Nomadism takes various forms in different parts of the world, depending on the natural environment, but also depending on the economic, social, and political environment of the human groups that practice it as a response to particular geographic and human circumstances. In the Near East, a region that was the scene ofthe rise of the first Neolithic cultures and of urban civilization, nomads have herded animals for a long time. There are examples of camel nomadism and of different forms of seminomadism practiced by communities that include both shepherds with sheep and goats as well as farmers.
Camel nomadism
In the greater part of the Arabian Peninsula the average annual of rainfall does not go above 100 mm or four inches. The bedouins, aristocratic warriors and owners of camel herds, dominated the area until World War I. They forced the payment of tribute for protection upon caravans as well as tribes of seminomadic shepherds. The bedouins subordinated tribes composed of artisans, of groups of pariahs, and of slaves in the oases (Coon 1951: 198-210). to the camels that, since the third millennium bce, furnished them with milk and meat for their sustenance and served them as mounts and beasts of burden, they defied the adverse conditions of their habitat. Dromedaries can go without drinking water for several days in the summer and several weeks in the winter, which permitted, and still permits, their masters to make long journeys.
But this type of nomadism does not correspond to what is documented in the texts of ancient history. The Arabs appeared late in the history of the Near East at the beginning of the first millennium before our era. However, only many centuries later did their monopolistic control of caravans permit them to get horses and weapons, and thus increase their military power (Bulliet 1990: 87-110). The people present in the region since the dawn of its history and to whom some refer as nomads in fact correspond to what the anthropologists prefer to designate as seminomads.
Forms of seminomadism
In regions that receive 200 mm or eight inches of rain a year dry farming is possible; yet due to the recurring periods of drought, only an average annual rainfall of 300 mm or 12 inches permits truly reliable agricultural productivity (Sanlaville 2000: 8-13). The agropastoral populations knew how to exploit this transition zone between the desert and the zones that had enough rain or which could be artificially irrigated. Herds that pastured in the steppes or the highlands during the rainy season in the winter were led at the end of the spring to the banks of the rivers or to wadis, dry river beds. Sheep and goats fed on the pastures along river banks or on the stubble in the fertile fields, and with their manure they fertilized the fields.
It is difficult to classify the diverse forms of nomadism into categories like seminomadism, semisedentarism, transhumance, and occasional nomadism. The combinations are very varied: the movement of the group can be partial or total; the establishment of the community can be temporary or permanent, in a fixed place, in two places, or more.
Two examples of patterns of movement are illustrative. The tribe of the Ogueidat was established at the beginning of the twentieth century of our era at the confluence of the Habur River with the Euphrates in Syria. The entire community moved on a south-north axis among three levels: a low terrace on the bank of the river, an intermediate, higher terrace, and the hills upriver which enjoyed more than 250 mm or 10 inches of rain and offered good winter pastures. Between May and June the whole group pitched tents in the intermediate terrace; beginning in the middle of June, they moved to the low terrace where the herds fed on the grasses on the river banks, and there the seminomads grew grain and vegetables. In autumn, the community dispersed in various little groups over the neighboring steppes, but if the rain was not sufficient, all the groups moved together to the pastureland of the upper plateau. At the beginning of the 1920s the groups were transformed into agriculturalists, and they created small villages. But as of the 1980s, some of its members who had emigrated to the Arab Emirates returned to the region and once again took up semisedentary pastoralism (D’Hont 1991: 205-6.)
In the second example, the pattern of movement is more complicated. Various groups of the Mawali and of the Haddidini established permanent villages in the district of Salamiyeh, around Hama in Syria, where in years of good rain they grew crops. In winter part of the community dispersed with the herds of small livestock to the steppes to the east. The shepherds returned to the villages at the end of the spring, but in full summer the entire community moved to the west in search of pastures on the banks of the Orontes (Al-Dbiyat 1980: 172-9).
The exchanges of products and services between the groups of shepherds and agriculturalists are fluid because communal management of the natural resources supports group solidarity. But if the shepherds, returning from the steppe, set themselves up on communal lands belonging to another tribe, permission to pasture the flocks and let them eat the stubble must be negotiated. The city dwellers and the rural people integrated into the urban state do not look favorably upon groups of shepherds who establish themselves on the fields around the villages or near croplands, although the villagers or the agriculturalists who have sheep use shepherds of nomadic origin (Al-Dbiyat 1980: 180-2).
A social watershed does not exist between nomads and sedentaries in fact, but between those who identify themselves as belonging to a tribe and those who do not assert tribal loyalty. Sedentarization does not necessarily entail detribalization. In Sukhna, a village situated on the eastern tributaries of the Palmyra massif in central Syria, which has been the center of supply for various tribes, some families of seminomadic groups spend a long time in the village, but the members continue to be identified as bedouins of such and such a tribe regardless of whether they are sedentary (Metral 2000: 126-7).
Nomadism is now adapting to technological modernization and the globalization of world markets. There are many factors that have contributed to its decadence: tribal autonomy always has been perceived as a security problem for the state; the political and economic strategy of colonial governments, as well as that of postcolonial states, saw in nomadism a relic of an obsolete past and in tribalism an obstacle to the construction of the modern state and to economic development (Fabietti 2000). Traditional customary legal systems have been abolished; the exploitation of oil deposits and industrialization around urban zones have acted as poles of attraction for excess labor among the nomads and seminomads; automobiles have substituted for camels in transport and freight. Some groups of nomads that bred camels have replaced them with sheep, which are more in demand in the urban market. The breeding of sheep, considered despicable by the aristocratic bedouins, has made camel nomadism give way to a new type of pastoralism that prevails among both the bedouins of the desert and the seminomads. Flocks do not need to be led to pastures and water, since forage can be taken to arid places and the water may be transported in tank trucks.
Nevertheless, stationary flocks destroy the natural flora ofthe area in which they are found because they always use the available vegetation. The alarming degradation of the biomass of the steppes has occasioned a reconsideration of the policies geared to promoting agriculture regardless of the consequences and to fostering the sedentarization of seminomads, but to date there are no studies of the results (Bocco 2000: 213-17). One might ask oneself whether the traditional mode of exploitation of arid zones is in the end more rational than the programs developed by governmental experts.
World History
