Language:
English
Edition:
eHRAF World Cultures
Series Statement:
eHRAF World Cultures
Keywords:
Arabian Peninsula--Description and travel
;
Bedouins--Arabian Peninsula
;
Bedouins--Saudi Arabia
;
Folklore--Arabian Peninsula
;
Saudi Arabia--Social life and customs
Abstract:
This collection of three documents and a culture summary, all in English, cover historical and cultural information from about late-1900s to mid-1970s. Alois Musil, a Czech historical geographer, traveled with the Rwala Bedouins between 1908 and 1915 working for the Austro-Hungarian government. His book provides first hand accounts of daily life, ethical codes, social structures and religious practices of the Rwala when they were still living in the desert as nomadic pastoralists. Carl Reinhard Raswan, a German adventurer, spent 22 years off and on among the Rwala Bedouins from 1913-1935. He presents detailed information on Rwala code of honor and ethics, drought and patterns of migration, marriage practices and duties of village Sheiks. Anthropologist William Lancaster conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork among various Rwala groups in Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia in 1972-1975. Lancaster's work explores how Rwala families, lineages and Sheiks have changed over the past several decades in response to external forces, notably the division of their traditional homeland among four newly emerged sovereign states (namely, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq) and the oil boom in the region. This work also deconstructs travelers' reports and European imaginations of the Bedouin which tend to romanticize their desert life and "exotic" lineage systems. The Rwala are nomadic pastoralists who live mainly in southeastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. They speak Arabic and refer to themselves as "baduw," that is, people of the "desert." All Rwala are believed to be descended from a common but unknown Arab ancestor. Their access to grazing land has been altered by the creation of nation-states in the 20th century and the establishment national boundaries across their customary migration routes. Since 1970 the Rwala have made more money from commerce and wage labor than from pastoralism
Description / Table of Contents:
Rwala Bedouin - William Young - 2009 -- - Black tents of Arabia - Carl R. Raswan - 1947 -- - The manners and customs of the Rwala Bedouins - by Alois Musil ... published under the patronage of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts and of Charles R. Crane - 1928 -- - The Rwala Bedouin today - William Lancaster - 1981
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