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Decolonizing Tribal “Genealogies” in the Middle East and North Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2021

Najwa Adra
Najwa Adra*
Affiliation:
Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: najwa.adra@gmail.com
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Extract

The continued use of the term “tribe” to describe groups with segmentary organization in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has long been recognized as problematic, albeit without viable alternative English translations of the local terms: qabīla, ‘ashīra, sha‘b, ‘ilt, and others. Yet the equally problematic but enduring uncritical acceptance of genealogical classification of MENA's tribes leads to fundamental misunderstandings of the basic principles of tribal organization as well as the multiple roles of kinship in the region. This propensity is not only misleading but is loaded with social evolutionary assumptions about presumed “stages of development” that hinder scholarship on tribes and have a negative impact on international policy toward countries like Yemen with significant self-identified tribal populations. Key to this essay is the wide diversity and flexibility in the terminology applied to tribal segments and in the sizes of segments.

Type
Roundtable
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 492 - 496
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 See, for example, Biebuck, Daniel P., “On the Concept of Tribe/Sur le Concept de Tribu,” Civilisations 16 (1966): 500–15Google Scholar; Maurice Godelier, “Le Concept de tribu: Crise d'un concept ou crise des fondements empiriques de l'anthropologie?” Diogène (1973): 3–28; Fleuhr-Lobban, Carolyn, Lobban, Richard, and Zangani, Linda, “‘Tribe’: A Socio-Political Analysis,” Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies 7 (1976): 143–65Google Scholar; Szuchman, Jeffrey, “Integrating Approaches to Nomads, Tribes and States in the Ancient Near East,” in Nomads, Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, ed. Szuchman, Jeffrey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 1–4Google Scholar; and Najwa Adra, “Don't Throw Out the Baby with Social Evolution: Revisiting ‘Tribe’ in the Middle East and North Africa,” Anthropology News (2015), http://www.najwaadra.net/AN2016.pdf.

2 Field research in Yemen was funded by the National Science Foundation (1978–79), the Population Council, MEAwards (1983), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (1983), and the American Institute for Yemeni Studies (2005).

3 Qabyala is a distinctly Yemeni term not to be confused with qabaliyya, or tribalism. Najwa Adra, “Qabyala: The Tribal Concept in the Central Highlands of the Yemen Arab Republic” (PhD diss., Temple University, 1983); Najwa Adra, “Qabyala, or What Does It Mean to Be Tribal in Yemen?” in Tribes in Modern Yemen: An Anthology, ed. Marieke Brandt (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, forthcoming).

4 Rossi, Ettore, “Il Diritto Consuetudinario delle Tribu Arabe de Yemen,” Revista degli Studi Orientale 23 (1948): 1–36Google Scholar; Adra, “Qabyala: The Tribal Concept,” 161–211; Dresch, Paul, Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Weir, Shelagh, A Tribal Order: Politics and Law in the Mountains of Yemen (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

5 Feuds can be instigated and funded by external parties, including the government and neighboring states, as is made evident by the Houthi wars and the ongoing conflict. See Brandt, Marieke, Tribes and Politics in Yemen: A History of the Houthi Conflict (London: Hurst, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Adra, Najwa, “Tribal Mediation and Empowered Women: Potential Contributions of Heritage to National Development in Yemen,” International Journal of Islamic Art 5 (2016): 301–37Google Scholar.

7 Hammoudi, Abdallah, “al-Dakhili wa-l-Khariji: fi al-Tanzir li-l-Zahira al-Qabaliyya, Khutwa fi Tariq Ta'sis Khitab Anthrubuluji Mustaqill,” ‘Umran/Omran 19, no. 5 (2017): 13–56Google Scholar.

8 Bayt denotes “house” or “domicile.” In poetry, it denotes “verse,” the building block of poetry. Dayma in local dialect denotes “kitchen” and connotes “continuity.”

9 While cousin marriage is accepted, it is not generally preferred. Women often argue that they are treated better and have more bargaining power vis-à-vis their in-laws when they marry outside the lineage.

10 Qarya, the standard Arabic term for village, is used in literary sources.

11 Bride wealth is reduced for marriages within a village. The preference for village endogamy is often explained as a reluctance to separate young women from their mothers.

12 Elsewhere in Yemen, smaller groups may be named qabīla, and the larger group that identifies with a known territory is given other names.

13 When al-Ahjur's villages did not agree on a single paramount shaykh, two were selected, each with jurisdiction over the villages that supported him.

14 Personal communication, January 1979.

15 Lucrative qat cultivation has replaced grain cultivation in much of al-Ahjur, increasing the threat and incidence of theft.

16 ‘Abd al-Rahman bin Muhammad ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimat ibn Khaldun: al-Juz’ al-Awwal, ed. ‘Abd Allah Muhammad al-Darwish (Damascus: Dar Ya‘rab, 2004).

17 Robertson-Smith, W., Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (Boston: Beacon Press, [1903] 1973), 1Google Scholar.

18 Peters, E. L., “Some Structural Aspects of the Feud among the Camel-Herding Bedouin of Cyrenaica,” Africa 37 (1967): 262, 279CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Berque, Jacques, “Qu'est-ce qu'une ‘tribu’ Nord-Africaine?” in Eventail de l'histoire vivante: Hommage à Lucien Febvre, vol.1 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1953), 265Google Scholar.

20 Ibid. (author's translation).

21 Hammoudi, “al-Dakhili wa-l-Khariji,” 299.

22 Adra, “Qabyala: The Tribal Concept”; Swagman, Charles F., Development and Change in Highland Yemen (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1988), 100Google Scholar; Adra, “Don't Throw Out the Baby.”

23 Varisco, Daniel Martin, “Yemen's Tribal Idiom: An Ethno-Historical Survey of Genealogical Models,” Journal of Semitic Studies 62, no. 1 (2017): 217–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Conte, Edouard, “Entrer dans le sang: Perceptions arabes des origines,” in Al-Ansab: La quête des origines. Anthropologie historique de la société tribale arabe, ed. Bonte, Pierre (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1991): 55–100Google Scholar.

25 Porter, Anne, “Beyond Dimorphism: Ideologies and Materialities of Kinship as Time-Space Distanciation,” in Nomads, Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East: Cross-Disciplinary Perspective, ed. Szuchman, Jeffrey (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2009), 208Google Scholar.

26 This is not to say that Yemen's neighbors have not attempted to colonize parts of Yemen, nor that the influx of cheap food imports that has had a negative impact on agriculture do not represent a form of economic colonialism. The long-term impact of the current conflict on Yemeni social cohesion is difficult to predict.

27 Godelier, “Concept de tribu,” 15–24.

28 Ibid, 4–5; see also the impact of such ideas on colonial policy in Berque, “Qu'est-ce qu'une ‘tribu,’” 261.

29 Jeffrey Goldberg, “‘The Obama Doctrine’: The Atlantic's Exclusive Report on the U.S. President's Hardest Foreign Policy Decisions,” Atlantic, 10 March 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/press-releases/archive/2016/03/the-obama-doctrine-the-atlantics-exclusive-report-on-presidents-hardest-foreign-policy-decisions/473151.