Page 84 - Arabian Studies (II)

74 Arabian Studies II
case of homicide within a single tribe in bedouin society, the
offending group of agnates must flee the tribe and seek protection
elsewhere. And who can protect more securely than the tribe’s
enemies? Protection is, thus, usually granted by the shaykh of a
hostile tribe. Through the convention that the offending group must
flee, a dispute is removed spatially from the tribal sphere, where
otherwise there would be some danger of its spreading out through
the segmentary tribal groups. In settled life in the Gulf states,
customs of protection acted as a check upon the authority of
individual rules. Common circumstances and values were such as to
make possible an appeal in political affairs outside the limits of the
state to some other part of a super-national polity. No ruler was the
final authority, above appeal in his own state. His people could take
refuge with the ruler of another state and might even, as in the case
just described, involve the latter in a guarantee of security given to
them by their own ruler when they came to terms with him. The
people of the state did not owe the ruler ‘allegiance’.
Only according to very limited criteria could any one shaykhdom
of the Gulf be counted as a discrete, self-sufficient political entity.
For the most part, the workings of internal politics have to be seen in
relation to engagements, actual or potential, with other shaykhdoms.
In spite of settled circumstances and the development of authority,
no shaykh could control the whole, and thus the power of rulers
continued to be kept in check. Lack of water for irrigation meant that
the resources of the state lay not in the land but in the people, who
produced wealth from outside the territorial boundaries of the state.
In order to compete for resources, the rulers of the states thus had to
compete for people rather than for land, and in politics the people
had a correspondingly high value.

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