The Bedouin are Arabic-speaking desert-dwelling pastoralist tribes historically found across the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, the Sinai and the Sahara, organized through tribal and clan genealogies (nasab) and customary law distinct from settled Arab urban and agricultural society. Bedouin social organization traditionally emphasizes hospitality codes, tribal honor and a segmentary lineage system for resolving disputes and allocating grazing and water rights. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century state policies across the region, including large-scale settlement programs in countries such as Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, have profoundly reduced nomadic Bedouin life, and Bedouin land and recognition claims remain an active and documented political issue in several states today.
Facts
Group TypeSourced to the subject's own accountEthnic/lifestyle subculture (pastoralist) 1 Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountArabian Peninsula and broader Middle East and North Africa (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Sinai, the Sahara) 1 Primary LanguageSourced to the subject's own accountArabic (Bedouin dialects) 1 Subsistence ModeSourced to the subject's own accountHistorically nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoralism (camel, sheep and goat herding) across arid and semi-arid desert regions; today the substantial majority live in settled or semi-settled communities. 1 Disputed
Population Estimateseveral million across the region 1 Sourced to the subject's own account'Bedouin' denotes a shared nomadic-pastoralist tribal heritage rather than a single census category, and the great majority of historically Bedouin-descended people across the Arab world are now settled, so no single reliable total exists. Sources
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