Page 75 - Arabian Studies (II)

The Authority of Shay khs in the Gulf: 65
When large groups moved from one place to another, they were
often following shaykhs of their own. Tribal segments, among settled
people as well as bedouin, had their own shaykhs, and if provoked
too far, a large body of people might follow these sectional shaykhs
to another place of settlement. Secession was a sanction against the
abuse of authority. It reduced both the military and the economic
power of the state. It also humiliated the ruling family.
Although the seafaring life of the shaykhdoms coupled with their
lack of agriculture made the settled people of the shaykhdoms more
like bedouin in some respects than like a Middle Eastern, peasantry,
nevertheless between the situation of bedouin and that of settled
people, even seafarers, there are naturally enormous differences.
Among these is the difference in the relative positions of the shaykhs
of the tribe and the shaykhs of the tribal sections. There are many
things in settlement to induce a mutation in the political pattern. A
town may be made up of various quarters, each predominantly
inhabited by a particular segment of a tribe and called by its name,
like the segments of a bedouin tribe gathered together round the
permanent wells in the summer. The segments of the town
population may have families of hereditary shaykhs of their own,
and the town as a whole may accept one of these families as
paramount. Nevertheless, neither in their economic nor their political
life — two things very closely connected in the present instance —
can the people of the town be like bedouin. Nor can the shaykhs of
the town and the shaykhs of the sections in the town be like bedouin
shaykhs.
Whether they are living in the desert or in the towns, the shaykhs
continue to bear the same title, but in the towns their role is
transmuted. In the case of shaykhs of tribes, though not of tribal
sections, the transformation is from leadership to rule, though it is
rule of no very secure kind for any individual shaykh. Other
institutions, which must be assumed to have originated in the
bedouin tribal life, have also modified themselves so as to play an
important and characteristic part in urban life and politics. Like the
institution represented by the shaykhs themselves, they continue to
bear the same titles, but their role is transmuted.
The pattern of movement along a scale from leadership towards
rule is one of the things suggested most clearly by the historical
material. The details of cases of secession and their subsequent
history suggest how successful assertions of autonomy by tribal
segments had the effect of changing their shaykhs from leaders to
rulers. Such a change was often followed by further secessions. The