- Ghālib Halasā’s (1932 – 1989, Jordan) short story ‘al-Bashʿa’, which can be found in the collection Wadīʿa wa al-Qadīsah Mīlādah wa Ākhirūn (‘Wadi and the holy Milada & other stories’, 1969). The title of the story refers to a Bedouin ritual to discover guilt in which a piece of hot metal is placed on several suspects in the belief that only the tongue of the guilty person is burnt. The short story aims to portray the oppressiveness and the double standards of a Bedouin community where face-saving is in practice much more important than solidarity within the community (reference). The crime in the story is that Turkī’s leg is broken with a hammer, and although Saʿīd is the obvious offender, his family tries to defend him.
- Jihād Abū Ḥashīsh (1962-, Jordan) – Thʾib Allah (‘God’s wolf’, 2017), on the influence of tribal structures on politics and culture in Jordan in the 1970s. The main character of the novel, ʿAwwād, embarks on a series of opportunist actions so that his tribe will be rich and strong, such as stealing and smuggling and trading arms (reference). Among others, he joins the Palestine Liberation Organization and an extremist Islamic organization. Eventually however, he loses his testicles, and with it his manhood, in a series of hotel explosions (reference). His story also portrays the events leading up to Oslo (see 1993: Oslo Accord) and the connections between Palestine and Jordan (also in D: Disabilities, Illness, and Disorders: Physical Disabilities: Impotence and Castration).
- ʿĀʾishah Ibrāhīm (1969-, Libya) – Ḥarb al-Ghazālah (‘War of the gazelle’, 2019). This novel is set in the Holocene period in the Tashwent Valley in the Acacus Mountains in southwestern Libya. In the novel, Kāshiyūn, the leader of the al-Māghiyū tribes, launches an attack on the kingdom of the Mūhījāj and steals from its pens the gazelle Sāffī, which is the symbol of the tribe and the favourite deer of Queen Tandrūs. The story describes the efforts to return the dear, while depicting the matriarchal era in the Holocene period (reference) (also in H: Historical novels: Jāhilīyyah (before 610 CE)).
- Al-Mukhtār al-Sālim Aḥmad Sālim Abūh (1968-, Mauritania) – Mawsim al-Dhākirah (‘Season of memory’, 2006) has been described as one of the first novels to touch upon the sensitive topic of ethnicities and terrorism in Mauritania.
- Malika Mokeddem (1949-, Algeria) – La Siècle des sauterelles (1992, English trans. Century of the Locust, 2006). Set in Algeria in the first half of the twentieth century, this novel focuses on the destruction of Bedouin life and the pain of exile that its characters face at the hands of settler colonialists. Life of the heroin, Yasmine, is written to correspond with that of the Swiss explorer Isabella Eberhardt and describes her and her father’s, Mahmoud, quest to return her grandmother’s bones to their tribe and avenge the rape and murder of the mother (reference). Yasmine, who resorted to silence after the death of her mother, is supported by her father to follow an education and he shelters her from the conventional expectations of tribal life (also in C: Children and Family Life: Parent and Child: Father and Child).
- Ṣabrī Mūsā (1932 – 2018, Egypt) – Fasād al-Amkina (1973, English trans. Seeds of Corruption, 1980). Set in the desert of Eastern Egypt near the mountain of al-Darhīb at the border with Sudan, this novel portrays the conflict between traditional Bedouin honour and pride and modern materialism and corruption. It portrays the Italian traveller Nīkūlā, who settles in the Egyptian desert. This novel was influential in the development of literature centered on the desert.
- Walad ʿAbd al-Qādir (1941-, Mauritanian) – al-Qabr al-Majhūl (‘The unknown grave’, 1984). This novel centres the historical conflict between two tribes, the Zawiyas (Islamic mystical lodges), and the love story between Maymūnah and her cousin Salāmī, of whom she becomes illegally pregnant. In his absence, she is forced to bury the fetus by herself. The novel symbolically evokes pre-twentieth-century live as a representation of a society made up of ‘cliques’, and the social structure of the capital Nouakchott in 1980s Mauritania. In doing so, it calls for coexistence and knowledge (reference) (C: Cities: Mauritania: Nouakchott).
- Maḥmūd Shuqayr (1941-, Palestine) – Faras al-ʿĀʾilah (‘Family horse’, 2013) and Madīḥ li-Nisāʾ al-ʿĀʾilah (‘Praise for the women of the family’, 2015). Both novels are dedicated to the Bedouin al-ʿAbd al-Lāt tribe, an important tribe in Palestinian history.
The first novel describes the religious, social, and political aspect of life in the tribe. Religious commitment, for example, was limited, which meant that men and women could freely communicate and arrange their own marriages. The tribe has their own myths, such as that of the horse of the Shaykh who died defending the tribe’s water. The tribe eventually replaces the nomadic lifestyle with a sedentary one and settles in the village of Rʾas al-Nabʿa near Jerusalem.
The second novel, Madīḥ li-Nisāʾ al-ʿĀʾilah, takes place from 1970s onward and describes the social relationships in the tribal web after its members have spread over different villages and cities (reference). Its focus is on the history of women in the al-ʿAbd al-Lāt tribe, including their life after settlement in which they are less subject to social control. This means that some women chose their own ‘unconventional’ partners; examples include marriage to people from other religions. However, some women prefer the traditional tribal life and move to the village Rʾas al-Nabʿa where many of the tribe’s members life.
- Mīrāl al-Ṭaḥāwī (1968-, Egypt) – al-Khabāʾ (1996, English trans. The Tent, 1998). For this novel, the author, herself a Bedouin, did formal ethnographic research among the Egyptian Bedouin. The novel weaves authentic Bedouin poems and stories into the narrative as well as describing their cultural, linguistic, and physical landscape (reference). It centers the young daughter of a patriarch Bedouin noble, Faṭīmah, who grows up in a dysfunctional household that she is eager to escape and who finds joy in her friendship with the slave Sardūb and moments of singing and storytelling (reference). The novel also criticizes Anna, a Westerner who settles in the area to collect Bedouin material culture.
- Kateb Yacine’s (1929 – 1989, Algeria) play Les ancêtres redoublent de férocité (‘The ancestors redouble their fury’, 1959). The Vulture, the central figure of this play, advocates for his tribe, the Keblouti tribe, to avenge past killings and thus also instigates a seemingly endless cycle of violence (reference). The Keblouti tribe was known in the nineteenth century for its resistance to Turkish and French invaders, the latter of which smashed down the tribe in 1837 when the French killed their chiefs (also in 1954 – 1962 French Algerian War and Algerian Independence).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Sabry Hafez and Catherine Cobham ed. 2011. A Reader of Modern Arabic Short Storis. Saqi: London, p. 153-154
- Ramī Abū Sahāb. 2017. “Ansāq al-Quwah wa al-Haymana fī Riwayat Dhiʾb Allah.” www.alquds.co.uk, 18 July 2017, https://www.alquds.co.uk/%EF%BB%BF%D8%A3%D9%86%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%82-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D9%88%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%87%D9%8A%D9%85%D9%86%D8%A9-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%B0%D8%A6%D8%A8-%D8%A7/ (last accessed 6 December 2021)
- Khulūd Fawrānī Siriyah. 2016. “‘Thʾib Allah’ lil-Kātib Jihād Abū Ḥashīsh.” www.diwanalarab.com, 22 March 2016, https://www.diwanalarab.com/%D8%B0%D8%A6%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%D9%87-%D9%84%D9%84%D9%83%D8%A7%D8%AA%D8%A8-%D8%AC%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%AF-%D8%A3%D8%A8%D9%88-%D8%AD%D8%B4%D9%8A%D8%B4 Ramī Abū Sahāb. 2017. “Ansāq al-Quwah wa al-Haymana fī Riwayat Dhiʾb Allah.” www.alquds.co.uk, 18 July 2017, https://www.alquds.co.uk/%EF%BB%BF%D8%A3%D9%86%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%82-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D9%88%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%87%D9%8A%D9%85%D9%86%D8%A9-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%B0%D8%A6%D8%A8-%D8%A7/ (last accessed 6 July 2023)
- Yūsuf ʿAbbūd Juwīʿad. 2020. “Naqd: Taqniyyāt al-Sard wa Usṭurat al-Aḥdāth fī ‘Ḥarb al-Ghazālah’.” www.akhbar-alkhaleej.com, 4 January 2020, http://www.akhbar-alkhaleej.com/news/article/1195722 (last accessed 11 April 2021)
- EAL, p. 252
- Bernard Aresu and Jeffrey S. Ankrom. 1999. “Narrating the Tribe: Rachid Mimouni and Dystopia.” Research in African Literatures 30(3): 135-150, p. 139
- Trudy Agar-Mendousse. 2007. “’Century of Locusts’ by Malika Mokeddem (review).” Women in French Studies 15: 162-163, p. 162
- Abd al-Qader, Ahmad Ben (1941–). “Biographical Encyclopaedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa.”. www.encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/abd-al-qader-ahmad-ben-1941 (last accessed March 17, 2021)
- Haytham Ḥusayn. 2016. “Madīḥ li-Nisāʾ al-ʿĀʾlah, Tawthīq Tafāṣīl Ḥayāt al-Muqdisīīn” www.aljazeera.net, 9 December 2016 https://www.aljazeera.net/news/cultureandart/2016/1/8/%D9%85%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%AD-%D9%84%D9%86%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%84%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D9%88%D8%AB%D9%82-%D8%AA%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B5%D9%8A%D9%84-%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%AD%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%A9 (last accessed 14 November 2021)
- Caroline Seymour-Jorn. 2017. “Ethnographic and Literary Reflections on Miral Al-Tahawy’s ‘The Tent’.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 13(1): 107-123, p. 108, 114
- Clare Finburgh. 2005. “Kateb Yacine’s ‘Le cadavre encerclé’ and ‘Les ancêtres redoublen de férocité’.” p. 115