A history of pastoral nomads in the Islamic Middle East from the rise of Islam, through the middle periods when Mongols and Turks ruled most of the region, to the decline of nomadism in the twentieth century. Offering a vivid insight into the impact of nomads on the politics, culture, and ideology of the region, Beatrice Forbes Manz examines and challenges existing perceptions of these nomads, including the popular cyclical model of nomad-settled interaction developed by Ibn Khaldun. Looking at both the Arab Bedouin and the nomads from the Eurasian steppe, Manz demonstrates the significance of Bedouin and Turco-Mongolian contributions to cultural production and political ideology in the Middle East, and shows the central role played by pastoral nomads in war, trade, and state-building throughout history. Nomads provided horses and soldiers for war, the livestock and guidance which made long-distance trade possible, and animal products to provision the region's growing cities.

A scholarly volume devoted to an understanding of contemporary nomadic and pastoral societies in the Middle East and North Africa. This volume recognizes the variable mobile quality of the ways of life of these societies which persist in accommodating the ‘nation-state’ of the 20th and 21st century but remain firmly transnational and highly adaptive. Composed of four sections around the theme of contestation it includes examinations of contested authority and power, space and social transformation, development and economic transformation, and cultures and engendered spaces.

Examines how negotiations between the Ottomans and Arab nomads played a part in the making of the modern Middle East.

Based on three decades of ethnographic fieldwork and documentary research, this book traces the political and social history of the Shahsevan, one of the major nomadic peoples of Iran. It is a dramatic story, recounting the mythical origins of the tribes, their unification as a confederacy and their eventual decline. In its synthesis of anthropology and history, the book will make a major contribution to the study of the Middle East and Central Asia, and also to current debates on tribe-state relations and the relationship between identity and history.

British Imperialism and 'The Tribal Question ' reconstructs the history of Britain's presence in the deserts of the interwar Middle East, making the case for its significance to scholars of imperialism and of the region's past. It tells the story of what happened when the British Empire and Bedouin communities met on the desert frontiers between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. It traces the workings of the resulting practices of 'desert administration' from their origins in the wake of one World War to their eclipse after the next, as British officials, Bedouin shaykhs, and nationalist politicians jostled to influence desert affairs. Drawn to the commanding heights of political society in the region's towns and cities, historians have tended to afford frontier 'margins' merely marginal treatment. Instead, this volume combines the study of imperialism, nomads, and the desert itself to reveal the centrality of 'desert administration' to the working of Britain's empire, repositioning neglected frontier areas as nerve centres of imperial activity. British Imperialism and 'The Tribal Question ' leads the shift in historians' attentions from the familiar, urban seats of power to the desert 'hinterlands' that have long been obscured.

This book is about the land and people of parts of the interior of Syria and Jordan. At the beginning of the nineteenth century most of the people were nomads and only a small proportion of the land was cultivated. Today nomads are few, peasants are numerous and nearly all the land that will bear a crop is under cultivation. This study shows how the present situation came about as the state extended and strengthened its hold on the countryside, the economy of the country developed, landlords and peasants took up hitherto uncultivated land and nomads settled down to become farmers. The concluding chapters discuss the effects of population growth, mechanised farming and overgrazing on the semi-arid environment and its inhabitants. Norman Lewis combines geographical, historical and ethnographical material derived from an immense variety of sources, including unpublished manuscripts and fieldwork undertaken over a period of forty years.

A Moveable Empire examines the history of the Ottoman Empire through a new lens, focusing on the migrant groups that lived within its bounds and their changing relationship to the state's central authorities. Unlike earlier studies that take an evolutionary view of tribe-state relations -- casting the development of a state as a story in which nomadic tribes give way to settled populations -- this book argues that mobile groups played an important role in shaping Ottoman institutions and, ultimately, the early republican structures of modern Turkey. Over much of the empire's long history, local interests influenced the development of the Ottoman state as authorities sought to enlist and accommodate the various nomadic groups in the region. In the early years of the empire, maintaining a nomadic presence, especially in frontier regions, was an important source of strength. Cooperation between the imperial center and tribal leaders provided the center with an effective way of reaching distant parts of the empire, while allowing tribal leaders to perpetuate their own authority and guarantee the tribes' survival as bearers of distinct cultures and identities. This relationship changed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as indigenous communities discovered new possibilities for expanding their own economic and political power by pursuing local, regional, and even global opportunities, independent of the Ottoman center. The loose, flexible relationship between the Ottoman center and migrant communities became a liability under these changing conditions, and the Ottoman state took its first steps toward settling tribes and controlling migrations. Finally, in the early twentieth century, mobility took another form entirely as ethnicity-based notions of nationality led to forced migrations.

The interaction between Eurasian pastoral nomads and the surrounding sedentary societies is a major theme in world history. This volume explores the mulitfarious nature of nomadic society and its relations with China, Russia and the Middle East from antiquity into the contemporary world with emphasis on the Mongol and Turkish peoples.