Bedouin, Levantine

The Eastern Bedawi Bedouin are the Arabic-speaking tribes of the Sinai Peninsula and the Negev, with kindred tribes in Egypt's Eastern Desert, southern Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza, and smaller tribal communities in Lebanon and southern Syria. Most speak Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic (avl), a Northwest Arabian dialect group whose western branch is spoken in Sinai and the Negev. Their tribes trace descent to Arabian and Hijazi tribes that came in waves from the early Islamic centuries to the 18th century, and several span the borders drawn later: the Tarabin, Tiyaha and Azazma live in both Sinai and the Negev. Sinai has some 26 tribes. In the north live the Sawarka, Rumaylat, Tarabin, Bayyadiya, Akharsa, Dawaghra and Masa'id, and in the centre the Tiyaha and Ahaywat. The southern tribes are known together as the Tawara: the Muzayna, Aleiqat, Sawalha, Qararsha, Awlad Said and Hamada, beside the Jabaliya, who by their own tradition descend from soldiers Emperor Justinian sent from Wallachia and Egypt in the 6th century to guard Saint Catherine's Monastery. Further south, the Ma'aza herd in the mountains of the northern Eastern Desert, and in Egypt the Ababda of the southern Eastern Desert, an Arabic-speaking tribe of Beja origin that calls itself Arab, are counted in this group. The Negev Bedouin have lived under Israel since 1948 and the West Bank tribes under occupation since 1967. Bedouin (badu, desert people) call themselves 'Arab and set themselves apart from settled townspeople and farmers by descent, dialect and tribal law.

Bedouin life grew from camel and goat herding, caravan work and small gardens in mountain wadis. Most families have left the goat-hair tent for houses in villages and towns, though many keep herds and a tent for the season. Hospitality is a duty: a guest is welcomed with coffee, tea and food, and may stay three days before being asked his business. Tribal customary law ('urf) settles disputes through judges and elders, with fines in camels or money, and in Sinai the bisha'a fire ordeal was used to test a man's truthfulness. Families are patrilineal and marriage within the tribe, often between cousins, is preferred; in Sinai the colour of a woman's embroidered dress has shown whether she is married. Oral poetry, the men's evening gatherings, wedding dances and camel races carry the culture, and in South Sinai the Jabaliya keep walled orchards of apricots, almonds and olives high in the mountains.

The Bedouin are Sunni Muslims. Prayer, Ramadan and the Eids order the year, and tribal custom runs alongside Islamic law in matters of honour, marriage and property. Older practices persist: visits to saints' tombs (in South Sinai the Tawara gather each year at the tomb of Nabi Salih in Wadi al-Sheikh), belief in jinn, fear of the evil eye and healing by Quranic recitation. Sufi orders such as the Jaririya have followers among North Sinai's tribes, while Salafi preaching spread from the 1990s; in November 2017 militants killed more than 300 worshippers at the Sufi al-Rawda mosque near Bir al-Abd. In the Negev, the Islamic Movement and new mosques have made religious observance a stronger part of public life since the 1980s.

The full Bible exists in Standard Arabic, and portions in Bedouin Arabic. Resources in Bedouin Arabic (avl) include the JESUS Film, Sabeel Media audio of the Gospel of Luke, stories of the apostles and stories of the prophets, and Global Recordings Network recordings. No known congregation of Bedouin believers meets in Sinai; a small number of Bedouin believers and some outreach exist in the Negev. Saint Catherine's Monastery, whose monks have lived beside the Jabaliya for 1,400 years, does not evangelise.

The Ababda (al-'Abābda, singular 'Abbādī) live between the Nile and the Red Sea from Qena and Aswan to the Halayeb-Shalateen triangle and across the border into Sudan. They trace their descent to al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, a companion of the Prophet, through an ancestor named Abad, and call themselves Arab; 19th-century travellers counted them among the Beja, and Beja speech survived then only in a few families. Their Arabic is close to that of Sudan's Shukriya. Their culture shares much with their Bisharin neighbours: the jabana coffee of roasted beans with ginger, bread baked in hot sand, the shakreeb dance to the tanbura lyre and the sword-and-shield hosheeb. After the droughts of the 1970s ended most camel trading and herding, many turned to artisanal gold mining in Wadi al-Allaqi and the southern desert, under a state mining company that takes over half of the yield, while others work in ecotourism around Wadi El-Gemal (Beyt Ababda heritage centre), fishing or the professions. IMB listed them as a people group in Egypt until 2015 (157,000-192,000); no source counts them, and estimates run to 250,000 or more. Many lack national identity papers, a long-standing grievance shared with the Bisharin.