Page 19 - Arabian Studies (II)

Oath-taking and Vows in Oman 9

making, and the kind of sanctions that operate against oath breakers.
‘AIT Musallam the Mehri has told me that the situation in this regard
is much as among the Mahrah, though the terminology is rather more
complex among the Mahrah.
I give below a full summary of the relevant parts of a text on the
subject of warfare and raiding which I recorded in January 1974 at
Hayma in the Jiddat al-HarasTs from Ibrahim Saqr.
‘When two tribes, Ghafirl or HinawT, swear to a temporary
(me''dr red) truce, it is made binding on legal child or bastard, woman
or man, male or female slave, great or small. Whether a truce is fora
year, or a month, or a week, or a day, we enumerate all of these.
‘If it is not a temporary truce we swear to it in one another’s
presence as binding on young man and old, oath-keeper and
oath-breaker, living and dead, for as long as the world shall last and
until its soil and dust arc swept away.
‘If someone of the parties to the sworn truce violates the oath, we
call him ‘ayeb (Omani Arabic ‘ayib). No one will accept the greetings
of such an oath-breaker, nor will people give him coffee, nor will
they keep him in their dwelling places, nor allow him to stay in their
land. He has no position and even his cousins may kill him.
‘What is an ‘ayeb? We consider as an ‘ayeb one who kills his travelling
companion (rebya, OA ribi\ viz. one whom he has sworn
to protect); one who violates a truce; one who slanders others behind
their backs; one who treats his travelling companion badly; one who
gives a promise and does not keep it; one who sows dissent amongst
Muslims; one who lacks filial piety and neglects the obligations of
blood relationships. . . .’ (cf. Landberg, Glossoire Datinois, s.v. and
especially p. 1091).
The HarsusT speaker here goes on to enumerate under the general
heading of oath-breaking a number of misdemeanours which in fact
involve no breaking of oaths, however reprehensible they may be to
tribesmen. Dhofaris would accept as oath-breaking only the first two
misdemeanours in this list (which contains further items), namely the
killing of one’s travelling companion and the breaking of a safe
conduct agreement.
The fact that the HarsusT speaker includes so many misdemean­
ours shows that ‘ayeb is coming to mean ‘dishonourable’ rather than
‘oath-breaker’, and this reflects the obsolescence of oath agreements
in the Jiddat al-HarasTs.
Clearly a tribesman would not be outlawed for all of the
misdemeanours listed as 'ayb (oath-breaking) though of the ‘ayeb