The interior of Arabia has been a difficult terrain during the period of recorded history, although we know that it had been much wetter in the past, supporting animals like hippopotami. The animal best suited to survive in Arabia as it is now is, of course, the camel—or if you will, the dromedary. Camels are adapted to extremely dry conditions in various ways you wouldn’t immediately think of; for example, their blood cells are oval, fitting more easily through dehydrated veins than round cells. Camels were domesticated in this region a long time ago, used for fuel (dung), milk, meat, and transport.
When we meet desert-dwellers in the Bible, during the Iron Age, they are the Midianites, Moabites, Edomites, Amorites, Amalekites, and possibly others. Not until later are they called “Arabs.” It’s unclear how the term “Arab” came about; one theory is that its root meaning is “mixed,” that is, the mixture of all these tribes living similar nomadic lifestyles in the harsh dry environment. (Hebrew speakers may think of לְעַרְבֵּב, which means “to mix.”) Moab, Midian, and Edom were gradually forgotten, and the resulting population was just called “Arab” by those who lived in cities. The word “Arab” also resembles the compass direction “west,” so that might be part of the root. The earlier Bible-era names matter because they suggest that “Arab” was not a tribal identity in the beginning; each group called itself something else. “Arab” is a label imposed from the outside on people who may not have considered themselves much related, at first.
Nomads in the desert move about to find better pasture for their sheep and goats, using camels to pack and carry their gear. The camels can also form caravans, and they can be ridden to war. But additionally, nomads in the desert adopted horses, who were less hardy but much faster. The one-two punch of desert warfare became the combination of camel and horse. The camel could carry the horse’s food and water, while the horse could attack swiftly on local raids.
Desert tribes tended to be very large extended families that focused on remembering their lineage; perhaps if you have no fixed place, your lineage matters more to locate you in space and time. They were highly aware of following the customs of their particular ancestors, so that customs varied a lot through the region. We tend to assume that, for example, nomadic desert people have always been polygamous, as some Muslim desert sheikhs are now. But the pre-Islamic marriage customs are all over the place, in old records: some brides joined the husband’s family. while some grooms joined the wife’s family. Some tribes permitted multiple husbands (brothers) for one wife, while others allowed a man to leave his property only to his sister’s children, not his own. Some tribes permitted temporary marriage, while others permitted a wife to dismiss a husband by turning the tent so the door faced away. (Hoyland, 128-31)
The point was that each extended family followed the ways of its ancestors, and that’s the culturally unifying point: to follow the sunnah of your progenitor. We know the word “sunnah” from Muslim use, as it refers to the Prophet’s customs. But we can only understand this use if we understand the previous one: to follow the ways of your tribal ancestor. Where he went, you go. What he worshipped, you do too. How he settled disputes, that’s how you will. It was a very basic legal system among nomads, as long as most people operated only within their family groups where the same sunnah was known.
Desert nomads cared for their flocks and worked in caravans, but they also raided each other to steal livestock or other wealth. It’s a traditional way of life around the world: Tim Mackintosh-Smith points out that Sanskrit has a root word that refers to both cattle and war, as Arabic’s word for livestock is also cognate with “plunder, loot.” (Mackintosh-Smith, 62) My Scots ancestors raided cattle and received protection money not to raid the cattle; it was called “reiving.” Raiding only works if you have a wilderness to fall back to, getting lost so your pursuers face real danger if they try to recoup their losses.
Because of the desert tribes’ raiding skill, there was one more social role they played: the mercenary. Having no city to defend, they could be hired to beef up any city’s defensive or offensive forces. They had large families and limited resources, always the formula for supplying fighting men. As their supply of both camels and horses grew, they filled more and more of the interior and came closer to the cities at the edges of the desert, where they picked up work for fighting or for transport. Gradually, some desert tribes came to be semi-settled near some towns, working as bodyguards or other fighters. There was still a clear separation between townsfolk and nomads, but they started to mingle socially much more.
- Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam. Robert Hoyland. Routledge, 2001.
- Arabs: A 3000 Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires. Tim Mackintosh-Smith. Yale University Press, 2020.