Camel Raiding of North Arabian Bedouin: A Mechanism of Ecological Adaptation1

Abstract

T HE Bedouin camel breeding peoples of Arabia are among the most conspicuous in the public tradition of romanticized warrior nomads, but among the least used in current ethnological theory. Yet they inhabit a desert zone marked by varying and extreme geographical conditions for human survival and display in their modes of adaptation a wealth of features useful for developing cultural ecological theory. Moreover, their contiguity with regions occupied over millennia by complex states provides a host of problems of intercultural adaptations. Most prominent among these, perhaps, has been the persistence and elaboration of kinship as the organizing basis of these desert societies. This paper is concerned with examining some of the features and adaptive functions of one of the core mechanisms of Bedouin socio-cultural systems, institutionalized raiding, as a major factor in the persistence of such kin-based societies.2 Raiding is variously regarded as a sport, a passion, an industry by Western writers; it has been labelled brigandage, feuding, and warfare, and has been denounced and deplored, and rarely admired. But few serious students of Bedouin life have failed to appreciate its significance for the Bedouin, regardless of the moral or political stand from which the writers might evaluate it. Burckhardt, for example commented upon the precariousness of wealth in camel herds among the Bedouin, the rapid changes of individual fortunes as parties of men raided and counterraided each other's encampments. But he also calculated in monetary terms the cost of living as a Bedouin camel pastoralist. He concluded: