customary to divide Middle Eastern society into permanent settlers and nomads. In the literature about the tribes of the different countries of the Middle East it was assumed that ‘tribes’1 had a separate socio-economic structure which made them distinct from and opposed to the sedentary population and any form of central government. With the advance of socio-anthropological research, it became clear that the tribal population is not all of a piece. In the past, certain variations within the bedouin population—particularly differences of origin and kinship which the bedouin themselves

The Pasha's Bedouin

34

took care to emphasize—were well known. It became clear that not all the bedouin were nomads, and that some were semi-nomadic. This is an economic distinction: in tribal society there is a link between political organization and economics, and the political organization of tribes practising dry farming1 is different from that of tribes most of whose livelihood is derived from animal husbandry. The bedouin themselves recognize only a small number of tribes as ‘true bedouin’, and there are long-standing traditions of their ancient and noble lineage. In recent years it has become clear that these traditions, based on detailed genealogical trees, are historically and factually unproven. This, however, does not impair the status of those who claim noble blood. Others, who cannot boast of such an ancestry, have always been thought of as client tribes, and have even made efforts to acquire patrons, though their way of life is no different from that of the ‘noble’ bedouin. Because of the differences in internal social and economic organization between the tribes, it is hard to delineate a typical permanent structure of a tribe qua tribe, though this has often been thought possible. Although the principle uniting the different tribes, whether nomadic or settled, is consanguinity, their internal organization tends to differ from tribe to tribe, and it may be said that the economic and political relationships between tribes, settlers, and the state are qualified in many respects by these organizational forms. Tribes and permanent settlements were mutually dependent in many ways for their material supplies; but the relationships between them were not always identical, since different tribes related differently to the sedentary settlements and to the broader economy. As will be shown below, tribal organization can be defined as segmentary and lineal;2 but in daily life the tribesmen tend to take care of their political and economic needs by organizing in ways other than the segmentary pattern, even cutting through it.3 We shall now review some of the central theories on the question of the tribe and its structure, and discuss those by groups of approaches. Corporatism and political organization Emanuel Marx uses an improved version of Dale Eickelman’s model to present a model of his own which helps us to understand tribal organization, which is, in his view, political in nature. He claims that nomads, and especially those who breed animals, have several theories about the structure of their society. According to one of them, the tribe is a large society, a framework which includes all types of organization and action; it is composed of groups which claim common descent, ranging from the family through kinship groups which become increasingly large until they constitute a tribe, which is, he claims, a political organization at its best.4 He believes that the bedouin tribe is the biggest political organization, while the confederation is a purely territorial grouping.5 Marx also explains that the organization of tribes and confederations is influenced by the ecology of the desert, and is first and foremost a means of correlating arrangements for pasture and the use of sources of water and other resources in extensive units of desert territory. On the other hand, the structure of the organization, its character and its extent are influenced by the activities of the centralized authorities in the regions situated on the fringes of the desert. Further, in the circumstances of ‘institutional’ political development within the confederation, there may develop the basis for a chiefship, which is a more developed form of political organization, as we shall see below.

Tribal society and the tribal elite

35

The degree to which the tribe is a political organization depends on the degree of corporatism it possesses. Tribal organization generally has certain corporative characteristics, which have been defined in the literature as follows: the tribe limits the acceptance of new members by a series of rules; the members of the tribe have a clear conception of their rights and duties, through which they enjoy ‘symbolic corporatism’, in the words of the anthropologist Philip Carl Salzman; the tribesmen are equal before the law; the tribe possesses ‘immortality’, but it sometimes lacks an important characteristic—the ability to coordinate collective action. Marx sums up the matter thus: ‘The tribe is the cumulative result of the efforts made by individuals and corporative groups to enlist the cooperation of others in order to deal with problems of pasture, water and self-defence.’6 Even a chiefship may develop and flourish simply in order to ensure access to sources of pasture and water in the territory over which it rules. This struggle takes place at different levels of political development. A tribe numbering a few hundred members will find it difficult to coordinate collective action without formal leadership. As has been remarked, the descent groups which make up the tribe are not attached to each other in daily life, and have no obligation to any political organization. Although the tribe is composed of a number of descent groups, it is not necessarily organized corporatively. When, however, a conflict arises, whether on pasture-land or between individuals, or when there is a threat from outside the tribe, whether from the authorities or from another tribe, or when economic interests are involved, several groups join together for joint (corporate) action, to the point where all the tribe is mobilized. At this point the tribal social organization acquires political significance. The mobilization of the groups is the result of a combination of internal motives and the involvement of the authorities from without. Marx claims that there is no instance of group organization resulting from common origin documented in the research literature; it has always been the outcome of economic and political interests. Members of one tribe have fought each other more frequently than they have united under one leader. His conclusion is that a segmentary structure has no function in intra-tribal disputes. Nonetheless, the bedouin put the tribe at the centre of their image of their society, since they view it as an autonomous body. Territoriality, political centralism and leadership The complex social organizations, hierarchies, and/or political centralism which develop in tribal society result mainly from what Phillip Burnham calls spatial mobility. This phenomenon influences the structure of tribal society, leading to the development of political centralism and social stratification. Tribal territory provides a variety of resources: natural resources such as pasture and water, and economic and strategic assets such as transport routes and trade which are subject to control. Though the right to exploit these resources is held in common by the whole of the tribe, in practice the strong groups which move around within the territory control the resources, and exploit them more than the others. Weak groups are sometimes expelled from the territory as a result of conflicts over the use of resources. Thus, it may be said that horizontal mobility within the tribal space is apt to encourage upward mobility; but it also tends to disrupt existing frameworks. So, spatial mobility may also be viewed as the source of the transformation of nomadic society from an egalitarian society to a socially stratified one, as well as the

The Pasha's Bedouin

36

reason for the division and unification of tribal units. Closely knit political groups, defined as descent groups, may crystallize in the course of countless migrations, seasonal and other. Kinship groups may unite to become closely knit political groups with their own leadership, ignoring genealogical links, when they are close neighbours in the migratory camps at certain seasons. This gives support to Emanuel Marx’s approach. On the other hand, if the political and environmental conditions change, these groups are liable to break-up into their individual components, and to extend their loyalties in other directions.7 Thus, climate, pasture, the neighbouring tribes and the government dictate the type of political organization, its size, and the extent of the territory which it must control. In other words, tribal organization is based on territory, and adapted to its ecology. Not every tribal unit has an overall leadership. Sometimes the unit is named after a primeval ancestor, but lacks a territorial centre or a meeting-place for the leaders of secondary groups: there is no recognized leader, and everything is a function of the tribesmen’s consciousness. Tribal leadership comes into existence not only to ensure the supply of pasture and water, but also to resist the demands of the ruler of the state for taxes or military service. By paying taxes the bedouin become protected citizens, but the regime usually exercises military and administrative pressure in exchange for the protection it is prepared to grant. At this point the bedouin are apt to combine in a broader framework under strong leadership in order to negotiate with the authorities and defend themselves against attack. Thus, for instance, in the second half of the nineteenth century the migratory route of the confederation of the Rwala tribes extended from al-Sham8, where they were under pressure from the Ottomans, to Juf and Tīma in the Arabian Desert, where they were under pressure from the kingdom of Ibn Rashīd. So they united under family and negotiated with both parties.9 In the leadership of the shēkhs of the the second half of the eighteenth century the recruited under their leadership many tribal groups in the Delta region in order to withstand the pressures exerted on them by the Ottoman regime and the local beys and emirs. There were many similar cases. Madawi al-Rasheed describes a process of political centralization in tribal society. In the middle of the nineteenth century the Shammar tribal confederation established a dynasty based on an oasis, led by one of their principal lineage groups, al-Rashīdī. The dynasty spread throughout the centre of the Arabian peninsula, and became the dominant force there towards the end of the century. The Shammar were pastoral nomads who combined camel breeding with a variety of economic activities, such as trade with settled communities. Al-Rasheed assumes that nomadic societies are capable of creating hierarchical political structures, with an administration and central leadership. She maintains that foreign intervention and a strategic location are essential for a tribal group to become a political entity.10 Commercial and pilgrims’ routes over tribal territory bring about political prosperity. As long as an external power such as the central regime is interested in exploiting the trading routes, it will ensure that its relationships with the nomads who control the region are good; to this end it will encourage and recognize leaders who can maintain security in such a way that commerce and pilgrimages can be conducted without hindrance. In Ottoman Egypt and during Mehemet Ali’s rule the tribes which controlled the nautical routes, the Nile, and the continental trade routes from Upper Egypt to Qena and al-Quseir on the Red Sea coast attained political power, and

Tribal society and the tribal elite

37

their shēkh negotiated with the authorities from a position of strength. An outstanding example is the influence achieved by Shēkh Humām ibn Yūsuf, the shēkh of the Hawwāra tribes, who controlled the transit routes northwards from Upper Egypt The various functions and offices made available to (the bedouin shēkh) by political centralism—arbitration of disputes, connections with the government, etc.— are economic. They provide him with additional benefits of power and wealth, though his supporters may not see this as essential. Among some of the bedouin, for instance, the right to use tracts of pasture-land in tribal territory, especially when this was permitted by the regime, was the principal basis of the shēkh’s continued power over his supporters, his fellow-tribesmen. The Bedouin shēkhs fulfilled a function in distributing the booty derived from attacks on other territories, and they also received income from the taxes paid by their fellow tribesmen.11 Under the Ottoman Empire appropriated for himself a high proportion of the taxes which he collected, and received grants of land from the authorities as a reward for his services. The Ottomans initiated this practice in Egypt on a large scale as early as the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and Mehemet Ali expanded their system to a significant degree. On the strength of this wealth, as well as private lands and large private herds, the shēkh could afford to be a generous host, and to maintain a household with a retinue of servants, soldiers and followers with whose help he overcame his enemies. Martin van Bruinessen used segmentary theory to explain who becomes a leader in tribal society. There are usually many people vying for leadership within the tribe, since there are no clear rules for the making of a leader. The lineage structure is symmetrical, in that in every generation each individual has an identical status from the structural point of view, and there is no structural relationship which can pick out a particular individual as leader in that generation. In fact, therefore, all are equally entitled to demand that they become leaders. If there is no other mechanism which can decide incontestably who is entitled to be the leader, there will be a struggle for the leadership which will result in the survival of the strongest. This is a problem common to all tribal societies. Many groups have adopted the principle of the right of the first-born, which establishes the relative status of the members of each generation. Members of the current generation are ranked in such a way that their social status will depend on genealogical seniority, or their relationship to a famous ancestor.12 Van Bruinessen maintains that the leadership of the lineage or the tribe is inherited within one family, but there is no fixed rule as to who should be the heir. He found tribes in which the eldest son was considered to be the most suitable person, whereas in others the elders of the tribe or lineage chose brothers or nephews on the grounds that they were more suitable. These were always the closest relatives and followers of the tribal leader, and his most loyal supporters. Following them, members of his tribe, and, finally, the client groups of the tribe, would support him. But even in this situation, new forms of primordial loyalty might develop within the tribal structure, and through them the client group could acquire a separate leadership. Ernest Gellner also uses segmentary theory when discussing the question of tribal leadership. He maintains that the tribe is a segmentary/linear organization, made up of groups whose self-image and self-definition are based on genealogy and patrilineal relationships. The groups safeguard the social order by means of a cooperative effort, and every group protects its own members. It is the leading lineage or segment in the tribe

The Pasha's Bedouin

38

which provides the leaders for the group. Since the segments are equal in the social hierarchy, the leadership is weak, and the choice between leaders is more apparent than real.13 There is no clear rule of inheritance in tribal society, and the choice of leader depends on the balance of forces and on his prestige, rather than on his suitability for the position. The successor may be a brother, a son, or a cousin on the father’s side, and he may be chosen as a result of the degree of support he receives from the other segments. In the event of conflict, the successor is chosen according to his leadership potential, which is tested in armed combat. There can be no doubt that segmentation is derived from ethno-political ideologies based on genealogical relationships stemming from a patrilineal ancestor, and that these ideologies create a common identity. But these ideologies are revised and manipulated according to the social status of those who use them. Men who are politically and socially dominant in the tribe use such ideologies to reinforce political alliances with members of other tribal groups, to strengthen their standing with the authorities, and to present a biassed image to the outside world. It is the outstanding personalities, who are generally the leaders of the tribe in its external relations, who have usually provided information about the kinship links and tribal identity of those they represent to ethnographers and other outside observers, and it may be assumed that the ordinary tribesman will conceive of his identity in a significantly different way. Internal and external conflicts, contribute to the shaping and the crystallization of tribal leadership as well. With every conflict that the leader resolves, his authority becomes stronger and more widely known. On the other hand, power struggles between rival leaders lead to tribal conflicts. One of the most important functions of leaders in tribal society is to take command in conflictual situations, and either to initiate war against other tribes or to mediate between two hostile groups, on condition that the leaders do not belong to either of the groups and are at an equal distance from both.14 In Van Bruinessen’s view, since conflicts (internal or external) create the need for a chief shēkh of the tribe, the shēkhs who are interested in preserving or increasing their power do so by manipulating conflicts, and sometimes by involving the central government in them. The shēkh will resolve the conflict up to the point where the people of his tribe feel that they have achieved peace and security; but he will not end it completely, for this would mean that he would be thought dispensable. In times of peace the functions fulfilled by the head of the tribe are not particularly valued, and tribal unity exists only in appearance. Therefore, from time to time ambitious shēkhs find excuses to create conflicts in order to confirm their leadership and the unity of their tribe. The fact that the shēkhs are intermediaries, arbitrators or hostages in all their contacts with the central government makes them indispensable in the eyes of their tribe in certain matters, though not in those in which the tribesmen could manage without them. Salzman, for example, found that among the Zagros tribes in Iran the shēkh’s position is based on the organization of migration;15 but it appears that even when the shēkhs were forced to separate from their tribes or were taken as hostages by the authorities; their bedouin were able to organize their migrations without their help. The more heavily manned the Ottoman administration—and, even more, that of Mehemet Ali—the more low-level shēkhs began to fill political positions. The chief shēkh, and after him the shēkhs of the large tribes, shēkhs of small tribes and parts of tribes—all of them were integrated into the bureaucratic machine constructed by the regime, and their importance

Tribal society and the tribal elite

39

to the tribe grew. The conclusion from all the foregoing is that the office of shēkh as leader in time of war and as intermediary between the state and the nomad population was of very great importance. His role among the bedouin was connected first and foremost with armed conflict and its alternatives—mediation and adaptation to the circumstances. A detailed examination of the social and political situation of the bedouin tribes in Egypt proves that during the eighteenth century, there existed in Egypt regional tribal leadership which ensured a great deal of freedom of action and even a certain degree of territorial independence. Shēkh Humām ibn Yūsuf, the leader of the Hawwāra, and the leader of the tribes, both were mentioned above, assembled under their leadership several tribes living in a particular territory. In the period of Mehemet Ali, however, leadership developed only in homogeneous tribal frameworks. It seems at first sight as if Mehemet Ali’s centralistic regime was an external threat to the bedouin; but in fact the leadership that crystallized was generally initiated or confirmed by the regime itself. In this period there were also serious internal conflicts among the bedouin: inter-tribal conflicts and wars, as for instance between the and the Hanādī, as well as troubled and hostile relationships between descent groups within a single tribe. The reasons for these conflicts were struggles over the control of water resources, pasture-land, and arable land, concessions for the levying of taxes and of transit payment from commercial and pilgrims’ caravans, and even disputes over the control of routes which were a potential source of profit from banditry. In general, however, the central government exploited these rivalries for its own ends, and apparently did not permit the organization of large confederations of tribes which grow up under such conditions; apparently Mehemet Ali believed that such bodies were liable to become a threat to security and public order. Travelers who visited Egypt in the relevant period confirm the views of scholars of our time about the place of the shēkh in tribal society. J.R.Pachio visited Egypt and Cyrenaica in the first half of the nineteenth century, and tried to understand the status of the among the the biggest confederation in the Western Desert of Egypt, and in Jabal al-Akhdar in Cyrenaica. He indicated that it was hard to see that they had any regime which could be called aristocratic, though this was expressed more in form than in essence. The loose authority of the shēkhs depended not on force but on the reputation and estimation which they enjoyed within the tribe. Pacho added that when he visited the after Mehemet Ali had destroyed the tribe’s power, a practice of granting the shēkhs titles and badges of honour approved by the Pasha had been established; but when they returned to their camps wearing the insignia which the Pasha had affixed to their clothes, the ribbons aroused mockery and disgust, unless the tribe had given its support before the Pasha approved the award.16 In other words, they did not gain their power by inheritance or through a dynasty which they themselves had established, but as a result of their ability to stand at the head of a system of units of blood relationship hierarchically balanced; and the heads of these units decided on their attitude to the regime, and on the degree of authority which they granted to those they chose to represent them vis-à-vis the regime. Savarese, an Italian lawyer, also described his impressions of the status of the bedouin shēkh in Cyrenaica at the same period. Every ‘household’ has a shēkh of its own,

The Pasha's Bedouin

40

chosen on the grounds of his age and wisdom or his courage and trustworthiness, though the office of shēkh is usually inherited within certain families. The shēkh is obeyed and honoured by his dependents, but he must be rich, for the expenses of hospitality are considerable. He takes a leading part in the resolution of disputes, and he must possess the tact required to preserve the unity of the group as against other groups of the same order. He represents his group in relations with these groups, and with the others of whom his own group forms part. In matters concerning the whole group he consults with the shēkhs of the bigger groups. The shēkh commands the males at time of war, and levies taxes for the government. The however big the group he represents, lives and dresses like his fellow bedouin, but since he is rich his tent may be bigger than most. He also has more horses and wives than the other bedouin.17 In many cases, tribes were created either as the result of the direct political involvement of the agents of certain states, or of indirect pressure, such as economic incentives that create new economic values—trade routes, markets, and exchange communication. The state also enforced new regional arrangements of land ownership and allocation of resources, and thereby initiated a series of organizational changes which led to the appearance of tribes with a formal structure. Thus there was created a tribe, a territorial organization which defends the resources in its territory by force, with representatives who maintain the connection between the tribal population and the governing regime.18 The shēkh than is appointed by the government and passes messages from the government on to the population, and vice versa. Thus, the tribe relates to the bedouin’s organization in the state and their necessity to adapt their life to current reality in all its aspects. They view the tribe as an administrative unit, or as a subordinate entity indirectly controlled by the state.19 Consequently, if the state is strong and succeeds in imposing its authority on all its territory, they become more dependent on the services provided by the state; they act as the authorities require, and obey the rules of the bureaucracy. Thus, again, the tribes encountered by the historians are usually of this type—vassals of states, some of whom engage in trade while others guard the country’s borders. It is to a great extent the authorities who decide how the tribes are to be organized, and that the bedouin are well aware that the state controls the tribe, though indirectly. This leads to the conclusion that both the ‘tribes’ mentioned in the historical sources and those we encounter in our own time are administrative units assembled round leaders legitimized by the authorities. On the other hand, the bedouin believe that these organizations serve their interests as well as possible under the existing geopolitical circumstances. Tribal societies, therefore, need leadership to maintain their livelihood, and to manage their external relations. The more important these relations are, the more centralized and the more political the leadership will be. The emergence of a leader is the reaction of the tribes to the political circumstances in which they find themselves, with the state and the regime virtually dictating their method of organization. In principle, the shēkh’s identity and leadership depend on three main elements: he represents the dominant group, or a coalition of groups, in a tribe—in other words, he represents the majority of the tribe; he is a strong personality, and this, together with his connections, makes him capable of obtaining the greatest possible benefits for his tribe; and his family is considered blessed, since it has provided generations of successful shēkhs. In practice, the government is the

Tribal society and the tribal elite

41

principal factor in choosing the tribal leadership and shaping its character, and is usually involved in the appointment of the shēkhs. Sometimes the principles on which this choice is made are at odds with the three elements enumerated above, even though the government recognizes their importance. The government ensures that the confederations —but, as a result, of tribes have a centre and an official leader—the his influence will usually be limited. The central government can nominate a leader who is not one of the dominant groups to levy taxes, supply the army with soldiers and equipment, and be responsible for public works and the provision of services. This is what Mehemet Ali expected from the tribal leaders; and, indeed, these were the principal functions which they filled under his regime. Their main task was to supply horsemen for his army and services for his administration. Together with the authority which the tribal leader is given by the government, he can also increase his influence and power within the tribe by uniting bigger groups with smaller in a confederation; as a result, the government will take note of his power. Leaders who combine success in uniting forces within the tribe with an official appointment can bring together a great number of tribal groups. Then they can offer their services to the government; or the fact of their existence will constitute a threat, and the authorities will be compelled to take notice of them. A shēkh who has official support will find it easier to maintain his status. He will be considered an ‘official’ or ‘governmental’ shēkh, by his tribe as well.20 He has duties both to the government and to his tribe. His status is very similar to that of a feudal lord. He collects taxes and levies, and maintains order on behalf of the government; at the same time, he conducts his supporters’ external affairs in the political sphere, adjudicates conflicts, allocates pasture-land and regulates migrations. One may say that the most important activities which the shēkh undertakes in order to reinforce and broaden his authority are contact with supporters outside the tribe, instigating disputes, and arbitrating the disputes of others. In certain circumstances a confederation, which is a loose organization of tribes, and also, in effect, a territorial unit, may acquire the form of a political organization with ‘statelike’ characteristics—a regional bedouin ‘state’, as it were, or chiefship. This happens when there are, in its territory, resources which afford it a political and economic advantage, such as transport routes and the trade which passes through them, or markets where trade between bedouin and settlers is conducted. Leadership comes into existence not only in order to organize matters of pasture and water, but in order to gain control of these resources. The central government will become conscious of the status of these leaders: in addition to military pressure, it will try to reach agreement with them, and thereby strengthen them further. Such a ‘state’ comes into existence when the confederation produces leaders who take action to buttress its economy, in addition to dealing with matters of pasture and water. For this purpose they try to gain control of resources which are not controlled directly by the confederation, such as supervision of trade routes and pilgrims’ routes which pass through their territory, or control of the markets and of the settlement to which the members of the confederation transfer their domicile. This settlement then becomes a political and governmental centre. A hierarchy is created, and centralized governmental machinery is developed, together with a military force made up of tribesmen—which is at the disposal of the chief. Chiefship is a partnership, as Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner explain, between pastoral nomads on the margins of inhabited land, semi-nomads engaged mainly in agriculture, townsmen

The Pasha's Bedouin

42

who move from one place to another, and a ruler or shēkh who lives in a town or one of the provinces. In this framework the nomads and semi-nomads are supposed to abstain from internal conflicts and contribute forces for purposes of defence and expansion. The function of the chief is to supervise this partnership. The relationships between him and his society are not necessarily institutionalized, and they are often based on ad hoc arrangements whereby the tribes who constitute the confederation enjoy a degree of political autonomy.21 Socio-political structures such as these do not exist simply as objects cut off from their social and cultural context. They are linked to a specific situation, and change according to the historical circumstances. There is a great difference between the context of a strong central regime and a weak one. Clearly, a centralistic regime which succeeds in imposing its authority over its subject regions will have a different concept of social organization from a weak regime which leaves the periphery unsupervised and consents to the existence of strong independent bodies which develop an identity of their own. Such an identity develops out of agreements over rights to pasture and water, matrimonial strategies, and other matters. ‘Local’ ethno-political ideologies enable the members of the tribal group to elucidate their socio-political organization. Practical ideas which do not turn into formal ideologies serve as guides to the daily relationships between the groups. The authorities also contribute to the crystallization of an identity when they use the tribe as an administrative tool. This is often based on the idea that a corporative identity exists, with permanent territorial boundaries. The government grants privileges and authority within a particular territory to tribal leaders who are dependent on the existence of the state-like organization, and have not grown up out of the tribal leadership as the tribesmen understand it. In short, the terms ‘tribe’ and ‘kinship’ are based on common cultural constructs and on the way in which the bedouin understand the social world and activities within it. The case of Egypt: landownership and the formation of a tribal elite Having considered the causes of the crystallization of an elite and of tribal leadership, we shall now discuss Egypt at our research period, on the hypothesis that the power of the tribal elite sprang mainly from the possession of land, and control of tribal territory and economic resources. A further hypothesis is that this elite was crystallized as a result of involvement in two principal spheres: (a) playing a role in central events: participation, partnership in and influence on military, political, economic and other actions which made their mark on a particular period of time; struggles with other centres of social power; and (b) cooperation with the authorities: involvement in the administration, the army, the economy, in internal struggles and more. It may be said that the deeper their involvement in contemporary events, the more successful their struggles with other centres of influence, the more varied their cooperation with the authorities, and the more extensive their sources of power, the greater the status and influence acquired by the elite. Here, we are discussing a power elite: an elite defined in terms of power, whose members seize positions of leadership and command. There is no evidence that there existed in Egypt at this time a religious elite possessing overall moral and traditional superiority, as was the case, for instance, with the Senussi leadership of the Tripolitanian tribes. The

Tribal society and the tribal elite

43

Egyptian bedouin elite based its claim to leadership on political and economic grounds. We shall, therefore, emphasize the political and economic aspects of the leaders’ activities and of the relationships which they developed with the sedentary population and the state. Since economic relationships are power relationships, and, therefore, political, the layout of considerations, which the bedouin actuated, were basically economically motivated. From the point of view of the inner workings of bedouin society it seems that the type of elite and leadership which we have discussed so far functioned only in external affairs, with the shēkhs representing the tribes vis-à-vis the regime. This does not necessarily attest to the relative strength of the forces within the tribe. Inside the tribal system there frequently takes place a process of self-government linked to territorial space which brings about a certain isolation from the outside world. As a result, one can find within the tribes groups with no connection with the outside sedentary world that represents traditional political and economic power. Within the region there also takes place a process of political centralism resulting from developed mobility. This phenomenon does not contradict the fact that the tribes maintain symbiotic relations with the settlers, and are even dependent on them. The anthropologist Smadar La vie identified four such groups in the Muzēna tribal confederation in southern Sinai: the ideological leadership of the tribe, the symbolic director of warlike operations (galīd) and his entourage, who inherited their power as a result of genealogical purity; the fishermen, who derived their power from the fact that their descent group controlled the coastal areas, and this gave them a monopoly on fishing; the ex-smugglers who purchased political and economic power for money in the period of Egyptian rule of Sinai, until 1967; and the nouveaux riches, who also bought their power, but during the period of Israeli rule.22 These groups make up the tribal elite, and they have much more influence than the official/governmental shēkh. Nonetheless, ethnographers who observe the tribe from without are inclined to identify the tribal leadership with the group which includes government-nominated shēkhs and other dignitaries who have received concessions and grants from the authorities, even though their social and political power is far less. In Mehemet Ali’s Egypt, this group even formed part of the rural elite in respect to its social and economic characteristics; but in the eyes of their fellow tribesmen its members were leaders in external affairs alone, while in the eyes of the government they were the tribal leaders. Consequently, we can distinguish two elite groups. The first consists of shēkhs and dignitaries who usually lived on land which they been given by the authorities. This group was distinguished by a certain degree of corporatism, exclusivity and group spirit, and dealt with external affairs. These attributes they derived from the authorities, who viewed them as a homogeneous group, and adopted an identical policy towards all of them. The shēkhs received instructions and decrees in concert, were invited to meetings with the authorities and received official enquiries, and were given joint responsibility in certain areas. But, in contrast to other social elites, this group did not represent common tribal interests, and possessed no common ideology. The second group was the ‘tribal’ elite, which stayed in the tribal area, had no corporative, exclusive or group character, and dealt with internal matters. As early as the Ottoman period in Egypt, there had crystallized a tribal bedouin elite group, and the phenomenon of ‘households’—created by prominent bedouin shēkhs

The Pasha's Bedouin

44

primarily in order to safeguard their land rights—was striking. Dominant bedouin shēkhs in Mehemet Ali’s Egypt built themselves economic/political units very much like familybased factions. These units were composed of members of the shēkh’s segment or descent group—the kinship group closest to him, including his wives and married sons with their families—and others: Coptic and other officials, soldiers, black slaves and handmaids and other protégés. Evidence that in this period bedouin shēkhs possessed biography of slaves can be found in when he went out riding, all his slaves followed him on foot.23 The shēkhs’ homesteads served as administrative and supervisory centres, and were, in effect, enlarged farmhouses. In many respects they were similar to the ‘households’ (kapis in Turkish) headed by a bey which grew under the influence of the model of the Mamluk household, and they began to be a significant factor in the political, social and economic life of Egypt in the eighteenth century.24 Kenneth Cuno calls them ‘joint family households’. His conception of the structure of a household fits the case we are discussing. The phrase ‘joint family household’, describes the network of relationships inside the tribal household better than ‘extended family’. Cuno maintains that it was connected in particular to the reproduction and strengthening of the shēkh’s economic and political status: it seemed that the existence of a joint household would prevent the land from being split up through inheritance.25 Bedouin dignitaries tended to build joint family households mainly in order to reproduce their economic and political status in a district of permanent settlement, and thereby to strengthen it. The more palpable the threat to the unity of the group as a result of permanent settlement, the more the shēkhs and dignitaries tended to strengthen the joint family household. ‘Households’ such as these also bore witness to the growing wealth of the bedouin shēkhs during this period. Many of them used their wealth to build a mansion (qasr) in a strategic spot close to the tribe’s migration area. In the second half of the nineteenth century the shēkhs of the Lamlūm family of the Fawāyed tribe lived in a mansion called qasr lamlūm in the Western Desert. of the tribe, even built several mansions, one in the town of al-Fayyum, the others in its vicinity.26 Robert Hunter maintains that the ‘houses’ of those shēkhs involved in the administration provided a focus for the growth of large estates. They had an advantage over others, in that the land was obtained legally, whether it was a gift from the sultan or whether it was purchased, even if compulsion was used in the process. The wealthier shēkhs belonged to the local hierarchy. is an outstanding example. He owned extensive land holdings, which had considerable socio-political influence.27 They were the source of benefits granted to the group to which the estate owners belonged, and enabled them to wield personal influence in the sub-district (nahiye). usually moved his residence to a permanent settlement or lived on The his estate in the vicinity of such a settlement, thereby strengthening his standing within the tribe. His fellow tribesmen supported such a move, since they knew that he was close to the centre of government, and could look after their interests better as a result of his personal contacts. Therefore they were not concerned when he left the tribal territory, and did not try to harm his interests or his economic and political rights or those of his descent group while he was away; nor did others compete with him or attempt to

Tribal society and the tribal elite

45

undermine his authority, provided he represented them successfully vis-à-vis the authorities. Ultimately the fact that these shēkhs were estate owners made them more dependent on the government, since they were obliged to pay taxes and perform various services for the regime. As for the authorities, they preferred the shēkhs to live close by, within their reach, so that they could supervise what was happening in the tribe and tribal territory more closely, and use them as hostages for the fulfilment of their obligations, whether assumed or imposed. Their high office, their control of broad tracts of land, and the fact that they were leaders of tribal groups, made it possible for them to act both as representatives of the government and as representatives of their groups. There was a similar phenomenon in Middle Egypt: the case of the leaders of the At the end of the seventeenth century lived in the village of Dijwa in the province of al-Qaliubiyya, which served as the centre of his rule. He controlled the provinces of al-Qaliubiyya and al-Sharqiyya with the help of his two sons and his relatives. He owned partnerships, economic companies, agricultural lands and great houses in these provinces. His first son, Sālim, built a mansion, markets, olive-presses and mosques in the town, and planted decorative trees and date palms. His second son, Swēlim, built a tall palace on decorative columns, and a large quay on the sea-coast.28 Swēlim had at his command a cavalry force made up of black slaves. A historical survey of the bedouin tribes in Egypt proves that the possession of land was in most cases a source of power and a springboard to tribal leadership. The central government leased land to the heads of strong descent groups and other tribal groupings. Towards the end of the Mamluk Sultanate the bedouin of Upper Egypt founded a semiautonomous regime, based on permanent centres and control of the pasture and arable land. The leaders of the Hawwāra, ruled from within their estates in Upper Egypt as early as the fifteenth century. From the end of the fourteenth century onwards emirs of the clan of the Hawwāra controlled land estates in Girga. In 1493 the leaders of the Awlād Humām descent group of the Hawwāra founded a similar political The emir organization whose ruling centre was in Farshut, in the head of the was recognized as the ruling authority in (the person Upper Egypt. The chronicler Ibn Iyās even calls him in charge of the provinces of Upper Egypt).29 Control of land also brought them recognition by the Ottomans after their conquest of Egypt in 1517. During the first 100 in the years of their rule, the Ottomans recognized the authority of the They developed its agriculture, and acted as tax farmers for the central government. The bedouin tax farmers in Upper Egypt (al-wujh al-qiblī, or ) among whom the Hawwāra were prominent, employed many fellahin on their lands; many others were also under their surveillance for tax purposes. The fellahin also asked the shēkhs for protection against attack by bedouin from other areas, primarily from Lower and Middle Egypt (al-wujh al-aqālīm al-wasta).30 Thus, Ottoman sovereignty in the was based on a territorial arrangement with the bedouin, expressed in treaties with the heads of the important groups: they maintained control over the tribal territory (dīra), and undertook to maintain security, to develop agriculture and to collect taxes on the land; in return, the authorities recognized their authority, and this

The Pasha's Bedouin

46

recognition afforded them leadership status. Official recognition of the rule of the shēkhs which they took the form of usufruct rights—the right to use pieces of land received as tax farms (iltizāms).31 In the framework of the feudal-like system established by the Ottomans, the iltizām system, the bedouin leaders became multazims, supervising the Sultan’s lands, and created a system for levying share-cropping fees The fact that many of the bedouin were multazims speeded the process of sedentarization, and many of them settled permanently in their estates. With the process of settlement, the organizational pattern of the elite was created. Villages in the iltizām of bedouin shēkhs were linked in a regional for purposes of taxation. The administration consisted their agents, and office-holders from among the of the proprietors of the bedouin population, and they constituted a nomadic aristocracy whose principal income was derived from land. This elite was an intrinsic part of Egyptian society, and equal in status to the Ottoman-Egyptian elite which also owned tax estates. In Middle Egypt, too, bedouin shēkhs became multazims, as early as the period immediately after the Ottoman conquest. They encouraged settlement, and founded villages populated entirely by bedouin, such as Dijwa in al-Qaliubiyya, the centre of the administration of the and his sons Sālim and Swēlim, who are mentioned above. In other villages bedouin settled next to the fellahin.32 In the second half of the eighteenth century many of the leaders of the bedouin groups owned iltizāms, and belonged to the official Ottoman administration in the rural areas of the provinces. From the bedouin groups which gained the right to possess land and settled permanently on it in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as the Hawwāra, the and others, there grew up leaders who joined the provincial administration and, later, the central government apparatus, at the time of Mehemet Ali. Cuno maintains that they were among the few who combined the office of shēkh al-balad with that of multazim.33 As has been remarked, the source of these groups’ power was land, and the possessions which they amassed. I shall attempt to locate the elite of tribal society in the period of Mehemet Ali using the socio-cultural analysis of Egyptian society in the mid-nineteenth century proposed by Ehud Toledano,34 with the addition of a geographical and spatial dimension. Mehemet Ali ruled Egypt with the help of a small elite consisting of several thousand officials and army officers. They spoke, and administered the country, in the Turkish language, though their culture, which was distinctly Ottoman, gradually took on an Egyptian flavour. With the help of Mehemet Ali’s agrarian economic policy they exploited all the material and human resources of the country. This elite constituted a sub-culture within Egyptian society, and all the groups which did not belong to it constituted a separate sub-culture. Prominent among these were the village dignitaries. Their culture was local ArabicEgyptian, as against the universal imperial culture of the ruling Ottoman-Egyptian elite. In distinction to Toledano, Robert Hunter prefers to use ethno-cultural terms to describe the elite group with whose aid Mehemet Ali ruled: it included Turks, Egyptians—divided into dignitaries, among them village shēkhs, and technicians—Armenians, and Europeans, who were mainly involved in the urban society and economy.35

Tribal society and the tribal elite

47

In the tribal bedouin society of Mehemet Ali’s Egypt the process begun in earlier periods continued, to a great degree. A distinctive group of chiefs of tribes, descent groups and households became crystallized, at an even greater pace than previously. This group consisted of owners of great herds of sheep, goats, cattle, horses and camels, who possessed agricultural lands and other assets in rural and urban areas. In socio-cultural terms, this group was, according to Toledano’s definition, a ‘sub-elite’ within the tribal bedouin sub-culture that was outside the Ottoman-Egyptian ruling elite. Unlike other subelites, the tribal elite preserved its essential distinctiveness more than did other social groups, though it was particularly close to the elite of rural dignitaries, and shared their norms and values, particularly with regard to social issues. During the 1830s, after its members had begun to hold office in the provincial administration, they were considered to be part of the rural elite. According to Toledano this sub-elite had no political power, but its members had some influence on economic and political affairs through the Ottoman-Egyptian elite group. One of the ways in which it was expressed was the ramified network of mutual relationships between the local population and those members of the elite who filled administrative positions in the provinces. This was the result of the closely knit administrative network created by Mehemet Ali in the rural areas, the provinces. These processes became established in the provinces of Egypt, despite the centralist nature of Mehemet Ali’s regime. Soldiers, officials and administrators in the local government system already had local interests: they were given lands, were involved in the local economy, and married local women. This was particularly true of the officials of Turkish extraction, who remained in the service of Mehemet Ali and were not related to him. Some of the shēkhs made alliances with them by taking wives from these groups. One instance is the family, which thereby gained entrance to national Egyptian politics. Bedouin shēkhs and dignitaries joined Mehemet Ali’s bureaucracy mainly after 1833. At that time he gave orders to appoint bedouin heads of villages and of Egyptian bedouin tribes to provincial posts, first of all in the ranks of nazιr qism, hâkim hutt, and memur. had been in the hands of Until then, most of the positions above that of the village non-Egyptians.36 At the end of the 1830s Egyptians were to be found at all ranks of the provincial administration, apart from that of müdür (provincial governor).37 Among them were dignitaries of bedouin descent, and bedouin shēkhs from important families already partly settled, such as the Abāza and the Shawāribī.38 The absorption of bedouin dignitaries into the local administration also advanced their relatives in the bureaucratic scale, since they were permitted to bequeath their posts to their sons. Al-Sayyid Abāza inherited the position of nazιr qism from his father, After his death, the qism was divided into two halves, and his son Hasan was appointed nazιr of one of them.39 Sulēmān Abāza Pasha was the most prominent personage in the history of his dynasty. He was descended from the family of the shēkh al-balad of al-Sharqiyya province.40 His first office in the administration was that of nazιr qism in Al-Qaliubiyya. After a number of years in office, he began to serve in a long series of minor posts in the administration of his home, al-Sharqiyya—the home of the greatest number of bedouin in Egypt. It appears that in the eyes of his superiors his bedouin descent was an advantage for his work in the province; for that reason they did not appoint a Turco-Circassian official, as

The Pasha's Bedouin

48

was usual in other provinces. In 1857 he received the title of agha, and was appointed nazιr qism. The family of Sulēmān Pasha, the Abāza family, was a ramified tribal grouping comprising one of the branches of the tribe, which was descended from the ancient tribal confederation Judhām. According to family tradition, the name Abāza originated from the marriage of the eighth in their genealogical line to a woman from the family of Abāza during the reign of the Circassian mamluks. After the marriage, the members of the Family

tradition

tribe began to distinguish between Awlād al-Abāziyya and and this was the beginning of the split between the two groups. held that the first to bear the name of Abāza was

41 the son of Several of the Abāzas joined the Ottoman-Egyptian administration during the eighteenth century, and received civil and military titles and ranks. also known as

was the hazinedar of Ibrāhīm Bey, the associate of Murad Bey in the duumvirate which ruled Egypt on the eve of the French invasion. Mehemet Kethüda Abāza was also active in the service of Murad Bey and Ibrāhīm Bey.42 During the French invasion some of them were active in local attacks on the French. Al-Jabarti describes an event of 7 January 1799. and his brother Sulēmān Abāza, the shēkh of the and their men attacked and Munayr and stole some cattle. was captured by the French and brought to Cairo as a hostage together with some other bedouin from his group, and his wives and children and the rest of his retinue followed after them.43 One of the most prominent leaders of the Abāza during Mehemet Ali’s reign was who ruled most of the province of al-Sharqiyya. In 1812 Ibrāhīm, the son of Mehemet Ali, appointed him of (‘half’) al-Sharqiyya.44 was recognized as the leader of the Abāza grouping, and later joined the (High Council) together administration of Mehemet Ali as a member of the with his brother Baghdādī.45 He was also a close personal associate of Mehemet Ali. By virtue of his position as nazιr qism he was apparently responsible for reporting on the state of the lands in different parts of al-Sharqiyya; their classification as agricultural lands and their tax assessments were based on these reports.46 died in 1848/9, and his eldest son, al-Sayyid Pasha (died 1875/6) took his place as leader of the group. Al-Sayyid began his public career as nazιr qism in the Sharqiyya.47 Apparently he, too, dealt with matters of land in the area which he ruled.48 Later he filled (1854–1863), who befriended the Awlād Abāza public positions under the khedive and conferred military and administrative rank, including, in some cases, the rank of Pasha, on the heads of the group. Al-Sayyid was a legal agent of internal affairs and, later, of all the provinces müdür of al-Beheirah. He was also the proprietor of an behalf of the government. Thus, he acquired a firm power base.

and in his village, on also

Tribal society and the tribal elite

49

mentions (died 1836) the chief shēkh of the whom Mehemet Ali made first nazιr qism and later memur of Belbeis.49 It seems that the matrimonial ties of the Abāza family with women of a Circassian/Abkhazian family, whatever its importance, afforded them a serious opportunity to join the eighteenth-century Ottoman-Egyptian elite and the elite which developed at the time of Mehemet Ali and his successors. Baer points out that this was the way in which the bedouin shēkhs who had grown rich as a result of their landed property joined the elite of big land-owners.50 —joined Distinguished men from both family branches—Abāza and Mehemet Ali’s administration, and some of them married into his family. Mubārak mentions one of the best-known shēkhs of another branch of Iyyād Kuraym al-Mihnāwī, who was memur of Belbeis for some time, and died in 1846. His eldest son was Abdallah ibn Iyyād (died 1875/6).51 One of Abdallah’s grandsons, married the Princess the granddaughter of Ibrāhīm Ahmed, who was the grandson of Ibrāhīm Pasha, Mehemet Ali’s son. The princess and her family owned large estates near Belbeis, the centre of shēkhs.52 When they joined the administration they were obliged to leave the village of Abāza, where most of the family lived, and Belbeis, the centre of the tribe, and move elsewhere in al-Sharqiyya province and in other areas.53 Sulēmān Abāza, and others were leaders of tribal groups who had posts in Mehemet Ali’s administration. At the same time they were leaders of tribal rural elites. Thus, they became an integral part of the local Egyptian elite. In 1850 this large group numbered some 20,000 families.54 Since most of their activities took place in the provinces close to the place where their large families lived, and their social standing among the local population was well established, they could develop power bases around themselves. reign, the among them bedouin shēkhs, were given During the task of inspecting the watchmen (ghafirs),55 and the responsibility for recruiting workers for public works and military duty. They also served as tax collectors, land assessors and tax assessors. They were the mainstay of rural and tribal security and the taxation system.56 The ‘family’ influence, based on land ownership, which began to evolve particularly after 1860, mainly helped those officials in the provincial administration who belonged to the great tribal groups such as the Abāza, Shawāribī, and Sultān, and the great rural families. They used the benefits of office in order to strengthen their local connections. They succeeded in building power centres around themselves, since for most of their career they lived in their own places of residence, close to their families, and in their own tribal territory. As a result, they had a solid social base among the local population. Some factors made this possible: First, the first appointments of dignitaries were always in their own home province. Many began their career in the provincial hierarchy as nazιr or hâkim of provinces or sub-districts in which their own descent group lived. They also became governors in neighbouring provinces. Sometimes a local official—for instance, or al-Sayyid Their relatives looked after their Pasha Abāza—would receive his own village as

The Pasha's Bedouin

50

interests when they were away, since there were generally lower-ranking officials in the provincial hierarchy, such as nazιr qism, among them.57 The second factor was the process of Ottomanization in Egyptian society, which proceeded side by side with the process of localization, as Toledano has described. This was a socio-cultural process. However, its influence on tribal society was minimal. It only affected the dignitaries of tribal bedouin society, and even in their case only symbolically and, in the main, superficially: for instance, their participation in the system of honours conferred by the administration: the Pasha would grant a mantle or robe of honour (farwa, kiswa, ), and decorations (nişān), on the occasion of the appointment of a shēkh, or as a reward for special services to the government. As against this, they were integrated into the local rural system and the sub-culture of the rural dignitaries. As has been said, bedouin shēkhs and other tribal dignitaries moved to urban or rural settlements or to their own estates; there is evidence that shēkhs owned houses and other property in different settlements, and even in Cairo. In the records of the court al-Qisma in Cairo there is a discussion centring on a deed for a house in the Bab-al-Nasr quarter of Cairo in the name of the deceased 58

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, before their number was limited by law, every tribal grouping and every village had a recognized shēkh. This applied also to the tribal society of the bedouin. From this point of view, the role of the shēkhs, and their status in village or tribe, was related to the organization of their communities by means of family connections and corporate activities. The term “shēkh” meant an elderly man, honoured by the community, the head of a tribe or Egyptian village. The many men who held this title in village or tribe were the elders of their descent group. One of their main tasks was to resolve conflicts within their descent groups, and to negotiate on their behalf with people from outside the tribe. But, from the moment that they began to act as minor officials in the local administration, they were required to act as intermediaries between the government and the tribe for which they were responsible. In this position, their main tasks, like those of the village shēkhs, were to maintain security and see that taxes were duly collected. Contrary to the theory that tribal society was isolated, the status of was defined in the course of a long period of interaction between the tribal community and the outside world, particularly the government. It seems that represented the authorities vis-à-vis the tribesmen no less than he represented the bedouin vis-à-vis the authorities. This can be clearly seen in the was documents of Mehemet Ali’s government. Like shēkh-al-balad, identified with the territory in which his descent group or tribal grouping lived, or with the estate which he cultivated. Thus, for instance, the village of Abāza in the al-Sharqiyya province was the home of the Abāza tribal grouping, of the tribe. There is also a request to Khalīl Effendi, the munazzam umūr of Bahansawiyya al-Shamaliyya, to consider the request of the bedouin Shēkhs and Smēdī from the in the province of Beni Suweif that they should be transferred to village of another district, to enable them to pay the tax on the miri land which they owed, on time. The fact that they were identified with the village proves that they owned land there, and 59 It also shows that the shēkh and his descent possibly held the whole village as a

Tribal society and the tribal elite

51

group usually lived in the vicinity of the land which they cultivated. In such cases the duty related not only to the official status of the shēkh but also to the area where his was always territorial, for he was authority was valid. The authority of responsible for the tribal territory (dīra)—the tribe’s pasture land. This discussion leads us to the following conclusions: (a) Tribal leadership and elites should not be viewed from the point of view of the sociocultural division of Egyptian society alone. The territorial connection is an integral component of this group’s outlook, and spatial and geographic questions must also be considered in this respect. (b) The socio-political organization which the shēkhs created by building ‘households’ neither broke down the tribal structure described above nor deviated from it. Dependents who were not blood relations had always been part of the tribe. The shēkhs retained their links with tribal culture and their tribal background even though they adopted the style and symbols of the Ottoman-Egyptian bureaucratic culture taken over by Mehemet Ali. Bedouin from the smaller tribal groupings, with less political power, generally remained in their tribal territories, and continued to lead a nomadic life based on their traditional economy of animal husbandry combined with dry seasonal farming. This type of behaviour can be studied in cotemporary research on the bedouin tribes. (c) The more the bedouin shēkhs are identified with the territory in which their tribes operate, the more centralized their political activities become. (d) The greater the involvement in economic activity outside the tribal area, the more the elite group becomes crystallized. (e) The developments and changes in employment and economic activity experienced by the group of bedouin dignitaries, and their involvement in the local rural system, emphasize even more the similarity between them and the group of rural dignitaries— a similarity which had already existed in the characteristics and functions which both of these groups filled in their own communities. Control of territory and involvement in the administration of the Pasha were necessary conditions for the emergence of political centralism—that is, active leadership—but they were not sufficient conditions. The land which the tribal leaders received from the authorities was sufficient for them to be able to function independently of the tribes and to be considered part of the rural elite. As a result, their authority became more similar to that of the shēkh-al-balad, who ruled over the neighbourhood where his family lived within the village. During the eighteenth century, when the tribal shēkhs and their families settled and became tax farmers, they took over functions similar to shēkh-al-balad. This was particularly the case in Upper Egypt,60 but there were similar instances in parts of Lower Court in al-Mansūra subEgypt, too. Cuno discovered that in the records of the family in the village of Mit Dafar were identified province the heads of the both as bedouin shēkhs and as village shēkhs. They held part of their village as iltizām, and part of the rizqa land in order to provide for the village mosque. Shēkhs of the Abū Gawra Bedouin family from the village of Mit al-Amal, filled the post of shēkh-albalad.61 In the 1830s the government began to call the chief bedouin shēkhs, known as by the title of like the village heads.62

The Pasha's Bedouin

52

Like the Ottomans before him, Mehemet Ali did not start his reign with a tabula rasa. He inherited the system of land ownership which had been in force since the Ottoman conquest of 1517, with remnants surviving from previous dynasties. This task was also given to government officials, especially governors with the rank of kâşif and agents (âmil), who were chosen from among the wealthy. Helen Rivlin maintains that the iltizām system which eventually evolved was undoubtedly the work of these agents.63 The state lands which were distributed as iltizām throughout Egypt towards the end of the eighteenth century fell into the hands of the most powerful, and these were mostly Ottoman regimental officers and members of the Ottoman-Egyptian elite group. But there was also an important group of bedouin landowners who owned and cultivated wide areas of land, as a result of the processes of sedentarization which began with the Arab conquest. These were mostly situated in Upper and Middle Egypt, but also in al-Fayyum and Lower Egypt. The Qanun Name of the Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, which was published after the conquest, recognized the importance of the bedouin element, and imposed on the bedouin shēkhs the tasks of supervision of state land cultivation and tax collection in the wide areas under their control. As the number of tribes entering Egypt increased, the bedouin shēkhs gradually acquired the position of multazims by inheritance, and the most important among them possessed almost unlimited power in the areas under their control. This applies particularly to Upper Egypt, where the Hawwāra had settled. Far from the centre of government in Cairo, Upper Egypt was almost an autonomous region, and developed local customs different from those to be found in other regions of Egypt. In the mid-eighteenth century Humām was the last shēkh of the Hawwāra who possessed absolute power in Upper Egypt. He supplied the government in Cairo with an average of 150,000 irdabb of wheat per year, and was rewarded with a free hand to exact taxes and to rule the region. His administration was stable, and Upper Egypt was prosperous under his rule. In al-Qaliubiyya, ruled over wide tracts of land, and was the head of a tribes. Both of them union of tribes which belonged to the ancient confederation of were defeated by Ali Bey al-Kabir, who decided in 1769 to destroy the power of the great bedouin shēkhs. And, indeed, from the death of Shēkh Humām in 1769 until the slaughter of the Ottoman-Egyptian beys and grandees by Mehemet Ali in 1811 there arose no new bedouin dynasty, and Upper Egypt was on the brink of anarchy. Since a considerable proportion of the income from taxes remained in the hands of those bedouin shēkhs and dignitaries who were multazims, they continued to amass wealth and influence after Mehemet Ali’s rise to power. The relations between the bedouin and the Pasha’s government were still mainly concerned with land; so the elite which crystallized in the tribes in this period consisted of estate owners, as had been the case during the Ottoman conquest. Until the abolition of the iltizām in 1813 they continued to control resources and territory as they had done before the French invasion. In al-Daqahliyya, the Abū Gawra family was the most prominent bedouin family. Its shēkhs were tax-farmers in at least four villages in the province. They held rizqa bi-la māl land, and held the post of shēkh-al-balad.64 (died 1808) was the head of the family. He was the ‘Abū Kara’ or ‘Abū Kura’ who bought and later married a young French woman who was captured during the massacre of the French garrison of alMansūra in August 1798. She bore him three sons, and after his death married his

Tribal society and the tribal elite

brother.

53

His

sons, and were shēkhs. In 1834 the French doctor Clot-Bey visited the village of Mit al-Amal, and was the guest of the Abū Gawra family, the heads of which at the time were his mother Stēta the daughter of and eldest son.65 of the tribe, was granted the village of Murayh in al-Qaliubiyya as iltizām, and received a deed for the land (taqsīt), because his father and his brother had in the past been multazims of the village.66 Some scholars, including Baer and Cuno, consider the bedouin shēkhs and dignitaries to have belonged to the group of Egyptian rural dignitaries particularly since they were landowners.67 Mehemet Ali granted shēkhs and bedouin dignitaries land in exchange for services and as a solution to the financial distress of the Egyptian treasury resulting from expensive foreign wars and the desertion of land by villagers because of the weight of taxation. Mehemet Ali’s government also saw the grant of land to the heads of the tribal groups as a tool to promote widespread settlement of the bedouin population, though there is no clear evidence that this was the main objective of his policy towards the bedouin. There are also no signs that he insisted on settlement of all the bedouin or initiated settlement projects for them. It was more important to him that the shēkhs and heads of the other tribal groups should be under his supervision and control; this could be achieved by granting them lands to cultivate and including them in the administration. For this to come about they had to settle in a permanent village or town. The fact that the government co-opted them to the administration is clear proof of the sedentarization of shēkhs as a group. Those of them who joined the administration in executive positions also received considerable areas of land. for instance, held 2,019 faddān of land between 1862 and 1869, in the provinces of al-Minieh, Beni Mazar, Beni Suweif and al-Fayyum.68 The chief categories of land granted to bedouin shēkhs are considered below.

land Mehemet Ali was interested in increasing the area of cultivated land in Egypt, and therefore encouraged the cultivation and improvement of uncultivated land. These lands were defined as and were considered to be preferential for cultivation. They were measured in the land survey which Mehemet Ali initiated in the years 1813/4 and 1820/1, but were not included in the cadastral land registry. They were situated in semiarid areas. They had no permanent sources of water, and were far from the Nile, the main source of water for Egyptian agriculture. The first grant of land of this category was made in 1826, and the Pasha began to give out land to his favourites in 1829. Among those who received allocations were administrative officials and army officers from his personal entourage. The land was given on favourable conditions—exemption from tax for the first years, when it was known as rizqa bi-la māl; thereafter the tax was reduced by 50 per cent.

The Pasha's Bedouin

54

Most of the areas defined as were, in practice, territories providing a livelihood for the tribes, and most of the bedouin tribes lived in such areas. Therefore the government approached the heads of the tribes, among others, and suggested, as an incentive to settlement, that they accept responsibility for land suitable for cultivation, on condition that they cultivate it. Many bedouin shēkhs seized the opportunity, and received land. The bedouin preferred land to al-athariyya; considerable areas of according to this was because of their migrations from one place to another, and their unwillingness to bind themselves to the soil. Therefore, according to him, the government exempted them temporarily from the payment of tax, and this exemption was renewed yearly on condition that the residents of the nahiye were not in need of land.69 In the first instance those who were granted these lands received only rights of usufruct, but in 1836 it was decided that they were inheritable, and in 1842 their owners were granted the right to sell them and transfer them to others.70 In point of fact, many of those who cultivated these lands were bedouin who migrated within these areas in any case, and saw that this was a good opportunity both to remain in their original living areas and to receive government aid for land improvement. These lands were given to bedouin shēkhs on favourable terms, including tax exemption for several years (rizqa bi-la māl), but under certain conditions: a) that the villagers in the vicinity are not in need of land; b) that the lands should be prepared for cultivation, and their owners should work them themselves; c) that they should not be leased to the fellahin or given to them to cultivate; and d) that they should not settle next to the land which they had been given or in the neighbouring villages.71 Bedouin shēkhs received large plots of land on the fringes of cultivated land. It seems, therefore, that the prohibition on settlement in this area was intended to prevent disputes land was granted to the bedouin between them and the neighbouring villages. shēkhs without a deed of possession (taqsīt), but as compensation the Pasha undertook that they would pay no direct taxes, nor be conscripted for corvées or army service.72 In this way shēkhs and prominent bedouin leaders received large stretches of land. These shēkhs had served Mehemet Ali’s regime—taken part in his foreign wars, helped him to put down rebellions of other tribes, acted as watchmen in his public works projects, and executed logistic functions such as transport of food and equipment. Prominent among the bedouin leaders who received large grants of land were the shēkhs of the great confederation most of whose members lived in alBeheirah. These were mainly members of the powerful al-Magrahī descent group, which traditionally provided the dominant shēkhs of the whole confederation. was one of the shēkhs of the who received land as a reward for his services to the government.73 Another member of this family, from al-Beheirah, negotiated with the authorities about handing over to him and his men land, to be cultivated without payment of māl. confederation, received 600 Kheyrallah al-Dajan, another shēkh of the land of the villages and Zawiyat Musallam in alfaddān of the in al-Beheirah received 3,655 faddān. They Beheirah. In all, the shēkhs of received most of this land as compensation for land which had been taken from them and

Tribal society and the tribal elite

55

given to Mehemet Ali’s family.74 This shows that in the period before Mehemet Ali’s rise held lands there, were at least partly settled, and to power members of the practised agriculture. Turning land into cultivated plots involved a huge investment, since this was untilled land, in arid regions far from sources of water, which could not be cultivated without measures for improvement. For this it was necessary to buy animals and agricultural equipment, and to build dams and irrigation installations. The bedouin had animals available, and could easily recruit labour to prepare the infrastructure, using their more developed group solidarity: large close-knit family units were absolutely essential to the development projects. Those who were granted land exploited these facts, and requested government aid or licences and concessions for these lands. The government was anxious to increase the area of agricultural land in Egypt; so these requests were usually granted. For instance, Mehemet Ali granted permission to the and of the to construct three waterwheels (sāqiya) on the Mahmudiyya canal in order to improve and sow land which they had received over a period of three years; they were also granted more land for improvement. Some shēkhs exploited the wish of the authorities to increase the area of Hussein agricultural land to request an award of land without payment. Karīm asked for extra land, in addition to the 130 faddān which he had already received.75 Despite the strong group solidarity of the bedouin, the desire to obtain land led to disputes even within families, and they were dealt with in the appropriate divan. Gāsim Abū Zēd lodged the following complaint. He had been cultivating a plot of 200 faddān since the year 1814/5, and paying two riyāl per faddān every year. This year, however, there had arisen a dispute between him and his cousin, Shēkh Suleymān Farā, and the cousin had tried to obtain the land at three riyāl per faddān. The matter was brought before the khedivial divan, which decided that justice required that the land remain in the hands of Shēkh Gāsim, but demanded that he pay three riyāl per faddān. Shēkh Gāsim demanded compensation for the damage which his cousin had done him, and requested a grant of extra land, tax-free, as was usual with land. The divan’s decision was passed on to Ahmed Pasha, the memur of where both of them lived.76 Most of the shēkhs of the other tribes, great and small, received

land for

shēkh of cultivation. tribe,77 received 500 faddān of the land of the nahiye of Tukh al-Jabal in merkez Girga, according to an edict published in 1841. He also received land together with Ibn Abī Gharāra, one of the dignitaries of his tribe, as a reward for their part in building bridges and digging irrigation canals on the Nile. The land was granted as rizqa bi-la māl, whether it was suitable for sowing or not.78 Prominent among those who received land was the descent group of Shadīd, of the Ghanāmiyyīn branch of the tribe, which traditionally provided the shēkhs of the tribe. In 1824 an edict was published exempting of the and other bedouin from and a half per faddān on an area of 148 faddān which they had sown in paying an

The Pasha's Bedouin

56

the village of Sanafir in al-Sharqiyya and in the village of and in other villages in al-Qaliubiyya. The grain (ghilāl) which was disregarded [by the tax collectors] shall be considered their daily sustenance.’79 The same was granted 100 faddān in the nahiye of Salhiyya and Ajhur al-Sughri in al-Qaliubiyya. For every faddān he was required to pay two riyāl, and for this he was granted a sanad and permission to sow. He was also granted exemption from tax for three years, but in the fourth year was required to pay tax (māl) as was customary in the village.80 received a grant of 100 faddān of the land of al-Zāwiya for land was granted to māl.81 Similar the shēkh of the tribe near Sinaru, close to the al-Jabālī town of al-Fayyūm.82 Other bedouin shēkhs who received land were of the tribe in al-Fayyūm, and of the Fawāyed tribe, who received 500 faddān of the land of Benī Warkan and other villages in the provinces of al-Minieh and Benī Mazar.83 Several strong shēkhs who were also landowners came from descent group of the Hanādī tribe.

tree-planting,

as

rizqa

bi-la

received 100 faddān in Wadi al-Tumēlāt in al84

Sharqiyya.

and

leased 220

land in al-Sharqiyya in the year 1830/1, on the undertaking that they faddān of would cause no damage to the village farmers.85 of alJawāzī tribe, received 500 faddān of the land of the village of Ashruba, near alBahansa in merkez al-Minieh and Benī Mazar, and 650 faddān of the land of the village of Shusha, near merkez Samalut, in al-Minieh. a 86 shēkh of the tribe, received 25 faddān in the nahiye of al-Bahansa. In the year after the first cadastral survey (1815), of the village of Mit al-Amal received 19 faddān of uncultivated land near the village of Shanisa for cultivation, and was taxed afterwards; he worked the land he had acquired with the help of others, mainly by means of leases according to which he supplied most of the capital and the land.87 Hindāwī, of the received lands in the qism of al-Rahmaniyya, as the result of a Viceregal decree sent to Ahmed Effendi, the memur of the qism.88 Despite the restrictions which accompanied the grant of land, the shēkhs often found that it was much more convenient to lease them to landless fellahin. In 1837, 1846, and later, edicts were published forbidding this practice. The shēkhs of were explicitly warned by the müdür of al-Beheirah neither to allow the lands which they had been villagers to participate in the cultivation of the granted, nor to approach the village and settle there. If they did not obey, they would be dismissed from their post.89 In this matter there were instances of jealousy, and even of complaints to the authorities. The khedivial divan requested Khalīl Effendi, the memur of al-Bahansawiyya, to deal with the complaint of Jabālī, the shēkh of the

Tribal society and the tribal elite

57

He claimed that that he and his men had sowed fields which he had been granted, subject to half the māl, and paid what they owed; but they knew that alFawāyed bedouin, who had also been granted land, did not cultivate them, and gave them to the fellahin to work. ‘Therefore they demand amwāl, like the Fawāyed bedouin.’ The divan returned the money to the complainant, and Khalīl Effendi was asked to check the shēkh’s complaints and consider whether it would not be better to transfer the Fawāyed’s’ land to the fellahin, since they were working them in any case.90 This case is evidence of a quite consistent policy on the part of the authorities: a just attitude to the complaints of the bedouin, combined with preference for the fellahin, and strict observance of the division between fellahin and bedouin, even if the bedouin were inclined to settle in a particular spot. This policy is clearly reflected in the official documents. It seems that the guiding principle of the regime was that land cultivation should not be disrupted; so that the payment of taxes should continue and produce continue to reach the government stores without hindrance. The government also wanted to prevent the creation of dissatisfaction or a feeling of discrimination among the bedouin, which could have led to tension. The government consistently sought to prevent such situations, no less than harassment of the fellahin and raids on the villages. Therefore it rewarded the bedouin shēkhs with land, but demanded that they comply with the restrictive conditions it imposed. land More land passed into the possession of the bedouin shēkhs and dignitaries as a result of the introduction of the system91 in an edict promulgated by Mehemet Ali on 23 March 1840. He hoped that the new system would increase the income of the state, which had been depleted as a result of his unsuccessful wars in Bilād al-Shām (Syria/Palestine). Another reason for the change was the increasing difficulty in raising taxes directly from the fellahin. The taxes were exceedingly high, and as a result many fellahin left their land were bedouin shēkhs, village shēkhs, army villages. The owners of the officers, senior officials in the administration and other dignitaries. The legal significance was the acquisition of the produce of the fellahin’s land. During the 1830s, of the meant the responsibility for agricultural land assumed by a person when he the term became its owner, usually by undertaking to pay all the debts owed on it. The owners also undertook to collect the current and future taxes from a village or group of villages in In return, they received privately owned tax-free land, to be cultivated by the their In other words, the villages were tax estates. The shēkhs who fellahin of the land, were required to treat the fellahin under their tutelage fairly. If they possessed tried to dominate them in any way, they were liable to be expelled from the land, which would be given to the local inhabitants. They were granted the right to defend the interests of the tribesmen, as against those of the fellahin. In such a case, if the central government was convinced that they were making an effort to work the land and supervise it, it would order the provincial administration to leave them in place. To a certain extent this was a return to the iltizām system which Mehemet Ali himself had abolished. After this system had been abolished in 1813, the holders land, among

The Pasha's Bedouin

58

them, of course, bedouin, acquired rights of ownership of the areas over which they had taken responsibility. For this they needed the agreement of the provincial governor to classify the land as rizqa bi-la māl.92 There are many examples of the grant of land, and even whole villages, to shēkhs of Most of them already possessed land which they had bedouin tribes as Ibn Shadīd held ten faddān of received as a grant. In the years 1809–1810 land

exempt

from

firda

tax in the village of Sanafir, in his held 60 faddān in the village of Dhawaba al-

Hamra in the province of al-Qaliubiyya.93 the shēkh of the was given the village of Marih in al-Qaliubiyya province, together with a deed of possession, following in the steps of his father and his brother who were multazims of the village, and his relative, who held 94 the land of the village of Zafita Mashtul in al-Qaliubiyya. The heads of the descent groups of the Hanādī tribe were also great landowners, and held the post of shēkh of the village of al-Mansuriyya in the Giza province. who has been mentioned above, received Wadi al-Tumēlāt as his holding extended over 5,000 faddān. He also received land in the qism of Mit al-Iz in al-Daqahliyya and alSharqiyya provinces. Aref Bey, who was the müdür of al-Sharqiyya at the time, received the order to hand the area over to He received 100 faddān of the 300 faddān of land in Mit al-Iz, in exchange for 100 faddān of his land in the on this land for 1845. His brothers nahiye of Wadi al-Tumēlāt. He paid land tax in al-Beheirah.95 Al-Sayyid Abāza, mentioned Suleymān and Yūnis also held of the qism of in al-Sharqiyya which contained 20 villages.96 above, received to Mehemet Ali gave 1,700 faddān of land in Qaliub as who was appointed to his office in 1818. He renewed the grant.97 also received another 400 faddān free of tax. The shēkh of the tribe, was given responsibility for the village of al-Mureij in al-Qaliubiyya,98 and Baghdādī al-Bakrī and the shēkhs of the bedouin of Wadi al-Tumēlāt, were made responsible for the nahiye of al-Shabanat in al-Sharqiyya,99 while the shēkhs of alFawāyed tribe received land,100 and of the mentioned above, received land in the oasis of Siwa, in the Western Desert.101 This is a clear instance of permanently settled farmers being made subjects of neighbouring bedouin tribes and forced to pay tax on their land and produce. There were also many similar cases in other regions of Egypt as a result of the initiation of the system. Many members of the Abāza family and the tribe, of which they were part, belonged to the village elite which grew up during the reign of Mehemet Ali. This group points out was outstandingly mobile, both geographically and socially.

Tribal society and the tribal elite

59

that the tribe became established in al-Sharqiyya by taking over the land of the village of al-Qasuriya. When Mehemet Ali came to power they had a reputation as troublemakers who participated in many disputes and battles. They had already acquired many possessions—date palms, land and money. Mehemet Ali presented them with a choice: if they continued to behave as bedouin, he would confiscate their lands; if they preferred to settle as fellahin, they would retain their property. It appears that the people of the tribe, to which the Abāza group belonged, preferred not to aggravate their relations with the Pasha, and made agriculture their chief means of livelihood; the village of Abāza, founded in 1813 in the district, which appears in Mehemet Ali’s land registry as having 1,335 faddān, and the village of Sharawida in the same district, are clear evidence of this group’s permanent agricultural settlement. founded the village of Ibrahim in the merkez of Belbeis; 102 When Hasan Agha Abāza, thus there was another village named mentioned above, died, he held 4,000 faddān of land. Some of the land, on the border of al-Wujh al-Qibli, was of the hatīta category and was exempt from tax, and appropriated by bedouin. Most of his land was given to him untaxed by the government (rizqa bi-la māl). He was among those who profited almost every time from Mehemet Ali’s ‘agricultural campaigns’—planting mulberry trees for the silk industry, sowing cotton, etc.—for whose promotion the Pasha distributed land.103 He was also involved in substantial land transactions with government officials. On 31 December 1836, the müdür of al-Sharqiyya, reported to the Pasha that he had received from a deed of conveyance of ownership (sanad) for the lands of the nahiye of al-Hadariyya in the qism of Kufur Nijm, and that he had annexed the nahiye, since had paid the māl for the rest of the lands of the nahiye which were under his control. It appears that this transaction was not entirely legal: the divan of the Pasha replied to the müdür that the people of his müdüriye were lax in the payment of māl, and that some of them had sold agricultural land and produce privately; they must, therefore, be punished, and the grain that they had sold should be seized.104 The allegation that he had special relations with the officials is supported by the decision of the majlis of the Pasha to enquire of Hasan Effendi, memur nizām al-Sharqiyya, why he had given the bedouin lands subject to māl, whereas received 105 land exempt from māl. is said to have dissipated most of his great land holdings and given them away, while his sons, al-Sayyid Pasha and Sulēmān Pasha, inherited less than half of his possessions.106 Al-Sayyid held 6,000 faddān of land, and he of 20 villages; his brother Süleymān possessed about 2,000 faddān. was Baghdādī, brother (died 1858/9) owned an estate of 500 faddān, and founded a village of his own in the al-Sharqiyya province. He was a member of

uncle (died 1865/6) owned 2,000 faddān, and he, too founded a village in al-Sharqiyya. He was one of the powerful shēkhs who were not content with the land which Mehemet Ali allocated to them, and ‘took over’ additional lands in the words of chronicle.107

The Pasha's Bedouin

60

The heads of the house of Abāza contributed to the development of the villages that they founded. The aforementioned Sulēmān built an irrigation system that included pumps, and also cotton gins.108 These activities—founding villages and developing economic institutions and projects—prove that the tribe, to which the house of Abāza belonged, settled permanently in al-Sharqiyya. The heads of other bedouin descent groups were also among the great land-owners. The chief of the Abū Kurēsha group, ruled over several villages in the Girga district; Mubārak estimates that by the name of they extended over 16,000 faddān.109 The shēkhs of the Lamlūm family of the Fawāyed tribe possessed widespread estates, and in the 1950s they were still prominent in the struggle against agrarian reform in Egypt.110 The Hawwāra had been dominant in Upper Egypt during the first half of the eighteenth century, until they were defeated by Alī Bey al-Kabir. One of the shēkhs of the al-Hawwāra was given back a sugar cane plantation, 300 faddān in extent. Their shēkhs, headed by Humām ibn Yūsuf, were great multazims, and owned extensive estates until Mehemet Ali confiscated them all in 1812.111 and his descent group, the Shawāribiyya, were among descent group also held extensive areas of land the first great landowners.112 The in Samalut in al-Minieh province. Their powerful standing enabled them to have a hand in the appointment of high-ranking officials.113 One instance is that of His wealth was derived from the land owned by his family. 1,902 faddān were registered in his name, mostly in alMinieh, but also in Beni Mazar, Beni Suweif, and al-Fayyum. He also dedicated 4,400 faddān to the needs of the wakf in the same district, 965 of them in the village named after him.114 In 1885 he owned four estates employing 493 persons. There were also settlements, housing many workers, on his estates.115 This was originally iltizām land which was passed on by inheritance, as well as villages and other tracts of land which the family received as land became exceedingly The shēkhs and other bedouin dignitaries who owned powerful because, in practice, they controlled broad populated rural areas. However, they became more dependent on the central government, and more exposed to pressure from it, even though they never lost their tribal power. They could no longer evade their duties to pay taxes and to treat the villagers fairly. In the official documents there are descriptions of cases in which force had to be used in order to collect taxes from the It appears that the of the qism of Dalhanis in al-Minieh province refused to pay his taxes. He was told that the Majlis sitting in the citadel of Cairo had nominated an officer with the rank of ser liva süvarī to recruit a military force which would oblige the bedouin to pay their debts.116 Shēkhs and heads of bedouin groups were also given control of khārijiyya lands, on which kharāj tax was levied directly by the representatives of the authorities.117 The land was leased to them tax-free for a period of three years, and in the fourth year was taxed at a reduced rate. Thus, for instance, the khedivial divan decided to instruct Hasan Effendi, Khamīs of the the memur of Thilth al-Sharqiyya, to lease an estate to Hanādī tribe for three years at seven riyāl per faddān per year. At about the same time the majlis al-mulkiyya also decided to lease a similar tract to Shēkh Khamīs at eight riyāl per

Tribal society and the tribal elite

61

faddān per year, on the conditions laid down for all the bedouin shēkhs who received land: to work the land themselves, and not to encroach on their neighbours’ land. The authorities’ main concern was that the bedouin might trespass on the fellahin’s territory; they therefore took care to mention this in the leasehold agreements with the bedouin.118 After the completion of the first cadastral survey in 1813/4, Mehemet Ali also renewed the policy of exempting from tax some of the lands of the shēkhs and other dignitaries. This was known as (‘granted’, or ‘given by permission’). Both bedouin shēkhs and village shēkhs benefited from this privilege. This term was used of two types of land. was untaxed land given as compensation to the shēkhs for fulfilling their duties; after the second cadastral survey of 1820–1821, there was no untaxed land available as land was intended to cover the heavy expenses for entertainment of visitors and the maintenance of a guest-house, and it was therefore not taxed. Among those who received land in this category were and his brothers. The Abū Gawra group continued to hold land after 1821; this shows how important this family was among the village dignitaries.119 As we have seen, bedouin shēkhs and other heads of lineage groups became landowners and held office in the local administration, and most of them settled permanently on their estates or in a permanent settlement in which the government’s representatives also lived. The question of how tribal structures, and tribal society in general, changed as a result of these developments is of very great importance. Egyptian scholars are inclined to maintain that Mehemet Ali forced the bedouin to accept sedentarization, and that from that moment they were assimilated into village society, and their bedouin origins became indistinct. This, for instance, is theory. She claims that from the moment that Mehemet Ali began to grant land to the bedouin shēkhs, they became an important part of the middle class of the Egyptian village.120 This view has no basis in the historical sources. Moreover, the sources we possess provide almost no clear picture either of the structure of the tribe or of the tribal economy from which we might be able to learn how tribal society in Egypt changed in our period. Other Egyptian scholars also relate to the changes in the status of the shēkh and in tribal society. Latīfa Sālim claims that the sedentarization of the bedouin led to changes in the structure of the land and were exempted from military tribe, since the shēkhs became owners of service and forced labour; therefore, she claims, they considered themselves superior to the fellahin.121 There is no support in the sources for her sweeping conclusion that the bedouin adopted permanent settlement as a result of grants of land to their leaders. maintains that as soon as the bedouin began to settle and become land-owners the shēkh began to look down on his fellow tribesmen: they even made him extra payments in addition to what he received from his land and his official position. Thus, the status of the shēkh gradually underwent a deep change: he became a great landowner. None of his predecessors had come close to his degree of power and influence, and he was no longer a leader of the community, but rather the lord of his subjects, who were denied their rights to independence and to the use of land.122 This of a rural area in which claim is erroneous. It is true that the shēkh who was there lived both villagers and tribesmen was, in effect, a sort of feudal lord of those who

The Pasha's Bedouin

62

lived in the area for which he was responsible. But he was still the recognized leader of his descent group and of the broader tribal framework to which it belonged, and this served the interests of the group members and of the whole tribe. The shēkh was also tied to the traditional bedouin economy of animal husbandry; so he needed pasture-land in his tribe’s territory for his herds, and was careful to develop his own social networks within his home tribe. Moreover, at the authorities’ behest the shēkhs recruited from among their own descent groups and other tribal groupings soldiers, men to convey equipment and supplies to Mehemet Ali’s army, militiamen and bodyguards. On the other hand, Ali Mubārak adduces at least one dispute between tribesmen and a shēkh who was dwelling on his estate. They rebelled against him, accusing him of stealing their property. Despite his attempts to appease them and restore his wounded dignity, he was forced to resign.123 From studies of bedouin society in our time we know that dignitaries and shēkhs, even though they do not live in tribal territory and play a political or civic role, are still subject 124 and are involved in internal and interto the bedouin system of law tribal disputes and their resolution. The bedouin shēkhs and dignitaries who evolved into an elite as a result of the land granted them by Mehemet Ali constituted a suitable means of achieving the goals he had set himself—to increase the area of agricultural land, and to levy taxes on it. The historical symbiosis of nomads and settlers made it essential to establish tribal branches in the towns. The heads of powerful and wealthy families had long been living in urban and rural settlements, both in order to fulfil their official functions better and in order to serve their tribesmen’s interests. Their fellow tribesmen expected the shēkhs to maintain good relationships with the regime in order to advance the economic and political interests of the tribes through them. And the regime used this symbiotic relationship to strengthen its supervision of the nomad population and turn the leaders’ residence in town into a tool by means of which it could ensure their loyalty and obedience. Only specific groups were involved in the process of sedentarization, and it should not be seen as a general process of settlement. Heads of the tribal groupings of shēkhs and dignitaries who received grants of land tended to settle in the vicinity of their estates, surrounded only by the members of their descent group.

Summary In this chapter we have discussed one of the chief sources of power of the tribal elite which grew up in Mehemet Ali’s time: the possession of land. The shēkhs and tribal dignitaries were given responsibility for broad areas within which they levied taxes from the villagers, and founded their own estates on and other categories of land which they were given; and round them grew up tribal groupings and ‘households’ in the Ottoman-Egyptian style. Needless to say, they also controlled the traditional tribal territories, areas of seasonal migration in search of pasture, and occasionally led their tribesmen in raids on commercial caravans using the land passages through their territories, such as the routes from Cairo to Suez and from Qenah to Quseir in Upper Egypt and the pilgrims’ route Their economic and political activities were conducted in the corporative framework of the group. The authorities found it hard to act

Tribal society and the tribal elite

63

against the bedouin leaders because of their distance from the centre, and because their territories were in the main peripheral desert areas which the central government was unable to reach. Though the Pasha enacted ordinances to restrict the movements of the tribes, it was difficult to enforce them. It must be added that the group of shēkhs and heads of the various descent groups which we have been discussing had no common ideology or group solidarity. They did not lead the bedouin tribes in concert, nor did they represent them in common vis-à-vis the authorities. Nor did they conduct any ‘bedouin policy’. Every shēkh headed his tribe on sufferance of the authorities, and subject to their permission. They were leaders in external affairs, and their prime function was that of intermediaries between the authorities and the tribesmen. The other dignitaries in this group were the heads of less important descent groups, and they wielded influence principally within their own group and tribe. Nonetheless, within the tribes there existed a leadership with traditional political and economic power whose influence was no less than that of the elite group, and perhaps even greater. Its power stemmed mainly from the control of productive assets in tribal territory, from arbitration in states of conflict, from traditional moral authority, and from genealogical purity. However, Mehemet Ali’s policy and the way in which it was executed led to the development of a homogeneous group which functioned in an environment characterized by spatial mobility: and this group may be considered elite. It is they who were involved in the events and processes discussed in this study.

3 Territoriality and identity In this chapter we shall discuss the question of whether, during our research period, Egyptian tribal groups had a political link with a particular territory, over and above their common exploitation of natural resources such as pasture and sources of water. We shall also consider whether there were groups which identified themselves with a defined territory or were thus identified by others. This question leads us to the issue of whether there existed in Egypt at this time chiefships or tribal autonomies within territorial boundaries, and to consideration of the structure of the tribal groupings which existed at the time. Another related question is whether territoriality influenced tribal structure and organization, and whether, and to what extent, it contributed to the development of separate tribal identities and to the relationships between the tribes. The answers to these questions may contribute to our understanding of the relationships between the tribes and the authorities, and the ways in which the regime was involved in determining the territory, the identity and the structure of the tribal groupings. The concept of territoriality has been recognized as a basic behavioural and spatial concept which shapes the relationships between human beings and their physical and social environment. Territoriality is socially conditioned, in that it is the product of a particular system of social relationships, but it also shapes such relationships. In other words, we must distinguish between a social definition of territoriality and a territorial definition of social relationships.1 Many factors are involved in the concept of territoriality, and all those who have dealt with the subject have discussed them: cultural, conceptual and cognitive elements, politics and demography, and competition for environmental resources are all of great importance, and each of them is connected with a particular network of social relationships which exists in a specific area. Itzhak Shnell defines territoriality as one aspect of spatial organization. Human beings divide space into delimited units of area which bears emotional significance in their eyes. They achieve dominance within these spatial units, and as they become entrenched in the territory they tend to crystallize their personal and/or collective identity there. He associates territoriality with collective identity, which he defines as a network of subidentities.2 The experience of various Egyptian tribes has proved that scholars of nomadism have under-emphasized the importance of territory and the place of domicile in the life of the tribe and its lineages have demarcated widespread territories in the bedouin. The Eastern Desert of Egypt for themselves. These territories are jealously preserved, and, like segments, play an important role in their daily economic activities. From this point of view, the lack of a nomad ‘motherland’, with its economic and ideological elements, is compensated for by strong social bonding Social and political relationships define the size of the territory. If there is a leaning to territoriality, it is expressed first and foremost at the level of the tribal confederation and the tribe. At the same time, the social

Territoriality and identity

65

framework preferred by the bedouin is the small group.3 The nuclear or extended family is the basic economic unit, and within the bounds of the tribal territory it is this unit that owns cultivated land, as distinct from pasture land, which is held in common by all members of the confederation. As social change among the nomads progresses, their territoriality is intensified, and the transition to permanent or semi-permanent agricultural settlement creates new patterns of attachment to territory. In the case of the bedouin, territorial issues may be considered at three different levels: the social level, the level of territory and settlement, and the political level. On the evidence available it is impossible to decide whether the Egyptian bedouin at the time of Mehemet Ali had developed any degree of collective identity. There are no indications that the tribes cooperated with each other, as bedouin possessing social solidarity in the struggle against the central regime, except when they had specific common interests. It seems that this was also the case during the Mamluk Sultanate and the period of the Ottoman conquest. The and groupings which existed in Ottoman Egypt encompassed a large number of groups and tribes, but they had no social function. They were political frameworks based on a true or imagined mythological origin, and served specific political interests. The tribes were inclined to make individual alliances with various Ottoman-Egyptian factions in accordance with the ‘camps’ with which they identified— or —but there was never a general bedouin alliance against the regime, or for a struggle in order to attain some particular objective. and as such ruled over no territory and did not enjoy political autonomy, so they cannot be considered chiefships. I suggest, therefore, an additional way of understanding the bedouin’s tribal conception of space and of settlement: a discussion of the meaning of territoriality in their eyes. My starting-point is the assumption that the bedouin divide the space in which they live into demarcated units of territory which afford them their identity and to which they have a sense of belonging. Pastoral nomads have a living area defined by the amount of pasture-land and water needed by their flocks over a number of seasons. This is known as ‘tribal territory’ (dīra). It is unusual for a tribe to have control of all the area it requires, either because part of it is of a high enough quality to attract permanent settlers, or because other pastoral nomads use it. Naturally, the authorities also use parts of these areas. The tribesmen, particularly pastoral tribesmen, must possess a territory, however small, in order to be considered a tribe. The size of the territory is largely determined not by their existential needs but by the pressure exerted on them by tribes or other bodies which use the land. Tribal organization is determined mainly by the types of territorial resources possessed and controlled by the tribesmen. These constitute the basis of common interests and patterns of cooperation and competition. The authorities consider certain locales to be ‘bedouin areas’, even though they contain a village population; this depends entirely on the numerical strength and degree of authority of the tribes in the area. In short, tribalism and tribal identity are expressed primarily in territorial terms. It is my contention that this was also so in our research period. Each of the tribal groupings has its own space. In the eyes of the authorities this space is collective, and they, no less than the bedouin themselves—and perhaps even more— demarcate this space in terms of territories with which they are identified. The ‘tribe’, therefore, is made up of sub-identities, and each one of them, within the overall network of identities, is linked to a tribal territorial base which also indicates a hierarchic

The Pasha's Bedouin

66

structure. In other words, tribal identity is linked to a manifestly territorial and social outlook which is strengthened by the attitude of the authorities. Avinoam Meir maintains that in the course of the nineteenth century and, even more, in the twentieth, as a result of various historical developments, pre-modern bedouin society changed its character: from an a-territorial society it turned into a territorial one.4 In traditional nomadic agricultural societies based on links of kinship social norms are determined largely by the relationships between man and the soil. However, though kinship relationships are the main guiding principle of the bedouin’s social organization, they adopted territorial conduct as a result of the existence of over-populated resources which brought about increased competition for access to them between the different groups. Competition for agricultural land brought about a new attitude to the question of land ownership. One of the types of ‘tribe’ to which the bedouin consider themselves to belong is territorial organization for the exploitation of natural resources, with no centralized political organization. In this territorial organization there is no ownership of land, but, rather, rights to ancestral land—the dīra. This tendency to preserve traditional systems of land tenure creates a sort of ‘agrarian socialism’ which safeguards equality by preserving access to land resources. Such a ‘tribe’ will seek to coordinate its affairs with others who use the environment in order to enable it to manage its flocks for a certain period. First, it will try to gain control over territory which will partly satisfy its needs. Usually, this territory will not fulfil its requirements during the summer. The tribe is, therefore, compelled to leave its territory for part of the year because it lacks pasture and water; during this period it migrates to a wider area which it must share with others. This wide area is known as dīra. If the tribe controls these two factors—both its own area and that for which it needs the agreement of others—it must organize its affairs in such a way that it can retain control. This it does by creating a network of links with the relevant population: for instance, a network of marital relations. For example, if one group wants to use a summer grazing area claimed by another group, marital relations with the other group are developed, and thus each of them may use the area. Territory supplies those who live in it with secure basic living conditions. Control of territory finds its expression in the grant of free access to pasture and natural water sources to every tribe, by means of mutual coordination based on networks of relationships whose spatial coverage coincides with the extent of the tribal confederation’s territory. Social and political relationships between the groups determine the extent of the territory, but territoriality in itself does not determine the nature of social relationships between the bedouin. Members of this organization possess the right to cultivate plots, to build, to exploit sources of water and to control the roads which cross the land within their territory. They may also transfer some of these rights to exploit the resources of the territory to members of other tribes, and this is an act of sovereignty no less than the act of guaranteeing other rights to the members of the tribe. Both types of ‘tribe’ can exist side by side. The bedouin of southern Sinai belong to a ‘super-tribe’ by the name of —a sort of confederation or association of tribes—which affords them access to pasture-lands throughout the southern part of the peninsula. In addition, however, each of them is a member of his own ‘personal’ tribe, which grants its members the right to build houses and to cultivate land in tribal territory.

Territoriality and identity

67

Tribal raids: a model of territorial behaviour The regulation of exploitation of resources is not only territorial: it also has a defensive function. It was created in reaction to the widespread anarchy prevalent among the bedouin, which constitutes a threat to small groups of shepherds. Its function is to defend the territory in which they live, and to enlarge it by means of incursions into the land of other tribes. Such incursions are also part of the tradition and political culture of the nomads, and have served as a means of conquering new territories.5 The usual pattern was a short raid of a group within the tribe on the camp of another group. The most common objects of plunder were camels, flocks and household chattels. This would be followed by a retaliatory raid. These raids were so common that Darwinist sociologists have viewed them as an imprinted cultural mechanism, designed to preserve the longterm ecological balance between herds, pasture and humans.6 The Egyptian bedouin’s motives for raiding were, in the main, economic and political. The small groupings within the tribe do not invade each other, but join together to protect themselves against other tribes. At the same time they recognize tribal leaders who concentrate on coordinating their responses to external threats. The higher the level of political organization, the broader the territory under its control. The fiercest territorial struggles between the bedouin tribes took place in the first years after the French retreat. When the Ottoman authorities returned to Egypt after the French retreat, they recognized the territorial rights of the bedouin in al-Beheirah province, in order to win their support and sympathy. This policy was promulgated in a firmān dated December 1801 ‘to all the bedouin shēkhs of the Hanādī, individuals and groups, the Bahaja and in general’. In August 1801, immediately after the French withdrawal, the bedouin of al-Beheirah sent a petition to the Sultan saying that from ancient times they had possessed houses in the desert plains of al-Beheirah whose ownership passed from father to son. Since they were now living in the Ottoman state and defending its citizens and the roads to al-Beheirah, they requested to be permitted to continue to dwell in their erstwhile places of habitation as in past years. In his firmān the Sultan wrote that since it was the custom that every bedouin tribe in Egypt possessed an unchallengeable area of habitation of its own, and al-Beheirah had been their area of habitation in times past, he again confirmed that they were the undisputed inhabitants of their stone houses. This acknowledgement was granted on condition that they send to the Grand Vezir a letter undertaking not to attack or injure the citizens of the region, to protect the roads, not to damage the farms or the cattle of the citizens of the region, and not to give shelter to bandits, murderers or criminals. If any of these conditions were infringed, the bedouin would pay 200,000 qirsh to the Egyptian treasury.7 It is unclear whether the bedouin of al-Beheirah approached the Ottoman authorities jointly, or whether each shēkh approached them separately on behalf of his tribe. The authorities related to them as inhabitants of one common territory, divided internally among the tribes. The words of the firmān show that the bedouin lived in stone houses— that is to say, permanent buildings. Presumably these were the houses of the shēkhs, most of whom were multazims, and lived on their estates. Mehemet Ali adopted the same territorial approach later on when he determined that none should move from one province to another without the permission of the authorities, and thereby recognized officially the territorial boundaries of the tribes. He addressed the results of the

The Pasha's Bedouin

68

aforementioned territorial struggles when he came to power in 1805, and attempted to initiate supervision of the bedouin population: he transferred the Hanādī, his allies from al-Beheirah province, to the Sharqiyya, in order to put an end to the dispute between them and the The central government and the process of sedentarization play crucial roles in the creation of tribal territorial identity and the definition of tribal space. Tribal territory which was once pastoral expanded to become agro-pastoral dīra, containing both pasture land and cultivated plots. From then on it became a permanent spatial entity, with defined boundaries. The process continued with formal parcelling of the cultivated land. Mehemet Ali’s regime speeded this process by distributing land, principally to shēkhs and other notables, and introduced official methods of classifying and grading land ownership. As a result, the demand for land, which before his rise to power had been a free commodity, grew apace. This led to conflicts and clashes between the tribes in which the Pasha was obliged to intervene: and the Hanādi waged a lengthy war in and the fought each other in the Eastern the Western Desert, the Desert, and so forth. Modern anthropological research has shown that when the regime reveals interest in land for development, military use and the like, the bedouin initiate a flurry of land sale and purchase, in order to produce proofs of ownership. Mehemet Ali took possession of all of Egypt’s agricultural and uncultivated land, and left in the hands of the bedouin only the arid outlying desert areas, and thereby led to the exacerbation of inter-tribal struggles for control of territory, and to conflicts with the village population. These conflicts and struggles strengthened the collective identity of the tribes in relation to their territory. At the same time, the regime recognized tribal boundaries in certain areas, and thereby formalized their territorial borders. Despite the fact that Mehemet Ali enforced the law with a firm hand, raids and counter-raids were frequent during his time in power. In his official documents there are several mentions of reciprocal raids between the tribes. The authorities viewed them as an expression of political and military rebelliousness, and an aspiration to create unrest in the provinces which could be exploited in order to gain control of open spaces and make profits. Inter-tribal clashes took place, in most of the known cases, as a result of a struggle for territory caused by the need to acquire broader stretches of grazing land, new sources of water and new economic resources. The French doctor Clot Bey, who travelled through Egypt in the service of the Pasha, gives an instructive description of a battle between tribes which he apparently saw or heard of from eye-witnesses: from the Bilī several times; the Jawāzī themselves suffered an incursion by the and Hüseyin Agha, who was the müdür of the First Half of Qibliyya (Upper Egypt) was asked to ensure the return of the stolen sheep and camels.14 Mahmud Effendi, the mandūb of the qism of Isna in Upper Egypt, was asked to investigate the complaint of Shēkh Khalīfa, who demanded that the camels which the Bashāriyya bedouin had stolen during a reprisal raid for an attack by the on from the shēkhs of the 15 also stole from the the Bashāriyya be returned. The camels which had been pressed into military service, and the Majlis ordered that they be returned.16

Territoriality and identity

69

Tribes from outside Egypt attacked Egyptian tribes. Al-Tūr bedouin of southern Sinai, of central Sinai, made incursions, and the authorities demanded that and the their shēkhs should ensure the return of the plunder; the bedouin of Gaza and ‘Bar-alSham’ raided Egyptian bedouin, and Mehemet Ali promptly asked the Mîr-i mîran of Jerusalem to effect the return of the booty, and to caution the shēkhs.17 The and the Farjān bedouin attacked the bedouin of Middle Egypt and stole camels and other property. Hasan Bey, the müfettiş of Middle Egypt, was ordered to return the booty and prevent the bedouin from repeating their crimes.18 The great attack on Shēkh one of the senior shēkhs of the in al-Sharqiyya, was of some concern to the authorities. Bedouin of the Tiyāhā, the Sawārka, and Bilī al-Barāra tribes, all from the Sinai peninsula, participated in it. They attacked in his home in Wadi al-Tumēlāt. This was apparently a reprisal for the clan attack on them. The authorities were prepared to send a military force to aid only if it was clear that the attackers came from outside Egypt.19 The Sawārka bedouin, who lived in northern Sinai, attacked and plundered bedouin hamlets in Shaykh Zuwayd in northern Sinai.20 Practising raids for territory formation: the case of the who were on the move, raids were a way of gaining control For the over a territory which in time became their own. This also applies to the other tribes which arrived in Egypt from the Maghrib. The settlements in the Nile Valley and the pilgrims’ and trade routes which passed through the Eastern Desert were tempting targets In their words, in the Arabian peninsula the acacia trees had been felled, for the the ibex had all been hunted, there was little pasture, and there was unceasing war, raids and slaughter, with raiders coming from as far away as Syria; whereas In Egypt there was peace, water, and many ibex in the hills. One of the members of the Khushmān sub-tribe told the Geographer Joseph Hobbs, who conducted fieldwork among the between 1982 and 1986, that the were well aware of the economic benefits of Egypt. In earlier times they used to come from the Arabian peninsula in the boats of the Juhayna tribe, to anchor in one of the harbours between Safaga and al-Quseir, on the Red Sea coast in Upper Egypt, and to bring home produce of the pastoral nomads—goat’s cheese, palm fibre, dates and charcoal made from acacia trees for sale in the Nile Valley and for the purchase of seeds, clothes and other commodities. The men of the who had arrived before them defended them on camel-back on their way through the Eastern Desert to the Nile valley, to the Qenah market and back to the coast. Those who returned from the Nile valley reported that Egypt was a rich land. During the eighteenth exploited these opportunities and invaded century, therefore, the raiders of the the country from the Arabian peninsula through the Sinai peninsula. Along the way they encountered their traditional enemies, including the the the Tiyāhā and Bilī, who sometimes drove them deeper into Egypt. attacked and robbed caravans in the Eastern Desert from the The moment they arrived and settled there, and thereby became enemies of the

The Pasha's Bedouin

70

since the caravan routes passed through their territory and were under their protection. The conflict between the two tribes led to raids and counter-raids, involving much booty. Both the raids on the caravans and the incursions into neighbouring territory were an so much so that it would have been hard for important source of income for the also extended the area of their forays to the them to give it up. The western areas of Egypt (Jihat al-Gharb). Mahmud Effendi the müdür of Middle Egypt wrote to the Pasha that one of the shēkhs of the and 30 bedouin cameleers who were making their way to one of the oases, attacked some of its residents and stole property from them. He asked the Pasha to instruct the chief shēkh of the who lived in Cairo, to investigate the matter and suggest a solution. Their own villages, in the region of the Second Half of Middle Egypt provinces, were also raided.21 in the At the end of the eighteenth century the presence of the Eastern Desert was greater than ever, since raiders belonging to the tribe had been and waylaid caravans, arriving in the region for a long time. They fought the apparently settled and did not return to the region from whence they came. The on the along the Nile Valley, and guarded the desert caravans. The attacks of the tribes which stood in their way to the Eastern Desert—the the the Tiyāhā and Bilī, among others—continued in the nineteenth century, when the were already settled permanently: they attacked bedouin caravans which crossed the border with Sinai on their way to the oases. Another instance is an attack on bedouin from the province of al-Tur in Sinai.22 These actions, which took place over a short space of time, forced the Pasha to take action. He deposed the shēkh of the and raiders found that the appointed a more compliant individual in his place.23 The peasants of the Nile Valley were an easy prey. Their favourite method was to steal their cattle. In the long winter nights they would steal several head of cattle and take them to the desert. Afterwards they would send a delegation to demand ransom amounting to half the value of the cattle. The peasants generally submitted and paid up; otherwise, their livestock was slaughtered or sent to market.24 In about 1805, after some decades of peaceful commercial activity, side by side with their warlike activities, the obtained their own tribal territory in the Eastern Desert. South of them was the territory of the With regard to an important event which led to an agreement on the boundaries of the tribe, there is a contradiction between the oral tradition of the and the version found in the official documents. Both sources agree that in January 1807 bedouin attacked a convoy travelling from Qift in the Nile Valley to al-Quseir on of the the Red Sea coast. The raiders stole the kiswa (the brocaded curtain covering the in Mecca, made annually in Egypt and transported with the pilgrimage caravan). took their booty to Cairo in order According to the official record, the to sell it. Mehemet Ali sent a military force, which confiscated all the raiders’ property and camels.25 On the other hand, Hobbs writes that according to their oral tradition the kiswa was indeed stolen, and there was a battle against 500 peasants from Mehemet Ali’s army who were guarding the convoy. All the soldiers, and not a single were

Territoriality and identity

71

killed. The authorities took no punitive action. The fled to the hills with their booty, and there divided it among themselves. They were subsequently given land in order to prevent such a raid from recurring. According to their version, an emissary from the tribe approached the Pasha a week before the raid, and told him that they were compelled to engage in raids, since the government had requisitioned all their land, and they now had none. The Pasha promised to give them living-space on condition that they cease their incursions and accept their territorial boundaries ( and Wadi Araba in the north, the Qift-al-Quseir road in the south, the Nile in the west and the Red Sea coast in the east). The emissary said that the raiders were on their way to the convoy bearing the kiswa. The pasha replied that he would send soldiers to fight the raiders, but would accept the results of the battle. When he received the news of his soldiers’ defeat, he honoured his commitment to the and even appointed the leader of the raiders, to the post of in the Benī Mazar sub-province. considered themselves to be a tribal Hobbs received the impression that the nation who had fought for their territorial living-space in Egypt and won it. Their enemies, the considered the occupation of their territory to have been a compromise made by the authorities with a cruel and undeserving invader. From and the the regime’s viewpoint, the agreement on the borders between the was a reasonable political resolution of a temporary state of affairs in an important strategic area. This was a case in which the authorities granted geographical formalization to a tribal territory, which resulted in the development of deep emotional ties with small localities, and a disposition to preserve and develop the resources in the territory. Nonetheless, the tribe continued to function as a widespread framework for the preservation of affiliations and kinship ties and for the maintenance of the traditional economy, and—most important of all—for representation vis-à-vis the government. Hobbs maintains that the territory interests of the nomads are not only their own affair. The commitment of the to their ‘manifest destiny’ in the desert deeply influenced other groups of nomad bedouin, and also non-nomads, in Egypt. The conflicts over territory within the desert, and more widely spread struggles between inhabitants of the two natural areas—the desert and the Nile oases—were instrumental in shaping the distinct identities of segmentary kinship groups of bedouin, and creating the conception of the nomads as a sector distinguished from its neighbours.26 In the first and second decades of the nineteenth century there took place a series of raids between the who lived in the mountainous area of southern The British traveler Edward Robinson recounted that in Sinai and the about 1811 the invaded the camp of the in Wadi Sidr in the Sinai, from Egyptian territory. The invading force comprised 200 fighting men, 9 horsemen and a group of 50 Maghārba horsemen. In 1814 the invaded the territory The traveler Burckhardt narrated that in near al-Quseir and also attacked the 1813 the raided a camp of the and a year later the retaliated with an incursion into the territory close to al-Quseir in Upper Egypt. were accustomed to make raids by sea in Moreover, according to Robinson, the who lived in the mountainous region west of the Gulf boats on the camps of the

The Pasha's Bedouin

72

of Suez, and steal their camels; at the same time, the Tiyāhā, who lived in central Sinai, for the same purpose.27 Oral tradition tells of an attack raided the camps of the by the on the in the 1820s. They penetrated deep into the territory of and found that the region was rich and the inhabitants sparse and unarmed; the so they decided to settle there. However, rumours of this reached the ears of the who had settled in the Nile Valley, and they hastened to the aid of their poorer still remember this as a gruelling period, since the nomadic brethren. The possessed firearms, which they did not.28 This incident proves that the bedouin who had settled outside the dīra did not give up their nomadic territory, and that tribal solidarity was still effective. The authorities did not intervene in these wars, since they took place far from the centre, most of them in the Sinai. Raids often involved casualties, and led to blood feuds. The feud between the and the began with a dispute about pasture-land, agricultural land and other resources in the territory, such as the commercial routes in the Eastern Desert. In the early years of the conflict, however, Ruwēshid, the leader of the was killed Ruwēshid, of the Gasasāt clan, was a desert general, by the of the raiding units. The take great pride in his moustache, commander version of which was so long that he used to tie its ends behind his ears. The the story is that Ruwēshid’s wife told him to bring her the head of an so that she could take pleasure in their famous hair. Ruwēshid agreed, but while he was still looking for a suitable victim he himself was trapped by an ambush of the and was buried in a Nabatean grave in Wadī al-Ghazza.29 This murder launched a blood feud, and acts of revenge by both parties. in the Eastern Desert of Upper Egypt is The tribal territory of the It stretches from Wadi Araba in the north to the Qift-al-Quseir called axis in the south. This is a political region, indicating both inter-tribal relations and the tribe’s relations with the authorities, who do not recognize the existence of political expect outsiders to recognize their territories smaller than the tribe. The ownership of all the resources within their political territory. On the level of territorial have made appropriate arrangements with their neighbours, the organization, the for the use of resources: the members of each tribe are permitted to graze and water their flocks in the territory of the other. In day-to-day life, the relationship to particular spots in the desert, and the responsibility for resources, are functions of the territory of the descent group rather than of the tribe. In the tribal there were four sub-territories belonging to sub-tribes: Tabābna, territory of the Umsērī and Khushmān. Tribal territory determines common ownership and use of resources, but liability is divided between the descent groups. Members of the Khushmān group told Hobbs that they considered their territory to be the best possible place to live in, and called it baladna—‘our country’. Hobbs found that the name that they used—al-balad—had several strands of meaning. The most general strand is the connotation ‘countryside’, a cultivated and populated region parallel to the Nile Valley in Egypt, called by the Egyptians al-rīf. In English, the equivalent word is ‘desert’—in

Territoriality and identity

73

nomadic Arabic which means ‘desert’, or ‘an uninhabited region’ with adjectives derived from ‘deserted’, ‘empty’. Similarly, Hobbs found that the nomads did not use the various words for ‘desert’ to describe their place of habitation: they dwelt in the ‘countryside’. The term also has a decidedly political dimension. for instance, is used of the tribal territory of the Bilād al-Khushmān, Bilād alTabābna and others refer to the territories within the great tribal area recognized as belonging to the sub-tribes.30 In short, our discussion of the question of territoriality in nomadic tribal society shows that the nomadic bedouin of the Middle East had a moderate tendency to territoriality at the migratory stage. The existence of such a tendency is confirmed, in general terms, in studies of pastoral nomads in Africa and other places. But the most relevant factor to the present study is the transition from minimal territoriality to territoriality. Our contention is that this transition can take place under two sets of circumstances: the more important is economic—in other words, the transition, for whatever reason, from pastoral nomadism to arable farming (though it should be pointed out here that an absolutely pure pastoral way of life is very rare, and it is usually combined with a certain degree of arable farming and other forms of economic activity); the second, less important, has a more political character, and is linked with the inclination of tribes and large confederations to formalize their territorial rights.31 Our discussion of Mehemet Ali’s plans for agricultural reform and his new agrarian policy in Egypt throws some light on the first of these processes. His plans brought about the possibility of acquiring rights of ownership of, or tenure on, land on the basis of membership of a tribe, and set in motion a transition from the ideology of common control over territory and its resources to a more practical ideology. Those whom the state permitted to own plots of land brought about the development of a real-estate market, and this led to a process of privatization of territory, under which the right to private property replaced the collective tribal right to the control of land and the resources it contained. Despite this, small household plots were not strengthened at the expense of the large tribal systems, as happened, according to Ugo Fabietti, in the case of the Shammar bedouin of Saudi Arabia, in the wake of agricultural development programmes.32 In the Egypt of our research period tribal frameworks continued to play a part, both in the villages and in desert areas. It was the descent group that was strengthened within the broad tribal framework, since the status of the shēkhs who became landowners was improved. The social definition of territoriality began to be replaced by the territorial definition of social relationships: territoriality was defined in terms of private or collective ownership of land. The second, less important process whereby the development of territoriality for individual members of tribes can be speeded up is the formalization of the territory of tribes or confederations, as we have seen in the case of the Frank Stewart documented a further example, in connection with the boundaries between the bedouin of the and those of Tiyāhā in central Sinai in the mid-nineteenth century. He conjectured that when they implemented the concept of official boundaries the bedouin were undoubtedly influenced by the increased activity of the Egyptian state in the region during the second half of the nineteenth century.33 The more the tribal territories were formalized geographically by government action, the more tribal consciousness

The Pasha's Bedouin

74

increased. Generally speaking, it was in the regions in which many bedouin lived, such as the Eastern and Western Deserts, that there developed tribal consciousness related to the area which they inhabited. The government considered that areas of refuge for the bedouin, such as Jabal al-Akhdar in Cyrenaica, to which they were accustomed to flee from the authorities, were tribal regions. When land was distributed and, in parallel, control of tribal land and territories was strengthened, ties to the home region were reinforced. Permanent settlement of bedouin in previous generations did not bring about the loss of tribal identity, and villages such as nazla and retained their tribal identity, particularly in the eyes of their neighbours. Thus, tribal identity was connected with territory; in effect, it consisted of territoriality rather than common identity. As a result of these two processes, tribal groups created ‘territorial identity’ which defined the relationships between them. But the object of this identity was to regularize the relationships between the various units within the groups and between the groups themselves and, at the same time, to re-define the tribal groups and to represent them in relation to the state. As the authorities became more interested in the bedouin lands this identity became more dominant, but it never took the place of other identities. Sedentarization and settlement The integration of the bedouin in rural society was expressed in two ways: shēkhs became owners of estates and began to live in a permanent settlement with their descent groups; and bedouin settled among the fellahin within the villages or on their borders, and were absorbed among them without losing their tribal identity, which consisted primarily in the preservation of their social organization and the tribal legal system The process of mutual assimilation began relatively early and, as early as the time of the Ottoman conquest, there was no clear line between nomads and permanent settlers. Since the period of the Mamluk Sultanate many of the bedouin had been wholly or partly farmers, and towards the middle of the eighteenth century they began to undergo a rapid process of sedentarization, which brought in its wake assimilation among the fellahin, some of whom were bedouin who had settled in previous generations. description of the Ahl al-Hilla reflects a general trend which was widespread at this period among parts of the tribal population of Egypt: the adoption of inhabitation and occupation patterns, and the societal patterns of the permanent settlers in the villages to the vicinity to which they had moved; and social change, particularly in the sphere of religion. Mubārak’s encyclopaedic survey gives us an insight into some of the aspects of the social transformation undergone by the Egyptian tribes, apparently under the influence of the transition to permanent dwelling and the proximity to rural and urban settlements. If Mubarak’s description is accurate, even if we take into account a certain degree of exaggeration, there is no reason to doubt that it reflects the process undergone by the tribal population. According to their tradition, Ahl al-Hilla arrived in Egypt during the twelfth century, and settled near Tahta in the Girga province, on land which had formerly been in the hands of the Juhayna. After fierce clashes with the Juhayna, the Ahl al-Hilla succeeded in taking possession of half of their lands, and by further acquisitions

Territoriality and identity

75

increased their agricultural land to about 20,000 faddān, in addition to their land. Mubārak describes all their shēkhs as brave, generous and hospitable, and some of them still lived in tents during the summer.34 Until the time of Mehemet Ali, crime and disputes were dealt with by the shēkhs, in accordance with tribal law and custom. One of their shēkhs, gave himself up to a life of luxury after Mehemet Ali rewarded him for outstanding service in the Egyptian expeditionary force in the war against the Wahabi in the Hejaz. Another shēkh, of the same clan, did likewise;35 he bred horses for the army of Ibrahim, Mehemet Ali’s son.36 On the other hand, the Ahl al-Hilla thought little of agriculture. Mubārak indicates that in the course of the nineteenth century, the Ahl al-Hilla underwent an important process of social change. They had traditionally been thought of as boorish, conceited and ignorant; it was said that they claimed to have been mentioned because they heard the verse when it was being in the read.37 They did not teach their children to read and write, since they feared that education would undermine their courage and weaken their ability to make raids and give battle; imāms were brought from town only for show, but they were not employed for prayer and religious practice.38 It seems that this approach was modified during the nineteenth century: they became polite and kind-hearted, many of them set up schools next to their houses, and some attended al-Azhar. Most of those who ran guest-houses (madāfas) added a mosque to them, and hired an imām who was attached to the madāfa, and had the same duties as the servants, in addition to teaching the children the It seems that religion played an important part in the life of the former Ahl al-Hilla tribe, and particularly of their shēkhs and dignitaries.39 Thus, permanent settlement was such an old and deep-rooted phenomenon in Egypt that it was well known that there were two types of bedouin population: village bedouin and nomad bedouin. Shādhilī, who wrote a chronicle of the events of the eighteenth 40 century, spoke of Maghārba qātinīn, village dwellers, as against This distinction was even clearer in the case of the Hawwāra, who had a tradition of settlement in Upper Egypt from the beginning of the sixteenth century at least. The sources distinguish between the Hawwāra and the— the farmers and the uprooted (nomads)—and Damurdāshī makes a distinction between tax farmers who are no longer faithful to the bedouin way of life, multazimīn and— as against those who are still bedouin—among the Hawwāra Qiblī.41 As early as the period of the Mamluk Sultanate there were villages in Upper Egypt named after various groups of the Hawwāra bedouin, such as the and the Hawwāra al-Qibliyya. The Hawwāra bedouin came to Upper Egypt with the patent objective of settling and engaging in agriculture.42 During this period the organizational and agricultural networks of the Hawwāra were established, and their structure and character crystallized: they took control of villages, established a dual relationship with the fellahin in order to gain control over the levying of taxes, and created a system of region had the characteristics necessary for the development of feudal rule. The permanent settlement: it was the most fertile area of Egypt, and served as the country’s granary. Thus, the benefit conferred by permanent settlement consisted of the cultivation of and trade in cereals.

The Pasha's Bedouin

76

In the course of the first half of the eighteenth century certain bedouin groups began to undergo a rapid process of sedentarization. These were mainly groups that had reached Egypt from North Africa during the seventeenth century and at the beginning of the eighteenth, and settled a short time after their arrival. They bought land belonging to several villages and began to cultivate it: the Hanādī bedouin and groups belonging to the Barāghīth who came from North Africa bought wide tracts of land from the fellahin. According to G.W.Murray, the who were expelled by the Hanādī when they invaded Egypt from the Maghrib towards the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, preferred to settle among the fellahin and assimilate to them.43 At the end of the eighteenth century the camel-breeding tribes of the Western Desert who originated in North Africa, such as the were still migrating regularly between the Nile Valley and the eastern oases, but they had already begun to acquire agricultural skills and to lease land from the fellahin.44 Bedouin groups of the Maghārba and among whom were both semi-nomads and settlers, lived in the vicinity of Alexandria and Rashid and intermarried with the local population.45 At the were still living in tents, time of the French invasion, the Jahama and though they possessed land; and the began to live in houses only in the mid1780s.46 The ‘southern’ (Yemen) tribes from the Arabian peninsula also underwent a similar process during the same period. Prominent among them were the in al-Sharqiyya, who preferred to call themselves fellahin in order to safeguard their lands, as Mubārak points out.47 Thus, the distinction between recently settled groups and fellahin, some of whom were bedouin who had settled in former generations, became increasingly blurred. Gabriel Baer maintains that sedentarization was the result of settlement of true nomads, and detribalization and assimilation of semi-nomads.48 Western travelers who passed through Egypt at the end of the eighteenth century were impressed by the speed of the process of sedentarization of the bedouin, and mentioned it in their writings. The British traveler James Bruce, who visited Egypt several times in the 1860s and 1870s, said that ‘The Bedow is a Peasant Arab’. In Bulāq, on the banks of the Nile, he met the who dwelt there, on the outskirts of Cairo, during periods of calm when they were not at loggerheads with the authorities. In addition, they were and in the accustomed to spread out southwards as far as the territory of the past had been known as nomads or herdsmen. He also visited Manfalut, and wrote that it was a large town which had been repopulated by bedouin.49 European observers who stayed in Egypt at this time pointed out that tribal groups were similar to groups of fellahin. The traveler St John Bayle, who visited Upper Egypt in the middle of the nineteenth century, saw no nomad bedouin there—only settlements of bedouin who have settled permanently, but preserve their ancient customs. True, they still belong to a tribe which wanders in the neighbouring regions, but in other respects they have already become attached to the soil.50 Another European observer, who accompanied the Pasha on his campaigns, maintained that the bedouin in Egypt were part of the population of the rural area of Egypt (al-rīf), like the settled fellahin.51 Contemporary Egyptian scholars usually classify the bedouin according to the outdated division of nomads and settlers. True, maintained that ‘the bedouin belong to the second class in the Egyptian rīf, like the fellahin of bedouin stock’, and added that the nomads who live in

Territoriality and identity

77

the deserts close to the Nile Valley, the Delta and the are known as bedouin. She added that because of changes in the course of the Nile as a result of flooding, fellahin abandoned flooded lands, or handed them over to ‘semi-bedouin’, so that bedouin and fellahin lived together ‘in geographic and social confusion’ and that there were commercial links or wars, or both together, between the two groups. Even so, she adopts Ibn Khaldun’s division of the bedouin into three grades on the social ladder: on the highest, zwho live in the oases or close to wells. accepts the classification of al-Fawwāl, who divided the bedouin into four categories: long-distance nomads, relying mainly on camel-breeding; short-distance nomads, who concentrate on sheep-breeding; seasonal nomads, some of whom wander in certain seasons, but most of whom live permanently in their own settlements; and settled bedouin, most of whom live on the fringes of the desert close to centres of permanent population.52 Gabriel Baer uses the inexact statistics concerning the number of bedouin in Egypt at the beginning of the nineteenth century to prove that in the course of the nineteenth century many bedouin achieved permanent settlement and, in effect, ceased to be counted as part of the bedouin population. In his view the data are inaccurate, and the bedouin population was actually more numerous. The reason is that it was customary to count the number of horsemen, which did not take into account those who were still semi-nomadic. As against this, the statistical data from the end of the century are exaggerated since, in his view, many fellahin declared that they were bedouin in order to evade military service. He adduces several examples from the chronicles of and althe Hanādī, who Jabartī and of the scholars G.W.Murray and belonged to the bedouin of the Western Desert, were transferred to al-Sharqiyya and settled there by Mehemet Ali;53 the Fawāyed section of the Barāghīth bedouin, who reached Egypt from Libya together with the Hanādī during the stormy period of the eighteenth century and invaded the Gīza province in February 1813, settled in the regions of al-Fayyum, Beni Suweif and al-Minieh during the nineteenth century;54 the powerful Hawwāra bedouin, the real rulers of Upper Egypt, were defeated by Ibrahim, the son of Mehemet Ali, in 1813, and by the beginning of the twentieth century ‘had become lost among the fellahin’.55 The who controlled the Delta in the eighteenth century, are no longer mentioned by authors dating from the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Baer adduces an instructive instance of sedentarization: the assimilation of the in al-Sharqiyya at the beginning of the nineteenth century. When Mehemet Ali achieved power, they were, in the words of Mubārak, fi khushūnat —‘inferior nomads’, embroiled in many blood feuds with other tribes, and with none of the fellahin’s obligations, ‘and they often attacked the neighbouring inhabitants and villages’. Mehemet Ali restrained them by building roads; they were given the choice of exemption from treatment as fellahin, in which case their lands and their palm-groves would be impounded—as was the case with other nomads who lived in the hills in crude tents—or to be treated as fellahin, in which case they would be permitted to retain their property. They chose the way of life of the fellahin, were considered to be Egyptian fellahin, and were treated as such in every way: taxation, canal-digging, etc.56 there occurs the term In the records of the Viceregal Department ahlīn, which refers to bedouin groups which apparently achieved complete permanent

The Pasha's Bedouin

78

settlement. From the point of view of the authorities, this was expressed in the payment of the firda which was imposed on villagers who engaged in agriculture. This is exemplified in a request from the divan of the Pasha to the kethüda Bey (the Pasha’s lieutenant) about the levying of the firda from the on the grounds that they were considered ahlīn.57 This was a quick process of settlement, since the arrived in Egypt from the Maghrib only towards the mid-eighteenth century. Baer maintains that Mehemet Ali promoted his objective of assimilating the tribes and breaking down their social solidarity by appointing their shēkhs, for the first time, to official posts. In his view, this policy was bound to distance the shēkhs from their tribes, but he considers that it was successful.58 And, indeed, until 1833 all posts higher than of a village were filled by non-Egyptians; from that year onwards, native and bedouin shēkhs, were appointed to the posts of nazιr qism Egyptians, mainly or memur. Thus, as a result of their integration in the administration, many of the shēkhs had to move their homes to urban centres: for instance, the Abāza, most of whom were natives of the village of Abāza, moved to various urban settlements in al-Sharqiyya and other provinces.59 Mehemet Ali brought others to Cairo as hostages. In the words of Clot Bey, quoted by Baer: Depuis lors les Bédouins ont été soumis au vice-roi. En faisant la paix avec eux, celui-ci avoulu que leurs grand-cheiks habitassent le Caire, où ils lui servent d’otages et sont responsables de toutes les infractions que leurs tribus peuvent faire au bon ordre. Ils reçoivent d’ailleurs un traitement.60 Since then the bedouin have been subject to the viceroy. When he made peace with them, he demanded that their chief shēkhs should live in Cairo, where they served as hostages, and were responsible for all the infringements of good order that their tribes might carry out. Nonetheless, they were treated well. From now onwards throughout the nineteenth century many of the more important shēkhs founded new villages and settled in them with their families: of who died in 1836, founded the village of Ibrahim; two of the Abāza—Baghdādī (died 1858) and (died 1865)— are mentioned by Mubārak as having founded villages; and Iyād Kuraym al-Mihnāwī (died 1846) founded the village which still bears his name, some twelve kilometres northwest of Belbeis. Others settled in the chief provincial towns as a token of their advanced of the social status. One of these was confederation, whom Mehemet Ali appointed chief of all the tribes of the Fayyūm.61 By the beginning of the twentieth century many of the shēkhs had become town-dwellers: the bedouin of Lamlūm, one of the clans of the Fawāyed, lived in Maghāgha (al-Minieh) and in Cairo, the of the tribe of in Malawī (Assiut), and so forth. According to Baer, the separation of the shēkhs from the way of life of the rest of the tribe led to further disintegration of tribal unity.62

Territoriality and identity

79

In 1854 a perceptive Armenian engineer by the name of Yussef Hékékyan who was employed by Mehemet Ali and his sons described the process of bedouin settlement in his diary as follows: Mehemet Ali was the first person in modern times to allow the nomad bedouin to cultivate the fringes of the Nile Valley, on condition that they prevent the destructive bedouin from invading the Valley. When the new settlers grew rich, the Pasha demanded a small annual tax on the land, and gradually increased their obligations until they were eventually equal to those of the fellahin.63 Sedentarization was the central trend which influenced all those sectors of the population that possessed any sort of tribal organization. Its characteristics differed, of course, in accordance with the different stages of transition at which the tribes had arrived by the beginning of the nineteenth century: from the complete nomadism of the bedouin in the Western Desert to the advanced assimilation of those who settled in the Delta. Moreover, local conditions played a part in defining the concrete form of the transition to agriculture. As we have mentioned, the tribes of the Western Desert bought control of the land from the fellahin, and, as it seems, practised agriculture themselves. On the other hand, a tribe such as the Ahl al-Hilla, which apparently settled close to Tahta in the province of Girga as early as the twelfth century, still viewed agriculture as dishonourable at the time of Mubārak and, according to him, did not work their land themselves,64—like many of the Syrian tribes of ‘noble descent’ in the twentieth century. Commenting on this phenomenon, Emanuel Marx claims that nomads consider themselves nobler than settled farmers for purely economic reasons, since the breeding of flocks is more profitable because the price of animal produce is higher than that of agricultural produce.65 Baer remarks that this attitude to agriculture was, of course, not confined to the settled tribes; it was a significant obstacle to the attempts of Mehemet Ali and his successors to settle some of the nomad tribes of the Egypt deserts. They were given land to cultivate, but instead of settling down and working it they continued in their nomad way of life, and leased the land to fellahin in exchange for half of the crop. This practice was forbidden again and again—by decrees in 1837, 1846, and 1851—but there were bedouin who did not give in until the second half of the nineteenth century.66 Baer points out that the process of sedentarization of the Egyptian tribes took place at least fifty years earlier than that in Syria and Iraq. He maintains that the reason for this is that Egypt was geographically and economically more suited than the lands of the Fertile Crescent to a strong central regime; the Nile served as an artery of communication between the different parts of the country, and was the sole foundation of its economy. Such a strong central regime was established in Egypt by Mehemet Ali at the beginning of the nineteenth century.67 Baer presents arguments and examples on two levels. On one level, he maintains that the bedouin settled and began to engage in agriculture and, as a result, began to assimilate to the fellahin. In my view, the data at our disposal do not indicate how the bedouin settled, or how they assimilated to the fellahin. Since we do not possess complete information about the social and political organization of the tribes or about their various economic activities, we do not know whether they were ‘true nomads’, as Baer defines

The Pasha's Bedouin

80

them, or semi-nomads. Modern anthropological research shows that, after they have settled in one way or another, the bedouin do not completely abandon the breeding of livestock, and for this they require tribal territory (dīra) to move around in. Moreover, the directives which Mehemet Ali was obliged to publish, warning the bedouin not to lease or transfer to the fellahin the lands they had been granted prove that this practice was widespread, and that the authorities sought ways of controlling it. The bedouin employed fellahin to work their land so that they could be free for other pursuits, particularly the traditional economic activity in the tribal territories—rearing and trading in livestock. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain how tribal groups which had been ‘settled’ by Mehemet Ali continued to supply camels, sheep and animal products as the authorities required. Baer portrays the assimilation of the bedouin as the ‘disappearance’ of tribes such as the Hawwāra and the or adopts uncritically the comments of Murray and Mubārak. This approach is simplistic. The disappearance of tribal groups was usually accompanied by the process of division and unification within tribal society which is described elsewhere in this work. Demographic growth, conflicts between lineages and clans, and competition for pasture-land, accompanied by a permanent lack of resources in the tribal territories, led to the break-up of tribal structures and the creation of new ones by a process of unification. Large clans tend to use the name of the forefather of the descent group, and even to secede from the group to which they are affiliated. They create a new genealogy for themselves, in a new territory—and thus a new ‘tribe’ is born. In many cases the sources at our disposal do not enable us to identify its origins or the way in which it took shape. Al-Jabartī defined the as a rabble of unclear origin;68 in other words, a conglomeration of groups of different origins around the clan which split up after their defeat by Each group went of its own way, and we do not know what happened to them, which bigger groups they joined, or what names they used at a later period. We also know, through the results of modern anthropological research, that bedouin groups also preserve their separate identity when they live in the neighbourhood of fellahin. The difference is expressed in forms of marriage, and the structure of descent groups within the tribes. The economic activities of the various tribal groups are also different. It is more correct to speak of urban bedouin, village bedouin and nomadic bedouin, each group of which has common economic and social features. The second group of arguments is concerned with tribal disintegration resulting from the separation of the shēkhs from the other members of the tribe. Mehemet Ali endeavoured to strengthen his supervision of the tribes and his control over their leaders. He therefore employed a ‘stick and carrot’ technique, and took two contradictory actions. On the one hand, he involved bedouin shēkhs in the machinery of government in order to get them to make their permanent home in a town or a village. Baer does not see the grant of estates to the shēkhs as a step in this direction, even though this policy, rather than their administrative appointments, can undoubtedly be interpreted as an attempt to ensure their settlement. On the other hand, the Pasha ensured that the shēkhs were in his grasp as hostages to ensure that his orders were carried out, irrespective of the question of their permanent settlement. There is no proof that Mehemet Ali intended to hasten the assimilation of the tribes, or to disrupt their solidarity through administrative appointments of the shēkhs. Shēkhs or shēkhs’ sons who were held as hostages or even as

Territoriality and identity

81

prisoners for a limited time in Cairo were permitted to return to their tribes when the penalties imposed on them had been paid. Therefore Clot Bey’s words, as quoted by Baer, are not relevant to the question of the official appointments of the shēkhs and the break-up of the tribal frameworks. If the Pasha really thought that by this means he would detach the shēkhs from their tribes and create a feeling of alienation and estrangement in regard to them, he was mistaken. The status of the ‘governmental shēkh’ within his tribe was strengthened when he became a landowner or a holder of administrative office and moved to a permanent domicile. Modern field studies show that bedouin are interested in their shēkh’s living close to the centre of authority and having favourable connections with the officials. They see him as a intermediary between them and the authorities, or, as the Muzēna bedouin of the Sinai peninsula say: ‘His only duty is to create a bridge between the politicians and the people of the land.’ The shēkh, too, is interested in living in a permanent settlement, so that he can deal with the problems of his tribe and obtain benefits for it from the authorities, and thereby enhance his status and increase his influence within the tribe. The shēkh takes care not to be cut off from his tribal support, and continues to take care of the social networks in which he is involved, as well as his economic interests, through his representatives.69 The map of the Egyptian villages of our own time shows clear traces of bedouin settlement in previous generations. About 70 per cent of present-day Egyptians live in villages and small towns, and in many of them there are indications of this settlement. The tribes that migrated into Egypt settled close to the fellahin on agricultural land in the Nile Valley, and gained control over extensive areas of land. Some of them soon abandoned the bedouin way of life and became assimilated to the fellahin. At the beginning of the nineteenth century many of the tribes were completely settled, and engaged in agriculture and other trades.70 Egyptian scholars distinguish between the who had stockades (lived in houses), and the jute-tent-dwelling 71 Lozach and Hug (1930) identified the types of settlement relevant to this 72 study. There were two types of hamlet: and The original meaning of was a temporary encampment in the fields; this sense is still preserved in Upper Egypt. Later, it signified a small village or agricultural settlement founded by a great landlord who employed the inhabitants of the village.73 Among the great landlords at this period were bedouin shēkhs who employed mainly members of their own clans to cultivate their as a seasonally and estates. The geographer David Grossman defines an intermittently occupied place of habitation, part of the dynamics of settlement at its embryonic stage—for example, seasonal encampments of fellahin living among the bedouin tribes.74 also has two meanings. The earlier—a temporary camp of nomadic bedouin—is close to that of also signifies a small village (a hamlet) inhabited by bedouin who had settled in the previous generation. This type of settlement is limited to Upper and Middle Egypt. There is another type of settlement, known as the nazla. In general, the meaning of this term is similar to that of Many settlements in the Nile Valley are defined as or nazla. Sometimes the name of the place bears witness to the fact that its land was the property of one of the shēkhs (for instance, a shēkh of the Fawāyed bedouin, or al-Barānī, a shēkh of the ) or that it is named

The Pasha's Bedouin

82

after one of the tribal groups that founded the settlement.75 The members of Napoleon’s scientific expedition, who conducted surveys in both village and desert areas, found many settlements whose names attested to the rule of one of the bedouin shēkhs, or were named after a particular tribal group. These findings prove that a number of tribes had reached the stage of permanent settlement before the French invasion, and that some of them were at that time considered to be farmers. Instances of this are the tribe in alSharqiyya, to which belonged the Abāza family whose sons owned a great deal of land family from and lived in villages around Belbeis bearing the family name; the Samalut in al-Minieh; the Shawāribī family in al-Qaliubiyya; of the who were tax farmers of several villages around Qenah and became shēkhs of the village of Abu Mana in that region at the beginning of the nineteenth century; and the villages, one of which was called Āl Abū Kurēsha, who settled in in the province of Girga, named after the shēkh of the 76

The third most important type of settlement in the Nile Valley was that connected to the nomads, who were numerically the smallest social sector, but nonetheless cultivated the largest area of land. Bedouin settlements are composed of small populations whose size changes according to the seasonal requirements of the livestock. Thus, during the winter, when the possibilities of finding sustenance are greater, camel breeders of the Egyptian desert are scattered in small groups of half a dozen tents or families, whereas in the summer, when they have to gather round wells and other permanent sources of water, the number of families in each settlement is greater.77 The bedouin who did not settle in the Nile Valley continued to be typical desert nomads, and were not involved in Egyptian social and political developments. By contrast, those who settled, even if only partially, became part of village, and even of urban, society. The authorities distinguished between the desert bedouin, known as barāra, and other bedouin tribes, who were generally seminomadic. The tribes defined as barāra lived in the provinces of al-Sharqiyya, alBeheirah, or the Sinai. Among the most important were the who controlled al-Hanādī, althe extensive dīra in the Western Desert, 78 Juhayna, Bilī, and Awlād Wāfī. These were confederations, which acted as territorial organizations ruling over widespread wandering areas in order to ensure free access to pasture and water. The bedouin did not live in the Egyptian oases. The big oases were occupied by farmers. Despite the tendency to believe that an oasis is an ideal spot for the nomads of the vicinity to settle, they do not provide conditions for permanent settlement. They must be sufficiently big and rich to supply the needs of a population which is capable of defending itself against other groups of nomads who covet its resources. Otherwise, the oasis and its well will serve only to provide water for visiting flocks. At various times oases served as stations on the routes of commercial and pilgrims’ caravans; those who settled in them, therefore, were mostly merchants from the towns. The bedouin continued to dominate the vicinity and watch over the oases. In Siwa, a big oasis neighbouring on the territory of the bedouin in al-Beheirah province in the Western Desert, there lived villagers who engaged in farming and grew dates and olives. Under Mehemet

Territoriality and identity

83

Ali’s regime, Siwa was, administratively, a nahiye, and the office of nazιr during our period was in the hands of the chief shēkh of the who was also the of the nahiye, and levied taxes from the inhabitants.79 This explains why the who were organized in a strong and extensive confederation and dominated the Siwa area, never settled in the oasis. They preferred to base their economy on cattle rearing in their own territory, and control the people of Siwa from without. The regime recognized their strength and their power over the region, and appointed their shēkh to be nazιr of Siwa. Egypt, to rebel against the Sultan. This rebellion, which was defeated in 1524, led to the decision of the Sublime Porte to send the Grand Vezir Ibrahim Pasha to Egypt, in order to impose order in the country and to restore the power of the sultan. The bedouin’s main influence was in the military sphere. They succeeded in exhausting the Ottoman army in al-Sharqiyya, in the course of rebellions which continued from 1517 to 1525. After the rebellions had been suppressed the Sharqiyya bedouin continued to defy the state, and it was only their lack of the ability and the will to unite that prevented them, even at this, the low point of the Ottoman hegemony, from being a serious political threat to the government.82 On the other hand, the bedouin of al-Sharqiyya made an important contribution to the shaping of the Ottoman legal system, particularly in the definition of its attitude to the bedouin and their leaders. This was discussed in the section concerning the bedouin shēkhs and their status in the Qanun Nameh-i Misr which was published after the visit of the Grand Vezir. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Banī Baqr clan, of the Judham group of tribes, was playing an important political role in the province. (ibn Gāsim ibn Baybars ibn Baqr ibn Rāshid ibn ) ibn Baqr Abū al-Shawārib and his five sons and held the title of emir at the end of the Mamluk Sultanate. On served as the eve of the Ottoman conquest the province was in a state of disarray. The powerful clans took control of extensive regions, fought against the enfeebled mamluks, and waited for the arrival of the Ottomans. The rebels were led by the clan of Shēkh Ahmad He was the first to declare ibn Gāsim ibn Baqr, a shēkh of the loyalty to the new regime, even though he held the rank of tablhane under the mamluks. His son on the other hand, preferred to rebel against the Ottomans. His revolt, which took place in 1518, was the first of a series of rebellions against the new regime. The authorities tried to reconcile father and son in order to pacify the region; they finally succeeded in ending the dispute and restoring order in 1523.83 In 1518 the bedouin of the Sawālim clan, of the tribe of also rebelled, threatening the section of the route which passed through alSharqiyya. It was not until 1520 that the Ottomans succeeded in organizing a large military force and defeating them in battle. As a result of this defeat all their property was confiscated and plundered. Shēkh Nijm, the leader of the clan, was arrested and taken to were the biggest and most powerful group in the Cairo.84 The province. They, too, established themselves in the region. The most prominent clan whose leaders also bore the title of emir. They during this period was the were the sworn enemies of the Banī Baqr, and were responsible for the safety of the

The Pasha's Bedouin

84

pilgrim caravans to Mecca in the section of the route which passed through their territory, as far as Aqaba. This was one of the most important and sensitive sections on the pilgrims’ route. The mountain pass near Aqaba was vulnerable to attack by robbers, so the authorities considered the protection of the caravans which passed that way to be particularly important.85 The gained control over many stretches of land in the region during the period of the Ottoman conquest. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the Abāza clan of the tribe played an important role in the economic and political life of the region. Its leaders were given senior posts in Mehemet Ali’s province administration, and during his successors’ rule the Abāza were active in national politics. Several Egyptian historians believe that the Sharqiyya bedouin, headed by the were among the forerunners of Egyptian nationalism, since they joined the rebellion against the English, led by the officer Ahmad Urabi, a native of al-Sharqiyya, in 1882. The Pasha’s economic policy, and his efforts to develop the country’s resources, had a great effect on the province and its inhabitants. His attitude to the bedouin, his utilization of extensive estates in populous areas, and the numerous rights to land which he granted to members of the royal family and the elite led many bedouin to settle down and engage in agriculture. But they also brought about the entry of new elements into the province. The heads of the Ottoman-Egyptian households had tried, with little success, to prevent raids by the bedouin, and the internal troubles of the Ottoman regime afforded the bedouin opportunities which they made the most of, until the time when Mehemet Ali conquered his Ottoman-Egyptian rivals and took power. He forbade the bedouin to ride horses, thereby limiting their mobility and their ability to make raids, and unhesitatingly forced them to settle peacefully, making the shēkhs responsible for the arrest of raiders.86 Bedouin who agreed to abandon the nomadic way of life were granted cultivable land. But no efforts were made to encourage the new settlers to show any interest in their new occupation. Meanwhile, those bedouin who had acquired land but cultivated it by means of leaseholders or by forced labour of the fellahin were faced with the choice between losing their land or cultivating it themselves. In many cases (the in the Belbeis district are an obvious instance) the tribes concerned preferred to abandon their nomadic way of life permanently, and become so-called ‘settled bedouin’.87 These measures undoubtedly affected the status of the bedouin in al-Sharqiyya, and many of them were assimilated to the fellahin. But the economic element should not be ignored. The nomad bedouin of al-Sharqiyya never found sufficient pasturage in the sandy areas of the region to rear enough camels, sheep or goats to enable them to live as true nomads. They continued to be nomads as long as they could recompense themselves for the lack of pasture by raiding caravans and harassing the fellahin. When public safety was guaranteed, and caravans of merchants and pilgrims ceased to travel through Sinai, the nomads were forced either to leave the region or to give up their way of life. Since there were no areas favourable to immigration in the neighbouring countries, the latter solution was the only one possible. Even the camel trade, in which they had been dominant and made good profits, no longer thrived as it once had. Camels of a superior breed were imported from other countries, and there was no demand for the inferior breeds reared by the bedouin. Since the route between Syria and the Arabian peninsula was now secure, the camel dealers who came from those countries no longer needed the

Territoriality and identity

85

services of the Sharqiyya bedouin as middlemen between them and the people of the Egyptian rīf.88 There was another way in which Mehemet Ali’s policy affected the people of alSharqiyya. Shortly after his accession to power, he transferred a large group of Maghrib bedouin, the Hanādī, to the region. Until then they had lived in al-Beheirah province, west of the Delta, and at the time of the French conquest they were considered to be the biggest and most powerful tribe in that area. But another group from the Maghrib, the invaded their territory. The Hanādī were defeated several times, and the took over most of their lands. Mehemet Ali tried unsuccessfully to help them, and decided to put an end to the unceasing conflicts in al-Beheirah by transferring all the Hanādī to al-Sharqiyya.89 In the first instance they were given no land, but were employed to collect land taxes, for which they were well paid. When the administration improved, and an efficient method of controlling income had been put into practice, the state granted the Hanādī widespread stretches of land in the Wadi Tumēlāt region. But, since this land was poor, they asked to be granted more fertile land, which was to found in plenty in the sparsely populated al-Sharqiyya. The Hanādī spread throughout the province, and their shēkh lived in the district of Faqqus. At the same time, or perhaps a little later, other tribes from the Maghrib migrated into al-Sharqiyya.90 The industrial development of the country, one of the main objectives of Mehemet Ali’s economic policy, could not be achieved without raw materials. Mulberry and olive trees had to be grown for the silk and soap industries. The Wadi Tumēlāt area was uncultivated at the time, and it was decided—perhaps for technical reasons—that it would serve this purpose. Land was prepared for planting, hundreds of waterwheels (sāqiyas) were constructed, and thousands of mulberry and olive trees, covering an area of 8,000 faddān, were planted.91 The workers needed for these vast plantations were brought from various parts of Egypt. According to al-Jabartī, the Pasha published a decree saying that all the landless fellahin of al-Sharqiyya should be conscripted to carry out his plans. In return for their labour they were to receive money, living quarters, and the equivalent of a quarter of the yield.92 The Pasha’s decrees limited movement to alSharqiyya; as a result, many of the fellahin in the province, and in other provinces as well, abandoned their villages. This widespread flight shows how widely the decrees were executed. The public’s apprehensions caused the Pasha some concern, and he was obliged to announce that the decrees were meant to affect only those who did not work in al-Sharqiyya. Al-Jabartī himself admitted that the region of al-Wādī (Wadi Tumēlāt) was soon occupied by people of every description.93 Until the development initiated by Mehemet Ali in the region of the Wadi, it was mainly inhabited by bedouin tribes, designated in our sources by the collective name or They were accustomed to move around with their flocks throughout the rich pasture lands. After the Pasha’s death the mulberry and olive groves were neglected, but the estates in the region of the Wadi were still cultivated. Summing up our discussion of the character of al-Sharqiyya province, it should be pointed out that the estates granted by Mehemet Ali to his family and the elite in this area were bigger than those in most other areas. Some of the bigger estates became villages: among them were bedouin settlements such as the villages of the Abāza clan94 and other clans of the

tribe, so that bedouin sedentarization was a more significant

The Pasha's Bedouin

86

phenomenon in this province than in other regions; it developed as the result of the acquisition of rights to broad tracts of land. It was the bedouin who influenced the composition and character of the population, from the beginning of the Muslim Arab conquest, in the following respects: (a) There was a south-Arabian element, particularly in the north-east, and in a number of pockets on the borders of the Belbeis district. (b) There was a north-Arabian element, more assimilated and more advanced, to the west of most of the area of the Belbeis district. (c) There was an element of Maghrib Arabs (particularly the Hanādī tribes) scattered all over the Sharqiyya, especially north-east of Faqqus and in the vicinity of (d) There were heterogeneous elements in the Tel el-Kebīr area, composed of both eastern and western bedouin, and of migrants from different parts of al-Sharqiyya and various parts of the Nile Valley. Although a high proportion of the tribes that had arrived in earlier generations had become assimilated into the village population, and some of the newcomers from the time of Mehemet Ali settled on the great estates, the influence of tribal culture was dominant in the region. In al-Sharqiyya, manifestations of ‘independence’ and activities of a territorial nature on the part of the big tribes can be clearly discerned. The authorities made great efforts in the sphere of agricultural development in order to tempt the bedouin leaders and their people to settle down and cultivate the soil; the Wadi Tumēlāt project was the crowning achievement of the government’s plans. But, in practice, the bedouin took control of the Wadi area: it served as a place of safe haven for refugees, who were able to hide among the bedouin, and a focus of conflict over land taxes with the authorities. Appointments to posts in the local administration bear witness to the province’s importance for the control of the bedouin population. Muhammad Taymur Agha is a good example of a strong and efficient governor who understood the bedouin, and knew how to deal with them firmly and efficiently. The bedouin hinterland of the Sinai, which borders on the Sharqiyya from the east, strengthened its bedouin character. Geographical proximity facilitated free transit of tribes with no fear of control by the authorities. Compared to other provinces, al-Sharqiyya was highly populated with bedouin, and many of them acquired extensive arable areas. Bedouin had a tradition of settlement in villages of their own and were engaged in agriculture. The tribal confederations, in particular controlled vast pasturage dīras. Bedouin shēkhs and heads of clans were officials in the provincial administration. The authority of the central government was hardly felt and the fellahin often found it helpful to be related to a bedouin tribe, which could protect them from ruthless raids that other bedouin used to carry out on the villages and fields, and not to mention the fact that the Bedouin usually had employed the fellahin to look after the land. The consequence was that al-Sharqiyya was pretty much a ‘bedouin’ territory.

Territoriality and identity

87

Al-Beheirah: land of the Maghārba In Egypt, all the bedouin who lived west of the Nile were known as Maghārba. The extensive al-Beheirah province included the Western Desert, and its population consisted almost entirely of tribal groups of Arab and Berber extraction who came from North Africa, descendants of the Arab conquerors of North Africa. In our research period, a feudal system existed in the region. The dominant groups were the Marabtin tribes (literally: the tied), also known as al-Sadgān (clients of the fee), and the tribes (descendants of the primeval mother (literally: the free or noble), also known as the ).95 The marabtin were vassals of the in exchange for ‘vassal’s tax’ (sadaqa) they received armed protection and grazing rights in tribal territory. Among them were vassals of several tribes. The bedouin were marabtin of the Sanāgra, and Sanāna—all clans of the The were marabtin of the and became nominal subjects of Other important marabtin tribes were the Awlād Sulēmān, the the and the The was the most important tribe among the western bedouin. This feudal system made it possible to maintain powerful political organizations which ruled over widespread territories. They exploited the fact that the central government, including that of Mehemet Ali, was not strong enough to enforce its authority on this and their marabtin distant area, close to the Libyan border of our day. The were, apparently, the most highly developed political and territorial organization of Egyptian tribes during the Pasha’s reign. They occupied the whole of the northern coast from al-Sallum to Alexandria, and most of the Western Desert. They claimed descent from the ancient tribal confederation of the Banī Sulaym, which took part in the conquest of North Africa. Their widespread blood ties helped them to maintain their political networks. Evans-Pritchard discovered that their political links stretched across the Libyan Desert from Cyrenaica to the Nile Valley. In his words, ‘there is not a Cyrenaican tribe, or even large section, which has not some of its members in Egypt, often whole lineages.’96 For a long time the lived in Jabal al-Akhdar in Cyrenaica. In the 1880s they were summoned by the to come to Egypt in order to help them in their conflict with the Hanādī. They began to move eastwards, and, with the help of their subject groups, occupied both the northern coast and the Beheirah province.97 With the aid of the a vassal tribe which transferred its allegiance from the Hanādī to the the succeeded in defeating the Hanādī, even though the latter received military support from Mehemet Ali. After the decisive defeat of the Hanādī in 1808, the Pasha gave the whole of the territory of the Western Desert to the by granting them the right to use the land. As he was accustomed to do in other places, he exempted them from land taxes and military service, in exchange for their commitment to provide cavalrymen for his expeditionary forces.

The Pasha's Bedouin

88

Most of the marabtin tribes in the province were subject to the who succeeded in maintaining a widespread territorial and political organization with their help. The authorities recognized the link between the and the and often approached the shēkhs of both tribes in concert. They also employed them together for various tasks: for instance, to put down the revolt of the Gaza bedouin. There is much evidence that they cooperated in the use of the resources to be found in their territory, as well as in commercial, political and military affairs. In addition to the and the who are mentioned above, the were also marabtin, though they did not transporting dates from the pay sadaqa, and worked in partnership with the Bahariyya oasis. They divided the trade between them in such a way that the yields of the village of Mandisha were allocated to the and those from the village of The Samālūs bedouin were spread among the Mabwati to the along the northern coast. Nonetheless, there are no indications that the maintained the framework of a chiefship. Strong clans such as Abū Baqr, al-Jabālī and others accepted the authority of the Pasha, and the shēkhs and heads of clans worked in his service.

4 The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin Theoretical issues The question of the economics of the bedouin is related to two central issues in the investigation of tribal society: the nature of nomadism; and whether the bedouin maintain an independent economic structure, or form part of a broader economic system. These questions cannot be separated from their social context. Nomadism, in its different forms, is both a type of economic behaviour and a form of social organization. Widespread economic links also involve reciprocal relationships with the broader society. It may be said that tribal organization is also organization for economic purposes. Gibb and Bowen devote a comprehensive discussion to the place of tribes in the wider society: they propose what they call a mosaic theory. ‘Islamic’ society is depicted as a mosaic of isolated groups, which provide for their needs, manage their affairs, and maintain villages, tribes, and ethnic communities linked together by Islam.1 This cellular structure is the principal organizational weakness of ‘Islamic’ society, since it permits the emergence of arbitrary despotism; government is imposed by force, unmediated by middle groups or classes, and with no fear of a united opposition.2 The Islamic-mosaicdespotic model lays particular emphasis on the natural contrast between tribes, on the one hand, and towns and permanent settlements on the other. Edmund Burke put forward the concept of two distinct inimical social structures: ‘noble savages’ who believe in equality (Berbers), as against the ‘despicable and despotic Arabs’.3 Even though Hanna Batatu’s work marks a significant departure from traditional historiography, he, too, uses the notion of a dichotomy between ‘tribes’ and permanent settlers as a key concept for the understanding of the divisions in Iraqi society: he maintains that the independent socio-economic character of the tribes created the antagonism between town and village in Iraq.4 In contrast to these analyses, the concept of fundamentally distant ‘tribes’ constituting separate inimical social entities did not exist in nineteenth-century Egypt, and is historically invalid. I shall present two interconnected arguments against this view. First, it is wrong to maintain, as do several scholars,5 that the Egyptian tribes at this period were ‘primordial’ forms of organization. Their reciprocal ties with other social and economic groups developed in the course of their history, and these ties led to their integration into broader socio-economic systems. In order to investigate the tribes, therefore, one must identify and analyse the wider frameworks within which they reproduce themselves as ‘tribes’. Secondly, tribes undergo a continuous process of generation and change over periods of history; therefore, there are significant variations both in their internal structure and in their relations with other social groups.

The Pasha's Bedouin

90

Accordingly, there is no characteristic permanent socio-economic structure of a tribe qua tribe.6 A meticulous reading of the Arabic and European sources which have been said to authenticate the ‘primordial’ theory of tribalism reveals a completely different picture of the Egyptian tribes. Instead of independent tribes supplying their own needs, these sources show that: (a) the tribal economy was an integral part of the wider economy, since it did not concentrate only on animal husbandry, but also included field crops, commerce and services; (b) tribes and permanent settlements were mutually dependent for their livelihood; and (c) there were several variants both of internal organization, and of the tribes’ relations with permanent settlers and the central authorities. The bedouin tribes (nomadic, semi-nomadic, and permanently settled) were far from being primordial; there were great differences between them in their economic and social structure. Although blood relationship was the basic principle of organization among the tribes, their structure and character differed as between one tribe and another, and were dependent on their economic activity and the nature of their property relationships—for instance, the mode of exploitation of the soil. Thus, the social organization of production of the pastoral tribes of in Egypt or and shammar in Syria is significantly different from that of or the Hawwāra in Egypt, which engage in dry seasonal farming and other occupations and economic activities, and are on the verge and of sedentarization. Nomad tribes such as branches of used their land only for pasture, since their animals were their chief means of production and their major asset. In this case, tribal organization developed in relation to their perpetual movement with their flocks in search of sources of water and pasture. Among these tribes ownership of livestock was private, but the land was used by the community as a whole. The term ‘nomad’, according to Jacques Berque, applies to societies very different from the wider population, but differing among themselves, though the definition of ‘nomadism’ has never been clear. Most nomads live in areas with sparse and irregular rainfall in which dry farming is impossible; so the population has to move constantly in order to seek pasture. Peoples who are constantly on the move and have no permanent homes are known as nomads. It appears, however, that nomads do have permanent homes, to which they return from time to time in the course of the year. Moreover, it is generally hard to draw a clear line between different groups of nomads on the basis of their different types of movement: some move more, others less. Berque maintains that animal husbandry is conducted by the tribe as a whole, and is always guided by political and strategic motives rather than economic factors. The nomad’s only consideration is to ensure that he and his herd can use stretches of land which are usually distant from each other, but in which are to be found water and pasture, according to the season and, even more, the quantity of rain. Therefore, he creates a bio-geographical sphere in which he and his animals live, and serves as administrator of the land on which they graze. He governs or oversees the land, rather than exploits it.7 Emanuel Marx, on the other hand, maintains that nomadic livestock breeders are a special sector of a widespread and complex society. They practise animal husbandry only when there is a market for their cattle, and they are therefore dependent on the settled population for almost all their daily requirements. At times of economic crisis, or when

The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin

91

public order is disturbed, and town dwellers cannot afford to buy meat, they can reduce meat production drastically or even stop it completely, and resume it when conditions change. Thus, it may be said that the bedouin engage in animal husbandry only to a limited degree and at particular times. In order to reduce their dependency on the market and the state, they are involved in various economic activities, such as a combination of pastoralism and dry farming—which is very common—or the caravan trade, which has become an important source of income. The more complex the civilization of which the nomads form part, the more complex their occupations become. As a result, two opposing processes take place within the tribes. Alongside the transition to occupations in the fields of trade, service occupations and wage labour in the service of the authorities, they preserve their traditional forms of economic activity. This happens when the authorities encourage the bedouin to enter fields of employment and economic activity outside their tribal area. Thus, in the period of our enquiry the bedouin were employed by the regime, and were integrated into the wider economy. Marx maintains that these two processes are not necessarily contradictory. The traditional economy is preserved as a safety measure. The economic and political conditions are seen to be uncertain, and people suspect that they may lose their urban occupations at any time. Dependence on uncontrollable external sources of employment involves serious risks. This viewpoint is related to the nomads’ outlook, according to which the world is constantly changing. Marx also maintains that, though it is generally believed that under a strong government pastoral nomads achieve permanent settlement, settled nomads become peasants, and tribal organizations disintegrate under the influence of the modern economy, these claims do not hold in the case of the bedouin of the Middle East. Their integration into the broader economy is expressed in their exchange relationships with the permanent population: for instance, they raise animals for sale in the town markets, and buy agricultural produce and tools with the proceeds.8 Anatoly Khazanov points out that nomadism has many faces: there is little in common between wandering hunter-gatherers and nomadic graziers. Similarly, the expression ‘nomads’ is inappropriate when referring to groups of workers in modern industrial societies who move from one factory to another. Thus, following A.L.Kroeber, who distinguishes between ‘pastoral nomads’ and ‘simple nomads’, Khazanov maintains that hunter-gatherers who do not live a settled way of life could be described by the term ‘wandering’, whereas pastoral societies with a high degree of itinerancy should be called ‘nomads’.9 Our research relates to pastoral nomads, some of whom raised camels and some small cattle, and all of whom also engaged in dry farming. Pastoral nomadism is, in fact, a type of economic activity, whose most important characteristics are: (a) Flocks are kept throughout the year on a basis of free pasture. (b) Seasonal migration in accordance with the demands of the pastoral economy, within the boundaries of special grazing territories, or between these territories. (c) Maximum participation of the members of the tribes in pastoral nomadism, as distinct from cases in which professionals look after the herds and only a minority takes part in pastoral nomadism. (d) Orientation on production rather than subsistence.

The Pasha's Bedouin

92

In other words, pastoral nomadism, which we are analysing here, can be defined as a type of food-producing economy in which itinerant pastoralism is the main occupation and most of the population take part in the seasonal pastoral nomadism. Most of the Egyptian bedouin lived a life of permanent settlement. Their members engaged in dry farming most of the time, and their herds were out to pasture all the year. The type of pastoralism appropriate to most of the bedouin population in Egypt permitted dry farmers in certain ecological regions to use other areas for pasture at the seasons when they were most productive. For a certain period the herd was kept in the hills, and at another it was brought to lower areas. As Khazanov remarks, this type of nomadism is parallel to the concept of transhumance. Khazanov points out that there is a necessary link between the nomads and the outside world—that is to say, with societies with different social and economic systems—and that this link enables nomadism to exist. In his view, nomads are unable to exist without the outside world and its permanent communities. In effect, the nomadic world can function only when the outside world allows it to do so through economic, social and political interaction with it. In the modern period, nomads have become integrated directly or indirectly in the political and economic systems of the settled world. The growth of the strong centralized state has been an accelerating factor in this integration. Moreover, modern research proves, contrary to the accepted view, that the nomads only live in the desert for part of the year: they need pasturage and water throughout the year, whereas water is to be found in the desert only in the winter and spring. The need to seek water and pasturage for their animals brings the nomads into settled areas, far from their own territory. Thus, for some half of every year they are completely dependent on the settled region, and, therefore, more exposed to the powers that be, more dependent on their good will and more submissive. On the other hand, in the winter they are relatively free: they have plenty of milk and are well nourished, and their spirits are higher. Nomadism, therefore, is not a marginal occupation which drives those who practise it into the desert, but a profitable livelihood compared with dry farming. The nomad becomes a nomad because as a nomad he can make a better living than the peasant. The nomads do not seek a way to the desert; the desert provides their livelihood for several months of the year. Tribal economy: ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ occupations In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the period of the Ottoman conquest, the bedouin population amassed economic power which afforded it political power. It was the result of three main factors. The first was the strategic and economic importance of the area in which they lived: the province of al-Sharqiyya, the home of the greatest bedouin population, was important, since the commercial route between Egypt and alSham, and the pilgrims’ road to Mecca, passed through it; the province of al-Beheirah, in which dwelt the powerful bedouin of and the dominated the fertile area of the Delta on its western flank, and the route to North Africa through the Western Desert on its east; the region of the Upper Egypt, the home of the Hawwāra bedouin, was the granary of Egypt. The second factor was the fact that the central regime became dependent on the bedouin for the supply of merchandise and artefacts. The

The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin

93

multifarious economic activities of the bedouin constituted the third factor. Some of these were exclusive to the bedouin alone: for example, the rearing of camels, horses and sheep, as a result of which they achieved dominance in the provision of animal products, as well as the provision of riding horses and draught camels for the army and trade caravans, caravan escorts, etc. In all these activities the bedouin were linked to the economic system, and formed an integral part of it. Evidence from the second half of the sixteenth century that the bedouin were an integral part of the broader economic system can be found in the sijills of the court in Alexandria. They prove that the bedouin had almost complete control of trade in certain branches and products: Damascene flour, tea, rusk, sesame oil, pickled lemons, and mirrors, trade in which was handled by the Maghārba bedouin, who lived close to Rashid. The Hijāziyyin and the Jadhawīn bedouin, in the same district, traded in black raisins, iron nails and mirrors. The Maghārba and the Hijāziyyin bedouin also engaged in money-lending to the inhabitants of the villages and towns of the area.10 Travelers and European observers who passed through Egypt during this period noted that the bedouin engaged in a variety of agricultural pursuits, and traded in their products. They were the main producers of sugar-cane (qasab), straw and lucerne (barsīm) for animal fodder; they were almost the only cultivators of dates, and also traded in rubber; and they had a virtual monopoly on the production and sale of charcoal, made from acacia trees which grew on the banks of the Nile and in the desert; the trees were afterwards used to make gunpowder. They also grew watermelons, tobacco, and indigo root along the banks of the Nile, and set up factories for the processing of sugar and tobacco and the extraction of dye from indigo. They raised horses, camels, sheep and cows, and processed animal products: meat, milk, cheeses, wool and leather. They also grew wine grapes, and engaged in fishing, crocodile hunting, and the production of honey. During the, same period bedouin engaged in the packaging of salt, which was dug up in small lakes on the Mediterranean coast and close to Suez and al-Fayyum, and were responsible for conveying it to Cairo. The transport and sale of oil, grain and honey was in the hands of the Sharqiyya bedouin.11 Since the bedouin controlled the rearing of and trade in horses and camels, the authorities attempted not to deal too harshly with those who engaged intensively in the rearing of and trade in livestock. On the other hand, as the traveler C.S.Sonnini tells us, when the authorities took a strong line with the bedouin and they were expelled, there were complaints from the people of Cairo, who began to feel the scarcity of animals such as cows, sheep, camels and horses.12 This proves that the bedouin were dominant in the rearing of livestock. The bedouin also profited from the provision of drinking water to the towns. In certain areas this was a most sensitive matter. Cairo, Suez, and other urban centres were completely dependent on the supply of water from outside the town. Only the bedouin carried water to Suez from the wells of Sinai in water skins on the backs of camels. Some of the water was regularly sold to pilgrims on their way to Mecca. Every year, the Kapudan of Suez received a sum of money in order to hire bedouin to bring drinking water from the Nile and from other wells for free distribution to the poor.13 The influence of the bedouin can be clearly discerned in Egyptian trade of the period. The transport of goods throughout the length of Egypt, whether on the Nile or by land, was usually arranged in accordance with the relations between the authorities and the bedouin. The bedouin were in almost complete control of the banks of the Nile: they

The Pasha's Bedouin

94

could prevent passage of goods at their will; if they did, the goods had to be transported in caravans, for which camels were required—provided by bedouin. Until the eighteenth century Suez harbour was the only centre of trade in the Red Sea, and al-Quseir harbour served only merchandise which originated in or was destined for Upper Egypt. But, as a result of bedouin attacks on the caravans that travelled between Suez and Cairo, there was a considerable increase in the quantity of goods transported from Suez to al-Quseir; towards the end of the century between ten and twenty ships were reaching the harbour each month, as against 60 ships which reached Suez every year. The merchandise from al-Quseir was loaded on bedouin camels, and sent by land, mainly to Qena on the bank of the Nile.14 The trade route between Egypt and Syria passed through the Sinai peninsula, and was almost entirely controlled by bedouin. The bedouin themselves also engaged in trade along this route, and transported goods in small caravans. During the eighteenth century, and particularly in its second half, the bedouin’s economic influence became even greater. This was due primarily to their control of certain key regions of Egypt. The Red Sea route became the most important trade route for the British, and the section between Suez and Cairo was controlled by the confederation, who had the concession for the transport of goods which arrived by ship. the leader of this group, was responsible for security on the river, and levied protection fees from the ships which passed through it. For most of this period the Hawwāra bedouin controlled the grain trade as a result of their domination of the In the first half of the eighteenth century the Hawwāra bedouin sent to the imperial granaries 150 irdabb of corn every year. The authorities were, therefore, compelled either to reach an agreement with them or expel them; and, indeed, chose the latter alternative, and waged war on them. In 1769 he managed to have these two strong bedouin leaders done away with. After the collapse of the rule of Shēkh Humām, the Hawwāra ceased paying taxes to the imperial treasury.15 We possess descriptions from the period of the French conquest from which we can learn much about the economics of the bedouin, and their involvement in the Egyptian economy. The various groups of bedouin engaged in a wide range of economic activities, from pastoralism to permanent settlement and dry farming. This can be clearly seen in the description of the bedouin of Middle Egypt16 given by Jomard, a member of Bonaparte’s scientific expedition. There, he says, on the narrow eastern bank of the Nile, the bedouin farmers possess a separate identity from that of the fellahin whose land they have stolen. They also retain their courage and their skill in battle. Jomard provides a good description of the bedouin’s involvement in economic activities, and their control over certain central economic sectors, during this period: they possess military power and also economic power, since some of them are farmers: they sell live-stock, levy payments from the trade caravans, and control the sale of animal products. They themselves, however, buy very little in the Egyptian market. The caravans from Suez and Syria to the Red Sea conduct their trade through them, and it could not exist at all without them. Only their internal division prevents them from possessing even greater power.17 The descriptions found in the accounts of travelers and Western observers, mainly from the eighteenth century, bear witness to the fact that the bedouin usually camped close to the fellahin’s villages, and combined animal husbandry with dry farming, as well as protection of caravans along the route to Syria (al-Sham) and the Hejaz. French

The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin

95

observers described the region as being rich in various field crops and orchards, and particularly in date plantations. Commercial crops had already become an important part of agricultural production. From the middle of the eighteenth century, one of the bedouin had established itself on the right bank of the Nile, in the tribes in Egypt, the regions of Atfeh, Ashmunin and Manfalut, and begun to engage in agriculture. When Jomard made his observations (1799–1801) they had widened their authority to the other side of the river, even though they had control of most of the islands in Middle Egypt, and of a thin strip of land on the left bank. It appears that the instability of the end of the eighteenth century enabled these and other bedouin to settle in an agricultural area, where they harassed the veteran settlers. But they were far from destroying the state, and they made improvements in its agriculture. Their fields were cultivated and irrigated better than those of their neighbours, the village fellahin, and their settlements were more populous. According to Jomard, bedouin agriculture was market-orientated: the land was sown with tobacco, indigo, sugar-cane, dates, fodder crops, melons, grain crops and legumes. The first group of crops was the most important, for they were destined to the local and regional market. Sugar, indigo and wool were basic industries in these villages, as were dates, and their products were sold to merchants from Cairo. Wide areas of fodder crops were also grown during the summer, and necessitated the use of oxen in order to turn the waterwheels (sāqiya); further, the military power and communications of these villages were dependent on large numbers of horses and camels. North African tribes also settled in the west of Middle Egypt, beside Bahar Yusuf, and engaged in agriculture. built houses when the conditions permitted, and, after establishing their authority over the fellahin, developed a flourishing agricultural economy. Like the bedouin of the eastern bank of the Nile, they, too, bred horses and camels, and were able to withdraw to the desert if threatened. Among them were groups of tribes such as and This, apparently, was the reason why the bedouin of replaced their tents with houses some 15 years before the arrival of the French. To the west of these groups there still dwelt the so-called (‘Tent Arabs’), whose territory extended from the peasants’ fields to the region of the pastoral nomads. Among them were the Ibn Wāfī, Abū Kuraym, Juhama, 18 and Like their geographical position, their economic system constituted an intermediate state between pastoralism and agricultural settlement. Following his travels in Egypt, Sonnino wrote that the economic welfare of Egypt was dependent on the protection of the bedouin and of most of their principles and way of life. Only they, he said, could guard the communication routes in uninhabited areas. In his view, the bedouin themselves were interested in good relations with their neighbours, the villagers, from whom they could obtain all they needed in the way of food and equipment; and commercial relationships would bridge the gaps between them. It was necessary only to prevent them from looting.19 Sonnino appreciated the value and importance of the bedouin, and recognized the mutual dependence which existed between them and the fellahin of the villages. He believed, however, that the state should supervise them in order to prevent harm being done to the other inhabitants. Thus, the impressions and recommendations of Sonnino, an outside observer, recognize that the bedouin are an indivisible part of the overall economic system of Egypt, and that it would be beneficial to make use of their superior qualities in various economic spheres.

The Pasha's Bedouin

96

Other travelers who have explored the Middle East, ethnographers, and administrators who have lived in the area have written a good deal about the bedouin. They do not, however, discuss tribal economics. They write only that the nomads breed animals, and distinguish between camel-breeders, considered to be the ‘aristocracy’ of the bedouin, and breeders of sheep and goats. They do not believe that the bedouin engage in dry farming or in other types of economic activities for their livelihood. Even in the classical works of Niebuhr, Doughty, Burckhardt, Palgrave, Jaussen, Musil and Lawrence20 there is no mention of the fact that the bedouin engage in agriculture. Only in recent works by authors with anthropological training, which began to appear in the 1960s and were confined to particular aspects of bedouin society, are the bedouin depicted as a community which does not necessarily engage only, or even primarily, in animal husbandry. Most of them engage in different economic branches, whose weight in the nomadic economy differs from time to time as a result of economic changes or political and economic crises.21 I refer here to animal husbandry and dry farming as traditional occupations, for they are central to the economy of the nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples, and are associated with them from ancient times. One may also add to them the bedouin tribes’ raids on other tribes for the purpose of taking booty, which were also an important element in tribal livelihood, though they were not always motivated by economic considerations alone. I shall now discuss the ‘traditional’ occupations of the bedouin, and the way in which they were adapted to the new economic reality created by Mehemet Ali’s regime. The traditional occupations were always fundamental to the bedouin economy, regardless of the geopolitical conditions. The other forms of livelihood which are mentioned in different periods are more dependent on the political and economic circumstances of the time, and are liable to disappear in the wake of changes in the livelihood of the bedouin and the power of the regime. This applies to attacks on merchants’ or pilgrims’ caravans en route, to attacks on and invasions of villages and agricultural land, and to raids on other tribes for the sake of booty. In periods during which the central authority was weak, the number of raids and incursions grew. During Mehemet Ali’s supremacy, the security of travelers and villagers became a central objective of his internal policy and his policy towards the bedouin population. Other economic activities of the time were the provision of services to the government and recruitment to the army. Bedouin were accustomed to join regular and irregular armies as mercenaries, during the periods of the Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman conquest. Bedouin horsemen were an essential part of the military forces of the rival Ottoman-Egyptian households. They were recruited through the shēkhs, who assembled the horsemen of their tribe and received remuneration for them. Mehemet Ali assigned them a special function within the ‘New Army’ (Nizam-i Cedid) which he created, and military service became an important economic branch. Services to the authorities generally consisted of transport of goods, the provision of horses and camels to the army, the provision of agricultural and animal products, guard duty and public works. Robbery and attacks on caravans and villages should be viewed as an ‘economic’ occupation, and when it became less worthwhile economically the incidence of robbery and assault became smaller. The provision of services and recruitment to the army were also an important part of the bedouin economy. Even so,

The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin

97

they should all be seen in the light of the relationships between the bedouin and the state, and we shall discuss this question in a separate section. In this period, the economy of the groups of bedouin in Lower and Middle Egypt covered a wide range, from pastoralism at one extreme to permanent agricultural settlement at the other. Within this range were those who combined animal husbandry and dry farming in varying proportions. Some of these groups acquired land in the Belbeis region even before the Mamluk Sultanate, and took to agriculture, while others turned to the desert regions, where they concentrated on raising livestock, particularly camels, as well as engaging in other ‘occupations’ such as attacks on merchants’ and pilgrims’ caravans and on agricultural areas. They also acted as guards, and provided services to the caravans. Both of these groups continued their seasonal migrations; and in the winter and spring many of them wandered with their camels, traded in dates and seeds, and transported the fellahin’s agricultural produce on their camels’ backs. In had already conquered al-Beheirah province, the pastoral cultivated areas, in a way similar to the bedouin of Middle Egypt, by the eighteenth century. Animal husbandry The main characteristics of bedouin animal husbandry are: keeping flocks and herds during the whole year on the basis of free pasture; periodic migration in response to the requirements of the pastoral economy, within the limits of grazing territories, but not to the extent of permanent migration; participation of most of the population in pastoral nomadism; orientation of production both on subsistence and on the market. During Mehemet Ali’s rule, there is much evidence from official sources that animal husbandry was only one of the types of economic activity of the bedouin. This was semi-nomadic pastoralism, characterized by extensive grazing and seasonal changes of pasture-land for most of the year, complemented by dry farming. Within this framework, there were groups which practised both dry farming and grazing, others which engaged only in grazing, and others which practised only dry farming. For instance, in the Western Desert the bedouin engaged both in dry farming and in grazing, whereas the Hawwāra tribal confederation in Upper Egypt was divided into farmers and nomads, and is described thus in our sources. As a result of the policies and actions of Mehemet Ali, and particularly of his agrarian policies, the traditional areas of wandering were limited, as was the area available for summer grazing, and the amount of animal husbandry was reduced. There remained almost no land free for seasonal migration except in the outer desert areas where there were no agricultural lands. However, economic and social developments led to a rise in the standard of living of part of the population, and the demand for meat and meat products rose. In order to satisfy this demand, and in order to improve the quality of Egyptian sheep, Mehemet Ali imported sheep from Europe, and the bedouin continued to raise livestock and to sell animal produce in the rural and urban markets. We have no data about the number of sheep or the price of meat during this period, but modern research has shown that livestock breeders increase production at times of prosperity, and reduce their flocks at times of crisis and economic depression.22

The Pasha's Bedouin

98

It appears that here, for the first time, the regime intervened directly in order to stabilize the economy of livestock breeding. Nonetheless, the authorities were still dependent on the bedouin for the development of animal husbandry and the supply of livestock and animal products; so the bedouin continued to enjoy a considerable degree of freedom of action in this area. Sheep-breeding was integrated into the monopoly system which was inaugurated in all branches of agriculture; the government supervised the breeding of sheep and maintained its own flocks; the shēkh were employed as middlemen between their bedouin and the administration on matters connected with the supply of sheep; and the bedouin were required to provide the state with sheep, sheep’s wool and camel’s wool (wabr) in accordance with the demands of the government. The authorities also controlled the livestock economy administratively. They appointed shepherds from among the bedouin to take charge of the government-owned flocks which were devoted primarily to the production of wool. A special nazιr, appointed for the purpose, was responsible for dealing with the shepherds, paying their wages, and shearing the wool at the appropriate season. The rearing of camels and horses was also devoted primarily to satisfying the needs of the government. In contrast to previous practice, grazing areas were supervised, and the bedouin were required to apply for grazing land. Shēkh Hindāwī of the tribe requested a grazing area close to the village of Sanhara in the sub-district (qism) of Damanhur on the ground that it was uncultivated land, with no owner; the nazιr of the qism, was, therefore, asked to verify whether the shēkh’s claim was correct.23 This policy was opposed to the cultural and territorial conceptions of the bedouin, and it put to the test the solidarity of their territorial organization. The result was an increase in the conflict between bedouin and villagers, concerning the use of the land for pasture. The bedouin understood, according to their standpoint, that they could continue to use pasturage in all parts of their traditional territory. Mehemet Ali invested much thought and effort into the improvement of the Egyptian breed of sheep. He therefore directed that breeding rams should be imported from Europe. The bedouin provided ewes for breeding to the mīrī flocks (which belonged to the government). Thus, a shēkh of the Hanādī bedouin, and another shēkh, were asked to report how many ewes they could supply in order that it would be possible to send a sufficient number of rams to obtain results similar to those of the flock of the Giza province.24 A letter from the court of the Pasha to Rustum Effendi memur stated that one by the name of Ahmad al-Gharbi had been sent to him to direct the handling of the Spanish breeding rams in his care—to buy a hundred ewes for them, and to find a bedouin shepherd.25 The Pasha also dealt with the import of marino sheep for the production of wool devoted mainly to the weaving of gokh—thick scarves supplies mostly to the soldiers of the Pasha’s army—and for woven material for clothing. Mehemet Ali’s administration appreciated the expertise of the bedouin in raising sheep and cows, and appointed them to deal with these matters. They employed them as shepherds of the imported sheep and paid them wages from government funds. They also had to shear the government-owned herds under the supervision of the nazιr of the mīrī flocks. The administration put a special official with the rank of nazιr in charge of the bedouin shepherds and the sheep that were imported from Europe; in 1824/25 the nazιr of the government-owned granaries

The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin

99

(shūnat al-ghilāl) was assigned to this post. Correspondence preserved in the official dealt with the imported sheep whose wool was sijills reveals that the nazιr destined for the scarf-making industry in Egypt, as well as the appointment of shepherds He was responsible for paying the shepherds’ from among the salaries, and for finding pasture. Further, the authorities assigned lambs to bedouin to rear, and appointed a nazιr to deal with all the administrative questions connected with the return of the adult sheep to the authorities.26 The authorities were also assisted by bedouin in the import of cows and oxen from Tarablus al-Gharb. A royal edict (irāda) was sent from the Khedivial Divan to Ahmet Pasha memur province of the and Shēkh requesting him to require Hindāwī of the to buy cows and oxen in Tarablus at the cost of 1,000 riyal and the faransi. They relied on their good relations with the bedouin of who lived in the region of the Western Desert and were accustomed to cross the border between Egypt and the province of Tripoli, which was under Ottoman rule.27 Bedouin are the traditional breeders of camels in the Middle East.28 In the period discussed here, too, the raising of camels in Egypt was entirely in their hands. Government sources mention demands for hundreds of camels for different tasks in the spheres of transport and public works; this proves that in Mehemet Ali’s Egypt camels were reared in great numbers. Among the foremost camel breeders were the bedouin of who grazed their camels in the extensive areas of al-Beheirah and the Western Desert, and crossed the border in the region of Jabal al-Akhdar in Tripolitania. Their expertise in camel-rearing was well known, and they assisted the authorities in dealing with the camels that arrived from the Sinnar region in the Sudan and failed to become acclimatized in Egypt. The bedouin could provide pedigree Mahari camels of the Mahariyya breed.29 It seems that, since the demand was so great, the bedouin reared herds of camels in order to satisfy it. This demand also led to the smuggling of camels from al-Sham to Egypt. The smuggled camels reached the territory of the Hanādī bedouin in al-Sharqiyya, and Hasan Kashif al-Kurdi, the nazιr of the local bedouin, dealt with their surrender to the authorities.30 Mehemet Ali’s administration was entirely dependent on the bedouin for the supply of camels. The Pasha needed a great many camels, principally for the army, and the demand grew when he was waging his foreign wars in the Hejaz, the Sudan and Syria. During the war in the Sudan, heads of Ottoman-Egyptian households fled to the Sanda area, and there some of them were killed. He informed his son Ibrahim, who was the serasker of Sudan, of this, and suggested that he should approach the local bedouin of al-Kabābīsh and obtain camels from them.31 The camels were used not for war but mainly for the transport of food, fodder and other requirements for the army within Egypt and outside it. Every year the bedouin shēkhs were presented with a demand for the camels that they would have to supply for the public works that were planned for that year. In the course of the excavation of the Mahmudiyya canal the authorities needed a great number of camels, and Rustum Effendi, the memur of dealt with the matter on behalf of the Khedivial Divan.32 The bedouin also supplied camels for trading caravans for Western travelers and for pilgrims travelling to Mecca. At the request of the authorities, every year the bedouin shēkhs of the Hanādī in al-Sharqiyya assembled camels for the pilgrims’ caravan in order to carry the

The Pasha's Bedouin

100

In the year 1829–30 the shēkhs refused to provide the required camels, and the Pasha appointed a special official by the name of Kuja Ahmad to use force against them.33 There are many references from the sijills, which show that the government kept its own camels; the sale or lease of camels to the authorities is also mentioned.34 Many references refer to requests from the central government to the province governors asking them to acquire camels from the bedouin in order to carry wood, wool, grain, rice, and baskets ‘for work with chalk and gypsum’.35 Many camels were needed to transport the grain along the trade route from Qena to al-Quseir, as is evidenced by the numerous letters, circulars and instructions on this matter.36 Dry farming For the bedouin, dry farming is a secondary occupation and takes several forms. Seminomads, and also those who engage in a full annual migration, have cultivated wasteland for long periods for their own consumption, as well as breeding livestock. With the transition to more permanent settlement, more emphasis was laid on dry farming, but the breeding of flock and camels was not abandoned. In tribal society dry farming is the traditional form of cultivation, and it exists side by side with animal husbandry. It is dependent on the amount of precipitation and the quality of the land available. Its extent depends on its profitability, and on the state of the market for animal products. In our research period the bedouin engaged in dry farming side by side with animal husbandry, just as they had done in previous periods. Many scholars of rural Egyptian society, therefore, relate to them as if they were for the most part semi-nomads or nomads who had achieved permanent settlement.37 The cultivation of small plots within the territories of tribal nomadism is a well-known phenomenon in tribal society. Seasonal rainfall of 250 millimetres makes it possible to grow barley without the use of sources of water independent of the rains. Because of the small and irregular rainfall, the yields are generally small, and devoted to consumption by the cultivators. The cultivated plots are always in private hands within the tribal territory, which is communally owned by the tribal confederation—the territorial organization of the bedouin. This type of farming does not accelerate permanent settlement; at the most, it leads to temporary seasonal dwelling. The second type of farming is controlled cultivation of areas granted to the bedouin by the state. Such lands were more suitable for permanent cultivation, and they contained sources of water which could be used throughout the year. Bedouin who cultivated such lands settled more permanently. But they did not completely abandon cattle raising, since their occupation of the land was generally conditional on the payment of land tax and the approval of the authorities. In the face of the insecurity which accompanied the political situation in Egypt for long periods, the bedouin remained faithful to their traditional economic practices, even when they had the opportunity to engage in permanent agriculture. Permanent bedouin dry farming was already well established from an early period, mainly in Upper Egypt and in parts of the Nile valley—in al-Beheirah and the provinces. Bedouin who arrived from the south of the Arabian peninsula, with the Arab conquest in the seventh century, acquired land, principally in al-Sharqiyya province and in other parts of the Delta, and the

were among the first to engage in agriculture in

The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin

101

al-Sharqiyya. The Maghārba tribes, who came from North Africa and began to practise agriculture immediately on their arrival, were concentrated in villages in Upper Egypt. The Hawwāra engaged in agriculture during the Mamluk Sultanate, even before they came to Upper Egypt; in certain literary sources they were not even considered bedouin.38 In the period of the Ottoman conquest the increased practice of dry farming by the bedouin was a function of the increased rate of their permanent settlement. Bedouin shēkhs became multazims and employed farmers of their own descent group. The bedouin were integrated in the modern agriculture developed by Mehemet Ali, particularly in the period of centralism and expansion (1816–1837), through the two great projects mentioned above, which were completed in 1820: the great irrigation project of the excavation of the Mahmudiyya canal, and of the deepening of the canals and the building of dams; and the preparation of Wadi Tumēlāt in al-Sharqiyya for the planting of olive groves and mulberry trees for the silk industry, as well as the broadening of other agricultural area, the improvement of idle land, and the extensive preparation of land for commercial and industrial crops. Some of these lands were in bedouin territory and had been used for agriculture, but since there were no means of irrigation they could be exploited only for a short season and for a limited range of crops. The integration of the bedouin into the agricultural system brought about an improvement in the economic status of the shēkhs. As a result, they succeeded in amassing more power within their tribes and in the surrounding villages. Since the Pasha’s agricultural policy was market-oriented, in the first ten years of the monopoly system the shēkhs were allotted responsibility for transferring the agricultural produce in the area under their supervision to the governmental granaries (shūna). After 1820, the officers of the shūna replaced the shēkhs as purchasing agents under the monopolies, but the shēkhs were still responsible for the supervision of cultivation, and transfer of produce according to the rules of the monopoly. The bedouin shēkhs succeeded in obtaining licenses for the erection of pumping-stations and the planting of trees along the Mahmudiyya canal, since the land round the canal was sparsely populated, and little cultivated. During this period the Pasha began to allocate the idle and uncultivated lands which had been surveyed and recorded but set apart from the tax registers. The first grant of this nature was made in 1826.39 Large areas designated as were granted to pastoral bedouin to induce them to settle, and on condition that they cultivated them. They were generally given to the bedouin shēkhs, who employed their own men to cultivate them. Among those who received extensive grants of land in Wadi Tumēlāt, in whose neighbourhood much uncultivated was improved and prepared for agricultural cultivation, were the shēkhs of the region. As a result, many of the bedouin became farmers, and paid taxes to the state. The taxes levied on the bedouin’s lands were, in principle, similar to those on similar areas which were granted to nonbedouin farmers: untaxed (free from māl) for the first three years, and taxable from the grants to the bedouin were given without deeds of ownership, bearing fourth. only the Pasha’s promise neither to levy direct taxes on the bedouin, nor to conscript them to a corvée or to the army.40

The Pasha's Bedouin

A typical instance of the procedure whereby

102

land was transferred to bedouin

in the section on shēkhs was published in the official journal matters of the Council of Countryside Affairs (Majlis al-Mashura). Hajj Muhammad Agha, memur al-Qaliubiyya sent a letter to the Majlis al-Mashura, which included the following passage: Shēkh Sulēmān and — bedouin shēkhs, applied for lands in the village of Sanhara which is in his memuriye [al-Qaliubiyya], on condition that they pay māl of two riyal on every faddān, and sow this land from the year [12]46 onwards. If this comes to pass, he must send a summary of the matter in order to obtain a deed of ownership (sanad). [The Majlis] agreed to grant the shēkhs’ request on these conditions for three years only. They will be granted permission to sow and a deed of ownership, and they will be required to make a declaration that will be inscribed in the defter of the memuriye, and if another person requests [land], it shall be given to him on the same conditions, and in the fourth year māl shall be levied on the land at the same rate as the tax on the village and that is on the order of the Khedivial Divan to the memur.41 The bedouin often found that it was far more convenient to rent out the land they received. Decrees dated 1837, 1846 and 1851 forbid this custom. There is also evidence in our sources that the bedouin were accustomed to abandon the agricultural lands that had been allotted to them, and the authorities took steps to make them return.42 These incidents are described in some of the research literature as intermittent ‘flight’ to the desert and return to cultivated areas. does not doubt the existence of this phenomenon, but gives no explanation of it.43 As remarked above, the explanation is primarily economic: the bedouin’s unreadiness and inability to pay taxes, together with their desire to continue to rear livestock, usually because of its profitability and contribution to economic security. The authorities were reluctant to hand over these lands to the bedouin, because of their manipulative approach. Thus, we find a decision of the Majlis, sent to Ratib Effendi from the memur of alland Sharqiyya, saying that if the inhabitants of the village of Shiba request that be leased to them, they will be exempt from māl for the first three years, and will pay māl land to the inhabitants of from the fourth year. This is because entrusting this this nahiye is better than handing it over to the bedouin, who will only exploit the soil. Land taxes were sometimes levied in a variety of ways, and arrangements were made to ensure the payment of debts. The authorities also imposed sanctions on those who refused to pay, such as forbidding the harvest of fields that had been sown until the tax had been paid. It was common also for soldiers to be sent to arrest bedouin who had fled in order to avoid paying māl. Soldiers were specially recruited and special units created, for this purpose.44 In Cuno’s incomplete list of the multazims of Middle Egypt (from the Daqahliyya province in particular) which was prepared by the French, we see that the clan of

The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin

103

of the Hanādī tribe, held plots in three villages, while the Kurēm clan held at least two. The notables of also cultivated land in other provinces, in the nahiye of and in Wadi Tumēlāt and in the nahiye of al-Salihiyya in the province of al-Beheirah.46 For the first time there appeared in these areas small numbers of (tax-free land of village shēkhs and notables) which they held. Cuno maintains that the expulsion of the peasants by the bedouin in these areas was one of the most blatant expressions of the conflict or competition for land between farmers.47 The shēkhs, who were, in effect, officials of the administration, administered the financial affairs of the agricultural areas. The assignments that they took on had economic aspects: maintenance of irrigation canals, supervision of agriculture and the provision of grain from the government-owned granaries, reporting on climatic changes which affected agriculture, and the like. According to Cuno, the courage and military expertise of the bedouin of Middle Egypt are apparently the explanation of the fact that in these provinces the lands were greater than in Lower Egypt since, in the villages where bedouin settled the village shēkhs were bedouin. The more powerful shēkhs combined the abovementioned duties with those of the local multazims.48 The most extensive areas of the were in al-Sharqiyya, because of the presence of the 45

strong and influential tribes and clans Abāza and (al-Hanādī). The activities of the recent arrivals from Middle Egypt is reminiscent of those of the Hawwāra bedouin, better known in Upper Egypt, and of the shēkhs of the in the Eastern Delta before 1769. Like them, the shēkhs of Middle Egypt held an official position in the administrative machinery, and their autonomous position was linked to economic success. in Middle Egypt cultivated lands In 1820, the villagers of the nahiye of in the neighbouring villages: Sinjid, al-Gharraqa, Shanisa and al-Deir—2,229 faddān in all—in addition to the 1,087 faddān in their own village. The in 1820. This ownership of the land was recorded in the cadastral books of shows how the authority of the shēkhs of the Abū Gawra clan extended to the lands of their fellahin, even though they were situated in another village. In 1820 apparently the eldest of the three sons of and his French wife Steita, held a in four of the five villages in which his fellahin cultivated the soil: 200 faddān in Abu Daoud al-Gharraqa and Sinjid, and 50 in Mit al-Amil itself; there, his brothers shared 243 faddān of Shēkh Muhammad appears in the registers (sijills) of the Mansura court as the multazim of al-Gharraqa, Mit Abu al-Harith, Minyat Samanud and Mit Bazo.49 al-Saniyya there is a vast correspondence between the In the registers of departments of the Pasha’s cabinet and the provincial authorities on matters concerning the bedouin’s lands and land taxes. The sheer quantity of documents shows that many bedouin were connected with Mehemet Ali’s agrarian and agricultural system. They were also an indication of the efforts made by the authorities to deal with a number of problems characteristic of the bedouin. The most frequent of these were: the bedouin’s practice of transferring their rights in the land to fellahin who would cultivate it; their

The Pasha's Bedouin

104

absence from the cultivated land in order to deal with other matters at various seasons of the year; and their failure to pay taxes. The bedouin were also prone to complain of unfair treatment, and to make demands and requests for exemption from taxes, rights over uncultivated land, etc.50 The registers include decrees, injunctions, and reports dealing with the allocation of land to the shēkhs and bedouin notables, and payment of land tax by the shēkhs themselves, though they are not always mentioned by name. Other letters speak of bedouin lands in general terms, though it is clear that all matters of taxation and land ownership were in the hands of the shēkhs, and the authorities considered them to be qualified to deal with these matters: the shēkhs and other notables received the land grants, and were responsible for levying taxes. For instance, Ahmad Pasha, the memur of was requested by the Sublime Porte (Mehemet Ali) to deal with the 51 ’: that is, the shēkhs of allocation of lands to ‘the bedouin of According to these registers, the authorities treated the agricultural settlement of the bedouin by the same standards as for the village fellahin: for instance, in the village of Tahoriyya the bedouin inhabitants paid the taxes on their cultivated land to the multazim52; in the village of al-Khattara al-Kubra in al-Sharqiyya some bedouin families were exempted from the māl of the firda of the village for four years; Nazlat al-Arab in al-Qaliubiyya province was a bedouin agricultural village, as its name attests. In a letter of the Copts, Ghali (Sergius) he is from the Pasha’s court to the requested to deduct 709 qirsh for 68 faddān on which the bedouin had sown field crops from the total sum of the firda tax imposed on the village.53 When the authorities treated the bedouin as farmers they demanded that they should pay māl and firda, and bring their agricultural produce to the government granaries (shūna). The case of one of the was published in the official journal, in the section the memur of eastern Atfeh, wrote to the Department of Civil Affairs (Divan Khedivi) and his letter was forwarded to the Majlis Mashura. In it he writes: a shēkh of possesses agricultural lands in the nahiye of al-Basatin which belongs to the qism [eastern Atfih]. And stated [in the letter] that for some time no grain has been sent to the granaries, but only the allotted māl. A decision of the members of the Majlis was sent to the memur, saying that the agriculture of the is like that of the fellahin in nahiyes, and the fellahin do send their grains to the granaries. The members of the Majlis said that the matter of the shēkh must be examined, and he should be asked to send the grain, as required.54 Though these sources apparently show that bedouin villages existed, we should not reach hasty conclusions about the degree of permanence of bedouin settlement. An element of transience also appears in the correspondence we possess. The bedouin were accustomed to abandon the land which the shēkh received on their behalf, and the shēkhs themselves did likewise. Clearly, they generally did this in order to seek pasture for their animals, but also in order to avoid paying taxes or working in a corvée. The bedouin of al-Fawāyed ceased sowing their fields, and the supervisor (nazιr) of al-Wastaniyya (Middle Egypt) was asked to stop levying the māl tax. The authorities accepted the fact

The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin

105

that the bedouin change their place of residence from time to time, in a controlled and recognized fashion, and agreed to release them from the payment of taxes. A letter from the Department of Civil Affairs (Divan Khedivi) to Hasan Effendi, the memur of says that it is intended to grant the fellahin and shēkhs who wish to sow land exemption from māl for four years. But, since the bedouin do not reside in a defined area, and move to a different place every year, they will receive the land in exchange for payment of māl. The Majlis considered Hasan Effendi’s report, and decided that the conclusions were identical. Therefore it was decided to publish an lands injunction to the memur (Hasan Effendi) to the effect that he should grant to those who wish to sow them without māl for four years; bedouin should receive them subject to the payment of māl, as had previously been the case.55 The registers show that as early as 1811, an early stage in the Pasha’s rule, bedouin shēkhs held responsibility for rural areas, and were in charge of levying land taxes, including firda, from their inhabitants. It may be that this was inherited from the Ottoman period, before Mehemet Ali came to power, when the bedouin shēkhs, especially in the were responsible for wide rural areas. For instance, Huwēja Abū Wahab, of the owned several in the Beheirah, one of them in Umm Dinar village; he was exempted from part of the firda levied on the lands which he cultivated.56 In 1809–10 the from the tribe, which included the villages of Sanafir and Dhawaba al-Hamra in alpossessed an Qaliubiyya. He had to pay firda. were the biggest, most powerful and most influential tribes in this period, and they are, naturally, mentioned more than others in the archival governmental were known primarily as breeders of livestock, but registers. The bedouin of it appears from the archival sources that they also practised dry farming over wide areas. We find an extensive correspondence between the Divan Khedivi and the provincial administration on questions of land allocation and taxation of the bedouin of and this proves that dry farming was a central occupation of theirs. It may be that the authorities distinguished between two categories among the bedouin of settled and nomadic.57 Land was allotted to the bedouin of mainly in the Beheirah, on condition that if the fellahin needed them they should be received uncultivated lands in the qism of alshared.58 The bedouin of Nejeila for cultivation every year, since the inhabitants did not need them. Their shēkhs received land in various locations in the Beheirah province, and even made sure that they received alternative lands as compensation when the Nile overflowed its banks.59 From cultivated idle land themselves, another letter we learn that the bedouin of and were able to do as they would, as long as the state showed no interest in these lands. It may be assumed that most of the uncultivated land was in the tribes’ migratory territory (dīra), and that they used it both for grazing and for dry agriculture. Mehemet Ali’s policy brought about a significant change, and limited the bedouin’s independence in this respect. Thus, Ibrahim, the governor of the Damanhur, received permission to lease to the bedouin of 200 faddān in one of the villages of the district at a charge of three riyal māl per faddān per year. In their application, the bedouin claimed that the land

The Pasha's Bedouin

106

had not been ploughed or sown for 200 years, and that they were cultivating it themselves: neither renting it to the fellahin nor entering into partnership with them. The emphasis on the fact that they were not renting the land to the fellahin was intended to appeal to the authorities, since it was known that the regime was opposed to the transfer of the rights to cultivate to the fellahin. The bedouin of al-Hanādī, who came to al-Sharqiyya as the result of a fierce conflict and Mehemet Ali’s intervention, also engaged principally in dry with the farming. Their shēkhs were particularly active in creating links of every sort with the authorities, and in acquiring idle land for cultivation; they also acquired land in other provinces, as we shall see below. The authorities were interested in concentrating them in one region, and they employed various inducements to this end. There are echoes of this in the official journal in which were publicized the proceedings of the Majlis al-Mashura: Salih Effendi, the memur of Mit Ghamr and Sanbalawin, sent to the Majlis a notice saying that it is necessary to allocate [housing] places to the bedouin of al-Hanādī who live in the memuriyes, so that none of them shall migrate elsewhere, since some of them go to the memuriye of Mit Ghamr and Sanbalawin and pitch their tents there, causing damage to agriculture, as their shēkhs who live in the memuriyes have confirmed. Accordingly, in order to prevent this damage, their memurs must be instructed that they shall return to their places of residence. Therefore, it is recorded that the Divan Khedivi will instruct the memuriye to act accordingly.60 Indeed, we possess several decisions of the Council of Civil Affairs (Majlis al-Mulkiyya) to lease lands to various notables of the Hanādī, on condition that they do not encroach on the dry lands in the neighbourhood, and that they cultivate the land. The annual māl varies from seven to eight riyal per faddān, for a period of three years.61 One of the decisions of the Majlis on this matter depicts problems typical of the granting of land to the bedouin. This, too, was published in the section of the official journal devoted to the proceedings of the Majlis: Hasan Effendi, the memur of Thilth al-Sharqiyya, sent a complaint to the Majlis al-Mashura, saying that the Pasha’s administration (al-idāra alsaniyya) dealt with the allocation of places to all the groups of bedouin in the Bahariyyah sub-provinces, and they were forbidden to move from one sub-province (memuriye) to the other, on pain of expulsion. A summary of the matter was sent to him [Hasan Effendi]. The state of affairs is that since 1246/1830 Khamīs and the shēkhs of alHanādī, have been leasing 220 faddān of uncultivable land situated within his memuriye, at a cost of eight riyal for two years. If the land is taken from them, it will remain uncultivated, unless the villagers are permitted to cultivate it. In addition to this memorandum, it is stated that the above-named shēkhs have also signed [the agreement], and that

The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin

107

they can give assurances that their bedouin will cause no damage to the area where they live in the summer, or to the villages. They will sow the land, and pay eight riyal māl per faddān for a period of two years. He asks the Divan Khedivi to instruct the memur to act in this spirit.62 The bedouin of al-Hanādī, like other groups, were not always keen to undertake to cultivate land permanently for a fixed period and to pay māl, as was demanded of them. Apparently they continued to migrate with their animals; and they also had other means of livelihood. This matter was reflected in the summary of a discussion in the Pasha’s Supreme Council and was sent to the Divan Khedivi for confirmation. In re the letter sent to the Divan Khedivi by Hajj Muhammad Agha, the memur of alQaliubiyya, referring to the message sent to the bedouin of al-Hanādī, it was decided to permit the grant of land in the sub-district (nahiye) of Sanhara for sowing for a period of three years without māl; māl shall be paid in the fourth year. They bedouin replied that although they were in that area that year, the previous year they had been in a different area. Therefore, they were not prepared to commit themselves to sowing for three years. If, however, they were given the land in 1246 at four riyal to the faddān and they were not obliged to pay any other taxes, they would agree to sow the area. It was the opinion of the Majlis that it was desirable to grant them the land at four riyal to the faddān, as they wished, rather than leaving it uncultivated.63 Thus, the bedouin of al-Hanādī were able to dictate conditions to the authorities, and not abandon their economically advantageous migrations. The authorities were interested in increasing the area of cultivated land almost at any price, and therefore they acceded to the bedouin’s demands. The bedouin’s reaction was based on economic considerations, which determined their preferences. It seems that at this time the income from animal husbandry and the other means of livelihood in which they engaged was greater than that from dry farming. The heads of the clan of the al-Hanādī tribe received extensive areas of land for cultivation as a reward for their activities on behalf of the regime. was one of the outstanding shēkhs of the Hanādī on behalf of his clan, and took part in various governmental operations. Therefore, his family was granted various tracts of land as or lands almost untaxed. When asked for 100 faddān of land

in

Wadi al-Tumēlāt, his request was granted by the governor (müdür) of al-Sharqiyya, who had received a viceregal decree (amr karīm) from the Pasha instructing him to comply, on condition that the plot in question should not be in the cultivated area destined for mulberry trees, and that he had fulfilled all his financial obligations. found support in the local bureaucracy for his request for exemption from mal on the land he had received, and the officials of the Pasha demanded that Abd al-Rahman Bey, one of the officials of the province, should explain the reason. The 100 faddān plot was taken from him, but he received as compensation a similar area in the Wadi, in the of and another 300 faddān in the Wadi. It was decided that he would have to pay three riyal per faddān on 200 faddān, and that a hundred faddān in the Wadi should be exempt from māl, but subject to mīrī tax.64 Like many of the bedouin shēkhs, did not

The Pasha's Bedouin

108

fulfill his obligation to pay the māl. He was approached by the agent (vekil) of the deputy (the kethüda) of the Pasha, and asked to deal with the arrears in payment by the lessees of the land in the wadi from 1846/7:118,676 qirsh and nine fadda.65 In another case, the was asked to give guarantees that Department and his brother Shēkh Sulēman would pay the debts of their It appears that the two brothers possessed an shared by another brother by the name of Yunes, which had not been subjected to parcellation, in the nahiye of al-Salihiyya.66 During the month of Safar 1266 (1849/50), the bureau that oversaw the çiftliks several 67 times attempted to arrange the payment of the title-deed on the lands of the up to 1265. As often happened among the bedouin, and men left the cultivated land and spread out in the provinces of al-Minufiyya and al-Gharbiyya, apparently in order to pasture their animals and to work for hire in various places. It was, therefore, necessary to ask the bureau to apply the agent of Isfa in order to make the in charge of the çiftliks viceregal decrees and the bedouin return and pay for the taqsīt which they owed for the lease of the land.68 The Shadīd clan of the tribe enjoyed a similar status. was one of the most distinguished notables. He received tax-free grant lands (rizqa bi-la māl). In 1834–35 the authorities confiscated more than 100 faddān of his land in al-Zawiya al-Hams and Mit al-Sirh, and they were given to Hasan Bey, the müdür of al-Qaliubiyya, to Osman Bey, the supervisor (nazιr) of Shubra, and to Basilios Bey, for tree planting. They received the land as rizqa bi-la māl. received 35 faddān in the nahiye of Mit Halfa in the Qaliubiyya province as compensation.69 Viceregal

The Fawāyed bedouin who dwelled in the provinces of al-Fayyum and alBahansawiyya also cultivated land. Their notables received land, and they, too, did not pay the māl in due time, and leased their land illegally to fellahin. fled when the tax payments on the nahiye he had been given were due. As a result, a viceregal edict was sent to the shēkh of the Fayyum bedouin present himself in order that he should be handed ordering him to ensure that over to the inspector (müfettiş) Hasan Bey to pay the tax. On the other hand, another shēkh paid most of his debt early, and was excused the remainder of his debt on his land. Al-Fawāyed bedouin were allocated land out of the lands surveyed in al-Fayyum, as rizqa bi-la māl by order of the memur Hasan Agha. On the other hand, the shēkh of the tribe was required to pay four riyal for every faddān of usiya land70 which he possessed in the nahiye of Beni Suwef.71 It appears, too, that the Fawāyed bedouin cultivated land which they had been given in various parts of the district. Other groups of bedouin mentioned in the registers were the Jawāzī, the Julēlāt, and the Juhama. They are mentioned in connection with the payment of māl, and this shows that at that time they engaged in arable farming. The Samālūs bedouin also owned agricultural land, and the governor of the provinces of Middle Egypt was asked for his opinion as to whether the land which had been confiscated from them in 1821/2 should be returned so that they could cultivate it.72

The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin

109

The bedouin often complained about the amount of tax they were required to pay. A typical grievance was brought before the Khedivial Divan. Shēkhs of appeared before the Divan together with Shēkh Gāsim Abū Zēd, the shēkh of their marabtin bedouin, for a discussion of an estate within the boundaries of the department in the province of al-Beheirah. (qism) of al-Nujayla in the district (khutt) of Shēkh Gāsim put his case before the Divan: Ever since the year 1230 (1814/15) he had occupied an estate of 200 faddān, and paid two riyal per faddān every year. This year, however, he had quarrelled with his cousin, Shēkh Sulēman Farrāj, who attempted to obtain the estate at three riyal. The Divan discussed the dispute, and decided that of the previous occupant, Shēkh payment of three riyal should be made for the Gāsim, as well as compensation for his loss (since his cousin had been granted the estate in return for his higher offer). Shēkh Gāsim was not satisfied. He demanded that in addition, he should be granted land as rizqa bi-la māl. All of the shēkhs of supported this claim. The Divan decided to verify whether this suggestion accorded with the routine formalities (hazine). Ahmed Pasha, the memur of the province, received the letter, but there was no indication as to whether he was requested to take any practical steps in the matter.73 From the correspondence, it appears that the authorities tried to avoid confrontation with the tribes on these matters, and accepted most of their requests. courts, and not within the legal Transfer of rights to land took place in the system of the bedouin. This was, apparently, because of the desire to afford recognized legal legitimacy to these proceedings, in order to protect the rights to land preserved in the cadastre of Mehemet Ali.74 The bedouin legal system dealt with disputes over land and internal disagreements on questions connected with land belonging to members of the tribe. Within the tribal territories there were lands suitable for cultivation which were considered to be the private property of those who worked them. These were small plots which could be sown occasionally after rain or flood. Plots were customarily bought and sold within the tribe by the two parties concerned, with no outside intervention. Under the Pasha: a new economic world? Mehemet Ali attempted to establish a more complex and ‘modern’ economic system in Egypt,75 even though, as Cuno rightly maintains, village society and economics in Egypt of the Ottoman period were not entirely ‘traditional’, and the economic and social changes in the rural districts under the rule of the Pasha were not so radical.76 He continued the process of transition from subsistence economy to market economy which had already begun in the seventeenth century. We have shown above how, even then, villagers and bedouin in Egypt had economic links with urban communities by means of a network of seasonal markets, credit and commerce, and production, much of which was market-oriented. Commercial crops were normal both among the peasants and among the bedouin. But, with the rise of Mehemet Ali, the economic ties between town and village—to which the bedouin were party—grew stronger, and trade developed further, while rural economics developed only an in evolutionary fashion. A more drastic change was the degree of intervention of the regime—its entrepreneurship, and its methods of

The Pasha's Bedouin

110

procedure in the spheres of economics and commerce. These had a direct influence on the bedouin population through the ecological changes they brought about. Mehemet Ali’s agrarian policy led to profound involvement of the regime in agricultural affairs, and, therefore, also to its presence and intervention in the bedouin territories. Mehemet Ali based the Egyptian economy almost entirely on agriculture, and his agricultural policy was dictated more by political than economic considerations. In an effort to stabilize his rule he tried several systems of land ownership in order to increase his sources of income. In order to achieve the goals of his economic policy he initiated three projects, which increased the cultivated area of the country, and were all completed by 1820. The Mahmudiyya canal, from the Rashid branch of the Nile to Alexandria, was dug. The maritime dam close to Alexandria was repaired, and Wadi al-Tumēlāt in alSharqiyya province was prepared for growing silkworms and for that alone: a great many mulberry trees were planted, and 1,000 waterwheels constructed. Many bedouin were recruited through their shēkhs for the construction of the canal, both in corvées and as guards. They also received permits to construct waterwheels on the canal, to irrigate the agricultural land which they received. Many bedouin lived in the Wadi, and they engaged in farming activity and in tree-planting. Mehemet Ali conducted cadastral surveys of the cultivated land in Egypt. The first survey was in 1813/4, and the second in 1820/1. At the end of 1815, after completing the process of appropriating the land from its former owners, Mehemet Ali turned the majority of Egypt’s territory into one great governmentowned estate, under the direct management officials of the state apparatus and its branches in the provinces. At this point the Pasha began to distribute estates, and the result of his policy was the creation of a new class of landowners possessing large private estates. This process was based not on a desire to create a new landowning class, but to establish an administration which would levy taxes for the state and the new ruling elite.77 As a result, the iltizām was abolished, and large estates, among them uncultivated and idle land, were granted to members of Mehemet Ali’s family, elite and to rural notables. The irrigation projects which he initiated brought about an increase in the area of cultivated land, and, more importantly, made possible the transition to a system of allyear-round irrigation, which paved the way to the cultivation of crops which required water during the summer. In this way the authorities were able to supervise closely most of the territory of Egypt. They ensured that agricultural land should be exploited, in order to levy taxes. From 1826 onwards, they attempted also to exploit idle lands most of which were in the areas of bedouin wandering, in order to increase both the volume of agricultural production and the state’s income from taxes. For this purpose they gave land which had been included in the surveys but not recorded in the tax registers to people who were able to improve it and bring it to a condition of lands and were productivity. Priority was given to villagers who wanted to sow prepared to pay the high tax rate. Only if such people were not to be found was the land given to bedouin at a lower price, to prevent it being left idle and uncultivated.78 The Pasha also developed a network of transportation and haulage intended primarily to improve foreign trade. Particularly noteworthy are the improvements to Alexandria harbour, which was joined to the Nile by a canal; the development of the overland trade routes from Suez to Cairo, from Qena to al-Quseir in Upper Egypt and the route to Syria (Barr al-Shām); the development of the harbours of al-Quseir on the shore of the Red

The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin

111

Sea, Rashid and Dumiat on the Mediterranean, and the digging of navigation canals from the Nile. Many commercial caravans travelled along these routes, some of them carrying European merchants.79 Mehemet Ali constructed modern industry, and built a system of production based on the monopoly trading system which he introduced. He bought the peasants’ crops and raw materials at fixed prices. By 1830 the factories had already begun to produce goods made of cotton, silk, wool, linen and more. The bedouin had a valuable share in the production of some raw materials and its haulage. The centralistic and bureaucratic character of the state also brought about changes in the ecology of the tribes. The Pasha supervised the different provinces of Egypt, and reorganized their administration into standardized areas of government—provinces, subprovinces, counties and districts. He appointed governors, deputies, supervisors and heads of villages, each of whom constituted one link in a single chain of command. In 1824 Egypt was divided into 24 provinces, in each of which was set up an administrative apparatus containing branches in the sub-provinces and districts and the urban and rural settlements. For the first time ever, the government maintained an effective presence in most parts of Egypt. The supervision imposed on the bedouin by Mehemet Ali limited their migrations, and they were forbidden to move from one province to another. The result was that regions which the bedouin defined as traditional tribal territory were divided between different provinces. Further, some of their territory was defined as arable land, and given to members of the Pasha’s elite and village heads who employed the farmworkers as tenant farmers. In some cases, it was forbidden to cross the district borders for pasture in areas which had remained in other provinces. The penetration of the government into tribal territory, particularly in desert areas, laid the bedouin open to pressure and restrictions. Until then, these territories had been a place of refuge from harassment, and members of the tribal staffs had enjoyed free access to pasture and sources of water. As a result, the incorporation of the bedouin into the broader economic system was accelerated, as was the process of differentiation within their own economy. Integration into the broader economy did not bring about the destruction of the ‘traditional’ tribal organization, even though an economy based on animal husbandry involves much insecurity. Diseases, floods, famine and invasions may destroy all a man’s possessions overnight; but tribal organization provides two separate arrangements which the nomad is not prepared to relinquish even when he finds his livelihood outside the tribe: blood relationship, and joint access to the natural resources in the vicinity. These are the defence systems which make for the preservation of the traditional economy of animal husbandry and seasonal dry farming. Descent groups and tribal belonging were not destroyed, therefore, and tribal alliances were preserved, since these structures were designed for the personal defence of their members and for supervision over the tribal territories.80 As has been remarked above, Mehemet Ali’s schemes and activities in the spheres of agriculture, industry and trade led to ecological changes among the tribes. The balance between the natural conditions in the tribal territories and economic activity was disturbed, and this brought about change and innovative economic organization among the bedouin. Pastoral nomadism of animal husbandry and seasonal agriculture had always been an economic strategy which adapted itself to changing social, economic and

The Pasha's Bedouin

112

political circumstances. In this respect, under Mehemet Ali’s rule, nomadic animal husbandry was one of the tribesmen’s means of livelihood, similar to many strategies adopted by other groups in Egyptian society. They supplemented their earnings from time to time by raids and pillage (including attacks on other tribes), escorting caravans, guarding trade routes, military service as mercenaries, transport of merchandise, and more. In this way the process of transition from traditional sources of livelihood to economic dependence, particularly on the state and the national economy, was accelerated. Cuno calls the years 1816 to 1837 the period of centralization and expansion.81 Mehemet Ali’s agrarian policy was part of a policy of overall economic expansion. The result was an increase in the pressure on his main source of income, the agricultural sector. Mehemet Ali intensified the supervision on land, and invested great efforts into broadening the variety of crops grown. The bedouin were heavily involved in such crops, which included indigo and various summer crops. The bedouin always preferred to grow summer crops, since during the spring and winter they were on the move, seeking pasture and water for their livestock. Mehemet Ali initiated the planting of olives and the import of merino sheep for the wool industry, branches in which the bedouin were prominent. From 1827 onwards Mehemet Ali granted tax-free land as rizqa bi-la māl to those who undertook to plant acacia trees, which were in widespread use among the bedouin. In order to increase the areas of land available for cultivation, the old channels had to be deepened and new ones dug, particularly in order to irrigate the summer crops. Summary The bedouin economy was not, therefore, a closed autarkic economy. The bedouin maintained relationships with other groups in the Egyption economy, and were dependent on external markets in the towns and villages. They were, of course, economically dependent on the authorities, and the monopoly system in agriculture and industry initiated by Mehemet Ali made them even more dependent. The relations between them and the fellahin were agrarian relations. The fellahin who joined tribal groups did so for economic reasons: they were employed as tenants on bedouin land, and were classed as ‘landless’. Bedouin also leased to the fellahin land which they been given by the Pasha, and this angered the authorities. The bedouin economy can also be seen from the point of view of the competition between them and the fellahin for agricultural land. Mehemet Ali’s agrarian policy led to an increase in the bedouin’s engagement in arable farming. The strong centralized regime which he established created local conditions which induced the bedouin notables to ask for agricultural land. The grant of land in the category of rizqa bi-la māl played its part in pointing the way to the transition to agriculture; and, indeed, many of the camel-breeding tribes of the Western Desert who moved around between the Nile Valley and the oases began to settle during this period. The agriculture which had developed in Egypt in the wake of Mehemet Ali’s reforms made it possible to amass monetary capital instead of grain, and this prompted the bedouin to take up agriculture. Moreover, the agricultural and agrarian policies of the regime encouraged the reclamation of desert areas for cultivation: on the one hand, this reduced the tribes’ grazing areas; on the other, it encouraged them to change their means

The economic world of the Egyptian bedouin

113

of livelihood and their economy. In addition, this development led to a reduction in the social and economic disparity between the bedouin and the villagers, and to a change in their types of behaviour: the infiltration into settled regions, which grew with the transition to arable farming, reduction in the area of pasture-land, and closer relationships with the village population, especially from the time when the shēkhs became and began to fill position as nazιr qism. Growing relationships between the two sectors led both to a closer integration of the two economies and to conflicts resulting from the struggle for control of the land. Further, there arose new social groupings, of village bedouin and nomadized fellahin. In some regions this changed the character of bedouin and village society alike. During the Pasha’s reign the character of the bedouin’s employment changed significantly. Some of the most prominent changes are recruitment to the army and integration into branches of service to the army and the administration, and integration into commercial activity. Bedouin were also an important part of the hired labour which was recruited for public works in the sphere of the development of irrigation systems, canals and transport. It may be assumed that these changes in employment also influenced the patterns of bedouin settlement, as they do in our day: in addition to types of more permanent settlement, they also incline to settle close to their place of employment, but do not neglect the tribal background which continues to provide economic security in times of crisis. This type of activity was typical mainly of the tribes which lived close to the centre of the country, and in regions where development works were executed. Those who lived in al-Sharqiyya, in southern Upper Egypt, or the Western Desert were more bound to the traditional tribal economy and semi-nomadic way of life.

5 A trinity of competition and cooperation ‘Mamluks’, bedouin and fellahin in the Egyptian society The question of the ‘Mamluks’ in Egypt after the fall of the Mamluk Sultanate is bound up with the complex and wide-ranging historiographic controversy about key issues in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Egypt which has been taking place over the past two decades. It centres on the debate between the ‘Ottomanist’ and ‘Mamlukist’ approaches to the composition and character of the elite which developed in Egypt at this period. Historians differ in their views of those who are called Mamluks in Ottoman Egypt. The Mamlukists base their arguments mainly on Arabic chronicles, and, therefore, all of their terminology, phraseology, and imagery are formulated in Arabic. Their researches present an Egyptian ‘national’ narrative. Jane Hathaway maintains that these Mamluks were no less Ottomans than Mamluks, and that they were not the remnants of the Mamluks of the Sultanate, but belonged to the provincial elite which flourished increasingly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.1 Another approach, led by Ehud Toledano, claims that there developed in Egypt a local elite group which he calls ‘the Ottoman-Egyptian elite’. Its members, who were widely known as Mamluks, were, in effect, kul: military slaves of the sultans.2 The Mamluk Sultanate was taken over by the Ottomans in 1517. Although the system of government was called Ottoman, the Mamluk administrative infrastructure did not disappear, but continued to exist in part in parallel to the new system. The Mamluk system of recruitment and socialization survived in Egypt; in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it even became more powerful, and eventually achieved dominance. This, too, is not surprising, since the elements of this system were not fundamentally foreign to Ottoman concepts, and may even have been influenced by them to no small extent: despite the differences, the devşirme system, and the training of recruits in the Palace School, were very similar to the system of recruitment and training of the Mamluk Sultanate. After the Ottoman conquest, the governing group was composed of the Ottoman and Mamluk military and bureaucratic elites, including the governor and the high officials of the Ottoman administration, the sancak beys, kâşifs, their retainers, and the officers of the seven Ottoman garrison regiments (Ottoman-Turkish: ocaks).3 These were generally Ottoman-Turkish speaking foreigners. They originated from the Mamluks or were brought from the Caucasus and central Asia. They dominated the governmental positions, weather military or administrative, enjoyed privileges reserved to them, lived in relative prosperity and largely segregated themselves from the ‘ruled’ Egyptians, mainly Arabicspeaking They built up ‘households’ (Ottoman-Turkish: kapι; Arabic: bayt): clusters of individual groups linked to the head of the household, which developed over

A trinity of competition and cooperation

115

time into factions based on ties of family and origin. It must, however, always be remembered that the groups of which the households were composed were not internally homogeneous: among them, and sometimes at their heads, were officers of non-Mamluk origin; while in all the ocaks, which, as has been pointed out, were regiments of the Ottoman garrison, there were also officers and men of Mamluk origin. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the ‘household’ began to be a significant factor in the political, social and economic organization of the Egyptian province. Strong bedouin chieftains, bearers of the rank of emir, also established households in a similar style and similarly constituted in Upper Egypt. During the seventeenth century, and even more markedly in the eighteenth, the quasi-Mamluk household headed by a bey (or sancak bey) attained a central role in Ottoman Egypt.4 Some among them were of Mamluk origin, particularly from the Caucasus, while others were recruited as free men in various regions of the Ottoman Empire mainly in Anatolia. The rise of the Egyptian households was influenced by the model of the Mamluk household, apparently as a result of the Mamluk heritage which was rooted in the political and social environment, and the head of the household was called bey. Nonetheless, the ‘Mamluk households’ gradually became ‘Ottoman households’. Their chiefs were recruited by the Mamluk system: they were bought and brought to Egypt by the heads of households, were trained in Egypt to be members of the Ottoman-Egyptian elite, and rose in the hierarchy until they themselves became heads of households. Among them were also free-born elite members, including officers in the ocaks. It may be that in the Mamluk environment which survived in outlying regions where the Ottoman presence was limited, principally in Upper Egypt, some similar quasi-Mamluk estates survived. At any rate, that is where the powerful beys and their bedouin allies were concentrated, even after Mehemet Ali Pasha’s rise to power in 1805. The political history of Egypt in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and until the destruction of the beys—the heads of the old Ottoman-Egyptian elite, the ‘Mamluk emirs’ as al-Jabartī named them—by Mehemet Ali in March 1811, is the story of struggles between alliances and coalitions which crossed the boundaries between the local beys and the Ottomans. Among them, the ocak officers vied for supremacy with the members of the ‘Beylicate’. All of the rival sides needed allies to increase their military strength, and it is here that the bedouin were involved in the internal political struggle in Egypt. The bedouin who lived in rural areas had contacts, and clashes, with all the elements in the local elite—the members of the ‘Beylicate’, the officers of the three ocaks which were stationed in the rural areas, and the heads of the households of Mamluk origin—since they were responsible for overseeing the payment of taxes and enforcing the authority of the central government. Thus, they were both their allies and their enemies. The chroniclers of this period, both Egyptians such as and those of Ottoman origin such as use the term ‘Mamluks’ to denote the members of the elite, which Toledano calls ‘Ottoman-Egyptian’, and do not distinguish between those of Mamluk origin and the ‘Ottomans’ who came from various parts of the empire. We may conclude, therefore, that those who were called Mamluks in this period were an Ottoman-Egyptian element, whose power increased and decreased by turn until its eradication in 1811, similarly to that of other local elements in the Ottoman empire in this

The Pasha's Bedouin

116

period. We shall use the terms Mamluks and Ottoman-Egyptian interchangeably in referring to these local elements below. Bedouin and Mamluks: an alliance of rivals The historical heritage: heroic epics and poetic heroes Bedouin and Mamluks were associated with each other in Egypt from the end of the thirteenth century, when the Mamluks established their Sultanate with its centre in Cairo, until their successors, the Ottoman-Egyptian chiefs, were finally removed from the military and political arena in 1811 by Mehemet Ali’s brilliant act of deception, the slaughter in the citadel of Cairo. For almost six centuries bedouin conducted a complex and dual system of relationships with the heads of Mamluk and Ottoman-Egyptian factions and households. Even from the early days of the Mamluk Sultanate there were bedouin emirs who kept their own Mamluks in their courts. Tribal bedouin society and military Mamluk society were both similar and different. Their basic value system was similar, being based on the way in which the group saw itself and its history. The Mamluks possessed a strong class consciousness, based on their common origin and their military status. They were descended from nomads from central Asia, who preserved the memory of their origins in their army units and their factions. Their culture was based on horsemanship (furusiyya). Horsemanship, and all that it implied, was the central pivot of their lives; it was the source of their pride and their feeling of superiority. The bond between the Mamluk, his horse and crossbow began in early childhood, when he was still living in the plains or the wild mountainous regions of the land of his birth. Around the eleventh and twelfth centuries there were created epics which combined their way of life with the tribal nomadic lifestyle of their ancestors. The heroes of the epics were tribal horsemen. At about the same time, when the class of horsemen was mainly Turcophonic, there developed Arabic epics about renowned tribal Arab horsemen from the pre-Islamic period.5 The motifs of both types of epic were similar, and constituted part of the historical heritage of bedouin and Mamluks alike. The heads of the Mamluk factions and, later, the Ottoman-Egyptian quasi-Mamluk households adopted a matrimonial policy which led to the adoption of clients with no known ancestry. In this way they increased the number of members of the household, strengthened it politically and increased its assets, and thereby created political alliances and obtained access to sources of economic strength. It was mainly by means of ties of marriage that the wives, concubines and daughters of the head of the household achieved influence and contributed to its economic prosperity.6 In this respect the mamluk factions were similar to tribal bedouin society, which was based on tribal frameworks organized in accordance with the principle of common origin based on blood relationship—whether mythological or real—and was divided into rival tribes and segments of tribes which fought among themselves. There is evidence of matrimonial ties between chiefs of bedouin clans and heads of the households of the Ottoman-Egyptian grandees. Bedouin tribes adopted policies of marriage to create alliances and strengthen the tribal group. In their society, too, the chief’s dwelling-place served as a centre of political gatherings. Further, in both societies

A trinity of competition and cooperation

117

the principle of the blood feud was an accepted mechanism for resolving conflicts. However, the same bedouin chieftains who became an elite group with the aid of the authorities also formed part of a variegated system of tribal frameworks, each of which fulfilled different functions. The various forms of political and territorial organization differed in accordance with the economic function which they aimed to fulfil, a function which dictated their association in different units. Like the members of this society they had left their tribal regions and settled in the areas they were allotted or in permanent settlements; but, unlike them, they did not abandon the confederative frameworks which served as territorial organizations and ruled over the dīra, principally in order to ensure their members’ rights to pasture and water. The clearest indication of the close social connection between bedouin and the quasimamluk households of Ottoman Egypt is, perhaps, the alliance and identification of the primeval bedouin confederations, the and the with the great households of the early seventeenth century, the Faqāriyya and the Qāsimiyya respectively.7 and were examples of a model which existed in the whole region for centuries—a moiety organization comprising two rival axes round which political camps coalesced. These were generally known by pairs of names, both in Egypt and in other parts of the Middle East: examples are and and Hanāwī and Ghāfrī; Qays and Yaman. and were loose informal tribal confederations which derived their strength from the support of nomad or settled populations. In the period we are discussing, both bedouin confederations and Ottoman-Egyptian households belonged to one of these moiety organizations. In the literary sources of the period the bedouin federations are almost entirely identified with these households: so much so, that the ‘sancaks of ’ are distinguished from ‘the sancaks of ’, when in fact the reference is to the Faqāriyya and the Qāsimiyya.8 Thus, one coalition comprised the Faqāriyya, the ocak of the Janissaries and the bedouin tribes of the while its rivals were a coalition of the Qāsimiyya, the infantry Ottoman regiment, and the tribes. Al-Abāziyya, one of the households in the Qāsimiyya faction, which was in league with the established matrimonial relationships with the in al-Sharqiyya province. From this relationship grew the Abāza clan, which was of great importance in the local politics of Sharqiyya during the second half of the nineteenth century. Until March 1811, when Mehemet Ali eliminated the beys, the chiefs of the old Ottoman-Egyptian elite, they were the principal allies of the bedouin, and took part in intrigues, rebellions, and the conquest of various parts of Egypt. During the seventeenth century the bedouin took part in most of the political intrigues and military conflicts among the Ottoman-Egyptian households, exploiting the situation to their own advantage. As a result of the link between the Faqāriyya and the and between the Qāsimiyya and the the bedouin were in the centre of the political arena, and as the central Ottoman regime became progressively weaker and the beys gained strength the influence of the bedouin groups and clans became greater. After the beys were eliminated, the bedouin were at the mercy of the Pasha’s regime, and they had to choose between

The Pasha's Bedouin

118

continuing their relationship of alienation from the regime and acceptance of its sovereignty. The twilight of the rule of the beys: the loss of an ally The end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth witnessed a long war marked by the participation of French and English forces, in alliance with the Ottoman governor of Egypt (Ottoman Turkish: vali) and the beys—the leaders of the local military elite. Bedouin groups took part in the armed struggles in alliance with all the warring parties. During the French conquest they fought together with the beys in the struggle against the French. These were the last years during which they could still use their superior skills to aid the warring factions and to fight in their ranks against the central Ottoman regime, the British or the French. After the French retreat, the beys were interested in gaining control over the province, therefore they conducted a struggle for power in Egypt; the bedouin were interested in guarding their economic and territorial interests, and preferred the rule of the beys so that they could exploit the rivalry between the various households and factions for their own benefit. chronicle is a most important source of information about the political role of the bedouin in the struggle for power of the beys after the retreat of the French which culminated in the victory of Mehemet Ali.9 This is because the ‘Mamluk amirs’ —the beys and the Egyptian gentry in Jabartī’s writing—played the principal political part in his chronicles; therefore most of his information about the bedouin deals mainly with matters concerning the relationships between them and those emirs.10 From his chronicle, it appears that the bedouin very often placed their trust in the chiefs of the great households, and thought that they could rely on them. Much can be learnt from al-Jabartī’s descriptions of the nature of the relationships between the bedouin and the Mamluk emirs, and the way in which alliances and enmities between them were formed; but, in most instances, his attitude to the bedouin was hostile. Because of his social and cultural background he was not close to them, and had no intimate knowledge of them: on the contrary, he was very prejudiced, particularly about their characteristics and actions. It would appear that he agreed with the French who maintained the aim of bedouin and the mamluk emirs alike was to plunder the country, and destroy Egypt. After the French left Cairo (3 July 1801) and, two months later, left the whole of Egypt, many bedouin groups allied themselves with the beys who attempted to frustrate the efforts of the Ottomans to re-establish their rule over Egypt. During this period the bedouin enjoyed freedom of action, since the Ottoman regime had ceased to function, and there was a state of political disorder in which they had proved their ability to succeed. Our sources do not indicate that they established any unit of territorial autonomy. They were powerful, however, in al-Sharqiyya and in the lands of the Western Desert, and Mehemet Ali waged a hard struggle against them in these areas after his rise to power. Some of them exploited the transitional period to commit acts of banditry and breaches of law and order. After the French retreat, Abu Maraq, the governor of Gaza, tried unsuccessfully to expel the There is evidence of this also in Ottoman documents, which complain that the infringed law and order in the Khan Yunis

A trinity of competition and cooperation

119

area, south of Gaza, and that they even had the temerity to rob the supply convoys of the Ottoman force which had been sent to expel the French from Egypt, despite a firman sent to them on 10 August 1801, warning them against such actions and asking them to cooperate with the central government.11 The bedouin did not obey the firman, and and attacked the Ottoman army. The bedouin of al-Beheirah, particularly the the Hanādī, were involved in actions against the Ottomans, who sent penal expeditions against them: in one instance they sent 40 boats loaded with soldiers by way of the Nile to pacify al-Beheirah province, but without success. The under Musa Khālid, even carried out raids in Giza. A military force was sent against them, but they succeeded in holding it off, and returned to al-Beheirah. After the death of Murad Bey, two camps crystallized among the mamluk emirs: the supporters of Mehemet Bey al-Alfi al-Kabir, who advocated an alliance with the British, in order to seize power with their help; and the followers of Ibrahim Bey and Osman Bey al-Bardisi, who was in favour of an alliance with the Ottomans. The dominant bedouin groups helped both of these camps. Bedouin from Upper Egypt ensured the superiority of al-Alfi’s supporters (who had previously supported Murad Bey), and even attacked Turkish posts in September 1802. When al-Alfi returned from London, where he had been canvassing the support of the British for his attempt to take control of Egypt, alBardisi tried to expel him; but he escaped, with the help of and with whom he found refuge. Later on the situation was reversed: alBardisi’s faction was expelled from Cairo, and then the bedouin of al-Beheirah joined the camp of al-Alfi. He showed them no indulgence when he wrought destruction in the region, exacted taxes, threatened Cairo from there, and got as far as Upper Egypt. The region of Upper Egypt again became the stronghold of the Mamluk emirs (beys) and their followers. From the moment when both of the camps were expelled from Cairo both the Ottomans and their enemies considered them to be dangerous rebels. AlBardisi’s force moved around between Lower, Middle and Upper Egypt and, supported by bedouin, exacted taxes by force and disrupted the passage of caravans. When these disturbances became worse, al-Alfi decided to unite a number of rival Mamluk emirs in order to fight al-Bardisi. The bedouin helped him in this, and, since they knew the Mamluk emirs well, with their support he conquered al-Fayyum. Al-Jabartī wrote that the bedouin of Upper Egypt joined the Mamluk emirs and supported them against the Ottoman authorities. When the Mamluk emirs reached Lower Egypt, all the bedouin of the Gharbiyya province, as well as al-Hanādī, al-Beheirah bedouin and others all joined them. They successfully attacked the Ottoman forces, set up ambushes, and cut the Ottomans’ lines of supply and communications.12 At this point Mehemet Ali was the most serious contender for the control of Egypt, but he only achieved it in 1805, six years after he reached the country. It may be pointed out that the methods he used to achieve power were not essentially different from those of the Ottoman-Egyptian system in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He arrived in Egypt in 1799, as the second in command of an Albanian-Ottoman occupying force, sent by the people of his town, Kavala, Macedonia, at the request of the Sultan, in an attempt to re-establish his sovereignty over Egypt and expel the French. Up to this point he had had to overcome rival beys, members of the Ottoman-Egyptian elite, and their bedouin allies. Most of the battles between the beys with their bedouin allies and Mehemet Ali’s

The Pasha's Bedouin

120

Albanian soldiers arose from incidents of pillage of agricultural villages by bedouin. According to al-Jabartī’s account, most of the bedouin tribes joined the beys’ camps and, in addition to fighting against Mehemet Ali’s army, exploited the state of political disorder to engage in banditry. In April 1804 the future Pasha fought a major battle in the vicinity of Imbaba in the Giza province, not far from Cairo. Al-Jabartī says that the emirs and the bedouin deployed over the area and attacked and plundered Imbaba, all of whose inhabitants fled. Mehemet Ali and his Albanian officers and men arrived some days later and began to prepare for battle. They set up their tents, and raised a number of barricades on which they placed cannons. Before dusk the Mamluk emirs and the bedouin stormed the barricades and killed several soldiers in a single attack; others escaped and jumped into the Nile. Those on the other barricades fired their cannon, and a fierce battle, lasting four hours, ensued. The emirs and the bedouin retreated, and the two forces disengaged. A description of the events which followed on a battle close to Bab al-Nasr about a month later also emphasizes the role of the bedouin, who engaged in looting while fighting in the service of the Mamluk emirs. In May 1804, the Pasha designated by the Sublime Porte, together with Mehemet Ali, set out to fight the emirs again in the vicinity of Bab al-Nisr, in Cairo. After a day’s fighting the emirs and the bedouin dispersed throughout the provinces al-Sharqiyya and al-Qaliubiyya, creating disturbances on their way. They destroyed crops in the fields, and stole grain that had been threshed. Then they freed the horses, leaving them to graze on whatever was left in the fields, and set fire to the unthreshed crops. They stole every living creature, and slaughtered and ate the cattle. One group reached Belbeis, and imprisoned the kâşif of al-Sharqiyya for two days. After this, they pillaged the town, and killed about 200 people. the shēkh of came and castigated the emirs for allowing the plunder, saying that most of the crops belonged to bedouin, but not to the bedouin rabble allied to the emirs. As a result of these accusations the Hanādī shēkhs and their allies attacked and almost killed him, and fights broke out among the bedouin. The emirs also captured the kâşif of al-Qaliubiyya, demanded that the shēkhs of alZawāmil, and other tribes appear before them and demanded taxes from them, and appointed bedouin to collect taxes. During the following months there were many such clashes between Mehemet Ali’s forces and those of the Mamluk emirs, and land and sea routes were cut off. The Mamluks were not united, and struggled for power among themselves, and each of the emirs recruited bedouin to aid him in the conflict. Al-Jabartī maintains that the bedouin swung from side to side like a pendulum, as a result of the weakness and ineffectiveness of the government and the fact that the law could not be enforced, while the villagers tried to withstand the bedouin’s attacks, insofar as their strength or weakness permitted. Mehemet Ali’s most dangerous rival among the beys was Mehemet Bey al-Alfi. After Mehemet Ali achieved power in March 1805 al-Alfi, supported by bedouin troops, ranged himself against him.13 He had travelled to London and obtained a promise from the British to champion him, and now he asked for the support of important bedouin leaders and high-ranking religious personages. He wrote to the shēkhs of the and the shēkh of the

in Sharqiyya, and to the bedouin shēkhs of al-Jazira region. Ibn Shadīd, a and shēkh of one of the bedouin groups in al

A trinity of competition and cooperation

121

Beheirah, brought his letters to Mehemet Ali. The Sublime Porte withdrew its support from Mehemet Ali, and al-Alfi attempted to use the opportunity for a confrontation with Mehemet Ali, who was supported by the and the at the time.14 He defeated Mehemet Ali in battle in the vicinity of al-Nujayla, and from there advanced in the direction of Damanhur and laid siege to the town. In the end, however, he remained isolated in his struggle, since the Sublime Porte confirmed Mehemet Ali’s appointment as Pasha of Egypt on July 9th. The emirs considered that the support of the bedouin was problematic for several reasons. Their actions were unreliable. They lost no opportunity to profit from the losses of those who had hired their services as fighters, and whenever possible indulged in acts of banditry which caused much damage. They did not hesitate to leave the field of battle when they realized that they were losing, and that the camp to which they belonged was about to be defeated. They considered that war was a purely economic affair, and they had no political obligation even to the shēkh through whose offices they had been recruited. They did not give up their traditional economic occupations, on which their livelihood was based: they all left behind them livestock which had to be cared for and cultivated fields. It appears that this conduct resulted from the fact that the bedouin did not consider that the heads of the factions and households for whom they fought possessed sovereign authority: until they had proved that their path to power was certain, the bedouin could enjoy a great degree of freedom of action. Al-Alfi encountered this state of affairs after he had raised the siege on the town of Damanhur, when he was waiting for the help promised by the British, which did not arrive. He and his forces waited in al-Beheirah for three months. It was the height of summer, and there were no ripe crops or pasturage. The bedouin began to complain. They demanded to be allowed to leave for the to look for food and pasturage. Al-Alfi was forced to accede to their demands and move in the direction of the in fact, since his army was composed of 800 warriors from his retainers and 6,000 bedouin, who formed the backbone of his military force, he had no alternative. On 27 January 1807 he and his army reached the village of al-Hakim, and his men spread out along the western bank of the Nile, close to Imbaba and Giza. According to al-Jabartī’s account, al-Alfi’s army was large and impressive; when it passed by his forces reached to the horizon, and were organized in regiments and battalions, each with its own drums. Behind them came and al-Hanādī bedouin, and the bedouin of Sharqiyya, in an impressive the procession. Al-Alfi stood on one of the hills overlooking Cairo, and began to address his men on the sufferings of Cairo. Suddenly he began to haemorrhage, but he managed to say that it all was over, and Cairo was Mehemet Ali’s. On 28 January 1807 al-Alfi died, without realizing his dream of becoming ruler of Egypt. One of the bedouin who accompanied him took the news of his death to Mehemet Ali. The Pasha refused to believe him, and imprisoned him for four days. Bedouin loyal to al-Alfi put his body on a camel and brought him to burial. Bedouin in his army quickly left and returned to their homes to look after their animals and their fields. Some of them very soon asked for Mehemet Ali’s protection, since they appreciated that his power was becoming stabilized. Mehemet Bey al-Alfi was a unique personage. Because of his special relations with the bedouin he became leader of the emirs’ camp which threatened Mehemet Ali’s position, and the most likely person to be victorious in the struggle for power. Emirs who

The Pasha's Bedouin

122

preceded him, such as Ibrahim Çavuş, Mehemet Bey

Salih Bey al-Qasimi,

and others, only gained the support of a limited number of bedouin groups, mainly those from their own region. When Mehemet Ali heard of the death of alAlfi, he said of him: As long as al-Alfi lived, my life was not untroubled. He and I were like two acrobats on a rope, but he wore wooden clogs on his feet. When I heard the news of his death Egypt became more comfortable for me. It seems that his relations with the bedouin aroused apprehension among his rivals, particularly Mehemet Ali. Al-Jabartī describes this vividly: Al-Alfi was an important and distinguished emir. His special characteristic was that all the bedouin in Egypt were subject to him, and expressed their deference before him: they obeyed his commands, and never refused an order. He possessed an extraordinary ability to oversee and control them, and profound knowledge of their nature and their way of life, as if he were one of them and had grown up among them. They would stand or sit at his command. Even though he confiscated money, camels and sheep from them, imprisoned and released them at will, and killed several of them, they never deserted him. He took many bedouin wives, and kept those who found favour in his sight as long as they suited him; those who did not suit his nature he sent back to their families. Only one of them stayed in his household: she satisfied him, and remained by his side until his death. When the bedouin heard of his death, the women assembled to mourn him, and declaimed laments which were sung by the poets, accompanied by musical instruments, time after time. How strange it was! When he came to the region which had formerly been controlled by the bedouin at the time of his annual stay east of Belbeis he imposed his rule on the bedouin, punished them with imprisonment, cooperated with one faction against another, confiscated money, horses, camels, sheep and goats, taxed them severely, and prevented them from using force against the fellahin. When he returned from England and al-Bardisi surrounded him on every side, he found refuge among the bedouin, and fled to the house of the bedouin in the Wādī (Tumēlāt); he gave him shelter, and kept the matter secret. Although al-Bardisi and his men conducted a thorough search, and offered rewards for providing information or surrendering him, the bedouin were unwilling to do this, and did not reveal his secret hiding-place. They even kept guard on the roads to prevent anybody from coming and surprising him during the night. Some of them claimed that he had enchanted them, or that he possessed a secret which enabled him to make them obey him. When he died, the bedouin’s unity was shattered, and they no longer gathered round a single leader. Every tribe dispersed to its home region, and some asked the Pasha for protection.15

A trinity of competition and cooperation

123

Al-Jabarti continues by describing a typical situation which again attests to the bedouin’s inconsistency, even towards al-Alfi, with whom they had an exceptional relationship. In what was apparently a rare moment of candour, speaking to one of his men in Beheirah, al-Alfi expressed his true feelings about the bedouin: Sometimes I feel like committing suicide. It is not easy for me to live now that I have become one man among thousands of enemies. Even my closest companions have abandoned and attacked me. There are also bedouin who cluster around me, whom I tempt and lead by means of appeasement and threats, just as I deal with my horsemen and Mamluks. Every one of them asks me for a position of influence or command— unthinkingly, as if the country is under his control, and I am infringing his rights. Sometimes I deal with them politely; at others I rebuke them severely. Among all these factions, I feel like a hunted animal, and those surrounding me are like a pack of hungry dogs trying to tear me to pieces. Since I have no assets to pay them with, I have to act unjustly towards them, to confiscate their property and their money, to eat their cattle and their crops. If God grants me victory, I shall reward them and act justly towards them. According to al-Jabartī’s account, al-Alfi was an exceptional person from the point of view of his relationships with the bedouin. It is hard to estimate the extent of the unity of the bedouin of which al-Jabartī speaks, but it is clear that in the course of his activities a number of bedouin groups gathered round him. Al-Alfi’s enemies also succeeded in recruiting bedouin; clearly, then, not all the Egyptian bedouin supported him. He made alliances with bedouin by ties of marriage, as was usual in the relationships between bedouin and Mamluks in Egypt at different periods, and the bedouin, in their turn, sought such connections in order to obtain support and increase their power. The death of al-Alfi paved the way for Mehemet Ali to try to gain control over all the bedouin tribes, using the extensive connections with them which al-Alfi had established. But the powerful confederations— al-Hanādī and al-Hawwāra—who had been allied to Murad Bey, Mehemet Bey al-Alfi and al-Bardisi, opposed this move. It and the was Mehemet Ali’s good fortune that the enmity between the Hanādī was overwhelming, and prevented the creation of a united bedouin front against him. As long as the Mamluk emirs remained active, Mehemet Ali encountered difficulties, since the bedouin continued the traditional policy which they had followed throughout the period of the Ottoman conquest: making alliances with rival emirs. It was only in 1811, after the slaughter of the Mamluk emirs’ leaders, that Mehemet Ali was free to attempt to put into practice his ideas about ways of dealing with the bedouin. Al-Jabartī’s observation, that after al-Alfi’s death there arose no Mamluk emir who could unite the bedouin around him, is interesting. And, indeed, in the Mamluk leaders’ struggle against Mehemet Ali the bedouin were not significant allies of either side, and some of them were already looking for ways to collaborate with the Pasha as he continued to confirm his status as ruler of Egypt. Yasin Bey succeeded in recruiting bedouin to fight against Süleyman Bey al-Alfi. The battle took place on 26 June 1808 in an open field in al-Minieh. Yasin Bey was defeated, even though Süleyman Bey was

The Pasha's Bedouin

124

killed in a surprise ambush. Shahin Bey al-Alfi also had good connections among the bedouin, and he was involved in the negotiations which led to the end of the conflict and the Hanādī and the Juhēna in al-Beheirah province in between the from the region. October/November 1808; he succeeded in expelling the Following the death of al-Alfi, the emirs’ camp which fought against Mehemet Ali was weakened. 1810 was a decisive year for the bedouin. During this year the emirs and Mehemet Ali conducted deliberations about the government of Egypt. The emirs’ leadership was divided, and there were some desertions to Mehemet Ali’s side. Shahin Bey, al-Alfi’s heir, the leader of the Alfiyya household and the leading figure in the emirs’ camp, also went over to the Pasha; but, after a serious quarrel between them, he returned to the emirs as one of their chief leaders. In the period of Mehemet Ali, the bedouin appreciated that the role of the beys was about to come to an end, and that it was only a matter of time until he finally defeated them. At the end of 1809, Shahin Bey al-Alfi, Mehemet Bey al-Ibrahimi and Mehemet Bey al-Manfukh al-Muradi were among the leaders of the Pasha’s opponents. Rebiülahir 1225 (6 May-3 June 1810) was the turning-point. Many bedouin, led by Osman Bey, were waiting in the royal camp outside Giza for a reception to be held by the Pasha to celebrate the formulation of a peace agreement. They suffered a serious humiliation when the Pasha did not go to the trouble of coming to them. Osman Bey and other sancak beys, accompanied by many bedouin, set up camp outside Giza, and waited for the sound of cannon-fire which would announce the coming of the Pasha. The signal was not given: instead of receiving them, the Pasha had gone to his palace in Shubra. This was the ultimate stage in the deterioration of relationships with the Pasha. On the 13th of the month Ibrahim Bey was given to understand that Mehemet Ali’s condition was that Ibrahim should accept his authority: if he did, he would be granted any position he wanted, provided that he paid all levies and taxes, including the traditional payments to the bedouin. During the same night most of the beys left Cairo, taking with them their horses, camels and accoutrements, and crossed the river in the direction of Giza. They joined together, and divided into three groups: the Muradi group led by Shahin Bey; the Mehemeti group, under the command of Ali Bey Iyub; and the Ibrahimi group, led by Osman Bey Hasan. Their first action was to write to the bedouin shēkhs. Though the letters were meant to ensure the support of the bedouin, at that very moment the were on their way to the Pasha, who gave them shawls, cashmere scarves, and 150 kīs. By contrast, the Hanādī joined the emirs. After the failure of the negotiations with the Pasha, Shahin Bey took the initiative, and in the course of the next six months fought against Mehemet Ali in a series of battles which are considered to be the final stage in Mehemet Ali’s struggle against the beys. Bedouin horsemen took part in all these battles, and continued to declare their loyalty to Shahin. He re-organized the beys’ camp, appointing Amin Bey and Yahya Bey as commanders after the withdrawal of the three beys of the al-Alfi camp. But the news of the rift in the ranks of the beys reached Upper and Lower Egypt, and the bedouin who were on their way to join them returned to the Pasha, asked for his protection, and declared their loyalty to him. The Pasha heaped clothes and other gifts on them. The bedouin who had already joined the beys’ camp deserted. After a number of defeats followed by arbitration, Shahin Bey returned to Cairo in December 1810, and reached a peace agreement with the Pasha. This did not save him

A trinity of competition and cooperation

125

from the elimination of the beys in the citadel of Cairo perpetrated by Mehemet Ali three and a half months later; he fell fighting. His bedouin supporters were unreliable. As usual, they deserted after every defeat, and some of them, foreseeing the future, found their way to the Pasha’s camp. During the years following al-Alfi’s death Mehemet Ali succeeded in creating rifts and uncertainty among the beys in Upper Egypt. On 1 March 1811 he invited the beys to the citadel, to take part in a ceremony celebrating the departure of his son Tusun at the head of an expeditionary force to the Hejaz. When they had drunk their morning coffee with the Pasha and were about to leave, the gates of the citadel were locked at his command, and they were savagely slaughtered. In this way the Pasha eliminated the most serious threat to his rule.16 The bedouin had lost a solid means of support, and had now to decide whether to cooperate with Mehemet Ali or oppose and al-Hanādī had already chosen sides. him. As has been mentioned, the But, unfortunately for them, they were in deep conflict, and Mehemet Ali exploited this to impose his rule on them with a firm hand. Bedouin and fellahin: competition for land The contacts between villagers and bedouin during our period were basically no different from those which modern research holds to be historically typical: economic cooperation and, simultaneously, rivalry for the use of land—symbiosis or interdependence, accompanied by conflict between dry farming cultivators, farmers and cattle-breeders. During this period, however, there were additional factors in these relationships. During Mehemet Ali’s rule there were no bedouin groups enjoying territorial autonomy as there had been in the eighteenth century; but more bedouin shēkhs were granted extensive areas for cultivation, as well as rural areas from which they exacted taxes and thus became part of the administration. Thus, a considerable part of the village population was subject to their surveillance or control. Moreover, various groups of bedouin from the desert areas continued to reach the margins of the agricultural areas in the Nile valley in order to improve their economic situation; there they came into conflict with dry farming cultivators, and even the relatively strong hand of the Pasha could not deter them. The authorities held the shēkhs who were at the head of the invading groups responsible for peace and quiet on this front. They were forced to manoeuvre between the two sides to prevent tension and, above all, to prevent the destruction of agriculture. A special feature of this period, noted by Cuno, was the growth in certain areas of what might be called a class of militant farmers. This was a political and economic phenomenon, since the farmers defended agricultural areas, markets and commerce, and sometimes extended their supervision to additional areas of this type. Further, they used their power to defend themselves against the increasingly heavy burden of taxes and other payments imposed by the multazims and the local administration. It was also a social phenomenon, since it was connected with the sedentarization of a number of bedouin tribes. As soon as they became farmers, there was very little difference between them and the farmers; some of them even adopted the farmers’ brown woollen garments. But they continue to preserve their tribal identity and their solidarity as against strangers.17 The joint interests of bedouin and fellahin in this respect bred military alliances. ‘Village wars’ were waged against neighbouring districts. The frequent

The Pasha's Bedouin

126

references to farmers bearing arms in their fields, and to fortifications in villages and urban settlements, testify to this.18 The objective of the village wars was to ensure control of water and soil, and they doubtless broke out as a result of the rise in the value of land and herds because of the fluctuations in the Nile floods. Social aspects: symbiosis and confrontation The issue of the relationships between bedouin and fellahin has usually been connected with the historical controversy over the question of the existence of a struggle between ‘desert and sown’, a struggle which involves perpetual confrontation between the bedouin, who were desert nomads, and the fellahin, settled on cultivated land. This struggle is emphasized in the accounts of Arabic chroniclers, travelers and Western observers. They have generally stressed the confrontations between these two sectors: the continual oppression of the fellahin by the bedouin, and the incessant acts of plunder of villages and agricultural land. One of the reasons for this bias was that the authors did not know the bedouin, and related to them with suspicion, and, therefore, described principally the difficulties experienced by the authorities as a result of the bedouin’s confrontation with the fellahin. But, despite the distinction between cultivated land and desert, which is also to be found in Arabic literature, the pastoral/ nomadic economy could not have existed in isolation from the settled agricultural population, and a critical reading of this literature reveals that there were economic links between bedouin and fellahin in a number of spheres. Moreover, the relationships were symbiotic: in Ottoman Egypt pastoral sheep and goat breeders bought seeds and other commodities from rural and urban settlers, and supplied them with livestock and wool. Further, not all the ‘Arab’ were pastoral. Thus, the question of the relationship between the agricultural village population and the nomad population is linked to the question of the bedouin economy, and this is the reason for its importance. Modern historical research about Egypt, which also deals with social and economic issues, presents a varied and multidimensional picture of the relationships between nomads and permanent settlers, and permits us to present a different interpretation of the facts described by our sources. Modern anthropological research dealing with the economic, social and political activities of bedouin and town-dwellers shows that the bedouin always lived side by side with settled farmers and townspeople, and developed economic and social relationships with the general community. These researches can help us to learn more and understand more about the past.19 and fellahin in terms The Egyptians themselves distinguished between bedouin referred, in their of lineage rather than in a political or national context. The term eyes, to people whose real or fictitious origin was in the bedouin tribes which reached were of Arab Egypt during and after the seventh century, even though not all the 20 stock. made a similar distinction between and fellahin. The prestige afforded by bedouin descent, or by some connection with a bedouin tribe, or was manifested when families of fellahin in Lower Egypt joined one of the camps—camps which served as comprehensive affiliational frameworks both for bedouin and for Ottoman-Egyptian households. In his study of the village of Silwa in

A trinity of competition and cooperation

127

the Aswan province, Hamed Ammar maintains that the supposedly ancient lineages of the fellahin led clearly to two brothers who settled on opposite banks of the Nile.21 The fellahin, like the bedouin, accepted the lineage which included their connection with the bedouin group. These two social groups can also be viewed through their mutual images, as expressed in patterns of marriage and political organization. In this connection, an observation of is of interest. He wrote that the bedouin who the Egyptian historian engaged in agriculture and adopted a way of life subject to certain authorities considered themselves to be superior to the fellahin.22 On the other hand, Clot Bey, the French doctor who worked in the service of Mehemet Ali, asserted that the bedouin who lived outside the bounds of settlement felt that they were superior to those who had adopted farming as a permanent way of life. He adduced an instance in which one of the shēkhs who had settled permanently wanted to arrange a marriage with one of the desert shēkhs. He refused, on the grounds that the settled shēkhs was not worthy of such a relationship, since he had abandoned the rugged life of the tent with its solidarity, and chosen a tranquil and luxurious life.23 This may be connected with the fact that bedouin employed fellahin as farm workers on the lands which they had received from the government, or leased them to the villagers—practices which the authorities attempted to eradicate. The Egyptian fellahin, who reached the Negev (south of Israel today) at this period, possessing no land, became serfs within the bedouin tribes and so were considered to be inferiors. Although agrarian and agricultural matters were at the heart of the contacts between bedouin and fellahin at various periods, it seems that during Mehemet Ali’s rule the competition for land gained impetus and became fiercer. Employment of fellahin as sharecroppers by bedouin landowners became more frequent. Travelers who visited the Sinai peninsula during the nineteenth century reported that the bedouin told them that they sowed their land themselves, but that many of them needed to hire husbandmen the landowner supplied them with a plough, a camel, seeds and a tract of land, and the contributed only his work, and received only a quarter of the crop in return.24 In 1785 the French traveler, Count Volney, wrote: Beyond Gaza, when we return to the desert from the east, we see ahead of us strips of land suitable for cultivation…. as far as the road to Mecca. These are valleys in which a number of farmers have been tempted to settle…and grow palm trees and sorghum…under the aegis of the bedouin, or, more exactly, in fear of their rapacity. These farmers are even more wretched than the bedouin themselves. Volney does not state whether there were agreements between the bedouin landowners and the fellahin, but there appears to be a case here of fellahin being dependent on bedouin for protection. Marx suggests that Volney may have thought that the bedouin who worked on the land were fellahin.25 Emanuel Marx argues that the groups of fellahin did not usually believe that they had a common interest as ‘settlers’ as against the ‘nomads’. It was difficult for them, therefore, to find a method of political cooperation; and, indeed, unlike the bedouin, they

The Pasha's Bedouin

128

never developed a genealogy, which would have united them and expressed a feeling of partnership. In general, the most important matter which united them was the question of matrimony. The fellahin claim that they neither give their daughters to be married to bedouin nor take wives from among them. In fact, however, historical sources show that the bedouin did take wives from among them, but did not give their own women to them in marriage.26 Many fellahin were absorbed in this way, and in other ways, into the tribes known as ‘landless’. They had to lease most of their land, and in this way bound themselves to the bedouin politically and economically. This led to a unique phenomenon during Mehemet Ali’s reign: fellahin migrated eastwards from their homes in the Nile Valley to Gaza, Khan Yunis and the Negev, and joined up with groups of bedouin landowners. They settled as sharecroppers, and in the course of time acquired land wherever they could and remained under the protection of the tribe from which they had bought the land. Thus, there are to be found in the Negev groups of fellahin who belong formally to three or four tribes, while others are concentrated under the aegis of a single tribe. Some of these acquired land. It was hard to distinguish between bedouin who worked on the land and fellahin, so there was a tendency to confuse the two, particularly on the part of travelers and Western observers. Other Western observers have emphasized the close relationships between the bedouin and the village population in different regions. In parts of the lower al-Sharqiyya and alDaqahliyya provinces there was a symbiosis between bedouin and fellahin. Bedouin who lived north of Belbeis were described as ‘Caste preponderante…sans être le plus nombreuse’ (the predominant caste…, though not the most numerous).27 They attested that the bedouin encamped in the vicinity of rural settlements, and combined animal husbandry with arable farming. Jomard described the commercial relationships in the village markets. On the other hand, the observers noted that the relationships were inequitable, since the fellahin were often robbed, and the bedouin were accustomed to abuse and attack them.28 In the 1860s, Shēkh Nimr, of the told the British traveler Bruce that he was 60 years old, was continuously at war with the fellahin, and had not seen the Nile until he reached the age of 27.29 At the end of the eighteenth century Volney wrote that the Egyptian bedouin plundered the farmers, who therefore hated them.30 Jomard said that the settled bedouin (Arabes cultivateurs) in Egypt exploited the fellahin and took possession of their lands; when they considered agriculture to be their permanent occupation, they forced the fellahin to cultivate the land they had stolen, creating a situation in which the fellahin grew the bedouin’s food.31 The Egyptian scholar Ali Shalabi claims that the bedouin occupied land by force because they realized that agricultural land was more valuable than their own.32 This bears out Emanuel Marx’s contention that the bedouin used for pasture lands that were unsuitable for dry farming, and that otherwise these lands would not have been used; but that they preferred to graze their animals on better land, and that they needed such land to graze their livestock at the end of the summer. Thus, the bedouin were interested in taking over agricultural land, or, at the least, in exploiting sparsely populated agricultural areas. These groups did not cultivate their land themselves, but institutionalized their dominance over the fellahin on the latter’s territory, where much land was given over to pasture. Cuno points out that in these bedouin villages and in other villages in Middle and Upper Egypt the shēkhs had an important political and economic role which was

A trinity of competition and cooperation

129

expressed in the relationships with the fellahin. They used their power, and the fact that they owned land, to increase the fellahin’s dependence on them. This is an indication of the way in which this tribal elite joined the administrative apparatus as soon as the tribesmen took control of a particular area. The shēkhs were made responsible for land which they collecting land taxes from the villages and the farmers for the controlled. Another, equally important, expression of this symbiosis came to the fore in the eighteenth century, in their ability to cooperate in resisting the oppression of the beys, which reached its peak under the Ottoman regime. The political situation forced the bedouin and the fellahin to work together to defend their mutual interests. This was expressed in political and military alliances, and in cooperation in various fields. The bedouin recruited fellahin to their fighting forces in order to increase their military strength when they were attacked by rival forces. During the 1860s, when the head of the powerful group, attacked Süleyman Agha Abu Dafiyya in retaliation for the defeat of his son Sālim, there were fellahin, bedouin and black slaves in his army.33 Apparently these fellahin, who were attached to the shēkh’s group, worked as sharecroppers on his land, and had to take part in the battle in order to defend the interests of the group. Thus, bedouin agriculture was connected to military activity: competition with the fellahin over the use of land led them to organize in order to take possession of the lands of the fellahin and of other, weaker, tribes, or control them by terror and deterrence. There were also alliances between bedouin and fellahin to protect their common interests in matters of land. To a great extent the Qanun Name of 1525 established the pattern of the agrarian relationships between fellahin and bedouin in Egypt, a pattern which did not change fundamentally during the period of the Ottoman conquest or the nineteenth century. It directed the bedouin shēkhs to ensure that the land was cultivated, and to encourage the fellahin to settle on their land. The shēkhs undertook the responsibility for levying taxes, and were even instructed not to impose a harsh burden of taxes on the fellahin.34 During the Ottoman period different agrarian relationships developed in different parts of Egypt. The most important difference was between Upper and Lower Egypt. The key to the difference was the degree to which the bedouin maintained control or surveillance of the land, and their status as multazims. In Upper Egypt the fellahin were, in effect, serfs of the powerful bedouin shēkhs, who protected them. Bedouin shēkhs who were multazims dominated the villages and exacted land taxes from the and proprietors of villagers. For instance, Shēkh Humām ibn Yūsuf, the head of the Hawwāra confederation in Upper Egypt during the 1860s, was a multazim, and protected the fellahin from incursions by other bedouin tribes. In general, the bedouin protected the fellahin better than the central government. Jomard states that the bedouin shēkhs of Middle Egypt controlled three or four villages in their iltizām. At the end of the eighteenth century there appeared in the bedouin villages of Middle and Upper Egypt, for the first time, small stretches of land held by bedouin and exempted from tax. It was said that this land was ‘stolen by Arabs [bedouin] who settled by force in different villages’, and was inherited by their heirs.35 They used their political power in the locality and their control of economic resources to obtain land under favourable conditions from the authorities. The expulsion of fellahin by bedouin in these regions, as a result of a

The Pasha's Bedouin

130

struggle or competition for land between farmers, was one of the most blatant signs of the use of this local political power. When the central Ottoman government was stronger, however, the bedouin abandoned the villages they had conquered, for they wanted to avoid conscription and the payment of taxes; instead, they raided the fellahin.36 As has been said, the relationships between tribes and villagers sprang from competition for land. The bedouin shēkhs and heads of clans, who had already become tax farmers during the eighteenth century, were, in effect, the rulers of broad areas populated by villagers. The bedouin multazims in Upper Egypt were better able to defend the fellahin from attack by the bedouin of Lower Egypt. Thus, many fellahin were, in practice, under the control of the powerful bedouin shēkhs. The multazims in Lower Egypt were accustomed to take the sons of the fellahin as hostages for the payment of their debts, and exacted heavy fines for any delay in payment.37 From this and other points of view, the status of the bedouin multazims was the same as that of the multazims who belonged to the Egyptian-Ottoman elite. Many multazims, among them bedouin, made alterations in the system of irrigation canals in order to obtain more water for their crops; and if the yield from their land was not sufficient, they would appropriate some of the fellahin’s crops. This led to complaints by the fellahin, and the intervention of the authorities. During the harvest season the bedouin’s incursions onto agricultural land in order to steal the crops increased.38 Towards the end of the eighteenth century the fellahin found themselves between the hammer and the anvil: the multazims exploited them as a result of the weakness of the central government, and the bedouin forced them to abandon their villages and move to the towns. Many villages became under-populated often stole sheep, cattle and because the villagers left their lands; the camels from the villagers; and bedouin who became farmers did not therefore stop making raids and taking control of agricultural land by force. They diverted water from the irrigation channels, and stole the crops of the fellahin in the vicinity.39 The authorities were troubled by disputes between fellahin and bedouin in every period. No regime could afford to allow damage to agriculture or to agricultural produce at a time when agriculture was the sole foundation of the economy. Much effort was, therefore, invested in punishing the bedouin. Both al-Jabartī, who was an eyewitness of the events, and Jomard, a member of Bonaparte’s scientific expedition and the author of the chapters on the bedouin in the monumental Description de l’Egypte, give harrowing accounts of the sorry state of the fellahin. According to Jomard, the fellahin feared the bedouin and gave them water, dates and bread, and the bedouin succeeded in gaining control over extensive areas of land, from the south of Upper Egypt up to the Mediterranean Sea, particularly along the western bank of the Nile. The bedouin exploited the period of uncertainty before the French invasion and in its early days to steal property and produce from the villages, so that the inhabitants fled to Cairo.40 Among the official documents of Mehemet Ali’s administration are very many letters, directives and instructions concerning various aspects of the relationships between bedouin and fellahin. Most of them contain complaints by the villagers about damage done by the bedouin, and reports of actions taken by the authorities against the aggressors. But they also attest to the efforts made by the authorities to solve the problem by separating the village population from the bedouin, in order to give satisfaction to both sides. However, the picture painted by these documents is to a great extent one-sided and distorted. They reflect the attitude of the authorities, and the steps they took to reduce the

A trinity of competition and cooperation

131

tension between nomads and settlers. Beneath this apparent conflict, farmers and tribesmen cooperated on several levels of economic activity. Examples of such cooperation may be seen in our own day, and they suggest that a similar degree of association probably existed in our research period too. For instance, agricultural lands are often used for pasture in areas where bedouin live close to villages: the farmers allow the bedouin to graze their herds on the stubble fields after the harvest. There are also economic links such as buying and selling of property and merchandise, and social relations, such as marriage. None of these is mentioned in the documents. Something of them may be learnt from the accounts of foreign observers such as Clot Bey, John courts Bowring, Joseph Hekekyan, Felix Mengin and others. The sijills of the also reflect other aspects of the relationships between villagers and bedouin. From the official documents it appears that the activities of the bedouin were similar to those we have seen in previous centuries. On the other hand, the authorities’ efforts were more resolute, and were backed by directives, rules of procedure, and administrative orders. In response to the increasing gravity of the bedouin attacks in various regions in the early 1830s, the Council of Civil Affairs (Majlis al-Mulkiyya) decided to forbid the bedouin to pitch their tents on agricultural land belonging to the villagers, since this constituted an injury to the inhabitants. The governors of several provinces in Upper and Lower Egypt were ordered to enforce the decision. When the situation deteriorated further and the damage and financial losses increased, the royal divan issued an order forbidding the bedouin to leave the province where they lived for another province.41 42 The chief This decision was published in the official journal shēkhs of the tribes routinely reported to the Pasha, and undertook on behalf of their people not to harass the villagers. the chief shēkh of the Fawāyed bedouin, promised that his tribesmen would cause no damage. In view of this explicit undertaking they were given a licence to settle in the alFayyum area and sow the lands that they had been granted; but they were warned not to travel between the villages or through agricultural areas. The authorities also took military action against the bedouin. In December 1835 a military force was sent to alMinieh province in Upper Egypt in order to expel the the the Hanādī, the and the Fawāyed bedouin in the qism of Tahabush, who had spread out over cultivated fields in the area with their cattle.43 During this period, the tension between bedouin and fellahin was concentrated in two regions: the provinces of al-Gharbiyya and al-Beheirah, where the powerful

lived, and al-Sharqiyya, home of the Bilī, al-Hanādī and many other tribes. In reached Rashid, on the Mediterranean October 1834, when the coast, in order to steal dates and attack the farmers, an order was sent to Yahya Effendi, the governor (mühafiz) of Rashid, instructing him to arrest two of them: one was to be crucified in order to deter the others, and one was to be sent to prison. The were forbidden to enter Rashid except for urgent reasons and their shēkhs were ordered to vassals of the pitched enforce the prohibition. The their tents in open areas between the villages, and were accustomed to let their camels wander through the village fields and browse there. A complaint was made to Hüseyin Agha.44 In Mahalla al-Kubra, bedouin forced the fellahin to pay them various taxes, in

The Pasha's Bedouin

132

addition to those owed to the government. The Hanādī and also levied taxes from the villagers in al-Beheirah. When the bedouin in al-Fayyum province pitched their tents among the olive-trees and date palms, Mehemet Ali issued an order that they should be expelled from there. In the same district the bedouin stole some of the dates grown by the fellahin, and stopped the water from flowing to agricultural areas. The Pasha issued an order to expel them from the area, in order to prevent more damage. The order instructed the governor (memur) of al-Fayyum to make them move to the foothills; if such actions were repeated, the crops were damaged and their cattle got on to the fields, they would be fined, and their cattle would be confiscated by the government.45 Many complaints came from al-Sharqiyya, whose bedouin inhabitants frequently overran the village fields with their cattle. The complaints of the villagers from this district show that the bedouin not only grazed their cattle on agricultural land and caused damage to the crops; they also tried to intervene in the internal affairs of the villages, and ensure that their supporters took control of the inhabitants.46 In al-Gharbiyya province the confrontation between the Jawāzī bedouin and the people of the village of Ibshan turned into a real battle. The bedouin stole camels and cattle, and it appears that people were killed, since the authorities instructed their representatives in the province to arrange a with all speed.47 The major source of friction was competition for land. Since the government controlled and supervised agricultural land, and allocated it as it would, the bedouin and the farmers could only complain of injustice, damage to the land by the bedouin, and matters connected with the payment of land taxes. published an account of one such matter. It was discussed in the Council of Countryside Affairs (Majlis al-Mashura) at the initiative of Hasan Effendi, the memur Thilth al-Sharqiyya. He requested an investigation of a complaint made by farmers against Huseyin, the chief in that qism, and against one of the Hanādī bedouin in the nahiye of Qawa. The complaint maintained that from the day the bedouin came to the land in the qism the inhabitants suffered damage, since the bedouin appropriated to themselves more than 200 faddān belonging to the fellahin without paying māl, and that their cattle trespassed on the farmers’ land. Hasan Effendi claimed that these shēkhs exacted five riyal per faddān, and agreed among themselves to raise the māl, since the tax was 8.5 riyal per faddān. The shēkhs requested that their claim should be judged by bedouin law The authorities recognized the role of the bedouin legal system in resolving disputes; this indicates the degree of autonomy which the bedouin enjoyed under Mehemet Ali, which included exemption from military service. from the The majlis decided that the bedouin should remove their camps land, and that only the leaseholders should remain there. When the crop was ready, each of them would take his part, and pay māl for the inhabitants’ land according to the tax rate; as for the bedouin’s land, māl should be paid in accordance with the leasing agreement.48 This solution is typical of those usual in such cases: first of all they expelled the bedouin, to avoid tension between them and the local farmers, and then ensured that the taxes should be paid. This case throws light on one aspect of daily life in the Egyptian countryside.

Part II Governing the state

6 Tribe and state in Egypt Coexistence in conflict The way in which the Egyptian authorities dealt with the tribal population did not change in its essence up to the period discussed in this book. The attitude of the authorities to the bedouin was shaped by a continuous conflict. On the one hand, they waged a military struggle against the rebellious tribes who gave aid to the enemies of the regime, harassed the villagers and threatened security on the roads. On the other hand, they developed good relations with the leaders of the tribal groups by granting them land, involving them in the administration, and even relying on the bedouin element for military purposes. The bedouin also assisted the authorities in various economic spheres. The fact that the bedouin lived in the desert, in distant peripheral regions, only increased suspicion and fear of them. Basically, most of the Egyptian rulers adopted a similar policy. The occasional variations are connected with changes in bedouin society in matters of settlement and economics, and also with the different personalities who were active in this sphere. The policy of a regime towards various sectors of society may be considered on three levels: the normative level, on which one examines the place of ‘ideology’, and whether there exists a common ideological denominator which creates cooperation and common interests; the utilitarian level—the participation of the sector in the resources of the state such as soil, education, etc.; and the level of coercion—the means of coercion and punishment used by the regime. At each of these levels the regime uses methods of appeasement, compensation, coercion and co-optation to deal with the sector. In such a manner the Pasha had performed and by that he was able to achieve effective governance. The strength and rigorousness of each of these methods attests to the relative weight of each level in overall policy, and whether it is normative, utilitarian or coercive, or a combination of the three. Governments generally incline to see the bedouin in terms of stereotypic images, and to treat them as a social problem. They place no value on the contribution of the nomads to the economy, and view their nomadic life as an attempt to evade civic duties such as military service and the payment of taxes. From this point of view, there is virtually no difference between the policies of the Ottoman rulers, of European colonial rulers, and of modern states. The usual administrative attitude to tribal society was that it was inferior to the settled urban population. According to this viewpoint, the town is the source of government, order and productivity, whereas the tribes are naturally inclined to rebellion, robbery, and destruction; this inclination is a function of their difficult living conditions, their distance from the centres of civilization, and the idleness which is part of their way of life.1 In the eyes of the authorities they are an unstable element which threatens

The Pasha's Bedouin

136

security and order. It may be that this attitude is justified to some extent from the point of view of the government, but it is shallow and stereotypic. It stems from the objective practical difficulties involved in the constant supervision of a nomad population, which enable some of them to evade fulfilling their obligations, at least for some time. Such evasions then become uppermost in the bureaucrats’ discourse. In order to exploit the labour and the military potential of the nomads, or simply in order to take the easy way out, the authorities usually evade their civic responsibility and relate to the nomads as tribesmen. They are looked on as a closed society, a ‘tribe’ which is permitted to preserve its traditional culture and manage its affairs independently, with little official interference. The fact that bedouin tribes are usually to be found in marginal regions along the borders increases the authorities’ suspicions; hence there is felt a need both to take coercive measures against them and to attempt to absorb them in the broader society and economy. The authorities generally prefer peasants, who dwell on their own land and can be taxed and conscripted into the army, to nomads, who live their lives away from the national community and are liable to jeopardize public order. Mehemet Ali’s view of the bedouin was no different from these traditional generalizations. His centralistic view of the organization of the civil service also led him to formulate a ‘bedouin policy’ in response to this continuous conflict. The administration which he founded served this end. We shall now examine the administrative structure of his regime, and the nature of its bureaucratic culture, and ask to what extent his administration served the aims of his policy with regard to the tribal population. The Pasha’s administration: looking at the bureaucratic culture The history of Egypt in the period of the Ottoman conquest was marked by a pattern of fluctuation between strong central forces and local and regional forces. Between the Ottoman conquest of 1517 and Mehemet Ali’s rise to power in 1805 there existed no central political force in Egypt, except for exceedingly short periods. Egypt was divided into feudal estates ruled through tax farmers (multazims), among them the heads of the factions and households of the elite of Ottoman/Turkish extraction, army officers, and also heads of villages and bedouin shēkhs, who were the real rulers of the provincial areas: in the absence of an effective central government they administered their own affairs. The central government was concerned mainly with the levying of taxes; as long as the money flowed into its coffers satisfactorily and no more was required, they interfered very little in the doings of the people, and the relations between the central government and the population were minimal. As against this, the period of Mehemet Ali’s rule was one of the periods of Egyptian history when the regime was characterized primarily by centralism. He aspired to establish an independent dynasty and a new empire in the Eastern Mediterranean region. His plans for independence and expansion were backed by internal reforms. In the winter of the year 1813/14 he abolished the iltizām system of tax farming in rural areas which had been in place since the sixteenth century. Instead, he established a direct centralized system of land taxes. Together with the centralized state, he also built a national army on the French model.

Tribe and state in Egypt

137

Robert Hunter, who wrote a history of the internal administration of Egypt, examined the administrative apparatus which Mehemet Ali constructed and the bureaucratic structure which characterized his reign. He depicts Mehemet Ali as a transitional figure. He was the last of the great Mamluk commanders who ruled by means of a ‘household’, and the first ruler of the new age of bureaucracy. Like his predecessors, he strove to attain a monopoly of power. But the reforms which he initiated, which were based on Western concepts, actually reduced his own autonomy. In effect, Mehemet Ali defined the limits of modernization: using European methods and modern technology he reinforced the absolute authority of his household, and the modern bureaucracy which he adopted strengthened the rule of his outmoded ‘house’. Hunter showed that his administration was not completely identical with his bureaucracy. The bureaucratic apparatus contained a strong informal element which stemmed from the ties of personal obligation and mutual dependency between individuals, and was not imposed by any directive. Thus, parallel to the formal system, there existed an informal and primordial one, based on networks of personal ties, known as intisāb, and on loyalties to local units based on blood relationships—family, tribe and village.2 Although the officials of the provincial administration were subject to the khedivial divan, they developed centres of independent local support based on these social networks. The government generally allowed these networks to function and develop as long as they did not interfere with its ability to govern.3 The administrative system which Mehemet Ali established consisted of a branching bureaucratic hierarchy: a rigid system, in which the management of the state’s affairs was concentrated at the tip of a pyramid, and there were no independent political centres at the middle range. Such an ‘arbor-form’ system is liable to bring about one of two situations: absolute obedience at every level below the ruler, or total resistance leading to revolt and the destruction of the system. Under Mehemet Ali’s regime, however, neither of these two things happened. His centralism developed from an ‘arbor-form’ system into an ‘open’ one, in which only temporary and dialectical situations, of non-acceptance and non-rejection, could come about. It was a complex system which interacted with its surroundings, and the relations between the government and its subjects were implicated. Every one of the constituents of such a system is linked directly to another, and the individuals who create it possess relatively more power than under a hierarchy. The constituents of this system functioned within the formal ‘arbor-form’ system in accordance with the hierarchic order which extended to the top of the pyramid, but they also maintained a system of informal horizontal contacts, particularly in the provinces. The main reason for this development was that Mehemet Ali created a ‘personal’ government built on the typical pattern of a ‘household’ which included his family: blood relatives, followed by relatives by marriage, white freedmen (freed kul, Mamluk-type), and, finally, people with none of these relationships who entered the household by dint of individual agreements—clients, partners, those born in his native region, and the like. All of these were close, loyal and subservient dependents. The activities of these ‘households’ strengthened his personal leadership. Their members were not bureaucrats on the Weberian model; they were administrators of the regime, who owed their positions to the backing of their master. He appointed them to most of the key positions in the central government, and to key positions in the provinces. All they were required to do was to keep order and to ensure that tax payments were kept up to date, in order to add

The Pasha's Bedouin

138

lustre to the ruler’s authority and to broaden his dominion. Their loyalty was rewarded by grants of land. They were all dependent on the whims of the ruler, and tried to obey his orders; and, indeed, they tended to pass on even the most trivial issues to one of the central organs of administration. But family relationships and the solidarity of the ‘house’ created a parallel informal quasi-tribal system which included both horizontal links unconnected with the summit of the pyramid and vertical links parallel to the formal hierarchical chain of command. Those who administered this system developed narrow personal interests, mainly concerned with land ownership, in the areas where they served; and they maintained direct links with different parts of the system, through alternative unofficial channels rather than the hierarchical order, in order to protect their interests. The combination of high office and possession of land enabled some of them to fulfil a double function—to represent the government, with its hierarchic and centralized organization, and to speak on behalf of local interests. As has been said, the system was open to interpretation, and constituted a negotiated order—as, indeed, did the centralized system of the Pasha. The subordinate ranks did not follow instructions and procedures in every detail; but they did not express opposition, and did not rebel. Those among the group of favourites who belonged to Mehemet Ali’s ‘house’ and held administrative posts constituted part of the elite which grew up during his reign. Ehud Toledano, as mentioned before, calls this elite ‘Ottoman-Egyptian’, in sociocultural terms, whereas Hunter divides them into five categories: Turks from the region of Mehemet Ali’s birth; Westernizing Egyptians educated in Europe, who were a vital element in the expanding bureaucratic apparatus; local landowning dignitaries with regional power bases; Armenians; and Europeans. The Ottoman-Egyptian elite was small, and numbered a few thousand bureaucrats and army officers who spoke Turkish and used it as the language of government, and whose culture, which was distinctly Ottoman, gradually acquired an Egyptian flavour. They were loyal to the dynasty, and committed to lengthy service in Egypt.4 The Pasha placed the greatest faith in members of his inmost circle, and he put them in charge of the central administrative apparatus and the machinery of provincial government which he set up for them, and was intended to supervise and manipulate the existing Ottoman system. In the years 1812 to 1827 Mehemet Ali devoted much effort to creating a solid administrative structure for the requirements of the members of his household. Between 1812 and 1815, all the country’s land was transferred to the control of his favourites, and machinery for supervision and taxation, which they administered, was created. As a result, there came into being the informal open system described above. The creation of provincial administrative machinery was one of the reasons for the transformation of Mehemet Ali’s originally ‘arbor-form’ hierarchical government into a hierarchical system whose arrangements were subject to interpretation and negotiation, a system in which obedience to instructions was neither absolute nor automatic, and the channels of communication were neither permanent nor uniform. As a result, the provincial administrations developed a dynamic of their own which led to processes of localization. These processes were expressed in certain aspects of the administration and in the sphere of social relations with the local population; they provoked a reaction from the centre, and thereby shaped the policy of the central regime towards the population in peripheral areas, including the bedouin. These processes, and their manifestations, were full of contradictions. We shall now outline these manifestations and administrative

Tribe and state in Egypt

139

methods, and the way in which the bedouin built up their relations with Mehemet Ali’s administration and with the apparatus of local government. Mehemet Ali’s household was the axis and pillar of his government. He ruled with the aid of the Viceregal entourage or cabinet It consisted of a small group of kindred and favourites. They were all of Turkish extraction, from among the Ottoman-Egyptian elite group.5 They were in direct communication with the Pasha, and all his instructions to the provinces were passed on through them. He ordered the provincial governors to be in direct touch with them in order to receive the instructions and edicts which he published. For instance, in 1820 the Pasha ordered Muharram Bey, the governor (mühafiz) of Alexandria, to send his letters directly to Habib Effendi, who would pass them on for him to read. It was usually they who had meetings with the governors of provinces and subdistricts, and with bedouin shēkhs, village shēkhs, and the like, in order to inform them of the Pasha’s edicts and instructions. In 1829, for instance, the Pasha instructed Zaki Effendi to go to the memuriye of Fawa, assemble the memurs, and threaten them with punishment if they did not execute the works which had been imposed on them to the Pasha’s satisfaction. They were instructed to preserve secrecy, and to allow nobody to read the documents they received, particularly those from abroad.6 Mehemet Ali also put them in charge of supervisory committees in the provinces whose task was to scrutinize the activities of the local officials, and ensure that the inhabitants’ requests were being granted. In the course of time members of this group deviated from established procedures, and Mehemet Ali had to threaten them with corporal punishment, including the use of the truncheon (nabūt). This phenomenon was specially marked in the lower ranks, such as nazιrs of qisms. According to Mehemet Ali, they were negligent in the performance of their duties, and received bribes from the citizens.7 This may be seen as an expression of a different interpretation of administrative order from that of the Pasha, and not necessarily as a criminal act such as theft or embezzlement. Many of those who held the posts of müdür and mühafiz, also acted according to an interpretation which permitted them to present incomplete, distorted and inexact reports of events in their provinces, concocted in order to serve their personal interests and strengthen their economic connections in the region. The Pasha looked on this as embezzlement at the expense of the public interest, and urged them to check the reports which they sent him seriously and well.8 Another aspect of Mehemet Ali’s administration was the system of permanent rotation of office which had been practised from the early days of the Ottoman Empire, in the sixteenth century.9 It was intended to be part of the system of social control. Although the relationships between patrons and clients, and between the patrons themselves, were supposed to be founded on cooperation by definition, they were in fact alien and unknown to each other. As a result, the authorities succeeded in creating a state of uncertainty in the provinces which harmed the ongoing relationships between patron and client. This was one of the regime’s sources of power in our period. Rotation was one of the devices used by Mehemet Ali on his accession to power in his campaign to destroy the traditional political, social and economic networks. This was also his method of maintaining his favourites’ loyalty. He succeeded in doing this primarily at the expense of the beys’ households. He did not, however, succeed in creating alternative frameworks. He destroyed the feudal system which had been in existence ever since the period of the Mamluk Sultans; but he replaced this system, by a system of monopolies in

The Pasha's Bedouin

140

all spheres of trade and production. This system made far-reaching administrative reforms essential. The rotation of offices increased the power of policy-makers over their clients. Instead of relying only on the army to enforce social control, Mehemet Ali used rotation to reinforce his rule both in Cairo and in the towns and villages of the provinces. Rotation also guaranteed a degree of impermanence in office. Mehemet Ali aspired to eradicate local social networks as far as possible. Nation-building was accelerated by the use of timetables to control oppositionist social elements and to limit their potential for autonomous action. The limitation of periods in office was designed to achieve political and social objectives. Mehemet Ali based his relationships with all the social groups in Egypt on various timetables. The regime’s control of officials’ period in office according to the system of rotation, as well as the centralistic nature of the regime, brought about the concentration of officials of the ranks of memur, müdür, nazιr and others in the centre of his governance. According to Karen Barkey, time served as a resource and as an effective tool for controlling the complex and multilateral relationships within Egyptian society.10 Mehemet Ali’s state, like the Ottoman and other patrimonial states, was incapable of ruling without the help of its elites, and it was of the utmost importance to control the relationships between them. Thus, for example, after 1833 there came into being a network of mutual relations with those groups that were of importance to the state at that time. As Cuno says, at that time Mehemet Ali initiated a comprehensive reform in agriculture and the monopoly system; the posts of nazιr, müdür, memur and others were linked directly to agriculture, including the allocation of land to various crops, and the maintenance of dams and irrigation canals. Mehemet Ali undoubtedly became convinced at that point that he should assign local dignitaries, including bedouin shēkhs, to office, since they were more familiar with these matters than outsiders.11 There is evidence of requests to dismiss the Turkish nazιr and replace him with a locally born Egyptian nazιr.12 This tendency strengthened the local village elite, including the bedouin shēkhs and dignitaries. Mehemet Ali used the temporal dimension to regularize the relationships between the centre and influential groups on the periphery. Since he considered it dangerous to rely entirely on the village elite, he endeavoured to make the elite dependent on the centre. One of the principal ways of doing this was by means of the control of land, and the many reforms in the system of land ownership and maintenance which he introduced from time to time. Thus he created uncertainty, and long-term dependence of various groups on the state apparatus. So when bedouin shēkhs and village heads began to be appointed to posts in the administration, the Pasha wanted to prevent this group from acting independently. This they were able to do through the local social networks, whose connections were mainly with middle-rank officials at the level of memur or nazιr. Therefore he frequently changed these officials, prevented them from maintaining longterm contacts with local dignitaries, and used the village and bedouin dignitaries to suit his purposes. Mehemet Ali ensured the loyalty of the members of his elite by co-optation by grants of land and money which ensured their allegiance and restraint. Despite this, they were also devoted to their personal interests; so much so that he threatened them with dismissal and confiscation of their property.13 In order to deal with this phenomenon, in 1810, at a very early stage in his reign, he appointed a special official, known as kâtip-i dhimma, in every province, to supervise the work of the officials. An Egyptian historian, Hilmi

Tribe and state in Egypt

141

Shalabi, who made a study of the bureaucracy at this period, maintains that the incidence of corruption, forgery and false reports on the part of officials in the central hierarchy and the provinces was the result of the frequent structural reforms and continuous mobility of officials which the Pasha initiated in order to achieve control over the periphery and improve the administration. Shalabi maintains that since the posts in the provincial administration were temporary, the officials had to exact bribes from local dignitaries in order to recover the money they had paid in order to get their appointments. Insecurity in office, which involved unexpected transfers from post to post and from province to province, caused everybody to aspire to accumulate wealth from his post, in case he should have to leave it unexpectedly. The officials’ frequent moves were also intended to prevent deviation and wrongful interpretation of the bureaucratic order. There is evidence that the Pasha was forced to struggle personally against these phenomena. He complained that many of the governors promoted their own interests, made false reports, and did not act for the public good. He maintained that although he granted lands to the governors in order to ensure their loyalty, they nonetheless continued to deceive him.14 Further, his officials fostered their own personal economic interests in the provinces where they served, particularly in matters of land ownership and taxation. In 1841 he had to dismiss the governor of the al-Beheirah province on counts of negligence and forgery. At the lower levels, of memurs and nazιrs, there were much more serious cases of corruption, such as bribery, forgery and embezzlement, apparently because of they had so many more dealings with the local villagers and bedouin. Mehemet Ali warned them against embezzlement, and in 1832 dismissed a group of memurs in Gharbiyya province, and appointed others in their place. Nepotism (wāsta) was also prevalent among the provincial officials; in a letter to the superintendent (nazιr) of the council, Mukhtar Bey, Mehemet Ali mentioned that members of the supreme council were accustomed to ask the provincial governors to look after their interests in their provinces.15 As a result of closer supervision, the fight against corruption, the more effective taxation system, the increase in forced labour, and the reforms in agriculture, the Pasha’s system led to greater involvement of the government in the machinery of local government and in local affairs. At the same time, the system involved a certain degree of acquiescence in the existence of parallel systems. At the beginning of his reign Mehemet Ali tried to prevent the growth of alternative power centres which tended to undermine the centralized character of his regime; therefore, he had to initiate structural and agrarian reforms from time to time, and to use land as a means of supervision and control. He attempted to continue to control his officials in the provinces through the central administration, while exploiting the advantages of the independent networks which had developed in the provinces. Thus, in practice there was created a centralized system oriented on the periphery. The peripheral centralization which characterized the Pasha’s rule led to the creation of sub-elite of local dignitaries in the provinces, side by side with the ruling elite. Within it, the village elite—village chiefs

and heads of bedouin

—became increasingly important. The importance which the groups Pasha ascribed to land obliged him to grant land rights to shēkhs and bedouin dignitaries. Land grants were made as rewards for outstanding service, and bedouin were also

The Pasha's Bedouin

142

included among the office-holders. Hasan Abaza, who was a district chief (nazιr qism), received 50 faddān exempt from māl on every 1,000 faddān of his land. This was a reward for the payment of all the māl and he also received one of the sub-districts (nahiye) in the qism of Kafr Nijm in al-Sharqiyya province, as a bonus.16 The village dignitaries, including the bedouin shēkhs, gradually proved that they were indispensable allies of the Pasha, and were gradually absorbed into his administration.17 He appointed village dignitaries and powerful bedouin shēkhs to salaried posts so that they should assist the officials in the rural areas of the provinces. In the years 1820 to 1846 there were rebellions and acts of destruction in the villages, and bedouin participated in some of them. But they were put down with the help of bedouin leaders, among others, and did not threaten the stability of the regime. Because of the nature of the hierarchy, most of the great landowners belonged to the urban elite groups which were granted extensive estates. They appropriated the yields produced by the large peasant population, while the village dignitaries served the representatives and favourites of the Pasha. The lower classes also suffered badly as a result of the series of crises in Lower Egypt in 1813 and 1816. Heavy taxation, more effective methods of tax collection, closer supervision, changes in agricultural techniques, increases in the number of corvées for big irrigation projects, and conscription to the army—all imposed a heavy burden on the villagers. The rural family, which had acted as a corporative unit of production, was under great pressure, and cooperative customs fell into disuse. Thus, again, the government strengthened its foothold in village society and the rural areas, and prominent bedouin dignitaries were given yet another opportunity to exploit the distress of the fellahin with the support of the government, to take control of land and property in the name of the state and, again, to exploit them through their family group; for these corporative groups did not suffer as a result of Mehemet Ali’s structural and agrarian reforms. Mehemet Ali made recurrent reforms in the structure of the administration, both in order to keep control of the provincial officials and maintain their mobility, and in order to impose administrative restrictions on the bedouin tribes. The new regulations restricted their movements, particularly between provinces. There were many administrative reforms during Mehemet Ali’s reign. In 1824 a new structure of provincial administration was introduced. It was influenced by the experience of the traditional Ottoman government, and contained a clear hierarchic chain of command extending from Cairo to the villages. At its head was a new central authority, composed of two councils: the supreme council for civilian affairs ( or majlis-i mulkiyya); and majlisi jihādiyya for military affairs. Until then Mehemet Ali had ensured his command of the country’s administrative bodies by the use—and, usually, the manipulation—of the Ottoman bodies which he had inherited, such as the ruznameh (the executive department of the old Ottoman treasury), and the system of provincial government, which consisted of Turkish superintendents (nazιr) with the subordinate (kâşif) below them, and, at the lowest level, the village heads—shēkhs al-balad. Egypt was divided into two regions: Lower Egypt (al-Wujh al-Bahri) and Upper Egypt (al-Wujh al-Qibli). Sometimes another region, Middle Egypt (al-Wasta), including the provinces of Beni-Suweif, al-Fayyum and al-Minieh, was added. Mehemet Ali divided these regions into twenty-four parts, which were divided into sub-districts (khutt), districts (qism) and divisions (memuriyes), later called merkez and müdüriye.18 Two divans dealt with internal matters, including bedouin

Tribe and state in Egypt

143

affairs: the divan of the Pasha’s lieutenant, (kethüda) and the divan of the inspectorThe provincial administration, which is most important to us, general was also subjected to fundamental reform. Three ‘workshops’ (warsha) were set up, each and an executive officer (mubāshir). They were subordinate to a general headed by a and received the reports (jurnāls) prepared by the provinces. As manager a result of the financial crisis of 1837, Mehemet Ali issued an edict detailing an extensive new reorganization. Seven divans were set up, each headed by a müdür. An example of these frequent changes can be seen in al-Sharqiyya, where there was a big bedouin population. In 1825 the administrative division of Egypt was changed, and the province was renamed a memuriye. In 1833 Mehemet Ali again changed the administrative division, and al-Sharqiyya became a müdüriye, headed by a müdür, ranking above a memur. Thus, the Pasha was able to increase the number of officials in the provincial apparatus, and al-Sharqiyya was divided into two ‘halves’—first and second (al-nisf alawwal, al-nisf al-thāni) each headed by a müdür. Despite the closely knit administrative organization established by Mehemet Ali, the provincial officials were unable to satisfy his incessant demands for agricultural produce, tax payments and conscription of manpower for military service. As a result, there were frequent, almost daily, changes in every sphere of public affairs, partly because the central government did not know how to deal with the problems. Mehemet Ali continued to change his officials incessantly, but the fellahin nonetheless continued to abandon their lands, tax payments were still in arrears, and agriculture production was below expectations. When Mehemet Ali realized that he was facing an economic crisis, and that the population was exhausted and dissatisfied, he decided to abandon the policy of direct and centralized administration, and to grant more freedom of action to the machinery of provincial government. This was his chief tool for implementing his bedouin policy. This was particularly evident in the area of land management. The central bureaucracy began to provide a framework for the administration of the çiftliks and lands. From 1838 onwards he began to grant extensive estates mainly to his relatives and favourites, system, under which members of the Ottomanand at the same time instituted the Egyptian elite were given medium-sized estates, including whole villages whose taxes had not been paid, which they administered independently. In many respects this was a return to the iltizām system which the Pasha himself had abolished in the 1910s. Once again, prominent bedouin shēkhs who had controlled tax estates under the previous dispensation now returned to their previous position as landowners. Those who received land undertook to settle present and future debts to the treasury, in exchange for the right to cultivate the land by forced labour which would ensure their profit. These estates had an important socio-political effect. They facilitated personal influence in the province. Round them there developed an administration with a dynamic of its own. The estates employed large teams of workers, including, among others, overseers, engineers, and guards. In the course of the 1840s Mehemet Ali’s administrative centralism collapsed, and the trend to decentralization which had begun in the 1830s was reinforced. The Pasha continued to grant extensive holdings to privileged groups: members of his family, high-ranking officials of Turco-Circassian origin, and others who served in his administration. He created many and continued to make grants of uncultivated

The Pasha's Bedouin

144

land Direct supervision of most of the lands was relaxed, and the landowning class, which included bedouin shēkhs and dignitaries, assumed the task of supervision in the name of the Pasha. The bedouin, like other village dignitaries and others who received grants of land, became part of the supervisory apparatus. They had to report to the provincial authorities and the various divans, and thereby became officers of the administration. With the collapse of the centralization of economy and administration, and with the strengthening of the tendency to decentralization which had begun in the 1830s, the trend to localization in the provinces was speeded up. Round the bedouin and village dignitaries there crystallized family and tribal forces which set these processes in motion land. They in certain districts. More bedouin shēkhs were granted wide areas of began to play a role in local—and some even in national—politics. Localization was to in 1882. The organization of the rebellion demonstrate its power in the revolt of began in al-Sharqiyya, where the bedouin population was large and well established: it had passed through a process of agricultural settlement, and its collective local consciousness was well developed. Some of its leaders, particularly those from the Abāza family, who owned land and other resources, joined Urabi’s rebellion. The economic power and public influence in the area wielded by bedouin dignitaries of that family also point to the development of localization in al-Sharqiyya. Their status gained them positions in the Pasha’s administration at an early stage.19 From 1838, for the first time, the Pasha opened minor posts in his administration, and even higher offices, to Egyptians. Among the first of these were dignitaries of bedouin extraction from al-Sharqiyya, such as Suleiman Pasha Abāza, who began his career as the nazιr of the qism of Miniyat albegan his Qamh, at a monthly salary of 25,000 qirsh. career as nazιr-i qism of Qalunsa, and attained a salary of 125,000 qirsh in the post of also began as nazιr-i qism of al-Qalunsa. A similar müdür, and process of localization took place in al-Gharbiyya province. It was set in motion by the bedouin and their client tribes, who controlled territories in the Western Desert from Jabal al-Akhdar to Alexandria. The structure of the provincial administration enabled the peasants and the bedouin to satisfy their needs at the level of the qism—the sub-district. One of the principal duties of the nazιr-i qism was to encourage the progress of agriculture, and to supervise the means of production: both government-owned resources and, in particular, those in private hands, since their produce, too, was subject to the government monopoly.20 The nazιr was responsible for special records of the quantities of produce (defter-i maliye ve zirai). Bedouin who cultivated land had to pay the nazιr their land taxes in cash or in agricultural produce. He was also responsible for the public works which the villagers were obliged to execute—digging irrigation channels, bridge-building, and the like. The shēkh al-khutt, in coordination with the nazιr-i qism, supervised the execution of such projects. The shēkh was responsible for providing forced labour from the villages, and for providing paid watchmen. He also maintained constant contact with the the nazιr on relevant matters. In addition, the nazιr was responsible for the population’s court for solution. The nazιrs were legal affairs, and brought them before the also responsible for sending monthly reports on the above-mentioned matters, and others with which they were concerned, to the memurs and müdürs for forwarding to the Pasha.

Tribe and state in Egypt

145

However, he frequently mistrusted this channel of communication, and was accustomed of the provinces to assemble the nazιrs, the shēkhs al-khutt, and the which he passed through on his travels, and demand a face-to-face report.21 The Pasha’s ‘bedouin’ policy: enforcement and co-optation Between the bedouin tribes and the central Egyptian government there developed relationships of coexistence in a conflict. They arose from the contradiction between the centrifugal tendencies of the bedouin and the centripetal tendencies of the state. They were far from being ties of fraternity and devotion. The regime’s strategic considerations, which give preference to cooperation with the bedouin, were the fruit of daily reality. The bedouin tribes lived in distant desert border areas, through which passed the major trade and transport routes, and they tended to expand into agricultural areas. But it was impossible to defend the land of Egypt without military aid from the bedouin. Nor was it possible to preserve internal security in agricultural regions without reaching agreement with the tribal leaders. The convergence of interests between the bedouin and the authorities, according to which dialogue on the tactical level was preferable to a direct confrontation between them, resulted in a pattern of relationships amounting to coexistence tempered by continual conflict. Both sides were aware of the depth of the disagreements between them and of the difficulty in reaching a solution which would enable them to live together. But, at the same time, they appreciated the limitations of their strength, and their inability to reach a solution based on ‘one and not the other.’ Thus, coexistence in conjunction with continuous conflict does not mean that each side accepts its adversary—but neither does it reject him entirely. Most of Mehemet Al’s activity in relation to the bedouin was coercive. In the first years of his rule he invested much effort in putting an end to inter-tribal wars, in acquiring allies among the tribal leaders, in involving them in the politics of the provinces, and in limiting the areas of their migrations to the area of their residence—all this in order to put them under the control of the state. He undertook a number of military and administrative actions to put his plan into effect. To this end, he created a special body to deal with the bedouin, an act without precedent in Egypt. He wanted to supervise them, to limit their movements, and to exploit their positive qualities in a methodical and institutionalized fashion. In many respects he was like his Ottoman predecessors. His bedouin policy was the product of his instrumental administrative conception. In retrospect, it seems that the provincial administration which he set up was suited to the needs of the bedouin and to his concept of tribal society in general. The rationale of the administration which Mehemet Ali created was not ideological; it was instrumental and based on power, and relied on the thoroughgoing dependence of the local inhabitants, including the bedouin, on an administration which sought to attain a monopoly on their lives in many senses, by employing supervision, control and selection. The more the bedouin became dependent on the centre, the more invasive and domineering the Pasha’s bureaucratic culture became. Mehemet Ali undoubtedly considered the bedouin to be an alien and suspect factor in Egyptian society. He interfered in many aspects of their lives: in the choice of shēkhs and their official appointments, in legal affairs, and in the resolution of internal disputes. He prevented

The Pasha's Bedouin

146

them from moving freely between different provinces. And, notwithstanding, all this in contrast to the accepted belief he considered them to be a constructive factor in certain spheres, he was conscious of their potential contribution to agriculture and to economic life in general, and he knew how to exploit their strength and their military skills. This was the source of his instrumental approach to the bedouin. Mehemet Ali’s policy towards the bedouin was based on his concept of government, and stemmed first and foremost from their ability to improve the workings of the administration, the army and the economy, and help him to achieve his economic, political and strategic objectives. This applies particularly to the years between 1812 and 1827, by which time the beys and their households no longer threatened his regime. Thus, for instance, when he sought to increase the area of cultivated land by improving waste land he adopted the basically utilitarian approach which characterized his policy: he approached the bedouin dignitaries and offered them land grants, since he was aware of their ability to take on such a task. His aim was to achieve the central objective of his economic policy and his policy in internal affairs: to develop agriculture and increase agricultural production, in order to augment the state’s income from taxes and the sale of agricultural produce. He did not aim to settle the bedouin, but his policy resulted in the partial settlement of bedouin groups. He achieved this because he succeeded in bringing into being a tribal elite of shēkhs and other dignitaries who settled in the estates which he gave them and in other permanent settlements, and drew in their wake other members of their descent group. He used the grant of lands in order to co-opt shēkhs to his administration, aiming to improve his supervision of the tribes. Similar considerations dictated the recruitment of bedouin to the army, as we shall see in a later chapter. Upper Egypt, and the provinces of al-Sharqiyya and al-Beheirah, were major centres of friction, and often became the scene of uprisings and failures of internal security. In these regions it was of prime importance to reach an agreement with the large bedouin population—the powerful Hanādī and as well as and their clients, It was impossible to ignore the bedouin in these regions, and in order to the ensure the safety of the fellahin and security on the roads the central government had either to negotiate with the bedouin or impose the law by force of arms. And, indeed, the authorities generally inclined to include the bedouin leaders in the state administration. The principal reason for the bedouin’s importance in Egypt was the conspicuous lack of a clear border between the ‘desert’ and the ‘sown’ regions. The settled Nile Valley is a thin strip bordered by desert on both sides. The desert touches the boundaries of rural and urban settlements alike. The bedouin, their families and their flocks spent most of the year on the fringes of agricultural land. Therefore, friction and conflict between them and the villagers was inevitable. Moreover, the urban settlements depended on the bedouin for their supplies of food and water. Shortly after his accession to power, Mehemet Ali realized that the bedouin still constituted a threat to the stability of Egypt, primarily because of their ability to cause damage to agriculture and to disrupt the transport of commercial goods. The inter-tribal raids gave him cause for concern, since he considered that they were simply wars and political insurrections: the bedouin fought against him at the side of the beys, and in the course of the battles they plundered and destroyed villages. Even earlier than this, the

Tribe and state in Egypt

147

bedouin had established a number of political and strategic facts: they controlled the route between Cairo and the pyramids, and tourists needed to be defended from them, or reach an agreement with them; they regularly attacked the suburbs of Cairo, and sowed panic among the inhabitants;22 they also controlled important trade routes from Suez to Cairo and from Qenah to al-Quseir; and, in addition, they found time and incentive to engage in battles among themselves. Mehemet Ali had to restrain and control them in order to preserve internal security in the rural areas. He used the same tactics as he had in his war against the beys: he incited the rival factions against each other, and created common interests between himself and one of the groups. He forced the shēkhs who led the bedouin groups to live in Cairo or the vicinity, paid them salaries and other expenses, and turned them into hostages, thus ensuring their obedience and their support in restraining their tribes.23 He led many military campaigns against them, and even carried out reprisals according to bedouin custom. When camel trains led by the reached Giza from Upper Egypt, he attacked them by night and stole both camels and merchandise.24 The Pasha exploited the various inter-tribal disputes which arose as a result of their reciprocal raids: he intervened in them, using bedouin against rebellious bedouin.25 The dispute between the and the gave him an opportunity to intervene in the internal affairs of the tribes. In September 1806 these tribes fought each other outside the walls of Cairo and in the vicinity, and they blocked several roads. The Pasha supported the and even travelled to al-Adliyya on their behalf to prepare the the ground for a meeting of the rival tribes with naqīb al-ashrāf, who arranged a reconciliation between them. Mehemet Ali decided to foment dissension within the bedouin camp which supported Mehemet Bey al-Alfi— among them al-Hanādī, and al-Hawwāra. Following the agreement initiated by the naqīb al-ashrāf, the bedouin joined the camp which supported the Pasha. He ‘persuaded’ the other tribes to join him by punitive campaigns in the provinces of al-Beheirah, al-Fayyum and the central provinces in which these tribes lived. Al-Alfi did not manage to persuade them to continue to support him.26 This was a most important success in the course of the establishment of the Pasha’s rule. In this respect, the control of al-Sharqiyya, with its population of many powerful bedouin tribes, was also important. The control of the al-Beheirah province was no less important for the stabilization of and the Pasha’s rule. Here, there were disputes between two great tribes, the the Hanādī. The province of al-Beheirah and the Western Desert constituted the entrance to Egypt from the west. Jabal al-Akhdar in Cyrenaica was a refuge for rebellious and fugitive bedouin, and from there the bedouin entered Egypt territory. Mehemet Ali used the enmity between the two tribes, and adopted a policy of ‘divide and rule’, which would enable him to gain control over the whole of Lower Egypt. On 5 March 1808, the Hanādī and the Juhēna bedouin proposed a peace agreement with the Pasha, asking in return that they be allowed to return to their homes in al-Beheirah and expel the who had taken over the region. After the death of al-Alfi there was no personality in the camp of the beys strong enough to gather many bedouin round him, as al-Alfi had done. The bedouin gradually began to declare their loyalty to the Pasha. Some

The Pasha's Bedouin

148

of the beys were also interested in joining the Pasha’s government. Al-Jabarti describes the events in detail, and maintains that in this instance Shahin Bey al-Alfi, Mehemet Bey’s successor, served as intermediary in the agreement, though it is unclear from alJabarti’s account whether he acted on Mehemet Ali’s behalf or in his own interest. The left Mehemet Bey al-Alfi’s camp immediately after his death in 1806/7. Shahin Bey did not consider that he had any obligation to them, and in the month of Safer he and his band waged a hard-fought battle against them, which ended with the defeat of the bedouin. Many of them were killed, some 40 were taken prisoner, and many of their flocks and camels were taken as booty. After this battle, Shahin Bey acted as advocate of peace with the Hanādī and the Juhēna. He enhanced their standing, arranged for them to settle in al-Beheirah, and expelled the from the province. did not concede defeat. They wrote to the Pasha with the aid of some of his officials, suggesting a payment of 100,000 riyal in exchange for their return to al-Beheirah. AlJabarti contends that the Pasha’s notorious greed prompted him to agree. But it seems that he wanted to create confusion in the ranks of the bedouin; and, indeed, their assembled again in suggestion infuriated the other tribes. The 27 but did not pay as they had promised. The Pasha sent Ömer Bey to deal with them, and the Hanādī bedouin joined him. After a series of confrontations the left al-Beheirah, but the affair was still far from its conclusion. The Pasha could not ostracize the for fear that they would endanger internal security. The shēkhs also sought a path to reconciliation, and on 26 May 1810 they appeared in the Pasha’s court in Cairo. He gave them cashmere scarves and 150 kīs. In response, the Hanādī joined the camp of the beys (al-Jabartī’s Mamluk amirs), who were still fighting against the Pasha’s regime.28 Only Mehemet Ali’s slaughter of the emirs in the citadel of Cairo in 1811 finally severed the link between the bedouin and this group. In one respect the bedouin tribes suffered very little harm from Mehemet Ali’s repeated structural, agrarian and economic reforms. The basic group in the tribe was the descent group, which continued to exist, and to fulfil economic functions, so that its common liability was not affected; indeed, we encounter such groups in the course of the events and processes described here. When the bedouin dignitaries were forced to give up their tax farms, they returned to the traditional economy of animal husbandry and dry seasonal farming in their tribal territories, and increased their practice of banditry, particularly in raids on agricultural land. At the same time they continued to put their resources at the disposal of the government, and to supply, for payment, the services of guards and watchmen, as well as transporting raw materials, grain and various commodities, particularly for the army. Moreover, they did not pay taxes and were not conscripted to the army, and were, therefore, not subject to the same pressures as the peasants. The severe drought and cholera epidemic of the early 1830s, and the outbreak of plague in 1835, made the plight of the peasants even worse; but in this respect, too, the bedouin were less badly afflicted. They even exploited the situation by trespassing more boldly on agricultural land with their flocks, and making more raids on merchants and caravans. As a result of the drought they moved closer to areas where there was pasture and water; there they clashed with the villagers, and the authorities were obliged to take steps to restore calm.

Tribe and state in Egypt

149

On the other hand, the bedouin were adversely affected by the increased intervention of the authorities in their internal social affairs, which was the basis of Mehemet Ali’s method of control of the tribes. The authorities were almost full partners in the solution of conflicts in bedouin society; and, though they allowed them to apply the principles of bedouin law in blood feuds, they exerted pressure on the tribal leaders to surrender murderers to the law. The government also intervened in the organizational structure of the tribes, deciding on the appointment of shēkhs and enforcing allegiance to a particular shēkh when it suited the interests of the regime. Tribes were split up by the authorities when they were considered a danger to public order and security. It is somewhat surprising that the bedouin cooperated with this system of close supervision and control. They accepted the rules of the game: they complained of acts of exploitation by their shēkhs, and did not hesitate to demand that they be transferred from the responsibility of one shēkh to that of another when it served their interests. They also exploited their enforced dependence on the authorities to attempt to depose shēkhs and appoint others in their place, sometimes in opposition to the authorities and sometimes with their agreement. It must be concluded that most of the bedouin accepted the authority of the state in matters concerning their social organization. This is a measure of the success of Mehemet Ali’s system of control. On the other hand, they continued to act in accordance with their own interests in their struggle for territory against other tribes and against the peasants, and also to practise banditry on the roads. Their major interest in these activities was economic, and on this they were unwilling to compromise, even though they laid themselves open to the imposition of punishments and sanctions by the authorities. The chief administrative means of control over the bedouin was the official shēkh, whose appointment was subject to regulation by the administration, and the an official of the provincial administration whose task was to enforce edicts and directives of the regime on the bedouin, and to deal with their affairs. The governor of the province (müdür al-iqlīm) served as a channel for passing on edicts and directives to the bedouin shēkhs, and for providing information about events among the tribes. During Mehemet Ali’s reign, methods of punishment and sanctions on lawbreakers and those who acted in ways considered aggressive were no different from those practised in earlier periods. During the Ottoman period it was usual to hold the sons of shēkhs as hostages in the citadel of Cairo when their fathers were required to hand over rebels and other criminals. It was part of Mehemet Ali’s policy towards the tribes to act similarly, in order to enforce obedience on the part of the shēkhs. They were required to bring their sons in order to guarantee that the shēkhs would recruit a sufficient number of horsemen from their tribe, or surrender murderers or others who had been given refuge by the tribe. The punishments were usually collective, and the authorities rarely imposed sanctions on specific individuals or groups. Involvement in acts of murder and assault, particularly against soldiers, was punished by the death (by hanging or shooting) of one or more of the members of the group which committed the offence. Repressive measures were imposed mainly on tribes which engaged in road banditry or harassed the village peasants. The confiscation of sheep, camels and horses was a particularly harsh method of punishment, and when it occurred the tribesmen hastened to ask the authorities to return their livestock, after which the issues could be resolved.

The Pasha's Bedouin

150

Mehemet Ali frequently used violent methods of punishment against rebellious tribes, criminals, and those who engaged in banditry and attacks on the peasants. For this purpose he employed units which formed part of the ‘new army’ (nizam-i cedid). They were irregular units of horsemen, which also included bedouin, called başιbozuk. Each unit numbered between 200 and 400 horsemen, armed with rifles and swords, and headed by an officer of Turkish or Kurdish extraction from among the Ottoman-Egyptian elite, known as sersüvari or serdelilan, who sometimes held the title of Agha. He was It was his task to deal with bedouin affairs, which sometimes called mainly involved rounding up shēkhs and bringing them to be interrogated about illegal acts committed within their tribes. There were five such units, which took action against bedouin when information about irregular actions had accumulated. Detailed operative instructions were given to the commanders of the units, which moved around the different provinces and along the banks of the Nile.29 These horsemen would attack groups of bedouin, move them away from the area of their activities, and expel them far from inhabited territory, often to the mountains; or they would drive them out of their home province.30 One of these units was sent to fight the who gave refuge to bandits in flight from the law.31 The bedouin were usually powerless in the face of artillery bombardment and attacks by these cavalry units and infantrymen. The claims that, as a result, they were forced Egyptian historian to accept Mehemet Ali’s authority, and the shēkhs of the tribes understood that, for the good of their tribes, it was better to hand over bandits accused of attacking members of the establishment.32 The basic attitude of the authorities was that they should deal with the bedouin with a firm hand. But, despite the strong measures taken against irregularities, there were many cases of the use of discretion when considering punishment, and military measures were not necessarily the first option. In 1837 the Pasha permitted his son Ibrāhīm to take measures against a tribe that had been involved in various incidents only on condition that the information about these events was correct, and that the punishment was essential robbed a convoy carrying the in order to restore order.33 When the English post in 1842, Mehemet Ali gave orders to invite their shēkhs to him for interrogation, and forbade the use of military measures against them.34 He imposed sanctions on government officials and army officers who used unnecessary force against the bedouin: an officer of the rank of binbaşι was demoted, and an order was issued that he could never return to that rank, because he sent a military force against bedouin without receiving orders.35 The shēkhs themselves did not escape punishment or arrest when their tribesmen damaged property or threatened the security of the village population, or when they failed to fulfil their obligations or obey instructions. Mehemet Ali’s government sent warnings threatening to execute those who failed to prevent pillaging and damage to property. The investigation of such incidents was the responsibility of the müdürs of the provinces, who were required to estimate the value of the damage and ensure the return of the stolen property.36 Most of the great and powerful shēkhs were arrested at some time in their careers. In June 1850 and sent to the prominent shēkh of the

of the

was arrested

in February 1851 a was arrested and taken to Cairo for interrogation.

Tribe and state in Egypt

151

The arrest was made through also of the who was apparently the head of the shēkhs. It appears that the authorities were not disturbed According to the laws of by the prospect of a clash between two clans of the action was considered an offence interpersonal conduct in tribal society, for which he could be prosecuted and fined, even if the authorities had compelled him to bring to them. This incident may be evidence that in our period the bedouin were reconciled to the dominant position of the state, and saw themselves as subordinate to the rules of the game and the legal framework established by the authorities. Further, the authorities did not hesitate to break-up tribal structures as a method of restraint and repression. When the caused a disturbance of public order, it was reported to Khalil Effendi, the müdür the First Half of the provinces of Middle Egypt. The Pasha responded that ‘it has been decided to pacify them by beatings, or by any other means, to prevent them going the way of anarchy’. On the following day he wrote and told Khalil to ‘go and divide them into two or three parts’.37 Our sources prove that the authorities invested much effort in resolving blood feuds in which bedouin were involved, as part of their supervisory system. Incidents of murder were widespread among the bedouin tribes, and were part of the competition for economic resources which was expressed in frequent inter-tribal raids and internal struggles between the clans. Incidents of killing and murder also took place as a result of clashes with peasants over agricultural land. Mehemet Ali’s administration made an appreciable effort to prevent the spread of insoluble blood feuds, and therefore aimed at apprehending the murderers. To this end a network for collecting information was set up through the provincial governments in order to locate murderers who had found refuge with other bedouin. Shēkhs who refused to hand over murderers or evaded searching for them were given deterrent penalties, and captured murderers severely punished. The complexity of such an operation can be seen in the two following examples: When and his brother, from the were murdered, the authorities immediately approached the mutasallιm of Darna in the Sudan, where the murderers had fled after the incident, and requested help in apprehending them. The identity of the murderers was known. They belonged to the group of and their leader was The Pasha ordered (al-Salanikli), an army officer, to go to Darna and arrest the murderers. Within this band were not only the murderers, but men who had only participated in the raid in the course of which the murder took place. one of the most powerful shēkhs of the was also sent to help catch this band, and for this he recruited horsemen from his group. The authorities ensured the provision of barley and rusks for the horsemen and their mounts, and they were brought to them by boats by way of the Nile. The correspondence shows that the mission was successful, and some of them were arrested. The Pasha ordered Rustum Effendi, the memur of (‘half’) of al-Beheirah, the province of the to execute those who were proved guilty of murder, to hand over the most dangerous men in the band to their shēkh, and to return the money to its owners. The correspondence between the Pasha and his officials about this case gives evidence about

The Pasha's Bedouin

152

some fundamental questions: the authorities were interested in preventing the dispute tribe from spreading, and they expected the shēkh— within the the most powerful shēkh of the —to punish the criminals himself. The correspondence does not explain the background of the murder, or 38 which groups were involved in it; apparently they were rival clans of the The background to the murder of was an appointment to the post of shēkh. was the shēkh of the Jawāzī bedouin, and he was killed in 1836 by and Abū Gharāra, members of the men from the group of shēkh’s clan. After the murder they opposed the appointment of his son as vekil of a shēkh. At the time, was a prominent shēkh and an important member of the administration of the province in which his tribesmen lived. The authorities decided to intervene resolutely and punish the murderers ‘for their disloyalty, and because they have gone in the way of fasād.’ The task was given to Mustafa Bey, the müdür of the ‘second half of the provinces of Middle Egypt. He sent a troop of cavalry, including men from the group of the murdered shēkh, under the command of the Their orders were to pursue al-Farjānī and Abū Gharāra, to attack their encampment and capture everything in it, to arrest them and to take them to the infamous prison of Alexandria (the liman) and keep them there until they gave up the murderers of Shēkh Bāsil, who had apparently fled to al-Gharb (the province of alBeheirah).39 In this incident, too, the background is unclear, but, since the murderers belonged to the shēkh’s group, it may be that it was connected with a dispute about the position of shēkh. In cases of murder, as in other cases, patronage was no protection, and murderers were arrested even in their places of refuge. For instance, the five murderers of of the village of al-Dahatmun in the Sudan, fled to a great Ahmad Hasan, the of distance, to the nahiye of al-Tawila in the province of al-Sharqiyya, in the a shēkh of the Hanādī bedouin, a powerful and important personage. There they found sanctuary, together with their families and their livestock. The Viceregal Department ordered that they be arrested and brought before the müdür of al-Sharqiyya.40 As has been remarked, the punishments were severe. There are few examples: Adham Effendi, the müdür of al-Beheirah, was ordered to behead the leader of a riot (fitna) in the village of Suweif, because a bedouin was killed in the course of the disturbances ‘so that the others should learn a lesson’. killed asked the governor of Rashwān Abū Khafīfa and fled. The shēkhs of Damanhur,

(al-Salanikli) to pursue him. Four horsemen of the

followed him, but failed to catch him. was, therefore, required to confiscate the murderer’s property, including his house, his field, his flock of sheep, his camels, and various other items, and to give them to the murdered man’s family.41 It may be that Mehemet Ali was interested in the settlement of the bedouin, not in the modern sense of the term, but as part of his system of surveillance of the tribal population. He neither planned nor founded villages for them; he was satisfied with close supervision of their seasonal movements, and the imposition of limitations on movement between provinces, and on the entrance to Egypt. By giving land for agricultural

Tribe and state in Egypt

153

cultivation to the tribal shēkhs he tried to stabilize the shēkhs and their clans, and thereby to control the places of residence of the rest of the tribe. Government documents show that the authorities recognized that the tribes migrated in search of pasture, and that the bedouin needed additional sources of livelihood such as agriculture in order to exist; they therefore used the permits for pasture in order to intensify the dependence of the tribes on the authorities. Mehemet Ali’s relationships with the bedouin show that he viewed them as a population with special characteristics, from the point of view both of their political organization and of their economic behaviour. Herecognized their positive characteristics in the economic sphere, took their special needs into account, and did not attempt to damage their political and territorial organizations, although he often intervened in the tribes’ internal disputes. Therefore, he appointed officials with the rank of nazιr to deal with bedouin affairs, but did not appoint parallel functionaries to deal with other social groups. By contrast, the bedouins’ attitude to the authorities was one of alienation; they were seen as a foreign element which must be viewed with suspicion, and its weaknesses exploited as much as possible. Therefore they used every opportunity to deceive the authorities, and to avoid carrying out properly the tasks they were set.42

7 Office-holders Mehemet Ali appointed special officials with the rank of nazιr, and the title of to deal with the day-to-day affairs of the bedouin. They were in charge of bedouin affairs in a particular province or in one tribe. They were usually members of the Ottoman-Egyptian elite. Most of them were stationed in al-Sharqiyya, which had the biggest bedouin population in Egypt at this time, but there were also some in al-Beheirah and al-Qaliubiyya, where there were also a great many bedouin. They were generally given a permanent post to deal with day-to-day questions on behalf of the Pasha, but there were also nazιrs for special assignments connected with the bedouin. There were also some who were responsible for particular tribes, such as Hüseyin Agha, the nazιr of 1 the Hanādī bedouin, and Ahmad Pasha, the nazιr of the There was also a nazιr responsible for the Barāra tribes—those that were defined as nomads. It seems that the criteria were the size and economic importance of the tribe, and the degree to which it was involved in disturbances and uprisings against the government or in harassment of the village peasants involving damage to agriculture.2 The Pasha attached great importance to gaining the trust of the bedouin, and did not want them to fear that the nazιr would intervene too much in their affairs. This was doubly important in the case of tribes that lived in distant regions, and were defined as —nomads with no fixed place of habitation. Therefore, he sometimes let the shēkhs participate in the choice of the nazιr. He asked the shēkhs of al-Hanādī and whether they agreed to the appointment of Nasir Ali Effendi as 3 their nazιr. Mehemet Ali’s successors also considered the post of to be an important position in the supervisory system, since distant tribes and the Barāra were likely to cause trouble. One instance of this is the Sinai peninsula. There, the presence of the authorities was minimal, and the bedouin of al-Tur region controlled their territory far more independently than most of the tribes in the interior of Egypt. However, the Pasha wanted to increase his involvement, and sent a firman to announcing that he had decided to make Muhammad Effendi mühafiz, of their region and hâkim over them. This, he said, this was in order to improve the management of their affairs, as with other bedouin like them. He asked them to display loyalty to him, so that ‘the wishes of each and every man’ could be satisfied.4 In addition to the general responsibility for supervision of the tribes in his district, the was also assigned special tasks. Thus, for example, in 1836/7 Bashir Agha, the (al-Sharqiyya bedouin) was made nazιr with responsibility for and Sawāhma who lived in Wadi alpreventing the bedouin of al-Hanādī, Tumēlāt from trespassing on the mulberry groves with their flocks. He also dealt with the

Office-holders

155

drafting of camels from and al-Gatāwī bedouin, following a complaint from the mutasallim of Gaza at the beginning of that year. This was the period of the Egyptian conquest of Syria and Palestine, and at that time the camels were generally destined for the Egyptian army. Apparently the bedouin were ordered to supply camels to the Pasha’s agent in Gaza, and failed to do so. In the month of Şevval 1252, Bashir Agha was 5 The Pasha appointed Hüseyin Agha to the post of appointed nazιr of the bedouin from his province who conveyed the special allocations (murattabāt) destined for the Hejaz on the section of the road between Qenah and al-Quseir. The reason for this appointment was to enable the bedouin to be assembled in one place, so that they could transport the rations at a suitable time; otherwise, it would be difficult to carry out the task, since they were spread out in various places in mountainous districts, and the allocations usually arrived late. In December 1835, when the Hüseyin Agha was about to travel to the Hejaz, the Pasha considered sending a nazιr for bedouin affairs to the müdüriye of Qenah, to be responsible for the bedouin who were supposed to set out for the Hejaz at the same time; he asked whether this was necessary.6 The appointment was particularly important in this province, since Qenah served as the starting-point of the convoys which transported food, grain, and fodder to the Egyptian army in the Hejaz. The convoys went by land to the harbour of al-Quseir, and thence by sea. The bedouin were usually responsible for the supply of camels for the convoys, transport of the goods, and the security of the convoys en route. But they often attacked and robbed caravans travelling by this route. It was, therefore, necessary to ensure that they execute their task in time, and prevented acts of banditry by bedouin along the way. It seems that this was also the reason for the appointment of a special nazιr to deal with the bedouin going to the Hejaz and carrying supplies from Qenah to al-Quseir.7 was multifarious. It included supervision and followup of The office of the public works for which the bedouin were responsible, and of the transport of merchandise, agricultural produce and livestock for the government. The nazιr also dealt with the shēkhs’ commitments to carry out various assignments, and sentenced them to imprisonment if they failed to do the work on time.8 He was also responsible for the payment of the kiswa, and ensured that those who evaded service or were accused of crimes—for instance, bedouin who had run away from their tribes—were not paid until they had returned and executed the required service. Details of these decisions were published in the official journal, both in order to afford them validity and to warn others not to evade their duty.9 The nazιrs investigated complaints of shēkhs in connection with payments owed to them, and they ensured that the kiswa be paid, and allocations of fodder for horses and camels be distributed. Among their most important duties were the levying of the māl tax and the capture of deserters and fugitives from among the tribesmen. To this end they used spies from the tribes to collect intelligence. They also dealt with disturbances, mostly clashes with the villagers following damage to agriculture by the bedouin’s flocks, and punished the bedouin for their transgressions. In this they were helped by the army, units of which were sent to them to put down rebellious tribes. They also intervened in legal affairs, and sought solutions to a variety of disputes in which the bedouin were involved, both with other tribesmen and with the villagers; this was generally done with the help of the shēkhs. The nazιr of the bedouin of the alBeheirah province was requested to invite

one of the most

The Pasha's Bedouin

156

important shēkhs of the to help him to put an end to a number of disputes. The document does not say what the disputes were, but it appears that intervention was necessary, and this is proof of his elevated status and his influence. Mehemet Bey, was asked to employ spies to investigate runaways who had found refuge among the bedouin, and to warn the shēkhs that anybody found harbouring such a person would receive a punishment of 500 lashes with the kurbāj, or even a death sentence.10 was Sometimes, in addition to his responsibilities for the bedouin, the given other duties, usually military. Thus, Muhammad Agha, a guide (delīl) in the service of the Pasha, was appointed concurrently mühafiz of the route to al-Sham and 11 some, such as the nazιr of the al-Beheirah bedouin in 1848/9, who was a sersüvari, also had army rank. The nazιrs had under their command soldiers with horses or camels to carry out their assignments. Apparently the tasks of enforcement which they had to carry out led to tension, and sometimes violence, between them and the bedouin. The also had to deal with the recruitment of bedouin to the army. The authorities considered any injury to the staff of the nazιr to be a most serious offence. This is the impression made by the case of the murder of soldiers of the of al-Beheirah, the sersüvari by bedouin of the confederation in the province. The soldiers were killed in the course of a raid in Giza, near Cairo, in the year 1845/6, carried out by tribes of the apparently in the month of (September/October). The murderers fled to the southern provinces, Upper Egypt. Following this incident, during the month of were asked to ensure that the October/November the leaders of the murderers be handed over, and the authorities exerted pressure on a number of shēkhs in the confederation. was ordered to send his son Ahmad as a hostage in order to ensure the murderers’ surrender. This was the authorities’ usual method of constraining shēkhs to hand over murderers and other criminals. one of the most important

was

soldiers warned that he must take steps to have the murderers of arrested; if he failed to do this, his tribesmen would be expelled from Egyptian soil. This was an unusually severe threat. The authorities did not relax their pressure, and after some weeks of inactivity the shēkhs were given ten days to hand over the criminals. Several more days went by without action, and the Pasha’s kethüda wrote to the shēkhs accusing them of giving asylum to murderers, and expressing his displeasure at their ‘offensive deeds’. He sent a letter to the shēkhs, castigated their actions and the granting of refuge to the murderers, and threatened that if they did not hand them over the tribe would be destroyed by bedouin horsemen who were waiting in Cairo for the order to set out. Moreover, in this case the authorities took exceptional steps to isolate the They informed the shēkhs of the tribes of al-Fawāyed. Althat the in al-Beheirah Jawāzī, al-Juhama and province had committed criminal acts in the course of their raids, and that they must assemble horsemen to punish them. When the horsemen of these tribes were assembled in

Office-holders

157

Cairo, waiting for orders to leave for the punitive campaign, the authorities used them in They even tried to sow dissension between the an attempt to intimidate the who were apparently a client tribe of the bedouin tribes, and asked the to break off relations with them. By the month of Zilhice (November/ December) the matter was not yet resolved, and the shēkhs came to ask for more time. They were so that he could send them to Alexandria ordered to send their sons to the as hostages until the murderers were surrendered. The horsemen—among them some belonging to the shēkh of al-Jawāzī, and some belonging to —waited in Giza for the order to set out and punish the if they delayed the Agha was asked to postpone surrender of the murderers any more. The nazιr the dispatch of the horsemen if the hostages arrived or the murderers were handed over. were again warned to send the hostages to the nazιr without The shēkhs of delay; otherwise the bedouin horsemen would ‘attack, destroy and disperse’ them. The authorities continued to exert pressure on weak bedouin groups in an effort to isolate the they apparently again approached the shēkhs of the above-mentioned tribes, and also the Hanādī and the and asked them to press the to come and swear loyalty to the authorities, and thereby, in effect, to break off their relationship with the The acceded to the demand, and declared that they would serve the interests of the state in al-Beheirah faithfully. They added that this was difficult for them, since they were clients of the and cutting themselves off from them would expose them to danger and prevent them from using their rights to the tribal territory. On 23 April 1847,

received an order

a prominent shēkh of the had which shows that undertaken to arrange for the murderers’ arrest and not give them protection, but that he was asked to come had not carried out his promise, and had given them asylum. to an understanding with with the help of the bedouin of the province, and take the hostages from him.12 It appears, therefore, that the authorities took vigorous action against those who seriously injured office-holders. They apparently had no difficulty in enlisting the loyalty of shēkhs who were not involved in such incidents in order to isolate other shēkhs whose groups engaged in activities against the government. Among the prominent officials who dealt with bedouin affairs was Hüseyin Agha, in al-Beheirah province in 1826/7, who was apparently of Kurdish extraction. His actions included: asking to get the Hanādī and the Hatīm shēkhs to bring on their camels enough wood from the mountain regions to fuel the government’s kitchens; investigating the complaint of Sultān Abū Shukēla, a bedouin of al-Hanādī tribe, that since his return from the Sudan, four installments of his salary had not been paid; arranging for the provision of fodder for his animals, and receiving 150 irdabb of barley and beans for them from Timur Agha, the memur of al-Sharqiyya.13 Hüseyin Agha also dealt with various administrative affairs concerning the six tribes under his supervision, such as payments to the tribes, and the delivery of fodder to the animals that worked in the service of the government. On 10 March 1834, the müdür

The Pasha's Bedouin

158

of al-Sharqiyya, transferred the nizara of the six tribes from Hüseyin Agha to Hüseyin Agha Abu Saleh Agha, the nazιr of Sharq Abu Kabir and Kafr Nijm.14 It seems that Hüseyin Agha retained the post of possibly of al-Hanādī. He apparently also held a military appointment, as well as this post, since he is mentioned as a and required riding horses for this purpose. In response to the complaint of the müdür of the First Half of the provinces of Middle Egypt he had to impose sanctions on the bedouin shēkhs who did not fulfil their obligations to transport on their camels grain which reached the sea coast from the granaries of al-Fayyum and Gharb al-Sham.15 who was made responsible for al-Hanādī bedouin, was also the delibaşι, or serdelilan.16 One of the first problems which he had to deal with after his appointment in May 1832 was the allocations of alfalfa to the shēkhs of the Hanādī. The shēkhs had undertaken to recruit men to carry out certain tasks for the authorities, but had not carried out their promises. Their men had scattered over various units of the provincial administration (memuriyes) such as Tanta, Damanhur, al-Gharbiyya and Beni Suweif, where they apparently found more profitable occupations; others had taken their flocks out to pasture in various places, for this was a bountiful spring. There began arguments and negotiations based on conflicting interests rather than good faith. The authorities were interested first and foremost in getting the bedouin to return to their permanent homes, in order to prevent clashes between them and other bedouin, to supervise them more efficiently and, of course, to ensure that they fulfilled the tasks they had been set. Therefore they imposed sanctions, and stopped the allocation of alfalfa. These sanctions forced the shēkhs to turn to the responsible for them, and to give him an undertaking to bring all their men back from the places where they were dispersed in order to fulfil their obligations. But to this end they asked that the allocation passed their of alfalfa should be according to the number of men, not of horses. request on to the majlis, in the light of their undertaking to make an effort to execute their tasks. But an examination of the repository of goods revealed that the shēkhs had already taken the kiswa due to them until the year 1831/2. The majlis rejected the shēkhs’ request to allocate them alfalfa according to the number of people rather than the number of horses; they would receive the allocation on condition that they return to their homes and to the work for which they were registered, and fulfil their obligations as was the custom of the tribes. The grounds for this decision was that horsemen from the tribe had gone to the Hejaz and the Sudan, and their salaries would be paid through the allocation of the tribe’s alfalfa to their relatives who had stayed at home. This controversy sheds light on a very real problem. Bedouin who had joined the Pasha’s army as salaried cavalrymen feared that their families would have no means of livelihood; so they often deserted, particularly at the grazing season. The shēkhs received the tribe’s allocation of feed for the animals in government service, but apparently gave it first and foremost to their own clans, and not equally to all the groups in the tribe. The authorities made use of the discussion of the shēkhs’ request, and the khedivial divan announced that everybody who pledged himself to join government service would receive an allotment, and the horses of the shēkhs registered for service would receive alfalfa.17 Abdin Agha dealt with the great dispute that arose following the murder of He organized the capture of the murderers, who were fellow

Office-holders

159

tribesmen of the shēkh, and the confiscation of their property. He arranged for the release of a shēkh of the Hanādī bedouin, after the authorities had succeeded in arresting two of his sons who had evaded conscription. Abdin Agha also helped to put down one of the many protestations of the fellahin which took place during Mehemet Ali’s reign as a result of high taxation. The müfettiş of the provinces of Upper Egypt was ordered to punish the inhabitants of the villages of al-Kum region in Upper Egypt, because of in the words of the record. Abdin and his men (who were bedouin) were called to join Mehemet Bey, the mîr-i alay of the 13th squadron of cavalry, stationed in Manfalut, in order to punish the rebels. Mehemet Bey brought his own force of bedouin horsemen to put down the dissidence.18 The ‘government shēkhs’ The involvement of the Pasha and his officials in the affairs of the tribes was clearly exemplified in the procedures for choosing shēkhs. Emanuel Marx has already pointed out that the head of the tribe (shēkh), whether nominated or elected, is appointed by the authorities. In other words, the authorities are able to choose a person whom they think suitable, not necessarily from the strongest clan, which usually supplies the shēkhs. He may be accepted as shēkh by the tribe members, but the authorities nonetheless appoint him by means of the process of endorsement. The tribesmen see him as the ‘government shēkh’,19 as distinct from other shēkhs—heads of clans and lineages who resolve disputes between individuals and groups inside the tribe, and organize communal activities such as tribal pilgrimages. By contrast, the ‘government shēkh’ mediates between the authorities and the tribesmen, but in certain critical areas, such as control of territory, he does his best to keep at a distance from the authorities. He may fulfil a number of functions without satisfactory payment, and without having the requisite forces and means, though he usually receives an allocation for his work as arbitrator. He looks after the common interests of the tribe, however, and does not give the authorities inside information, for fear of involving his kinship group in a dispute with other groups in the tribe. The authorities insist on his reporting everything that happens in the tribe and its vicinity, and surrendering murderers, criminals and rebels. This is, in effect, a system of ‘indirect rule’ imposed by the authorities. They defend it on the grounds that the tribesmen want to preserve their independence and their tradition.20 Mehemet Ali’s administration intervened actively in the internal management of the tribes, and it was primarily his officials who defined the rules of the game. Under the rule of the Pasha most of the ‘tribes’ functioned as administrative units rather than freely managed bodies, though blood relationship was still, of course, the basis of their association. The bedouin were still organized more ‘authentically’ only in the more distant desert areas and in Sinai. The family unit continued to exist as a corporative economic and political group within the tribe. Sometimes the lineage group (ancestral house) which supplied the shēkhs for the tribe was also a corporative group with economic functions. Since, as we have said, the Pasha intervened directly in the management of the tribes, the shēkh was, in effect, the executor of his policy. When he was unable to carry out his duties, the regime would not hesitate to split the tribe into two, and nominate a second shēkh in order to carry out all the required tasks. This fact

The Pasha's Bedouin

160

corroborates the view that the tribe was an administrative unit. Such an event took place tribe, when the müdür of the First Half of Middle Egypt provinces in the to the post of the shēkh of half of received an order to appoint Suleiman in order to assist to carry out the orders of the tribe the authorities; the salary would then be divided between the two shēkhs.21 On the other hand, the authorities also dealt with requests for the merger of groups in a tribe, by transferring men from groups which, for various reasons, had no shēkh. After the death of the shēkhs of al-Jawāzī agreed that would also be responsible for the eight remaining people in the late requested an allocation of 1,200 qirsh and also kusūr for shēkh’s group. them.22 Such situations also prove that the tribe was an administrative unit. Since Mehemet Ali intervened in the process of appointment of shēkhs, his administration dealt with disputes between various groups which broke out as a result of competition for these posts. The regime also became the recipient of complaints against a shēkh, if the bedouin were dissatisfied with him. Thus, they ‘exported’ disputes which had usually been resolved within the tribe. It sometimes also happened that the proposed shēkh himself asked for his appointment to be confirmed when difficulties arose. AlMabrūk Bayādī was surprised to discover that another shēkh had been appointed in his place; so he asked the authorities in Cairo to make him shēkh of the instead of his deceased father. Mîr-i mîran Ahmed Pasha Taher, the müdür of the Middle Egypt provinces, was instructed to find out whether the tribesmen supported al-Mabrūk, and how much his father’s salary had been. A month later the müdür received a directive concerning the appointment of al-Mabrūk as shēkh.23 the shēkh of the complained to the government that a man named a member of his tribe, who was not a shēkh, nonetheless presented himself as such, though this was only the fruit of his imagination, and all of his behaviour was improper. From the letter sent to Mehemed Agha, the müdür of Middle Egypt provinces, it appears that did indeed boast of being shēkh, and was to have received a salary.24 Shēkh Bāsil, the shēkh of the Jawāzī bedouin, made the following complaint to the khedivial divan: Ibrahim Pasha appointed him shēkh of his tribe, and he was later sent on a mission to Sinar, in the Sudan. On his return he found that his fellow tribesmen had chosen a person by the name of Ahmad in his stead. He demanded to be restored to his position. The divan was disturbed by this incident, and asked the Bey who was memur for the affairs of the to find out whether Shēkh Bāsil was, in fact, out of favour with his fellow tribesmen, and what was his standing in the tribe. If they really wanted to relieve him, the tribe should decide on his fate, and the government must determine his future.25 The was also frequently involved in the choice of shēkhs. When a shēkh of the had to be appointed, they accepted the nazιr’s recommendation; he also dealt with the appointment of as shēkh of Gabīlat al-Fawāyed.26 Disputes over the appointment of shēkhs even led to murder, and here, too, the intervention of was sought. and

Office-holders

161

two shēkhs of the Jawāzī tribe, were apparently involved in the murder of 27

The tribes continued to comply with the traditional procedures for choosing shēkhs. But now they also had to follow the procedure dictated by the authorities. The custom was that the shēkh’s son generally inherited his father’s office and all his other appointments, including military posts such as commander of cavalry units, watchmen, etc. When the shēkh of the tribe died, dignitaries of his clan, speaking in the name of the eldest son, requested that he be appointed to the post. In most of the appointments mentioned in the official records the eldest sons succeeded their fathers. The authorities did not confirm the appointment automatically; they checked whether the candidate was suitable and trustworthy, whether he was indeed the eldest son, and whether his character and personal integrity fitted him for the post. They also tried to avert disagreement by enquiring whether he was acceptable to the tribe. The custom of having consultations and gathering opinions about the appointment of a shēkh is exemplified in the case of the appointment of as shēkh of the Mugābala bedouin, after the death of The appointment was conditional on his suitability to the post, and his ability to carry out the instructions of the authorities. A decree sent to stated that if it appeared that he was not suitable, and that he did not live up to his name, another person could be sought; but, in that case, details about him based on personal acquaintance should be collected.28 It was desirable that he should be relatively mature, though of the Abābda Barāra was appointed to replace his father, who had been killed, when he was only 25 years old.29 In the story all of the conditions, the processes, and the of the appointment of forces involved in the appointment of shēkhs under Mehemet Ali can be clearly seen. was the natural candidate for the chiefship of the Fawāyed tribe after the death of his father. An application was made to the müdür of the First Half of the provinces of Middle Egypt for him to bring the nomination to the Pasha for approval. The müdür was ready to grant the request, especially since there were appended to it declarations of support for the candidate both by his fellow tribesmen and by the although they included no details. The müdür passed the request on to the Pasha. However, an order sent to the müdür stated that the declaration of the bedouin suitability to the post must be verified. A Viceregal edict should not be relied on; was sent to Rustum Bey, ordering him to assemble the other shēkhs—obviously the other tribe—and discuss the proposed appointment with shēkhs of the them. The müdür was ordered to assess his capabilities and his suitability for the post with the help of the shēkhs, and to ensure that all his debts to the government were paid before he was appointed.30 There are more cases, which show the procedures of the shēkh’s appointments: Ghadāb, the son of of the received the same salary as his late father—200 qirsh; the authorities agreed that Mehemet Bey, the memur of al-Qaliubiyya, should appoint the son of the shēkh of the Hanādī bedouin in place of his father, who had just died, on condition that he fulfilled the conditions for leadership; Badrī became shēkh of the Jawāzī bedouin in place of his dead father, Bāsel; Abū Ĝarāra,

The Pasha's Bedouin

162

one of the shēkhs of the Jawāzī, died, and a request was immediately made to appoint his son approached the authorities of Middle Egypt on the matter of the appointment of to the office of shēkh of the in the place of his dead father, and on the matter of the equal division of the dead shēkh’s 31 salary between his sons and the müdür of the Middle Egypt as one provinces was ordered by the Pasha’s court to record of the shēkhs of the Julēlāt in place of his dead father, and to fix his salary at 510 qirsh, received an order about the appointments of like that of his father; Salūma, the son of the deceased and the son of the In the event that the sons deceased Shamlūq Abū Suleimān as shēkhs of the of a deceased shēkh were too young for one of them to be made shēkh, another person would be appointed, and a guardian provided for the children. When one of the shēkhs of the Juhama, died, the divan of Mehemet Ali gave written instructions to the kethüda, Sharif Bey, to appoint Kaylānī Abbās as guardian of the shēkh’s children until they reached maturity, and to pay him half of the dead shēkh’s salary; the other half should be given to the orphans. As for the nomination of Kaylānī as shēkh, it was said that his suitability to the office should first be assessed.32 The son of a dead shēkh was not always appointed in his place. When shēkh Bāsil al-Saghīr, the shēkh of al-Jawāzī, was murdered, his son was appointed as temporary shēkh (vekil) until the return of whom the authorities wanted to make shēkh, from al-Sham. Thus said the Viceregal edict sent from the khedivial divan to Mustafa Bey, the müdür of the Second Half of the provinces of Middle Egypt.33 It was also customary to appoint a vekil when the shēkh was absent or ill. Sometimes the post of shēkh was inherited by a brother. There are several such cases was appointed shēkh of the in the MS records. Thus, instead of his deceased brother; when the shēkh of the died, Habib Effendi was requested to ask his brother whether he would be prepared to take on the office. was appointed shēkh of the instead of his deceased brother he was granted the usual kiswa and was appointed shēkh of the tribe, which ‘belong to ’, instead of his brother Thaghlib, and Mūsa Jīzāwī of Hanādī was made shēkh instead of his dead brother. In one instance a nephew was given the post: the nephew of of the Jawāzī bedouin. The most suitable relative could also be appointed: for instance, the müdür of the First Half of the provinces of Middle Egypt was asked to appoint the most suitable relative of Suleiman of the 34

The authorities also acceded to requests from the bedouin to appoint a shēkh. Thus, the shēkh of the the appointment of the son of the deceased Fawāyed bedouin, was approved in response to a request from the tribesmen; instructions were given to pay his salary and to grant him a plot of land. This appointment was effected by a Viceregal edict or firman sent by the Pasha to the governor of the

Office-holders

163

appropriate province. Notices were also sent to the other shēkhs in his tribe. An announcement of an appointment would be accompanied by various orders and instructions. When of the was appointed in place of his deceased father, a firman about the matter was sent to all the shēkhs of the a large confederation of tribes. They were instructed to obey him and to cooperate with him in paying salaries. The firman added that he was granted the right to punish anybody who did not obey him or fulfil his obligations. Apparently the intention was not that the other shēkhs of the should obey even though he belonged to an outstanding clan from which had come influential shēkhs, but rather to ensure that the common bedouin should obey him.35 The documents dealing with the nomination of shēkhs give us a partial picture of the social structure and methods of organization of the bedouin population. This will be discussed in another chapter; but here it may be noted that in some tribes there were normally several shēkhs recognized by the authorities—almost certainly ‘government shēkhs’ appointed by them. Each of them apparently headed a sub-tribe or clan within the tribe and at their head stood a ‘Grand shēkh’, or several Grand shēkhs. They were sometimes called like a village head; it is, however, unclear whether this was an official title of the bedouin shēkh or whether it was an honorific title, intended to distinguish between his status and that of the other shēkhs. It seems that the authorities were interested in nominating from all the important clans of the tribe, since this made supervision easier. This is somewhat contradictory to their tendency to reduce as far as possible the number of representatives and spokesmen of the bedouin population with whom they had to maintain contact. On the other hand, they were careful not to bring about further divisions within the tribes. Four shēkhs of the Fawāyed bedouin petitioned Rustum Bey, the müdür of half of the provinces of Middle Egypt, for They claimed permission to secede from their that a dispute had arisen among them, and that they wanted to move, and live in his (Rustum Bey’s) mudiriyya, and were prepared to obey all the government’s orders. Rustum Bey passed the request on to the Pasha, pointing out that all four were related, i.e. that they belonged to a single clan. The Pasha’s answer was negative: the four were ordered to return to the authority of Shēkh Mugarrab, and forbidden to split up his group. It seems that the authorities recognized the principle of kinship as the basis of organization of groups within the tribe, and appreciated that excessive division would make it difficult for them to control the tribes. If part of the tribe were to move to another province, this would not bring about complete separation between the seceding group and the tribe, and the local authorities would have to deal with the problems arising from the division, such as the continuation of the dispute between them. The authorities were also not interested in weakening the status of who was apparently a ‘Grand Shēkh’.36 The shēkhs played a part in the process of appointment of other shēkhs in the tribe. The authorities relied on their judgement of the candidate, and usually accepted it. There are a few examples: the ‘Grand Shēkhs’ were asked to give their opinion on the appointment of the above-mentioned as shēkh

The Pasha's Bedouin

164

of the Hasan Sulēmān was made shēkh of the Tiāhā bedouin with the of the tribe.37 agreement of the After the appointment had been agreed, the authorities authorized payment to the treasury registers (defters). The payment could be made in several ways. The shēkhs usually received an annual monetary allowance, in accordance with the number of people under their care. In practice, the appointment was effected by inviting the shēkh to the divan or to the provincial governor, where he was invested with a a ceremonial mantle made of squirrel or weasel fur. While the Egyptian army was serving in the Hejaz, Mehemet Ali appointed Ghānim bin Midhyān, a shēkh of the and a shēkh of the to their posts without a On the other hand, when son of the deceased Shēkh Shadīd, was made 38 shēkh of the he was invested with a After their entry into office, the authorities usually gave the shēkhs their backing. Their fellow tribesmen were required to obey them always, and they had the right to punish their opponents. This was occasionally the subject of discussions between the Sublime Porte, the khedivial divan, and the provincial governors. Ihsan Pasha, the memur of the provinces of Middle Egypt, was asked to deal with the defence of of the Fawāyed, and ensure that all his administrative orders were carried out.39 On the other hand, the shēkhs were strictly controlled by the authorities. The shēkh was, in effect, an official in the provincial administration, and was obliged to supply services to the government and execute public works. If he refused, or abandoned his responsibility to carry out the tasks assigned by the government, he was considered to have left his post. When one of the shēkhs of the resigned from government service and fled, Rustum Effendi, the memur of Damanhur, was asked to appoint in his place.40 Dismissals of shēkhs by the authorities were not rare. When this happened, a firman, or Viceregal edict was sent to the tribe, announcing the dismissal and the appointment of a new shēkh. of the Jawāzī was dismissed in this fashion, and appointed in his place.41 Disobedience or rebelliousness on the part of the shēkhs led to an immediate stoppage of his pay. This is echoed in the complaint of the grand shēkh of half of the in the müdüriye of beni Suweif. He wrote that since the year 1844/1260 the shēkhs had received neither allowances nor grants, though they were obedient to the müfettiş, the nazιr, and the other representatives of the government. They claimed that the reason for this was a whim of the serasker. The shēkh requested that the previous state of affairs be restored. He said that what disturbed him most was the fact that, as a result, people had ceased to respect him and begun to ridicule him.42 Because of acts of immorality and strife in which he was involved, one of the shēkhs of in the müdüriye of al-Giza was exiled to Jabal Qisan for five years and sentenced to hard labour.43 Although the government intervened in events within the tribes, such as intertribal and intra-tribal disputes, shēkhs were chosen after consultation with the tribesmen, and usually according to their recommendation. For instance, the Pasha permitted the

Office-holders

165

müdür of the provinces of Middle Egypt to appoint the men he chose as shēkhs of the Jawazi, but only with the agreement of the tribesmen. In this way the authorities could control the tribes more efficiently, and the shēkh served as their tool. He was responsible for public order and security, and was even employed to arrest other shēkhs. Thus, of the was thanked for arresting one of the shēkhs of the Fawāyed; Shēkh Jabālī Huseyin was involved in the arrest of and barham, shēkhs of the for ‘shameful and seditious acts’.44 Mehemet Ali continued and improved the system of payment to the shēkhs which had been instituted by the Ottomans. They paid the shēkhs for protecting the pilgrims’ way to Mecca (darb al-hajj), for transporting goods and people, and for other services. Mehemet Ali did similarly. At an early stage in his reign he began to pay salaries to the received 5,000 qirsh ‘on account shēkhs. In 1821/2 Shēkh Khayrallah of the 45 During their tenure the shēkhs received a whole range of grants of the tribe’s and payments in reward for services to the government and for work which they did at the request of the authorities. These grants and payments were meant to give the shēkhs authority by bringing them close to the regime; this was co-optation, as was said in the official journal.46 These payments had various names: which usually meant a grant of land, though it was sometimes paid as a monetary grant by the hazinat al-firda, the treasury of impositions; and kiswa, which was general compensation for services such as the execution of special tasks or different duties. There were different types of kiswa. It was given for a limited period—for instance, two years—and had to be renewed after that

sometimes called muratabat, was fodder for livestock, given period had lapsed.47 to the shēkhs for horses or camels which they used for military purposes or for once every transportation. Shēkhs who had been granted land by the state received year. This was their profit after the deduction of all the taxes they owed to the treasury. The office of the ruznameh kept detailed track of all the payments made to the shēkhs, The shēkhs also received extra and they were recorded in the payments for carrying out special tasks, and, of course, for transporting goods at the invitation of the government. Salaries were paid by the hazine in every province, according to the place where the shēkh lived. The amount was fixed in accordance with the number of people under the authority of each shēkh, and the details recorded in the list of shēkhs receiving salaries.48 Extra payments were made to mark feast-days. The officials of the administration would also pay advances to the shēkhs if they applied for them explaining their need. The authorities took care to deduct the shēkhs’ debts from their salaries. In order to receive kiswa for executing projects and giving services to the authorities, the shēkh had to make a request with proof of his right to it, and the payment was made after this right had been investigated. If his right was confirmed, the kiswa was given in accordance with the number of horses the shēkh had used for the work, and the shēkhs’ deputies received it.49 Despite this, there were several shēkhs who found various ways of increasing the money allotted to them, by using names of men who had died or by demanding payment although they had already received the money due to them.

8 Military service The Pasha’s bedouin The anthropologist Henry Rosenfeld claims that there is a primeval process whereby the bedouin warriors ‘defend’ the settlers against invaders, thieves and unruly elements.1 More recent approaches in historical research present a different picture of the bedouin’s superior military capabilities. In his discussion of the invasion of North Africa by the Banī Hilāl in the eleventh century, J.Poncet maintains that their success was due not to their military ability, but to the political and economic decline of the Maghrib and the internal political struggles which weakened the military system of the state and contributed to the destruction of its agriculture. When the Bānī Hilāl arrived from Egypt they discovered that the local leaders preferred to reach an accommodation with them.2 The French historian Claude Cahen accepts this view, and adds that during this period the political world of the Muslims underwent a process of ‘bedouization’. Local bedouin dynasties grew up on the ruins of the In Egypt the bedouin were playing a more prominent role by the end of the Fatimid period, and Turkish elements, themselves semi-nomads, were pressing from without. In his view, it is against this background that the growth of the power of the Bānī Hilāl must be viewed.3 In other words, the political ascent of the bedouin may simply have been the result of the collapse of other forces in the country in which they lived; but this does not prove that they played no part in the general political processes in the state. Since they enjoyed the personal and territorial liberty which nourishes belligerent tendencies, they gained strength as the government’s army grew weak. Disputing Rosenfeld’s theory, Talal Asad claims that a flourishing centre of agriculture and commerce is more likely to dominate bedouin tribes than be dominated by them. Like Cahen, he maintains that the conflict between militant pastoralism and civilization, if indeed it exists, is the result of the bedouization of the political system.4 Asad sums up by saying that effective military capability is not associated particularly with nomadism, and that there is little logic in generalizations about the military advantages of nomadic mobility as against the lack of mobility of the settler population. The tribal history of Egypt conforms to this theory. The military potential of a number of groups of pastoral nomads was greater than that of groups of settlers: for example, they were better able to evade the forces of the central government, to hinder the passage of commercial caravans and to stage surprise raids on agricultural villages. The nomads were always more successful at fighting against a regime than at enforcing a system of government. In Egypt the fighting force which the bedouin deployed was usually of little importance. When the Mamluks were active in the area, however, the military strength of the bedouin afforded them a considerable advantage. In the Ottoman period, the bedouin used their military power against the fellahin, with the aid of the beys—the heads of the Ottoman-Egyptian households within the elite of Turkish origin; and this led to the destruction of agriculture by the bedouin and the bedouization of the economy. In such a situation, when the central regime is helpless, the state’s internal security is destabilized

Military service

167

and autonomous political regions come into being. This happened in Egypt in the became an autonomous bedouin region of the Hawwāra, eighteenth century: the and the enjoyed complete freedom in the Nile Delta. The practical result of this state of affairs was that peripheral cultivated areas were abandoned to independent pastoral bedouin, even though they did not constitute a military threat: the population was small, and eager to flee from an oppressive regime. For many years, during the period of the Ottoman conquest, the dominant military force in Egypt was in the hands of the beys. But the armed strength of the bedouin tribes was far from negligible: they put their military forces at the service of the rival OttomanEgyptian factions which fought among themselves or rebelled against the regime. The bedouin, like the Mamluks, did not have to part from their horses, since they adopted firearms only after it became possible to use them from the back of a horse or camel; they, too, were not forced to change their style of fighting to any degree when they changed their weapons. They were able to use firearms mainly because the rifle was a simple weapon and easy to operate. In fact, the rifle was the only firearm used by the bedouin, and the field-gun afforded the regular army a considerable advantage over them. The similarity between the battle tactics and military aptitudes of bedouin and Mamluks bred in the past amity and cooperation. The leaders of the bedouin tribes gave military support to the beys and emirs, and formed military alliances with them in their revolts against the Ottoman regime and their struggles among themselves. In the period of the Mamluk Sultanate, many of the heads of the great bedouin tribes received military titles, such as emir or muqadim. The bedouin of Upper Egypt joined the Mamluk expeditionary forces to Nubia, and the bedouin on the western borders of the country were employed to repel the attacks of the Crusaders; they participated in the defence of Alexandria in 1365/6. In 1429, when Alexandria was attacked from the sea, a unit of bedouin fighters was called to the rescue. The Mamluks tried not to exhaust their army by using it for internal security, police work and protection of the roads, so they reached agreements with the strong bedouin tribes from the border areas that they would carry out these tasks. Thus, bedouin were responsible for the security of the roads to the Hejaz and to al-Sham, and for the maintenance of the ‘Barid’. Groups which gave military support were allowed to breed horses. The Hawwāra were not the only bedouin who joined the military elite. Other bedouin leaders also attained high rank under Ottoman rule. They were considered equal to army officers or governors of nahiyes and districts. Michael Winter adduces a number of outstanding examples: held the rank of Sancak Bey (1571/2); the in Upper Egypt commanded a unit of 50–60 janissaries predecessor of from Cairo (1573/4); the leader of the Ghazāla bedouin, held the rank of emir in the nahiye of Um Hanan in the Giza province; in 1856/7 was put in command of the Egyptian expeditionary force in the Ottoman army which fought in Persia.5 In the course of the seveneteenth century, shēkhs and other leaders of bedouin tribes and tribal clans and their tribesmen were involved militarily in the struggles between rival Ottoman-Egyptian factions and households. With the decline of the central Ottoman regime the power of the beys grew, but the Ottomans continued to employ bedouin to put down their rebellions. It would seem, therefore, that at the time of the Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman conquest of Egypt there grew up a group of

The Pasha's Bedouin

168

bedouin leaders who were also high-ranking army officers. It was not, however, an organized and crystallized elite with political or military influence, nor was it separate from the other recognized tribal frameworks. Each of the leaders was the head of his clan, and the soldiers he commanded were his clansmen. The emirs of the Hawwāra in Upper Egypt, whose joint power in their confederation was recognized by the Ottoman regime after the conquest of Egypt, were to some extent exceptional in this respect. As has been remarked, the final appearance of bedouin as an efficient and organized force was in the eighteenth century. The independent bedouin forces which came into being in the Delta region and Upper Egypt proved their military ability in confrontations with the authorities. and his sons Sālim and Swēlim, the leaders of the ruled in the Delta area from 1711 until 1769, as a result of their military strength and their ability to form alliances with other bedouin groups. in concert with the ‘bedouin of al-Jazira’ and the ‘bedouin of alMinufiyya’, defeated Hasan Abu Dafia, the governor of Cairo, and captured its cannon. Swēlim commanded a force of cavalry made up of black slaves; Sālim built up a naval force which controlled the waterways of the Nile. Their military capability was based on the agreement between all the components of this tribal entity to provide soldiers for the leading clan, and to entrust their security to it. The bedouin used their fighting capabilities as auxiliaries in the power conflicts that took place in the long period of instability dating from the accession to power of the duumvirate of Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey in 1775. Most of the aid they gave lay, again, in their ability to provide the rival and rebellious beys with large numbers of horsemen. During the next twenty-five years, until the French invasion in 1799, rebellious beys with the help of bedouin cavalry continually invaded agricultural areas held by other beys and emirs. There were no longer powerful bedouin in the service of the regime to restrain them, as the Hawwāra had done. The French could not rely on an alliance with the Hawwāra or other bedouin, and the situation even became more anarchic than at the end of the Ottoman conquest.6 The Hawwāra: from military elite to cavalry unit After the conquest of 1517, the Ottoman rulers of Egypt were prepared to save the cost of establishing an administration in certain regions by recognizing the rule of natural bedouin leaders in those regions. They were interested first and foremost in profiting from the military point of view by encouraging local bedouin leaders to take an interest in defending their home regions. Thus, the Ottomans recognized the primacy of the emirs of the confederation of the Hawwāra tribes in Upper Egypt. The centre of the Hawwāra had been in Upper Egypt since the fifteenth century at least, and they were considered to be bedouin warriors. During the Mamluk Sultanate their leaders bore military rank, and had the title of emir in the military hierarchy; prominent among them were the emirs of the 7 The Hawwāra gradually entered the ocaks as soldiers. Their tribesmen were registered according to law, and in Ibrahim Pasha’s records they were entered as 8 janissaries and Until the revolt of in 1524, bedouin shēkhs bore military ranks as in the period of the Mamluk Sultanate. The Hawwāra’s

Military service

169

advantage was that they could muster a large force of cavalry at short notice, so they were invited to give assistance both in the conflicts between the beys and in the defence of the central regime against rebellious beys. From the seventeenth century, with the decline of the central regime and the rise of the Ottoman-Egyptian group of beys, the Hawwāra became an extremely important military factor. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the emir Ahmad, grandfather of Shēkh Humām, joined the regiment of janissaries and was rewarded with the right to farm tax.9 He began to strengthen his military forces in preparation for the struggle for hegemony in Upper Egypt. In 1743 he succeeded in eliminating all his enemies with the help of the military forces of his clan, the Awlād Humām, and became the head of a chiefship based on a union of the Hawwāra tribes in Upper Egypt. Their military strength enabled them to defend the inhabitants of the villages under their control. Their strength sprang from the fact that they were soldiers in the ocaks, and that over the years they had developed ties with the heads of the Ottoman-Egyptian military elite, as well as from their ability to muster a large force of cavalry very quickly.10 The fellahin supported them militarily and and others, also economically. Allied tribes such as the Maghārba, the contributed to their military strength. Refugees from the Qasimiyya faction were given asylum, and served as soldiers in the service of shēkh Humām. After the destruction of the independent military strength of the his dominion in 1769 by Hawwāra was also destroyed. It frequently happened in the period of the Ottoman conquest that rebel beys and emirs who were forced to flee from the authorities found refuge in Upper Egypt with the bedouin emirs of the Hawwāra, and aided them with their military experience. The Hawwāra were finally destroyed only at the end of 1813, by Ibrahim Pasha, Mehemet Ali’s son. Al-Jabarti describes the bitter fate of the last of their leaders in his account of the events of the month of Dhu al-Hijja 1228 (25 November to 23 December 1813). During that period the Pasha succeeded in gaining complete control of the This followed the killing of the Ottoman-Egyptian leaders in the citadel of Cairo, for until then they controlled the region. He appointed his son Ibrahim as governor. Ibrahim treated their elite cruelly, stole their money and property, and imposed heavy fines on them. Al-Jabarti says that he was young and arrogant, not yet twenty years old, and had not been well educated by his father. As a result, Shēkh Humām’s descendants were left penniless.11 The military action against the Hawwāra destroyed their strength as a fighting force, and they were unable to resist the Pasha’s superior strength. In fact, after the break-up of Shēkh Humām’s alliance they lost all interest in preserving their independent political power in Upper Egypt. The Hawwāra became one of the chief sources of recruitment of first-rate cavalrymen to the Pasha’s new army (nizam cedid), as a result of their splendid military tradition, which dated from the Mamluk period. It appears that the army became a central channel of social mobility under the new dispensation, from the moment that Ibrahim Pasha eliminated their leadership and thereby finally shattered the tribal framework. At a certain stage, it appears, their name became part of the local culture as a symbol of pride and bravery, and ‘Hawwāra’ became a general term for soldiers in the Pasha’s army, with no special reference to their tribal origin.12 Because of their military function, the Hawwāra were close to the leadership, so different shēkhs began to join them—for instance, from the Hanādī, the and others—and they, too, began to be called ‘Hawwāra’. In the

The Pasha's Bedouin

170

new army, cavalry units called Hawwāra or Hawwariye were formed, and their commander was known as hawwāra başι.13 It was not only the Hawwāra who provided horsemen for these units. They also contained men from the the Fawāyed, 14 and the The officers of the Hawwāra units were usually not bedouin, but members of the Pasha’s Ottoman-Egyptian military elite, and their rank was usually Agha.15 The Hawwāra were considered to be hardened fighters, and suited to difficult missions; and, indeed, they were posted to various places, such as the areas of hostilities in the Hejaz, the Sudan and al-Sham, and also within Egypt.16 They were involved in a variety of military actions. They participated in Mehemet Ali’s campaigns, and fought side by side with the regular army on foreign fronts; they were also employed in pursuing and arresting deserters, bedouin and fellahin alike; in preserving the security of the Pasha’s forces along the route to al-Sham; and in putting down civil strife (fitnas) and various rebellions within Egypt and in the conquered territories. It appears that the chief task of the Hawwāra units was capturing various rebels and criminals and putting down fitnas. This was stated unequivocally by the superintendent of the army affairs (nazιr-i jihadiya) in a report to the khedivial divan. Following a report by Mahmud Agha, the the superintendent of the scribe office (nazιr-i kalemhane) to the consultative council for the army affairs (majlis shura al-jihadiyya) stating that a group of bandits had appeared in the area of the Khanaka (in Cairo), broken into houses and stolen money, the majlis decided to appoint a platoon of infantry (bölük baltaciye). The Pasha, however, decided to send a force of 70 or 80 Hawwāra cavalrymen with their own başι, or a number of bedouin horsemen. He argued that they were preferable to baltaciye, who were infantrymen, and not supposed to catch and punish rebels. The Hawwara başι reported to carry out the assignment. There are, in fact, many records showing how the Hawwāra were employed for such tasks. In this case, went to al-Barsim to select 60 horsemen of his own to apprehend the thieves. He divided the force into three groups, put a memur in charge of them, and gave him two boxes of ammunition. Then he sent them to the surroundings of the khanaka, and told them to move about there until dawn, telling nobody of their mission, and to return to the place where the horses grazed.17 When a fitna broke out in Manfalut in Upper Egypt and the memur of Manfalut, was killed, some units of Hawwāra were ordered to go and suppress it. Ali Agha, the Hawwara başι, went at the head of forty horsemen to capture Hadīwī and Zaghal, two members of the Hanādī tribe; it seems that they were wanted for the murder, and, according to information received by the authorities, were hiding in Wadi Tumēlāt, together with seven of their comrades. After they had left, Timur Agha, the powerful kâshif of and the memur of al-Sharqiyya, were asked to help them. The authorities preferred to send the Hawwāra unit to catch the criminals first, for fear that the gang would know that they were being hunted, and flee.18

Military service

171

The recruitment of the bedouin During Mehemet Ali’s reign, instead of the autonomous entities that had existed for the last time in the second half of the eighteenth century, the characteristic political units of tribal society were clans of large tribes whose importance was increased by their leaders’ ability to provide a great number of horsemen, together with their mounts. The modern era, which arrived with Mehemet Ali’s regime, gave birth to growing economic and technological pressures aimed at encouraging agriculture and increasing the area of cultivable land. Therefore, the state did not easily abandon peripheral areas to the nomads, as had happened in previous periods. Consequently, the tribes no longer built up their own fighting forces in order to retain control over territories in which the state was not particularly interested, and their fighting capability declined more and more. claims that Mehemet Ali recruited bedouin in order to solve the problem of migration and to encourage settlement, in the context of his policy towards the bedouin. claims that the recruitment of the bedouin was part of his policy of subjugation, and that this policy forced the shēkhs to enter the service of the government.19 Both of these scholars present a narrow point of view, and do not provide a deep enough explanation of the recruitment of the bedouin. It may be said in reply that the Pasha did indeed want to encourage the bedouin to settle permanently, but that he used other means for this; and, in point of fact, the bedouin did not abandon their traditional economy, and were accustomed to desert from the army in order to take care of their animals. The shēkhs were indeed integrated into the administration, as part of his policy of co-option, but they viewed this as an opportunity to improve their status within the tribe and their economic circumstances. The reasons for the recruitment of the bedouin were much deeper than those adduced above. Mehemet Ali’s foreign wars were conducted for the most part in desert regions with a tribal population. The Pasha appreciated the ability of the bedouin to navigate and fight in desert areas and to move over sandy routes. He also needed their knowledge and social contacts in order to create links with the local tribes and persuade them to transfer their allegiance to the Egyptian regime; and, indeed, it was not unusual for local tribes in the Hejaz, the Sudan and al-Sham to transfer their support to the Egyptian side, alongside tribes which had rebelled against it. Moreover, the Pasha needed their camels to carry equipment and supplies to the army units, and to carry the post over the desert routes. The bedouin were employed in observation posts along the lines of the Egyptian army’s advance. During military engagements they provoked skirmishes, using hit-and-run tactics, in order to exhaust the enemy and reduce his ability to fight on the principal battlefield. After the fighting, the victory and the conquest, there remained two weak points with which the Pasha had to contend continuously throughout the years of conquest in the Hejaz, Sudan and al-Sham: revolts of local tribes and fellahin, and the provision of food for his army. The bedouin were the key to the solution of these problems: they were able to spark off revolts or quell them, and they controlled the means of transport of food and equipment. In short, the reasons why the Pasha needed them were not confined to subjugation and sedentarization.

The Pasha's Bedouin

172

Khaled Fahmy maintains that the bedouin became an essential element in Mehemet Ali’s army precisely because he was forced to recruit the fellahin, although at first he tried to avoid this. He was most anxious to rid himself of the Albanians in his army, since it had proved impossible to turn them into disciplined and obedient soldiers. So he tried a new tactic. He was not keen on conscripting fellahin, since he did not want to reduce agricultural production, so he did not hasten to use this great reserve of manpower. Instead, he sought other sources of recruitment to the army. In the summer of 1820 he recruited two expeditionary forces for the Sudan, one commanded by his son, and the other by his son-in-law, Mehemet Bey the Defterdar. In these two armies there were 400 bedouin and Magharbi cavalrymen, 800 bedouin and 20 According to Fahmy, one of the Magharbi infantrymen, and 700 aims of the war in Sudan was to recruit disciplined soldiers to the Pasha’s army there. Both armies encountered great difficulties from the early stages of the campaign, and it became clear that they were unable to conquer and control extensive areas in the Sudan. army and help him So more al-Hawwāra bedouin were sent to reinforce enforce law and order in Sinar, since ‘this is a spacious land’.21 The conscription of the fellahin began as a result of the failure of the two armies in the Sudan. It originated with the Pasha’s wish to release his Turkish soldiers from service in the hot and distant areas of the Sudan. He never succeeded in persuading the fellahin to join the army of their own free will on ideological or religious grounds.22 The fellahin used various methods to avoid service—fleeing to al-Sham (primarily to today’s Gaza Strip and Palestine) and to the bedouin settlements in the desert, mutilating themselves in order to obtain exemption from service, and more. The Pasha increased the pressure on the village shēkhs and fellahin to recruit more men. The conscription of the fellahin led to the hiring of more bedouin horsemen in irregular units, for their principal assignment was to capture the fellahin who had fled their villages with their families in order to escape conscription. The authorities also asked the bedouin to surrender deserters who had found refuge with them. Mehemet Ali considered the bedouin to be brave, and quick to use their weapons, and they were not unfamiliar with the battlefield. In order to exploit their military capacity, he suggested, through their shēkhs, that they join the army.23 The bedouin’s superiority in this sphere was well known to foreigners who resided in Egypt and observed the Pasha’s policies and actions. A contemporary military observer, Lieutenant Felix Matthew, maintained that the desert bedouin were the Pasha’s most disciplined soldiers. They were, however, too independent by nature, and needed a life of unfettered freedom; therefore, they were not conscripted into the army, and the government was afraid to conscript them. Instead, they were recruited to irregular units.24 Another contemporary military observer remarked that one of the benefits of the Pasha’s decision to recruit 12,000 bedouin horsemen for the war in al-Sham was that it would rid the interior of the country of the nomads who were harassing fellahin and caravans.25 The establishment of irregular bedouin cavalry units such as the Hawwāra or the shēkhs’ horsemen turned out to be an effective system of surveillance on the tribes themselves, no less than on the fellahin. The bedouin horsemen arrived in separate groups under the command of the shēkh of the group through which they had been recruited. The military commander of the cavalry units was a Turkish officer with the rank of başιbozuk, and they also contained horsemen of Turkish and Magharbi origin. In the nineteenth

Military service

173

century the Ottomans also dealt similarly with tribes in different parts of their empire. In Kurdistan, for instance, they organized militias and units of border police on a tribal basis.26 In effect, the regime established semi-tribal units with no tribal character; in this way the state was able to intervene in them more directly, and, through them, to increase its involvement with the tribe. In a certain sense this was the equivalent of breaking up tribal frameworks and resettling the tribes. It was the authorities’ method of destroying the power of the great tribes and attaining more effective control over the shēkhs. There is also evidence that bedouin served in the army in regular units in various capacities. Camel drivers were recruited for various military purposes, and were called who hajjana. In the Sudan it was for the most part the camel-drivers of the were employed.27 Bedouin were brought from al-Gharbiyya province to serve in the navy;28 and in the lists of the Pasha’s soldiers there are many typically bedouin names.29 From the 8,000 bedouin who joined the army in 1825, some 2,000 from Upper Egypt and from Dankala in the Sudan were chosen, of whom the thousand best soldiers were assigned to the artillery regiment. From the provinces of al-Fayyum, Beni Suweif and alBahansa in Middle Egypt and from Assiut and other provinces in Upper Egypt, 1,000 were assigned to the eighth and ninth regiment (alay) of the infantry, which suffered from a shortage of soldiers. They were trained with the different units.30 The Pasha conceived of a plan to recruit bedouin to artillery units (topçiye) under the responsibility of the nazιr of the vessels. The officers of the topçiye would receive eight- or nine-year-old bedouin children, educate them and teach them the use of artillery—apparently naval artillery. Bedouin were also employed in intelligence work, mainly spying on deserters from the army.31 In the course of his endeavours to win the sympathy and loyalty of the bedouin, Mehemet Ali exempted them from conscription to corvées. They were also exempted from conscription, in exchange for an agreement that the shēkhs would provide warriors on request.32 He agreed to pay their expenses, but on condition that each of them would report with his horse and his weapons. They were entitled to these rights, except ‘in time of war’. In 1882 this was expressed in moral terms: ‘The citizens of this dear country’ benefit from working the land, like other citizens, and they must therefore take part in its wars, if requested to do so, in return for wages paid by the state.33 Exemption from military service was legally confirmed in an edict which decreed ‘not to conscript bedouin in Lower Egypt (al-Wujh al-Bahri) and Upper Egypt (al-Wujh al-Qibli)’. In fact, Mehemet Ali refrained from full mobilization of the bedouin even at the time of his foreign wars. In two orders which he sent to the müdür of Middle Egypt provinces he demanded ‘mobilization of part of the bedouin who live in the provinces of Middle Egypt’, and requested ‘to send the bedouin recruited from the tribes to al-Mahrusa (Cairo)’.34 In the MS records there is a wealth of documentation concerning mobilization orders to the provincial governors, telling them to assemble bedouin fit for military service. Most of them were issued during the campaign of al-Sham. During the years of the conquest (1831–1840) the need for more soldiers from among the fellahin and irregular bedouin horsemen became greater. Ibrahim, who was the commander of the Egyptian expeditionary force, needed a great many bedouin in his army in order to counteract the desertion of fellahin in the course of the campaign. Orders were sent to the provincial governors detailing the number of horsemen required. The shēkhs were responsible for

The Pasha's Bedouin

174

carrying out these orders. In the course of the war, and during the period of the occupation, Ibrahim sent many letters to his father demanding reinforcements of horsemen. The Pasha usually fulfilled his son’s requests without delay. The bedouin shēkhs played a key role in the mobilization of the male members of their clans to the army. Mehemet Ali endeavoured to recruit bedouin in alliance with the shēkhs, on whom he showered gifts, grants of land, and positions in the provincial administration. The supply of horsemen to the Pasha’s army was considered to be one of the shēkhs’ obligations, and part of their service to the state. The officials of the administration in the provinces made enquiries in order to find shēkhs who were interested in military service. They were invited to the divan, and there they were recruited, and undertook to bring in horsemen from their tribes. They were sent to count and register the number of horsemen in their tribe, and then conscripted and sent to military service. Since the authorities now knew how many horsemen there were in the tribe they could demand the required number from the shēkh: the authorities decided on the number required, and the shēkh had to ensure that they reported to the müdür of the province.35 When they wanted to recruit from among the they sent an order to Shēkh ordering him to mobilize a hundred horsemen, and appoint a man who would accompany them, ‘because it is part of the servitude’s duty and the liability of the service imposed upon you’, in the words of the document.36 In a decree sent to the müdür of Middle Egypt provinces the Pasha demanded that 600 bedouin from among the Jawāzī and the Fawāyed, who lived in those regions, be sent to Ibrahim Pasha’s command, under an officer recruited for the purpose. The memur of Damanhur was asked to choose thirty horsemen fit for battle from among the to appoint a (baş) over them, to pay their travel expenses and to send them before the end of the month. a shēkh of the Zāwiya bedouin, was ordered to bring 100 horsemen; each of the shēkhs of the Fawāyed, the and the Jawāzī was told to choose 25 horsemen from his tribe, since it had been decided to set up a unit of 75 horsemen who would join Ibrahim Pasha’s entourage ‘whether he is camping or moving’, in order to guard him.37 The sanctions and means of punishment which the authorities used in order to ensure that the shēkhs fulfilled their obligations included conscripting their sons into the army or holding them as hostages in order to ensure that the horsemen actually arrived as required. The son of one of the shēkhs of the was ordered to report to the army, but ran away, and the authorities looked for another relative to conscript, at the request of one of the shēkhs of the Hanādī. It was mainly the shēkhs who were punished for defections, for they were considered responsible for bringing the recruits to the army. In one of the letters to the müdür of al-Sharqiyya, he was told to muster the bedouin needed for military service, and release the shēkhs imprisoned for concealing men fit for service, on condition that they undertake to bring the required number of conscripts and surrender the deserters. In addition to imposing sanctions, the authorities supported the shēkhs who arrested defaulters and sent them to the army.38 This support was important in order to preserve the balance within the tribe and prevent violent clashes as a result of the surrender of defaulters.

Military service

175

Although the bedouin shēkhs pledged themselves to supply a stated number of men for military service, their power was limited. They were anxious to make such a commitment in order to obtain the promised reward, but many of the bedouin were far from keen to be conscripted, and it was not easy to persuade them to volunteer, although they received payment for service; they preferred to evade conscription or to desert. When a number of bedouin shēkhs in al-Beheirah province signed a petition claiming that they were unable to recruit men to the army, the authorities directed the müdür Hasan Bey to refuse to accept unsuitable recruits and to pay 150 qirsh only to those fit for service.39 maintains that the bedouin were eager to join the army, and that in 1825 there were 8,000 bedouin in the Pasha’s army, 3,000 from Upper Egypt, while in 1833 there were 5,370 bedouin in the army.40 Her claim is, however, proved false by the archival registers, which record many cases of defection. It may indeed be that there was some enthusiasm among them at an early stage, but it cooled off when it became clear how hard the conditions of service were. Bedouin from the Hanādī and fled to the provinces of al-Sharqiyya and al-Daqahliyya; the authorities prepared lists of defectors, and ordered the shēkhs to conduct investigations and surrender them. one of the shēkhs of the was asked to provide horsemen from among his tribesmen, but many of them refused to join the army and fled to al-Gharb (Tripoli), which was outside the area of Mehemet Ali’s rule. The authorities were forced to adopt methods of enticement, and sent letters to Tripoli promising salaries and monetary grants to those who joined up.41 The shēkhs found themselves between a rock and a hard place, and some of them preferred to conceal their tribesmen or help them flee in order not to spoil their relationships with various clans. In such cases the authorities adopted a harsher stance. of the who lived in east Atfeih, helped three men to evade army service, and looked after their livestock. The authorities gave him some time to surrender the fugitives; if he did not do so, he and his family would be executed.42 When deserters were caught they were imprisoned and given the alternative of returning to their cavalry unit or remaining in prison. The policy of imprisonment and punishment of deserters made the bedouin reluctant to employ their camels on work for the government for fear of arrest, and the nazιr-i kafile (officer in charge of convoys) was asked to deal with this problem. A certificate of rectitude was not a requisite for army service. Incarcerated criminals who were fit for service were sent to the jihadiyya instead of serving their sentences. An edict on this matter sent to the mutasallim of Gaza may be evidence of the difficulties caused by the mass desertion of fellahin at the time of the alSham campaign. These difficulties were also expressed in the extreme attitude towards the nazιrs who were responsible for assembling the recruits: negligence in the execution of their duty was punishable by death. Sanctions on payments due were imposed if orders were not carried out meticulously. undertook to recruit a hundred bedouin horsemen, but when they reported for duty it appeared that some of them were old, and some were fellahin. Consequently, the authorities decided to order Mahmud Effendi, the müdür of al-Wastaniyya (Middle Egypt) not to pay the shēkhs the emoluments due to them.43 Financial matters—wages, grants and various expenses paid to bedouin shēkhs and horsemen alike—constituted an important issue, which is documented extensively and in

The Pasha's Bedouin

176

detail. Monetary payment was the major attraction, and the shēkhs received money and grants even before they set out with their men to their appointed posts. The bedouin received payment from the day their names appeared in the lists of the jihadiyya. The wage of a volunteer bedouin horseman was 200–250 qirsh per month, but this varied from time to time. Bedouin volunteers for the jihadiyya received an advance. Those who fought in al-Sham and the Sudan received advances on their wages in cash for some months, according to the reckoning of the hazine, and the advances were deducted from their payment during their active service according to the lists sent by the hazine. Bedouin who brought their horses to Cairo on their way to their place of service were given travelling expenses, and those who came to Suez were given feed for their horses. If the dispatch of a group of bedouin to the front was cancelled, the authorities demanded the return of the travelling expenses they had received. Release from obligation to serve and permission to return home were conditional on the settlement of outstanding debts.44 The bedouin’s camels were one of the elements on which the Pasha’s new army was founded. As a result of the increase in the size of the army, its deployment in distant regions, and the campaigns in the Hejaz, Sudan and al-Sham, the army’s lines of supply were greatly extended. Therefore many camels were purchased both for riding in combatant units and for carrying equipment and supplies. Bedouin from the tribes of alFawāyed, and al-Hanādī carried military equipment and supplies of flour, samne, and wood to army camps.45 The government also hired camels from the bedouin, sometimes with their riders. The shēkhs of the tribe were responsible for mustering the camels required and delivering them to the authorities. A special government official, the kabīr al-jammālīn, was responsible for hiring camels from the bedouin and checking whether they were fit for military service. In point of fact, the cumbersome logistic system of the Pasha’s army was very largely dependent on the supply of camels by the bedouin, and the care afforded by bedouin experts to those on active service.46 The question of whether to transport the army and its equipment on camels hired from the bedouin, or to rely entirely on those that belonged to the government, was the subject of deep controversy among the officers, which led to a serious conflict. This was the subject of the quarrel between Colonel Salih Bey of the Third Cavalry Regiment and Süleyman Bey (the French officer, Colonel Sèves, not yet promoted to Pasha), who commanded an infantry regiment.47 The conflict was so serious that Mehemet Ali himself wrote to his son Ibrahim instructing him to look into it. Whether or not this was the real reason for the conflict, it was a serious issue fraught with uncertainty, because of the untrustworthiness of the bedouin. Very frequently the shēkhs did not fulfil their obligations to supply camels, and the logistic and operational capability of the army was affected. Functioning in the army: bedouin Cossacks The isolation of the soldiers in the military camps was enforced by a system of close supervision. From this point of view, the bedouin continued to play a decisive role in supervising the recruits after their transfer to the training camps. But, just as in the case of the village shēkhs, reliance on the bedouin was quite problematic. For instance, the and the Hawwāra bedouin, who guarded the forces that on his ill-starred campaign in the Sudan, frequently deserted accompanied and returned to their home territory. Moreover, the different tribes were continuously at

Military service

177

loggerheads; when they believed that they were not being treated equally by the authorities they rebelled and harassed the very provinces whose defence was the main task for which the government was employing them.48 Even at the time of the Sham campaign, when the whole of the military system was supposed to be in a state of maximum alert and discipline, the bedouin horsemen who were chosen to protect the rearguard of the army attacked and pillaged the villagers who came to watch the army. More important was the fact that some of the villagers were accustomed to give refuge to deserters, and not to surrender them to the authorities. In reaction to this, Clause 15 of the Qanun al-Fellaha, the compilation of regulations on matters of agriculture, states: If a fellah hides among the bedouin, if the bedouin who conceals him is young he shall be conscripted into the army, and if he is old he shall be sent to the liman prison for six months.49 It is ironic that the very bedouin who were employed by the government in order to help create a strictly disciplined army frequently proved to constitute a threat, and that the authorities were often constrained to use the army against certain tribes in order to bring them under control. There were other units, such as the baltaci ortas, which were supposed to perform this task, but they themselves were plagued by desertions, so that their employment for this purpose was not effective. There were also differences of opinion about the appropriate use of these units. The mobilization of bedouin to patrol the peripheries of training camps, military colleges and barracks proved to be inefficient, or problematic at the least, since it raised the seemingly paradoxical question of who would guard the guards. The authorities gradually came to the realization that they needed a system of inspection which would avoid the necessity of relying on bedouin patrols to capture deserters. The objective was first of all to fix the idea of confinement in military camps in the soldiers’ minds, and then to subject them to a supervisory regime under which obedience and discipline would seem natural and be put into practice. And, indeed, in May 1832, when Acre was conquered and the Egyptian soldiers deserted their units and plundered the civilians, Ahmed Bey, who had been appointed commander of the citadel of Acre, complained to Ibrahim Pasha. Instead of asking for bedouin units to catch the deserters, he suggested a simple and effective solution: two parades every day; absentees would be declared deserters, and suitably punished. Even so, units of bedouin horsemen continued to conduct patrols round training camps and barracks so as to prevent any possibility of desertion. According to Fahmy it seems that many of the soldiers were anxious to desert because of the gruelling conditions of battle, low standards of health, harsh terms of service, and many other factors. But the fellahin, who were the main part of the fighting force and who suffered the greatest proportion of casualties, left no written evidence of the conditions of their military service.50 We have only indirect circumstantial evidence from the official records. Many letters speak of the problem of desertion, of the urgent need for wool and blankets to protect the soldiers from cold, and the need for wood for the field kitchens. The bedouin were instructed to fulfil their obligations to seize and surrender deserters, and also to provide wool and wood for the soldiers.

The Pasha's Bedouin

178

The bedouin’s place in the deployment of the Pasha’s army at time of battle is the clearest indication of their real function in the fighting. All the descriptions of Ibrahim’s order of battle say that the irregular cavalry units stood at the ready in the rear of the main force. It seems that they were employed as reserves in case of need. But their traditional function in Mehemet Ali’s army would equally lead to the supposition that they were stationed there to catch deserters from the Egyptian army. When the battle began in earnest, many soldiers were trapped between the enemy facing them and those who were watching them from behind. Thus, the bedouin were not usually front-line fighters. This was because their skills were not suited to the tactical order of battle and methods of warfare of the ‘new army’. Moreover, they were not completely trusted, and were known to be unreliable in critical situations. But there were exceptional cases. The battle of Konya in December 1832 was one of Ibrahim Pasha’s greatest victories. In the middle of Anatolia, thousands of miles from home, in wintry weather, he succeeded in defeating an army three times bigger than his own. He made skilful tactical use of the forces at his disposal, coordinating his forces in a manner which emphasized his military ability. He deployed his forces in three columns, with the road from Koniya to Istanbul between them. In the first column he stationed two infantry battalions under a single commander. A few dozen metres behind them he put two more infantry battalions. His personal guard unit (Guardia), together with two cavalry battalions, was deployed about 100 metres behind the second column. Behind this third line he placed the irregular bedouin horsemen. Three artillery batteries were stationed along the length of the first line, two with the second and one behind the Guardia. A thousand bedouin horsemen took part in the battle. It was the bedouin who captured the serasker Rashid Pasha, the commander of the Ottoman army in this battle.51 In the eyes of foreign observers, including French and English military men who accompanied the Egyptian army’s campaigns in al-Sham and the Sudan, the bedouin in the Pasha’s army were like Cossacks.52 One of them reported that Ibrahim Pasha employed the bedouin as irregular mobile forces, like the Cossacks, and that this could be expected to determine the way they fought.53 The main military functions of the bedouin horsemen during the fighting were observation during an advance, pursuit of enemy forces, and the instigation of skirmishes in order to exhaust the enemy and keep him at a distance. They were considered to be adept at these tasks because of their mobility and speed, but primarily because they were not part of the regular army, had no training in the use of modern weapons, and were unfamiliar with the new military doctrine that the Pasha imposed on his army. The Pasha gave them an additional task: political and military activity among the tribes of conquered and disputed territory, aimed at persuading them to declare their allegiance to the Egyptian regime. In this way, he hoped to exploit their family ties, and the mental and cultural similarities between the tribes in the Hejaz, the Sudan and alSham and those who lived in Egypt. The bedouin in Mehemet Ali’s foreign wars Mehemet Ali waged a number of foreign campaigns in order to broaden the area of his rule beyond the boundaries of Egypt. In this work we shall not analyse the reasons for

Military service

179

these campaigns, nor describe the battles in detail.54 He did not employ the bedouin in all his foreign wars: only in those against the Wahabi in the Hejaz (1811/1226 to 1819/1235), in the Sudan (1820/1236 to 1822/1238) and in al-Sham (1831/1246 to 1841/1257). The number of bedouin in the Pasha’s army varied from time to time; for instance, in 1829 there were 15,000 bedouin in the Egyptian expeditionary force in the Hejaz, whereas only 5,000 participated in the first Syrian war.55 The Hejaz campaign Mehemet Ali’s campaign to subdue the Wahabi in Hejaz and other parts of the Arabian peninsula began in 1811. It was his longest military campaign, and went on until 1819. Two expeditionary forces participated in it, each under the command of one of Mehemet Ali’s two sons, Tusun Pasha and Ibrahim Pasha. Each of them mobilized a great many bedouin: some of them as horsemen to fight, to observe the course of the battle, to harass the enemy and capture deserters, others as camel-drivers, to transport equipment and supplies,56 and others again as paid labourers. One of the main tasks of the bedouin who accompanied the Egyptian expeditionary force was to work among the bedouin of the Arabian peninsula in order to deter them from hostile activity and persuade them to support the Egyptian regime. The Pasha exploited the family ties between subdivisions of tribes living in Egypt and the Hejaz.57 In Tusun Pasha’s expeditionary force to the Hejaz, which set out on 8 August 1811, there was a cavalry unit numbering 3,000 men, many of them bedouin.58 Tusun took with him head of the Shadīd clan and shēkh of the to contact the tribes in the Hejaz which had branches in Egypt, among them al-Abābda, Bilī,

al-Khamāysa,

al-Kawāmla,

Banī

Juhayna, and Muzēna. All of these lived in the vicinity of alWāsil, Madina or along the road to it, and it was important to win their allegiance in order to gain control of the holy cities. Bedouin of al-Fawāyed, and of alBahansa also took part in Tusun’s expeditionary force. Immediately after they landed at the port of the Egyptians made contact with the tribes in the vicinity and gave them gifts of money and robes of honour. The bedouin who accompanied the expeditionary force carried letters to the heads of the local tribes, and asked them to inform the more distant tribes of their content. also accompanied Tusun’s army, and was appointed supervisor of the bedouin who served in it.59 For the rest of the year he was şahbender-i tüccar in Mehemet Ali’s government. In this capacity he was responsible for dealing with bedouin caravans and for correspondence with them. The chronicler al-Jabarti, who observed his activities, said that he was also responsible for preserving order among all the bedouin tribes and clans; he controlled them firmly, using mediation, arbitration and material incentives as well as methods of intimidation and guidance suited to the nature and temperament of each of the groups.60 Tusun’s bedouin engaged in scouting and patrols along the Hajj route, and thereby facilitated the speedy progress of the Egyptian forces towards al-Medina. The military conquest was not easy, since the expeditionary force had to put down revolts of bedouin

The Pasha's Bedouin

180

tribes all along the way. Here is a contemporary description of Mehemet Ali’s tactics in relation to the bedouin during the Hejaz war: on the borders of After the capture of the rebel Tāmī, the emir of the Yemen, and the death of the emir of the Zaharān tribe, which had taken part in the rebellion, none of the leaders of the khawārij (the Wahabi) was prepared to rekindle the fire of revolt. Even so, soldiers were sent to Mecca, to and to other places which needed watching, special attention being paid to the preservation of order in all regions. Mehemet Ali again suggested that Tusun should begin to clear out the area round Najd, which lies between

(the capital of

the Wahabi) and al-Madina, so as to induce the Mtēr and and other tribes in the region to declare their allegiance. He preferred that Tusun Pasha should stay in al-Medina until soldiers with camels, artillery and ammunition arrived, so that he could begin the attack on 61

The dealings with the bedouin were apparently successful, and justified Tuson’s principal motive for enlisting so many bedouin in his army. The reports that many tribes transferred their support from the to the Egyptians confirm this; and Mehemet Ali informed the Sublime Porte accordingly. Tusun completed his mission in the Hejaz and returned to Cairo in November 1815. The second Hejaz campaign began when Ibrahim Pasha set out on 5 November 1816. His attitude to the bedouin was similar to Tusun’s. The bedouin who joined his expedition also helped to defeat the bedouin tribes in the Hejaz and transfer their allegiance to the Egyptian expeditionary force. The were his main supporters among the bedouin, and provided 6,000 camels to 62 transport his army to the port of al-Quseyr, whence they proceeded by sea to After defeating the Wahabi, Mehemet Ali created a local administration in the major settlements, with the aid of the tribes of the region and the tribesmen from Egypt. Bedouin who did not bring horses or camels to join the mounted units were sent to the Hejaz for various service duties, and were each paid. The Pasha was, however, forced to tackle a number of problems which persisted until the end of his rule in the region: continuous tribal revolts, such as that of the Yām in the Yemen in 1821, the rebellion of the emir of in 1823, and unrest and riots in the vicinity of al-Madina and in the Bayas region in 1838; difficulties in the provision of food and equipment to the expeditionary force which he left in the area; and desertions of soldiers and bedouin.63 It appears that among the deserters were bedouin who were themselves supposed to catch deserters, which shows that the bedouin were not a single uniform military unit, but belonged to different tribal groupings with varying interests and needs. The Pasha was in need of help from the bedouin in order to deal with these problems, and groups and units of bedouin, both cavalrymen and servicemen, continued to reach the Hejaz. In 1832 there apparently took place some events which required the urgent mobilization of a group of a thousand bedouin troops from al-Fawāyed, al-Jawāzī, and al-Hanādī tribes.

Military service

181

The first group, 100 in number, inhabitants of Middle Egypt from the Fawāyed tribe, were ready to leave in 1832 in response to the urgent request of the serasker, Ibrahim Pasha. Three months later the memur of Damanhur was asked to select 300 men fit for for the ‘serasker Pasha’, to appoint a commanding battle from among the officer for them and to give them travelling expenses. A month later Ahmad Pasha, the müdür of Middle Egypt provinces, was asked to send the remaining bedouin horsemen without delay to Ibrahim Pasha in the Hejaz. Even earlier 600 bedouin from those provinces reported to him and were given expenses for the journey to the entourage of Ahmad Pasha Yeghen, the governor of Mecca.64 Mehemet Ali kept a close watch on the number of bedouin horsemen posted to the Hejaz, and, despite the large number already stationed there, reinforced them with 800 ‘Süvari bedouin’, because of their exertions in the service of the expeditionary force. He also published an edict imposing the responsibility for fulfilling the bedouin’s one of the Hanādī assignments and keeping their accounts on left for the Hejaz can be deduced shēkhs then in the Hejaz. The date when from a communication sent from the khedivial divan to Kurd Hasan Agha, the delibaşι, Süleyman, his on the matter of the payment for the camels under the command of vekil, accompanied him to the Hejaz. It was decided to give them a monthly ration of coffee beans. Timur Agha, the governor of al-Sharqiyya, was informed of the decision. This was apparently done in order to preserve good relations with the Hanādī who lived in the province. A year after this the Pasha ordered an extension of appointment in the Hejaz. A letter from the divan to Hasan Effendi, the memur of al-Sharqiyya, stated that he would remain in order to supervise matters of ‘give and take’ with the bedouin, and special expenses.65 Mehemet Ali did his best to avoid friction with the bedouin in the Hejaz and to take care of their welfare, in order to prevent them from rebelling. When he learnt of acts of theft and banditry which took place in the course of a dispute between Ibn Mukhlif, the shēkh of the and Ibn Midyan, he ordered the mühafiz of Mecca to ensure that Ibn Mukhlif would return the property and camels that he had stolen from Ibn Midyan, since ‘we must be responsible for the bedouin tribes in order to win their hearts.’66 Abbas Pasha, who came to power in Egypt after the sudden death of Ibrahim Pasha, Mehemet Ali’s son, acted similarly. In a letter which he sent to the shēkh of the he wrote: There has been no enmity or hostile activity between us. We want you to know that we honour you and all the bedouin, and we must uphold your wishes so that we may be spoken of with honour. We would wish to maintain cooperation and friendship between us as with the other bedouin, and that is the object of this letter. We are sending you lamps as a gift to al-Madina and Haram al-Sharif, and wish you to ensure that they reach their goals in safety; and to you, too, we are sending gifts.67

The Pasha's Bedouin

182

The Sudan campaign In his first foreign campaign, in the Arabian peninsula, Mehemet Ali gained much experience of movement in the desert and dealings with the indigenous bedouin tribes. The Egyptian scholar Makkī Shubēka maintains that he profited from his experience in the Hejaz campaign, including his failures, and explained to his friend and military adviser Mehemet Bey Lazughli the basic principles according to which he intended to prepare his expeditionary force and set out to the Sudan, at its head.68 In view of the lessons of the Hejaz war he included many more bedouin units in the expeditionary force also which set out for the Sudan, all mentioned in the relevant records. mentions the Jahama and the Hanādī.69 Bedouin of the Juhēna and the Hawwāra tribes also joined the Egyptian expeditionary force to the Sudan, because, among other reasons, some sections of their tribes which had left Egypt in the past lived there.70 Mehemet Ali depended to a great extent on horsemen from among the mainly because of their considerable knowledge of the trade routes and other roads and found it convenient to work with them, and thoroughfares in the Sudan. horsemen, whose numbers reached 900. This was expressed in often asked for a letter to Ibrahim Pasha from Assiut: You should know that 600 have been posted to the entourage of and have been sent with him. There is an obligation to post another 300 horsemen to the entourage of Mehemet Bey the Defterdar to accompany him; so when he reaches you, you must order Mulla Hüseyin, the mühafiz of Qena, to organize the recruitment of 300 and appoint one or two of their most outstanding shēkhs to be responsible for them. You must carry this out in the best possible way.71 The supplied camels to the Egyptian expeditionary force, and also carried grain and equipment on their camels from Egypt to the Sudan. One of the was one of the biggest suppliers of camels during the year of 1821. Mulla Hüseyin, the mühafiz of Qena in Upper Egypt, who was also responsible for Wadi Halfa in the Sudan, negotiated with him for the hire of camels to transport 5,800 irdabb of grain from the granary in Aswan. They also discussed the which had been killed in battle in the service of the payment for camels of the Egyptian army in the Sudan. In the course of that year there were 3,000 camels in the service of the Egyptian army in the Sudan, and 50 of them belonged to 72

Mahmud Effendi, the mühafiz of al-Quseir, who was made through hiring of camels from the also took part in the negotiations. The announcement of his appointment, sent as an instruction to Ahmad Pasha, the mutasarrif of Girga, said: responsible

for

the

Military service

183

We have informed you that Mahmud Effendi, mühafiz of al-Quseir, has been appointed responsible for hiring from the through camels required for the infantry and cavalry in the regions of Danqala and Barbara [the Sudan]. The camels required for the transport of grain and other assignments from the area of the Aswan falls and the Wadi Halfa falls will be hired from the fellahin of the villages of Asna and Aswan, through the services of kâshif of Asna; he has already acquired 1,400 camels from the fellahin of Asna and Aswan, among them forty assigned to the transport of ammunition.73 The importance of camels can be seen in the correspondence, in which there are urgent demands for the camels to be supplied in time, and that they should be fit for their assignments. The degree to which the army was dependent on the supply of camels also became evident when it was impossible to transport grain from the granaries without the bedouin’s camels. When the owners were not paid on time, they simply took their camels and left. The Hawwāra bedouin contributed much to the campaign as a result of their great experience of warfare. Their shēkhs volunteered for service, and asked Mehemet Ali to establish military units of the Hawwāra to serve in the Sudan, as can be seen in this letter from the Pasha to the kethüda Bey: has made a request stating that, since he has served on various missions in the Sudan, and is capable of managing and commanding soldiers, he asks for permission to command a unit of 400 Hawwārī for such missions. At the time when this request was made one of the men of the hâkim of Sinar arrived with a request to send horsemen. When he was ordered to go to Sinar, he accepted full responsibility. As a result he has been sent to you to receive a robe of honour, on condition that within a short time he assembles the 400 Hawwārī whom he intends to recruit, completes all the preparations for the journey, and brings them to the appointed spot. You must help him to complete his complement of soldiers, and make this clear to them in the near future.74 In the Sudan, as in Mehemet Ali’s other foreign campaigns, the bedouin were employed as experts on the desert regions, and their leaders built up contacts with the heads of the Sudanese desert tribes, and persuaded them to transfer their allegiance to Egypt.75 The bedouin used their camels to transport equipment and other necessities to the Egyptian forces in the Sudan during the war, to bring slaves from the Kordofan area, and to carry the postal convoy of Mehemet Bey the Defterdar.76 They were employed to fight rebellious tribes and to deal with incidents involving local tribes. The revolt of the Shāyqa bedouin in October 1820 led to the intervention of many bedouin horsemen. The Shāyqa attacked the village of Najib, and three sub-tribes (badans) of horsemen went out took with him 120 horsemen, Ahmad Agha, the head of the against them. took 110; they were joined by tüfekçiye (carabineers) took 150, and

The Pasha's Bedouin

184

250 horsemen of the ‘Gharb Bedouin’, and 350 of the The amount of fodder allocated to the horsemen and their mounts was proportionately great: 12,000 irdabb of oats, 5,000 of beans and 7,500 of crushed beans for the camels. In the ensuing battle, at Qarta, on the border between al-Shāyqiyya and Danqala, 12 of the Gharb horsemen were killed.77 The shēkhs who had recruited the fighters from the tribes headed the mounted tribal units. If the shēkh was old and unfit he sent one of his sons in his place with the men. of the Fawāyed did this: he sent his son Muhammad in his place to join army. Muhammad died in the Sudan, and his father wrote to Mehemet Ali asking him to bring his son’s wife and effects back to Egypt. Kīshār, the second son of Shēkh Alawān, asked to command a squadron of horsemen from his tribe in his Before he left for brother’s place, and the Pasha granted his request in a letter to the Sudan to lead his tribesmen the Pasha gave him a grant of 1,500 qirsh, and gave orders to provide him with camels for the journey.78 The Pasha was in need of bedouin in the first stages of the Sudan campaign, and, therefore, promised high wages to all those ready to join the army. He even paid them six months’ wages in advance. Shēkh Salīm al-Bāsil of the Jawāzī received 4,000 qirsh shortly before leaving for the Sudan to join the expeditionary force. Following this, Khalil Bey, the hâkim of the Middle Egypt provinces, was ordered to pay Shēkh Muhammad Ibn Lasīsa of the and of the Fawāyed on their leaving for the Sudan. The shēkhs of the Fawayed received especially high payments immediately on their return from their assignments in the Sudan. In 1820/1, when the Gharb bedouin were about to leave for the Sudan with Mehemet Bey the Defterdar, Mehemet Ali ordered his officials to speed up the payment of the salaries of the bedouin leaving with the expeditionary force. Similarly, in the case of Shēkh Khērallah, one of the shēkhs of the and his men, who also accompanied the Defterdar, he ordered the governor of al-Beheirah, the home province of the to send them immediately the remaining half of the Fawayed to the shēkh. The bedouin shēkhs also received financial guarantees for the amounts fixed for them and their men on their leaving for the Sudan, and orders were given to the provincial governors to honour them with all speed. Such an order was sent by the memur of the divan to Khalil Bey, concerning the payment of the amount fixed and the and the Fawāyed who honouring of the guarantees given to the shēkhs of the 79 were to set out for the Sudan with In the final resort it was the shēkhs who profited from most of the salaries and grants, which they received for the men they recruited. Consequently, the tribesmen evaded army service; a number of instances of this during the Sudan campaign are documented. Mehemet Ali wrote of such a case in a letter to the hâkim of the Middle Egypt provinces. Shēkh Ghadiyān, a shēkh of the had sent him a letter complaining that some of his tribesmen, who opposed him because they had been chosen to go to the Sudan with expeditionary force, had escaped to the and, together with them, attacked his orchard and damaged it.80

Military service

185

Even after they had reached the Sudan in army, many of the bedouin continued to be refractory, and returned to Egypt. This can be seen in the following letter to the kâshif of al-Beheirah: In the matter of the Gharb bedouin who were attached to the entourage of and went with him to the Sudan, it must be said that they deserted disgracefully, as their nature dictates. They have reached the border of al-Beheirah and are encamped there. It is the intention of the Pasha’s edict and firman that, however many of them there may be, information about them be collected, and that they should all be arrested in the places where they are to be found.81 Mehemet Ali demanded that harsh measures be taken against these bedouin, and attempted to use methods of intimidation in order to prevent desertions. He believed that their inclination to desert despite the rewards they had received was an ingrained and despicable natural attribute of theirs. The Magharba bedouin of al-Gharb, were among the most restless tribes; they were more nomadic, and often committed raids on villages and urban districts. Despite this, 400 horsemen of the Magharba served in the Pasha’s expeditionary force.82 Mehemet Ali also considered that the rebelliousness of the tribes was the result of war fatigue and their inherent tendency to move from place to place. He therefore tried to relieve them with other, more highly motivated, bedouin. This can be seen in his letter to his kethüda Bey, in which he asked him to recruit 200 bedouin of the Jawāzī, al-Jahama, al-Fawāyed, and and appoint a delibaşι to take command of them, in order to relieve the exhausted bedouin in Kordofan.83 The war in al-Shām Mehemet Ali showed an interest in the province of al-Shām84 at an early stage in his career. As early as 1810 he intervened in a dispute between the vali of Sidon and the vali of Damascus, the governors of the two administrative districts of the province. He several times asked the Sublime Porte to grant him authority over the vilayet of Damascus, in addition to Egypt, and from the early 1820s began to build up a strong military force in preparation for a possible invasion of al-Shām. Because of his special interest in al-Shām, and his involvement in many of the region’s internal affairs, from the early years of his rule Mehemet Ali was concerned with the security of transport and defence of the ‘al-Shām road’, the route through north Sinai to El-Arish and Gaza. His operations were based on the bedouin. In 1828 he brought some al-Hanādī bedouin from al-Sharqiyya to guard the road to El-Arish.85 His son Ibrahim concentrated forces in the Gaza region, and bedouin assisted him to transport equipment and supplies. In 1829 he mobilized 300 camels from the Juhēna, and tribes in order to carry equipment and supplies to his forces in Gaza, which by then comprised three regiments. Following this, he ensured the submission and obedience of the to prevent their participation in hostilities on the al-Shām road.86

The Pasha's Bedouin

186

In al-Shām the Pasha recruited and employed many Hanādī bedouin; they were the had been in the Sudan. The main cornerstone of his bedouin forces, just as the reason for this was that one of the clans of this tribe had settled in the Gaza region after the retreat of the French, particularly under the rule of Mehemet Agha (nicknamed Abu Nabut) who was governor of Gaza from 1807 to 1818. During this period Mūsa Agha, the head of al-Hāsī clan of the Hanādī, from al-Fayyum, also came to Gaza, as the result of a blood feud.87 In the first instance Mūsa al-Hāsī settled in the region under the protection of the who had come to the region many years of earlier, and was considered to be a local dignitary. Later, he was appointed Hawwāra başı (commander of a unit of ‘Hawwāra’ horsemen), under Süleyman Pasha, the vali of Sidon, He was killed at the end of the 1820s.88 His son and of his successor, succeeded him and was made agha in the service of Egyptian siege of Acre, however,

During the

and his tribesmen defected to the Egyptians. But

and his group participated in a revolt the honeymoon did not last long, and in 1829 of the fellahin and bedouin throughout the region west of the Jordan.89 In April 1832, one of the Hanādī shēkhs who was serving in the Egyptian expeditionary force asked Ibrahim Pasha to agree that he and his tribesmen should migrate from al-Sharqiyya to the Gaza region, where the Hāsī clan had already settled. He suggested that he should join the defences of the city against the surrounding bedouin. In July Ibrahim Pasha decided in and his clan to settle in the region, in the favour of the idea, and permitted hope of curbing the bedouin’s incursions. Ibrahim Pasha also encouraged settlement of the Hanādī in Huj and Tel al-Hasi.90 In 1831 an Egyptian expeditionary force invaded the paşalik of Sidon and the vilayet of Damascus. During 1832 the conquest of ‘southern Syria’ (Palestine) was completed. The new regime began to set up an administration. One of the problems it had to deal with was that of internal security. The policy of Ibrahim Pasha, the commander of the Egyptian expeditionary force, was to restrain the bedouin tribes and defend the fellahin in insecure areas such as the Jordan valley, Galilee and Mount Lebanon. For this purpose he mobilized loyal bedouin, among them al-Hanādī, in Egypt. Contemporary sources mention that the Hanādī bedouin were active in Galilee and the Aleppo (Halab) region, and that their role was to protect the fellahin and the permanent settlers of the region.91 Throughout the period of the Egyptian conquest of al-Shām, Ibrahim Pasha continued to recruit bedouin, primarily because of the great number of desertions. There is a vast amount of correspondence on this subject between the Pasha and his son Ibrahim, who was commander-in-chief (serasker) of the Egyptian expeditionary force during the whole period. The letters attest to a great measure of cooperation between Ibrahim Pasha and his father. Ibrahim sent very many requests to mobilize bedouin horsemen and fighters, and Mehemet Ali sent orders to the provincial governors to carry them out. The senior bedouin shēkhs were given responsibility for mobilizing horsemen and camels for the Egyptian expeditionary force during the campaign, and this is well documented. The shēkhs generally agreed to the requests of the authorities, and undertook to provide horsemen from their own tribes. Their chief motivation was economic; as has been remarked above, they received monetary payments and other benefits, and enhanced their political and social status both within their own tribes and in the eyes of the authorities. On the other hand, some shēkhs gave refuge to deserters, or

Military service

187

sent men unfit for combat, and were punished by imprisonment. This was the case of the the müdür of al-Sharqiyya, summoned in Hanādī shēkhs whom order to press them to surrender deserters. The shēkhs were also imprisoned because they gave refuge to men fit for military service.92 The advance of the Egyptian army in the direction of al-Shām encountered resistance from the beginning, mainly from the bedouin tribes in the Gaza region.93 Ibrahim Pasha was particularly concerned to suppress their resistance, since Gaza was on the Egyptian army’s principal supply route. In other areas, too, roads and settlements had to be guarded, and here again the Hanadi were given the task of defence. In November 1831 they were sent to join the forces that guarded the Nazareth-Tiberias road and (the valley). In the course of 1832, in the wake of a state of alarm in the Gaza region, hundreds of bedouin horsemen were mobilized to reinforce the area. In February Ibrahim sent an urgent demand for reinforcements of infantry and horsemen;94 in April the memur of qism Damenhur received an order to summon immediately one of the sons of the shēkh of the with 100 horsemen commanded by a kebir, to administer the oath immediately on their arrival, and to send them to Acre with all speed; in May, the Pasha demanded of Jabālī Huseyin, the shēkh of the of Mugarrib the shēkh of the Fawāyed, and of the shēkh of the Hanādī al-Gharb, that they recruit 700 horsemen, assign a commanding officer to them, and send them to join the army in Acre.95 the shēkh of the was ordered to mobilize 100 horsemen from his tribe, under the command of his son. A month later, 400 bedouin horsemen from the region of Kardasa, in al-Giza province, and 300 of the were mobilized, in addition to 1000 from Upper Egypt; they were all sent to Ibrahim Pasha, commander of the expeditionary force in al-Shām. In July 1832, Ahmad Pasha, the müdür of al-Aqalim al-Wasta and memur of Damanhur, was asked to choose 600 horsemen from among the bedouin of his province and attach them to the 650 whom they wanted to recruit. In November, the same Ahmad Pasha was ordered to mobilize another 300 horsemen from among the Jawāzī and the Fawāyed (in the same region), and send them to the serasker in al-Shām. He was told to ensure that there were no fellahin among them—only bedouin—and to ascertain precisely to which groups or tribes they belonged.96 The authorities were well aware of the desertions of the fellahin. Many of them hid among the bedouin. In the same month, Ibrahim decided to agree to the request of the Hanādī, from al-Sharqiyya, to settle with his people in the of vicinity of Gaza, in order to deal with the continual attacks by bedouin who lived The shēkhs undertook to restrain the between Gaza and what is now incursions of the local bedouin.97 1834 was marked by the spread of revolts by fellahin and bedouin in all the areas west of the Jordan. Gaza was still a vulnerable spot. Bedouin tribes of the Negev and the Gaza region, such as the Wuhēdāt and the Jabārāt, took advantage of the weakness of the Egyptian forces, which were composed of a weakened mounted regiment and a few hundred irregular bedouin horsemen, and reached the outskirts of the city. In June, Mehemet Ali decided to set out for Jaffa at the head of reinforcements consisting of 500 to put down the Gaza bedouin. soldiers, and to send 200 horsemen of the

The Pasha's Bedouin

188

During the same month the shēkhs of the and the undertook to mobilize 250 horsemen; their leaders, Shēkh Hindāwī and volunteered to go to Gaza themselves. Every rider received 500 qirsh. Part of this force, which included the first and the fourth regiment, travelled by sea. In July, however, the Pasha decided, for reasons which are unclear, that horsemen should stay in Cairo. Nonetheless, he ordered Hasan Bey althe Shamashirji, the commander of another bedouin unit in El-Arish, not to return to Egypt.98 In October/November 1834 several shēkhs reported to him that they had horsemen ready to leave for al-Shām: the shēkh of the Zāwiya, undertook to recruit 500 horsemen and appoint a man to command them, but apparently failed to fulfil his promise; one of the Awlād Sulēmān shēkhs, announced that there were 500 horsemen in his tribe. Hasan Effendi, the müdür of al-Beheirah, was ordered to tell them to go to al-Shām, but on condition that they were all bedouin, and that there were no fellahin among them. A similar condition was imposed on from the same tribe. one of the Jahama shēkhs, proposed to set out with 100 horsemen to from al-Qalyubiyya proposed to take 50 horsemen, as did another shēkh of the Awlād Sulēmān. All of them were told to bring only young bedouin, with no fellahin among them. The horsemen of the Jawāzī tribe were also incorporated into a cavalry unit, headed by Since there were many who refused to enlist, the shēkhs continued to try to recruit men who were unfit for battle, for fear of losing the payments due to them. The Pasha gave orders, therefore, not to receive bedouin shēkhs who reported with men who did not meet the criteria for military service. The shēkhs also tried to interfere in operational military matters, and to control the movements of their cavalry units. When the shēkh of the Fawāyed, attempted to do this, the Pasha wrote to Khalil Effendi, the müdür of the First Half of the Middle Egypt provinces, saying that ‘the Serasker Pasha is the only person responsible for military matters in Bar al-Sham, and has the authority to appoint officers’.99 Ibrahim continued to rely on his father for the recruitment of additional bedouin horsemen. One of the edicts issued by the Pasha at his son’s request said: [A communication] on the matter of the horsemen required from the tribes of al-Jawāzī, al-Fawāyed, Awlād Sulēmān and on the basis of the request of his highness the serasker from sums of money to be paid in advance, the dispatch of letters to the bedouin shēkhs so that they may come to receive the money, and the number of soldiers required, so that they may receive the money at the beginning of the month of Ramadan.’100 Ibrahim Pasha made an arrangement with the shēkhs of the above tribes whereby he would receive 300 horsemen from the Jawāzī, 150 each from the Fawāyed,

Military service

189

and 100 from the and 200 from the ‘new tribe’, the Awlād Sulēmān: 1,050 horsemen in all. Ibrahim asked that payment for the horsemen should be made as soon as possible. In March 1839, Mehemet Ali informed his son that he had organized a force of 300 bedouin horsemen from the Jawāzī, the and the Jahama, and that he would recruit a further 300, as Ibrahim had requested. But meanwhile the situation had changed, and Ibrahim asked his father to release 150 horsemen who had already been recruited.101 As has been remarked, the bedouin who served in the expeditionary force created special problems. The most serious was that of desertion. Many of the Hanādī bedouin deserted, and returned to their villages in al-Sharqiyya and al-Mansura. The extent of this phenomenon, and of their recruitment, may be seen from an edict sent to the bedouin shēkhs directing them to check the lists of horsemen in all the province of al-Shām, since many had deserted, and action to bring them back was imperative. The edict was sent to of the following shēkhs: Hindāwī Abū Dhahab of the the of the Hanādī; of the Jawāzī; of the Fawāyed; shēkhs of the Furējāt; Huseyin al-Jabālī of the 102 and the shēkhs of the Tamīm and the Ibrahim Bey, the emir of the cavalry division, described the phenomenon of desertion well in a letter to the consultative council for military affairs (Shura al-Jihadiyya): The soldiers, some of whom were in al-Shām, have fled to their pastureland and dispersed, for there is no supervision over them. True, somebody has been sent to try to take them back, but it is to be feared that the bedouin will disobey his orders, so as to defend their comrades, or that [even worse] they will strip them naked and send them packing. The Shura decided to demand that the bedouin shēkhs of El-Arish arrest the deserters, and to inform the deputies (vekils) of these shēkhs, who were living in Cairo, of this decision.103 The many demands made on the army authorities by the bedouin constituted another important issue. In reply to a request by the bedouin for additional tents, Mehemet Ali wrote: ‘Remind them that Mehemet Ali went to al-Shām without tents, and that Ibrahim Pasha, too, is still there without tents’. Exaggerated demands led to a decision to bring back a group of horsemen who were already half-way to Jaffa.104 Another problem with which the Egyptians had to cope throughout the period of the conquest of al-Shām was the defence of the long supply route, the al-Shām road, against the raids of the ‘Gaza bedouin’, as they are called in the documents. These were tribes of the Negev region, who often raided the supply convoys. The Hanādī bedouin and units of the Hawwāra continued to execute this assignment, and also to carry grain and other cereal along the road. The bedouin also continued to transport supplies along the lines of retreat of the Egyptian army. After the fall of Acre, Ibrahim Pasha directed that bedouin should be sent to bring the grain from Gaza to El-Arish. The Egyptian command wanted to conceal the fact that Acre had fallen, in order to avoid riots and attempts to take plunder along the line of retreat. They were particularly concerned that the bedouin might begin to raid the

The Pasha's Bedouin

190

retreating army, and take advantage of the confusion in order to raid the villages along the road. Therefore the serasker ordered the speedy return of the bedouin horsemen to Egypt, and that documents concerning the events of the war should not fall into their hands.105 Conclusion and others—believe that Certain scholars— Mehemet Ali recruited bedouin to his new army as part of his policy of sedentarization of the bedouin, in order to tie them down and transform them into an obedient agricultural population. This is to a great degree an oversimplification. I have discovered only one document connecting military service with any type of settlement—an instruction from the Council of Civil Affairs to Hasan Bey, the müdür of al-Qaliubiyya, to allocate an area the Hawwara başι in of half a faddān of alfalfa to each of the soldiers of this province.106 The migration and settlement of the Hanādī in the Gaza region took place at the initiative of the bedouin themselves. Ibrahim Pasha approved of their settlement, and later encouraged it, for practical reasons connected with the al-Shām campaign. Mehemet Ali needed the bedouin because of the special skills which he discerned in them: natural warlike attributes which underlay the social organization of the tribes, ability to find their way in the desert areas where most of the fighting took place, mobility, ability to create links with local bedouin populations and persuade them to support the Egyptian regime, and ability to supply the camels and horses which the army needed in order to transport equipment and food over the long supply lines which the Pasha was forced to create for tactical and strategic reasons. The bedouin also constituted a solution to the problem of the desertion of the fellahin, whom they captured in the course of their army service. Moreover, the Pasha saw that by recruiting them he acquired a further means of surveillance and control over their shēkhs, in addition to the grants of land which he gave them. The main motive of the bedouin for joining the army was economic. The shēkhs received generous payments for the horsemen whom they provided, and the soldiers themselves received money and fodder for their animals; and in the course of the campaigns they were able to attack and plunder other tribes as well as the enemy. There is no evidence that the mobilization of the bedouin resulted in their permanent settlement. The only exceptions were those in which groups of bedouin of the Hawwāra and the Hanādī stayed in al-Shām after the Egyptian retreat. Over the years they lost their tribal identity, and became assimilated into the local village sector.

Conclusion As early as the eighteenth century, there had crystallized a bedouin tribal elite composed of heads of tribes (shēkhs) recognized by the authorities, heads of clans and heads of other descent groups. The main reasons for this phenomenon were their possession of lands and their integration in the Egyptian-Ottoman local administration, primarily in rural districts. Already at that stage the principal source of their power was ownership and control of land, mainly as tax farmers (multazims). It is true that ever since the the independent ruler of second half of the eighteenth century, when Egypt, succeeded in subduing the chiefships of the Hawwāra in Upper Egypt and the Habaiba in Lower Egypt, they never succeeded in regaining the same degree of power and influence as they had previously possessed; but this did not prevent the shēkhs and bedouin dignitaries from holding key economic and administrative positions based on their status as tax farmers and allies of the rival Ottoman-Egyptian households and factions of the beys. Thus, they retained their lands and their wealth, and continued to enjoy a certain degree of influence, particularly in the border zones and rural areas. The attempt of Ali Bey, nicknamed Bulut Kapan (‘the cloud-catcher’) because of his overweening personal ambition, to achieve the leadership of an independent Egypt was frustrated by his rival beys and emirs, which strengthened the position of the tribal chiefs. The rival Ottoman-Egyptian factions courted them even more assiduously, and attempted to recruit them and their groups as allies in the struggles between the factions and in the contest for the leadership of Egypt which stemmed from the weakness of the Pasha nominated by the Sublime Porte. Thus, the bedouin continued to be both the chief suppliers of camels, war-horses and cavalrymen and a significant factor in the control of commercial and transport routes. With death in 1773 the political situation in Egypt deteriorated, and continued to do so until the French invasion of 1798. The bedouin chiefs again became an influential factor in the power struggle between the Ottoman-Egyptian factions. Their power was mainly concentrated in Upper Egypt The French invasion drove most of the beys and emirs from Cairo southwards towards where some of them found refuge with the bedouin, their traditional allies and the an eminently hospitable community. Ibrahim Bey, Murad Bey and Mehemet Bey al-Alfi, who were among the most prominent political leaders in Egypt at that time, recruited tribal groups to assist them in their wars against their rivals. Thus, the way was laid open for another contender for power to gain control over the agricultural and industrial resources of Egypt. This was the Albanian, Mehemet Ali, a military and political adventurer, who eventually succeeded where had failed. The bedouin exploited to the full the political uncertainty that followed the French retreat in 1801. Their leaders cooperated with the three leading personalities, particularly with al-Alfi, and continued to do so even after it became clear that Mehemet Ali was on

The Pasha's Bedouin

192

the way to leadership. The struggle for power brought about changes in the OttomanEgyptian elite. Al-Alfi excluded Mehemet Ali from the leadership and created an army of his own even before the French had retreated from their battle-lines, and bedouin shēkhs and their men joined this army. Fortunately for Mehemet Ali, however, al-Alfi died in 1807. When Mehemet Ali finally attained power, in 1805, the bedouin chiefs found themselves in a new situation. From the very beginning of his rule it became clear that he was a strong and determined ruler, who dealt firmly with centres of opposition. At first, the bedouin were not thought to be a particularly dangerous element, since they were not a crystallized force and the tribes did not cooperate with each other. But Mehemet Ali soon came to appreciate the strength of the great bedouin confederations such as the with its tutelage and influence over the small tribes of North African origin in the Western Desert, and the Hanādī, also of North African descent. These groups were in continuous conflict, and the Pasha decided to intervene and separate them, thereby establishing control over them. Until the elimination of the of the Ottoman-Egyptian beys and emirs in 1811/ 12, the bedouin were still an element to be reckoned with, and they played an active part in the struggle of the emirs against the Pasha. After the massacre in the citadel of Cairo, for the first time in the tribal history of Egypt the bedouin had no allies and no military option. They were left face-to-face with the centralistic regime created by the Pasha, and ceased to be relevant to Egyptian politics. Between 1820 and 1860 a number of revolts of villagers took place. They were mainly the result of high taxation, and resulted in the abandonment of village lands and agriculture. In the course of the revolts, bedouin perpetrated acts of destruction and pillage, and it seemed as if they had once again become a significant social and political factor. But Mehemet Ali suppressed them with the aid of other bedouin tribes, and thus prevented any threat to the stability of the regime. The question of whether under Mehemet Ali’s rule there existed tribal frameworks classifiable as chiefships, or any form of tribal autonomy, is of some importance. According to our sources, during this period several prominent shēkhs possessed broad areas of land and were responsible for rural areas, fought together with their horsemen in Mehemet Ali’s foreign wars, and were involved in a variety of economic activities. But none of them headed an autonomous political tribal entity, for Mehemet Ali’s centralized regime did not permit the development of such organizations. Nonetheless, we must take into account that the picture we possess is distorted to a certain degree. The official documentations contain many descriptions of rebelliousness, lawlessness, participation in acts of banditry and raids on the part of bedouin tribes. The frequent mention of these incidents is evidence of the authorities’ negative and suspicious attitude to the bedouin; perhaps they were, in fact, expressions of self-government. However, there is in these documents no indication of the existence of confederations with an internal hierarchy, administrative machinery, division of powers, an independent military force, or any other criterion appropriate to an independent tribal entity. As has been said, the the Hanādī, and, to a lesser degree, the were great tribal confederations in the Sharqiyya and Gharbiyya provinces on the eastern and western borders of Egypt; but they were not like the chiefships of the second half of the eighteenth century. The organization

Conclusion

193

was not headed by a chief; instead, there were several shēkhs who were heads of clans, approved by the authorities. Mehemet Ali and over them a ‘shēkh of the shēkhs’ or fostered the leaders of the dominant clans and brought them into his administration, and all their activities were, in effect, undertaken under his sponsorship or with his knowledge. It may be assumed that the existing confederative tribal units functioned as territorial organizations, acting in defence of their tribal territory. Moreover, in certain areas they protected farming villages from damage by other tribes, or supervised them by virtue of the shēkhs’ responsibility for levying land taxes. Such was the case in the oasis of Siwa, which was controlled by the even after the authorities had set up a local administration. The tribal elite became established during Mehemet Ali’s rule as the result of events in which the bedouin were deeply involved on three main levels: (a) The central events which influenced the period. The tribal leaders played an active part in the struggle for the control of Egypt after the end of the French invasion, in alliance with the rival beys. In the early years of Mehemet Ali’s rule, until the elimination of the beys in 1811, the bedouin and their leaders were active allies of the Ottoman-Egyptian beys. They participated in Mehemet Ali’s foreign wars—the Hejaz campaign, the conquest of the Sudan, and the two Syrian wars. The shēkhs supplied most of the horsemen in the irregular units, whose chief task was to attack the retreating Ottomans from the rear, to capture the many conscript fellahin who deserted, and to put down the revolts of other bedouin tribes, particularly in the Hejaz and al-Shām. They were a major factor in the suppression of the revolts of Egyptian fellahin and the abandoning of their farms as a result of oppressive taxation. (b) Cooperation with the authorities. This took place on several levels. Mehemet Ali needed the services of the tribal chiefs for his new army. He discovered what the beys and other leaders of the Ottoman-Egyptian factions had known in previous centuries, that only the bedouin could supply horses and highly skilled cavalrymen. He offered them a special role; and, in fact, they supplied the army with horses and camels. He ordered the shēkhs to recruit horsemen for him, and promised them a monetary reward. The shēkhs provided watchmen for the sites of his public works projects in rural areas, such as digging irrigation canals, building roads, etc. Thus, the shēkhs strengthened their position both within their tribes and vis-à-vis the authorities. The bedouin leaders were also dominant in the supply of certain products in which they specialized, such as wool, charcoal and wood, to the army; they also transported grain to the Egyptian ports. The more Mehemet Ali became dependent on their participation in his army and on their cooperation, the stronger their standing became. As soldiers, the bedouin were not highly motivated. They speedily answered their shēkhs’ call and reported for duty with their horses and rifles, but they also left the field speedily when the state of the battle was not to their liking. Moreover, they generally left behind them animals and farmland which had to be looked after. Therefore, they often deserted from the army or watch during periods of grazing, seedtime or harvest, when it was important that the head of the family should be present during the migration of the herds and in order to make decisions of importance for their economic future. They were also troubled by unresolved conflicts which they had left behind them. According to the custom of tribal society, a man involved in a conflict had to deal with the problem personally;

The Pasha's Bedouin

194

otherwise the conflict might escalate in his absence, and involve the whole of his co-liable group. Therefore many deserted even at critical moments in the battle in order to deal with conflicts and prevent them spreading. Many letters were sent to the Pasha in Cairo or Alexandria from the different fronts on the subject of the bedouin’s desertions; they included requests to press the shēkhs to find and arrest the deserters, or to send other soldiers and watchmen in their place. This shows that the military commanders were extremely concerned about this question. It was particularly troublesome on the al-Shām front. The links between the tribes and the state were based on co-existence within a complex relationship. The state does not usually abolish tribal values: it simply sets its own values above those of the tribes, and the state apparatus above the tribal groupings; in this way there are created complex mutual relationships between the state and a society undergoing a continuous process of change but still retaining its tribal values. This was so in the case we are discussing. Tribalism and the centralism of Mehemet Ali co-existed at the social, economic, political and personal levels of power relations. In other words, there was a dialectical element in both tribal and political situations alike, in that the bedouin were helped by the state, but also did it harm. This relationship enabled them to cooperate with the central regime. The heads of the tribes were absorbed into the administration at a rank and function almost identical with that of a shēkh albalad and some of them were appointed to the post of a governor of a district, thereby strengthening their standing in the region and the tribe. The tribes clearly constituted a factor which maintained its strength by exploiting the state apparatus, and even served to preserve the equilibrium between the mercantile and agricultural sectors. (c) Struggles in other centres of power. The elite of the shēkhs emerged from these struggles stronger and more united. Until Mehemet Ali’s elimination of the beys in 1811, the relationship between bedouin and the beys was one of rivalry, conflict and competition, even though they shared a long history of cooperation. In the OttomanEgyptian elite the bedouin found convenient allies against the central regime. On the other hand, they competed with them for the same resources—control of the villages, control of territory and trade routes, and the like. Mehemet Ali increased the bedouin’s dependence on his regime by the elimination of the beys, who were the only real alternative to central government, local government or cooperation in the exploitation of economic resources. A similar contest, with elements of conflict and competition, took place between bedouin and the fellahin over natural resources—agricultural land, pasture-land, and water. Such struggles take place in areas on the borders of the desert at different historical periods and in different places, including Egypt, whose border areas were the scene of clashes between the tribes and the settled population. The border areas of Egypt were always far from the centres of power and from the great cities. They were marginal territories, along the borders of the Ottoman province of Egypt and also along the borders of the cultivated agricultural lands the length of the Nile. Because of their demographic growth and the scarcity of resources in their home territories, the bedouin aspired to improve their economic condition by expanding into areas where there were economic resources in plenty, and settling there. This is a centrifugal process whereby groups of nomads leave

Conclusion

195

their places of origin, and penetrate unknown, and sometimes uninhabited, border areas. In certain circumstances these groups may act on behalf of the central regime—for example, in defence of the borders—or on behalf of organizations and communities other than the state. In other circumstances, the invaders act on their own initiative, which later on becomes linked to concerns of the nation or the community. The actions of those who invade the border area determine the nature of the transformation undergone by the penetrated area, from a discrete, marginal, uninhabited and undeveloped region to an integral part of state and society. On their way to agricultural areas the bedouin clash with the sedentary villagers. Conflicts between new settlers and the existing population are a permanent and widespread phenomenon in marginal desert regions. They play a part in shaping the socio-political character of the border region. Parallel with the clashes, the nomads cooperate with the settled population in economic activities, and a symbiotic relationship develops. The nomads need rural markets to sell their produce, particularly animal products, and to buy products and tools which they do not possess. The regime adopts centripetal measures designed to concentrate the bedouin in limited areas by restricting their movements and rewarding shēkhs who persuade them to settle in a particular spot. Mehemet Ali adopted a policy of distribution of lands and restriction of the bedouin’s movements between regions, though he very rarely tried to impose his will on the border areas. Since he was interested in ensuring the highest possible income from land taxes, his intervention in agricultural areas was considerable. In the desert regions, however, his administration did not impose its authority to a significant degree; so the bedouin were allowed freedom of action, which they used to invade agricultural lands, thereby clashing with the villagers. Mehemet Ali’s agrarian policy gave the bedouin shēkhs and dignitaries opportunities to strengthen their economic and social standing by gaining control of agricultural villages and their inhabitants. The system which he established made them responsible for the levying of taxes and current debts in rural areas. On the other hand, he and his administration were concerned about the historic conflict between the bedouin, most of them semi-nomadic, and the permanent farming population, a conflict which suddenly seemed to have developed within the state. The authorities were always apprehensive of such conflicts. Villagers often complained to the authorities about incursions by the bedouin and their herds on to agricultural land, and the authorities were forced to send punitive missions against them. It was very much in Mehemet Ali’s interest to maintain peace and security in rural areas, so that the land taxes could be levied efficiently. So he did not permit the bedouin to harass the farmers, and punished the tribal chiefs severely. The bedouin shēkhs and heads of clans constituted one of the foundation-stones of Mehemet Ali’s agricultural policy. Some of them were multazims even before his rise to power, and continued to transfer the taxes to his treasury. Between 1811 and 1813 the Pasha gradually abolished the iltizam system, but the shēkhs retained their control of lands, as did other groups. Mehemet Ali soon discovered that he needed the bedouin to put his new policy into practice. He aimed first and foremost at broadening the area of cultivated land, so as to achieve the central objective of his policy: development of agriculture, and an increase in agricultural production. All this was intended to increase the state’s income from taxes and the sale of agricultural produce. In the land surveys

The Pasha's Bedouin

196

which he conducted there remained extensive stretches of un-irrigated wasteland known as which were not recorded in the cadastre. This was the greatest reserve of unexploited land. Mehemet Ali realized that the bedouin were able to undertake the preparation of these lands for agricultural use, and to work them themselves. Most of the lands were within the areas of seasonal migration, and were used only for seasonal pasturage. They were far from regions of permanent settlement, so that in most of them there was no danger of friction between bedouin and farmers. The social solidarity of the bedouin descent group also helped: the head of a descent group could recruit his relatives to prepare and cultivate wasteland, with the help of government support. The Pasha recognized this structural advantage, and therefore offered the shēkhs land and exemption from tax for three years to prepare and cultivate it; in this way he also increased his control over them. The sedentarization of the nomads was only a by-product of his economic ambitions. The bedouin shēkhs and heads of clans were well suited to Mehemet Ali’s aim of extending the area of cultivated land. He gave land generously to most of the prominent bedouin and dignitaries, on condition, first and foremost, that the land should not be close to cultivated land belonging to the villagers, and that the bedouin should not pitch their tents there or invade the lands of the farmers. There were many disputes over land between bedouin and villagers, and this forced the regime to afford recognition to the bedouin sector, and the group of shēkhs and dignitaries who represented them. The historic symbiosis between nomads and sedentary settlers made the foundation of tribal branches in the towns essential, and they gave birth to a new element of urban bedouin. In point of fact, heads of dominant property-owning clans had long been settled in permanent urban and rural settlements, in order to be closer to the centres of government and thereby promote their own interests and those of their fellow tribesmen better. The tribesmen also expected their shēkhs and dignitaries to foster good relations with the regime, and to exploit them for their economic and political benefit. Thus, we see that during Mehemet Ali’s rule there grew up a group of bedouin shēkhs who were heads of ‘households’ and lived in urban and semi-urban settlements. The Abāza, originally from the in al-Sharqiyya province, are an outstanding example from this period. Mehemet Ali’s policy towards the bedouin was conducted on three levels. On the normative level he employed ‘ideology’, and attempted to find an ideological common factor with the bedouin. In his overall conception of the state he assigned functions to the different groups, among them the bedouin, of which Egyptian society was composed. He considered them to be a special social sector, to be related to differently from others. He mobilized them for the benefit of the military, agricultural and economic systems, to enhance the power, status and wealth of Egypt, using measures of concession, compensation and cooptation with their leaders, in order to buy their loyalty. The second level was the utilitarian: the use of territorial resources to supervise and control the bedouin. By giving the shēkhs and dignitaries land and exempting them from taxes, he bought their obedience, assured peace in the border regions, created a mediating

Conclusion

197

and supervisory element between the regime and the rural sector, and advanced his political and economic objectives. The third level was that of compulsion: the use of means of enforcement and punishment to control the bedouin. Mehemet Ali improved and reinforced his supervision of the execution of his orders by compelling the shēkhs to put their sons into his hands as hostages until his instructions were carried out. He intervened in disputes within and between the tribes, and even restrained blood feuds and demanded that murderers be delivered to him and punished. For the first time in Egyptian history, the bedouin’s movements were limited, and they were forbidden to move freely between different provinces. Mehemet Ali had a well developed and centralistic concept of administration. In the modern system of bureaucracy that he founded he appointed officials to deal with the bedouin. In the regions where there was a large bedouin population he appointed a who was responsible for all matters concerning bedouin. Alongside him were the ‘governmental shēkhs’ of the tribes, who were appointed with the approval of the government. One of the foreign observers who accompanied Mehemet Ali’s campaigns gave an excellent description of the relations between the Pasha’s administration and the bedouin: They are increasingly satisfied with the services of the bedouin. Their bravery, vigilance and loyalty are outstanding. It must be admitted that the love of booty is of great importance to these oriental Cossacks; but it is equally true that they have never ceased to display sympathy and admiration for Mehemet Ali: from the early days of his rule he has displayed the skill and ability to exercise a great measure of patience towards them. He has dealt with them with appreciation and confidence, fostered them and paid them, and in return they call him ‘our father’. Thus, these men, who were once thought to be the plague of Egypt, have today become its gendarmes. In addition, they are excellent soldiers, who enjoy the military emblems of their service as much as its execution, and therefore more men from among them join the ranks continually. This is a point which must be taken into consideration if there ever comes about a lengthy war between the Arab elements of the Ottoman Empire and the Turks.1 The Baron of Boislecomte, who headed a French military mission to Egypt in 1833, also summed up Mehemet Ali’s policy and attitude towards the bedouin: The fundamental principle of the Orientals is to go from harshness to mildness. At first, Mehemet Ali let them feel his iron fist. Afterwards he made them guards and recruited 5,000 of them who serve like Cossacks. At the same time he took care that he should not be considered their master, but negotiated with their shēkhs. He took their best mares from

The Pasha's Bedouin

198

them under various pretexts, and thereby settled them on the land. He took hostages from them and gave them land, and when they had enough strength he used them to punish other tribes. He controlled them by the division of powers.2 The bedouin had already begun to change from a monolithic tribal society to a stratified one; and the economic and administrative forces of the period speeded up this process. At the head of the social pyramid was the group of shēkhs who had acquired lands and filled official administrative posts. Below them were the heads of clans and other tribal groups who had accumulated possessions and local influence. The entrance of many bedouin to the general pool of employment, particularly in government service, altered the social stratification within the tribes and increased differentiation within tribal society. Herdsmen and seasonal farmers did not abandon the traditional tribal economy, but increasingly turned it into a default option for times of crisis. The period of Mehemet Ali foreshadowed the beginning of the end of pure traditional tribalism, and the beginnings of an urban and semi-urban tribal society which was an integral part of the settled population. On the other hand, it also signalled the deepening of the differences between the two main types of tribal groups: those who chose to be townsmen, and those who chose to remain on the periphery as semi-nomads relying principally on animal husbandry. During our period, the gap between these two tribal populations began to be more significant than ever before.

Notes Introduction Cambridge, 1 H.Dodwell, The Founder of Modern Egypt—A Study of Cambridge University Press, 1931. 2 Among the most important works are: E.Toledano, State and Society in Mid-Nineteenth Century Egypt, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990; F.R.Hunter, Egypt Under the Khedives, 1805–1879—From Household Government to Modern Bureaucracy, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984; A.L.Marsot, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984; K.Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants—Land Society and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740–1858, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992; L.Kuhnke, Lives at Risk—Public Health in 19th Century Egypt, California, 1990; H.Rivlin, The Agriculture Policy of in Egypt, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1961; G.Baer, A History of Landownership in Modern Egypt 1800–1950, London, 1962; G.Baer, Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt, Chicago, 1969; Kh.Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. 3 A comprehensive review is given in the introduction in: Ph.Khoury and J.Kostiner (eds), Tribe and State Formation in the Middle East, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990, pp. 1–22. One has to add to it the rest of the articles in this volume and other works in political anthropology, such as Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan, London: Zed Books, 1992, and anthropologists such as Ernest Gellner, Anatoly Khazanov, and Emanuel Marx, who deal with various aspects of the relationship between bedouin and the government. 4 The idea of a tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces is at the core of Avinoam Meir’s works in political geography on nomads and the state. See: A.Meir, ‘Nomads and the State: The Spatial Dynamics of Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces among the Israeli Bedouin’, Political Geography Quarterly, 1988, No. 7, pp. 251–270. 5 A.Meir, As Nomadism Ends, Boulder, Westview Press, 1997, pp. 194–202; G.M.Kressel, ‘Nomadic Pastoralists, Agriculturalists and the State: Self-Sufficiency and Dependence in the Middle East’, Journal of Rural Cooperation, 1993, No. 21, pp. 33–49. 6 G.Baer, ‘Some Aspects of Bedouin Sedentarization in 19th Century Egypt’, Die Welt Des Islams, 1958, Vol. 5. The article was enlarged and re-edited as ‘The Settlement of the al-twafiqiyya and he Bedouins’, in Baer 1969. Baer relied on didn’t access Egyptian archival documents from the period. In a later article ‘Continuity and Change in Egyptian Rural Society’, in L’Egypte au XIX Siècle, Paris, 1982 he talks about fellahin of tribal origin and regards them as a part of rural society who managed to integrate into the provincial administration in low-ranking positions. wa dawrhum fī

7 awwal min Layla

Cairo,

al1997; Cairo,

Notes

200

1986; al-Badu fi min 1848 ila 1952, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Ein Shams, 1987. 8 D.Eickelman, The Middle East and Central Asia—An Anthropological Approach, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 2002 (4th ed.), p. 118. 9 On these issues, see: P.Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977; E.Gellner, ‘Tribalism and the State in the Middle East’, in Khoury and Kostiner; E.Marx, ‘Are There Pastoral Nomads in the Arab Middle East?’ in U.Fabietti and Ph.C.Salzman, The Anthropology of Pastoral Societies, Como, Ibis, 1994. 10 Fahmy, op. cit. pp. xi, xii. al-Badū wa dawrhum fī al-thawra

11

Cairo,

1986. 12 The qirma script was introduced in the seventeenth century and was abolished by Mehemet Dirāsāt

Ali in 1834. See the table of symbols in:

Cairo, Maktabat al-Khāngī,

1980, pp. 47–56.

1 Tribal history in outline 1 See

(ed.),

Cairo, 1961, p. 3. Since the discovery of the treatise of al-Maqrīzī about the bedouin tribes in Egypt during the French invasion, it has become the main source for all studies of this subject. No less important as a source of information about the bedouin tribes in Egypt in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is Nihāyat al-arab fī

his second

al-jumān fī al-zamān, Cairo, work; see Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī (ed.), 1963. Al-Maqrīzī and al-Qalqashandī relied in most cases on the Some scholars of Napoleon’s scientists’ mission in Egypt (1798– lost work of 1801) had collected information about the tribes. See A.M.Du Bois, Mémoire sur les tribus Arabes des deserts de l’Egypte, in Description de l’Egypte, (DE), Tome XII, pp. 329–389; A.Jaubert, Nomenclature des tribus d’Arabes qui campent entre l’Egypte et la Palestine, in: DE, Tome XVI, pp. 107–X; E.-F.Jomard, Observations sur les Arabes de l’Egypte Moyenne, in DE, Tome XII, pp. 267–367. Extensive information about the dispersion of the tribes in Egypt could be found in F.Mengin, Histoire sommaire de l’Egypte sous le Gouvernement de Mohammed Ali, Paris: A.Bertrand, 1823. Modern works are: G.W.Murray, Sons of Ishmael—A Study of the Egyptian Bedouin, London, George Routledge & Sons, 1935; min

Cairo, fī al-qadīm

1965; 1963;

Cairo, fī

1935; thalātha

al-ūla

Cairo,

fī al-qurūn al1992;

fī al-Qaliyūbiyya fī 1517, Alexandria,

Sidon,

1989.

al-islāmī 641–

Notes

201

2 See, for example, the various tribes who were found as descendants of Banī Hilāl in H.A.MacMichael, A History of the Arabs in the Sudan, 2 vols, Cambridge, Cambridge I, pp. 239–244; Bagārah, I, pp. 271– University Press, 1922. Banī Salīm I, 145–151; 276. About the role of the Banī Hilāl mythologies in the local history see idem, The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1912, Ch. 2. 3 This invasion inspired Ibn Khaldūn’s writing and a basis to his theory about the tribal (solidarity) and its superiority to the urban society. 4 See I.Shwartz, The Bedouin in Egypt During the Mamluk Period, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Tel Aviv University, 1987, pp. 38–44 (Hebrew). 5 Compare: Murray, op. cit. pp. 44–45; E.W.Lane, The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, London, 1836, p. 202. Also al-tawfīqiyya aljadīda. 20 vols, Cairo (Bulaq), 1306/1887–1889. IX, pp. 84–85; XIV, p. 54; XVII, pp. 16– 17: The camps in Lower Egypt are and and in Upper Egypt— and and Nātina. However in the other Ottoman Period sources list only 6 D.Ayalon, Studies on the Mamluks of Egypt (1250–1517), London, Variorum, 1977, pp. 157– 160. 7

Agha Azabān al-Damurdāshī,

al-Qāhira 1100–1150, Cod. Arab 159 Det. Kongelige Bibliotek Kobenhaven, p. 2. The Faqārīs and the Qāsimīs factions within Egypt’s military elite emerged early in the seventeenth century. See about their origins and affiliation in J.Hathaway, The politics of household in Ottoman Egypt—The rise of the Qazdaĝlιs, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Hathaway assumes that they were not typical Mamluk factions, p. 12. al8 Qāhira min sanat 1100 ila ākhir which goes down to 1152/1739. MS. Hist., Osm. 38 in the Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, p. 68a. 9 The sort of follower designated by is a military client who is engaged in a patron-client relationship with a senior personage. See Hathaway op. cit. 1997, p. 23. 10 Kitāb al-durra fi akhbār alallies of the kināna, British Museum, MS. OR. 1073–74, pp. 114a, 201. The Qāsimiyya dominated al-Beheirah province to the extent that the government never sent a Faqari sancak bey as governor of that province. 11 Al-Hawf was the name given by the Arab to the eastern parts of Lower Egypt, whose metropolis was Belbeis. The other parts of the Delta were called al-Rīf. See The People of Sharqiyya, Cairo, Société Royale de Geographic D’Égypte, 1944, Vol. I, p. 19. 12 Murray, op. cit. p. 29. 13 Ibid. 29–30. About the migrations of the bedouin groupings of Sulaym ancestry from North Africa to Egypt see

op. cit. p. 167; Shamlūl, op. cit. pp. 38–39.

came up against 14 The Algerian traveler in Aqaba plain, on his way to Mecca for a pilgrimage. See his travel diary Nuzhat Warthīlānīyya,

Beirut,

1974.

See

al-mashhūra also the

bi chronicle

alof

al-athār fī al-trājim Cairo (Būlāq), 1279/1879–1880, 3 vols, vol. II, p. 149. Because of their Maghribi origin, presumably they

Notes

202

were engaged in securing the pilgrims from the Maghrib. Al-Jabālī, one of their dignitaries, headed a group of Maghribi pilgrims and was responsible for their safety. See ibid. IV, p. 299. 15 J.L.Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, London, 1819, p. 226. met them between Selima and Laqiya in 1800. These 16 The Maghribi traveler groups are known as in the historical sources. See Murray, op. cit. pp. 286, 293. al-durra 17 Anonymous (Damurdashi group), Kitāb Bruce 43, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, p. 60a. 18

al-kināna, Ms.

‘al-dalālāt al-Majallah

al-Qaliubiyya’,

1986, vol. 33, p. 329. 19 See about other bedouin migrations to Egypt during the Ottoman conquest in: R.Aharoni, The Bedouins in Egypt in the Ottoman Period 1798–1517, unpublished MA thesis, Tel Aviv University, 1993, pp. 21–24 (Hebrew). 20 Shwartz, op. cit. p. 280. See more details about the course of events in pp. 280–284. 21 See about the bedouin role in the Mamluk military expeditions against Nubia ibid. pp. 247– 261. The contemporary historian Ibn Khaldun argued that the rule in Nubia passed to Juhayna bedouin through marriage contacts. 22 See ibid. pp. 294–300. 23 Ibid. p. 304. ‘amir of the orchestra’—under his command 40–80 Mamluks. See D.Ayalon, ‘Studies on the Structure of the Mamluk Army’, BSOAS, 1953, vol. XV, pp. 448–476; 1954, vol. XVI, pp. 57–90. 24 Shwartz, op. cit. p. 306. 25 See in details about the shēkhs’ authorities, roles and ranks in Aharoni, op. cit. p. 30. 26 About Ali Bey see I, pp. 206–208, 250–253, 380, and his biography III, p. 57. See also D.Crecelius, The Roots of Modern Egypt—A Study of the Regimes of Ali Bey al-Kabir and Muhammad Bey Abu al-Dhahab, 1760–1775, Mineapolis and Chicago, Bibliotheca Islamica, 1985. 27 See about the

and shēkh Humām in Aharoni, op. cit. pp. 103–136; Layla shaykh

Humām,

Cairo,

1987. 28 Al-Jabartī alleged that Bonaparte’s invasion succeeded so easily first and foremost because of the corrupt rule of the two beys. See his III, pp. 7, 8. They defeated and managed to establish a duumvirate. Ibrahim was appointed Shaykh al-Balad and See also S.J.Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization Murad—Amīr and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517–1798, Princeton, 1962, p. 85; and his Ottoman Egypt in the 18th Century—The Nizamname-i Misir of Cezzar-Ahmad Pasha, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1964. tried to lead the same policy as of shēkh Humām. At the beginning he 29 helped Abu Dhahab when he took refuge in Upper Egypt. See II, p. 19. When Bey forced Murad Bey and Ibrahim Bey to flee to the in 1777, supported him and by that he lifted his prestige and power there. See Irwin, A Series of Adventures in the Course of a Voyage up the Red Sea, London, 1880, pp. 264, 265. In 1778 he transferred his support to Murad and Ibrahim. See in the recognized the authority of

II, p. 21. It seems that Murad See C.S.Sonini, Travels in Upper

Notes

203

and Lower Egypt, 3 vols, London, 1799, vol. III, p. 67. was wrong when he transferred his support to Hasan Bey al-Jadawi and Ridvan Bey against Murad. Indeed, Murad departed to the and while those beys were fleeing toward the south, he killed in June 1779. See II, p. 51 and D.V. Denton, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt during the Campaign of General Bonaparte, 3 vols, London, 1803, vol. II, p. 57. 30 J.C.Garcin, Un Centre Musulman de la Houte-Égypte Médiévale: Qūs, Cairo, Institute Fransois D’archeologie Orientale, 1976, p. 530; Denton, op. cit. vol. II. p. 6; 345. 31 See L.A.Berthier, Memoirs du Marechal Berthier, Paris, 1827, vol. I, p. 75. al-Muqāwama

32 See

al-

al-Barītānī, Beirut, 1992; al-Faransiyya wa khurūj al-Faransiyyin min

Faransāwī 1962;

I, p.

Cairo,

Cairo, al-qawmiyya

1983; wa

fi 3 vols, vol. III: Cairo, 1930; Mahmud Tabo Muhammad, The Role of the Bedouin in Egyptian Politics in the Period 1750–1850, unpublished MA thesis, AUC, Cairo, 1972. 33 op. cit. vol. I, p. 188. al-ajnābiyya fī al-adab Cairo, 1962, p. 96. 35 S.Moreh (ed.), Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle of the First Seven Months of the French Occupation of Egypt ( mudat al-Faransīs bi ) Leiden, Brill, 1975. 36 A.B.Clot Bey, Aperçu general sur l’Egypte, Paris, Fortin Masson, 1840, vol. II, p. 120. 37 The emissary was Lascaris de Vintimille who had spend the years 1810–1814 among the

34

bedouin, and his companion the wrote the annals of his travels among the tribes. See the article based on his manuscript: J.Chelhod, ‘Lascaris et Sayigh, agents de Napoleon chez les Bedouins (1810–1814)’, Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique [France], 1988, vol. 102(1–2), pp. 5–34. 38 These events are mentioned in L.A.Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons 1891, vol. I, pp. 153–154, 222; J.F.Miot, Memoir pour Servir a l’Histoire des Expeditions en Egypte et en Syrie, Paris, Le Normant, 1814, pp. 25, 45–46, 55; Berthier, op. cit. vol. I, p. 75. 39 G.Wiet (ed.), Nicolas Turc Chronique d’Egypte (1798–1804), Le Caire, 1950, pp. 50, 53, 55. 40 See Murray, op. cit. p. 31, who quotes D.Lacroix, Bonaparte en Egypte, an eyewitness to the battle of 2 July, in which the bedouin fled from the French. About the bedouin activities 41 42

during the French conquest, see op. cit. vol. I, pp. 256–257.

IV, pp. 7–19, 230, 320–321.

III, p. 38; Moreh, op. cit. p. 127; al-Jabartī mentioned in this chronicle that he was

Al-Jabartī uses the word (literally, ‘follower’), the shēkh of which in fact indicates a client—whether mamluk or non-mamlook—of a household head. This indicates the position of the bedouin shēkh at that time, as a head of some kind of household. 43 Turc argues that the attacking force numbered 10,000 men. It seems that this number is exaggerated, compared to other military events in that period. See Wiet, op. cit. p. 24.

Notes

204

44 Shukrī, op. cit., p. 44. He quotes J.B.Mure, Memoire Militaire et Politique sur l’Egypte, Caire, 1896; ibid. p. 143, quoting Jonquiere. are mentioned here as part of Murad camp, 45 Moreh, op. cit., p. 49. The are not mentioned. but 46 Turc (Wiet), p. 32. Turc argued that the French used warfare methods that were not familiar to the bedouin and the local forces. The bedouin still used swords and lances. 47 See III, pp. 7, 44; Bourrienne, op. cit., pp. 153, 176, 222; op. cit., vol. I, note 194; Berthier, op. cit., p. 24. 48 L.Bertrand, Campagne d’Egypte et de Syrie (1798–1799), 2 vols, Paris, 1847, vol. I, p. 145. 49 Ibid. pp. 59–61. III, p. 57. Al-Jabartī wrote that a group of bedouin from al-Beheirah named attacked Damanhūr and killed many French. 51 Miot, op. cit., p. 66. 52 G.Douin, La flotte de Bonaparte sur la Cote d’Egypte, Caire, 1922, p. 131. 53 U.J.Seetzen, Reisen durch Syrien, Palestina, die Transjordan-Lander, Arabia Petraea und

50

Unter-Aegypten, Berlin, G.Reimer, 1854–1859, vol. 3, p. 49. was the chief of the Tīyāhā confederation and headed the joint invasion of the Tīyāhā and the to the Negev (now in south Israel) in 1799, in order to push out the Wuhēdāt bedouin and to take control over their lands. See the story in detail in C.Bailey, ‘The Negev in the Nineteenth Century: Reconstructing History from Bedouin Oral Traditions’, Asian and African Studies, 1980, vol. 14(1), pp. 35–79. 54 C.S.Jarvis, Yesterday and Today in Sinai, Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood & Sons, 1941, p. 118. He quotes French documents without references. 55 G.Rigault, Le général Abdallah Menou et la dernière phase de l’expédition d’Égypte, 1799– 1801, Paris, Plon-Nourrit, 1911, p. 162. 56 L.Reybaud, Histoire Scientifique et Militaire de l’Expedition Francaise en Egypte, 10 vols, Paris, 1830–1836, vol. VIII, pp. 58–59. See also

III, pp. 56, 58. About the Hanādī

involvement see Turc (Wiet), op. cit. p. 114; III, pp. 180, 194; and J.L.E.Reynier, State of Egypt after the Battle of Heliopolis: preceded by general observations on the physical and political character of the country, London, G. & J.Robinson, 1802, who indicated that the treasury was empty because the bedouin had to be paid. See pp. 260, 268. 57 See firmān designated to al-Hanādī, al-Bahja and 204.

in

III, p.

58

III, pp. 110–111. Al-Jabartī, like the other members of his social class, behaved with suspicion toward the bedouin, and loathed them. He is wrong here when he ascribed the fellaheen disunity, which brings them to reconciliation with the bedouin. Actually they needed each other for economic reasons. 59 Reybaud, op. cit., vol. VIII, pp. 61–62. 60 See Shukrī, op. cit., p. 39. He quotes F.Charles-Roux, L’Angleterre, l’Isthme de Suez et l’Égypte au XVIII siècle, Paris, Plon-Nourrit et cie (c.1922).

61 III, p. 56 (the events of Za 1213/Apr 1799); p. 282; IV, pp. 4, 7, 10, 58, 136, 172. 62 Turc (Wiet), pp. 25–26. 63 R.T.Wilson, History of British Expedition to Egypt, London, C.Roworth, 1802, p. 371. This information has been discussed at British high levels. We learn it from the diary of the British officer W.H.Thornton, The British Campaign in Egypt of 1801, Alexandria, 1933, p. 61.

Notes

205

64 Thornton strengthens this assumption. See ibid. p. 67. 65 Wilson, op. cit. p. 200.

2 Tribal society and the tribal elite 1 Henceforth the word ‘tribe’ will be used for convenience, without intention to ascribe to the ‘tribe’ economic or social characteristics. 2 The segmentary system is based on the principle of a series of lineages that the components of each one of them are not only mutual guarantors, but also have equal political status. The equilibrium amongst them takes place by dividing similar but competitive interests between segments of identical structure and origin. M.Fortes and E.E.Evans-Pritchard, African Political System, 1940, p. 14; E.E.Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1940; idem, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1949. 3 The anthropologist Ian Cunnison brings us an outstanding model to it concerning an Arab Bedouin tribe that breeds cattle in Kordofan in north Sudan. See I.Cunnison, Baggara Arabs: Power and the Lineage in a Sudanese Nomad Tribe, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1966. 4 E.Marx, ‘Are there Pastoral Nomads in the Arab Middle East?’ in U.Fabietti and P.C.Salzman (eds), The Anthropology of Pastoral Societies, Como, Ibis, 1995; and his updated ‘The Political Economy of Middle Eastern and North African Pastoral Nomads’. In: Dawn Chatty (ed.), Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa: entering the 21st century, Leiden: E.J.Brill, 2006. The anthropologist Gideon M.Kressel suggests comprehending the patrilineal kinship group as a cornerstone of the tribal society’s structure. It is true especially, to his opinion, at a time of anomy due to the absence of a central government. Being in need of endogamy is characteristic of the nomadic peoples in the Middle East. See his Individuality Against Tribality: The Dynamics of a Bedouin Community in a Process of Urbanization, Tel Aviv, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1976, pp. 9–23 (Hebrew). 5 E.Marx, ‘The Organization of Nomadic Groups in the Middle East’, in M.Milson (ed.), Society and Political Structure in the Arab World, New York, 1973, pp. 305–336; idem, ‘The Ecology and Politics of Nomadic Pastoralists in the Middle East’, in E.Weissleder (ed.), The Nomadic Alternative, Hague, 1978, pp. 41–47. 6 Idem, ‘The Tribe as a Unit of Subsistence’, American Anthropologist, 1977, vol. 79, p. 358. 7 Ph.Burnham, ‘Spatial mobility and political centralization in pastoral societies’, Pastoral Production and Society, Cambridge, 1979, pp. 349–360. This is a further explanation of the continual divisions among the tribes, which are also the result of blood feuds. 8 See ch. 8, n. 85. 9 A.Musil, The Manners and Customs of the Rwāla Bedouins, New York, American Geographical Society, 1928, p. 162. 10 M.Al-Rasheed, ‘The Rashidi Dynasty: Political Centralization among the Shammar in North Arabia’, New Arabian Studies, 1994, vol. 2, p. 148. 11 L.E.Sweet, ‘Camel raiding of North Arabia Bedouin’, American anthropologist, 1965, vol. 67, p. 1135. 12 M.Van-Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan, London, Zed Books, 1992, p. 79. 13 E.Gellner, ‘Tribalism and the State in the Middle East’, in Ph.Khoury and J.Kostiner, Tribe and State Formation in the Middle East, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990, pp. 109–111. 14 Van-Bruinessen, op. cit., pp. 78, 307–308. This is the reason, according to his opinion, that many of the chiefs of big tribal confederations claim a foreign origin.

Notes

206

15 P.C.Salzman, ‘Hierarchical Image and Reality: The Construction of a Tribal Chiefship’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 42(1), 2000, pp. 49–66. 16 Evans-Pritchard, the Sanusi, p. 61. He quotes J.R.Pacho, Relation d’un voyage dans la Marmarique, la Cyrenaique et les Oasis d’Audjelah et de Maradeh, 1827, p. 67. 17 Ibid. pp. 60–61. He quotes Pacho, Pt. II, pp. 39–40. 18 M.H.Fried, ‘The Myth of Tribe’, Natural History, 1975, vol. 84(4), p. 18. 19 Marx, ‘pastoral nomads’, p. 152, n. 5. 20 Marx claims that usually this is the kind of shēkh which is known to us. He is appointed by the government, or alternatively the government assures his selection by his tribe. 21 Khoury and Kostiner, op. cit., pp. 8–13. 22 S.Lavie, The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories of Bedouin Identity under Israeli and Egyptian Rule, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990, p. 263. vol. XIV, p. 38; Baer, ‘Settlement’, p. 11. 23 24 See about the emergence of the kapi in E.Toledano, ‘The Emergence of Ottoman-Local Elites (1700–1900): A Framework for Research’, in I.Pappé & (eds), Middle Eastern Politics and Ideas—A History from Within, London and New York, Tauris Academic Studies, 1997, pp. 156–157. 25 The ‘household’ fits more to Cuno’s formula than to the one which Hathaway presents. See K.Cuno, ‘Joint family households and rural notables in 19th-century Egypt’, IJMES, 1995, vol. 27(4), pp. 485–502. See also J.Hathaway, ‘The military household in Ottoman Egypt’, IJMES, 1995, vol. 27, pp. 39–52. 26 See Baer, ‘Settlement’, p. 11; vol. XVII, p. 33. 27 F.R.Hunter, Egypt Under the Khedives, 1805–1879—From Household Government to Modern Bureaucracy, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984, p. 119. 28

I, pp. 345–346, 348–349.

al-zuhūr fī al-duhūr. Ed. Cairo, 1380/1961. Vol. I, p. 290, Vol. III, pp. 130, 159; J.C.Garcin, Un Centre Musulman de la Houte-Égypte Médiévale: Qūs, Cairo, Institute Franchise d’Archeologie Orientale, 1976, p. 498. p. 98. 30 31 S.Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517–1798, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1962, p. 30. The Ottomans couldn’t control the feudal-like estates (timār) because of the continuous insurrections of the bedouin, and they disappeared. 32 See the chronicle of Evlia Çelebi, Seyahatnamesi, Onuncu Cilt: Misir, Sudan, Habes, (1672– 1680), Istanbul, 1938, vol. X, p. 528. He reported about villages in which bedouin and fellahin lived together, e.g. Wasīm—a village surrounded by a wall and divided into two: the bedouin Zayda group—descendants of Abū Zayd al-Hilālī—and fellahin. 33 Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants, p. 94. 34 Toledano, State and Society, p. 16. 35 Hunter, op. cit., pp. 84–93. 29

36

vol. XIV, p. 38(6): ‘fī awwal al-aqsām min awlād sanat 1249’ also vol. XVII, p. 21(31). See also E.W.Lane, The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, London, 1836, p. 129: ‘the change was made very shortly before my second visit to this country’, meaning before 1834. 37 The Egyptian scholar Zein Shams al-Dīn Nijm found that the first native Egyptian who was appointed to an office in the provincial administration was who Samanud in 1829. See his Idārat al-aqālīm fī 1805–1882, was appointed to

Notes Cairo,

207

1988, p. 203. He quotes the Viceregal Department records

henceforth MS), defter 751, No. 185, 2 M 1245/4 July 1829; MS defter ( 38, No. 264, 12 S 1245/13 August 1829. See also Clot-Bey, II, pp. 186–187. 38 Hunter, op. cit., p. 88; Baer, ‘Settlement’, pp. 5–6. Only in 1858 the appointed the first hâkim from this group. See Toledano, op. cit., p. 18. 39 MS, 66/318, 23 R 1251/18 August 1835. 40 About Sulēmān Abāza see Milaffāt al-Mustakhdamīn (henceforth: MM), defter 1, 2, Vol. 3, vol. XIV, p. 3. no. 12707: mudad istikhdām Sulēmān Abāza; 41 This paragraph is based on the review of a member of the family, Ibrāhīm Dasūqī Abāza, ‘alusra al-abāziyya’, in Al-Sharqiyya wa Sināa, Zaqaziq: Mintaqat Zaqaziq 1368/1949, p. 63. His review is based on familial oral traditions and on documents, and he argues that the Abāza are Circassians. See also qadīm

wa jughrāfiyatha, Cairo,

According to his version, the

Sīnā al1903, pp. 108–109.

are divided into two sections: one applies to

and the other to assumes that the Abāzas had married Circassian women at the time of Mehemet Ali, although it is obvious that marriage ties to this family began much earlier. See The People of Sharqiyya, Cairo, Société Royale de Geographic D’Égypte, 1944, p. 43, n. 2. Jane Hathaway indicates that the Abāza are Abkhazians from the Caucasus and they founded the Katāmish household in Egypt. See J.Hathaway The Politics of Household in Ottoman Egypt: The rise of the Qazdaĝlιs, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 102. 42 III, p. 63, the biography of Ibrāhīm Bey al-Saghīr. 43 Ibid, p. 38. 44 This paragraph is based on the information accumulated by F.R.Hunter; see also vol. XIV, pp. 3(16)–5(17). In this manner Mubārak defines this capacity in the biography of which he presents. It seems that this is only an administrative role which Mehemet Ali dedicates for handling the bedouin affairs. Certainly, the tribes of half alSharqiyya had already shēkhs and chieftains of their own. vol. XIV, p. 4. 45 This Majlis was acted between 1240–1253/1837–1840. See 46 MS 56/200, 29 Ra 1250/5 August 1834. The letter was addressed to the müdür of al-wujh and the müdür of al-Minufiyya. It contains recommendations to cultivate and to sow the çiftlik land in view of the calculations, which are based on the reports of Hasan Agha. vol. XIV, p. 3. His appointment is in MS, x/363, p. 174, 23 B 1250/25 November 47 1834. The name of the qism—

—indicates that its population was mainly from

tribe, living in permanent settlements. The administrative division which Mehemet Ali had introduced didn’t include nomads in their territories of roaming. 48 Apparently he became entangled in money affairs of Ibrāhīm Efendī, the former vekil of the çiftliks of al-Sharqiyya, and was forced by the müdür of the province to return the looted money. See MS, 38/654, 19 N 1265/9 August 1849. 49 vol. XIV, pp. 116–117; ibid, p. 3. He built there a village of his own. 50 Baer, ‘Settlement’, p. 12. 51 vol. XIV, p. 5. 52 Baer, op. cit., p. 12. Baer quotes Al-Aharām newspaper from 21 January 1954. 53 vol. XIV, pp. 3–5.

Notes

208

54 Hunter, op. cit. p. 121. 55 The ghafīr was a rural watchman and also a guard on public projects at the time of Mehemet Ali’s reign. 56 G.Baer, ‘The village shaykh’, in Baer, Studies, pp. 38–45; Ph.Jallād (ed.), Qāmūs al-idāra [dictionary of the administration and the Low], 4 vols, Alexandria, 57

1890–1894, vol. III, p. 369, clause 121. vol. XIV, p. 116; vol. XVI, p. 57; Jalād, op. cit., vol. III, p. 504; G.Baer, A History of Landownership in Modern Egypt 1800–1950, London, Oxford University Press, 1962, p. 58; vol. IX, pp. 14, 99; vol. XV, p. 73.

58

Mahkamat al-Qisma sijill 716, p. 301, registration no. 662, 17 L 1259/12 November 1843. 59 MS 27/206, 17 Ra 1242/19 October 1826. 60 E-F Jomard, ‘Observations sur les Arabes de l’Egypte moyenne’, in Description de l’Egypte, vol. XII, pp. 267–327, Paris, 1821–1829, pp. 269–303. 61 K.Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants: Land, Society, and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740–1858, Cairo, The American University in Cairo Press, 1994, p. 93. 62 A.L.Marsot, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 119. Marsot discovered that the term was in use in official documents as early as 1823. 63 See about the iltizām system in details in H.Rivlin, The Agriculture Policy of Muhammad in Egypt, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1961, pp. 21–22. 64 Cuno, op. cit., p. 93. Cuno based himself on the sijills of the Court of al-Mansūra. 65 A.B.Clot Bey, Aperçu général sur l’Egypte, 2 vols, Paris, Fortin Masson, 1840, vol. II, pp. 116–118. A.B.Clot tells about his meeting with the woman. Her name, Sutayta bint indicates that she was a liberated handmaid. See also J.J.Marcel et al., Histoire Scientifique et Militaire de l’Expedition Français en Egypte, vol. III, (I), Paris Ducollet, 1830, vol. III, pp. 321–322; I, pp. 321–322. See also K.Cuno, Landholding, Society and Economy in Rural Egypt, 1740–1850: A Case Study of al-Daqahlia Province, Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, 1985, p. 351; J.Michaud & B.Poujoulat, Correspondance d’Orient 1830–1831, 7 vols, Paris, Ducollet, 1833–1839, vol. VII, pp. 26– 27. 66 MS 67/119, 16 B 1251/7 November 1835. It seems that although the iltizām system was abolished in 1814, the term was still in use in official documents. It might be that it was —a mixed variation of iltizām with some modifications. See the same MS 56/144, 11 S 1250/19 June 1834. 67 Cuno, Landholding, p. 554; Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants, pp. 89, 93; Baer, ‘Settlement’, p. 7. 68 Hunter, op. cit. p. 142. 69 MS Awāmir, 44/135, 21 S 1248/20 July 1832; 44/170, 25 S 1248/24 July 1832; 56/62, 10 M 1250/19 May 1834. Athariyya is a possibility to bequeath the usufruct rights to the male sons under the stipulation of paying land taxes. See Cairo, 1950, pp. 42–43. 70 See about the history of the rights of landownership in Egypt in the 19th century in Baer, 1962. Baer argues that the bedouin shēkhs were granted lands in limitative conditions, compared with other dignitaries and only gradually, the lands passed to their private ownership, see pp. 16–17. See also his ‘Settlement’, p. 9. See also al-mulkiyya

fī

wa atharihi

al-siyāsiyya

Notes

209

1813–1914, Cairo, 1977, pp. 33–34. In the sijills, which he examined, most of the grantees were high ranking officials in the administration and senior officers of the army. See also Y.Artin, La Propriete fonciere en Egypte, Le Caire (Bulaq), 1883, pp. 254, 256; Rivlin, op. cit. p. 62. 71

fī al-qarn Cairo, 1967, p. 79; MS 56/144, 11 S 1250/19 June 1834. This offer was presented to the who were ‘requested not to cultivate the land until it would be clear shēkhs of that the land was not requisite for the inhabitants of the district, in order not to give them an excuse to forsake the land and to enable the bedouin to settle next to them, at a distance from all government requirements.’

72 Artin, op. cit. pp. 261, 263. Only the Khedive Abbas tried to impose tax on the lands belonging to bedouin shēkhs and the managed to impose a high kharāj tax on those lands. See K.Cuno, ‘The Origins of Private Ownership of Land in Egypt: A Reappraisal’, IJMES, 1980, vol. 12, pp. 245–275. 73 MS 33/103, 3 Ra 1243/14 September 1827. was and died in 1234/1818–9. His son inherited the position until 1250/1834–35 and after him his brother until 1259/1843–4 and than and Kheyrallah. See Paul Kahle, ‘Die der Libyschen Wüste’, Der Islam, IV, 1913, p. 358. See about the tribal structure of in O.Bates, ‘Ethnographic Notes from Marsa Matruh’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1915, pp. 717–739. 74 MS 33/103, 3 Ra 1243/24 September 1827; MS, Awāmir Karīma, 1/1, 1243(?)/ 1827; (The date was not clear in the document) MS 56/144, 11 S 1250/19 June 1834. 75 MS, 33/256, 28 C 1243/16 January 1828; MS Awāmir 1/328, 9 S 1245/10 August 1829. Canal al-Mahmudiyya, between the Rashid branch of the Nile and Alexandria, was one of the greatest infrastructure projects initiated by Muhammad Ali for irrigation and was completed in 1820. 76 DH 731/788 7 L 1242/4 May 1827. Conflicts between kinsmen in the tribal society are very common because of the rivalry around resources for living. The English traveler James Bruce reported that the dispute between shēkh Humām al-Hawwārī and his brother was so intense that they could not agree even about the beginning of the Ramazan fast. See J.Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1805, I: 186; II: 23. 77 Nisf = half, in Ottoman Egypt usually is usually an administrative unit. In the archival sources it is also a small tribal unit. 215/144, 8 R 1258/19 May 1842; MS Defter Qayd al78 Barakāt, op. cit., p. 266; Awāmir al-Karīma, sijill 1, amr 49, 1245/1829–30. 79 MS 19/140, 19 Za 1240/5 July 1824. No. 159, 13 M 1244/26 July 1828. 80 81 MS Awāmir X/15, 18 S 1250/ 26 June 1834. vol. XVII, p. 33. 82 83 Barakāt, op. cit., p. 266. 84 85

4 sijill 1, amr 248, 1250/1834–35.

No. 169, 5 S 1246/26 July 1830; DH 769/158, 24 M 1246/ 15 July 1830. 86 Barakāt, op. cit., p. 266; Sijillāt al-Ruznameci, no. 3730: Defter Qayd al-Atyan biha min Mehemet Ali ve Abbas Pasha, 1268/1851–2. 87 Kh.Fahmy, All the Pasha’s men: Mehmed Ali, his army and the making of modern Egypt, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 112; Artin, op. cit., p. 363.

Notes

210

88 Amr Karīm 3/57, 5 B 1247/10 December 1831. 89 MS 56/144, 11 S 1250/19 June 1834. 90 DH 734/139, 5 Ş 1242/4 March 1827. 91 generally means ‘contractual obligation’ or ‘responsibility’, and in the law it means contractual liability. Baer also argues that a reason for introducing the new system was the continuous low-tide of the Nile for years. See Baer, ‘Settlement’, pp. 8–9; vol. XIV, p. 116; p. 51; A.Sāmī, (ed.), Taqwīm al-Nil [Chronicle of the [Mehemet Ali’s Reign], Cairo, Dār al-Kutub, 1928, p. Nile], vol. II: During the 1830s it was a contractual obligation when acquiring possession of land for the cultivation and the payment of its taxc. In so doing one became the usufruct holder. See Cuno 1994, pp. 157–160. 92 1830. to

No. 196, R 1246/16 October 1830; No. 169, 5 S 1246/27 July argues that the system is not a repetition of the iltizām, because the was only responsible for the welfare of the fellahin in his and was not able

collect

taxes

as fī

he

wished.

wa-Dawrhum

See

al-awwal

min

al-qarn

fī

Cairo,

1997, p. 139. See also al-Mulkiyāt wa Dawrhum fī Cairo, 1983, p. 44; Baer, ‘Settlement’, pp. 13–16. 93 Zawwat, mahfaza 4/146, 5 L 1226/23 October 1811; 4/181, 18 Ra 1226/12 April 1811. Firda—‘imposition’, a tax levied to offset the Apparently this is the devaluation of the coinage. See Fahmy, op. cit., p. 106. 94 Ibid 4/235, 23 Za 1227/29 November 1812; MS 67/119, 16 B 1251/7 November 1835. 95

al-qurā wa-dawrhum fī

fī al-qarn

Cairo, Dār al-Kitāb 1984, p. 101; MS Majmua 1/64, 1250/ 1834–5. Wadi al-Tumēlāt, or al-Wadi, was one of the three major projects launched by Mehemet Ali Pasha for the sake of the enlargement of the agricultural territories and has been completed in 1820. Olive trees for the soap industry and mulberry trees for silk worms were planted in Ras al-Wadi, eastern of Belbeis, and 1,000 waterwheels were installed lengthwise the river bed. The reclamation of the lands broadened the territories suitable for cultivation and lands became more attractive. A large bedouin population inhabited the Wadi. See vol. IV, p. 256. See also MS 26/3, 26 Ş 1264/25 July 1848; ibid s1/2/1 p. 97 no. 57, 6 S 1266/22 December 1849. 96 Ibid, Awāmir Karīma, sijill without number/3630 1250/1834–5. Al-Sayyid was nazιr qism Baer maintains that he was granted the lands by Mehemet Ali and his son Ibrāhīm. See vol. XIV, p. 3. Baer, ‘Settlement’, p. 9; fī 97 MS Majmua 4 1/227, 1250/1834–5. Also Mālik M.Rashwān, Cairo, 1994, p. 117. 98 MS op. cit. 99 MS sijill without number/67, 1251/1835–6. 100 MS Awāmir Karīma 378/1646. (no date). 101 MS Awāmir Karīma 1/8, 1249/1833–4. The inhabitants of Siwa belonged to the Berber Zanāta tribe. See A.Fakhry, Siwa Oasis, Cairo, The American University in Cairo Press, 1993, p. 29. 102 La Geographic de L’Egypte a L’epoque Arabe par le Prince Omar Toussoun, Tome I: La Cadastre de Mohammad Ali, Le Caire, Memoires de la Societe Royale Geographic

Notes

211

d’Egypte, 1936. See about the villages in M.Ramzī, al-Qāmūs al-Jughrāfī Cairo, 1992, vol. II, part 1, pp. 93, 103. Both villages were in merkez Zaqaziq, where most of the bedouin of the region were concentrated. op. cit., p. 138. was granted 20 faddān exempt of māl for 103 planting trees. See MS 278/185, 18 M 1254/19 September 1838. was Mustafa Agha. 104 MS 85/137, 29 Za 1252/8 March 1837. In this year, nazιr See ibid 84/19. 105 MS 748/180, 24 Ca 1244/3 December 1828. 106 See Abāza, p. 62. He refers to family oral traditions and the chronicle of al-Jabartī. vol. XIV, pp. 3, 5. See also Baer, ‘Settlement’, pp. 4, 8, 9; op. cit., p. 92. 107 108 op. cit., p. 169 vol. XIV, p. 38. About the village, see Ramzī, II (4), p. 98. 109 110 Baer, ‘Settlement’, p. 8. 111 IV, p. 183; vol. XIV, p. 69. 112 See about the role of the Shawāribiyya in the Urabi revolt 1882, in Cairo, Dār al-Kitāb

al-asās

1966, pp. 25, 41, 42.

al-rīf fī al-thānī min al-qarn Cairo, Dār al1983, p. 269. 114 Hunter, op. cit., p. 120. He quotes from qalam al-sijillat in the awqāf office, sijill 12 ahlī, hijja 36. 115 Ibid, p. 121. He quotes from Ministere de l’interieur, Recensement general, Vol. 2, pt. I. is a spontaneous, seasonal and intermittently type of settlement, which bedouin erect as part of a sedentarization process or during transit, mainly near employment sources. 116 MS 35/100, 35/101, 26 S 1265/21 January 1849. 117 The kharāj tax was levied by Mehemet Ali in 1813 upon the end of the first cadastral survey of the lands in Egypt, in order to ensure full control of all the rural production and its efficient utilization. Harāj was an equable tax where its rate changed according to the category of the land and the crops. See Hunter, p. 15. 118 DH 764/115, 1 M 1246/22 June 1830; 779/158, 24 M 1246/15 July 1830. 113

pp. 48–49; Cuno, The

119 See about in IV, p. 311; Pasha’s Peasants, pp. 170–172. 120 121

op. cit., pp. 165, 172. Latīfa

Sālim,

al-quwwa

fī

al-thawra

Cairo,

1981, p. 147. Al-rīf Unpublished Ph.D. 122 dissertation, University of Ein Shams (Egypt), p. 219. 123 vol. XIV, p. 3. 124 The bedouin maintain a legal system which is based on oral traditions and customary laws. It is intended to resolve conflicts due to the absence of governmental authority and to respond to a lack of security. See the review by Frank H.Stewart, ‘Tribal Law in the Arab World: A Review of the Literature’, IJMES, 1987, vol. 19, pp. 473–490.

Notes

212

3 Territoriality and identity 1 See a discussion about the various aspects of territoriality and its development in human society and among nomads in: A.Meir, As Nomadism Ends—The Israeli Bedouin of the Negev, Boulder Colorado, Westview Press, 1997, pp. 19–28. See also A.Meir, ‘Nomads and the State: The Spatial Dynamics of Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces among the Israel Negev Bedouin’, Political Geography Quarterly, 1988, vol. 17(3); J.J.Hobbs, Bedouin Life in the Egyptian Wilderness, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1989, pp. 12–21, 74–81. 2 See B.B.Brown, ‘Territoriality’, in D.Stokols and I.Altman (eds), Handbook of Environmental Psychology, New York, John Wiley, 1987, pp. 505–529; I.Shnell, Perceptions of IsraeliArabs: territoriality and identity, Aldershot, Avebury, 1994; R.D.Sack, Human Territoriality—Its Theory and History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986. 3 R.Tapper, ‘The Organization of Nomadic Communities in Pastoral Societies in the Middle East’, in Equipe Ecologie et Anthropologie des Societes Pastorales (ed.), Pastoral Production and Society, London, Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 43–65. 4 A.Meir, ‘Territoriality among the Negev Bedouin in Transition from Nomadism to Sedentarism’, in P.C.Salzman and U.Fabietti (eds), Tribal and Peasant Pastoralism—The Dialectics of Cohesion and Fragmentation, pp. 187–207, Pavia (Italy), IBIS, 1995. 5 About incursions, see the monumental ethnographic work of Alois Musil, who spent some years among the Rwala bedouin in North Arabia at the beginning of the 20th century: A.Musil, The Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins, New York, American Geographical Society, 1928, Ch. XXI: War and Peace. 6 For example L.E.Sweet in her article about camel raiding. III, pp. 204–205. 7 8 A.Clot Bey, Aperçu général sur l’Egypte, 2 vols, Paris, Fortin Masson, 1840, pp. 114–115. 9 al-qawmiyya wa vol. III: Cairo, 1930, III, p. 650. 10 MS s1/8/6, 79/84, 41/25, 4 Ca 1266/18 March 1850. MS 11/234, 17 11 MS 12/x, 22 M 1237/8 September 1823. Probably al-Fawāyed or Ra 1238/2 December 1822; MS 17/565 10 Ca 1240/31 December 1824; MS 17/575, 10 C 1240/31 January 1825. 19/31, 20 S 1260/12 March 1844. One can assume that the agreement did not 12 put an end to the reciprocal raids of the tribes and it was signed under the authorities’ pressure. 13 MS 28/313, 10 B 1242/7 February 1827. 14 MS 80/297, 5 N 1252/14 December 1836; MS 25/131 undated. 15 MS 19/64, 4 Ş 1241/14 March 1826. 16 MS 797/156, 19 L 1249/29 February 1834. 17

1/145, 2 Ş 1260/18 August 1844. Al-Tūr bedouin were those who belonged to the great territorial organization of the bedouin of south Sinai, Ibid. 1/188 18 Ş 1260/3 September 1844. 18 MS 4/148, 1263/1846–47. 19 All the raiders were of the south Sinai tribes. The epithet al-Barāra was designated to nomads who lived in the desert. Apparently, it was not a common attack of these groups but a series of raids at the same time. Wadi al-Tumēlāt was a fertile agricultural area and therefore, it was a preferable destination for tribal raids. MS 284/227, 28 S 1257/21 April 1841. 20 Shēkh Zuweid is a regional centre for rural and tribal populations who partly sedentarized in north Sinai. MS 284/120, 29 M 1257/23 March 1841.

Notes

213

21 MS 62/353, 15 N 1250/15 January 1835; MS 284/127, 1 S 1257/25 March 1841. It seems that these are permanent villages of in the Nile Valley outside the Eastern Desert, where the tribesmen dwelled. This indicates a process of sedentarization also outside the tribal territory. 22 MS 62/353, 15 N 1250/15 January 1835. It was an attack on a caravan of bedouin and the plundering of 14 loaded camels. About the al-Tūr incident, see MS 1675/24 undated. 23 MS Awāmir 119/50 undated. 24 T.W.Russell, Egyptian Service, 1902–1946, London, John Murray, 1949, pp. 56–57. 25 G.W.Murray, Sons of Ishmael—A Study of the Egyptian Bedouin, London, Routledge, 1935, pp. 267–268. 26 Hobbs, op. cit., pp. 12, 14–16. 27 Tawara is the communal name of the tribes of the mountainous region in south Sinai. About the course of events of the wars, see E.Robinson, Researches in Palestine, vol. I, London, 1841, pp. 206–207; J.L.Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, London, 1830, p. 173. 28 This oral tradition comes from the See Murray, op. cit., p. 141. 29 Ibid, p. 268; J.Wilkinson, ‘Notes on a Part of the Eastern Desert of Upper Egypt’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 1832, vol. 2, pp. 28–60. The author visited the region at that time and heard oral traditions. 30 See map and more details in Hobbs, pp. 67–86. 31 Meir, As Nomadism Ends, p. 25. 32 U.Fabietti, ‘Control and Alienation of Territory among the Bedouin of Saudi Arabia’, Nomadic Peoples, 1989, vol. 20, pp. 33–40. 33 F.H.Stewart, Bedouin Boundaries in Central Sinai and the Southern Negev: A Document from the Wiesbaden, Otto Harrassowitz, 1986. Observations which I made at the beginning of the 1970s revealed a similar phenomenon among the bedouin of alMuzēnah and al-Tarābīn along the shore of Aqaba Gulf, following the plans of the Israeli government to establish Jewish settlements along the shore. vol. XVII, p. 21(1–2). 34 vol. XVII, p. 21(22, 23, 26). 35 36 The horses, the fodder and pasture grounds were supplied by the authorities. He could keep vol. XVII, p. 21(17–18). for himself only the female foals. See 37 The sūrah 2:189 (‘They ask thee of cycles of new moon’). 38 About bedouin ignorance in religious practices, see Clot, op. cit. vol. II, p. 115; C.B. Klunzinger, Upper Egypt, Its People and its Products, New York, 1878, p. 264; F.Mengin, Histoire sommaire de l’Egypte sous le gouvernement de Mohammed-Aly, Paris, A.Bertrand, 1823, vol. II, p. 304. 39 vol. XVII, p. 22(14–16), 25(9–22). 40

Dhikr ma bayn al-Qāhira, Dār al-Kutub Cairo, al-Khazāna al-Taymūriyya, Taymūr 367. The Maghārba in Egypt are a complicated and problematic element. Berber tribal groups assimilated with Arab culture had arrived in Egypt from the Maghrib (North Africa), together with tribes of Arab origin, who were of a social organization like that of the bedouin. However, the historical sources regard them very often as different from ‘Arab’ (bedouin).

al-asrār fī al-kināna fī 41 Anonymous (Damurdāshī), min Sana 1099 ila sana 1163, Orientales (fol. 1–126), (L.O), Ms Arabe 437, Ecole Nationale des Longues, Paris, pp. 19–20, 58. 42 al-Maqrīzī assumes that the Great Amir Barqūq was the one who decided in 782/ 1380 to settle the Hawwāra in the Girga province to their satisfaction and their leader

Notes received the

214

(tax farm) of Girga. See

al-bayān Ed. Cairo, 1961, pp. 56–58, 134– 136. About the migration and the settlement of al-Hawwāra bedouin, see J-C.Garcin, Un Centre Musulman de la Houte-Egypte Médiévale: Qûs, Cairo, Institute Fransois d’Archeologie Orientale du Caire, 1976, p. 470. 43 See Murray, op. cit., pp. 29–30. He assumes that were sedentarized earlier and 44

they employed sharecroppers from the vol. XVII, p. 23(15–16).

tribal group.

45

fī madīnat Rashīd fī al-Majalla

1983/84, vol. 30/31, pp. 327–378. 46 E-F.Jomard, ‘Observations sur les Arabes de l’Egypte moyenne’, in Description de l’Egypte, vol. XII, pp. 267–327, Paris, 1821–1829, pp. 284, 296. vol. XIV, p. 3(8–11). 47 48 Baer, ‘Settlement’, p. 3. 49 J.Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, 2 vols, Edinburgh, 1805, vol. I, pp. 94, 116; vol. II, p. 2. 50 St. John Bayle, Village Life in Egypt with Sketches of the Said, Boston, 1853, p. 215. 51 G.Douin, La mission du Baron de Boislecomte—l’Egypte et la Syrie en 1833, Caire 1927, p. 104. wa-Dawrhum fī

52

fī

Cairo,

al-awwal min al-qarn 1997, pp. 34–35. See also

al-badāwa

Cairo, Dār al-Fikr

1967, p. 51; idem, Tanmiyyat —asās Cairo, Dār al-Fikr 1968, pp. 110, 111. The People of Sharqiya, 2 vols, Cairo, Société 53 Murray, op. cit., pp. 294–296; royale de géographic d’Egypte, 1944, vol. I, pp. 39–40. 54

IV, p. 174;

55

IV, p. 185; Murray, op. cit., p. 297. True, the Hawwāra are hardly mentioned in the

vol. XVII, p. 33(1–2).

al-Saniyya, and then only as soldiers. I found two documents from notes of 1237/1821–22 and 1242/1826–27 about who was granted 30 faddān exempt from māl in Qabalat Abu Salih for sowing. vol. XIV, p. 3(5–6, 8–11). 56 57 MS 32/607, 1 C 1245/28 Novemver 1829. 58 Baer, ‘Settlement’, pp. 5–6. vol. XIV, pp. 3–5. 59 60 Clot Bey, op. cit., vol. II, p. 121. See also IV, p. 150; Klunzinger, op. cit., p. 255. 61 vol. XIV, pp. 3(13), 5(6–7); XVII, p. 33(7–9). 62 Baer, ‘Settlement’, p. 6. 63 Hékékyan Papers, vol. 7, British Museum Add. 37454, f. 363, as quoted in ‘Settlement’, p. 6. About Hékékyan and his papers, see Hakakiyān, Cairo, 64 vol. XVII, p. 23(36). 65 Marx, ‘pastoral nomads’, p. 147.

1990.

Notes

215

66 Y.Artin, La Propriété foncière en Egypte, Le Caire (Bulaq), 1883, pp. 261–264; Baer, ‘Settlement’, p. 5. 67 Baer, ‘Settlement’, p. 14. 68

I, p. 345(11–12), there he writes: ‘wa laysa lahum

madhkūr fī

innama ishtaharū (Their origin is not mentioned among the bedouin tribes, but they were famous for their courage and their horsemanship). 69 S.Lavie, The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories of Bedouin Identity Under Israeli and Egyptian Rule, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990, p. 90. See also R. Fernea, Shēkh and Effendi: Changing Patterns of Authority among the El-Shabāna of Southern Iraq, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1970; W.Lancaster, The Rwala Bedouin Today, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. 70 al-rīf fī al-qarn al-thāmin Cairo, Dār 1983, p. 263. 71

al-Badū wa-dawrhum fī al-thawra

op. cit., p. 44;

Cairo, 1986, p. 21. 72 J.Lozach and G.Hug, L’inhabitat rural en Egypte, Cairo, La Societe Royale de Geographic d’Egypte, 1930, p. 155ff. C.Amici counted in 1882 in Egypt 6,305 1,565 naji’s 438 nazlas and 601 However it is difficult to assume definitely that all of them are bedouin settlements. See F.Amici, L’Egypte ancienne et moderne et son dernier recensement, Alexandria, 1884, p. 84. 73 D.D.Crary, ‘Irrigation and Land Use in Zeiniya Bahari, Upper Egypt’, Geographical Review, Vol. 39, 1949. 74 See about the phenomenon of the in David Grossman, Expansion and Desertion—The Arab Village and its Offshoots in Ottoman Palestine, Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben Zvi, 1994, pp. 44–52 (Hebrew). In his view, this phenomenon may be interpreted as ‘bedouization’, a serve bedouinized fellahin and sedentarized process opposite to ‘sedentarization’. The bedouin at the same time and in the desert borderland the defacement between the two populations is deep. 75 The meaning of nazla in Arabic is getting off the camel or horseback. 50 hamlets of type; 195 nazlas and 295 are mentioned in Ramzi’s geographic dictionary of Egypt. 76 He was one of the first to be nominated by Mehemet Ali as nazιr qism in 1833 and the cultivated area of his village was 16,000 faddān. See al-mulkiyyāt Siyāsat

al-kubra 1814–1937, Cairo, 1973, p. 91; izaa

fī

Cairo, Dār al-Kitāb

1986, p. 49. 77 See about it in H.B.Barklay, ‘The Nile Valley’, in Sweet, Louise E. (ed.), The Central Middle East—A Handbook of Anthropology and Published Research, New Haven, Human Relations Area Files Inc., 1968, pp. 20–21. He refers to our time, but it teaches us about the past. tribe appears in the documents as barāra who were dwelling along Wadī al78 The Tumēlāt in the desert province of Al-Sharqiyya. See MS s5/4/1 19/17, L 1263. 79 In 1250/1834–5

held this position. He was replaced by

Hindāwī

Abū Dhahab, the shēkh of because of complaints by the other shēkhs of the nahiye accusing him of arrogance and dishonesty. See MS s1/7/1, 126/ 227, 14 C 1250/18 October 1834.

were protégés of

and that can explain this

Notes

216

appointment. of was the nazιr of Siwa in 1266/1849–50. See MS zawat mahfaza 5/38, 7 R 1266/20 February 1850. 80 op. cit., vol. I, pp. 28–36. 81 I.Shwartz, The Bedouin in Egypt during the Mamluk Period, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Tel Aviv University, 1987 (Hebrew), p. 287. He relies on the of al-Maqrīzī and brings many examples of roads being blocked by the bedouin of the Sharqiyya in order to catch rebel Mamluk emirs (pp. 550–552). About the bedouin debts within the arrangement, see p. 449. About the prominent clans of the Sharqiyya bedouin, see pp. 231–237. 82 M.Winter, ‘The Bedouin Arabs and the State’, in Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule, 1517–1798, New York, Routledge, 1992, pp. 126–132. He relies on the contemporary chronicler Diarbakri. 83 About the course of events around the Abū Baqar clan and the subjugation of the bedouin in the Sharqiyya, see Ibn Iyyās, al-zuhūr fi al-duhūr, ed. vol. 5, Cairo, 1380/1961, vol. V, pp. 240–241, 274, 278, 283, 396, 447, 457. 84 About the Sawālim rebellions, see vol. V, pp. 370, 375, 377, 396. 85 About the darak system of guarding the roads, see R.Humbsch, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Osmanischen Ägyptens, Freiburg, 1976, pp. 81, 116, 118, 133. Compare, about Durar

in

fī

wa tarīq Makka Cairo, al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1384 akhbār (1964–5), p. 481. 86 Mengin, op. cit., pp. 299–300; Clot Bey, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 2–3. 87 Al-Maqrīzī mentioned that the settlement there started earlier (such as groups related to the Qays tribes in the Belbeis region in the southwest of the Sharqiyya who settled in the eighth al-bayān ed. century). See Cairo, 1961, pp. 128–129. Most of the authors took from him, and exhaustive summaries about the history of the bedouin incursions and settlement in the Sharqiyya can be found in: S.Lane-Poole, A History of Egypt in the Middle Ages, London, 1901, pp. 28–29; Et.Quatremére, ‘Mèmoire sur les tribus arabes ètablies en Egypte’, in Mèmoires gèographiques et historiques sur l’Egypte et sur quelques contrèes voisines, Paris, 1811, Tome II, p. 212; op. cit., vol. I, pp. 11–37. 88 E.Klippel, ‘Études sur le Folklore bédouin de l’Egypte’, Bulletin de la Société Khédiviale de Géographie, Série, 1911, VII, No. 10, pp. 585–588. 89 Description de l’Egypte, XVIII, pp. 138–145. For more about the Hanādī and their fights with other Maghārba tribes, see Murray, op. cit., pp. 271–276, 294–296. 90 op. cit., p. 40, based on an interview with of clan of the Hanādī. For names, numbers and dispersion of the Maghārba bedouin in the Sharqiyya, see A.Boinet, Géographie économique et administrative de l’Egypte, Basse-Egypte, Le Caire, 1902. 91 A.Lucas, A Report on the Soil and Water of the Wadi Tumēlāt Lands under Reclamation, Cairo, National Printing Department, 1903, pp. 7–8. IV. P. 276;

92

vol. X, pp. 43–44.

93 IV, p. 474. 94 The Abāza had vast estates in many districts of Minyat al-Qamh in the Sharqiyya, mainly around

See about them also in

vol. XIV, pp. 2–5.

Notes

217

95 See about this division in E.L.Peters, The Bedouin of Cyrenaica, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 40–58. See also wa taqālīd, Cairo, 1961, pp. 171–172. He argues that they got the name marabtin because these client tribes were to be found on the borders of the noble tribes, and were acting as buffers between them. 96 Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi, p. 50. 97 The anthropologist Gerald Obermeyer heard in 1968 another version from his informants in They argued that the were compelled to migrate from Jabal albedouin with assistance from the Ottoman authorities. See Akhdar to Egypt by the G.Obermeyer, Structure and Authority in a Bedouin Tribe: The of the Western Desert of Egypt, Indiana University, unpublished Ph.D. 1968, p. 8.

4 The economic world of the Egyptian Bedouin 1 H.Gibb & H.Bowen, Islamic Society and the West: A Study of the Impact of Western Civilization on Moslem Culture in the Near East, London, Oxford University Press, 1957. 2 Evolvement of the mosaic/despotism theory, see in B.S.Turner, Marx and the End of Orientalism, London, G.Allen & Unwin, 1978, pp. 39–48; H.Islamoglu-Inan, ‘Oriental despotism in world-system perspective’, in Islamoglu-Inan (ed.), The Ottoman Empire in the World Economy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987: pp. 1–10. 3 French historians of the Orient had described the North African societies in terms of dichotomy between tribe and state, which became deeper as a result of the ethnic dispute between Arab and Berbers and they talked about the tribal myth (kabyle myth). See E.Burke, ‘The image of the Moroccan state in French ethnological literature: a new look at the origin of Lyautey’s Berber policy’, in E.Gellner and C.Micaud (eds), Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation, (1973), pp. 175–199. 4 H.Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement in Iraq: a study of Iraq’s old landed and commercial classes and of its Communists, Bathists, and Free Officers, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1978, pp. 13–14. and 5 As the Egyptian historians 6 Few scholars, like Berque and Asad, argued that there is no ‘typical’ tribe, but nevertheless their observations were generally examined by historians in the field. See Jaques Berque, Structures sociales du Haut-Atlas, Paris, 1955; T.Asad, ‘Ideology, class and the origin of the Islamic state’, Economy and Society, 1980, vol. IX, pp. 450–473; idem, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam, Washington DC, Georgetown University, 1986. 7 J.Berque, ‘Introduction’, UNESCO International Social Science Journal, 1959, vol. XI(4), pp. 481–498. 8 See Marx, ‘pastoral nomads’; E.Marx, ‘Economic change among pastoral nomads in the Central East’, in E.Marx and A.Shmueli (eds), The Changing Bedouin, New Jersey, Transaction Inc., 1994, pp. 1–15. Salzman argues that pastoralists are ‘economic people’, who calculate. See P.C.Salzman, ‘Afterward: On some general theoretical issues’, in J.Galaty and P.C.Salzman (eds), Change and Development in Nomadic and Pastoral Societies, Leiden, E.J.Brill, 1981, pp. 160–161. 9 A.Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 15–16. 10 Harīdī,

He quotes from the sijills of the court.

Notes

218

11 Evlia Çelebi, Seyahatnamesi, Onuncu Cilt: Misir, Sudan, Habes, (1672–1680), Istanbul 1938, vol. X, p. 593; Other travelers noticed that activity. See Jomard, ‘Observations sur les Arabes de l’Egypte moyenne’, in Description de l’Egypte, vol. XII, pp. 267–327, Paris, 1821–1829, pp. 274, 314; G.Bremond, Voyage en Egypte 1643–1645, Cairo, IFAO, 1971, p. 92; P.A.Gonzales, Voyage en Egypte 1665–1666, Cairo, IFAO, 1977, p. 94; IV, p. 6; J.Coppin, Voyages en Egypte 1638–1639, 1643–1646, Cairo, IFAO, 1971, p. 202. 12 Jomard, op. cit., p. 314; C.S.Sonnini, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, London 1799, 3 vols, vol. II, p. 218. 13 S.J.Shaw, Ottoman Egypt in the 18th Century—The Nizamname-i Misr of Cezzar Ahmed Pasha, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1964, ch. VI; ibid, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517–1798, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1962, p. 225. 14 Ibid, Husayn Efendi’s Ottoman Egypt in the Age of the French Revolution, Cambridge, vol. XII, p. 70. Mass., Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 138, n. 179; 15 See the biography of shēkh Humām in

I, 343. See Layla

shaykh

Humām,

Cairo,

1987. 16 Middle Egypt is usually defined as the section of the Nile valley from Cairo south to alMinieh; Lower Egypt is the Delta. 17 Jomard, op. cit., pp. 270, 315, 324. He believed that the bedouin could be united, and their division into tribes is a result of internal conflicts. 18 Ibid, pp. 269–272, 278–280, 284–285, 296–297, 301–303. 19 C.S.Sonini, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, 3 vols, London, J.Stockdale, 1799, vol. II, p. 218. 20 C.Niebuhr, Travels Through Arabia, Perth (Scotland), 1799; J.L.Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys, 2 vols, London, Colburn & Bentley, 1831; W.G.Palgrave, Personal Narrative of a Year’s Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862–63), London, Macmillan and Co. 1868; C.M.Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, New York, Random House, 1937; A.Jaussen, Coutumes des arabs au pays de Moab, Paris, J.Gabalda, 1908; A.Musil, The Manners and Customs of the Rwāla Bedouins, New York, American Geographical Society, 1928; T.E.Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, London, 1935. 21 See P.C.Salzman, ‘Multi-Resource Nomadism in Iranian Baluchistan’, in W.Irons, and N.Dyson-Hudson (eds), Perspectives on Nomadism, Leiden, Brill, 1972. 22 About the economy of livestock breeding, see A.Abu-Rabia, The Negev Bedouin and Livestock Rearing, Oxford, Berg Publishers, 1994, pp. 25–42, 107–128. 23 MS 19/256, 13 Ra 1241/26 October 1825. 24 MS 203/342, M 1250/May–June 1834. 25 MS 33/322, 28 B 1243/14 February 1828. 26 MS 729/54, 1 N 1241/9 April 1826. 27 According to the MS registers, at least two transactions of importing cattle from Cyrenaica were accomplished through these shēkhs and each one of them had received 1,000 riyal. First, MS 729/601, 22 M 1242/26 August 1826; Second, 59/173 18 C 1250/22 October 1834. 28 Camel-breeders are a distinctive sector among tribal societies, and practise special patterns of nomadism, compared to flock breeders and predial semi-nomads. See D.Chatty, Structural Forces of Pastoral Nomadism with Special Reference of Camel Pastoral Nomadism, The Hague, Institute of Social Studies, 1972; W.Lancaster, The Rwala Bedouin Today, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981. 29 MS 78/351, 12 R 1252/28 July 1836; MS Mahfaza 5/197, 15 L 1252/24 January 1837. The Mahari camels were ascribed to the Mahara tribe of the Arabian peninsula and were regarded

Notes

219

as very swift. They were imported into Egypt from al-Sham. It might be that they were used for warfare and races. 30 MS 729/124, 28 N 1242/25 April 1827. 31 MS 7/20, 25 M 1236/3 November 1820. 32 MS 736/209, 19 Za 1242/14 June 1827; MS 743/8, 26 R 1242/27 November 1826. 33 al-sharīf is the decorated curtain for the that Egypt donated every year. It was carried in a canopy on the back of a decorated camel. See MS 38/640, 19 L 1245/13 April 1830. 34 MS 5/494, 25 Z 1235/4 October 1820. The Hazinedar Bey was ordered there to check the value of 61 camels taken from to carry fodder and for other tasks in the Beheirah. 35 MS 792/12, 27 Ş 1248/20 January 1833. A requirement from sub-district governors in alGiza province to send 150 camels to al-Fayyum with the appropriate baskets for the ‘chalk and gypsum works’. 36 For example, MS 19/402, 3 Ş 1241/13 March 1826. A decree directed to the Mandub of the Nizâm of al-Fayyum and Bahri al-Bahansawiyya to collect from the bedouin of Middle Egypt (al-Wasta) 400 invigorated camels to carry grain from al-Quseir to Qena. In another case the government was seeking to buy 700 camels in order to employ them for the same purpose. See MS 38/647, 21 L 1245/15 April 1830. 37 See the works of Gabriel Baer, Helen Rivlin and Kenneth Cuno. 38 The chronicler al-Farā al-Shādhilī, from the eighteenth century, writes about ‘Hawwāra and bedouin’ and about ‘Maghārba qātinīn’ in contrast to The historian A.N.Poliak indicates that Egypt was populated largely with bedouin farmers already in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. See Divrei Yemei (The History of the Arabs), Jerusalem, Bialik Foundation, 1945, p. 175. Arab sources from the Mamluk period distinguished between ‘bedouin’ and agricultural tribes See ibid, ‘L’arabisation de l’Orient Semitique’, Revue des Etudes Islamiques (REI), 1938, vol. 35–63, p. 56. 39 The terms būr and referred to land that was uncultivated and therefore not taxed at the time of the first cadastre, and which could be acquired under a variety of legal fī shān (The Valid Laws conditions. See Y.Artin, of the Egyptian Land), Cairo (Bulaq), 1889, pp. 254, 256; G.Baer, A History of Landownership in Modern Egypt 1800–1950, London, Oxford University Press, 1962, pp. 16–17; H.Rivlin, The Agricultural Policy of Muhammad Ali in Egypt, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1961, p. 62; A.Barakāt, al-mulkiyya wa-atharha al-siyāsiyya 1813–1914, Cairo, 1972, pp. 33–34. 40 Artin, op. cit., pp. 261–262.

fī

41

No. 159, p. 4, 13 M 1246/4 July 1830; It was recorded in MS 763/299, 8 Z 1245/31 May 1830. I have no information about the Qabāni group and their tribal ascription. They may be one of the tribal clans in al-Qaliubiyya province. 42 MS Awāmir 38, 6 S 1262/5 January 1845; 38j1/4, 8 Za 1266/16 September 1849. It is not clear if the topic was the desertion of the shēkh who received the grant of the land or the abandonment of the bedouin farmers under pressure of the shēkh. 43 A.Bonne, State and Economics in the Central East, London, 1960, p. 155; wa-Dawrhum fī

fī

al-awwal min al-qarn

Cairo, 1997, p. 123. 44 MS 764/309, 24 M 1246/15 July 1830; MS 56/147, 11 S 1250/19 June 1834; MS 39/132, 28 Ca 1251/21 September 1835; MS s1–44/7, 26 L 1263/7 October 1847.

Notes

220

45 K.Cuno, Landholding, Society and Economy in Rural Egypt, 1740–1850: A Case Study of al-Daqahliyya Province, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, 1985, p. 350. of Sulēman, Yunis and —three of the 46 See the correspondence concerning the dignitaries in the Beheirah: MS s1–2–1/57, 6 S 1266/22 December 1849; 137/77 24 S 1266/9 January 1850. 47 K.Cuno, ‘The Origins of Private Ownership of Land in Egypt: A Reappraisal’, IJMES, 1980, vol. 12, p. 258. 48 Cuno, Landholding, p. 351. 49 Ibid, p. 352. 50 For example, how Khalil Effendi the governor of Tanta and the Beheirah treated the appeal of concerning discrimination in māl payments for lands they cultivated in the province. See MS 12/946, 27 M 1241/11 September 1825. 51 MS 25/352, 27 Ra 1242/29 October 1826. The land was granted to them under the warning that if they will ‘harass others’, the land will be taken away. 52 MS Zawwat 3/55, 1 Ca 1224/14 June 1809. Banī Marzūq from the Qaliubiyya are mentioned in related to the same issue. 53 MS 80/427, 23 N 1252/2 January 1837. Firda (‘imposition’), extraordinary tax levied on the villages or on multazims. See K.Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants: Land, Society, and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740–1858, Cairo, The American University in Cairo Press, 1994, pp. 106, 125–126. 54 No. 394, 20 M 1248/20 June 1832. 55 MS 12/813, 9 Za 1240/26 June 1241; MS 748/240, 11 C 1244/20 December 1828. 56 See MS Zawwat 4/246, 27 Z 1227/2 January 1813. 57 Farhad Bey, the memur of al-Beheirah, was ordered to give the ‘settled ’ enough idle land, according to their request. See MS 42/56, 11 S 1246/1 August 1830. 58 This condition was stated in a letter from the Pasha to the kāshif of Qism Thilth al-Beheirah. See MS 19/2, 1 M 1239/7 September 1823. 59 Mahmud Effendi, the memur of al-Minufiyya and Ashmunin, was ordered to continue to give them idle land, as in previous years. See MS 1/328, 9 S 1243/24 August 1827; MS 8/935, 1 S 1238/18 October 1822. 60 162, 17 M 1246/8 July 1830. 61 MS 769/158, 24 M 1246/15 July 1830; 764/115, 1 M 1246/22 June 1830. Thilth al-Sharqiyya.

and

were granted land by Hasan Effendi the memur of

62 169, 5 S 1246/26 July 1830. 63 MS 770/85, 2 Ra 1246/21 August 1830. A different version of the decision was published in The Hanādī were ready to pay māl of two riyal and the authorities agreed for a period of three years. However they refused to commit themselves for the entire period pleading that they were nomads. They agreed to pay four riyal only for 1246/1830 and the Majlis accepted. See No. 84, 10 Ra 1246/ 29 August 1830. 64 MS s1–7–1/248, 22 C 1250/26 October 1834; MS 80/220, 15 Ş 1252/26 November 1836. In this year nazιr was Mustafa Agha. See MS 84/19; MS s1–4–4/3, 29 M 1263/17 January 1847, a letter from the müdür of jafalik (in Turkish çiftlik, privately owned estates of the Pasha and his family). 65 MS 8/46, 22 N 1264/23 August 1848. It might be the in the nahiye of al-Salihiyya, which müdür al-jafālik reffered to it in a correspondence below. 66 MS s1–2–1/57, 6 S 1266/22 December 1849.

Notes

221

67 The multazim received a title deed upon the purchase of iltizām, along with a written order to the shēkhs and the fellahin to pay the taxes to him or her. 68 MS 48g/16, 10 Za 1266/17 September 1850. It concerned 36 bedouin from al-Minufiyya who owed māl to the shēkh. 69 MS x/15, 18 S 1250/26 June 1834. 70 Probably usya land owed its origin to the abandonment of peasant-held land and was the only land over which the multazims acquired direct control. See Cuno 1994, p. 36. 71 MS 17/227, 8 Ra 1262/8 March 1846; MS 37/490, 22 Ş 1244/28 February 1829; MS 1/305, 5 M 1245/7 July 1829. 72 MS 80/393, 18 N 1252/28 December 1836; MS 39g/24, 29 Za 1265/17 October 1849. 73 MS 731/788, 7 L 1242/4 May 1827. archive concern transactions in bedouin 74 References from the sijills of al-Shahar the bedouin lands. See a legal hearing of shēkh Shadīd of the and two other bedouin shēkhs in sijill musalsala 40, 19 L 1228/15 October 1813. 75 Some Egyptian scholars compiled a comprehensive economic history of Egypt in the 19th century. They wrote very little about the bedouin share and role. See fī al-qarn

Cairo,

1967; fi

Cairo, Dār al-Sharqiyya, 1995. The author used only references of the registers of divan al-Tijāra 76 Cuno, op. cit., p. 552. 77 See details in Barakāt. For a comprehensive history of agriculture at that time see Cairo, Dār 1950, in particular ch. 4; About the agricultural policy and considerations of the Pasha see Rivlin. 78 See the decision of the Majlis to Omer Bey, memur nizâm that the fellahin in the province will pay eight riyal for one faddan and if there are no candidates the land will be given to the Hanādī bedouin for two riyal. MS 736/325, 12 M 1243/5 August 1827. ch. 6. 79 About the transportation developments see 80 This behaviour is characteristic in ‘labor migration’, which is common among bedouin in our time. See E.Marx, ‘Labour migrants with a secure base: Bedouin of South Sinai’, in J.S.Eades (ed.) Migrants, Workers and the Social Order, London, 1987. 81 Cuno, op. cit., p. 259.

Notes

222

5 A trinity of competition and cooperation 1 J.Hathaway, The Politics of Household in Ottoman Egypt—the rise of the Qazdaĝlιs, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997; idem, ‘“Mamluk households” and “Mamluk factions” in Ottoman Egypt: a reconsideration’, in T.Phillipp and Ulrich Haarmann (eds), The Mamluks in Egyptian Politics and Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 107–117. 2 See summary of the discussion about this issue in E.R.Toledano, ‘The Ottoman-Egyptian Elites’, The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, 2000, vol. 24(2), pp. 87–96. This is a review article on D.Behrens-Abouseif, Egypt’s Adjustment to Ottoman Rule: Institutions, Waqf, and Architecture in Cairo (16th to 17th Centuries), Leiden, Brill, 1994. 3 The two biggest ocaks, the Yeniçeri and the Ázeban, were posted in Cairo. They were engaged in policing and inspection. Two ocaks were in the possession of the Ottoman governor for the necessity in imposing his rule. The three remaining ocaks, which were composed of many horsemen, were scattered in the rural regions and were charged with policing and assistance in levying taxes. 4 About 20 beys stood at the top of the pyramid of the iltizām in Ottoman Egypt. They had ruling authority in the sub-provinces (sancaks) of their residence. The beys were members in a supreme council (the ‘Beylicate’, from the Ottoman beylik). and Dede Korkut of the Turcmans and the Oĝuz; Alpamiş of the 5 The epics of Ouzbeks; Almanas of the Kirghizes, etc. are based on traditions of tribalism and nomadism. The characteristics which the epics emphasized were glory on the battlefield, the honour and the the splendour of the tribe, respecting the aged, etc. The epics of the bedouin poet Yemenite prince Sayf ibn Dhu al-Yazan and Banī Hilāl provided a similar image. 6 See J.Hathaway, ‘The military household in Ottoman Egypt’, IJMES, 1995, vol. 27, p. 46. 7 The Faqāriyya and Qāsimiyya appeared for the first time in 1640 with the leadership of Dhu al-Faqar Bey and Qasim Bey the Defterdar. See P.M.Holt, ‘The patterns of Egyptian political history from 1517 to 1798’, in Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt, London: Oxford University Press, 1968, p. 86; idem, ‘Qāsimiyya’, EI2, Vol. 4, pp. 722b– 723a; idem, ‘Dhu al-Faqāriyya’, EI2, Vol. 2, p. 233 and the outstanding works of Hathaway 1997. 8 Damūrdashī, Kitāb al-durra fi akhbār al-kināna, British Museum, Ms. OR. 1073– 74, p. 306. 9 In fact, al-Jabarti is also a foremost source for description of the relationship between bedouin and the local military/administrative elite of the beys and the emirs in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There are, however, some gaps in his coverage and there are some parts in which he is a secondary source for other chroniclers as —his manuscript al-ishārāt fīman tawala min al-wuzāra covers his early period. The chronicle of al-Jabarti starts from 1100/1688–9. He, himself, was born in 1167/1753–4 and from 1190/1776–7 he systematically recorded the events, of which he was an eyewitness. The chronicle ends in 1236/1820, with Jabarti’s death, and that is its great importance. 10 The following is based on al-Jabarti’s chronicle, al-āthār vols, Cairo (Bulaq), 1297/1880, vol. III, pp. 76, 204–205, 227–231, 236, 237, 287, 292, 294–295, 297. I will use here his term—the Mamluk amirs.

4

Notes

223

11 See about the firman in A.Cohen, Palestine in the 18th Century, Jerusalem, Magnes, 1973, p. 108. He quotes firman of Awākhir Ra 1216/10 August 1801 from Mühimme Defterleri, vol. 216, p. 73. 12 G.Wiet (ed.), Nicolas Turc, Chronique d’Egypte (1798–1804), Cairo, 1950, p. 210; III, p. 237. Al-Jabarti indicates that people already preferred the French, because of the prevailing gloomy state of affairs. 13

al-qawmiyya

See

wa

vol. III: Cairo, 1930, p. 25. Mehemet Ali struggled against a few rivals from the group of beys, during the first two years of his reign. Among them were Osman Bey Hasan, Shahin Bey al-Muradi and Mehemet Bey al-Alfi, who threatened Mehemet Ali’s rule most seriously. See Wiet, op. cit., pp. 193, 201, 206; G.Douin, L’Egypte de 1802 â 1804: correspondance des Consuls de France en Egypte, Cairo, Société royale de géographic d’Egypte, 1925, p. 218. 14 The following account is based on the events from IV, pp. 11–14, 15, 37–38, 39, 75, 78, 112, 113, 114, 118, 123, 127. 15 Ibid, IV, p. 39. 16 See a detailed description of the elimination of the beys in ibid, IV, pp. 127–132. 17 K.Cuno, ‘The origins of private ownership of land in Egypt: a reappraisal’, IJMES, 1980, vol. 12, p. 253. 18 E.L.Malus, ‘Memoire sur un voyage fait a la fin de frimaire sur la Branche Tantique du Nil’, La Decade Égyptiene, Year VII [1798–99], vol. 1, pp. 136–137, 138–139; C.Shulkowski, ‘Description de la route du Kaire à Salehhyéh’, La Decade Égyptiene, Year VII [1798–99], vol. 1, p. 24; J.L.E.Reynier, Memoires du général Reynier sur les operations de l’armée d’orient, ou de l’Egypte aprés_la bataille d’Heliopolis, Paris, 1827, pp. 50–52. 19 who ruled in Upper Egypt until 1769 were arabized Berbers from North Africa. See P.S.Girard, ‘Mémoire sur l’agriculture et le commerce de l’Haute Égypte’, La Decade Égyptien, year VIII [1799–1800], p. 35. and arrived from North Africa to Middle Egypt in the seventeenth century. See EF.Jomard, ‘Observations sur les Arabes de l’Egypte moyenne’, in Description de l’Egypte, vol. XII, pp. 267–327, Paris, 1821–29, p. 284. 20 H.Ammar, Growing up in an Egyptian Village, Silwa Province of Aswan, London, Routledge, 1954, pp. 45–46. 21 See al-Rīf fī al-qarn althāmin Cairo, Maktabat Madbūlī 1986, p. 166. There is much evidence in the anthropological literature that nomads regard themselves more highborn than the settled fellahin. See Hobbs, p. 30; D.G.Bates, Nomads and Farmers: A Study of the Yörük of Southeastern Turkey, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 1973, p. 22. 22 Clot Bey, Aperçu général sur l’Egypte, 2 vols, Paris, Fortin Masson, 1840, p. 111. 23 See E.Marx, Bedouin of the Negev, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1967, ch. 12. Matrimonial relationship between bedouin and fellahin are mentioned in the sijill of the Alexandrian Sharia Court. In sijill 6, p. 62/157, 17 R 1004/16 April 1596 it says: Marriages and divorces cases between the folk and between them and the bedouin who were settled in the neighborhood, were taken care of, such as … (‘shamalat bayn al-ahālī al-muqīmīn ghayrihim’).

hunāk Quoted

mithl

al-zawāj

wa baynahum wa bayn

al-Maghārba in

fī madīnat Rashīd Fī

wa ‘ —dirāsa

Notes

224

,’ al-Majalla 1983/84, vol. 30/31, p. 337. The Hawwāra in Qenah province avoided marrying their daughters even to rich fellahin. See M.Awad, ‘Settlement of Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribal Groups in the Middle East’, International Labor Review, January 1959, p. 31. 24 Historians such as Kenneth Cuno and Juan Cole, who used sijills of sharia courts and registers of landownership, and anthropologists such as Marx, Salzman and Khazanov. 25 A.J.Jaussen, Costumes des Arabs au Pays de Moab, Paris, J.Gabalda, 1908, p. 246. 26 C.F.Volney, Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte; Pendant les Années 1783, 1784 & 1785, Paris, LXXXVII (1787), Jean Goulmier edition 1959, p. 231. 27 Shulkowski, op. cit., p. 25. 28 Travelers who visited Egypt, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, described the ‘misery’ of the fellahin because of the bedouin ‘raids’. See R.Pococke, Description of the East and Some Other_Countries, vol. I: Observations on Egypt, London, 1743, p. 133; J.L.Burckhardt, Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, London, J.Murray, 1822, pp. 459–467; C.E.Savary, Letters on Egypt, (English translation), London, 1799, pp. 221– 223. 29 J.Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the Years: 1768–1773, Edinburgh, 1805, vol. VII, p. 48. 30 Volney, op. cit., p. 28. 31 Jomard, op. cit., pp. 269–272. al-rīf fī al-nisf al-thānī min al-qarn Cairo, 32 1983, p. 276. rival, said 33 Shulkowski, op. cit., p. 62. It is worth noticing that Ibrahim Bey, is a rebel fellah’, ibid, p. 12. that ‘ 34 G.W.F.Stripling, The Ottoman Turks and the Arabs, 1511–1574, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1943, pp. 70–72. 35 Jomard, op. cit., pp. 285–286; M-A.Lancret, ‘Mémoire sur le système d’imposition territoriale et sur l’administration des provinces d’Egypte, dans les dernières années du gouvernment des Mamlouk’, Description de l’Egypte, vol. XI, p. 491. 36 European travelers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, brought related samples. See J.L.Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys, London, Colburn & Bentley, 1831, vol. II, pp. 459–467; Description de l’Egypte, vol. XII, pp. 309–324. I, p. 190.

37

fī

38 Jīrār (Girard, P.S.)

(trans.

), Cairo, 1942, p. 31; fī

Maktabat Anjelo, 1954, p. 92. 39

p. 55.

I, the events of 1207/1793, p. 239; the events of N 1214/1800, p. 111;

Cairo, 1987,

40 Jomard, op. cit., pp. 267–327; III, Z 1214/May 1799, p. 111. 41 MS 769/6, 2 M 1246/29 June 1830; MS 764/166, 8 M 1246/29 June 1830. 42 No. 194, 11 R 1246/29 September 1830. 43 MS 37/1450, 29 S 1244/10 September 1828; MS 21, 7 N 1251/27 December 1835. 44 MS x/242, 1 C 1250/23 October 1834; MS 63/178, 7 B 1251/29 October 1835. 45 MS 69/130, 16 C 1251/9 October 1835; MS 78/148, 18 S 1252/4 July 1836; MS 10, 5 S 1244/17 August 1825; MS 37/670, 30 S 1244/10 September 1828; S2/4/1 firman to to the shēkhs of shēkhs of

24 N 1262/15 September 1846.

to

and to the

Notes

225

46 A letter addressed to Omar Bey, memur of qism thani and thilth al-Sharqiyya, MS 28/325, 13 B 1242/1 February 1827. 47 MS 46/76, 24 N 1266/3 August 1850. In the bedouin law, diyya is payment of ransom in a case of murder. The payment was made in camels. It seems that the authorities recognized the bedouin legal system as a means of conflict resolution and here the tribes preserved their autonomy. No. 194, 11 R 1246/29 September 1830.

48

6 Tribe and state in Egypt 1 R.Tapper, ‘Anthropologists, historians, and tribespeople on tribe and state formation in the Middle East’, in P.Khoury, and J.Kostiner, Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990, p. 53. 2 F.R.Hunter, Egypt under the Khedives 1805–1879: From Household Government to Modern Bureaucracy, Pittsburgh Pa., Pittsburgh University Press, 1984, p. 110. He argued that ‘familial’ influences emerged since the 1860s and were based on landownership, ibid, p. 117. Shalabī, al3 Other studies dealing with the officials and the administration are muwazifūn

fī

fi 1989; Zayn

Cairo, Shams al-Dīn Nijm, Idārat al-aqālīm fī

1805–1882, Cairo, Dār al-Kitāb 1988; Raouf Abbas Hāmed, ‘The Siyasatname and the institutionalization of central administration under ’ in N.Hanna (ed.), The State and its Servants, Cairo, AUC Press, 1995. 4 E.Toledano, State and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 11, 78. 5 In the records we find them as rijāl rijāl or rijāl balāt al-pāsha. Among the most trusted by the Pasha were Baqqi Bey, the Director of finance and first lieutenant (Kathüda); his sister’s sons Ibrahim Yagan, the Governor of al-Gharbiyya and Ahmad Yagan the War director; his nephew Mehemet Sharif, the Director of finance and the Kethüda; Sami Bey, the Director in chief of the cabinet; Ahmad Pasha Manikli, the War director; Boghos Bey, the Director of foreign affairs; Osman Bey, Zaki pp. 30, 36. Effendi, Habib Effendi. See Hunter, op. cit., p. 24, 6 Memuriye is a unit of provincial administration. MS 6/285, no date, 1235–6/1830; MS Divan 38/230, no date, 1244–5/1829; MS Zawat 269, no date, 1242–3/1827. 7 MS 757/293, no date, 1245–/1830; MS 39/386, 1 S 1245/2 August 1829. The Majlis al-Mulki determined punishment of 200 floggings for nâzırs and shēkhs who deviated from their duties. See MS 66/376, 29 R 1251/23 August 1835. 8 MS 78/429, 17 R 1242/18 November 1826. 9 K.Barkey, ‘In different times: scheduling and social control in the Ottoman Empire, 1550 to 1650’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1996, vol. 38(3), pp. 460–483. She argues that the rotation had been neglected at the end of the seventeenth century following the reorganization of the landownership system during the reign of the sultan Murad IV (1623–1640) and the abolishment of the timār tax system. 10 Ibid, p. 463. 11 See K.Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants—Land, Society, and Economy in Lower Egypt,

Notes

226

1740–1858, Cairo, The American University in Cairo Press, 1994, p. 170 and also Clot Bey, Aperçu général sur l’Egypte, 2 vols, Paris, Fortin Masson, 1840, vol. II, p. 186. 12 So it was in the nahiye of Mit Abu Ghalib in qism Shirbin. See MS 25/149, 21 N 1249/1 February 1834. 13 MS 70/139, 27 R 1252/12 August 1836—a decree of the Pasha to all the müdürs. 14 See about the phenomenon of corruption, bribe and nepotism in fī fī Cairo, 1989, pp. 69–74. See about the Pasha’s attitudes toward his officials in 1995. He found that Mehemet Ali used to encourage the diligent and to punish his competitors. See MS 78/429, 17 R 1252/2 August 1836; MS 70/662, 27 R 1252/12 August 1836. 15 MS 282/1526, 22 Z 1256/15 March 1841; MS x/185, 9 Ca 1248/4 October 1832; MS 54/528, 23 M 1251/21 May 1835. 16 MS 85/137, 29 Za 1252/7 March 1837. 17 Toledano, op. cit., pp. 13, 15. 18 See about that in Nijm 1988, and Hunter, op. cit., pp. 35–80. A comprehensive work about the administrative sections of Upper and Lower Egypt since the Roman period was done by the prince Omer Toussoun of the viceroy family. See O.Toussoun, La Geographic de L’Egypte a L’epoque Arabe par le Prince Omar Toussoun, Tome I: La Cadastre de Mohammad Ali, Caire, Memoires de la Societe Royale Geographic d’Egypte, 1936. al-Badū wa-dawrhum fī al-thawra Cairo, al-Jabalāwī, 1986; A.Schölch, ‘The Egyptian Bedouins and the Urabiyun (1882)’. Die Welt des Islams, 1977, vol. XVII.

19 See

20 Details of the roles of the nazιr qism can be found in defter idāra wa sanat 1243/1827–8, p. 8. 21 MS 32/625, end of Ca 1245/27 November 1829; MS 1/209, 12 Za 1245/5 May 1830; MS x/217–219, 263, 11, 12, 27 C 1250/15, 16, 31 October 1834; MS 139/436, 8 B 1251/30 October 1835. 22 P.Merruau, L’Egypte Contemporaine: 1840–1857: de Mehemet-Ali à Said Pacha, Paris: Didier, 1858, p. 434; 23 vol. III:

III, p. 4, the events of L 1213/March 1799. al-qawmiyya wa Cairo, 1930, p. 629.

24 IV, p. 21, the events of Za 1221/January 1807. 25 C.A.Murray, A Short Memoir of Mohamed Aly, London, 1898, p. 45. IV, p. 18, the events of C 1221/August–September 1806; Shukrī, fī al-qarn Cairo, 1958, Vol. III, p. 1074. the Amīr 27 A village in al-Beheirah province was named after shēkh who was the amīr of in the 16th century. M.Ramzi, Al-Qāmūs min qudamā ila sanat 1945, 6 vols, Cairo, al-jughrāfī 26

1993, p. 234. 28 Kīs=500 qirsh. See IV, pp. 82, 84, 114. See also Shukrī, op. cit., vol. III, p. 1075. al-bulīs 29 See about these units and about policing at that time in 1805–1922, MA dissertation, Ein Shams University, 1977, p. 110; Amīn Sāmī, Taqwīm al-Nīl, Cairo, 1928, Vol. III, p. 123. The titles sersüvari and hâkim alBeheirah are mentioned in MS 610/1629, 18 Ra 1267/21 January 1851.

Notes

227

30 See, for example, an order given to Jaju Agha the vekil of serdalilan in MS 80/397, 18 N 1252/27 December 1836. 31 MS 54/535, 25 M 1251/26 May 1835. 32 This claim is not accurate. Bedouin continued to be engaged with banditry and in giving Banaa dawlat Alī, Cairo, Dār shelter. See al-Fikr

1948, p. 475. See also

Dirāsāt min

fī fī al-awwal min al-qarn MA dissertation, University of Alexandria, 1967, p. 144. 33 214/146, 19 Ş 1253/18 November 1837. 34 No. 970, 18 Ca 1258/27 June 1842. 35 MS 25/38 undated—a royal decree to the Jihadiyya. 36 MS 38/60, 7 L 1260/22 August 1849; 25/232, 18 Za 1249/29 March 1834; 25/166, 1 N 1249/11 February 1834. 37 MS 85/82, 9 Za 1252/3 June 1836; 85/88, 10 Za 1252/4 June 1836. This also proves that the tribes at that time were in fact administrative units. 38 The correspondence about this case lasted five months during 1244/1828–9. See MS 40/50, 10 Ca 1244/20 November 1828. 39 The correspondence about this case lasted five months during 1836–7. It could be seen in a few defters. See MS 70/625, 15 R 1252/31 July 1836. The two also opposed the appointment of the deceased’s son as an agent (vekil). 40 MS 45/180, 28 Ş 1266/9 July 1850. 41 MS 138/75, 18 Ra 1253/22 June 1837; 70/265, 13 Ra 1252/29 June 1836. It is interesting that the ’ applied to the authorities for help in capturing the murderers is interesting. It proves that the bedouin regarded the authorities as a legitimate organ for intervention in internal disputes. 42 Evidence of this can be found, for instance in a letter from the khedivial divan to the memur of Upper Egypt saying that the majlis had decided to take steps against the deceit practised by the bedouin who were brought before it in order to discuss and decide on their affairs. See MS 739/121, 16 S 1244/28 August 1828.

7 Office-holders 1 See about Ahmad Pasha in MS 58/482, 12 L 1249/22 February 1834. 2 Ms Majlis Mulkiyya, mahfaza 5/202, 2 L 1252/11 January 1837. Nazιrs of the bedouin of alFayyum and Qena are also mentioned in the records. 3 MS 58/439, 23 N 1249/1 February 1834. 4 MS s/4/6, p. 2 No. 15, 18 R 1266/3 March 1250. 5 MS 74/610, 17 S 1252/4 June 1836; Mulkiyya, mahfaza 5/202, 20 L 1252/30 January 1837. 6 MS 67/399, 23 Ş 1251/14 December 1835. 7 The murattabāt in this case were fodder and grain, supplied to the bedouin shēkhs for the bedouin’s horses and camels, which were serving in the Egyptian army in the Hejaz. See MS 60/356, 29 S 1251/26 June 1835. The appointed nazιr could be Hüseyin Agha, who was nazιr-i in al-Sharqiyya in 1242. 8 MS 44/674, 25 B 1266/6 June 1849. 9

No. 384, p. 221, 21 Za 1247. Kiswa=official uniform, which also granted a right for special payment.

Notes

228

10 MS 58/470, 9 L 1249/19 February 1834; 58/523, 28 L 1249/6 March 1834; MS awāmir 33, 19 L 1255/26 December 1839; 35/122, 3 Ra 1265/27 January 1849; 42/705, 22 S 1247/2 August 1831; 67/399, 23 Ş 1251/14 December 1835. 11 Darb al-Sham was a very important trade route at that time and the annual Damascus hajj caravan also passed via this route. Bedouin used to conspire against the caravan and to rob it. An announcement about the appointment was sent to the shēkhs of al-Hanādī and See MS 1/139, 28 Ş 1245/22 February 1830. 12 The correspondence regarding this case is in MS 4/41–43, 17/2, 3, 41, Za 1262—Ca 1263. 13 MS 15/226, 26 M 1242/30 August 1826. Other records mentioned Hasan Agha. It seems that he is the same person. In 1251/1835–6 another Hüseyin Agha was nazιr-i in Qenah. See also MS 27/135, 1 Ra 1242/3 October 1826; 733/422, 10 Za 1242/5 June 1827; 733/537, 19 Za. 14 MS 58/523, 28 L 1249/6 March 1834. 15 MS 70/123, 12 Za 1251/29 February 1836. 16 In

No. 384 from 21 Z 1247/23 May 1832 is mentioned who was appointed as hâkim on the shēkhs of al-Hanādī in

the memuriyes of al-Sharqiyya and al-Qaliubiyya. Compared with the delibaşι, who was mentioned in No. 411 of 11 Ra 1248/9 August 1832. In No. 443 of 23 Ca as serdelilan and nazιr-i of 1248/19 October 1832 was mentioned aqālīm al-Sharqiyya and al-Qalyubiyya. It seems that the ranks hâkim and nazιr were used became agha after he was kâşif. alternately in this capacity. Apparently 17 About the full chain of events and the share of nazιr-i see Nos. 384, 411, 443. Two of the Hanādī shēkhs didn’t take their allocation: Shēkh who escaped and

who was in al-Minieh province.

was appointed shēkh instead of his brother and it was decided to grant him pasture because it was a lush spring season. (Later it was made clear that the information in the hazine was erroneous. stayed with the Pasha’s army and was detained in liman of Alexandria because he had committed an offence). 18 MS 158/894, 895, 15 Z 1253/12 March 1838; 158/654, 2 Za 1253/28 January 1838. 19 I could not find an Arabic term in my sources. In our days bedouin use the appellation 20 Marx 1994, p. 152. 21 MS 70/106, 5 Za 1251/22 February 1836. divided province between two governors.

(= half) was an administrative unit within a

was interested in spreading 22 MS 41/29, 23 R 1266/8 March 1850. It seems that his tutelage on them only to get more allocations. Kusūr was a kind of allocation given to shēkhs. 23 MS 3/714, 12 L 1247/16 March 1832; 2/206, 29 Za 1247/1 May 1832. 24 MS 12/1002, 5 Ra 1241/18 October 1825. 25 MS 734/395, 14 Z 1242/9 July 1827. Ibrahim Pasha, son of Mehemet Ali, was the commander of the Egyptian expeditionary force in the Sudan with the rank of serasker, and of the Jawāzī tribe. bedouin were part of his army. It seems that the shēkh was 26 MS 70/460, 4 S 1252/22 May 1836; 84/203, 8 M 1253/24 April 1837. The term Gabīla indicates that the fawāyed were a tribal confederation—a territorial organization.

Notes

229

27 MS 74/921, 70/643, 23 R 1252/8 August 1836. Al-Saghīr was probably the nickname of the shēkh of al-Jawāzī, and his three sons and are mentioned in various sources as his inheritors after he was murdered. 28 MS 3/714, 12 L 1247/15 March 1832; 57/619, 7 Ra 1251/3 July 1835. Probably al-Mugābala was a group of one of the big confederations, as it was not mentioned anywhere. 29 MS 284/285, 17 Ra 1257/9 May 1841. 30 MS 70/456, 3 S 1252/21 May 1836. 31 MS 35/24, 18 Ra 1265/12 March 1849. It seems that in some cases the deceased shēkh’s salary had been divided among his sons to show the extent of justice. 32 MS 42/66, 19 S 1246/9 August 1830. is probably the son of Shēkh Bāsil. In another 33 MS 70/590, 1 R 1252/17 July 1836. place it was said that his son Badrī replaced him. See MS 78/624, 14 C 1252/27 September 1836. 34 MS x/200, 8 Z 1250/7 April 1835; 66/190, 14 R 1251/9 August 1835; 74/701, 10 Ra 1252/26 June 1836. Kiswa and are sorts of allowances that were granted to shēkhs together with their nominations; 49/44, 29 C 1252/12 October 1836. It is the only reference I found as belonging to the The were one of the that mentions the Marabtin groups, which were vassals of See Murray, pp. 279–280 and, about the Marabtin, pp. 272–273; MS 80/ 519, 9 L 1252/18 January 1837. 35 MS 44/141, 23 S 1248/22 July 1832; x/290, 12 Ra 1251/8 July 1835. could be 36 MS Majlis Mulkiyya 139/428, 8 B 1251/30 Oktober 1835. The title which was used to designate a ‘grand shēkh’. 37 MS awamir, x/124, 28 L 1250/27 February 1835; s/1/2/2/178, 13 S 1267/ 18 December 1850. 38 A mantle made of precious fur—‘farsaq’—is mentioned there. See MS 766/50, 1 Z 1249/9 May 1834; 2484, 26 C 1236/31 March 1849; 41/752, 22 S 1248/22 July 1822. 39 MS 38/460, 19 B 1245/14 January 1830. It might be that dissidence against the shēkh in his tribe had been occurred and that is how the need to support his decisions can be explained. 40 MS 44/175, 27 S 1248/27 March 1833. 41 MS 22/8, 7 Ca 1265/31 March 1849. 42 Mahafiz Abhath, 140, 3 S 1268/28 November 1851. The relation of the serasker to this case indicates that probably the reason for cutting off the allowances was the desertion of bedouin from military service. 43 Mahafiz Abhath, 9/190, 5 S 1269/19 November 1852. 44 MS 58/479, 12 L 1249/22 February 1834; 25/219, 10 Za 1249/21 March 1834; 25/232, 18 Za 1249/28 March 1834. 45 MS idhn al-hazina 6/248, 14 Ca 1236/19 March 1821. 46 No. 384, 1247/1831. 47 Sometimes the kiswa was a (ceremonial mantle) and those who refused received a monetary reward instead. See MS 796/50, end of Z 1249/9 May 1834; 74/185, 24 Za 1251/13 March 1836. 48 MS 733/112, 15 L 1242/12 May 1827; MS Majlis Mulkiyya, 139/81, 28 Ş 1251/19 December 1835. 49 MS 34/7, 3 Ca 1243/11 January 1838; 74/185, 24 Za 1251/12 February 1836; 778/ 178, 1 Ra 1248/7 August 1832; No. 443, p. 221, 23 Ca 1248/ 18 October 1832; MS 51/355, 2 L 1248/20 February 1833.

Notes

230

8 Military service 1 H.Rosenfeld, ‘The social composition of the military in the process of state formation in the Arabian desert’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1965, vol. 95. 2 J.Poncet, ‘Le myth de la catastrophe Hilalienne’, Annales: Economie, Societes, Civilisations, 1967, vol. XXII. 3 C.Cahen, ‘Quelques mots sur les Hilaliens et le nomadisme’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 1968, vol. XI, p. 132. 4 T.Asad, ‘The bedouin as a military force: notes on some aspects of power relations between nomads and sedentaries in historical perspective’, in S.Nelson (ed.), The Desert and the Sown: Nomads in the Wider Society, Berkeley, University of California, 1973, pp. 61–74. 5 M.Winter, Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule 1517–1798, London, Routledge, 1992, pp. 95–96. and 6 Despite the fact that on 4 July 1798 thirty shēkhs of the signed a peace agreement with the new regime, in the Ottoman army who stood before the French were 800 bedouin, who constituted the left wing in the battle near the pyramids of Giza on 21 July. But the same bedouin had disappeared when they realized that they were going to be defeated and when they heard the sounds of cannonballs. See Murray, p. 31, who quotes Lacroix, Bonaparte en Egypte who was an eyewitness to the battle of 2 July, in which the Bedouin escaped before the French. About the Bedouin activities during the French invasion, see IV, pp. 7–19, 230, 320–321. 7 See P.M.Holt, ‘Hawwâra’, EI2, III (1971), pp. 295–296. About the emirs of Hawwāra, see Ibn Iyas, I, p. 290; Garcin, p. 498. For a list of the Hawwāra emirs and their ranks, see J.C.Garcin, ‘Émirs Hawwāras et Beys de Islamologiques, 1974, vol. XII. 8

aux et XVII Siécles’, Annales

argued that the Hawwāra were or (janissaries—the largest and, by the mid-seventeenth century, the wealthiest infantry regiment in Egypt) and therefore they assumed that they should be exempt from māl payment. In 1773 Mehemet Pasha tried to dismiss them but he found out that their status was authorized by law. See (Çelebi), al-ishārāt fīman tawalla

min al-wuzāraa

al-mulaqqab

ed. Cairo, 1978, pp. 156, 202–203, 442. 9 Bedouin who joined the regiments were granted iltizām lands, which became a source of political and economic power—to the Ottoman authorities’ regret. See Garcin, Qus, pp. 521–522. 10 Shēkh Humām had at his disposal at least 4,000 cavalrymen. See Shaw, S.J., Ottoman Egypt in the 18th Century, the Nizamname-i Misir of Cezar Ahmed Pasha, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard Univ. Press, 1964, p. 44. 11 IV, pp. 184–185. 12 Presumably it had happened in the eighteenth century. Ahmet Pasha al-Jazzar, the governor of Damanhur, favoured the dressed them in uniform and called them ‘Hawwāra’. See PEFQ, 1906, p. 222 and note 1. Al-Jabarti wrote: ‘kān bihi min al-muqādim in IV, p. 185, when he refers to the elimination of the Hawwāra leadership by Ibrahim, the Pasha’s son, but the English translation suggests: ‘there had been…officers and soldier volunteers’. See T.Philipp and M.Perlmann,

Notes

231

History of Egypt, 4 vols, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994, vol. IV, p. 257. In another place, al-Jabarti wrote: ‘kānat min al-umaraa and in the English translation: ‘assigned to tax, farmers, amirs, irregular troops…’ ibid, p. 255. It seems that the translators were mistaken to think that the text refers to soldiers, while in fact it deals with the bitter fate of the Hawwāra. The records of the Viceregal Department and the divans usually mention al-hawwāra or başhawwariye, but also ‘Bedouin of al-hawwāri and al-khayyāla tribes’, to emphasize the identity between Hawwāra and cavalrymen and to show that Hawwāra are bedouin. See MS 289/279. In the second half of the nineteenth century ‘Hawwāra’ became a term which describes a kind of warrior. James Finn, the British Consul in Jerusalem 1846–1863, mentioned them in his memoirs as ‘başıbozuk’ or ‘Hawwāra’ (as they are in Arabic). See J.Finn, Stirring Times or Records from the Jerusalem Consular Chronicles of 1853–1856, 2 vols. London, C.Kegan Paul & Co., 1878, Vol. I, p. 104. The ethnographer Max von Oppenheim argued that since ‘Hawwāra’ became a term that indicates a type of warrior, it ceased to be a name of a tribe. See M.F.von Oppenheim, Die Beduinen, II, Leipzig, 1943, p. 30, n. 4. Notwithstanding all that, Hawwāra are living in Upper Egypt and they are regarded as settled bedouin. 13 A.Cohen, Palestine in the 18th Century, Jerusalem, Magnes, 1973, pp. 284–285, n. 48. 14 The leaders of these tribes had committed to supply to the Hawwara başι 100 horsemen within 2 months. See MS 11/218, 15 Ra 1238/30 November 1822. of the 15 Among them was also the Hawwara başι See MS 34/7, 23 Ca 1243/12 December 1827. 16 So, leastwise, was the opinion in the Pasha’s court, when a letter from the mühafiz of al-Madina has arrived and in it a demand for 300 tough men. See MS 11/ 123, 15 S 1238/31 October 1822. Also mentioned in the MS records are of the Hawwariye of Tarablus and Suleiman Agha, the hawwariye başι in al-Madina. See MS 12/608, 15 L 1239/14 June 1824. 17 MS 780/438, 23 L 1247/27 March 1832. 18 MS 731/640, 23 N 1242/20 April 1827; 733/130, 733/181, 733/270, 16–25 L 1242/13–22 May 1827. Cairo, 19 Dār al-Kitāb

1986, p. 63. See fī

al-awwal min al-qarn

wa-Dawrhum fī Cairo,

1997, pp. 208–209. 20 Kh.Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, his Army and the Making of Modern Egypt, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 86; al-qawmiyya wa vol. III: Cairo, 1930, p. 160. 21 MS S/1/47/3 No. 696, 4 Z 1236/2 September 1821. About Mehemet Ali’s policy toward the Hawwāra, see op. cit., pp. 25–42. 22 Fahmy, op. cit., p. 99. About the reasons for the conscription of the fellahin, see ibid, pp. 89–99. 23 Barker, FO 78/184, 7 July 1829. 24 For a report on the condition of the regular army from 30 May 1831, see G.Douin, La premiére guerre de Syrie (1831–1832), Le Caire, 1931, p. 43. 25 A report of Captain Aubry-Bailleul from July 1832, in op. cit., p. 261. 26 M.Van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State—The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan, London, Zed Books, 1992, p. 195.

Notes

232

27 MS 10/223, 22 B 1237/14 April 1822. The Viceregal Department ordered the nazιr of Aswan and Farshut affairs to give preference to the employment of the hajjana of the in guarding the (the black slaves from the Sudan) and to stop using the bedouin horsemen. 28 MS 51/365, 9 L 1248/1 March 1833. It seems that they were the Their shēkhs were committed to supply soldiers to the navy. See MS 76/106, 29 S 1252/ 16 June 1836. 29 Mahafiz Abhath, Mahfaza 105, a list of Egyptian government officials 1264/1848. 30 MS 20/133, 20 M 1241/4 September 1825. 31 MS 16/182, 18 C 1239/19 February 1824. This is the only reference to the education of the bedouin. It is compatible with the military orientation of the education policy of Mehemet Ali. See MS 16/331, 22 L 1239/21 June 1824. 32 Y.Artin, fī shān (The Valid Laws of the Egyptian Land), Cairo (Bulaq), 1889, p. 163. (A translation of Yacoub Artin, La Propriété foncière en Egypte, Bulaq, 1883). The privilege of exemption was abolished only with the publication of the law of conscription in September 1946. 33 Dar al-Mahfuzat (DM), mahfaza no. 42/79/1, C 1299/August 1882. 131, 526/7, 9 ş 1279/30 January 1863. In December 1885 a decision 34 regarding continuation of the exemption from conscription of settled bedouin, chose by lot. See also R.Teodorus, fi mudīriyāt Cairo, 1894, p. 230; DM 1/66, 10 Za 1247/12 April 1832; 13 Z 1247/15 M 1832. 35 MS 41/664, 11 Za 1247/11 April 1832; 41/658, 26 Za 1247/27 April 1832; 51/79, 9 Ca 1248/15 November 1831; S1/8/1, p. 157, 2 S 1264/9 January 1848, a decree addressed to 36 MS S1/37/1, No. 215, 4 M 1248/2 June 1832. 37 See A.Sāmī, Taqwīm al-Nīl (Chronicle of the Nile), vol. II: (Mehemet Ali’s Reign), Cairo, Dār al-Kutub, 1928, vol. II, p. 407; MS 33, 21 R 1255/10 July 1839; MS 51/100, 22 C 1248/16 November 1832; MS 56/299, 28 R 1250/2 September 1834; MS 16, 2 R 1250/8 August 1834. 38 MS 139/427, 8 B 1251/22 July 1835; 66/266, 20 R 1251/24 July 1837; 58/507, 19 L 1249/1 March 1834; 86/61, 24 B 1252/25 October 1836. 39 MS 56/464, 5 B 1250/7 November 1834. 40 op. cit., p. 63; op. cit., p. 414. 41 MS 58/333, 8 B 1249/21 November 1833; 25/114, 3 N 1249/14 January 1834; 58/382, 15 ş 1249/28 December 1833; 16, 7 M 1250/16 May 1834; 56/439, a decree to the müdür of alBeheirah, 21 C 1250/25 October 1834. 42 MS 31, 24 C 1253/25 September 1837. 43 MS 25/98, 14 ş 1249/27 December 1833; 67/437, 29 ş 1251/20 December 1834; 58/501, 17 L 1249/27 February 1834; sijill 70/520, 27 S 1252/12 June 1836; MS 56/449, 29 C 1250/2 November 1834; 56/463, 5 B 1250/7 November 1834. 44 MS 6/379, 28 B 1236/1 May 1821; 38/746, 18 Za 1245/19 May 1830, an order of payment to Hüseyin Bey the memur of Zifta; 13, 10 Za 1247/11 May 1832; 779/ 5, 19 Z 1247/20 May 1838; 5/985, 3 Za 1247/4 April 1832; MS 51/365, 9 L 1248/1 March 1833. Mehemet Ali ordered the vekil of the hazinedar bey to pay the bedouin who arrived from Middle Egypt, because they were on the way to the army. See MS 62/248, 16 C 1250/20 October 1834; 784/369, 18 Z 1247/17 May 1832; 56/367, 23 Ca 1250/27 September 1834, the departure of bedouin from to al-Sham was cancelled and the müdür of al-Beheirah was asked to take care concerning the collection of the debts. See also 50/348, 12 L 1248/4 March 1833. 45 To Beni Suweif and from al-Fayyum. See MS 17/286, 21 B 1239/22 March 1824.

Notes

233

46 The document deals with the appointment of Mehemet Agha to the post. See MS 798/135, 25 R 1251/20 August 1835. Accurate listings of the numbers of hired camels compared with the government’s camels can be found in the army reports (yol curnal) along with details about Sham, 2/39, 2 B 1247/7 December 1831. the bedouin units in service. See 47 About the conflict, see mahafiz, Sham, 1/27, 30 Ca 1247/6 November 1831. 48 MS S3/47/1 No. 58, 12 Ş 1236/19 November 1820; S3/47/1 No. 696, 4 Z 1236/ 2 September 1821; S3/47/1 No. 475, 3 N 1236/4 May 1821; S3/47/1 No. 561, 17 L 1236/18 July 1821; S3/47/1 No. 371, 25 B 1236/28 April 1821. 49 See S4/48/1 No. 524, 12 Ş 1250/20. In June 1834, Mehemet Ali instructed Hurshid Bey to send a cavalry unit to fight the Biyāly bedouin because they were giving shelter to deserters. See Ph.Jallād (ed.), Qāmūs al-idāra III, Alexandria, 1890–92, p. 1325. 50 Fahmy, op. cit., pp. 201–202. 51 About the description of the battle, see Fahmy, op. cit., pp. 160–163; See also cit., p. 277; Clot Bey, p. 160; Latīfa Sālim, al-quwwa

op.

fi al-thawra

Cairo, 1981, p. 67. 52 The origin of this appellation is Turkish—kazak, which means foolhardy, undisciplined and rebellious. In Central Asia, Siberia and Western Ukraine they became known as excellent warriors, served as border guards and were outstanding horsemen. The warfare methods and the social organization of the bedouin seemed to be the same as the Cossacks. 53 Mimaut à Sebastiani, 14 March 1832, in G.Douin, La premièrre guerre de Syrie, 2 vols, Le Caire, Société royale de geographic d’Egypte, 1931, pp. 70, 147. Also the Capitan AubryBailleul indicated that he was engaged with the training of irregular bedouin horsemen, who were intended to play the role of Cossacks, see ibid, p. 261. 54 A detailed military history can be found in M.Weygand, Histoire Militaire de Mohammed Aly et de_ses fils, 2 Vols. Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1936. See a discussion of the Pasha’s policy of expansion in F.Lawson, The Social Origins of Egyptian Expansionism during the Period, New York, Columbia University Press, 1992; Fahmy, op. cit., pp. wādī al-Nīl ( wal38–73. About the Sudan war, see Makī Shubayka, Sudān), Beirut, Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1965, pp. 309–371. 55 There is no full and accurate data about the number of the bedouin who served in the Pasha’s army. Sometimes they were included in the category of irregular horsemen forces, together with Turks and others. Partial data is found in G.Douin, La mission du Baron de Boislecomte—l’Egypte et la Syrie en 1833, Le Caire, 1927, p. 50. Also min Cairo, Maktabat Madbuli, 1990 and

al-jaish al-jaysh

al-barrī fī

basha al-kabīr, Cairo. 1939. 56 About negotiation to transport 15,000 irdabb of grains via the Suez route on bedouin camels, see a decree issued to the governor of al-Sharqiyya province concerning a letter of Hüseyin Bey the nazιr of the caravans in MS 70/397, 17 M 1252/5 May 1836. 57 Tribal groups from the Hejaz dwelled in Upper Egypt. cites documents, which deal with registration of rights on land of Bedouin from the Hejaz and their relatives in Egypt. See appendix 4, 5, pp. 283–284. 58 Tusun was 17 when he departed. He died in 1816 before he was 20. See al-dawla al-ūla 1158–1233 (1745–1818), Cairo, op. cit., p. 132. 1976, p. 303; 59 A decree sent to the kâshif of al-Beheirah, MS 6/629, 10 Za 1236/9 August 1821; op. cit., pp. 134, 132.

Notes

234

60 IV, p. 269, the events of 1232/1816–17. 61 mahfaza 4/14–16, 9 Ca 1230/19 April 1815. p. 153. 62 MS 1/75, 23 N 1226/11 Oktober 1811; 2484, 29 S 63 MS 11/235, 17 Ra 1238/2 December 1822; Dār al-Kutub, 1237/25 November 1821; MS 214/233, 26 C 1254/16 September 1838. Ibrahim Pasha exploited the and the to subdue the riots. 64 MS 779/606, 17 Ra 1248/15 August 1832; 51/100, 22 C 1248/17 November 1832; 51/124, 6 dafatir), 22 S 1248/ 21 July 1832. B 1248/30 November 1832; MS ( 65 MS 22, 28 M 1252/15 May 1836; 739/393, undated letter addressed to Hasan Effendi, the memur of Half al-Sharqiyya; 740/125, 9 Za 1243/24 May 1828; 737/ 393, 7 Za 1244/12 May 1829. 66 2484, microfilm 28609. 67 MS S1/4/6 No. 3, 1 C 1266/14 April 1850. 68 Makkī Shubayka, Al-Sudān fi qarn (1819–1919), Cairo, 1947, p. 13. 69 MS 7/122, 20 R 1236/26 January 1821 al-Fawāyed; 6/379, 28 B 1236/2 May 1821, 9/367, 9 C 1237/3 March 1822, 18/650, 18/35, al-Jawāzī; 1/142, al-Hawwāra, Juhēna, p. 174. 70 See Ahmad, p. 66 about links between tribes in the Sudan and Egypt. 71 MS 6/58, 12 S 1236/20 November 1820. 72 MS 6/118, 25 Ra 1236/1 January 1821; 6/328, 8 B 1236/12 April 1821. 73 MS 6/139, 10 R 1236/16 January 1821. Shēkh Khalīfa of the was also connected with the camel trade at this time. 74 MS 20/111, 10 M 1241/25 August 1825. 75 Makkī Shubayka, Al-Sudān al-qurūn, Cairo, 1964, p. 95; op. cit., p. 173; IV, the events of 1235/February 1820: Mehemet Ali asking the tribal shēkhs to recruit horsemen for his expeditionary force to the Sudan. 76

fī

—

ukhra, Cairo: Dār al-Kutub 1935, p. 84. The Defterdar was the Pasha’s son-inlaw. 77 The Gharb bedouin are various groups from al-Gharbiyya province. See mahfaza 19/ 13, defter 6/27, 29 M 1236/7 November 1820; 7/76, 3 Ra 1236/10 December 1820. 78 MS 7/122, 20 Ra 1236/27 December 1820; 7/202, 6/448, 22 Ş 1236/26 May 1821. 79 MS 728/373, 9 Ş 1235/22 May 1820; 328/246, 23 Ş 1235/5 June 1820; 757/345, 12 Ş 1246/26 January 1831; 6/79, 27 S 1236/5 December 1820; 728/346, 9 Ş 1235/23 May 1820. One of the shēkhs was Sālim al-Bāsil of the Jawāzī. 80 MS 6/31, 29 M 1236/14 November 1820. 81 MS 6/475, 3 N 1236/5 June 1821. op. cit., p. 74. op. cit., p. 174. 82 83 MS 33/105, 3 R 1243/24 October 1827. ) referred in contemporary Arabic and 84 The term al-Shām (some times Ottoman sources, to the region of Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine of our time. After the completion of the Egyptian occupation, the partition to paşaliks was abolished and instead the country was divided into eyâlets (Damascus, Alepo, Tripoli, Adana and Tarsus, Saida and Western Transjordan, Jerusalem and Nablus). All these regions were joined to one province—barr al-shām in the Egyptian records. See Y.Hofman, ‘The administration of Syria and Palestine under Egyptian rule (1831–1840)’, in (ed.), Studies on Palestine during the Ottoman Period, Jerusalem, Magnes, 1975, p. 316.

Notes

235

85 MS 741/272, 21 Ra 1244/1 October 1828. The letter addressed to the delibaşι Hasan Agha, the memur in the muhafaza of al-Shām road in al-Sharqiyya province. The responsibility of the Hanādī to guard the al-Shām road lasted until the Egyptian withdrawal in 1841. 86 MS 37/537, 12 N 1244/18 March 1829; 773/125, 4 C 1246/20 November 1830. 87 There are some disagreements about the date of his arrival. It is 1811 according to Macalister min and Masterman, PEFQ, 1906, p. 291; 1814 in Cairo, 1924, p. 73; Sometime between 1807 and aqdam azmānuha ila ayāmna wilāyat Suleimān Basha Saida, 1936, 1818 according to p. 223. 88 Looking for protection is customary and essential action in the bedouin legal system, in a were related, due to their Berber origin, case of blood feud. The Hanādī and the which also brought marriage relations. Therefore, it was instinctive for him to look to them for protection. brings a testimony of one Abu Jalil from op. cit.; According to Macalister and Masterman he died during 1826/7, the year of the siege on Sanur in the Samaria mounts. See p. 223. 89

left the Gaza region in 1842 or 1843, after the Egyptian withdrawal. He became chief under the patronage of the Ottoman government and imposed his authority over large areas in the Galilee during 1845–1870. He spent most of his career in the Ottoman security administration and also as a footpad. See about him A.Schölch, ‘The decline of local power in Palestine after 1856: the case of Aga’, Die Welt Des Islams, 1984, vol. XXIII– XXIV; W.Zenner, ‘Agiili Agha: the strongman in the ethnic relations of the Ottoman Galilee’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1972, vol. 14(1).

90 Asad Rustum,

al-malakiyya

—bayān

al-Shām, 4 vols,

Beirut, 1940, Nos. 313, 553, 671. The traveler E.Robinson visited Tel al-Hasi in 1838 and cites evidence. See E.Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions: A Journal of Travels in the Years 1838 and 1852, 2 Vols, Boston, 1856, II, pp. 90, 340, 378. documents, published by Rustum. See also 91 Many kinds of evidence are in the G.W.Murray, Sons of Ishmael: A Study of the Egyptian Bedouin, London, Routledge, 1935, p. 295 and n. 2. He argued that the Hanādī arrived only in 1835 and took part in military actions against the Egyptians. See also W.H.Dixon, The Holy Land, London, Chapman and Hall, 1865, p. 111. He argues that, in order to protect the Galilee, Ibrahim Pasha posted 1,700 Hanādī bedouin in the mountain passages, through which the Banī Saqr and of Transjordan used to invade the Valley. A contemporary anonymous writer also argued also that Ibrahim Pasha brought with him Hanādī bedouin forces in order to restrain the savage bedouin of north al-Shām and to protect the villagers. See Anon., Rambles in the Desert of Syria and Among the Turkomans and Bedaweens, London, 1864, p. 2. 92 MS 25/115, 3 N 1249/14 January 1834; 58/507, 19 L 1249/1 March 1834. 93 About the clashes between the and the Jabārāt and the Egyptian expeditionary army, see C.Bailey, ‘The Negev in the nineteenth century: reconstructing history from Bedouin oral tradition’, Asian and African Studies, 1980, vol. 14(1), pp. 47–55. 94 Robinson, op. cit., p. 390; Rustum, op. cit., No. 30, 783, 912. 95 MS S1/37/1 No. 205, 1 S 1247/12 July 1831. Another appeal was made to him in 1 Za 1247/3 April 1832; 2/227, 12 Z 1247/14 May 1832. 96 MS 2/215, 1 Z 1247/3 May 1832; Sāmī, op. cit., vol. I, p. 390; MS S1/37/1, No. 206, 4 M 1248/3 June 1832; 44/144, 22 S 1248/22 July 1832; 51/79, 9 C 1248/4 November 1832. 97 Rustum, op. cit., No. 313, 553, 671.

Notes

236

98 Ibid, No. 3505; MS 57/173, 12 S 1250/20 June 1834; 211/199, 14 S 1250/22 June 1834. Hasan Bey returned to Egypt because the edict did not reach him. See also 211/239, 11 Ra 1250/18 July 1834; 211/271, 2 R 1250/8 August 1834. 99 MS 158/3, 1 Ra 1253/5 June 1837. 100 Each soldier received money for 15 months in advance. See MS mahfaza 1/28, 7 ş 1253/8 November 1837. 101 MS 214/296, 28 M 1255/24 March 1839; 28/578, 12 C 1255/22 August 1839. 102 MS 25/114, 13 N 1249/24 January 1834; S1/7/1, No. 206, 9 C 1250/13 October 1834. We can learn from the document that the shēkhs mentioned were principal shēkhs and the edict was intended for the rest of the bedouin shēkhs, meaning the heads of the sub-tribes and clans. 103 MS 798/122, 5 Z 1250/4 April 1835. It was customary among the bedouin to catch soldiers and to strip them of their clothes and to disarm them. Deputies of bedouin shēkhs were held in Cairo as hostages until the shēkhs fulfilled their obligations. 104 MS 57/177, 20 S 1250/28 June 1834; 57/186, 10 Ra 1250/17 July 1834; 56/424, 10 C 1250/14 October 1834. 105 MS 214/530, 15 N 1256/11 November 1840. In the royal decree that was sent by to Selim Bey Hijazi he ordered him to join the bedouin horsemen and the Hanādī under the command of Abu Zeid Agha ( al-Hawwāra, Hawwara başι), in order to protect the soldiers and the Defterdar in El-Arish road. Also, Selim had to carry grain from Gaza to El-Arish. The Egyptian force under discussion was already in the course of withdrawal to Egypt after the fall of Acre and the failure of the whole war. Also 214/529, 13 N 1256, a decree to the serasker Ibrahim Pasha ordering him to send the bedouin of Selim Bey Hijazi for this mission. See also MS 214/540, 21 N 1256. 106 MS 806/169, 15 N 1250/15 January 1835.

Conclusion 1 Sebastiani in 5 July 1832, in Douin 1931, p. 246. 2 Douin 1927, p. 105.

Bibliography Primary sources: Archival material Cairo

Egyptian National Archives Sijillāt (registers) Sijillāt (collection of registers of various departments from the code S/5.

) designated by

Sijillāt Dīwān al-Saniyya (registers of the Viceregal Department) designated by the code S/1. Sijillāt Dīwān Khedewī (registers of the Department of Civil Affairs) designated by the code S/2. Sijillāt Dīwān al-Jihādiyya (registers of the War Department) designated by the code S/3.

(boxes) dignitaries).

(files containing copies of reports, decrees, ordinances and information about Barra (letters written to and received from foreign dignitaries).

Dhawāt (letters to and from members of Mehemet Ali’s family). Dafātir Dīwān al-Saniyya (Arabic summaries and translations from the registers of the Viceregal Department; most are Viceregal orders).

Dafātir (register books) Dafātir al-Ruzname: Dafātir Iltizām Dafātir Rizq (registrations of tax payments on lands owned by Bedouin shēkhs).

The General Repository of Documents Dafātir Mukallafāt (registration books of land of villages), designated by the Code 20. Milaffāt al-mustakhdamīn 1830–1948 (personal dossiers for retired officials containing employment records and information about the families).

Egyptian National Library (Dār al-Kutub), Cairo /Vekayi-i Mιsιriyye 1245–1300/1829–1883 (issues of the Egyptian Gazette).

(Department of manuscripts) al-Awāmir min and decrees from the sijills), designated by the code

Bāshā (a collection of letters Taymūr 2484.

Bibliography al-Akhbār

1548.

Duwal

238 (manuscript), designated by the code

Mukātabāt Rasmiyya min Bāshā ila (microfilm in 12 parts of letters from the sijills), designated by the code al-Rajbī, Shaykh Khalīl bin 23), designated by the code

(Fī shān) al-wazīr Taymūr 1149.

Land Registry Bureau Archive

Taymūr Taymūr 2656. Bāshā, (1238/ 1822–

Cairo

Sijillāt Isqātāt al-Qura (listing of villages’ fallow lands), designated by the code musalsala 40. Bāb Sijillāt Sijillāt

Bāb

Public Record Office, London

FO 24. General correspondence, Egypt, 1813–1814. FO 78. General correspondence, Turkey, 1817–1858. FO 142. Letters, books, Egypt, 1836–1860.

Primary sources: Chronicles al-ishārāt

(Çelebi), tawalla

fīman

min al-wuzāraa

al-mulaqqab bied. Cairo, 1978. Çelebi, Evlia, Seyahatnamesi, Onuncu Cilt: Misir, Sudan, Habes, (1672–1680), Istanbul, 1938. al-Damurdāshī, al-Qāhira 1100–1150, Cod. Arab 159 Det. Kongelige Bibliotek Kobenhaven. ——Kitāb al-durra fi akhbār al-kināna, British Museum, MS. OR. 1073–74. al-asrār fi al-kināna fī almin ——(Anonymous), Sana 1099 ila sana 1163, Orientales (fol. 1–126), (L.O), MS Arabe 437, Paris, Ecole Nationale des Longues. al-zuhūr fi

al-duhūr, ed.

vol. 5, Cairo, 1380/1961. 1297/1880. wa tarīq Makka

al-āthār

4 vols, Cairo (Bulaq),

Durar al-fawāyed fī akhbār Cairo, al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1384 (1964–5).

al-bayān ed. Cairo, 1961. al-tawfīqiyya al-jadīda, 20 vols, Cairo (Bulaq), 1306/1887–89. Moreh, Shmuel (ed.), Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle of the First Seven Months of the French Occupation of Egypt ( muddat al-Faransīs Philipp, Thomas and Moshe Perlmann (eds), Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994.

), Leiden, E.J.Brill, 1975. al-Rahman al-Jabarti’s History of Egypt, 4 vols,

Bibliography

239 latīf

al-Qāhira min sanat 1100 ila ākhir Osm. 38, Nationalbibliothek Vienna.

yashtamil (1152/1739), MS. Hist,

bayn al-Qāhira, 367 al-Shādhilī, al-Farā, Dhikr ma (Manuscript), Cairo, Dār al-Kutub. Shaw, Stanford J, Husayn Efendi’s Ottoman Egypt in the Age of the French Revolution, Harvard, 1964. Wiet, Gaston (ed.), Nicolas Turc, Chronique d’Egypte (1798–1804), Cairo, 1950.

Primary sources: Official Egyptian publications and edited documents Artin, Yacoub, La Propriété foncière en Egypte, Cairo (Bulaq), 1883. —— fī shān (The Valid Laws of the Egyptian Land), Cairo (Bulaq), 1889. Benis, Adam Georges, Une mission militaire Polonaise en Egypte, Cairo, Société royale de géographie d’Egypte, 1938. Cattaui, René (ed.), Le Règne de Mohammed Aly d’après les archives russes en Egypte, 4 vols, Cairo and Rome, Société royale de géographie d’Egypte, 1931–1936. Douin, Georges, La flotte de Bonaparte sur la Cote d’Egypte, Cairo, 1922. ——Une mission militaire française auprès de Mohamed Aly: correspondance des Generaux Belliard et Boyer, Cairo, Société royale de géographie d’Egypte, 1923. ——L’Egypte de 1802 â 1804: correspondance des consuls de France en Egypte, Cairo, Société royale de géographie d’Egypte, 1925. ——Mohamed Aly, pacha du Caire (1805–1807): correspondance des consuls de France en Egypte, Cairo, Société royale de géographie d’Egypte, 1926. ——La mission du Baron de Boislecomte: L’Egypte et la Syrie en 1833, Cairo, Société royale de géographie d’Egypte, 1927. ——and E.C.Fawtier-Jones (eds), L’Angleterre et l’Egypte: La campagne de 1807, Cairo, Société royale de géographie d’Egypte, 1928. ——(ed.) L’Angleterre et l’Egypte, vol. II: La politique mameluke (1803–1807), Cairo, Société royale de géographie d’Egypte, 1928–1930. ——La premièrre guerre de Syrie, 2 vols, Cairo, Société royale de géographie d’Egypte, 1931. ——L’Egypte de 1828 â 1830: correspondance des consuls de France en Egypte, Cairo, Société royale de géographie d’Egypte, Rome, 1935. Driault, Edouard, Mohamed Aly et Napoléon (1807–1814): correspondance des consuls de France en Egypte, Cairo, Société royale de géography d’Egypte, 1925. ——(ed.), La formation de l’empire de Mohamed Aly de l’Arabie au Soudan (1814–1823): correspondance des consuls de France en Egypte, Cairo, Société royale de géographie d’Egypte, 1927. ——L’Egypte et l’Europe: La crise orientale de 1839–1841, 5 vols, Rome, 1930–1933. Egypt), Cairo (Bulaq), 1940.

fī

(The Estates and the Taxes in the Land of

and Feldman, Izidor (eds), al-qawānīn Collection of the Laws and the Rules), 2 vols, Cairo (Bulaq), 1940–1941. Humbsch, R., Beiträge zur Geschichte des Osmanischen Ägyptens, Freiburg, 1976.

(A

Bibliography Jallād, Fīlīb (ed.), Qāmūs al-idāra

240

(Dictionary of administration and justice), 4 vols,

1890–1894. Alexandria, Lucas, A., A Report on the Soil and Water of the Wadi Tumeilat Lands under Reclamation, Cairo, National Printing Department, 1903. al-Qawānīn

fī al-diyār

(The land laws in Egypt) Cairo (Bulaq), 1893.

al-malakiyya Bayān al-Shām (The royal Rustum, Asad (ed.), archives of Egypt: a corpus of state papers relating to the affairs of Syria), Beirut, The American Press, 1940. Sāmī, Amīn (ed.), Taqwīm al-Nīl (Chronicle of the Nile), vol. II: (Mehemet Ali’s reign), Cairo, Dār al-Kutub, 1928. fī mudīriyāt (The valid regulations of the proceedings of the Egyptian government provinces), Cairo, 1894. awwal’,

‘Dīwān Dār al-Kutub Cairo, no. 1, 1960.

al-saniyya—al-sijill

al-

Primary sources: Reports, travel accounts, memoranda and memoirs Aimé du Bois-Aymé, Mémoire sur les tribus Arabes des deserts de l’Egypte, Livourne, De l’imprimerie de Jean Marenigh, 1814, (Description de l’Egypte, vol. XIII, pp. 329–389). Bayle, St. John, Village Life in Egypt with Sketches of the Saïd, Boston, 1853. Belzoni, Giovanni B., Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries in Egypt and Nubia, London, John Murray, 1822. Bertrand, L., Campagne d’Egypte et de Syrie (1798–1799), 2 vols, Paris, 1847. Bourrienne, Louis Antoine Fauvelet de, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891. Bowring, John, ‘Report on Egypt and Candia’, Parliamentary Papers, vol. XXI, 1840. Bremond, Gabriel, Voyage en Egypte 1643–1645, Cairo, IFAO, 1971. Browne, William George, Travels in Africa, Egypt and Syria from the Year 1792 to 1798, London, 1806. Bruce, James, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, 2 vols, Edinburgh, 1805. Burckhardt, John Lewis, Travels in Nubia, London, J.Murray, 1819. ——Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, London, J.Murray, 1822. ——Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys, 2 vols, London, Colburn & Bentley, 1831. Campbell, Col. P., ‘Report on Egypt’, FO 78/408 B (manuscript). Clot Bey, Antoine B., Aperçu général sur l’Egypte, 2 vols, Paris, Fortin Masson, 1840. Commission des sciences et arts d’Egypte, Description de l’Egypte, recueil des observations et des rescherches qui out été faites en Egypte pendant l’expédition de l’armée Française, publié par les ordres de Sa Majesté l’empereur Napoléon le Grand, 2nd edn, 21 vols, Paris, Imprimerie Impériale, 1821–1829. Coppin, Jean, Voyages en Egypte 1638–1639, 1643–1646, Cairo, IFAO, 1971. Denon, Dominique Vivant, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt during the Campaigns of General Bonaparte, 3 vols, London, Cundee, 1803. Dixon, William Hepworth, The Holy Land, London, Chapman and Hall, 1865. Doughty, Charles Montagu, Travels in Arabia Deserta, New York, Random House, 1937. Dumas, Alexander, Impressions of Travel in Egypt and Arabia Petraea, New York, John Taylor, 1839. D’une Contemporaine, Contemporaine en Egypte, les principaux, Paris, Chez Ladvocat, 1831.

Bibliography

241

Finn, James, Stirring Times, or Records from Jerusalem Consular Chronicles of 1853–1856, 2 vols, London, C.Kegan Paul & Co., 1878. Forbin, Count de, Travels in Egypt in 1817–18, London, Sir Richard Phillips Co., 1819. Girard, P.S., ‘Mémoire sur l’agriculture et le commerce de l’Haute Égypte’, La Decade Égyptien, year

VIII

(1799–1800).

Arabic

translation

by

Cairo, 1942. Gonzales, Pere Antonius, Voyage en Egypte 1665–1666, Cairo, IFAO, 1977. Jaubert, M. le Chevalier Amédée, ‘Nomenclature des Tribus d’Arabes Qui Campent Entre l’Egypte et la Palestine depuis Khân Younes et Ghazzah Jusqu’a l’Oronte’, in Description de l’Egypte, vol. II, pp. 249–276, Paris, 1812. Jaussen, Antonin, Coutumes des arabs au pays de Moab, Paris, J.Gabalda, 1908. Jomard, Edme-François, ‘Observations sur les Arabes de l’Egypte moyenne’, in Description de l’Egypte, vol. XII, pp. 267–327, Paris, 1821–1829. Klunzinger, C.B., Upper Egypt, Its People and its Products, New York, 1878. Lancret, Michel-Ange, ‘Mémoire sur le système d’imposition territoriale et sur l’administration des provinces d’Egypte, dans les dernières années du gouvernment des Mamlouk’, in Description de l’Egypte, vol. XI, 1821–1929. McCoan, James Carlisle, Egypt As It Is, London, Cassell, Petter & Galprin, 1877. Madden, Richard R., Egypt and Mohammed Ali—Illustrative of the Condition of his Slaves and Subjects, London, Hamilton, Adams and Co., 1841. Malus, Etienne Louis, ‘Memoire sur un voyage fait a la fin de frimaire sur la Branche Tantique du Nil’, La Decade Égyptiene, vol. 1, Cairo, Year VII (1798–99). Marcel, Jean J. et al., Histoire Scientifique et Militaire de l’Expedition Français en Egypte, III, (I), Paris, Ducollet, 1830. Mengin, Félix, Histoire sommaire de l’Egypte sous le gouvernement de Mohammed-Aly, Paris, A.Bertrand, 1823. Merruau, Paul, L’Egypte Contemporaine: 1840–1857: de Mehemet-Ali a Said Pacha, Paris, 1858. Michaud, Joseph Fr. and B.Poujoulat, Correspondance d’Orient 1830–1831, 7 vols, Paris, Ducollet, 1833–1835, vols V, VI, VII. Minutoli, Baroness von, Recollections of Egypt, London, Printed for Treuttel & Würtz, Treuttel, Jun. & Richter, 1827. Miot, Jacques François, Memoir pour Servir a l’Histoire des Expeditions en Egypte et en Syrie, Paris, Le Normant, 1814. Morier, J.P., Memoir of a Campaign with the Ottoman Army in Egypt from February to July 1800, London, 1801. Murray, C.A., A Short Memoir of Mohamed Aly, London, 1898. Niebuhr, Carsten, Travels through Arabia and other countries in the East, performed by M.Niebuhr, Perth (Scotland), R.Morison Jr., 1799. Palgrave, William Gifford, Personal Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862–63), London, Macmillan and Co., 1873. Pococke, Richard, Description of the East and Some Other Countries, vol. I: Observations on Egypt, London, 1743. Quatremére, Étienne M., ‘Mèmoire sur les tribus arabes ètablies en Egypte’, in Mèmoires gèographiques et historiques sur l’Egypte et sur quelques contrèes voisines, 2 vols, Paris, F.Schoell, 1811. Reybaud, Louis, Histoire Scientifique et Militaire de l’Expedition Française en Egypte, 10 vols, Paris, 1830–1836. Reynier, Jean Louis Ebenezer, comte, State of Egypt after the Battle of Heliopolis: preceded by general observations on the physical and political character of the country, (translated from French) London, G. & J.Robinson, 1802.

Bibliography

242

——Memoires du général Reynier sur les operations de l’armée d’orient, ou de l’Egypte aprés_la bataille d’Heliopolis, Paris, 1827. Robinson, Edward, Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions: A Journal of Travels in the Years 1838 and 1852, 2 vols, Boston, Crocker & Brewster, 1856. St. John, James Augustus, Egypt and Mohammed Ali, or Travels in the Valley of the Nile, 2 vols, London, Longman & Green, 1834. ——Egypt and Nubia: their Scenery and their People, London, Chapman and Hall, 1845. Savary, Claude Etienne, Lettres sur l’Egypte: ou l’on offer le parallele des moeurs anciennes & modernes de ses habitants, ou l’on decrit l’Etat, le commerce, l’agriculture, le gouvernement, Paris, Onfroi, 1786. (English translation, Letters on Egypt, London, G.G.J. & J.Robinson, 1799). Schoelcher, M.Victor, L’Egypte en 1845, Paris, Pagnerre, 1846. Seetzen, Ulrich Jasper, Reisen durch Syrien, Palestina, die Transjordan-Lander, Arabia Petraea und Unter-Aegypten, 4 vols, Berlin, G.Reimer, 1854–1859. Shulkowski, Le Citoyen, ‘Description de la route du Kaire a Salehhyéh’, La Decade Égyptiene, vol. 1, Cairo, year VII (1798–99). Sonini de Manoncourt, Charles S., Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, 3 vols, London, J.Stockdale, 1799. Thornton, W.H., The British Campaign in Egypt of 1801—as recorded in the diary of Surgeon Thornton, Alexandria, published privately, 1933. Vingtrinier, Aimé, Soliman Pacha—Colonel Séve—Généralissime des Armées Egyptiennes ou Histoire des Guerres de l’Egypte de 1820 a 1860, Paris, Librairie de Firmin Didot, 1886. Volney, Constantin Francois, Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte; Pendant les Années 1783, 1784 & 1785, Paris, LXXXVII (1787), Jean Goulmier edition 1959. Von-Oppenheim, Max F., Die Beduinen, II, Leipzig, Otto Harrassowitz, 1943. Wilkinson, Sir John Gardner, ‘Notes on a Part of the Eastern Desert of Upper Egypt’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 1832, vol. 2, pp. 28–60. ——Handbook for Travelers in Egypt. London, John Murray, 1847. Wilson, Robert Thomas, Sir, History of British Expedition to Egypt, to which is subjoined a sketch of the present state of that country and its means of defence, London, Printed by C.Ro worth, 1802. Yates, William Holt, The Modern History and Condition of Egypt, 2 vols, London, Smith Elder & Co., 1843.

Secondary sources Cairo, al-dawla

1983. al-ūla 1158–1233 (1745–1818),

Cairo, 1976. ——‘Land tenure in Egypt and its social effects on Egyptian society: 1798–1813’, in Khalidi, Tarif (ed.), Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the Middle East, Beirut, American University of Beirut, 1984, pp. 237–248. fī al-qarn al-thāmin Cairo, Maktabat Madbūlī, 1986. ——al-Rīf Abir, Mordechai, ‘Modernisation, reaction and Muhammad Ali’s “empire”’, Middle Eastern Studies, 1977, vol. 13(3), pp. 295–313. Abu-Rabia, Aref, The Negev Bedouin and Livestock Rearing, Oxford, Berg, 1994. Anjelo, 1954.

Cairo,

Maktabat

Bibliography

243

Siyāsat Kitāb

fī

Cairo, Dār al-

1986.

—— fī shaykh Humām, Cairo, 1987. Amici, F.Bey, L’Egypte ancienne et moderne et son dernier recensement, Alexandria, V.Penasson, 1884. fī

1805–1914, Cairo,

1993. wa-Dawrhum fī Cairo,

fī

al-awwal min al-qarn

1997. The People of Sharqiya, 2 vols, Cairo, Société royale de géographie

d’Egypte, 1944. Asad, Talal. ‘The Bedouin as a military force: notes on some aspects of power relations between nomads and sedentaries in historical perspective’, in S.Nelson (ed.), The Desert and the Sown: Nomads in the Wider Society, Berkeley, University of California, 1973. ——‘Ideology, class and the origin of the Islamic state’, Economy and Society, 1980, vol. IX, pp. 450–473. ——The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam, Washington, DC, Georgetown University, 1986. Awad, M., ‘Settlement of nomadic and semi-nomadic tribal groups in the Middle East’, International Labor Review, 1959, vol. 79(1), pp. 25–56. wilāyat Suleimān Basha Saida, 1936. Ayalon, David. ‘Studies on the structure of the Mamluk army’, BSOAS, 1953, vol. XV(2), pp. 203– 228. al-qurā wa-dawrhum fī Cairo, Dār al-Kitāb

qarn

1984.

——al-Badū wa-dawrhum fī al-thawra Cairo, 1986. Baer, Gabriel, ‘Some aspects of Bedouin sedentarization in 19th-century Egypt’, Die Welt des Islams, 1957, vol. 5(1–2) n.s., pp. 84–98. ——A History of Landownership in Modern Egypt 1800–1950, London, Oxford University Press, 1962. ——‘The settlement of the Beduins’, in Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1969, pp. 3–16. ——‘The village shaykh’, in ibid, pp. 38–45. ——Fellah and Townsman in the Middle East, London, Frank Cass, 1982. ——‘Continuity and change in Egyptian rural society (1805–1882)’, in L’Egypte au XIXe siècle, Colloques internationaux du CNRS, 594, Paris, Editions du CNRS, 1982, pp. 231–246. Bailey, Clinton, ‘The Negev in the nineteenth century: reconstructing history from Bedouin oral traditions’, Asian and African Studies, 1980, vol. 14(1), pp. 35–80. ——‘Dating the arrival of the Bedouin tribes in Sinai and the Negev’, JESHO, 1985, vol. 28, pp. 20–49. ——Bedouin Poetry from Sinai and the Negev, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991. al-bulīs 1805–1922, MA dissertation, Cairo, Ein Shams University, 1977. —— 1805– 1914’, al-Majalla 6, pp. 53–71.

(Tunis), 1992, vol. 5–

Bibliography

244

al-mulkiyya fī wa-atharha al-siyāsiyya 1813–1914, Cairo, Dār al-Thaqāfah al-Jadīdah, 1972. ——‘The development of landownership in Egypt (1805–1882)’, in L’Egypte au XIXe Siècle, Paris: Editions du GNRS, 1982, pp. 211–217. Barclay, Harold B., ‘The Nile Valley’, in Sweet, Louise E. (ed.), The Central Middle East: A Handbook of Anthropology and Published Research, New Haven, Human Relations Area Files Inc., 1968, pp. 5–89. Barkey, Karen, ‘In different times: scheduling and social control in the Ottoman empire, 1550 to 1650’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1996, vol. 38(3), pp. 460–483. Batatu, Hanna, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement in Iraq: a study of Iraq’s old landed and commercial classes and of its Communists, Bathists, and Free Officers, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1978. Bates, Daniel G., Nomads and Farmers: A Study of the Yörük of Southeastern Turkey, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1973. Bates, Oric, ‘Ethnographic notes from Marsa Matruh’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1915, pp. 717–739. Berque, Jaques, Structures sociales du Haut-Atlas, Paris, 1955. ——‘Introduction’, UNESCO International Social Science Journal, 1959, vol. XI(4), pp. 481–498. ——Egypt: Imperialism and Revolution, London, Faber & Faber, 1972. Boinet, A., Géographie économique et administrative de l’Egypte, Basse-Egypte, Cairo, Imprimerie Nationale, 1902. Bonne, Alfred, State and Economics in the Central East, London, Routledge, 1960. Brown, B.B., ‘Territoriality’, in D.Stokols and I.Altman (eds), Handbook of Environmental Psychology, New York, John Wiley, 1987, pp. 505–529. Burke, Edmund, ‘The image of the Moroccan state in French ethnological literature: A new look at the origin of Lyautey’s Berber policy’, in E.Gellner and C.Micaud (eds), Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation. London, Duckworth, 1973, pp. 175–199. Burnham, Philip, ‘Spatial mobility and political centralization in pastoral societies’, in Pastoral Production and Society. Proceedings of the international meeting on nomadic pastoralism, Paris, 1–3 Dec. 1976, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 349–360. Cahen, Claude, ‘Quelques mots sur les Hilaliens et le nomadisme’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 1968, vol. XI, pp. 130–133. Çelebi, Evlia, Seyahatnamesi, Onuncu Cilt: Misir, Sudan, Habes (1672–1680), vol. X, Istanbul, Devlet Matbaasi, 1938. Chatty, Dawn, Structural Forces of Pastoral Nomadism; with Special Reference to Camel Pastoral Nomadism, The Hague, Institute of Social Studies, 1972. Cohen, Amnon, Palestine in the 18th Century, Jerusalem, Magnes, 1973. Cohen, Ronald and Elman Service (eds), Origins of the State: The Anthropology of Political Evolution, Philadelphia, Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1978. Cole, Juan R.I., Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1992. Egypt’s Crary, Douglas D., ‘Irrigation and land use in Zeiniya Bahari, Upper Egypt’, Geographical Review, 1949, vol. 39. Crecelius, Daniel, The Roots of Modern Egypt: A Study of the Regimes of Bey al-Kabir and Muhammad Bey Abu al-Dhahab, 1760–1775, Mineapolis and Chicago, Bibliotheca Islamica, 1985. Cunnison, Ian, Baggara Arabs: Power and the Lineage in a Sudanese Nomad Tribe, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1966. Cuno, Kenneth M., ‘The origins of private ownership of land in Egypt: a reappraisal’, IJMES, 1980, vol. 12, pp. 245–275.

Bibliography

245

——‘Egypt’s wealthy peasantry, 1740–1820: a study of the region of al-Mansura’, in Khalidi, Tarif (ed.), Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the Middle East, Beirut, American University of Beirut, 1984, pp. 303–332. ——Landholding, Society and Economy in Rural Egypt, 1740–1850: A Case Study of alDaqahliyya Province, Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, 1985. ——The Pasha’s Peasants—Land, Society, and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740–1858, Cairo, American University in Cairo Press, 1994. ——‘Joint family households and rural notables in 19th-century Egypt’, IJMES, 1995, vol. 27(4), pp. 485–502. Diyāb, al-Sayyid S.A.T.,

fī

khilāl al-qarn

Cairo,

1994. Cambridge, Dodwell, Henry H., The Founder of Modern Egypt: a Study of Muhammad Cambridge University Press, 1931. Eickelman, Dale, The Middle East: An Anthropological Approach, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1981. Evans-Pritchard, E.E., The Nuer, London, Oxford University Press, 1940. The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, London, Oxford University Press, 1949. Fabietti, Ugo, ‘Control and alienation of territory among the bedouin of Saudi Arabia’, Nomadic Peoples, 1989, vol. 20, pp. 33–40. Fahmy, Khaled, All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, his Army and the Making of Modern Egypt, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Fakhry, Ahmed, Siwa Oasis, Cairo, American University in Cairo Press, 1993. 1967.

al-badāwa

Cairo, Dār al-Fikr

—asās Cairo, Dār al-Fikr 1968. ——Tanmiyyat Fernea, Robert A., Shaykh and Effendi: Changing Patterns of Authority among the El-Shabana of Southern Iraq, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1970. Fortes, Meyer and E.E.Evans-Pritchard, African Political System, Oxford, 1940. Fried, Morton H., ‘The myth of tribe’. Natural History, 1975, vol. 84(4), pp. 12–20. aux et XVII Siécles’, Annales Garcin, Jean-Claude, ‘Émirs Hawwāras et Beys de Islamologiques, 1974, vol. XII, pp. 245–255. ——Un Centre Musulman de la Houte-Egypte Médiévale: Qûs, Cairo, Institute Français d’Archeologie Orientale de Caire, 1976. Garthwaite, G., Khans and Shahs: A Documentary Analysis of the Bakhtiyari in Iran, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983. Gellner, Ernest, Muslim Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981. ——‘Tribalism and the state in the Middle East’, in Khoury, Philip S. and Joseph Kostiner, Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990, pp. 109–126. Ghorbal, Shafik, The Beginning of the Egyptian Question and the Rise of Mehemet Ali, London, Routledge, 1928. Gibb, Hamilton and Bowen, Harold, Islamic Society and the West: A Study of the Impact of Western Civilization on Moslem Culture in the Near East, London, Oxford University Press, 1957. Ginat, Joseph and Anatoly M.Khazanov (eds), Changing Nomads in a Changing World, Brighton, Sussex Academic Press, 1998. Gran, Peter, Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760–1840, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1979.

Bibliography

246

Grossman, David, Expansion and Desertion: The Arab Village and its Offshoots in Ottoman Palestine (Hebrew), Jerusalem, Yad Izhak Ben Zvi, 1994. bayn

wa-Najd fī

Cairo, 1992.

‘al-dalālāt al-Qaliubiyya’, al-Majallah 1986, vol. 33, pp. 329–366. fī 1973.

1914, Cairo, ——al-Mulkiyāt ——‘The Siyasatname

and

the

fī

al-mulkiyāt

wa Dawrhum fī Institutionalization

of

al-kabīra 1837–

Central

Cairo, 1983. Administration Under

in Hanna, Nelly, The State and its Servants. Cairo, 1995, pp. 75–87. Hanna, Nelly (ed.), The State and its Servants: Administration in Egypt from Ottoman Times to the Present, Cairo, American University in Cairo Press, 1995. ‘ —dirāsa 30/31, pp. 327–378.

fī madīnat Rashīd ’, al-Majalla

1983/84, vol. fī al-Sudān 1820–1897, Cairo,

1991. Hathaway, Jane, ‘The military household in Ottoman Egypt’, IJMES, 1995, vol. 27, pp. 39–52. ——The Politics of Household in Ottoman Egypt: the Rise of the Qazdaĝlιs, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. ——‘“Mamluk Households” and “Mamluk Factions” in Ottoman Egypt: A Reconsideration’, in Thomas Philipp and Ulrich Haarmann (eds), The Mamluks in Egyptian Politics and Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 107–117. fī

Cairo,

1950. fī al-qarn Cairo, 1967. —— Hobbs, Joseph J., Bedouin Life in the Egyptian Wilderness, Cairo, American University in Cairo Press, 1989. Hofman, Yitzhak, ‘The administration of Syria and Palestine under Egyptian rule (1831–1840)’, in (ed.), Studies on Palestine during the Ottoman Period, Jerusalem, Magnes, 1975, pp. 311–333. Holt, Peter M., ‘The patterns of Egyptian political history from 1517 to 1798’, in Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt, London, Oxford University Press, 1968, pp. 79–90. Holy, L. (ed.), ‘Segmentary lineage system reconsidered’, Queens University Papers on Social Anthropology, 1979, vol. 4. Hunter, F.Robert, Egypt under the Khedives 1805–1879: From Household Government to Modern Bureaucracy, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh University Press, 1984. al-rīf fī al-Barītānī, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Ein Shams (Egypt). Irons, William, ‘Political stratification among pastoral nomads’, in Pastoral Production and Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 361–374. Islamoglu-Inan, Huri, ‘Oriental despotism in world-system perspective’, in Islamoglu-Inan (ed.), The Ottoman Empire in the World Economy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 1–10.

Bibliography

247

Jarvis, Claude Scudamore, Yesterday and Today in Sinai, Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood & Sons, 1941. Jaussen, Antonin J., Costumes des Arabs au Pays de Moab, Paris, J.Gabalda, 1908. 1949.

(ed.), al-Sharqiyya wa-Sinā, Cairo, wa taqālīd, Cairo, 1961. al-Jaysh

1831–1832, Cairo,

1987. ——Tarīkh

fī

dirāsa fī

dīwān al-tijāra

Cairo, Dār al-Sharqiyya, 1995. Kahle, Paul, ‘Die der Libyschen Wüste’, Der Islam, 1913, vol. IV, pp. 355– 386. Khazanov, A.M., Nomads and the Outside World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982. Khoury, Philip S. and Joseph Kostiner, Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990. Klippel, Ernst, Études sur le folklore Bedouin de l’Egypte, Cairo, Imprimerie Nationale, 1911. Kressel, Gideon M., Individuality Against Tribality: The Dynamics of a Bedouin Community in a Process of Urbanization (Hebrew), Tel Aviv, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1976. ——Blood Feuds among Urban Bedouins: An Anthropological Study, Jerusalem, Magnes, 1982. ——‘Nomadic pastoralists, agriculturalists and the state: self-sufficiency and dependence in the Middle East’, Journal of Rural Cooperation, 1993, vol. XXI(1), pp. 33–49. Kuhnke, La Verne, Lives At Risk: Public Health in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990. Lancaster, William, The Rwala Bedouin Today, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981. ——and F.Lancaster, ‘The concept of territory among the Rwala Bedouin’, Nomadic ples, 1986, vol. 20, pp. 41–48. Lane, E.W., The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, London, 1836. Lane-Poole, S., A History of Egypt in the Middle Ages, London, 1901. Larson, Barbara K., ‘The rural marketing system of Egypt over the last three hundred years’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1985, vol. 27(3), pp. 494–530. Lavie, Smadar, The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories of Bedouin Identity under Israeli and Egyptian Rule, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990. Period, Lawson, Fred H., The Social Origins of Egyptian Expansionism during the New York, Columbia University Press, 1992. ——‘Persistent myths about the period’, in Abbas, Raouf (ed.), Reform or Modernization? Egypt under Muhammed Ali, Symposium organized by the Egyptian Society of Historical Studies, 9–11 March 1999, pp. 5–30. Lozach, Jean and G.Hug, L’inhabitat rural en Egypte, Cairo, La Societe Royale de Geographie d’Egypte, 1930. al-ajnābiyya fī al-adab Cairo, 1962. —— al-fikr min al-Faransiyya ila Cairo, Dār alHilāl, 1969. MacMichael, H.A., The Tribes of Northern and Central Cordofán, London, Frank Cass, 1967, (1st edn 1912). Dirāsāt min dissertation, University of Alexandria, 1967.

min al-qarn

min aqdam azmānha ila ayāmna

Cairo, 1924.

MA

Bibliography

248

Maqār, Nasīm, wa bannā al-Sūdān Cairo, 1993. Marlowe John, Anglo-Egyptian Relations 1800–1956, London, Frank Cass, 1965. Marsot, Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid, ‘Muhammad Ali’s internal policies’, in L’Egypte au XIXe Siècle, Paris, Editions du CNRS, 1982, pp. 153–173. Marx, Emanuel, Bedouin of the Negev, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1967. ‘The organization of nomadic groups in the Middle East’, in Menachem Milson (ed.), Society and Political Structure in the Arab World, New York, Humanities Press, 1973, pp. 305–336. ‘The tribe as a unit of subsistence: nomadic pastoralism in the Middle East’, American Anthropologist, 1977, vol. 79(2), pp. 343–363. ‘The ecology and politics of nomadic pastoralists in the Middle East’, in Weissleder, Wolfgang (ed.), The Nomadic Alternative: Modes and Models of Interaction in the African-Asian Deserts and Steppes, The Hague, Mouton Publishers, 1978, pp. 41–74. ‘Labor migrants with a secure base: Bedouin of South Sinai’, in J.S.Eades (ed.), Migration, Workers and the Social Order, London, Tavistock, 1987, pp. 148–164. ‘Economic change among pastoral nomads in the Middle East’, in Marx, E. and A.Shmueli (eds), The Changing Bedouin, New Jersey, Transaction Inc., 1994, pp. 1–16. ——‘Are there pastoral nomads in the Arab Middle East?’ in Fabietti, Ugo and P.C. Salzman (eds), The Anthropology of Tribal and Peasant Pastoral Societies, The Dialectics of Cohesion and Fragmentation, Pavia, Ibis, 1995, pp. 143–157. Meeker, Michael, Literature and Violence in North Arabia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979. Meir, Avinoam, ‘Nomads and the state: the spatial dynamics of centrifugal and centripetal forces among the Israel Negev Bedouin’, Political Geography Quarterly, 1988, vol. 7(3), pp. 251–270. ——‘Territorially among the Negev Bedouin in transition from nomadism to sedentarism’, in Fabietti, Ugo and P.C.Salzman (eds), The Anthropology of Tribal and Peasant Pastoral Societies, The Dialectics of Cohesion and Fragmentation, Pavia, Ibis, 1995, pp. 187–207. ——As Nomadism Ends: The Israeli Bedouin of the Negev, Boulder Colorado, Westview Press, 1997. Muhammad, Mahmud Tabo, The Role of the Bedouin in Egyptian Politics in the Period 1750– 1850, unpublished MA thesis, AUC, Cairo, 1972. al-Sūdān al-shamālī, sukkānhā wa

Cairo,

1951. —— al-Afrīqiyya, Cairo, al-Dār 1965. Murray, George William, Sons of Ishmael: A Study of the Egyptian Bedouin, London, Routledge, 1935. Musil, Alois, The Manners and Customs of the Rwāla Bedouins, New York, American Geographical Society, 1928. ‘ fī ’ in marr

(ed.), ——

Cairo,

Cairo,

1974. 1990.

Dawr fī tajribat

al-khārijī fī ijhād tajārub

—dirāsa

Cairo, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 1993.

al-Badū fī dissertation, Ein Shams University, 1987.

min 1848 ila 1952, Cairo, unpublished Ph.D.

Bibliography

249

Idārat al-aqālīm fī 1805–1882, Cairo, 1988. of the Western Obermeyer, Gerald, Structure and Authority in a Bedouin Tribe: The Desert of Egypt, Indiana University, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 1968. Oppenheim, Max F. von, Die Beduinen, 4 vols, Bd. 2: Die Beduinenstämme in Palästina, Transjordanien, Sinai, Hedjaz, Leipzig, Harrassowitz Verlag, 1943. Peters, Emerys L., ‘Some structural aspects of the feud among the camel-herding Bedouins of Cyrenaica’, Africa, 1967, vol. 37(3), pp. 261–282. ——The Bedouin of Cyrenaica: Studies in Personal and Corporate Power, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990. Poliak, A.N., ‘L’arabisation de l’Orient Semitique’, Revue des Etudes Islamiques (REI), 1938, pp. 35–63. ——Divrei (The History of the Arabs), (Hebrew), Jerusalem, Bialik Foundation, 1945. Poncet, J, ‘Le myth de la catastrophe Hilalienne’, Annales: Economie, Societes, Civilisations, 1967, vol. XXII, pp. 1099–1120. al-qawmiyya wa

vol. III:

Cairo, 1930. al-Rasheed, Madawi, ‘The Rashidi Dynasty: Political Centralization among the Shammar in North Arabia’, New Arabian Studies, 1994, No. 2, pp. 140–152. Cairo, Rashwān, Mālik M., 1994. Rigault, Georges, Le général Abdallah Menou et la dernière phase de l’expédition d’Égypte, 1799– 1801, Paris, Plon-Nourrit, 1911. Rivlin, Helen Anne B., The Agricultural Policy of Muhammad Ali in Egypt, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1961. Rosenfeld, Henry, ‘The social composition of the military in the process of state formation in the Arabian desert’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1965, vol. 95, Part I: Jan, pp. 75–86; Part II: Jul, 174–194. Russell, Thomas W., Egyptian Service, 1902–1946, London, John Murray, 1949. Rustum, Asad J., The Royal Archives of Egypt and the Disturbances in Palestine 1834, American University of Beirut Oriental Series, 1938, no. 11. ——Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984. Sahlins, Marshall M., Tribesmen, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1968. Sālim

Latīfa

M.,

al-quwwa

Cairo,

1981. al-Shām 1831–1841, Cairo, Maktabat Madbūlī, 1990. —— Salzman, Philip Carl, ‘Multi-resource nomadism in Iranian Baluchistan’, in W.Irons, and N.DysonHudson (eds), Perspectives on Nomadism, Leiden, Brill, 1972. ——(ed.) When Nomads Settle: Processes of Sedentarization as Adaptation and Response, New York, Praeger Publishers, 1980. ——‘Afterword: On some general theoretical issues’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 1981, vol. 16(1–2), pp. 158–166. ——‘Hierarchical Image and Reality: The Construction of a Tribal Chiefship’. Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 42(1), 2000, pp. 49–66. 1966.

al-asās

Cairo, ukhra, 1935.

Cairo,

Bibliography

250

Schölch, Alexander, ‘The Egyptian Bedouins and the (1882)’, Die Welt des Islams, n.s. 1976–77, vol. XVII, pp. 44–57. ——Egypt for the Egyptians!: The Socio-political Crisis in Egypt (1878–1882), London, Ithaca Press, 1981. ——‘The decline of local power in Palestine after 1856: the case of “Agil Aga”’, Die Welt Des Islams, 1984, vol. XXIII–XXIV, pp. 458–475. al-rīf fī al-thānī min al-qarn Cairo, Dār al1983. al-qarn

——

Cairo, Dār al-Kitāb

fī

1988.

Cairo,

1989. al-rīfī fī

——

Cairo,

1992. Cairo, 1965. Shaw, Stanford J., The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517–1798, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1962. ——Ottoman Egypt in the 18th Century: The Nizamname-i Misr of Cezzar Ahmed Pasha, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1964. al-Muqāwama al-Barītānī, Beirut,

al-Faransī 1992.

Shibeika, Mekki (Shubayka, Makkī), al-Sudān fi qarn (1819–1919), Cairo, 1947. Cairo,

——al-Sudān

1964.

—— Wādī al-Nīl fī al-qarn Beirut, Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1965. Shnell, Itzhak, Perceptions of Israeli-Arabs: Territorially and Identity, Aldershot, Avebury, 1994. Bannā dawlat al-Siyāsah al-Dākhiliya, Cairo, 1948. 1801–1811, 3 vols, Cairo,

—— —— 1962.

1958. al-Faransiyya wa khurūj al-Faransiyyin min Sīnā al-qadīm

Cairo,

wa jughrāfiyatha, Cairo,

1903. —— 1820–1899, Cairo, 1963. Shwartz, Igal, The Bedouin in Egypt during the Mamluk Period, (Hebrew), unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Tel Aviv University, 1987. Silvera, Alain, ‘Edme-François Jomard and Egyptian reforms in 1839’, Middle Eastern Studies, 1971, vol. 7(3), pp. 301–316. Smith, M.G., ‘On segmentary lineage systems’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1956, vol. LXXXVI(2), pp. 39–80. Stewart, Frank Henderson, Bedouin Boundaries in Central Sinai and the Southern Negev: A Document from the Tribe, Wiesbaden, Otto Harrassowitz, 1986. ——‘Tribal law in the Arab world: a review of the literature, IJMES, 1987, vol. 19, pp. 473–490.

Bibliography

251

——Honor, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1994. Stripling, G.W.F., The Ottoman Turks and the Arabs, 1511–1574, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1943. Sweet, L.E., ‘Camel raiding of north Arabian bedouin: a mechanism of ecological adaptation’, American Anthropologist, 1965, vol. 67, pp. 1132–1150. Tapper, Richard, ‘The organization of nomadic communities in pastoral societies in the Middle East’, in Equipe Ecologie et Anthropologie des Societes Pastorales (ed.), Pastoral Production and Society, London, Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 43–65. ——(ed.), The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan. London, Croom Helm and St Martin Press, 1983. ——‘Anthropologists, historians, and tribespeople on tribe and state formation in the Middle East’, in P.Khoury, and J.Kostiner (eds), Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990, pp. 48–73. Toledano, Ehud R., ‘Mehmet Ali Paşa or Muhammad Ali Basha?: an historiographic appraisal in the wake of a recent book’, Middle Eastern Studies, 1985, vol. 21(4), pp. 141–159. ——State and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990. ——‘The emergence of Ottoman-local elites (1700–1900): a framework for research’, in Pappé, (eds), Middle Eastern Politics and Ideas: A History from Within, Ilan and London and New York, Tauris Academic Studies, 1997, pp. 145–162. ——‘The Ottoman-Egyptian elites’, The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, 2000, vol. 24(2), pp. 87–96. Toussoun, Omar, La Geographie de L’Egypte a L’epoque Arabe par le Prince Omar Toussoun, Tome I: La Cadastre de Mohammad Ali, Caire, Memoires de la Societe Royale Geographie d’Egypte, 1936. —— Maktabat Madbūlī, 1990. ——al-Tūkhī,

al-Jaysh

al-barrī

al-Faransiyya

Nabīl,

Cairo,

1798–1801,

Cairo,

1997. Turner, Bryan S., Marx and the End of Orientalism, London, G.Allen & Unwin, 1978, pp. 39–48. Van Bruinessen, Martin, Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan, London, Zed Books, 1992. Verdon, M., ‘Where have their lineages gone? Cattle and descent among the Nuer’, American Anthropologist, 1982, vol. 84, pp. 566–579. Weygand, Maxime, Histoire Militaire de Mohammed Aly et de ses fils, 2 vols, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1936. Winter, Michael, Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule 1517–1798, London, Routledge, 1992. Al-Jaysh

al-Kabīr, Cairo, 1939.

——Ibrāhīm Bāsha 1789–1848, Cairo, ——

1948. al-Kabīr, Cairo,

1950.

Iqlīm Cairo, 1962. Zenner, W., ‘Agili Agha: the strongman in the ethnic relations of the Ottoman Galilee’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1972, vol. 14(1), pp. 169–188.

Bibliography

252

Encyclopedias and dictionaries 5 vols, Beirut, Al-Qāmūs al-jughrāfī

1994. min

sanat 1945, 6 vols, Cairo,

ila 1993.

Cairo,

1993.

General index

Abu Qir: battle 32, 34 administrative system: Pasha’s structure 148–55; reforms 155–8 ‘agrarian socialism’ 70 agriculture: bedouin development 78–9, 101–2, 103–4; crops 101–2, 104; Pasha’s economic policy 119–20, 159; reforms 64, 79, 153; and territoriality 69, see also arable farming animal husbandry 36, 104–5, 106–9; bedouin dominance 102; camelbreeding 39, 82, 88, 104, 108–9; characteristics 106; economics of 98–101; and landownership 66; Pasha’s intervention 106–7; sheep-breeding 107–8, see also pastoralism Arab: Egyptian definition 137 Arab conquest 17 army see military assimilation: Pasha’s policy 83–5 Bab al-Nisr: battle 30, 130–1, 161 barāra (desert bedouin) 88–9 başιbozuk (special officers) 5, 163, 188 battles: Abu Qir 32, 34; Bab al-Nasr 30, 130–1, 161; Imbaba 130; Konya 194; al-Minieh 134;

General index

255

Qarta 200; Shubra Heit 30 94–6 bey: definition 26, 128 beys: bedouin alliance 128–9; bedouin/fellahin alliance against 140; Cairo massacre 29, 136, 185; decline and elimination 134–44; stronghold 130 British: and al-Alfi 129, 131, 132; bedouin support 28, 34, 129; trade routes 103 cadastral records 57, 60, 65, 113, 120 Cairo massacre 29, 136, 185 camel-breeding 39, 82, 88, 104, 108–9 centralization 122; Pasha’s policy 148–58 commercial routes see transit routes confederations: and Mamluk/bedouin alliance 127–8; and tribal leadership 44–5 conflicts: inter-tribal see inter-tribal conflicts conscription 187–8, 190 corruption 153–4 Council of Civic Affairs (Majlis al-Mulkiyya) 116, 143, 144 Cyrenaica 21, 42, 79, 95, 161 Damanhur 29, 31, 131, 132 decentralization 156–7 desertion 136, 173, 191, 193–4, 197, 201, 204, 207 despotism 97 dīra (ancestral land) 70 dry farming 36, 117, 139; forms of 109–10; land abandonment 114; land allocations 111–12; and taxes 110, 111, 112, 113–19; as traditional occupation 105, see also agriculture economic crisis 156 Egypt: and al-Alfi 132–5; Arab conquest 17; background 12–13;

General index landownership 45–71; migration to 20–3; official appointments 174–5, 176, 177, 178, 179; Ottomanization 53–4; Pasha’s arrival 130; Pasha’s economic policy 119–22; pastoralism 100; tribe and state in 147–67 elite: crystallization 45, 47; influence 7; land grants 155; in Pasha’s ‘household’ 150–2; Pasha’s policy of cooptation 153 emir: receipt of title 25 extended family 47 Fatimid conquest 17 fellahin: authorities’ protection 142–4; bedouin protection 141; complaints 144; conscription 187–8; desertion from military 191, 193–4, 207; employment as sharecroppers 139; land policies towards 65; lineage 137; matrimonial customs 138; relationship with bedouin 136–44; state exploitation 155; taxes on 61, 143 feudalism 66, 81, 104–5, 140–1, 148; replacement 152 firearms: bedouin adoption 182 French: invasion and conquest 4, 22, 27, 28–34, 52; withdrawal 71, 128, 129, 209 Gaza: inter-tribal conflict 74; migration to 31, 139, 202, 207; rebellion 95; al-Shām war 202–4, 206 government: bedouin relations 2–5; rotation of office 152; and tribal leadership 43–4, see also officials

256

General index

257

‘government shēkhs’ 87, 173–80; tribal status 87 Hejaz: convoys to 169; migration from 22, 89; military campaigns 8, 195–8, 210; rebellions 187, 210 ‘households’ 47, 54–5, 125; Pasha’s 149, 150–2 land 57–61, 111, 112, 114, 116–17, 118, 120, 144, 156–7, 159, 213, 214 iltīzam (tax farming) 4, 8, 49, 55–6, 57, 61, 64, 120, 141, 149, 151, 156, 213 Imbaba: battle 130 industrial development 93, 121–2 inheritance customs 40 inter-tribal conflicts 42, 72, 74–8, 80, 92–3, 95, 115; blood feuds 164–5; management strategies 158; Pasha’s exploitation 160–1; and tribal organization 37, 41–2, 45–6 irrigation systems 12, 63–4, 120, 141, 157, 211 Islam: mosaic-despotic model 97 janissaries 127, 183, 184 joint family households 47 kinship groups 36, 37, 38, 45, 70, 178 kiswa: payment of 169–70, 180; theft of 76 Konya: battle 194 land grants 4, 5, 8, 136; in agricultural development policy 159; in exchange for services 39, 57; land 114, 116, 119, 120, 156, 159; as loyalty insurance 153, 154; as reward 154; and sedentarization 143; land 157; under Ottomans 39, see also land management

General index

258

land management 45–71; class creation 120; land 57–61, 111, 156–7; land 61–6, 156, 157 livestock: rearing see animal husbandry Mahmudiyya canal 110, 111, 120 Majlis al-Mulkiyya (Council of Civic Affairs) 116, 143, 144 māl tax 58, 60, 63, 111, 112, 113–14, 115–19, 144, 154 Mamluk Sultanate 23–4, 182 Mamluks: bedouin alliance 126–36; and bedouin military power 182; horsemanship 126; matrimonial policy 126–7; overview 18–20, 124–6 marriage see matrimony matrimony: fellahin customs 138; Mamluk policy 126–7; strengthening through 70, 126–7, 134 migration 17, 20–3; and animal husbandry 100, 106; and arable farming 109, 117; and military service 211; Pasha’s intervention 23, 67, 121, 158, 186, 207, 213; shēkhs’ responsibilities 41, 44; social stratification role 38; and taxes 58 military service: al-Shām war 202–6; bedouin potential 181–4; camels 192, 199–200; conscription 187–8, 190; desertion 136, 173, 191, 193–4, 197, 201, 204, 207; in foreign wars 195–206; Hawwāra 184–6; Hejaz campaign 195–8; mobilization 189–90, 193; monetary payment 191–2; 170; nazιr-i recruitment 105–6, 186–95, 203; Sudan campaign 198–201 al-Minieh: battle 134 multazims (tax farmers) see iltīzam (tax farming) murders 27, 33, 78, 165–6, 170–1, 173, 175, 177, 186

General index

259

nazιrs: appointments 51, 84, 166–7, 169; responsibilities 52, 107, 108, 157–8, 168, 169–70, 191 163, 168–73, 175 nepotism 154 Nile: bedouin control 102, 103–4; cultural influence 20–1; economic influence 85–6 nomadism: economics of pastoral 98–101; state attitudes towards 147–8; structural theories 36–7; term analysis 97, 98–101 Nubia 24, 182 occupations: and social grading 83; traditional bedouin 26; traditional and new 101–19, see also animal husbandry; arable farming; military service officials: ‘government shēkhs’ 87, 173–80; 163, 168–73, 175; rotation of office 152 Ottoman conquest 21, 27, 91, 124, 148 Ottomans: background 24–7; and bedouin military power 182; Egypt’s position 7; Pasha’s attitude 1; rebellions against 90–1; territorial arrangements 49, 71–2; and tribal organization 41 pastoralism: and territoriality 79–80, see also animal husbandry pilgrims’ routes see transit routes Qarta: battle 200 raids see tribal raids rebellions 154–5, 160, 204; against the Mamluks 23–4; against Ottomans 90–1, 129, 183; Ahmad Pasha 25;

General index bedouin control 187; nazιr’s role 170; Pasha’s management strategies 160–1, 163–5; pre-French conquest 27; Shāyqa 200; under French 30–1 resources: regulation of exploitation 71 rifle: bedouin adoption 182 rotation of office 152 security: bedouin provision 39, 103, 105, 158, 182 sedentarization 56, 72, 80–9, 137, 206–7 segmentary theory 39–40 settlement: agricultural 104; typology 87–9 al-Shām war 8, 202–6 al-Sharqiyya 8, 21, 52; attacks on fellahin 143–4; bedouin/fellahin symbiosis 139–40; economic importance 101; 112; province or territory? 89–94; rebellions 90–1; Wadi al-Tumēlāt project 93–4, 110, 111, 120 sheep-breeding 107–8 definition 54; status 42–3

44, 55 shēkhs: appointment procedure 175–8; arrest and punishment 164–5; dismissals 179; economic status 110–11; founding of new villages 84; murders 165–6; official appointments 87, 173–80; salaries 179–80; security responsibilities 39, 103; social responsibilities 92, 157–8; state control 162–3, 166–7; tax collection 53, 89, 114–15, see also ‘government shēkhs’ Shubra Heit: battle 30

260

General index Sinai: administration 168–9, 174; arable farming 139; bedouin support for French 31; inter-tribal conflict 74, 75, 76, 77; trade routes 102, 202; tribal confederations 20, 46, 71 social structure: bedouin preference 69; grading 83; and territoriality 79; and tribal leadership 36–45 Sudan: military campaigns 8, 108–9, 198–201 Suez 102–3, 120 surveillance: of tribal population 166–7, 188, 207 taxes: and arable farming 110, 111, 112, 113–19; on fellahin 61, 143; fellahin protests 173; firda 62, 84, 113–14, 115; government exemptions 58, 65; kharāj 68; mal 58, 60, 63, 111, 112, 113–14, 115–19, 144, 154; 53; non-payment 27; Ottoman practices 39; and protection 38; shēkhs’ responsibilities 53, 89, see also iltīzam (tax farming) territoriality: concept analysis 68–9; and social structure 79 trade and commerce: bedouin control 75, 101–3, 160, 212; in bedouin society 35, 38, 39, 43, 44; goods 75, 101–2, 104; Pasha’s reforms 7, 152; and sedentarization 81, 87; transportation improvements 120–1 trade routes see transit routes transit routes 39, 44, 75, 89, 101, 202; bedouin control 102–3, 160; camel provision 109; improvements 120–1; threats to 91 tribal disintegration 87

261

General index tribal organization: corporatism 36–7; dependence on economic activity 98; and despotism 97; landownership 45–71; leadership 36–45; and territoriality 70 tribal raids 71–80, 122, 129, 162; 74–8, 164 tribal territory: development of 79–81; state control 121 tribalism: ‘primordial’ theory 98 tribe: concept analysis 6–7, 35 unification 86 usufruct rights 49, 58 Wadi al-Tumēlāt project 93–4, 110, 111, 120

262

Index of names and tribal groupings

32, 72, 74, 75, 76–7, 184, 187, 193, 195, 198–9 176 Abāza 51, 52, 61, 128 al-Abāziyya 127–8 83 91 34 165 137 177

174

29, 52 165–6 see al-Jabartī 28, 73 60 26 202 118 186 Abdin Agha 173 175

74 170, 171

200

191 Abū Gawra 113 Abū Gawra Bedouin 55 Abū Gharāra 165–6, 176 Abū Kuraym 104 Abu Maraq 129 131

176

Index of names and tribal groupings Abū Zēd ibn Wāfī 21 60 52

21 21 20 20

82 Ahl al-Hilla 80–1, 85 88

Ahmad Agha 200

Ahmad ibn Gāsim ibn Baqar 91

91 19, 81, 126

186, 191, 206 165 Ahmad Pasha 168, 176, 199, 204 184 Ahmad Pasha Yeghen 197 60 20 Ahmed Effendi 60 Ahmed Pasha 59, 90 Ahmed Pasha Taher 175 Akhārisa 20 Āl Abū Kurēsha 88 88 174 74, 195

47 al-Alfi al-Kabir, Mehemet Bey 129, 131–4 205 186 197, 202 60 184 51 Ali Bey Iyub 135 Ali Bey al-Kabir 4, 26 56, 64, 103 56 49 9, 47, 52, 61, 63, 66, 80–1, 83, 84, 85 205, 206

264

Index of names and tribal groupings Amin Bey 135 65, 82, 112, 186, 206 144 Ammar, Hamed 137 Arab al-Maghārba 21 Aref Bey 61 Artin, Yacoub 9 Asad, Talal 181 77 103 28 Awlād al-Abāziyya 51 20, 21–2; animal husbandry 108; appointments 176; arable farming 82, 115, 118–19; arrests 164; feudalism 95; founding of new villages 84; and al-Hanādī 9, 42, 72–4, 92–3, 115, 134, 161; localization process 157; military service 185, 190, 197, 204; raids 32, 73; rebellions 129; resistance to French 29, 30–1; state attempts to isolate 171; tax disputes 118–19; tensions with fellahin 143–4; territory 89, 91 51 38–9 Awlād Humām 49 191 55 88 Ayalon, David 19 31 18, 29, 50, 51, 52–3, 61; agriculture 110; matrimonial relationships 128; rebellions 91; settlements 88 74 al-Azīz Ibn

52 Caliph of Cairo 17

265

Index of names and tribal groupings Badr ibn Salām 24 Badrī 176 Baer, Gabriel 1–2, 6, 82, 84, 86, 87 Bagāra 20–1 Baghdādī 84 Baghdādī al-Bakrī 61 Bahaja 71 Bailey, Clinton 31 Baja 20 1, 71, 82 Banī Baqr 91 Banī Hilāl 17–18, 23 91 Banī Salām 21 Banī Sulaym 21, 95 184 Banī Wāfī 26

195

Banī Wāsil 195 24, 49 Barāghīth 82, 83 Barāra 168 al-Bardisi, Osman Bey 129–30 Bashāriyya 74 Bashir Agha 169 of the Jawazi 179 175, 176 205 Batatu, Hanna 97 176 Bayle, St. John 82 Berque, Jacques 98 Bilī 29, 31, 32, 195 Bilī al-Barāra 74 Bruce, James 82 Burckhardt, John Lewis 9 Burke, Edmund 97 Burnham, Philip 38 Cahen, Claude 181 Clot Bey, Antoine 9, 28, 56, 73, 84, 87, 137 Cuno, Kenneth 2, 8, 47, 50, 55, 112, 122, 136, 153 al-Damurdashi, Ahmad Kethüda Dodwell, Henry 1 143, 164

19, 81, 126

266

Index of names and tribal groupings Eickelman, Dale 10, 36 Fabietti, Ugo 79 Fahmy, Khaled 2, 8, 187 Farjān 74 59, 175 al-Fawāyed 47, 64, 73–4, 83, 85, 143, 176, 185, 197, 200, 201, 204 Fayyūm 84 Gāsim Abū Zēd 59, 118–19 62 Gellner, Ernest 10, 40 Ghadāb 176 201 204 Ghānim bin Midhyān 178 Ghasāla 25 Grossman, David 88 26, 48, 83, 103 48, 49, 183 171 175 60 Hajj Muhammad Agha 111 191 202 75 177, 178 164 203, 205 78 177 58, 61, 177, 179 76 183 al-Hanādī 21, 22, 29, 32, 42, 61, 71, 72, 82, 83, 143, 198; arable farming 112, 115–18; and 9, 42, 72–4, 92–3, 115, 134, 161; military service 198, 202, 203; provision of camels 109; rebellions 129

267

Index of names and tribal groupings Hanāwī and Ghāfrī 127 73–4, 84, 185, 190, 197, 201 51, 154 52 Hasan Abu Bakr 179 Hasan Abu Dafia 183 175 63 Hasan Bey 74 Hasan Effendi 63, 64, 144, 204 Hasan Kashif al-Kurdi 108 157 Hasan Sulēmān 178 74 Hathaway, Jane 124 al-Hawwāra 21, 24, 30, 48, 50, 56, 103, 193, 198; agriculture 110; military service 184–6, 193, 198 al-Hawwāri al-Trabulsi 199 82 Hindāwī Abū Dhahab 205 Hobbs, Joseph 75, 76–7 33 Humām 56 Humām ibn Yūsuf 64, 141 Humām ibn Yūsuf al-Hawwārī 26, 39, 41 Humām, Shēkh 103 Hunter, Robert 2, 48, 50, 149, 150 Huseyin 144 176 Hüseyin Agha 74, 168, 169, 172 Hüseyin Agha Abu Saleh Agha 172 177 Huseyin Dayhūm 177 84 Huseyin al-Jabālī 206 Hüseyin Kishkish 132 Hussein Karīm 59 Huwēja Abū Wahab 115 20, 31, 59, 82, 118, 195 Ibn Abī Gharāra 59 Ibn Iyās 49 Ibn Khaldun 83 Ibn Midyan 198 Ibn Mukhlif 198 Ibn Rashīd 38

268

Index of names and tribal groupings

269

Ibn Shadīd 61 115

Ibn Wāfī 104 Ibrāhīm Ahmed 52

51, 63, 84, 107 Ibrahim Bey 27, 30, 51, 52, 129, 183, 206 Ibrahim Bey Abu Shanab 20 Ibrahim Çavuş 132 Ibrahim Pasha 52, 90, 184, 185, 194, 195, 196, 198, 202, 203, 204, 205 Ihsan Pasha 178

58 65 6

165 28

27 80 57, 61

61 108 187, 193, 198, 200, 201 Iyād Kuraym al-Mihnāwī 52, 84 Jabālī Huseyin 179, 203 9, 28, 30, 32–3, 52, 83, 126; on al-Alfi 132–4; on al-Wādī 93; on bedouin Mamluk alliance 128–9, 130; on divide and rule policy 161; on fellahin 142; 86; on the on Hawwāra leaders 185 al-Jabāyra 21 Jahama 82, 198, 205 Janbardi al-Ghazali 90 74, 143, 171 al-Jawāzī 73, 118, 197, 204, 205 Jomard, Edmé-François 103, 104, 139, 140, 141, 142 Judhām 18, 51 al-Juhama 21, 104, 118 Juhayna 18, 24, 195 Juhēna 198

Index of names and tribal groupings Julēlāt 118 21, 22, 107 al-Kabir 184 al-Kawāmla 195 Kaylānī Abbās 176 Khalil Bey 200, 201 Khalīl Effendi 60–1, 164, 205 al-Khamāysa 195 Khazanov, Anatoly 99–100 Kheyrallah al-Dajan 58 Khoury, Philip 2, 45 Khushmān 75, 78 205 Kostiner, Joseph 2, 45 Krocher, A.L. 99 Kuhnke, La Verne 2 Kuja Ahmad 109 Kulaybī 19 Kurd Hasan Agha 197 Lakhm 18 Lamlūm 47, 85 Lapidus, Ira 10 Lawāta 24 69, 72, 74–80 al-Mabrūk Bayādī 174–5 Maghārba 21, 32, 82, 94–6, 101, 110, 184, 187, 201 al-Magrahī 58 60 205 Mahmud Agha 185 Mahmud Effendi 75, 199 24

65

59 204 176 22 173 60 204 59, 60

al-Maqrīzī 17, 23 Marx, Emanuel 10, 36, 37, 43, 85, 99, 138 177 Matthew, Lieutenant Felix 188 Mehemet Agha (Abu Nabut) 202

270

Index of names and tribal groupings Mehemet Bey 170, 173, 176 Mehemet Bey Abu Dhahab 27 Mehemet Bey al-Alfi 30, 31, 34 Mehemet Bey al-Alfi al-Kabir 129, 131–4 Mehemet Bey the Defterdar 187, 200 Mehemet Bey al-Ibrahimi 135 Mehemet Bey Lazughli 198 Mehemet Bey al-Manfukh al-Muradi 135 165 132 Mehemet Kethüda Abāza 51 Meir, Avinoam 10, 70 Menou, Abdullah Jacques 33 104 178, 203–4 51 200 60, 113 143, 179 170 176 64 190, 204 168 28 200 178 24 190, 204 61 107, 205 48, 64, 157 205 18, 21, 31, 104 24 Mulla Hüseyin 199 Murad Bey 27, 30, 33, 51, 52, 129, 183 Murray, G.W. 82, 83 22 Mūsa Agha 202 Mūsa al-Hāsī 202 Mūsa Jīzāwī 177 179 Mustafa Bey 165–6

271

Index of names and tribal groupings Mustafa Kethūda 30 18, 21 Muzēna 195 al-Najama 26 Napoleon 28, 29, 30, 33 Nasir Ali Effendi 168 33 20 118, 195 176 Naum Shuqeir Bey 20 Nimr, Shēkh 139 19, 20, 69, 127 19, 20, 69, 127 135 Ömer Bey 161 Osman Bey al-Bardisi 129–30 Osman Bey Hasan 135 Pachio, J.R. 42 Poncet, J. 181 21 and 127 Qāsimiyya 19 Qays and Yaman 127 Quraysh 24 198 al-Rasheed, Madawi 39 179 Ratib Effendi 112 Rivlin, Helen 55 Rosenfeld, Henry 181 143 Rumēlāt 20 Rustum Bey 176, 178 Rustum Effendi 109, 165, 179 Ruwēshid 77–8 Rwala 38 172

47

61 165, 173

Salih Bey 192 Salih Bey al-Qasimi 132 175 Salīm al-Bāsil 200 Salim the First 25

172

272

Index of names and tribal groupings 48, 49 Sālim, Latīfa 65 Salūma 176 Salzman, Philip Carl 37 Samālūs 118 20 31, 57, 195 Sawālim 91 Sawārka 20, 74 al-Sayyid Abāza 51 al-Sayyid Marsot: Afaf Lutfi 1–2 al-Sayyid Pasha 52, 63 Seetzen, Ulrich Jaspar 31 85 Shabāna 105 Shādhilī 81 Shadīd 118 61 Shahin Bey al-Alfi 134, 135, 161 206 Shalabi, Hilmi 153 Shamlūq Abū Suleimān 176 Shammar 39, 79 23, 24 88 al-Shawādī 21 Shawāribī 51, 88 Shawāribiyya 64 Shāyqa 200 Shnell, Itzhak 68 Shubēka, Makkī 198 Shwartz, Igal 23, 24 Sinbis 24 Sonnini, C.S. 102, 104 Stewart, Frank 79 Sulaym 18

28

84

174 Suleiman Pasha Abāza 157 Suleiman al-Shawāribī 29 Sulēmān Abāza Pasha 51, 52 179 Sulēmān Farā 59 Sulēmān Farrāj 118

Sulēmān Pasha 63 Süleyman Agha Abu Dafiyya 140

175

273

Index of names and tribal groupings Süleyman Bey 192 Süleyman Bey al-Alfi 134 Süleyman the Magnificent 56 Süleyman Pasha 202 41, 48, 49, 56, 103 Tabābna 78 61, 104 Tamīm 206 Tapper, Richard 10 20, 31, 129, 195 74 21, 82, 85 104 71, 77 Timur Agha 186 Tīyāhā 20, 31, 74 Toledano, Ehud 2, 50, 53, 124, 150 19 al-Tūr 74 Tusun Pasha 195, 196 199 186

164 183 177 179 74, 164 183

Umsērī 78 157 176 Van Bruinessen, Martin 39–40 Volney, C.F. 139, 140 59 Winter, Michael 183 Yadim Sultan 22 and Yahya Bey 135 Yasin Bey 134

170, 171 127

204 Yussef Hqkqkyan 85 Zagros 41 Zāwiya 190

274