Regarding "Most of the Negev Bedouin tribes migrated to the Negev from the Arabian Desert, Transjordan, Egypt, and the Sinai from the 18th century onwards.": I think this sentence should be deleted. It is very wrong.
I am drafting an article on the history of the Negev and have taken a closer look at this thesis by Kark, Frantzman, and Yahel, which is a minority opinion. First, you need to know that Kark, a highly respected geographer, has a history of misquoting regarding Bedouins. Even before court, where she regularly testifies on behalf of the State of Israel to contest Bedouin land ownership claims.[1] Something similar goes for Frantzman. For example, his dissertation is very good; at the same time, he has a blog where he rants against 'Bedouin-lovers', among other things. One cannot write Bedouin and Negev articles without referencing Kark and Frantzman because they are too important, but at the very least, their theses should be attributed as they are clearly not neutral voices.
The thesis in question seems also to have arisen only through multiple misquotations. In the article cited on the page, it is only expressed in one sentence[2] and "substantiated" with a paper by Bailey, which is summarized as follows:
- "Bailey refers to the arrival date of the Bedouin to the Sinai and the Negev, mentioning that certain nomads arrived in the tenth century, "Dating the Arrival of the Bedouin Tribes in Sinai and the Negev," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 28 (1980): 20-49.)" (p. 104, FN 110).
In fact, Bailey writes the exact opposite of what is attributed to him - that most Bedouin tribes migrated to the Negev before the 18th century.[3] If one follows his article closely, Bailey only identifies 2 out of the 95 Bedouin tribes living in the Negev before 1948 as having arrived in the Negev after the 18th century.[4]
In two other articles, the thesis is discussed in more detail and is based solely on the claim that the Ottoman tax registers from 1596, examined by Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, indicate that the Bedouin tribes living in the Negev in 1596 were not the same as those living there later.[5][6]
But this is wrong. Again, there is misquotation; A./H. do not say on p. 3 or p. 51-53 what the three attribute to them.[7]
Here too, the tax registers and A./H. suggest the exact opposite. First, it is not possible to say anything about the history of the Bedouins in general using the tax registers and A./H. The Ottomans taxed Bedouins only up to about the southern end of the Gaza Strip; therefore, only the Jaram, Aṭiyya, 'Aṭā, Haytam, and Sawālima east of the Gaza Strip and the Yatim in the southern West Bank are documented in these tax register; most of the Negev was not recorded at all.[8]
But more importantly, second, five of these tribes still live in Palestine today; after 1948, however, not in the same area, but either in the Gaza Strip,[9] in the Hebron area, or in the Siyagh;[10] the reasons for the migration of the Aṭiyya are well known.[11] So, for 5 of the 6 mentioned tribes, what Kark/Frantzman/Havazelet write and then generalize to all Bedouin tribes is incorrect; none of them "migrated to the Negev from the Arabian Desert, Transjordan, Egypt, and the Sinai from the 18th century onwards". The Aṭiyya cannot be used to substantiate what they want to insinuate about all Bedouin tribes in the Negev either. Based solely on Abdulfattah and Hütteroth, one would instead have to conclude that, in general — in five out of six documented cases — the current Bedouin tribes were already living in the Negev in the late 16th century. Incidentally, three of these can be traced back almost another 100 years to the early 16th century: the Aṭiyya, 'Aṭā, and Sawālima revolted against the Mamluks and supported the Ottomans in the Mamluk-Ottoman War (see Etkes 2007, p. 5). DaWalda (talk) 08:03, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
- @DaWalda: You are well qualified to fix the article yourself and you have good command of the sources. So go for it! Zerotalk 14:20, 2 August 2024 (UTC)
References
p. 95: "The current Negev Bedouin tribes arrived to the Negev, from their historical homeland in the Arabian Desert, Transjordan, Egypt, and the Sinai, mainly since the eighteenth century and onwards."
"However, the hiatus between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, for which the historian previously found no written record, was the period when most of the present Bedouin population came to Sinai and the Negev." - Clinton Bailey: Dating the Arrival of the Bedouin Tribes in Sinai and the Negev. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 28 (1), 1985 [sic]. p. 48.
Of the 95 tribes that lived in the Negev before 1948, Bailey identifies only (a) 4 as having come to the Negev since the 18th century, and (b) 3 as having come since the 19th century.
(a) The arrival date of the said 4 tribes is derived solely from one of these tribes reporting that upon their arrival, they encountered the Wuhaydat, who were expelled from the Negev at the end of the 18th century; thus, he writes more precisely "the 18th century (at the latest)" and "while they may have been in Sinai and the Negev beforehand..." (p. 49). This is a terminus ante quem, not a terminus post quem.
(b) The Tiyaha, the Tarabin, and the Azazima are said to have arrived in the Negev from the 19th century onwards. The source in each case is the oral history of the Bedouins themselves.
(b1) Regarding the Azazima, Bailey also cites other oral histories, according to which they arrived earlier. Another alternative oral history can be found, for example, in this Zionist survey from 1920, according to which the Azazima competed with the Tarabin for land over centuries: במשך מאות בשנים היו להם מלחמות כבדוח עם הטרבין ויתר שכניהם על אודות רכישת אדמה; "For centuries, they had fierce battles with the Tarabin and other neighbors over land acquisition." Seetzen met Azazima in the Negev in 1807, thus, the 19th century hardly can be right.
(b2) This leaves only the Tiyaha and the Tarabin according to Bailey. For these tribal confederations, Bailey's arrival date can refer only to the main tribes, as he simultaneously identifies much earlier arrival dates for subtribes of the Tiyaha and Tarabin. For example, the Bili ("Bali" in Zero's list above) and the Jerawin (Jarawin) reached the Negev before the early Islamic period; the Jarm (not referenced in Zero's list; see Max Freiherr von Oppenheim (1943): Die Beduinen. Band II: Die Beduinenstämme in Palästina, Transjordanien, Sinai, Ḥedjaz. Otto Harrasowitz. p. 13.) are documented at least since the Crusader period, and the Wuhaydat were the dominant tribe during the early Ottoman period. Thus, from Bailey, a late arrival of Bedouins can only be inferred for 2 out of 95 tribes. edit: I have now found that even this is not true. The oral traditions Bailey refers to are explained in more detail in his 1980 article. Regarding the Tiyaha, he only writes about their winter residences being in the Sinai (namely in Wadi Abyad, just southwest of today's border), but their summer residences were in Gaza (in the northern Negev) even before the 19th century. Therefore, their roaming areas were no different before the 19th century than they were afterward. This is not the fault of Kark & Co., but rather Bailey's own mistake, who—for whatever reason—incorrectly included this in his table. See Bailey 1980, p. 39-42. Seth J. Frantzman / Ruth Kark / Havatzelet Yahel (2012b): Are the Negev Bedouin an Indigenous People? Fabricating Palestinian History. Middle East Quarterly 19 (3), 2012. p. 9: "Among the Bedouin tribes living in the Negev today, most view themselves as descendants of nomadic tribes from the Arabian Peninsula. In fact, most of them arrived fairly recently, during the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, from the deserts of Arabia, Transjordan, Sinai, and Egypt. [...] Ottoman tax registers demonstrate that the tribes which lived in the Negev in 1596-97 are not those residing there today. According to historians Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth and Kamal Abdulfattah, the tax registers that reflect material collected in those years show names of forty-three Bedouin tribes living in what became Mandatory Palestine, including six in the Negev. There is not much information on what became of those tribes. However, the names of the tribes currently living in the Negev do not appear on the tax registers from 1596." Havazelet Yahel / Ruth Kark / Seth Frantzman: Negev Bedouin and Indigenous People: A Comparative Review, in: Raghubir Chand / Etienne Nel / Stanko Pelc (ed.): Societies, Social Inequalities and Marginalization. Marginal Regions in the 21st Century. Springer, 2017. p. 132: "Ottoman tax registers demonstrate that the tribes which lived in the Negev in 1596-97 are not those residing there today (Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth and Abdulfattah 1977, 3). According to Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, the tax registers that reflect material collected in those years show names of forty-three Bedouin tribes living in what became Mandatory Palestine, including six in the Negev. There is not much information of what became of those tribes (Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth and Abdulfattah 1977, 51-3). However, the names of the tribes currently living in the Negev do not appear on the tax registers from 1596 (Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth and Abdulfattah 1977, 51-3)." On page 3, it does not say that "the tribes which lived in the Negev in 1596-97 are not those residing there today," but rather it characterizes Ottoman documents: "The sources we have used are seven daftar-i mufaṣṣal from the last census taken in the 16th century – that is to say, from the very last census taken during the period of Ottoman rule in the Arab provinces. [...] Since the daftar-i jadīd made up the last complete census, they were the official source of information for administrative purposes right down to the Tanzīmāt period in the 19th century. A number of later additions in different scripts testify to their use throughout the centuries, although the essential information contained in them had long become out-dated. Many of the villages had disappeared, tribes had changed territory and the whole economic picture of the country had undergone a change." -- Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth / Kamal Abdulfattah: Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Selbstverlag der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft, 1977. p. 3.
On pages 51-53, there is nothing at all corresponding to "There is not much information of what became of those tribes [...]. However, the names of the tribes currently living in the Negev do not appear on the tax registers from 1596 [...]."
See Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth / Kamal Abdulfattah: Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Selbstverlag der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft, 1977. p. 49.
D. Grossman: Oscillations in the Rural Settlement of Samaria and Judaea in the Ottoman Period, in: S. Dar / S. Safrai (ed.): Shomron Studies. Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 1986. p. 385 f. [Heb.].
Alexandre Kedar / Ahmad Amara / Oren Yiftachel: Emptied Lands. A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev. Stanford University Press, 2018. p. 124: "In the census summaries the names of six Bedouin tribes are mentioned, five of which can be identified today in the Mount Hebron region and the Negev.
It is important to note that the southernmost area surveyed by the census, the edge of the Ottoman-controlled area, was, according to census maps, demarcated by a line straggling between Hebron and Rafah, taht is, along the northern edge of the Bedouin region. Hence most of the Bedouin tribes who lived farther south were not surveyed or mentioned in the census."
Gad G. Gilbar: Ottoman Palestine, 1800–1914: studies in economic and social history. E.J. Brill, 1990. p. 326: [...T]he Arabian Banī ´Aṭiyya tribe attempted to take root in the eastern Negev, the same year [1830]. A severe drought in the 'Arava valley, where this Ḥijāzian tribe had been camping, forced them to cross over into the Negev to find pasture for their flocks. The predominant bedouin chief in the Negev at the time, Salmān ´Alī ´Azzām al-Huzayl, of the Tiyāhā, not being in alliance with them (which would have entitled them to graze there), demanded that they pay him tribute. Salmān's request, however, was not only refused, but the Banīi ´Aṭiyya even proceeded to cultivate the fertile Beersheba plain. Al-Huzayl thereupon put together a force comprising warriors of the Tiyāhā, Tarābīn, and Ḥanājra tribes, and villagers from the Hebron Hills, and hostilities ensued. [...] Hence the Banī ´Aṭiyya were expelled from the Negev [...]."
