Life of Bedouins

Bedouins are Arabs and desert nomads who hail from and continue to live primarily in the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East and North Africa. They have traditionally lived in the arid steppe regions along the margins of rain-fed cultivation. They often occupy areas that receive less than 5 centimeters of rain a year, sometimes relying on pastures nourished by morning dew rather than rain to provide water for their animals.

 Bedouins regard themselves as true Arabs and the “heirs of glory.” They are found mostly in Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman and Egypt. Bedouins are objects of romance and associated with the idea of freedom for many Arabs. But their life is not easy. Wilfred Thesinger described the Bedouin’s life as “hard and merciless...always hungry and usually thirsty.”

 Bedouin means “desert people.” The term Bedouin is an anglicization of the Arabic word bedu . It has traditionally been used to differentiate between nomads who made a living by raising livestock (the Bedouins) and those who worked on farms or lived in towns. There is some debate as to whether non-Arab- speaking nomads who live in the Middle East are Bedouins. These groups generally prefer names like the Fedaan tribe or the Rashaayda Arabs to Bedouins.

 Arab culture considers the Bedouin people to be “ideal” Arabs due to the purity of their society and lifestyle. Bedouins speak dialects of Arabic and are related ethnically to city Arabs. Their territory stretches from the vast deserts of North Africa to the rocky sands of the Middle East. Most are Sunni Muslims; some are Shia Muslims.

Most Bedouins are animal herders who migrate into the desert during the rainy winter season and move back toward the cultivated land in the dry summer months. Bedouin tribes have traditionally been classified according to the animal species that are the basis of their livelihood.

Camel nomads occupy huge territories and are organized into large tribes in the Sahara, Syrian, and Arabian deserts. Sheep and goat nomads have smaller ranges, staying mainly near the cultivated regions of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. Cattle nomads are found chiefly in South Arabia and in Sudan, where they are called Baqqarah (Baggara). Historically many Bedouin groups also raided trade caravans and villages at the margins of settled areas or extracted payments from settled areas in return for protection.

 According to Encyclopædia Britannica: Because Bedouin populations are represented inconsistently—or not at all—in official statistics, the number of nomadic Bedouins living in the Middle East today is difficult to ascertain. But it is generally understood that they constitute only a small fraction of the total population in the countries where they are present.

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