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The Shaykh of Shaykhs
Mithqal al-Fayiz and Tribal Leadership in Modern Jordan
By Yoav Alon STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-9934-8
CHAPTER 1
BORN A SHAYKH
IN THE ARABIAN DESERT a huge black goat-hair tent is surrounded by several dozen smaller tents. A herd of camels is grazing nearby, interrupting the silence with their grunting. The smells of the campfire, tobacco, and roasted coffee blend with the heavy stench of the animals. It is a miniscule island of human presence in the vast, empty desert. In this idyllic scene, the cry of a baby is heard from the big tent. It is a boy. A shaykh.
Mithqal Sattam al-Fayiz was born into the family of the leading shaykhs of the Bani Sakhr tribal confederacy around the year 1880. For two generations, his immediate family had led the confederacy, one of the largest and strongest nomadic tribal groups in the Syrian Desert. As such, his childhood was spent in preparation for the title and job of a shaykh, the tribal leader. An Arab shaykh had to demonstrate the virtues of wisdom, charisma, generosity, and courage, find victory in battle, and develop an intimate knowledge of the desert. He would hone his negotiating skills to represent the tribe vis-à-vis other tribes and government officials and would need to secure economic resources for himself and his people. At the conclusion of this long training and learning process, this boy would still be expected to compete with his brothers, cousins and nephews for the leadership of the Bani Sakhr people. It was an extremely sought after position and entailed respect, power, and wealth. It was worth killing one's own brother and even dying for.
Mithqal's childhood years occurred during a time of a great change in the desert. A decade prior to his birth, the Ottoman Empire had begun incorporating the southern regions of its Syrian province, east of the Jordan River, into its central rule. The tribes, long accustomed to their local rule and autonomy, suddenly had to adjust to sharing power with the Ottoman government. The success of Mithqal's grandfather and father in adapting to this new political reality was crucial. Their legacy paved the way for Mithqal's own greatness at a time of great geopolitical transformations. It also shaped the future leader's worldview, one that would guide him through his entire life.
THE BANI SAKHR IN THE SYRIAN STEPPE
Mithqal's family rose to prominence in the middle of the nineteenth century, during the time of his grandfather, Shaykh Fandi al-Fayiz. Fandi was born around the beginning of the century, and from at least the 1850s on led the Fayiz tribe. He gradually became the leader of the entire Bani Sakhr tribal confederacy, founding a dynasty that led it during the reminder of the Ottoman period, through the British mandate era, and into modern Jordan, till today, in fact.
During Fandi's time, the Bani Sakhr were fully nomadic, living off camel husbandry. Their cycle of life revolved around their herds. They spent the summer months in the fertile eastern parts of the Balqa' and 'Ajlun regions in present-day Jordan, as well as the southern Hawran in Syria. In winter they would dismantle their black tents and migrate hundreds of kilometers to their grazing grounds further east and south, in the Wadi Sirhan, in today's Saudi Arabia. The rich pasture and mild temperature presented ideal conditions for their camels to give birth and increased survival rates for the calves (see maps 1 and 2). Like other Arab camel herders, they laid claim to a pure, noble descent and felt superior to nomads who herded sheep and goats, to villagers, and to city folk.
The Bani Sakhr constituted a tribal confederacy, the most common form of political organization in the desert. As such, it was a coalition of several smaller political entities, or tribes; Mithqal and his family belonged to the Fayiz tribe, for example. The tribe was the basic unit, offering protection to its members, who were also relatives. Tribes combined into a confederacy as a result of political alliances and unions. And while many local tribes people believe that the tribal confederacy shares a common descent, it is more plausible that a myth of shared blood ties was created as a tool to cement the alliance and justify it ideologically. This ideology aside, the confederacy was a loose, fluid entity, each of whose constituent parts was autonomous and offered the confederacy only conditional support. Tribes or families could leave, and others could be invited to join. It was rare that the alliance acted as one body. A full union was achieved only on the occasions when the entire confederacy was attacked. At all other times, it was an organization that collectively controlled a territory. All members had free and safe passage within the tribal domain, or dira, and enjoyed the right to graze their herds and drink water from the wells. A tribal confederacy also deterred aggression; enemies and rivals were fully aware of the size of the force it could mobilize.
By the time Fandi became their shaykh, the Bani Sakhr were already the dominant power east of the Jordan and vast parts of the land were known to be their dira. Territorial hegemony had been acquired over the course of several centuries. Thought to be originally from the Hijaz, they gradually moved northwards and established their domain east of the Jordan River (see map 2). The earliest written record of their presence in the region goes back to the early fifteenth century, when a classical work in Arabic noted that they were living in the Karak area, the plateau descending from the Dead Sea. Ottoman registers from the end of the sixteenth century record their presence in the northern part of what would become Jordan. Over the course of the following centuries, they had to fight for their place and fame among the other tribal groups in the area. In a series of wars and quickly changing alliances, memory of which now only survives in oral histories and poetry, they managed to push the 'Adwan and 'Abbad tribes towards the Jordan Valley and took over the flat and fertile land in the eastern Balqa' region. While raiding, the Bani Sakhr warriors might go further afield, west of the Jordan River all the way to Gaza or into the western desert of present-day Iraq.
So by the time of Fandi's leadership, the Bani Sakhr experienced a period of nearly unprecedented strength and prosperity as a rich, powerful tribal group with thousands of members. The confederacy's fighting force was formidable. One estimate refers to 6,000 fighting men. Another, probably exaggerated, puts the number at more than 4,000 men mounted on camels and horses, with a reserve force of another 4,000. Since the confederacy hardly ever acted as one, these figures were only theoretical. Still, this was a considerable force in northern Arabia and enjoyed a reputation for ferocity. Visiting in 1863–64, the British clergyman and ornithologist Henry Baker Tristram wrote of the Bani Sakhr: "They have for centuries been a very strong tribe, but from some unexplained cause have increased in the last fifty years to an unexampled pitch of prosperity and wealth, both in population and cattle." He evoked biblical images to illustrate their strength: "When, in 1863, they encamped in the Ghor [the Jordan Valley], just before their raid on the plain of Esdraelon, their tents, like the Midianites', covered the ground for miles, far as the eye could reach from the Mount of Beisan, and in a week there was not a green blade to be seen, where before the arrival of these locusts one stood knee-deep in the rank herbage."
The Bani Sakhr domination in the region was accelerated by the withdrawal of the Ottoman presence east of the Jordan River around the beginning of the seventeenth century. For several centuries the nomadic tribes that occupied most of the Syrian Desert and its fringes were left more or less to their own devices, except when involved in the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, or the occasions on which they were contracted by the Ottomans to provide military service. Ottoman troops and officials were rarely seen in the area outside the time of the Hajj and the annual visit of the tax collectors to the permanent settlements. In the absence of central authority, the big nomadic confederacies were free to engage in intertribal wars or conduct raids. On the fringe of the desert, they extracted protection money (khawa), paid in the form of cash or a share in crops and other goods, from the few agricultural communities and the small and weak nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Salt, the largest settlement east of the Jordan River, with several thousand inhabitants, an important marketplace for the local tribesmen, paid the Bani Sakhr khawa, thus acknowledging their hegemony in the region. Even after Salt stopped paying, other localities and tribes continued to do so.
Likewise, the few Europeans who ventured to cross the Jordan River paid for the right to enter the tribal territory and for guidance and protection. For example, in 1818 two British Royal Navy officers visited the area east of the Jordan River and stumbled on a camp of a shaykh from the Fayiz tribe of the Bani Sakhr. When they introduced an Ottoman firman, or sultanic decree, assuring them safe passage, the shaykh dismissed it as useless: "The Firman was mentioned; he said he cared nothing for Firmans; that he considered them only fit for those who were weak enough to obey them; that he was Grand Seignior [a title applied to the sultan], and everything else here; and that we must pay."
The Ottoman authorities contributed to the well-being of the Bani Sakhr in another important way. From at least 1674/75 on, the Ottoman governor in Damascus granted the confederacy's members their most important source of income, namely, the privilege of escorting and providing for the annual Hajj caravan. The tribesmen supplied camels and camel riders, food and water. They also took payment from the Ottoman authorities in return for protection and, more accurately, permission for the caravan to cross their domain safely. The Hajj business not only enriched the Bani Sakhr but increased their fighting power. In the course of the nineteenth century, Arabs' spears, swords, and lances gave way to firearms, and tribesmen were able to buy rifles and ammunition with the cash it generated.
Relations with the Ottoman authorities in Syria also strengthened the leadership of the Bani Sakhr. The extensive autonomy of the confederacy's constituent elements made the position of the head of the confederacy precarious: it was usually only a nominal one and was easily challenged. Only in times of war would all tribesmen recognize the leadership of the head of the confederacy. At all other times, shaykhs had great difficulty in enforcing their will. Since male egalitarianism was one of Arab tribal society's fundamental values, a shaykh at least theoretically enjoyed no more than the status of primus inter pares. A shaykh had to use persuasion and reach consensus rather than seek to impose his will on his followers. An additional problem for the shaykh was his inability to tax his fellow tribesmen. On the contrary, he was expected to deliver a continuous flow of goods and services to other members of the alliance. Thus, material resources available for the usage of tribal shaykhs always came from outside the tribal system, such as subjugated peasant communities, weaker tribes or the central government. What is more, a shaykh constantly needed to rally the support of his followers against challenges from other able and ambitious men in his family and tribe lest he be deposed. Shaykhs overcame these problems by seeking official recognition from the Ottoman authorities. The governor of Syria recognized either the shaykh he thought most influential or the one who seemed likely to be the most loyal and cooperative as the representative of the entire confederacy. This recognition, and the material gains that came with it, gave that shaykh and his immediate family an advantage over other shaykhs. It was a classic divide-and-rule policy, and without the ability to rule directly, it served as the main Ottoman strategy in the periphery.
Among the Bani Sakhr, the development of direct relations with the Ottoman authorities favored the Fayiz tribe. In 1742, the governor of Damascus contracted with Shaykh Qa'dan al-Fayiz, the first recorded shaykh from that tribe, to escort the Hajj caravan. This privilege was probably an expression of gratitude for his military support earlier that year, when a tribal force under the leadership of Shaykh Qa'dan had participated in the siege of Tiberias, the stronghold of Dahir al-'Umar, the local ruler of the Galilee, who had defied the sultan's orders.
In spite of the cooperative relations that resulted, Ottoman recognition remained limited and sometimes the government failed to pay the Bani Sakhr for their services. In such cases, the tribesmen were quick to show their anger. In 1757 Qa'dan and his men attacked with exceptional ruthlessness the jarda, the military escort that departed from Damascus to meet the returning pilgrims in order to supply them with fresh provisions. A few days later, the Bani Sakhr plundered the main caravan, leaving most of the helpless pilgrims to die of hunger and thirst. One victim was the sister of the sultan himself. A contemporary Arab account portrays a vivid, if unsettling, account of the raid:
When Musa Pasha, the commander of the jarda, arrived in Qatrana, he was attacked by the Arabs and robbed. They plundered the jarda and took everything in it. They went so far as to strip Musa of his clothes and take his seal [ring] from his finger. They took him down from his seat of honor [on the camel's back] and rode it instead of him. They took his drum, his flag, and his guns. Their leader was called Qa'dan al-Fayiz. The people in the jarda dispersed all over. Some returned to Damascus, some to the Hawran, others fled to Gaza, Jerusalem, or Ma'an ... When the pasha was brought to Damascus, he was already dying. The next day he was buried.
Mithqal's grandfather, Fandi, enjoyed more stable relations with the Ottoman authorities and in fact, these relations were critical for his leadership status among the Bani Sakhr. In the 1860s, the Ottoman governor in Syria recognized Fandi's seniority, contracting with him for the protection and provision of the Hajj caravan. This recognition both reflected his emerging status among his tribes and bolstered his leadership, since it provided him with a great source of income and influence. Fandi valued his relations with the Ottomans and was careful to maintain them. He was known to be loyal to his patrons.
Extensive tribal autonomy and political hegemony as enjoyed by the Bani Sakhr and the Fayiz tribe in the course of most of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries was not peculiar to Transjordan or even to Syria. The same was true with other peripheral regions of the Ottoman Empire, such as the Kurdish areas in eastern Anatolia, Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, and most of North Africa. In all these areas, the empire's control was only nominal.
UNDER THE NEW OTTOMAN ORDER
But the hegemony of the Bani Sakhr east of the Jordan did not last for long. In the late 1860s, the Ottoman government changed its attitude towards its desert periphery and decided to place it under its direct rule. Fandi and his successors had to deal with this new and unfamiliar challenge to their authority and the autonomy of their tribes.
The new Ottoman policy in the desert was one aspect of the reform movement known as the Tanzimat. In the framework of its attempts to modernize government and centralize the administration, Istanbul was determined to strengthen its control over the empire's frontier zones. Ottoman authorities singled out the nomadic tribes as the main obstacle to their exercising sovereignty in these areas. The government sought to limit the nomads' hegemony over the peasants, thereby extending cultivation, and with it the payment of taxes. Since the empire lost most of its European provinces in the course of the nineteenth century, the Arab lands grew in importance and were seen by Ottoman statesmen as their only source of new prosperity.
Inconsistent measures in the 1840s and 1850s to increase Ottoman control in desert areas gave way to a more comprehensive move from the late 1860s on. In 1867, the governors of Damascus and Aleppo agreed to coordinate the administration of the desert, and a special military desert force was formed the following year. Also in 1868, the Ottomans created a new governorate of the desert. These administrative reforms were also facilitated by new technology. In 1868 or 1869, the Ottoman army in Syria adopted the breach-loaded Snider rifle, which represented the state of the art at the time. Other modern models entered service in Syria in the course of the 1870s. These gave the Ottomans an initial advantage over the nomads and allowed them to begin disciplining tribes.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Shaykh of Shaykhs by Yoav Alon. Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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