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This volume describes Bedouins, a tribal pastoral people in eastern Saudia Arabia. This volume documents changes in their way of life, beginning in the 1930s and continuing to the 1960s, when this book originally appeared. The Empty Quarter described here is a place inhabited by a people so thoroughly devoted to their pastoral pursuits that they are referred to as nomads of the nomads. To the Al Murrah and other camel-keeping pastoralists, theirs is a rich and rewarding life. For either to survive, men and camels must live in close symbiosis. The camels provide food, fiber, and transport; man provides knowledge of available resources, of which the most precious are water and the grasses that grow where rains have fallen. In this work, Donald Powell Cole shows us that this existence more complex and intricate. There is the complex knowledge of the desert itself, its varieties, moods, and resources. Next, there is the knowledge of the camels, their needs, capacities, and the peculiarities of each animal. These different kinds of knowledge must be brought together to fully use, yet carefully conserve, scarce resources. As important is the structuring of social life. The tribesmen must have a flexible social system that enables the individual household to operate alone when the environmental situation requires. This necessitates a pattern of independence and equality. The Al Murrah live according to ancient traditions, but life is not unchanging. In 1932, Saudi Arabia became a nation and intertribal raiding and warfare was brought to an end. Cole highlights the adaptability of the Al Murrah as the desert became increasingly invaded by motor transport and oil rigs. He sees their experience as prototypical: man everywhere must attune his life to the requirements of his economy. In a place like the Arabian Desert these adjustments are most insistent. This work shows that even when these demands of the external world pervade behavior, life can remain rich and rewarding.
This volume describes Bedouins, a tribal pastoral people in eastern Saudia Arabia. This volume documents changes in their way of life, beginning in the 1930s and continuing to the 1960s, when this book originally appeared. The Empty Quarter described here is a place inhabited by a people so thoroughly devoted to their pastoral pursuits that they are referred to as nomads of the nomads. To the ?l Murrah and other camel-keeping pastoralists, theirs is a rich and rewarding life. For either to survive, men and camels must live in close symbiosis. The camels provide food, fiber, and transport; man provides knowledge of available resources, of which the most precious are water and the grasses that grow where rains have fallen. In this work, Donald Powell Cole shows us that this existence more complex and intricate. There is the complex knowledge of the desert itself, its varieties, moods, and resources. Next, there is the knowledge of the camels, their needs, capacities, and the peculiarities of each animal. These different kinds of knowledge must be brought together to fully use, yet carefully conserve, scarce resources. As important is the structuring of social life. The tribesmen must have a flexible social system that enables the individual household to operate alone when the environmental situation requires. This necessitates a pattern of independence and equality. The ?l Murrah live according to ancient traditions, but life is not unchanging. In 1932, Saudi Arabia became a nation and intertribal raiding and warfare was brought to an end. Cole highlights the adaptability of the ?l Murrah as the desert became increasingly invaded by motor transport and oil rigs. He sees their experience as prototypical: man everywhere must attune his life to the requirements of his economy. In a place like the Arabian Desert these adjustments are most insistent. This work shows that even when these demands of the external world pervade behavior, life can remain rich and rewarding. Donald Powell Cole is professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, and Egyptology at The American University in Cairo (Egypt). He is author or co-author of numerous works, including Arabian Oasis City: The Transformation of ‘Unayah and Bedouin, Settlers, and Holiday-Makers: Egypt's Changing Northwest Coast.
Three articulated trucks load in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: two Volvo 4X2 European road artics and a Mercedes 6X6 desert artic. Their destination is Sharawrah, somewhere south of The Empty Quarter. Seven days to travel a thousand kilometers, a third of which are open desert. Seven days that will turn into seventy.... This is the true story of Gordon Pearce, an English truck driver determined to get the job done. With the help of Bedouins, he crossed three hundred kilometers of unpredictable desert in the height of the summer of 1978. Aside from the physical challenges, he also has to battle bureaucracy and begins to dread hearing the word bukkera (tomorrow). Told in an ironic modest style and illustrated with photos from that time, Where's Sharawrah? is a captivating book for vehicle enthusiasts and anyone who is passionate about truck adventures. [Subject: Memoir, Transportation]
A unique collection of essays accompany Wilfred Thesiger’s own personal photographs of the Africa he experienced as one of the world’s most celebrated explorers.
Music and Traditions of the Arabian Peninsula provides a pioneering overview of folk and traditional urban music, along with dance and rituals, of Saudi Arabia and the Upper Gulf States of Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. The nineteen chapters introduce variegated regions and subcultures and their rich and dynamic musical arts, many of which heretofore have been unknown beyond local communities. The book contains insightful descriptions of genres, instruments, poetry, and performance practices of the desert heartland (Najd), the Arabian/Persian Gulf shores, the great western cities including Makkah and Medinah, the southwestern mountains, and the hot Red Sea coast. Musical customs of distinctive groups such as Bedouin, seafarers, and regional women are explored. The book is packaged with downloadable resources and almost 200 images including a full color photo essay, numerous music transcriptions, a glossary with over 400 specialized terms, and original Arabic script alongside key words to assist with further research. This book provides a much-needed introduction and organizational structure for the diverse and complex musical arts of the region.
Restless, gripped by an overwhelming wish to make a name for himself in a world ever more hemmed in by progress and 'civilization', Thesiger (1910-2003) embarked on his amazing journeys across Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter to test himself and to show what could still be done. The result was a monument both to his resilience and to the Bedu who guided him and who emerge as the book's real heroes. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries - but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things- Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.
Oil and water, and the science and technology used to harness them, have long been at the heart of political authority in Saudi Arabia. Oil’s abundance, and the fantastic wealth it generated, has been a keystone in the political primacy of the kingdom’s ruling family. The other bedrock element was water, whose importance was measured by its dearth. Over much of the twentieth century, it was through efforts to control and manage oil and water that the modern state of Saudi Arabia emerged. The central government’s power over water, space, and people expanded steadily over time, enabled by increasing oil revenues. The operations of the Arabian American Oil Company proved critical to expansion and to achieving power over the environment. Political authority in Saudi Arabia took shape through global networks of oil, science, and expertise. And, where oil and water were central to the forging of Saudi authoritarianism, they were also instrumental in shaping politics on the ground. Nowhere was the impact more profound than in the oil-rich Eastern Province, where the politics of oil and water led to a yearning for national belonging and to calls for revolution. Saudi Arabia is traditionally viewed through the lenses of Islam, tribe, and the economics of oil. Desert Kingdom now provides an alternative history of environmental power and the making of the modern Saudi state. It demonstrates how vital the exploitation of nature and the roles of science and global experts were to the consolidation of political authority in the desert.