From August through January the edges of the mound and its surrounding area were also inhabited by a clan of the nomadic Hadij, a Bedouin tribe, whose tents usually dotted the landscape in groups of three or more. Their nomadic wanderings brought them to al-Hiba when the recession of the marshes furnished pasturage for their herds. When the winter rains and the increasing floods from the irrigation canals began to empty into the marshes and expand them, the Hadij moved west into Syria, then south to Kuwait, and finally into the deserts of Saudi Arabia before returning to the area near al-Hiba during the hottest part of the summer.
Some Bedouin encampments were within walking distance of al-Hiba, others could be visited by a combination of boat and camel. All Hadij were members of the same clan, but they split into smaller groups to take advantage of the emerging grasslands fodder at the edge of the marsh. All were also Sunni Moslems, and although they were of a different sect, the Bedouin were welcomed here by both Beni Hasan and the Mi’dan. They inhabited and used for their pasturage only that part of the land not used by the others—the part that was beneath the water level of the marshes during the rest of the year.
Most Beni Hasan and Mi’dan believed that they themselves were descended from nomads who had settled here in earlier days; thus they thought they were close relatives of the Bedouin. The Hadij were especially respected because the Prophet Mohammed had descended from these desert nomads and because they were people whose unsurpassed honor was obvious in their women’s purity, their men’s honesty, and their meticulous observation of rules of hospitality. If a villager wished to choose a bride from among the Bedouin—and many so aspired—he must be prepared to pay a bride price at least three times that for a village girl.
Three categories of Bedouin women, however, never married into local families: women from the families of the mukhtar or sheikh (clan leader), from the sayyid (clan religious leader) who was a descendant of the Prophet, and from the weavers. Although they perform the same functions as families of other clan members, the family of the mukhtar (often called sheikh by followers and neighbors) usually has a long history of clan leadership and is held in great respect. Girls from such families are usually married into other leadership families of equal or greater respect to maintain the political advantage of their fathers. Boys from these families must learn to do the same things expected of other boys their age and, in addition, are usually also given some special training in leadership, but they may more freely marry tribeswomen of other classes.
Both daughters and sons of the sayyid are expected to marry into families who are, like them, descended from the Prophet. Those children of a sayyid traveling with the Hadij had to find mates outside the clan: only one sayyid family accompanied a clan. Indeed, the sayyid and his family were not considered clan members, and could travel freely with it or not as they wished. Boys from such a family were given religious training in addition to the daily tasks of herding animals.
The male weavers, using shuttle looms, traded their more finely woven material to be used for clothes and blankets for cruder wool and woven carpets made by village women. In contrast to the other two status groups and in spite of their economic importance to the clan, male weavers and their families were given little or no respect by either the Bedouin clan to which they belonged or by local villagers. The only Bedouin wife considered undesirable was a woman from a weaving family; even the poorest villager would have considered such a marriage unsuitable. Members of weavers’ families married within their own families or into other weavers’ families. The origin of this bias seemed to lie within the historical Bedouin concept of the ideal man, who should be a first-rate hunter or raider, wily, strong, and proud, not a sedentary individual who spent his days sitting on the ground before his loom. Among the Bedouin weavers who visited the area, I always noticed a sort of frantic cheerfulness and frenetic high spirits as if to cover an imperfection of which they were all too well aware.
No such stigma applied to Bedouin women weavers. The women of each household wove their own goat-hair tent panels from which they constructed their tent and the special panels that were used to divide the tents into women’s and men’s quarters, which consisted of alternating horizontal strips of woven goat hair, sheep wool, and camel hair. The wool from animals with multicolored coats was segregated by color, and panels of different colors alternated within the basic design. Sheep wool, for example, could be woven into strips of brown, black, and white, and these strips would then be alternated with khaki-colored strips of camel hair and strips woven from various-colored goat hair.
Women also raised the tents (usually under the direction of their men folk) and dismantled them with no direction whatsoever. They cooked, made clothing, drew water for animals that could not be taken to the water source, made fuel from dung and straw or reed, cleaned, washed, and did all other household chores. Men herded the camels, sheep, goats, made coffee, and sometimes tea. In the past their other major duty was to guard the encampment against outside raiders and to conduct raids themselves. Although such raids seldom took place in the late 1960s or early 1970s, except occasionally to punish someone for breaching the honor of a family member, the appropriate skills were carefully maintained. Similar skills were still employed, for example, in avoiding the harassment of border patrols of national governments that, for security reasons, urged the Bedouin to settle down and cease their nomadic way of life.
The Bedouin kept herds of sheep and goats, which they considered to be the foundation of their wealth and their major economic resource. They also kept camels and occasionally horses. The stately and dignified walk of the camel belies their temper. When the Bedouin were in residence, I sometimes used a camel to travel from one village to the next when carrying out my research. Camels know precisely how great a load they are meant to carry, and it is easy to offend them by overloading them. If the overload is minor they merely lie down, and once the insulting kilos are removed, they get up again and walk on as if nothing has happened. If seriously overloaded they bellowed with rage, refused to move, and spat on any person within range. Some become so deeply offended that even removing their entire load cannot mollify them. Mitigating the inflicted injustice is the only thing that will restore them to their usually tranquil nature. As they seem to equate any animate thing with its odor, a person can resolve the perceived injustice by removing his or her clothes and putting them on the ground in front of the enraged beast. The camel will kick them, urinate on them, defecate on them, and sometimes get down on their knees to rub their waste products into the clothing, and thus restore their equilibrium. The offender can then pick up the clothes, put them back on, reload or remount the camel, and continue the trip with a renewed degree of understanding, if not open friendship.
The Bedouin supplemented their income during their residency in the area by hiring out their camels as conveyers of goods. According to an informant, this custom began long ago when the local sheikhs had great power over the area and the people. The Bedouin were required to transport grain and goods for the sheikhs as a fee for using the marginal land around the marshes. After the sheikhs lost their power or had fled, the Bedouin continued the practice but now received a fee that nicely supplemented their ordinary income. In 1970 mostly tradesmen and descendants of the sheikhs who still maintained a resemblance of their original position in the community hired them. The usual freight consisted of grain, reeds, and reed mats.
For the Bedouin the camel was indispensable. It was the main form of transportation and cartage; it was the means for moving home and contents from place to place throughout the year. In addition, female camels supplied milk, an important part of a Bedouin’s diet. The milk was highly regarded in the villages as a health cure, and its value in trade or outright sale also produced a significant addition to the family’s income. Then, too, the dried dung of the camel produced appreciably less smoke than that of other animals, and was considered the best fuel for making bread in the tannur, the oven for baking bread and meat, and the most practical fuel for inside heating producing a comparatively smoke-free environment.
In the past, I was told, camels were bred mostly for speed and endurance so they could most productively carry their masters on pillaging raids or into intertribal warfare. In 1970, however, the ideal camel was heavier and therefore capable of carrying heavier loads albeit at a slower pace, and was also a prolific producer of milk. Camels live to be as old as 27 years, but their average life span is about 20 years. Naga (female