The Pasha's Bedouin

Tribes and State in the Egypt of Mehemet Ali, 1805-1848

Reuven Aharoni

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134268207
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Egypt's history is interwoven with conflicts of Bedouin, governments and peasants, competing over same cultivated lands and of migrations of nomads from the deserts to the Nile Valley. Mehemet Ali's era represented the initial ending of the traditional tribalism, and the beginning of emergence of a semi-urban community, which became an integral part of the sedentarised population.

Providing a new perspective on tribal life in Egypt under Mehemet Ali Pasha's rule, The Pasha's Bedouin examines the social and political aspects of the Bedouin during 1805-1848. By highlighting the complex relationships which developed between the government of the Pasha and the Bedouin, Reuven Aharoni sets out to expose the Bedouin as a specialised social sector of the urban economy and as integral to the economic and political life in Egypt at the time. This study aims to question of whether the elements of bureaucratic culture which characterised the central and provincial administration of the Pasha, indicate special attitudes towards this sector of the population. Subjects covered include:

• The 'Bedouin' policy of Mehemet Ali

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• Territory and identity, tribal economies

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• Tribe and state relations

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• Tribal leadership

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With a long experience in fieldwork among Bedouin in the Sinai and the Negev, as well as using a range of archival documents and manuscripts both in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish, this highly researched book provides an essential read for historians, anthropologists and political scientists in the field of social and political history of the Middle East.

Reuven Aharoni, Ph.D (2001) in Middle Eastern History, Tel-Aviv University, teaches history of the Middle East at the Haifa University and at the Open University of Israel.

Part I

Historical and social perspectives

1 Tribal history in outline

The early confederations and groupings

The Arab conquest of Egypt in 641 brought in its wake the first waves of migration of Arab tribes from the Arabian peninsula. The first settlers were tribes that had originated in southern Arabia (Qaḥṭān or Yaman), and in the eighth century there began the settlement of tribes originating in northern Arabia (ʿAdnān or Qays). They were long-standing rivals, so the northern tribes settled for the most part on the western bank of the Nile, and the southern tribes on the eastern bank. Some of the tribes that arrived in Egypt settled permanently shortly after their arrival, and very soon began to resemble, and become integrated into, the veteran peasant population. This was chiefly because they settled in the agricultural areas of the Nile. The chronicler al-Maqrīzī wrote at the opening of his work:

Know that the Arab who took part in the conquest of Egypt have disappeared with the passing of time, and most of their traces have disappeared. In the land of Egypt there remain only remnants of these Arab.¹

Iʿlam ʿan al-ʿarab al-ladhīna shahadū fatḥ miṣr qad abādahum al-dahr wa-jahalat aḥwāl akthar aʿkābhum wa-qad baqiyat min al-ʿarab baqāyā bi-arḍ miṣr fa man baqiya

The migration of bedouin tribes to Egypt never ceased. After the Fatimid conquest in the tenth century, tribes of Berber descent from North Africa began to arrive, and they underwent an arabization process in Egypt. The major event of this century was the beginning of the migration of the Banī Hilāl tribes from the Najd region in the centre of the Arabian peninsula; until then they had not been significantly involved in the centrifugal expansion of many of the Arab tribes in the course of the early Arab conquests. There is no doubt that several of the waves of migration were voluntary, but a significant number of the Banī Hilāl tribes were exiled to Upper Egypt by the Fatimid Caliph of Cairo, al-ʿAzīz al-Muʿiż, as punishment for their participation in the Qarmaṭi rebellion and their plundering of al-Madina. There still exist residents of Upper Egypt and the Sudan who claim descent from the Banī Hilāl.² In the second half of the eleventh century the Banī Hilāl left Egypt and, at the urging of the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir, crossed the Libyan Desert and took North Africa by storm.³

On the eve of the period of the Mamluk Sultanate there still existed in Egypt some groups which had apparently belonged in the past to the great tribal confederations that existed at the time of the beginnings of Islam and even earlier, and therefore bore the names of tribes of that period: Judhām, Lakhm, Juhayna, Sulaym, and others. The Mamluk period saw the decline of these earlier confederations. Some disappeared completely: for instance, the ʿAdnān-Qaysi grouping of Sulaym disintegrated, and the only group identified with Sulaym at the time of the Ottoman conquest was the Muḥārib; and the Lakhm grouping disintegrated and disappeared as a result of internal disputes. Other structures disintegrated, or broke up into sub-groups which became dominant, and more important than the grouping to which they belonged. For example, the Juhayna, of Qaḥṭān/Yaman origin, to which most of the bedouin of Upper Egypt had belonged, shrank to a small group; and the Judhām, a group from southern Qaḥṭān/Yaman, disintegrated, and in the period of Mehemet Ali’s rule only the bedouin of al-ʿĀyedh remained as witness to their origins from this grouping.⁴

The great confederative tribal units, which included a number of tribal groups or large clans, and in earlier times also chiefships, disintegrated, and in the political arena there remained mainly smaller tribal groups, mostly composed of one central clan headed by a shēkh who represented the group vis-à-vis the authorities, surrounded by smaller and weaker clans with no independent representation. These groups had no political influence, and no longer constituted a threat to the central regime. By the second half of the eighteenth century the age of tribal leaders who had established independent dynasties, and succeeded in uniting round them large groups of tribes, was past.

As has been noted, the disappearance of the great confederative groupings in the course of the Mamluk period, and the rise of new groups with different names, is an indication of the unstable social structure of the tribes, and of the basic attribute which characterized bedouin society: division and reunification. For this reason, too, we encounter new bedouin groups at different periods of Egyptian history. True, there still existed groups which had arrived in various waves of migration; but many of them grew up as a result of seceding from a bigger group or from a long-established federation. The division was generally the result of a dispute or competition over land, or the demographic growth and increase in political and economic power of particular groups which decided to split off and become independent. Sometimes this was done with the encouragement of the authorities. On the other hand, groups which had become small and weak banded together to form larger, more defensible tribal units. The information we possess in this field is unclear, since our sources draw no exact distinction between types of groupings and their tribal affiliations. We have no way of knowing either the nature of the group in question, or its genealogical connections with other tribes. All that can be said is that there were no large nationwide tribal organizations, only local or regional tribal groupings. In the course of the period there took place changes in the bedouin tribal population as a result of fission and unification of various groups: some groups shrank or disappeared, and new ones were created.

Sources from the Ottoman period in Egypt frequently mention the erstwhile division of the bedouin tribes into two camps, Niṣf Saʿd and Niṣf Ḥarām.⁵ These were ancient bedouin groupings based on a myth of common origin, though they were almost entirely political and ideological in character. These groupings did not rule over territory, they had no overall leadership, and there was no division of authority among them; nor, indeed, did they function as political factions. They served mainly as a means of recruiting military forces when they were required. By the end of the seventeenth century the historical origins of the two factions had been forgotten and only myths and trappings remained. David Ayalon showed that this division related to the historic conflict between Tubāʿī and Kulaybī, and, at a later date, to the struggles between Yamanis and Zaydis, and, finally to the struggle between Niṣf Saʿd and Niṣf Ḥarām.⁶ The chronicler Damurdashi wrote:

The Egyptians were divided into two factions, the Zughbī and Hilālī, Tubāʿī and Kulaybī, Saʿd and Ḥarām, and, in the Ottoman period, Faqārī and Qāsimī. The Faqārī’s flag was white and the Qāsimī is red. This is so to this very day, among the bedouin and the fellahin in the Qibli and Bahri regions of Egypt.

He added:

wasumiya min dhālika al-yawm niṣf saʿd faqārī wasumiya niṣf ḥarām qāsimī.⁷
Was named from that day niṣf saʿd faqārī and niṣf ḥarām qāsimī.

Our sources also mention this as the distinguishing mark between different groups of bedouin. The chronicler al-Qinali wrote:

ʿurbān al-beheirah raʾyatuhum ḥamran dāʾiman maʿ al-qāsimiyya
The flag of the bedouin of al-Beheirah is red, they are always with the Qāsimiyya.

He added:

Until the time of the Ottoman House, Allah will grant him victory, since the Faqāriyya became Saʿd and the Qāsimiyya became Ḥarām.⁸

ila dawlat al-ʿuthmān naṣarha taʿāla faqārī saʿd qāsimī ḥarām firqatayn fī baʿadhum.

The inter-tribal political alliances and the alliances between bedouin and the Ottoman-Egyptian households (the so-called Mamluk households) between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries were based on these camps. It may be that this was because of the close relationships between bedouin shēkhs and the local military elite and grandees (especially the beys and the other households’ chieftains), and the affinity which grew up between the households and these tribal factions, even without bedouin from either camp actually joining them. As for the grandees, they recognized the bedouin’s commitment to these bodies, and identified their political allegiance accordingly. Therefore, when in 1105/1703–1704 the Qāsimi chieftain, Ibrahim Bey Abu Shanab, appointed his follower (tābiʿ)⁹ Ahmed al-Aʿsar as governor (sancak [bey]), he sent him to al-Beheirah province ‘since it was always his [Qāsimi jurisdiction] and because its bedouins are Niṣf Ḥarām completely.’ (liʾnaha daʾiman maʿ lakun ʿurbānha min niṣf ḥarām tamāman.)¹⁰ Since Saʿd and Ḥarām were groupings of tribal peoples, the significance of their accession to these factions was the ability to recruit large groups of supporters and large numbers of soldiers, over and above the normal tribal groups; hence the military and political benefit they afforded. Bedouin and grandees alike recognized the mutual advantage which stemmed from this mythological identity. The grandees wanted to improve their military ability in the struggles between the sects, while the bedouin were interested in ensuring the possibility of raids on other tribes under the aegis of their allies, not to mention their shared identity.

Official records from the time of Mehemet Ali’s rule do not mention this division. It appears that the reason for the disappearance of the division into camps is the disappearance of the Egyptian-Ottoman beys and their households from the military and political scene, following the massacre of their leaders by Mehemet Ali in the citadel of Cairo in 1811. Naum Shuqeir Bey, who collected information about the bedouin tribes in the Sinai peninsula in the first half of the twentieth century, gives additional confirmation of the loss of the original meaning of the division between Niṣf Saʿd and Niṣf Ḥarām. He was told that at that time they were in the camp of Saʿd in Sinai the tribes of Tiyāhā, Sawārka, Rumēlāt, ʿAyāyda, Samāʿna, Akhārisa, and Awlād ʿAlī (of Sinai), while the camp of Ḥarām included the Ṭawara (confederation of the bedouin of south Sinai), Ḥuwētāt, Aḥēwāt, Ṭarābīn, and ʿAgliyīn. But Shēkh Nāṣir Mūsa, formerly the shēkh of the Ṭawara bedouin, confessed that he had forgotten which of the camps his tribe was supposed to support.

Migrations

The nomads and semi-nomads of Egypt traditionally used the parts of the desert area contiguous to the cultivated lands round the Nile Valley. On the one hand, over the centuries they had gradually moved and settled, mainly in the area of al-Hawf.¹¹ From there they moved to other regions in the Delta and to areas in Upper Egypt, and there they were absorbed into rural society. On the other hand, the tribes of the Western Desert, such as the Awlād ʿAlī, looked towards Jabal al-Akhdar (part of Tripolitania, now Libya), whereas the bedouin of the Sinai peninsula and the Eastern Desert were closer to the nomads of the Arabian peninsula. The Baja of north-east Sudan underwent a process of arabization due to their proximity to Egypt, a process which was accelerated from the end of the nineteenth century as a result of Mehemet Ali’s conquest of the Sudan. The Bagāra bedouin, animal breeders from north Sudan, had close ties with the bedouin of the Nile Valley, though their cultural and ecological patterns were different. The fact that the Nile flows through a desert makes for cultural unity along its banks. There is variety within this unity. In the southern regions, close to the border with Sudan, camel-breeding nomadism is replaced by cattle-breeding nomadism, because of the environmental conditions and the climate. The Nile and the desert have a decisive cultural influence.

When the Ottomans reached Egypt in 1517, they found semi-nomadic bedouin tribes some of which had already settled permanently, mainly in Upper Egypt. During most of the Ottoman conquest permanent settlement persisted in Egypt with no intervention by the authorities, in addition to settlement of nomads on their own land. These processes were the result of waves of migration and changes in the geographical distribution of tribal groups. The principal areas in which Bedouin migration concentrated were al-Beheirah province, which was influenced by the penetration of tribes of Berber and Maghrib origin, and al-Sharqiyya province, which absorbed bedouin tribes from southern Arabia. For many years bedouin also settled in some of the regions of Upper Egypt, mainly because of the activity round the commercial route between Qenah and al-Quseir.

The biggest waves of migration came from the Maghrib (North Africa), and they reached their peak towards the middle of the eighteenth century. This migration set its hallmark on the bedouin population of Lower and Middle Egypt. It was the second wave of tribes of Maghrib origin which entered Egypt in the seventeenth century and returned to Cyrenaica, and of tribes of Arabic origin who arrived in Egypt at the time of the Moslem conquest, but were sent by the Caliph al-Mustansir Biʾllah in the Fatimid period to help ensure the victory of the Arab conquest of North Africa. Some consider that the invasion of al-Beheirah in 1689 by the Banī Sulaym, under the leadership of Shēkh Abū Zēd ibn Wāfī, was the beginning of this wave of migration. The Banī Sulaym were repulsed by the Hawwāra bedouin, and thereafter reached Upper Egypt.¹² In their wake there began a massive wave of migration of groups of arabized bedouin of Berber origin belonging to the Qabāʾil Sulaym, and of groups of ʿAdnāni origin. The most dominant groups were Arab al-Maghārba (Ibn Wāfī), Ṭarhūna (ʿArab Abū Kuraym), al-Juhama, and the confederation of the Muḥārib tribes, including al-Jabāyra, al-Shawādī, Banī Salām, al-ʿAgāgira, and al-Hanādī.¹³

The Hanādī bedouin, one of the biggest and most dominant groups, became a central factor among the Maghārbī bedouin in western Egypt over the coming century. The Hanādī were apparently a confederative unit composed of a cluster of tribes, which functioned as a territorial organization. They exploited a common North African origin in order to dominate a broad area. Their invasion drove out the Banī ʿAwna, who were at that time in an advanced stage of assimilation into rural society. The Jumēʿāt bedouin, who were tenant farmers under the tutelage of the Banī ʿAwna, remained in the region, and waged a stubborn struggle against the Hanādī in the 1770s. They enlisted the help of the Awlād ʿAlī, who lived at this time in Jabal al-Akhdar in Cyrenaica. In the future, the Awlād ʿAlī bedouin would make a profound impact on the map of the Egyptian tribes, and play a central role in the development of the relationships between Mehemet Ali and the bedouin. Following the Jumēʿāt’s call for help they began to enter Egypt, and settled in al-Beheirah and along the shores of the Mediterranean, as far as Alexandria.¹⁴ The war between these two powerful groups, al-Hanādī and Awlād ʿAlī, continued until the accession of Mehemet Ali. In 1798, on the eve of the French invasion, the Hanādī bedouin, then living in the Beheirah province and led by Yadim Sultan, head of the Manāṣra faction, fought an unsuccessful campaign against the Awlād ʿAlī. During the French conquest Mūsa Abū ʿAlī attained the leadership. According to a contemporary witness, they had 300–400 horses, and, together with their allies, 900–1,000 horsemen.¹⁵

Other groups arrived in the wave of migration from the Maghrib. One of the most dominant was the Barāghīth, a confederation of tribes of Berber origin. Their leader was Yūnis bin Mirdās al-Silmī, and the important groups within the confederation were al-Fawāyed and al-Jawāzī, bedouin of al-Firjān who also belonged to the Banī Sulaym, and began to be involved in tribal wars on their arrival from the Maghrib, until they eventually settled in the provinces of al-Minieh, al-Fayyūm and al-Gharbiyya. The ʿAmāyem bedouin, of Berber origin, settled on the border of the desert close to Manfalut, and maintained links with the Juhama and Ṭarhūna tribes. A group of 4,000 Ḍuʿafā bedouin, led by Masʿūd ʿUmar and his two sons Ḥammād and Muḥammad, had entered Egypt at an earlier stage, at the time of Vali Pasha (1711–1714).¹⁶

The massive migration of tribes from the Maghrib, particularly the Hanādī, the Barāghīth, and the Awlād ʿAlī, altered the map of the distribution and settlement of the bedouin. In addition, new alliances between groups of bedouin were formed, and this influenced the relationships of the bedouin with the central Ottoman regime. A coalition of the tribes of Khuwēlid, Bahja, al-Najama, al-Ḍuʿafā, Salālma, al-Hanādī, and Banī ʿAwānid, under the charismatic leadership of Shēkh Ibn Wāfī, participated in clashes with the Ottomans several times during the eighteenth century.¹⁷

Other bedouin groups that reached Egypt during the eighteenth century were the ...