Tribalism in the Middle East: A Useful Prism for Understanding the Region

Abstract

Despite entrenched views about tribes and tribalism as premodern phenomena, this form of social organization and identity is relevant today no less than in the past; in some cases, it is even more relevant. Even without exact statistics, one can safely assert that a large proportion of the Middle East's inhabitants belong to a tribe and adhere to tribal social norms and cultural values. Whereas tribe and tribalism in English have somewhat negative connotations—they refer to divisiveness, rivalries, sectarianism, and favoritism—in the Middle East the term tribe is used as a matter of fact, a part of reality. It has equivalents in the local languages (‘ashīra, qabīla, ṭā’ifa) and a long history, from the days before the emergence of Islam in the 7th century. It is a term used by local people, usually in a positive rather than a pejorative way; people are proud of their tribes and see them as building blocks of their societies.