Page 96 - Arabian Studies (I)

82 Arabian Studies /

concerned with irrigation and looking after palms under the
supervision of the falai foreman.
Badarah duties today are therefore survivals of the prc-lslamic
village organisation in Oman and the bayadtr carry on the same
duties as they did in Sasanid times. But while the present-day duties
and payments of the bayadir have remained more or less the same
throughout the whole of Oman there is a marked difference in their
social status between the IbadT and non-Ibadf regions. In both areas
bTddr designates the person who carries out the badarah duties (there
is nothing to stop him owning his own land as well), but whereas in
IbadT Oman he is a tribesman (in the sense that he has assumed the
nisbah of an Arab clan, is entitled to bear arms and meets with no
overt marriage barriers), in northern Oman (where many new tribes
have arrived since the area first cut itself off from the IbadT
influences of central Oman in the civil war which brought to an end
the First Imamate at the close of the ninth century A.D.) the
designation bTddr often carries marked social overtones and his status
in the eyes of the Arab tribesman is almost that of maw/d (client), not
dissimilar to that of the bayasirah. For these half-settled tribesmen
in the north, agriculture is still a somewhat despised occupation
whereas for the tribesmen of central Oman, many of whom can trace
their lineage and history far further back than any bedu group of the
desert fringes of northern Oman, there is nothing degrading in tilling
the soil.9
These differences in attitude which may be traced in IbadT and
non-IbadT Oman became even more marked when comparing
Hadramawt with Oman. Until the middle of the eleventh century
Hadramawt more or less formed part of the Omani Ibadi state but
once the various links between the two areas were finally broken
Ibadism completely disappeared from Southern Arabia.' 0 From that
time onwards one finds the growth in Hadramawt of a tribal
hierarchy divided between strong (qawf) and weak (cla’Ff), of a tribal
! structure headed by mashayikh, shanfs and sayyids who owe their
position to their holy descent and sultans whose power stems from
slave armies (Serjeant 1967, Bujra 1971). In contrast IbadT ideals,
which were never wholly lost in central Oman even at the height of
its ‘Dark Ages’ in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, operated
against the development of such a social structure. In Oman there are
i no families with barakah (charisma) who play a special role as
transmitters of doctrine or as guardians of sanctuaries, nor are there
important differences in tribal descent group status. With the
i
exception of the bayasirah village society in Oman is not stratified. It
: is however essentially tribal in organisation.

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