Courtney Freer, Alanoud Al-Sharekh - Tribalism and Political Power in The Gulf - State-Building and National Identity in Kuwait, Qatar and The UAE-I.B. Tauris (2021)

Tribalism and Political Power
in the Gulf
ii
Tribalism and Political Power
in the Gulf
State-Building and National Identity in

Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE
Alanoud al-Sharekh and Courtney Freer

I.B. TAURIS
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Contents
List of Figures vi
Acknowledgements viii
1 Introduction 1
2 The historical relationship between badū and ruling families 21
3 The social evolution of the tribe 47
4 Heritage production and branding of the modern badū in state
formation 65
5 Tribalization of traditionally non-tribal actors and future impact of
the resurgence of tribal rhetoric 95
6 Electoral tribalism 117
7 Tribal intersections in the digital age 137
8 Conclusion 153
Notes 164
Bibliography 200
Index 221
Figures
1 MP Faisal al Duwaisan quoted on Awwal Kuwait News, tweeting

on how Iranian workers built the wall of Kuwait in 1770 to protect
the city from the ‘ambush of the deserts’ in an example of how the
‘wall’ and its connection to the inner city hadar versus outer districts
bedouins divide is still an identity politics issue to this day. From
AwwalKwt news Instagram account (2017) 57
2 The Kuwaiti ‘Boum’, a ship that exemplifies the sea-faring heritage
trope used as an identity marker. Courtesy of Hala Shaaban 67
3 The dallah (Arabian coffee pot), one of the more universal images
associated with the Arabian Gulf and especially the Badu. Courtesy
of Hala Shaaban 71
4 Diorama from Kuwait’s National Museum taken on April 2019.
The scene depicts a traditional school. Courtesy of author 73
5 Diorama from Kuwait’s National Museum taken on April 2019.
The scene depicts a merchant selling wares in the old souq.
Courtesy of author 74
6 Kuwait’s National Assembly building designed by Danish architect
Jørn Utzon is across the street from the Arabian Gulf. Courtesy of
Hala Shaaban 75
7 In an example of ‘desert diplomacy’, this image from the Al_Saud_
instagram account, shows Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad
Bin Salman hosting a dinner at the Camel Festival in Tayef in
September 2018 for UAE Crown Prince Shaykh Mohammad bin
Zayed and his brothers Shaykhs Sayf and Nihyan bin Zayed, and
Prince Nasser bin Khalifa from Bahrain, Shaykh Abdallah
al Sabah from Kuwait, Prince Khaled bin Faisal from Saudi Arabia
and Sayed Asad bin Tariq from Oman 89
8 Image drawn by a Qatari cartoonist, meant to illustrate Saudi
Arabia’s perceived meddling in tribal affairs over the course of the
GCC crisis (2018) 107
9 An account that claims to be representing the interests of members
of the Mutayri tribe in Kuwait Oil Company advertises a committee
Figures vii
that will ensure a representative from the tribe in the union board
of 2020–2022. Both the Twitter and Instagram accounts were shut
down 115
10 An Al-Qabas newspaper archive article describing how
pre-election banquets raised the price of sheep in Kuwait in 1996 123
11 Table from Al-Qabas newspaper showing the number of voters per
major tribe in Kuwait in 2018 140
12 Social media platforms highlighted an incident allegedly involving
members of the ʿAjman tribe in Kuwait’s National Petroleum
Company, despite local newspapers not mentioning the tribe; this
post was shared widely on Twitter and WhatsApp in 2017 141
13 Tweet by Sarah Alajmi in response to the murder of Fatima
Alajmi where she says that re-educating tribal men is the moral
responsibility of the tribal shaykhs since allegiance is to the tribe
and not to the state in Kuwait (2020) 144
14 Tweet by Fatmah Alajmy in response to the murder of Fatima Alajmi
and Hajar AlAasi decrying the silence of tribal shaykhs and tribal
social media accounts around the murder of tribal women, which
she compares unfavourably to tribal blood money drives to release
male murderers 145
15 A map detailing the larger tribes of the Arabian Peninsula from the
UAE history kin website 151
16 Cat meme with caption ‘Shaykh of the tribe’ (2018). This account is
now closed but the meme itself was widely shared 152
17 A candidate from the Shammar tribe declares that he will be in
the service of his tribe ‘and its interests’ when he is elected to
office (2020) 156
Acknowledgements
The germ of the idea for this book came from a lecture at Nuqat Cultural series
in 2014, and so this project represents the culmination of many conversations
with colleagues across the Arabian Peninsula. We are indebted to everyone who
agreed to be interviewed for this project, as well as those who assisted with
images, namely Hala Shaaban and Nasser al Ghanim.
The support of LSE’s Kuwait Programme, generously funded by the Kuwait
Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) and led by Professor Toby
Dodge, was instrumental in undertaking this project, particularly through
providing assistance with fieldwork, feedback on drafts and encouragement
throughout the process. The team at LSE’s Middle East Centre also more broadly
facilitated the drafting of this book, hosting a workshop on tribe and state in the
Middle East gathering several experts on the topic in June 2018, which helped
both authors clarify the scholarly contribution we hoped to make.
Sophie Rudland at IB Tauris has been a pleasure to work with, being
patient with us throughout the long drafting process and providing us with
encouragement and helpful suggestions. We are also indebted to the anonymous
reviewers, who provided us with substantive and thoughtful feedback that
ultimately improved the manuscript considerably.
1
Introduction
The small states of the Arabian Peninsula have sometimes been disdainfully
described as ‘tribes with flags’,1 and most scholars agree that ‘the tribe is the
principal building block of these societies’.2 Nevertheless, the specific means by
which powerful tribes have shaped the political structures and environments of
these states is rarely explained; rather, it has often been simply taken for granted.
This book seeks to address these analytical gaps by examining tribes as modern,
policy-relevant actors in what some have dubbed ‘bedouinocracies’3 of Kuwait,
Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In so doing, it will demonstrate
the ways in which participation in tribal affairs provides a significant means
of individual involvement in the local politics of small rentier states, while also
comprising an important part of these governments’ legitimation strategies.
In addition, we will analyse the changes in the historical relationship between
ruling elites and nomadic tribes, particularly as affected by the discovery of oil
and the proliferation of oil rents that in many ways transformed these states into
archetypal rentiers.
By analysing the role of tribes as political units, this book will grant such
traditional groups agency as modern political actors. Where much of the
existing scholarship suggests that political life in the Arabian Peninsula is
underdeveloped (at least outside of Kuwait which houses an active parliament),
it is in fact in many ways merely under-institutionalized, as much of it
remains based on informal institutions, some of which are managed by tribal
populations. Indeed, tribal units often provide important means of bypassing
cumbersome bureaucratic structures present in many small rentier states,4 in
addition to providing strong and reliable social networks. This book will also
answer the following questions about the nature of tribal politics in states
with under-institutionalized political systems. Do tribes hinder or advance
popular participation in government by enhancing uninstitutionalized means
of citizen involvement? Has the strength of tribes prevented the growth of
independent political parties in such states? In what ways does identifying the
2 Tribalism and Political Power in the Gulf
political capital of tribes change our understanding of the small rentier states
of the Arabian Peninsula? The book will also examine how the governments
of three Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE,
which, at first glance seem quite similar, in terms of demographics and levels
of wealth, have handled the continued prevalence of tribalism in their domestic
government policies using a variety of methods. The book will thus contribute
to the advancement of our understanding of the internal politics of the Arabian
Peninsula, in particular going beyond the traditional rentier framework by
granting political agency to internal actors, even those existing outside of state
political institutions, and organized groups within such states.
In discussions about state-building and national identity, the role of tribalism
and tribal identity is often dismissed as being merely a social formulation, rather
than one with unique and important political consequences. In countries like
Iraq, Libya and Yemen, where the modern state project appears to be failing for a
variety of reasons, including state fragility and failed international interventions,
the resurgence of the political salience of tribal identities has been noticeable in
the resultant political vacuum. This re-emergence of tribal powers at the time of
state collapse suggests that these tribal affiliations are masked by state structure
rather than assimilated into it to the point of erasure. As a result, it is important to
examine the degree to which tribes influence political discourse in rentier states
of the Arabian Peninsula, which have relatively large and powerful governments.
In what follows, we hope to analyse how citizen-state relations are shaped (a)
in rentier states with strong central governments and (b) in states with salient
tribal identities, with particular focus on whether these formulations will lead to
a greater stake in policy making and in social life more broadly.
What is the qabīla?
The term qabīla is most often translated simply as tribe, yet can also denote
status as qabīlī, or claiming descent from some of the oldest tribes in the Arabian
Peninsula. Qabīla thus represents the highest level of organization for tribes of
the region and is further subdivided into smaller clan units of tighter circles
of consanguinity such as fakhith, ʿashira and batan, until the lowest level of
organization, the baīt or home.5 People claiming affiliation to a certain tribe
or status as qabīlī, however, are not necessarily classed as badū – another term
used to describe tribal populations. Though the term badū was initially used to
describe nomadic members of unsettled tribes, today, with the Arabian Peninsula
Introduction 3
largely settled and urbanized, its meaning is less obvious, having become more a
mark of identity than of location or occupation as it once was.
The definitions of terms therefore become more difficult to understand in the
modern era, as they had vague implications even from their origins. As Richard
Tapper explains,
[u]nfortunately, Middle Eastern indigenous categories (of which perhaps the
commonest to have been translated as tribe are qabila, ta’ifa, quam, and il) are
no more specific than are English terms such as ‘family’ or ‘group’ [….] As with
equivalents in English practice the ambiguity of the terms and the flexibility
of the system are of the essence in everyday negotiations of meaning and
significance.6
Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner agree: ‘[B]ecause the term tribe has
been used to describe many different kinds of groups or social formations, a
single, all-encompassing definition is virtually impossible to produce.’7
We use the term qabīla or its adjective form qabīlī to refer to claims of a
specific tribal heritage or background, one that claims deep roots within the
Arabian Peninsula, while we use the terms badū and bedouin interchangeably, as
both were initially used to describe segments of the population who earned their
living by raising livestock rather than having a settled agricultural or urban base,8
to describe segments of the population who classify themselves as having a tribal
background or identity, either identifying with or associated with nomadic,
rather than settled, ancestors in the Arabian Peninsula. And yet the term qabīlī
(meaning descended from pure tribal lineage) has deviated from being merely
an indicator of ancestral status, instead9 used now to signify a higher status in
socio-economic and socio-political terms, to bestowing a set of privileges that
are not associated with a bedouin, or badū, lifestyle, and in fact may indicate its
opposite. In historical terms, the Prophet Muhammad himself was descended
from the powerful Quraish tribe, a tribe of the city, of trade and commerce,10
which stood in diametric opposition to the usual desert-bound associations of
bedouin tribalism. To complicate this matter further, contemporary use of the
term qabīla and its plural qabāʾil in places like Kuwait is no longer indicative
of ancestral status; instead, it is used to signify tribe size and indicate a certain
socio-political behaviour, for example, in reference to the al-ʿAzimi (sometimes
known by their plural form, al-ʿAwazim) or al-Rushayda tribes. These tribes
may see themselves as bedouin, whereas others who self-identify as bedouin
might not classify them as such. As a result, it is important to keep in mind
that these definitions are both subjective and dynamic; they have also changed
considerably with the introduction and growth of the modern state. Further, the
level of tribal organization or social and political cohesion varies widely, with
smaller tribes often far less cohesive than their larger counterparts regardless of
their status as qabīlī.
Existing political science literature about qabīla and badū in the Middle
Eastern context has tended to focus on the role played by tribes in the formation
of modern states. Less research has been done into how these tribes behave once
they are incorporated into such states, however, aside from some examinations
of their ability to contest elections in states like Jordan and Kuwait.11 Importantly,
though, one’s designation as badū has serious political and social consequences,
especially when compared alongside the haḍar, or settled, populations of the
region. As Miriam Cooke explains, ‘like the Medicis in sixteenth-century Italy
and the Vanderbilts in nineteenth-century America, the Arab Gulf tribes in the
twenty-first century are asserting both tribal superiority and family privilege’.12
As a result, the tribal, though initially associated with origins and history of the
Arabian Peninsula, has become ‘integral to the modern’, as part of the social
hierarchy, but also as part of political systems and hierarchies, largely co-opted
by the nation state, as discussed below.13
Existing Literature
A considerable amount of the existing scholarship concerning tribes in the Middle

East juxtaposes the systems of government and organization by tribes with those
perpetuated by the modern nation state system, suggesting that tensions between
the two are inevitable. Fourteenth-century historian Ibn Khaldun is best known
for the first detailed elucidation of the relationship between tribe and state. His
introduction of the term asabiyya, most often translated as ‘group solidarity’
based on tribe or clan, demonstrates not only the importance of shared familial
background and blood but also of mutual socialization, which allows for unrelated
clients and allies to be included into the same ‘group feeling’ as members of the
same tribes. As Ibn Khaldun puts it, ‘the affection everybody has for his clients
and allies results from a feeling of shame that comes to a person when one of the
neighbours, relatives, or a blood-relation in any degree is humiliated. The reason
for it is that a client-relationship leads to close contact exactly, or approximately
in the same way, as does common descent’.14 Ibn Khaldun goes on to describe
the asabiyya based on common descent, however, as the most stable type and
therefore an important part of bolstering a stable and secure regime.
Introduction 5
Indeed, religion mixed with kinship, in Ibn Khaldun’s eyes, makes for the
strongest government. As he explains, ‘[l]eadership over people, therefore, must,
of necessity, derive from group feeling that is superior to each individual group
feeling’.15 Ibn Khaldun’s explanation of the strength of tribal loyalties has led
many scholars to view tribes as the building blocks of modern nation states.
Still, their roles have changed substantially over time and in different political
environments, as well as from tribe to tribe. From this we may also conclude
that the relative power and importance of a tribe depend on many factors, such
as size (and within that how many members of the tribe identify and respect or
adhere to tribal ties), proximity to the local rulers or to colonial powers (whether
through kinship or other forms of symbiotic alliance), their geographical
prominence across a certain state or across state lines, and increasingly, how
electoral politics bind this tribe into a single unit for the purposes of political
clout within a legislative body.
Despite the fact that tribal groups tend to be organized hierarchically, Charles
Lindholm considers the ideology of asabiyya to be far more egalitarian than
other forms of kinship. As he puts it, asabiyya ‘is not merely a mask for class
domination, but is deeply embedded in the kinship structure [….] the ideology
of kinship fundamentally opposes acceptance of the intrinsic superiority of
any group or person’.16 Mark Allen similarly explains in his book Arabs that
there is a high measure of equality within a tribe and that the shaykh of the
tribe is, as Thesiger also noted,17 a ‘first among equals’.18 Within the context of
increased politicization of tribal patronage systems within the modern GCC
states discussed here, this may seem like a romanticized vision, yet it reflects the
ways in which each tribe exists as a fairly autonomous and organized, though
technically informal, institution.
Due to the equality implied for all people linked by tribal ties, Steve C. Caton
points out the fundamental disconnect between tribal societies and ruling
families, even though both coexist in the GCC states under study. As Caton
explains,
[t]he problem of the royal tribal state is that it founders on its own political
contradictions – an urban civilization that ultimately tears apart the sturdy
Bedouin solidarity created in the close blood ties of the desert, a burgeoning
bureaucracy that alienates the ruler from his own house, and so forth. The
way to transcend these contradictions is to establish the state on some firmer
footing than common blood. For Ibn Khaldun, the new state must be founded
on prophecy and the religious law that prophecy reveals.19
Caton, while suggesting ways in which a tribal monarchy can be politically

resilient, fails to mention specific examples of the coexistence of the two, with
the best instances arguably in Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula.
This study will elucidate how and why tribalism, monarchical regimes and
even electoral schemes coexist inside the remarkably stable states of Kuwait,
Qatar and the UAE. Richard Tapper’s contention that it is not asabiyya that leads
to cohesion, but rather ‘the hope of material gain and the absence of material
cause for conflict’ that has the same effect, seems to foreshadow discussions
of rentierism and strong states of the Arabian Peninsula.20 Tapper ultimately
concludes that asabiyya is not powerful enough to secure political loyalty and
thus that tribe and state remain fundamentally at odds with each other. In his
words,
tribe and state are best thought of as two opposed modes of thought or models of
organization that form a single system. As a basis for identity, political allegiance,
and behavior, tribe gives primacy to ties of kinship and patrilineal descent,
whereas state insists on the loyalty of all persons to a central authority, whatever
their relation to each other. Tribe stresses personal, moral, and ascriptive
factors in status; state is impersonal and recognizes contract, transaction,
and achievement. The tribal mode is socially homogeneous, egalitarian, and
segmentary; the state is heterogeneous, stratified, and hierarchical. Tribe is
within the individual; state is external.21
Such a description in fact demonstrates the extent to which rentier states, many
of which historically lacked elected parliamentary systems and therefore have
somewhat personalistic political systems, can successfully integrate, and in
some cases even manipulate, tribal systems. While the state in its purest form
is as impersonal and contractual as Tapper describes, the state as seen in the
close-knit societies of Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE takes on a different character,
leading us to expect it to have a unique type of relationship with tribes – one
which current scholarship in English has yet to describe.
Despite efforts to understand how asabiyya affects political form in the nation
state, the relationship between tribe and state remains difficult to understand, in
terms of whether the two challenge or reinforce each other’s power. Khoury and
Kostiner posit that tribe and state
mingle and sustain each other; each part changes owing to the other’s influence;
and sometimes they seek to destroy one another. The nature of this dialectic
emanates not only from tribal military prowess and political organization but
also from tribal values and lifestyles and the wide range of influences they exert
Introduction 7
on society. Even in the absence of a common definition of tribe, some scholars

seem to agree that as a collective, tribal society possesses what Fuad Khuri calls
a ‘cultural substance,’ namely, a typical mode of behaviour and a value system, or
what Tapper calls a ‘state of mind’.22
Indeed, even in modern nation states, tribes have managed to sustain their social
and political roles. And, as Bassam Tibi explains, ‘though the tribe as an actual
social structure has declined in significance, the tribe as a referent for social
identity and loyalty has persisted’.23 Where the state monopolizes authority in
terms of military and economy, it cannot do so in society. In particular, in the
smaller GCC states, because tribal origin has been so important for the ruling
families’ rise to power, as will be discussed in chapter two, it is logical for it to be
re-emphasized as a type of ruling myth.
Kostiner’s later work, focused on the Arabian Peninsula and included in Uzi
Rabi’s edited volume largely dedicated to Kostiner’s early work, points out that
kin-based groups, either of large business families or tribal groups, became
‘durable, political, and state-sanctioned’, due to ‘the legitimacy of the family like
groups’.24 He therefore sees the relationship between GCC states and tribalism as
symbiotic – a symbiosis that was only made stronger, rather than challenged, by
the introduction of oil rents. While ruling families of the Arabian Peninsula had
long subsidized powerful tribes to maintain their loyalty,
the allocation of welfare funds, and almost free provision of services were widely
used as means to create bases of social support, and to ameliorate conflict
between sectoral, occupational, economic, and social groups. State institutions
and tribal corporate groups thus became even more interwoven. In the Gulf ’s
tradition, families, clans, and other tribal groups were regarded as legitimate for
boosting and befriending. Hence, once again, it was the merchant families, tribal
political groups, and middle-class families that thrived on the ‘rentier’ economy
on the one hand, and intensified its clientelist bonds with the state on the other.25
Therefore, much like Steffen Hertog predicts, distributive states create limits on
their power through ‘micro-level distributional obligations that are difficult to
reverse’.26 Having empowered tribes and large merchant families initially, then,
it is difficult to reverse this relationship. And despite the historical symbiosis
between state and tribe, which Kostiner believes is common to all rentier states,
politicized or clientelized tribalism still does not lead to the creation of ‘common
nation-like narratives’ throughout the GCC.27
In the same edited volume, Philip Carl Salzman appears to challenge the
symbiosis that Kostiner describes by emphasizing what he views as innate
tension between tribe and state: ‘Tribal values, which were creative adaptations
to stateless regions and pre-modern states, tend to inhibit and block modern,
consent-based governance, and to resist universalist, rule-based policies and
polities. Tribal values, constructive in their times and places of origin have
become problematical in modern society.’28 Salzman’s argument echoes many
concerns voiced in Kuwait and in Qatar in the discussion of elections about
the role of tribes in potentially undermining democratic institutions. While we
recognize that tribes are often used to circumvent institutions of the state, we
also recognize that they have adapted over time, as have state policies towards
them, meaning that ‘tribal values’ are likely not as static as Salzman describes.
Not enough scholarship specifically examines the political role of tribes inside
the rentier states of the Arabian Peninsula. In fact, their continued existence
challenges Michael Ross’s claim that rentierism threatens the formation of
independent social groups. In a 2001 article, he asserts that government funds
can be used to help prevent the emergence of independent social groups in
wealthy rentiers. Ross explains: ‘as governments increase in size (relative to
the domestic economy) they are more likely to prevent the formation of civic
institutions and social groups that are independent from the government, and
that the absence of these groups will hinder a transition to democracy’.29 This
stipulation assumes, however, that independent groups emerge only after the
formation of the government and thus does not apply to tribes of the Arabian
Peninsula that have inhabited the region for centuries, prior to the institution of
rentier policies.
Indeed, statements like the following are not always applicable when it comes
to tribes: ‘[W]hen oil revenues provide a government with enough money, the
government will use its largesse to prevent the formation of social groups that are
independent from the state and hence that may be inclined to demand political
rights.’30 To test for the presence of this effect, Ross uses the portion of GDP
accounted for by government activity; in essence, ‘the greater the government’s
size (as a fraction of GDP), the less likely that independent social groups will
form’.31 Simply because groups do not challenge the economic dominance of
governments in such states, however, does not preclude them from influencing
its policy or grassroots notions of identity.
In fact, Hootan Shambayati points out that it is the economic dominance
of governments in rentier states that makes cultural opposition the most likely
to emerge. He contends that, because economic grievances are unlikely to spur
political mobilization in states that provide handsomely for their citizens, cultural
and religious rallying points become the primary modes of independent political
Introduction 9
expression.32 As a result, a major part of regime legitimation involves tying rulers

to the cultural heritage of the state. In Shambayati’s words, ‘by appealing to golden
age myths, rentier states try to create a semblance of legitimacy. The unintended
consequence of this move is that culture and ideology become the main arenas of
conflict between the state and civil society.’33 Previous studies have demonstrated
that Islam is used by the state in a similar way to bolster its legitimacy and that,
as a result, independent movements of political Islam become important means
of mobilization in rentier states.34 Promoting tribal heritage is another means
of state promotion of national identity and cohesion under the ruling family’s
leadership, which can be at odds with popular conceptions of the appropriate
place and role of tribalism – a topic also discussed in this volume.
Miriam Cooke’s Tribal Modern demonstrates ways in which tribes in the
GCC states are fundamentally modern groups in the present day, using a
sociological perspective. Cooke describes the political and social hierarchies of
the Arabian Peninsula as comprising, at the top, the ruling family, with the social
clout associated with tribes diminishing the farther they are from the top of
the hierarchy.35 Tribal structures therefore determine the social hierarchy which
also informs one’s economic and political position, despite the sedentarization
of these tribes. As a result, Cooke concludes that
in today’s Gulf, tribe becomes race for exclusive citizenship; race becomes class
for a larger share of the national wealth; wealth subsidizes the production of an
essentialized tribal culture, a national culture appropriate for insertion into the
twenty-first-century world where these Gulf states wish to play a major role.
These transformations of tribe into race and then class – especially the urban,
cosmopolitan class – produce the privileged national citizen.36
Cooke’s conclusion harmonizes the existence of tribalism with rentierism

by folding tribes into the client-patron relationship with the rentier state
government. Indeed, perhaps because only in wealthy rentier states is citizenship
accompanied by material benefits, it is logical that tribal status is used to exclude
others from such benefits economically, politically and socially. As long as this
remains the case, and as long as political systems remain underinstitutionalized,
a change in this system remains unlikely.
Reflecting a similar conclusion about the salience of tribal identity, Kuwaiti
sociologist Khaldoun al-Naqeeb coined the phrase ‘political tribalism’ to
describe the origins of political legitimacy for rulers in the GCC.37 He rightly
identifies that ‘[t]he retention of kinship nomenclature helps in strengthening
the primordial attachments which serve as a powerful tool of motivation and
mobilization of individuals and social groups’.38 Al-Naqeeb goes on to imbue

the phrase with meaning in three primary ways: it allows for ‘group cohesion;’
it constitutes ‘an organizing principle’, and it encompasses ‘a general (popular)
mentality, which governs all forms of political relation’.39 Political tribalism can
therefore explain political, economic and social behaviour in rentier states.
Further, political tribalism is flexible and can adapt to existing circumstances,
untethered from a nomadic lifestyle.40
Al-Naqeeb also highlights that, in the Arabian Peninsula, political tribalism is
‘very closely and organically tied to religion, which endows it with an additional
source of legitimacy’.41 Tribalism and religion, then, become primary modes of
justifying the continued rule of GCC monarchs. In the Arabian Peninsula, he
contends, concepts of citizenship and state responsibilities are non-existent due
to the strength of the central government, with tribal rulers instead relying on
concepts of shūrā and the Qurʾan.42 The case of Kuwait complicates al-Naqeeb’s
conception of the tribal rentier state as one without participatory government,
since it houses a politically active parliament. Nonetheless, political tribalism,
supported by Islamic legitimacy, does seem to perpetuate strong states, as
predicted by Ibn Khaldun. In al-Naqeeb’s view, ‘those states in which social
integration was attempted by means of secular nationalism are less stable than
monarchical states based on religious legitimacy’.43 The events of the Arab
Spring, in particular the resilience of monarchical states of the GCC, even in the
face of limited protest, revealed the extent to which this assertion is true.
Sulayman Khalaf and Hassan Hammoud also recognize the ability of tribal
connections to support the strong governments of GCC states. They describe the
undergirding political structure inside such states as a coalition of ruling family,
merchants and tribal leaders.44 As they explain, ‘[t]he process of coordinating
and balancing the interests of such social and political groups did not rest only
on a particular system of economic stratification, but was at the same time
supported by the existence of a mixture of tribal sentiments and religious Islamic
ideology’.45 The three pillars of state legitimacy are thus defined, in Khalaf and
Hammoud’s view, as tribalism, Islam and, in the post-oil era, oil welfarism;
the combination of the three, they contend, is required to guarantee survival
of the strong states of the GCC, reflecting Kostiner’s earlier hypothesis about
the symbiosis between rentierism and tribalism.46 Tribalism and rentierism, in
Khalaf and Hammoud’s view, also appear to reinforce one another. Tribalism
is critical in this formulation, in particular due to the ability of tribal language
to personalize and informalize politics in small states since such language is,
ultimately, ‘a political language’.47
Introduction 11
Patricia Crone crucially points out, however, that tribal links have also
informed economic relationships in GCC states, in addition to holding political
capital. Indeed, tribes were initially organized not only by locality, but by
occupation, since their members engaged in pastoral or agricultural nomadism.48
Importantly, ‘[i]t is not for nothing that Arab tribes excluded all specialists (such
as smiths and entertainers) from membership. The more differentiated and
dispersed a tribe becomes, the less well the principle of collective responsibility
works and the more diluted tribal solidarity will accordingly become.’49 With
the development of commercial industry, class came to displace tribe affiliation,
forcing members of nomadic tribes to readjust. With the rise of the commercial,
or merchant class, labour came to be proletarianized and tribal values came to be
challenged, as described by Khalaf and Hammoud.50 Certainly, as they describe,
when the tribe ‘ceased to exist as a self-sufficient, self-perpetuating unit of
production’, tribes were transformed into ‘units of occupational stratification
involved in different kinds of labor’.51
Existing literature has made great progress in linking tribalism increasingly
to modern life and practices in nation states, with this linkage having been made
even more explicit through the perpetuation of certain state activities. Indeed,
‘[t]hrough elections, National Day celebrations, and the social prerequisites by
which access to the state and its resources is achieved, individuals are increasingly
called upon to express and utilise the consanguineal linkages of tribe’.52 Ali Alshawi
and Andrew Gardner document this process in the Qatari case, emphasizing that
‘[t]he idiom of the tribe serves as a framework by which this form of social power
is established and aggrandised’.53 Tribes, then, serve as a means of organizing and
classifying what are otherwise somewhat homogenous citizen populations, as
other academics have noted. Also echoing the sentiments of earlier scholarship,
Alshawi and Gardner highlight that badū is today more a marker of identity
than of a way of life, and that this identity has increasingly become linked to
national heritage, with tribe, bolstering rather than challenging the power of the
nation state.54 Indeed, reference to tribalism becomes a means of reaffirming
rootedness of ruling families in relatively recently independent states. As Alshawi
and Gardner explain, ‘tribes were viewed as an adaptive social form specifically
configured to socially and politically organize people distributed across the vast
territories required for pastoral nomadism on the arid Arabian Peninsula.’55
Today, tribes seem increasingly linked to the pre-oil history of the Arabian
Peninsula, something that ruling elites have in turn connected to authenticity
and heritage, and which allows for exclude certain classes of residents (namely
large expatriate populations) from the benefits of citizenship.
Despite the lack of literature on the specific political role of tribes, scholars
of the Arabian Peninsula have long described it as a traditional or tribal society.
Rarely has this tribal character been analysed in the region in terms of political
relevance, however, except in countries with weak central governments like
Yemen. In such states, ‘the strong presence of tribes […] is due to the corruption
and weakness of the state institutions. The tribes in Yemen provide social order
outside the formal system [….] they provide basic rule of law in the form of conflict
resolution and regulation.’56 Because smaller states of the GCC have strong and
relatively effective governments, the same dynamic does not exist there. Rather
than maintaining their role as service providers, then, tribes in other parts of
the GCC tend to find a role in supporting or challenging the existing rulership.
F. Gregory Gause III cites tribalism and Islam in the GCC as ‘important arms
of the state, providing institutional support and ideological legitimation to the
regimes’.57 As a result, he explains, GCC governments tend to grant the use of
public space and arguably greater political freedom primarily to these groups.
Limiting freedom to movements except for tribal and religious actors has
led most independent political groupings, logically, to form around the tribal
or religious lines, as mosques, religious schools or tribal meetings are the easiest
locations (outside of private homes) for people in the region to gather relatively
freely, regardless of political restrictions. As Gause explains, ‘[e]stablishing state
authority has necessarily meant subordinating Islamic and tribal institutions to
state supervision, if not outright control. However, that does not mean that those
institutions, and the rhetoric and symbols that accompany them, are politically
unimportant.’58 This political influence, however, is often informal and thus
dismissed in literature about politics in the Gulf which tends to focus on regime
politics. Consequently, it is still unclear how or when tribes exercise influence
on policymaking.
It also remains to be seen the extent to which tribal institutions, in particular
the majlis (plural majālis) or dīwāniyya (plural dīwāniyyāt or dīwāwīn), will be
able to survive in an era when populations are growing and becoming increasingly
urban.59 Still, the UNDP has recognized the majlis as ‘an important forum for
local social and political development’, thereby solidifying the institutional
importance of such informal forums for discussion.60 Uninstitutionalized
meetings of dīwāniyyāt and majālis still are the primary modes of civil society in
the GCC, despite civil society movements, whether state-funded or independent,
becoming increasingly influential in some states. The majlis remains a traditional
tribal element of political life, with the ruler’s majlis ‘the final court of appeal on
all important matters’, yet it has expanded beyond merely association with tribe
Introduction 13
or its leadership.61 The informal institution essentially constitutes ‘the substance

of day-to-day government’.62 Nonetheless, domestic political debates continue
largely through private majlis meetings, which are the site of ‘political give-
and-take and consensus-building’ on social, economic and political issues.63
The meetings also solidify the status of those who attend: ‘Regular attendance
to the weekly majlis of one or more of these potentates confirms one’s status
and credibility as a member of an influential elite group.’64 Further, the majlis
system has moved to the business world, with managers often using such forums
to provide employees a relatively informal space to voice their concerns.65 The
system, while allowing an informal mechanism of popular participation in
political life, also appears to support the traditional hierarchy that ultimately
bolsters ruling families in the region. Although rulers were traditionally
considered first among equals, as Eran Siegal points out, ‘[t]he tribal element
is basically more one of control and criticism than of primus inter pares as it is
mythically perceived’.66
Other scholarship by Calvert Jones has traced how, in the case of the UAE,
the government has self-consciously sought to convert bedouins, or badū, who
once populated the country into ‘a new kind of citizen, one who is more modern
in the eyes of rulers, more globalization-ready, and better prepared for the
post-petroleum era’.67 She therefore introduces the important concept of social
engineering when it comes to examination of the rentier states of the GCC and
how they have essentially sought to modernize their states by modernizing their
populations in a way that nonetheless preserves local culture and tradition.
Ultimately, Jones uses the phrase ‘entitled patriot’ to describe the population that
has emerged from the state’s social engineering efforts that have in fact made
these populations more aware of their privileged social and political position as
citizens, a distinction often linked to their shared tribal past.68
Courtney Freer has also examined the role of tribalism in elected bodies in
the GCC, coming to the conclusion that tribes are far more than mere clients of
rentier state governments, as has often been assumed by past scholarship.69 She
concludes that ‘because political life in the Gulf is so linked to social life, due to
the lack of institutionalized political openings, tribes remain the most influential
informal institutions in the region and are reliably turned to when governments
are considered unwilling or unable to answer citizen grievances’.70 As such, these
groups function as nascent civil society organizations, yet enjoy equally strong
social and political pull.
As can be seen in this review, much of what is recorded about desert life
and tribal heritage in academia currently comes from the works of Western
explorers, and then from Western academics who lived and worked in the region.
These descriptions and analyses are filtered through their own cultural lenses
and their experiences were often limited, as they were likely not often exposed
to the inner workings of the tribe due to language, cultural and social barriers
which greatly limit their exposure to and interactions with women in particular.
Many Arab scholars have since sought to examine these biases in books such
as Ammar al Sanjari’s Al-Bedu through Western Eyes,71 in which he claims that
the majority of those who came to explore the Arabian Peninsula had links to
colonial ambitions in the region and were for the most part unflattering in their
portrayals of the badū and of tribal practices in general. The reliance on Western
documentation of tribal and bedouin life is being increasingly challenged as
marred with ‘misunderstanding or misinterpretation’72 by local academics,
many of whom come from tribal or bedouin backgrounds themselves, and many
of whom are now offering their own views of the interaction between the tribe
and the state today, such as Mohammed al Bughaili’s book on Tribes and Power:
Tribal Political Activism in Kuwait.73 Others such as Abdelrahman al-Ibrahim
are seeking to find a more nuanced approach to the role of non-state actors such
as the tribe as a ‘balancing power’74 and by publishing in English offer a direct
alternative to texts published by Western academics. Abdulrahman al-Ibrahim
also points out the problematic practice of applying Eurocentric terms like
feudalism and bourgeoisie to the unique contexts of the Arabian Peninsula,75
and so, although we rely primarily on English scholarly sources, we also use the
Arabic terms commonly applied in the region to avoid confusion and to more
accurately describe and analyse the states under study. This book is intended
for a Western audience, and so we have focused on English language sources
for the most part, yet this study has also been careful to include established
and emerging voices from the region itself, whether in scholarly works or in
interviews, articles from traditional and new media sources, and a number of
interviews conducted with nationals within the three states under study.
Case selection
Though all GCC countries are often considered as a single unit, Michael Herb
makes an important distinction between the wealthier and less populous (in
terms of national citizens) rentier states of the GCC (Kuwait, Qatar and the
UAE) and their neighbours (Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia), explaining that
the former group has managed to use petroleum windfalls to perpetuate the
Introduction 15
strongest support system for their citizens.76 In addition to providing extensive

social welfare benefits, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE had ‘fail[ed] to wean citizens
from dependence on public sector jobs’,77 making employment part of the
rentier package.78 These wealthy states can also afford to employ large numbers
of expatriates to fill private sector positions, as well as jobs in service industries
that nationals consider undesirable, leading the state to employ some nine out
of every ten citizens.79 Further reinforcing the privileged position of nationals,
the governments of the wealthiest GCC states have constructed systems of
disbursements to citizens so extensive that Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE provide
the best examples of rentierism in the Gulf. Freer has thus distinguished them as
super-rentiers.80 Rentier state theory would lead us to believe that these states are
the least likely to house independent politically active groups of any type, and so
the existence of politically powerful tribes in such states challenges traditional
understandings of their government systems.
Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE are also Sunni majority emirates. They were all
influenced by British rule in varying degrees, and enjoy relatively stable internal
political environments. Nonetheless, these cases demonstrate a spectrum of
political activity among the GCC rentiers. The study of Kuwait, Qatar and the
UAE will be used to dispute the premises of rentier state theory by demonstrating
the political capital held by major tribes in these countries, even though each
case is unique. Indeed, one reason for the case selection is the variety these states
provide.
Kuwait is in many ways an anomaly – a wealthy rentier state with a vocal
parliament historically containing political blocs ranging from Salafis to secular
leftists. In such an environment, where electoral politics forms the centre of
political life, tribes have managed to maintain their political standing through
informal institutions like dīwāniyyāt81 and (technically illegal) tribal primaries
in which tribes determine which candidates they will support in parliamentary
elections. Kuwaiti tribes have thus adjusted to their political climate, maintaining
cohesion in a system which has historically fostered ideological, rather than clan,
identification. In response, the government has tried to mitigate tribes’ political
power in recent years by occasionally cracking down on previously outlawed
tribal primaries, for instance in 2008, in and by redrawing electoral districts.
Nonetheless, tribes have persisted as influential political actors in the GCC’s
most participatory state.
Qatar’s political system is less institutionalized and more personalistic than
that of Kuwait, with political power largely centralized in the hands of ruling
al-Thani family. While Shaykh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani (r. 1995–2013)
and his successor Shaykh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani (r. 2013-present) have
repeatedly voiced their intention to institute an elected legislature in the form of
a Shura Council (elections are now scheduled for October 2021), the only elected
body at present is the Central Municipal Council, responsible primarily for
local, and largely apolitical, issues such as road maintenance and public health.
In this environment, informal actors like tribes are the primary political agents.
The lack of political institutionalization and prevalence of tribal identification
in traditional Qatari society thus enhance their political role. Indeed, the use
of traditional tribal gatherings of majālis,82 even by the amir himself, to discuss
political issues demonstrates the degree to which Qatari tribes function as agents
of civil society and thus are influential in policymaking in that state.
The UAE contains the most segmented tribal environment of any of the
three states under study, considering its division into seven emirates with six
different ruling families. With the only elected body, the Federal National
Council, chosen by a small number of the population and having limited
legislative power, informal politics prevails. Tribes in particular exercise their
influence at the emirate level through appointed councils in those localities,
as well as informal majālis. At the federal level, tribal rivalries among different
emirates also inform policy decisions and have arguably helped to maintain
national cohesion. As in Qatar, the absence of a formal legislature allows space
for tribes to assert substantial political influence; unlike Qatar, though, tribal
cleavages often run alongside borders of individual emirates, in some ways
contributing to their importance.
Because these cases present different models of tribal engagement in
the smaller GCC states, they are instructive in demonstrating the degree to
which tribal politics influences policymaking and the political landscape of
the Arabian Peninsula’s super-rentier states. Further, variation among these
cases highlights the extent to which domestic politics in wealthy small GCC
states is often oversimplified, particularly in literature linked to rentier state
theory.
All three of these states have introduced forms of electoral democracy that
tribes have managed to penetrate, at least to a certain degree, and they therefore
provide us with interesting examples of how the interplay between tribalism,
rentierism and electoral systems, as well as a comparative political study among
three of the most economically similar states of the GCC. We will also examine
the role of small versus large tribes, as well as intra-tribal conflicts, and the use
of bedouin traditions and symbols by non-badū members of the population,
thus illustrating the persistent power of bedouinism and bedouin culture. This
Introduction 17
discussion will lead to a scholarly consideration of whether societies in the small

GCC states have become re-bedouinized in the modern era and, in particular,
whether the influence of bedouinism has slowed these states’ progress towards
more representative political systems.
Goals of this book
Given the extensive scholarship already conducted on tribes in the Arabian

Peninsula, this book is not attempting to look into the ancestry, anthropology or
sociology of tribes in that region. Instead, through this interdisciplinary study,
we hope to look into the modern usage of the terms tribe and tribalism as a
set of socio-political behaviours, which exist, perhaps against all odds, in the
framework of super-rentier states. To that end, we wish to examine super-rentier
governments’ selective use of tribes and the ways in which these policies have
either bolstered or fragmented national identity, as well as the ways in which
national branding and heritage projects focused on a desert past equates with
bedouinism and so-called ‘tribal values’. We also want to understand how super-
rentiers choose to engage with their tribal populations and the consequences of
these choices, as well as how tribal populations view these interactions and their
political as well as social consequences, in addition to how they have adapted
tribal practices to what we call ‘bedouin lite’, a concept which we elaborate on
throughout this book.
In the chapters that follow, we will demonstrate that independent socio-
political groups do exist in super-rentier states, much to the consternation
of traditional rentier state theory and that tribes are primary among them;
we will then demonstrate the ways in which both tribes and tribalism persist
in the rentier states of the GCC today, but have adapted since these states’
independence. Kuwait features an extreme manifestation of tribal autonomy,
even in the present day, with tribes acting essentially as political parties and in
so doing exerting political pressure in parliament. Qatar appears eager to avoid
instituting tribalized legislative elections, given the extent to which municipal
council elections have yielded tribally informed votes, and so tribal influence
remains politically influential as well as arguably omnipresent socially. The UAE,
because of its segmented tribal populations across seven emirates, has made
the most efforts to control what could be seen as competing tribes and tribal
influence, reasserting the place of the state and its institutions even as elections
continue to run largely along tribal lines.
While there is substantial historical and anthropological scholarship about

the tribe as a social unit, the modern super-rentier state has evolved considerably
even over the past decade, and so now is the time for a re-examination of tribes
and how states control or are controlled by tribes. Further, as the states under
study face the prospect of lower oil rents, most immediately due to the Covid-19
pandemic and in the long-term due to diminished demand for hydrocarbons,
tribes could also potentially become more powerful in their attempts to preserve
material benefits for their members, turning to self-interest as Salzman posits
is inevitable. In what follows, we re-examine the very real political and social
roles of tribes in the GCC’s super-rentier states, with a view to understanding
the interplay between rentierism and tribalism, as well as the intermingling of
the social and political in states whose institutions are complemented by very
real informal institutions, often informed by tribal or other family relationships.
By demonstrating the mechanisms through which tribes and tribalism exert
political and social influence in super-rentier states, we shed light on means
in which independent groups in these states exert real and sustained power
independent of large state structures.
The way forward
This book is divided into seven additional chapters. In the next chapter, we
address the directly political role played by members of the so-called badū
population, in particular examining ways in which Kuwaiti, Qatari and Emirati
ruling families interacted with these populations before and immediately after
achieving political independence. The chapter will also address the relationship
between members of the badū tribes and settled merchant populations of
haḍar, specifically how the state has managed and in some ways has encouraged
segregation between these groups. Analysis of citizenship laws will be helpful in
determining ways in which states of the GCC have perpetuated a separate badū
political identity, aside from the pre-existing social identity.
Chapter 3 will involve close examination of the ways in which tribes, which
predate nation state formations, have evolved socially to accommodate and at times
subvert the new rentier state models to their advantage. It will examine how these
badū tribes were rejected or embraced by post-settlement tribes in coastal cities
and how that dichotomy between inner-city and outer-desert tribes continues to
shape citizenship debates today. To that end, it will trace the development of tribes
Introduction 19
in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE from primarily political groups to socially coherent
bodies with shared political views and interests. It will pay particular attention to
describing the process of badū integration into state structures and broad-ranging
state-provided welfare systems as these emerged in the twentieth century.
The fourth chapter will analyse efforts, by citizenry and by the state, both
to define badū identity and to harbour its perpetuation through heritage
production and promotion. It will describe these in detail and identify points
of tension between grassroots and state-led efforts to promote badū identity for
political means, and specifically to boost a sense of shared national identity. In
particular, this chapter will address the underlying tensions, as well as areas of
commonality, existing between the state and tribes, both in terms of the political
roles they envision for themselves and the social values they promote.
Chapter 5 will highlight the political and social importance of tribal tropes
in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE with specific examination of their references and
particularly of state efforts to harness tribal power. It will show how the badū
population has come to influence not only the non-tribal populations, but also
the ruling elite, with the latter repeatedly referencing tribal tropes to enhance
their legitimacy.
Chapter 6 will examine electoral tribalism, or the degree to which tribal
alignment influences voter choice through in-depth examination of electoral
returns from the Kuwaiti National Assembly (parliament), Qatar’s Central
Municipal Council and the UAE’s Federal National Council. Although only
the Kuwaiti parliament holds substantial political authority at present, tribal
affiliation is proven to influence voter decision-making in the other two bodies,
suggesting that, even when fully elected legislatures are introduced in Qatar,
as is planned for 2021, and the UAE, voter choices would likely not be greatly
changed. This section thus posits that the existence of powerful tribes may
hinder the development of democratic practices and ideological politics.
Chapter 7, ‘Tribal intersections in the digital age’, will examine if and how
tribes have adapted to become politically and socially influential through new
media, including Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. We will assess the impact of
tribal social evolution online and off on tribal women and youth in particular.
In the substantive concluding chapter, we will assess the political and social
input of tribes in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, with specific focus on the extent to
which tribalism and its importance hinder or help the creation of modern state
project today. In short, depending on how it is being handled, it can either be
an impediment to ‘progressive’ citizenship, or a way to access a greater (perhaps
fairer) stake hold in policy making in these rentier states. We will examine the
unique interplay between tribalism, electoral politics and rentierism, with a view
to determining the comparative political influence of each in Kuwait, Qatar and
the UAE.
2
The historical relationship between badū

and ruling families
In this chapter, we endeavour to trace ways in which monarchical institutions

came into place and in some ways either replaced or reproduced the informal
tribal structures that preceded them in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE. Ultimately,
and rather unexpectedly, we find that tribal identity has in many ways been
bolstered to maintain national cohesion and loyalty in the Arabian Peninsula’s
ruling families discussed here.1 Combined with this dynamic is the rentier
nature of these states, whose vast oil wealth allows their governments to provide
handsomely for citizens; these states have therefore managed to successfully
take over the distributive responsibilities previously held by tribes, a major step
towards their consolidation of power. Nonetheless, tribalism remains politically
and socially significant. As Mehran Kamrava puts it, ‘[t]hroughout the Arabian
Peninsula, kinship, oil, and religion have coalesced to produce what appears to
be a “tribal ideology” that permeates most institutions and practices. Though
never formally articulated, this tribal ideology is not openly criticized either.’2
Indeed, despite their potential to challenge monarchical power, by emphasizing
the importance of ascriptive identity, tribal markers can also signal proximity to
the ruling family and so have become a particularly important part of social life
as well as signifiers of social standing in the Arabian Peninsula.
The country cases under study here reveal the prevailing political relevance of
tribalism, but also highlight the variety of tribal relationships apparent in states
that are very similar in many respects – even in terms of tribal composition. For
instance, Kuwait, as a consequence of having its present-day capital city settled
first of the three countries considered, has an entrenched urban merchant class
with a distinct identity, both politically and socially, from those perceived as
badū, or tribal; this division has become particularly influential and increasingly
clear in the country’s parliamentary elections, as discussed in Chapter 6. Qatar
and the UAE, however, were settled under unified political leadership after
Kuwait and were arguably more substantively affected by British presence, which
shaped both their initial sedentarization and coalescence into distinct states;3
the UAE’s tribal landscape is further influenced by the country’s organization
into seven distinct emirates, which has informed how the national government
has managed tribal populations. Below we trace the ties between the region’s
monarchies and indigenous tribal populations.
Kuwait
Members of the Bani Khalid tribe from the north-eastern segment of the Arabian
Peninsula initially settled Kuwait City in the seventeenth century. As Jill Crystal
notes, the al-Sabah ruling family are said to have been one of the first of the
larger Bani ʿUtub tribes to settle in Kuwait from the Najd in the early eighteenth
century. Initially, the family may have shared power in a rather informal division
with the al-Khalifa (the current ruling family of Bahrain), who managed pearling
and trade, and the al-Jalahimah, who were responsible for coastal security,
leaving the al-Sabah with ‘responsibility for explicitly political functions such
as city security and diplomatic, especially tribal relations’.4 In 1752, the al-Sabah
family’s rule more formally began in Kuwait, when the shaykh of the Bani Khalid
tribe and previous ruler, Sulaiman bin Muhammad al-Hamid, was succeeded
by Shaykh Sabah bin Jabir al-Sabah. Under his rule, the al-ʿAzimi tribe (or al-
ʿAwazim) became particularly important in protecting Kuwait City from attacks
from the outlying desert hinterlands, while the al-Sabahs of the Bani ʿUtub were
able to use their position on Kuwait Bay to secure their rule.5
Kuwait therefore transitioned to a settled state, at least with a sustained
settled urban centre in its present-day capital, earlier than its neighbours, with
the settlement primarily spurred by the growth of fishing, pearling and trade in
Kuwait Port.6 The status of the Bani ʿUtub from the Najd, however, as ‘aristocrats
of the desert’ was transposed onto urban society, with the Bani ʿUtub coming
to form ‘the ruling class’ of the growing Kuwait City, taking control of fishing,
pearling and trade, and critically important to the maintenance of al-Sabah
authority.7
The al-Sabah family, unlike other families of the Bani ʿUtub, was oriented
primarily towards the desert outside of the town centre, making them critically
important in maintaining links with that part of the population.8 Notably, the
al-Sabah is not the only ruling family of the GCC that belongs to the larger al-
ʿAnaza tribal confederation of the Najd, as the ruling families of Bahrain and
The Historical Relationship 23
Saudi Arabia are also part of the same tribal coalition.9 The al-Sabah family,
importantly, was able to come to power in Kuwait due to its ties to tribes,
particularly the ʿAjman, in the hinterlands, which became critically important to
political alliances.10 While many elite merchant families were oriented towards
the sea for trade and commerce, then, the ‘Sabah family remained oriented
toward the desert.’11 The al-Sabah family therefore always had important
political connections, although it was among the least wealthy of the prominent
families in what was Kuwait at the time.12 Because the ruling family depended
on merchants for funds, however, ‘from the beginning governance in Kuwait
was based on compromise and coalition-building, not extreme authoritarianism
or brute force’.13 Further, al-Sabah rule ‘was based more on competence than on
conquest or hereditary claims to greatness’, and the al-Sabah rulers themselves
recognized that their power was dependent on gaining support from families of
the Bani ʿUtub.14
Indeed, the al-Sabah rulers were not notably wealthier than other segments of
the population and largely were ‘first among equals’. Al-Shamlan describes them
in the 1800s: ‘[They] were not privileged from most of the Kuwaiti population
in any way. They were similar to the sheikh of a tribe. There was no distinction
between the sheikh and members of his tribe. The power of the ruler was
limited, and there were some Kuwaiti leaders who had more authority than the
ruler himself.’15 This egalitarian history likely influenced the consensus-driven
character of political life in Kuwait, which houses the most powerful legislature
in the GCC; indeed, merchant elites were more powerful than the al-Sabah
arguably until the discovery of oil, as the ruling family remained dependent on
them for funds until that time, and they benefited from Kuwait low customs
fees16 and international trade routes.
In 1899, Shaykh Mubarak al-Sabah signed an agreement with the UK which
granted the British Government control over Kuwait’s foreign affairs as well
as exclusive commercial agreements, a move which further cemented the al-
Sabah family’s position in power.17 Still, British influence in Kuwait was not as
wide-reaching as it was elsewhere in the GCC, as will be discussed at length
later. The British did, crucially, support the Kuwaitis against Ottoman attempts
to gain inroads; the UK in 1904 sent its first representative, a political agent,
to be based in Kuwait.18 As Crystal explains, ‘[b]y the time Mubarak died in
1915, he had established a strong bond with Britain. Although this bond left
Kuwait dependent on Britain, it also assured Kuwait’s political independence
from its neighbors and, however inadvertently, Kuwait’s eventual emergence
as an independent political entity in the international state system.’19 Further,
Shaykh Mubarak’s rule and his links with the British allowed Kuwait’s merchants
access beyond the regional economy and into global markets.20 The merchants
also remained powerful players domestically, even rebelling when Shaykh
Mubarak implemented new taxes on pearling in 1909 which led to the revocation
of this measure.21
The Battle of Jahrah in 1920 effectively solidified Kuwaiti independence,
albeit with British assistance, and helped in negotiating land rights with
Saudi Arabia’s King ʿAbdulaziz al-Saud (Ibn Saud) who sought to expand his
influence in the region.22 Nonetheless, victory in this battle was an important
step in subsuming tribal identities under a national Kuwaiti identity. As Claire
Beaugrand points out, King ʿAbdulaziz al-Saud’s imposition of a blockade on
tribal trade with Kuwait in 1921, which lasted until the mid-1930s, was another
means in which he sought to aggregate tribal support to fortify his position.23 As
Anthony B. Toth explains, ‘[p]ermitting access to the Kuwaiti market to some
tribes during times of privation manifested the power of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz over the
Bedouin just as much as denying them the same market during stringent periods
of blockade’.24 King ʿAbdulaziz al-Saud attempted to bring under his control the
al-ʿAjman, al-Mutayri (sometimes known by their plural form Matran), and al-
ʿAzimi (sometimes known by their plural form al-ʿAwazim) tribes, for whom
the blockade was particularly costly.25 The border between Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait was therefore arguably only imbued with meaning in terms of economic
value, particularly tribal access to markets.26
In his book on the history of Riyadh,27 William Facey describes the economic,
social and political ties of the established city dwellers and the bedouin tribes as
both symbiotic and predatory, where the latter sold certain animals and their
products, including dried camel milk, wool, woven goods and leather, in market
places and gained access to goods they would not be able to produce or procure
otherwise, such as dates, rice, wheat, coffee, cardamom and more importantly
weapons and ammunition, and household goods. However, at times of drought
or military attacks, the city dwellers were likely to be engaged in fending off
bedouin attackers, a cycle which continued until the formation of the modern
GCC states and the somewhat enforced sedentarization of the bedouins.
The discovery of oil in the 1930s spurred the formulation of more solid
borders and further strengthened the position of the political leadership under
the al-Sabah family who then had funds to back their claims to power; the al-
Sabah leadership received its first payment from Kuwait Oil Company in 1935,
at a time when the pearling industry faced major decline, when a trade embargo
with Saudi Arabia severely damaged merchants’ livelihoods, and when the
Great Depression was underway globally.28 Oil was discovered in commercial

quantities in 1938, with the first barrels exported in 1946.29
Notably, it was merchants, rather than members of Kuwaiti tribes, who had
been politically organized, at least in Kuwait City, first in the 1909 rebellion against
taxation and later in 1938 when merchants formed their own legislative body
to challenge leadership of the executive, especially in collecting and managing
the new oil revenue.30 The al-Sabah family managed to dissolve this assembly,
as it ultimately failed to find support outside the merchant elite; members of
prominent tribes, for instance, remained loyal to al-Sabah leadership. As Farah
al-Nakib explains, however, ‘the movement revealed that Kuwait’s rulers needed
to legitimize their control over the country’s newfound wealth and the sudden
and unprecedented level of government intervention in economic and social
affairs, particularly once oil revenues increased exponentially under Abdullah
al-Salem’.31 Indeed, in 1951, Shaykh ʿAbdullah (r. 1950–1965) made a 50–50
profit-sharing agreement with the Kuwait Oil Company, meaning that, by 1953,
revenues increased to $169 million and continued to increase every year.32 From
the start of the oil era, the government became focused ever more on expanding
the provision of social services to a larger number of Kuwaitis to secure and in a
sense justify their control of the state’s oil coffers.
In a largely homogenous ethnic environment, with the majority of the
national population Sunni and of Najdi origin, the major division in Kuwait
exists between fully urbanized long-time citizens (ḥaḍar) and newly naturalized
tribal figures (badū or bedouin), many of whom became naturalized in the 1960s,
Kuwaitis bi-l-tajnis, as opposed to Kuwaitis bi-l-ta’sis, considered the country’s
‘original’ inhabitants. A ḥaḍar is defined as a Kuwaiti ‘whose forefathers lived
in Kuwait before the launch of the oil era (1946) and worked as traders, sailors,
fishermen, and pearl divers’.33 Badū, in contrast, are, or are perceived to be,
‘immigrants, mostly from Saudi Arabia, who used to live on animal pastoralism’
and relocated to Kuwait between 1960 and 1980.34 In the words of Crystal, tribal
identity in Kuwait has remained important, not due to policies of the British, as
was arguably the case in the UAE,35 but rather because of ‘its economic uses to
the beduin and its political uses to the government’.36 Indeed, tribe has become
the major social category in Kuwait and, as a result and as will be discussed later,
has significant political consequences as well.
Kuwaiti citizenship policies have sharpened the badū-ḥaḍar division,
making it more overt there than perhaps in any other GCC state, though all
states implemented stricter citizenship laws in the wake of newfound oil wealth.
Kuwaiti nationality was initially defined in 1948 as belonging to those residents
whose family had been in Kuwait since 1899, as well as people born in the state
and Arabs or Muslims who had lived in the state for up to ten years.37 Following
the state’s first census in 1957, it was revealed that 45 per cent of the population
was expatriate; as a result of anxiety about this proportion, the 1959 nationality
law did not grant citizenship to people who had been born in Kuwait or to long-
term residents, but only to those settled in the state by 1920, the year of the Battle
of Jahrah which led to the construction of the third defence wall around Kuwait
City.38
Leading up to independence from the British in 1961, those who considered
themselves Kuwaiti were forced to report to committees with documentation
proving that they had been settled in Kuwait by 1920.39 This requirement, of course,
excluded tribes that had not yet been settled and thus lacked documentation of
their presence in the state. Beaugrand dubs the strict formulations of citizenship
laws an ‘urban snapshot conception of citizenship’, which ‘failed to embrace the
whole territory of the internationally recognised state, let alone acknowledge and
think through the reality of nomadism and tribal sedentarisation’40 – a sentiment
echoed by many Kuwaiti academics with a bedouin background today.41 Indeed,
because Kuwait’s citizenship policies privileged settled urban populations, they
led to the creation of a substantial population of people bidūn jinsiyya (without
nationality), as they were ineligible to claim Kuwaiti citizenship and unable to
return to their places of origin to claim citizenship there. Excluded from the
rights of citizens, members of this population are consequently also barred from
welfare benefits that citizens enjoy. Lacking identifying documents from any
country, members of this population often cannot find employment in their
home countries or cross borders to seek jobs elsewhere. Kuwait is estimated to
house some 100,000 bidūn.42 This issue has today become highly politicized, with
charges that members of certain tribes agitate for naturalization to inflate their
own representation in parliament and with the speaker of parliament, Marzouq
al-Ghanem, having put forward much contested new legislation in November
2019 to address the issue.43
After independence, only approximately one-third of the Kuwaiti population
were granted ‘original’ citizenship and were classed as founding citizens,
the majority of whom had been settled in towns or villages prior to Kuwaiti
independence.44 Some badū managed to gain citizenship later and thus have
been dubbed citizens through naturalization.45 Though fundamentally equal
before the law, members of the naturalized category were barred from voting or
running for parliament for thirty years – a requirement later reduced to twenty
years.46 Further, these tribal populations tended to be housed outside of the
urban centre, again solidifying their identity as distinct from the haḍar elites.
As al-Nakib puts it, ‘[t]his segregation contributed to fixing haḍar and badū
as mutually exclusive, and spatially bounded, social categories’.47 Such division
remains today and has major political consequences because these areas have
historically tended to receive government services of lesser quality than did
inner districts48 and because tribal voters tend to be concentrated in the present
day outlying Districts IV and V.
Tribal identity in Kuwait today

As a whole, the Kuwaiti Government strives to encourage national identification
above that of subnational loyalties like those of clan and tribe through its
management of the heritage sector discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4. Tribes
have historically been rarely mentioned publicly aside from during electoral
campaigns,49 but this has been changing over the last decade as will be examined
further in this book. Insofar as the government encourages tribalism, it is to use
symbolism of tribes to encourage loyalty to the Kuwaiti state. As Longva explains,
While effectively undermining the structure of the tribe, among other things
through the housing and education policies, the state is careful to cultivate
the external diacritica of tribal identity (e.g., tribal names) and the emotions
they elicit. At the same time, the badu are perfectly aware that the source of
their material well-being nowadays is the state, not the tribe. Increasingly, their
allegiance goes to the state, although the tribe conveniently provides the idiom
and imagery through which to experience and express this allegiance. We are
witnessing a shift in identification and loyalty from tribe to nation, deftly staged
and managed by the state, which appeals to both universalistic and particularistic
values to achieve its aim.50
And yet this shift has been disrupted recently by both electoral and selective
governmental tribalism, as well as tribalized housing policies that led to entire
blocks of government houses being occupied by members of a single tribe.51 The
shift away from tribe and towards state has therefore been both self-conscious
and incomplete in the Kuwaiti case as well as in the others under study in this
volume.
Uniquely in the Kuwaiti case, tribes have coalesced to form political blocs
contesting parliamentary elections. Initially, tribes in Kuwait tended to promote
‘service MPs’ who would secure material benefits for their constituents, a trend
which cemented haḍar beliefs that members of tribes had a transactional view
of politics. Indeed, while many members of the Kuwaiti haḍar population
consider tribes to be primarily interested in maintaining ties with the ruling elite
to maintain their access to state benefits, as suggested by Longva above, Kuwait’s
tribes have more recently become increasingly oppositional in their outlook.
Nathan Brown argues that Kuwait’s largest tribes (al-ʿAzimi and al-Mutayri,
followed by al-Rushayda, al-ʿAjman, and al-ʿAnaza) have become increasingly
aware of their political capital, specifically their ability to unite in order to block
government initiatives they oppose.52 As he explains, ‘[t]he tribes themselves
have grown far more sophisticated and demanding with regard to their political
agendas [….] Tribal primaries have allowed tribal members to use their votes in
a more united manner [….] And no longer can tribal deputies be bought cheaply
– they represent sizeable constituencies now and do not follow the government
blindly.’53 Al-Nakib, in many ways updating Longva’s earlier observations about
tribes’ reliance on the state, or at least perceived reliance upon it, explains that
‘while the state’s spatial policies to keep badū segregated was key to maintaining
a political balance between loyal and oppositional forces, the fact that the badū
were not only spatially isolated but also excluded through inferior benefits
and services made it difficult to maintain their long-term loyalty’.54 Indeed,
tribal loyalty can no longer be depended upon, and increasingly tribal figures,
most famous among them Musallam al-Barrak, have worked with non-tribal
members of the opposition to push for political reform which many members
of the haḍar population, eager to maintain the status quo, have opposed, in a
reversal of the previous arrangement in which merchants served as the primary
check on al-Sabah authority which was bolstered by its tribal allies. In fact,
Alsharekh argues that, after the 2012 protests that were mainly led by tribal
MPs and their constituents, Kuwait’s ruling elite turned towards cultivating a
political relationship with a ‘new’ state-sponsored merchant elite as a means of
balancing the newly oppositional tribal population.55
Qatar
Jill Crystal traces present-day Qatar’s modern history to 1766, when portions of
the Bani ʿUtub clan, the al-Khalifa and al-Jalahima, left what is today Kuwait for
Zubarah on the western coast of present-day Qatar to establish a settlement.56
Before that time, few settled towns existed in the interior of the Qatari peninsula,
aside from small fishing villages that were not completely sedentary.57 The al-
Thani, now the ruling family of Qatar and hailing from the Bani Tamim tribe,
are said to have migrated from Najd in present-day Saudi Arabia to the eastern
portion of present-day Qatar in the early eighteenth centuries;58 although they

may have been politically prominent prior to 1766, the arrival of the Bani ʿUtub
in Zubarah undermined any authority they had amassed, as Zubarah became a
successful trading port and pearling centre in its own right.59 In fact, Zubarah
became so successful that Persian and Omani troops attacked it, leading the
Bani ʿUtub from Zubarah and Kuwait in the 1770s to retaliate against both and
ultimately capture Bahrain in 1783.60 Many members of the Bani ʿUtub, namely
the al-Khalifa family who rules Bahrain today, left to settle on the island. Crystal
describes the departure of the Bani ʿUtub as critically important to Qatar’s
development, since it led to the end of political and trade alliances with other
members of that tribe.61 Further, their departure created a political vacuum; as a
result, in her words, ‘Qatar did not develop the centralized authority and strong
leaders that characterized its neighbors in Kuwait and Bahrain.’62
The al-Jalahima returned to Qatar after clashing with the al-Khalifa, and
Bahrain, through its al-Khalifa rulers, continued to exert limited influence over
Zubarah and other settlements on the Qatari peninsula; in fact, the UK had
signed protection treaties with Bahrain concerning the Qatari peninsula, which
was under Bahraini control, reflecting al-Khalifa predominance in that period.63
In the mid-nineteenth century, the al-Thani migrated to Doha from Fuwairat but
did not come to power in an organized or undisputed manner. Indeed, politics
of the Qatari peninsula were, until the end of the nineteenth century, largely
defined by outsides powers’ ambitions, namely those of the British, Ottoman
Empire, al-Saud, Oman and Bahrain.64
According to Fromherz, the al-Thani became the uncontested ruling
family after the establishment of dynasties in Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE,
with their rule initially limited to the area of present-day Doha, with Bahrain
claiming Zubarah, and with other tribes claiming much of the land north
of Wakra, the only other urban development at the time.65 Unlike Kuwait,
in which the ruling family rose to power through its ties to tribes in the
hinterlands, Ottoman and British authorities played a role in helping to
solidify al-Thani rule, leading to support, at least in Western scholarship, for
intertwining the rise of Qatar and the rise of the al-Thani family.66
Furthermore, due to the prevalence of pearling in Qatar’s nascent economy,
the settled community of Doha emerged at the end of the nineteenth century,
with the earliest settlement in the pearling town of Zubarah on the north coast
that dates to the eighteenth century. As Crystal explains, in contrast to Kuwait,
Qatar’s location outside of main trade routes, as well as its ecology, dictated that
it did not become as large of a global port as did Kuwait City, leading to generally
less trade and, as a result, a smaller merchant class.67 In her words,
[t]he different economy in turn affected the relative strength of social groups.
The basic actors were the same – the ruler, his family, Britain, the merchants, the
pearling workforce – but their size, strength, and consequently political role and
bargaining power differed from that of their Kuwaiti counterparts. In particular
the merchants were a weaker group. They were fewer in number and, completely
dependent on pearling, had fewer economic options [….] the merchants lacked
monopoly on trade, some of which was handled by the foreigners, some by the
ruler himself.68
In addition, many tribes from outside Qatari peninsula came to graze in that
area during the winter, further delaying permanent indigenous settlement.69 In
fact, many such tribes were loyal to the al-Saud, hailing from the al-Murrah and
al-ʿAjman tribes, leaving Qatari authorities little control over the interior of the
peninsula, especially given the strength of King ʿAbdulaziz al-Saud.70
On the whole, Qatar’s state apparatus developed later than did Kuwait’s.
As Crystal explains, ‘[h]istorically, the majority of Qatar’s inhabitants lived at
subsistence levels and depended for their livelihood on the desert or the sea. As
late as the middle of the twentieth century, Qatar’s total population remained
less than 30,000.’71 In contrast, Kuwait as early as the late nineteenth century
was growing and prospering.72 During this period of the eighteenth century,
in Crystal’s words, ‘Kuwait was already a political unit. Qatar was not, it had
no central authority. The peninsula consisted of a few sleepy fishing villages
governed informally by local Shaikhs, transitory nomadic camps, and two recent
and growing settlements tied to Bahrain.’73 By 1862, the small settlements of
Bidaa, Doha, and Doha al-Saghira (all of which comprise present-day Doha)
were united under Muhammad bin Thani and a Bahraini governor from the
al-Khalifa family.74 By 1867, the relationship between Muhammad bin Thani
and the governor had deteriorated, leading the al-Thani family to confront
Bahrain.75 In 1868, Colonel Pelly negotiated an agreement with Muhammad bin
Thani, the first time the British formally recognized Qatari partial autonomy
from Bahrain,76 following Bahraini attacks on Qatar, which had violated the
1835 maritime truce and therefore required British attention.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the al-Thani family, who hailed from one
of the oldest and largest tribes in the Arabian Peninsula,77 gathered power on the
east coast of the Qatari peninsula, despite Crystal’s claim that it had not historically
been prominent or even had a long history in Qatar itself (she suggests that the
al-Sudan was arguably the most powerful settled tribe in Qatar at the time).78
Nonetheless, the al-Thani family managed to secure their position of power

largely by their mercantile prowess which allowed them to amass a considerable
fortune and social standing,79 and by developing ties with the Ottomans who built
a fort in Doha after occupying Hasa in 1872, and later with the British.80 Qatar,
however, lacked a powerful indigenous merchant class. Because of the lack of
small merchants of the type seen in Kuwait and Dubai, there was a vacuum of
power for the al-Thani family to enter.81 Meanwhile, on the coast, Qatari pearl
divers tended to resist what they considered unfair labour practices due to their
ties to tribes that granted them mobility, arguably weakened the merchant class,
and limited political authority of the rulers at that time.82 In the words of then
ruler of Qatar Muhammad al-Thani to Palgrave, ‘we are all from the highest to
the lowest slaves of one master, pearl.’83
Because the al-Thani family traditionally exerted control primarily around
Doha, formerly Bidaa, which had a population of around 12,000 people
before the discovery of oil, there were, according to Rosemarie Said Zahlan
‘[c]ontextual documents of the British and Ottoman powers, both of which
were interested in legitimizing Al-Thani rule and ignoring or sidelining
the rival claims of other tribes, largely support a narrative of complete co-
dependence of the rise of Qatar and the rise of the Al-Thani’.84 The presence
of an Ottoman threat also allowed Shaykh Jassim, the son of Muhammad bin
Thani, to use rivalry between them and the British to help secure power for
himself and his family.85 Indeed, ‘[i]f Qatar’s conflict with Bahrain helped
to consolidate Al-Thani power, Qatar’s assertion of independence from its
major inland colonial protector – the Ottomans – provided Jassim Al-Thani
with an aura of authority’.86 Following the Battle of Wajbah in 1892, when
Shaykh Jassim al-Thani managed to bring together Qatari tribes, notably the
Bani Hajar, one of the largest tribes on the Arabian Peninsula,87 to defeat the
Ottomans, he was considered the country’s founder.88 Furthermore, this event
led to ‘a final halt to Bahraini claims over Qatar; never again was the authority
of the Al-Thani in Qatar to be seriously questioned by the Al-Khalifah’.89 The
Ottomans ultimately renounced their claims to Qatar in 1913, and in 1916
Qatar was brought into the trucial system when Shaykh ʿAbdullah bin Jassim
al-Thani signed a treaty with Britain.90 Shaykh Jassim, in addition to having
helped solidify Qatar’s independence from Bahrain, is today seen as the
country’s founding father.91
Despite such changes, al-Thani rulers enjoyed limited authority beyond
Doha before the discovery of oil, and in fact tribal disputes were often resolved
by a tribe simply leaving, demonstrating the continued fragility of settled life.92
For instance, after the shaykh of the al-Ainain, then in Doha, had a dispute with
the Bahraini ruler, members of the al-Khalifa destroyed their settlement and
threatened to force their move to Bahrain; they moved to Wakrah to avoid this
fate.93 Further complicating governance was the fact that ‘[t]here was simply
no known tradition of dynastic succession in Qatar before the treaty of 1868
between Muhammad bin Thani and the British Colonel Pelly’.94 Similar to the
situation of ruling tribes in other Gulf states, by the 1860s, the al-Thani were
considered first among equals.95
By 1913, territorial expansion under King ʿAbdulaziz al-Saud came closer
to Qatar, leading Shaykh Abdallah bin Jassim al-Thani (r. 1913–1949), the new
ruler of Qatar, to sign a formal protectorate agreement with the British through
the Anglo-Qatari Treaty of November 1916, with outside threats once again
threatening Qatari-British ties.96 British presence in Qatar, as in the UAE, ‘helped
solidify the status quo tribal arrangements’.97 It was during this period, then,
that al-Thani power and independence from Bahrain were institutionalized. In
fact, the treaty’s third article granted Shaykh ʿAbdullah sole authority to make
personal arms purchases from Oman, which were to be used by him and his
so-called dependents, yet he was prohibited from arming other, non-al-Thani-
linked tribes.98 This treaty with the UK, then, managed to ‘redefine and stabilize
the identities of local political units. They forged the first link between political
sovereignty (previously extended over tribes) and territory. The treaties also
gave power and legitimacy to the particular signatory Shaikhs.’99
Qatar’s dependence on pearling, as well as its late settlement under a unified
political leadership, nearly led to economic ruin in 1929 due to the worldwide
economic depression, which coincided with the introduction of Japanese
cultured pearls, ushering in ‘a period of unprecedented hardship’.100 Indeed, with
the collapse of the pearling industry in the 1930s due to the introduction of the
Mikimoto cultured pearl in Japan and due to global economic decline, much
of Qatar’s merchant population migrated.101 While almost half of the Qatari
population is estimated to have been involved in pearling, only 25 per cent of the
Kuwaiti and 31 per cent of the population of the present-day UAE were involved,
leading these ports to become home to other types of trade.102 The collapse of
pearling in Qatar, however, nearly wiped out its population.103
Kamrava explains that it was the arrival of oil, which was discovered in 1939
and exported in commercial quantities in 1949,104 rather than indigenous tribal
ties or British influence, which ‘hastened the transformation of the Qatari state
from a quasi-tribal institution to a comparatively more bureaucratic one. Prior
to oil wealth, one of the primary means of securing patronage had been through
land distributions – a practice that continues to this day – resulting in the

emergence of the Al Thanis as large landowners, as early as the 1950s.’105 Similar
such practices took place throughout the GCC as a means of further solidifying
state power in the face of known tribal threats, and today state ownership of land
remains a major policy issue in Kuwait,106 as well as Bahrain.107
The Al-Thani family’s rule

The ruling family in Qatar has historically been notably fractious. Lacking a
rule of primogeniture, succession has rarely been uncontested.108 When Shaykh
ʿAbdullah bin Jassim al-Thani took power in 1913, his twelve brothers turned to
Saudi Arabia for support to challenge him, which in turn led Shaykh ʿAbdullah
to rely on British support.109 Shaykh ʿAbdullah’s successor Shaykh ʿAli bin
ʿAbdullah al-Thani (r. 1949–1960) faced even more opposition as oil revenues
increased, meaning access to the ruler had monetary value. To maintain his
position and stability, Shaykh ʿAli ‘limit[ed] the civil list to the ruling family
and formalis[ed] the practice of granting larger allowances to those most closely
related to him’.110 Nonetheless, Shaykh ʿAli hesitantly abdicated in favour of his
son Ahmad bin ʿAli al-Thani (r. 1960–1972) in 1960 to prevent his nephew
Shaykh Khalifa bin Hamad from taking power, yet Shaykh Khalifa eventually
ousted his cousin ʿAli in 1972 in a bloodless coup shortly after independence.111
Shaykh Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani (r. 1972–1995), to protect his branch of the
family’s position, named his son Hamad crown prince, which spurred family
resentment and led to a coup attempt that was uncovered in 1983.112
Shaykh Hamad bin Khalifa in turn deposed his father in a bloodless coup in
1995, only to thwart an allegedly Saudi-backed coup attempt in 1996. Notably,
each of these coups had distinctive tribal elements:
In each of these coups, members of different factions of the ruling family turned
to different tribes for support (including the al-Murrah in 1996), and sometimes
to rulers of other countries (typically Saudi Arabia). With each succession, the
relative weight of the tribes shifted, depending on their allegiances. But the
overall process of succession through coups reinforced the relative power of
the tribes in Qatar in ways that other Gulf states did not experience.113
Also shaping this unique dynamic is the fact that the al-Thani family is the
largest in proportion of the total local population, amounting to 20,000 people
or half the Qatari population in the 1980s, in Fromherz’s estimation, making
divisions among their members less surprising.114
Because the family has been historically divided, tribes at times have provided
cover for the ruling family; for instance, in 1963, when Arab nationalists
demonstrated in Doha after the overthrow of ʿAbd al-Karim al-Qasim in Iraq,
tribes patrolled the streets.115 Fromherz explains: ‘[I]t was tribes external to
Al-Thani family, not the fractious Al-Thani family itself – which was as much
a problem as a help to the Emir – that helped guarantee the security of the
Emir.’116 Fromherz further posits that there are seven reasons for the successful
al-Thani dynasty in Qatar: the length of their reign, continuity of succession,
persistence of their settlement, a vacuum of political authority, British and
Ottoman intervention, traditional forms of allegiance, and their function as a
unifying symbol for diverse peoples of Qatar (Shaykh Jassim in particular is seen
as having decisively united the people of Qatar and led them to victory).117 All
of these factors have contributed to the very strong institutionalized political
position of the al-Thani family.
Tribal identity in Qatar today

As in the other two states under study in this volume, due to the handsome
disbursements granted to citizens, Qatari citizenship laws have been strict.
Beginning in 1961, citizens of Qatar were required to have lived in the country
since 1930 and have ‘regular legal residence’ inside the country for the same
period. In 1963, the government issued legislation restricting foreigners from
buying real estate and demanding that businesses be majority owned by Qataris.
Around the same time, Amir Shaykh Ahmad (r. 1960–1971) ‘fortified the
position of Al Thani by granting members preferential access to land or real
estate development in addition to their allowances and domination of leading
positions in the government and nascent administration’.118 These measures
resulted in part due to demands from the National Unity Front, which emerged
in 1963 uniting ‘Qatari workers, low-ranking Al Thani shaykhs and disaffected
nobles’ and called for a general strike, more social services, an elected municipal
council, and preferential hiring for citizens in the public sector.119 Anxiety about
the country’s growing expatriate population also led to the stipulation in voting
law that a Qatari citizen can only vote in municipal council elections if his or
her family has been living in the area before 1930, the start of the oil era.120
Further, legislation introduced in 2005 specified that Qatari citizenship could
not be granted to more than fifty applicants per year.121 Kuwait’s 1959 citizenship
law also specified that only fifty people could be granted citizenship in any single
year,122 amended to 4000 in 2019.123
Qatari society, like Kuwaiti, has traditionally been divided into badū and haḍar,
even though both groups were historically transitory, with badū migrating to Qatar
for the winter and haḍar leaving Qatar for the summer pearl diving.124 The haḍar
generally were more often involved in pearl diving but also included craftspeople,
many protected by the al-Murrah tribe.125 The hwala historically comprised another
significant group among the haḍar, as they were Arabs from areas in Persia where
Arabic was spoken and who migrated back and forth, including many prominent
members of Qatar’s present-day merchant class.126 Some members of the haḍar
were also professionals, like Islamic scholars or healers.127 The badū, in contrast,
were more homogenous ethnically, primarily Sunni and generally nomadic; they
tended to herd livestock and move seasonally, remaining primarily in the interior
and with many returning to Saudi Arabia.128 When they did settle, however, they
did so largely by tribe,129 as will be detailed later.
The al-Murrah emerged as one of Qatar’s most powerful tribes, yet preserved
many cross-border connections, with some members serving as border guards
for Saudi Arabia and regularly crossing the border into the 1950s.130 The Bani
Hajar were also historically linked to the kingdom yet defended Qatar alongside
Shaykh Jassim in the Battle of Wajbah against the Ottomans; other tribes were
considered loyal to the al-Khalifa family of Bahrain, and so have not managed
to become prominent in Qatar.131 Notably, most of Qatar’s other tribes are also
from outside the present-day Qatari peninsula, like the al-ʿAjman from Hasa
province in Saudi Arabia and the al-Mansuri (often referred to as their plural,
al-Manasir) from Trucial Oman and the UAE.132 Interestingly, then, though all
GCC states face the challenge of managing tribes that have members across
borders, Qatar faces the additional challenge that nearly all tribes, aside from
the Bani Hajar and Kaban, had other primary residences elsewhere and so owed
allegiance to other leaders, typically the Saudis, making it historically difficult
for Qatari rulers to exert control since members of these tribes could always
leave.133 Considering this fact, it is remarkable that the Qatari population today
is considered homogeneous.
Still, divisions do exist; Crystal claims that Qataris of bedouin origin tend
to find employment in the police and in the military,134 perhaps more readily
than other segments of the local population. Indeed, Fromherz points out that
badū members of the population had provided protection to the leadership
as a security force; today they are also politically useful yet in a different way
– essentially, as Fromherz puts it, ‘to shore up “heritage” identity’.135 While in
the past, members of badū populations provided reliable pillars of support for
the ruling family, today their loyalties remain less clear, largely since the dawn
of the oil era has obviated the need for tribes to provide materially for their
populations.136
Qatar today is largely urbanized, with more than 95 per cent of its population
in cities, around half in Doha alone.137 Further, new settlements sprung up
around oil wells in Dukhan, and Doha spread to overcome nearby towns of
Bidda, Rayyan and Wakrah.138 New jobs also attracted foreigners, leading to
the creation of the Nationality Law of 1961, which granted Qatari citizenship
to anyone who could prove their family had lived there prior to 1930; later laws
solidified greater property and business ownership laws to Qataris, as well as
granting them ‘exclusive or preferential access to free or subsidized healthcare,
utilities, education, and a range of other services’.139
Tribes have remained the country’s most powerful organizing principles and
retained their own independent leaders; the government’s settlement policies in
Qatar, as in Kuwait, also contributed to the resilience of tribal lines. Indeed, a
single tribe typically settled into a single neighbourhood or town – for instance
the al-Murrah in Rayyan, the Al bu ʿAinan in Wakhrah, the al-Sudan in Fareej
al-Sudan and the al-Khulaifi family into the Khulaifat neighbourhood.140 These
settlements, like badū neighbourhoods in Kuwait, are self-sufficient, housing
mosques and majālis, and more such settlements were built over time.141
Indeed, beginning in 1961, the Qatari Government took up a programme for
resettling badū; this process was meant to diminish ‘the economic basis of tribal
organizations’, yet members of the same tribes still tended to resettle in the same
areas where they had lived historically.142 Ironically, and rather unexpectedly,
then, settling tribes did not have a major effect on their strength and in some
ways in fact reinforced it.
The Qatari Government tried to urbanize tribes by settling them in the early
twentieth century, mainly by offering free housing and jobs, especially those in
the military. Complicating these efforts, however, was the fact that the Saudis
were implementing the same policy at the same time, leading tribes to have
shifting alliances, as seen with the al-Murrah.143 Ali Alshawi points out that the
Qatari Government at times seemed to be encouraging rivalry between tribes.144
He notes that the government granted bureaucratic positions to a number of
tribal members to breed competition rather than cooperation, which would
then allow the government to serve as mediator; specifically, the government
fostered competition between the al-Murrah and Bani Hajar tribes, the latter
more favourable to the al-Thani family since they had historically been loyal
to them.145 By employing an increasing number of foreign workers, who lack
access to local patronage and social networks, the Qatari Government managed
to exert more control; it also managed to control religious messaging by relying

largely on a non-indigenous clergy,146 something which has raised questions
in recent years about the religious and political orientation of the Qatari
leadership. The state also managed to use oil revenues to aid the creation of a
strong business sector by passing on opportunities to members of the al-Thani
family or smaller merchant families.147 To strengthen ties with all Qataris, the
government provided state employment and more government services, in
addition to advancing citizens’ rights. A 2004 labour law allowed Qataris to form
trade unions and even the right to strike.148 Further, the government hoped that
elections could diminish the political relevance of major tribes, while appointed
bodies have tended to hold members of major tribes yet do not always have
significant power in the policymaking process.149
It is worth noting that Qatar, perhaps more so than its neighbours, has long
been forced to incorporate expatriates, at least to a certain extent, into domestic
life. Zahlan makes the important point that even before oil was discovered
nearly half of the population was non-local, comprising slaves (of mostly
African ethnicity), Iranians, Baharna (Shi’i Muslims historically from the eastern
portion of the Arabian Peninsula) and nomadic tribes; further, most of Qatar’s
tribes actually hail from outside of the peninsula itself, calling into question
claims of original citizenship.150 Perhaps for this reason, the Qatari Government
has abandoned efforts to completely diminish the role of tribes in Qatar and
instead has sought to bureacratize them due to what Zahlan considered in the
1970s a lack of ‘corporate identity’ on behalf of the al-Thani ruling family and
the relative autonomy of large tribes.151 For instance, though the major tribes
were resettled by the state, they retained cohesion by settling together.152 Indeed,
‘[t]he emerging bureaucracy of Qatar today is a hybrid of the old tribal world
and the new world of management and job descriptions’.153 Tribe, as Fromherz
explains, remains the major identity marking in Qatar, although after the start
of the GCC crisis in 2017 national identification increasingly came to the fore.154
The UAE
The UAE’s tribal profile differs from those of the other countries discussed,
due in large part to its division into seven semi-autonomous emirates under
a federal system. Abu Dhabi primarily housed members of the Bani Yas tribal
grouping; Dubai traditionally housed the Al Bu Falasah of the Bani Yas; Sharjah
and Ras al-Khaimah were ruled by the al-Qassimi (sometimes referred to by
their plural form, Qawasim); Ajman was under the control of the al-Naʿimi,
Umm al Quwain ruled by the al-Mualla who are descendants of the al-Ali tribe,155
and Fujairah was under the control of the al-Sharqi (Sharqiyin) yet traditionally
dependent on Sharjah for trade and the second largest tribe in the Trucial States
after the Bani Yas.156 Indeed, the collection of emirates was formerly known as
the Trucial States and was grouped together primarily due to a series of treaties
with the United Kingdom. As in Qatar, due to the scarcity of water and lack
of available fertile land, large numbers of the early tribal population moved
to coasts during parts of the year, leading to ‘a seminomadic pattern’ in some
emirates, and ‘a great deal of versatility among the tribes’.157
Until the 1960s, despite the discovery of oil, the present-day UAE was by and
large ‘a collection of small settlements situated along inlets that formed natural
harbors for maritime activities’.158 Each settlement was under the notional control
of tribal shaykhs whose authority rarely extended far beyond the port and areas
immediately outlying, and was symbolized through the construction of a fort.159
If one such fortress was captured, the ruler was effectively overthrown, leading
to a period of what Andrea B. Rugh refers to as ‘continuous warfare’ in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, largely between tribal leaders defending
their land, resources, followers and trying to extend their sphere of influence.160
During this period and even before it, each ruler’s diwan, comprising the
shaykh’s appointed advisors (many from the ruling family) and more informal
majālis were the primary instruments of government, with references to the
majlis’s importance as ‘a vibrant forum for debate’ in Dubai’s ruler and UAE Vice
President Shaykh Mohammed bin Rashed’s personal website161 and ‘as an “open
house” discussion forum’ drawn from ‘Arab Bedouin traditions of consensus
and consultation’ on the UAE’s US Embassy website page.162 Historically, the
majlis system allowed what Christopher Davidson calls ‘mobile democracy’: if
a member of a tribe disagreed with a decision of the ruler or was dissatisfied, he
or she could move, essentially ‘voting with his feet’, as happened historically in
Qatar as well, adding to the political insecurity of this era in what is today the
UAE.163
Demonstrating that patterns of patronage predated the establishment of the
state, tribal rulers often used subsidies to guarantee their own influence and
protection.164 Taxes were also collected from local populations to raise funds
for different projects at the local level, demonstrating the extractive capacity
even of tribal units.165 Davidson points out that the increasing sedentarization of
life within the UAE necessitated the expansion of government function as well,
something that British administration of the Trucial States largely facilitated.166
The Trucial States’ overall tribal fractiousness was encouraged and manipulated
by the British during their period in residence, as tribes became critical to their
ability to delegate power and allocate rents.167 The UAE, due to its arrangement
into distinct emirates, some of which like Dubai and Sharjah have for centuries
engaged in trade, while others had remained more inward-looking, has also
led to a segmented merchant class. Furthermore, ‘the merchants’ influence was
weakened by tribal divisions and regional division among the different emirates.
Overall, the result was the creation of a new merchant class, sometimes out of
the old merchant class, sometimes out of other social groupings.’168 By and large,
then, differentiation among the emirates has concerned tribal structure, rather
than issues of class or standing.169
Unlike in Kuwait and Qatar, however, the British played an important role
in expediting the settlement of Emirati towns during the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries.170 In particular, British endorsement of a local ruler’s
authority was a boon, allowing rulers to use British mechanisms to enforce
the status quo and, to a certain extent, political quiescence: ‘[W]here they had
previously relied on personal persuasion to achieve their goals, they now had
to impose British fines on their followers.’171 The fines were so contested that
entire segments of tribes would often leave town to avoid payment; this practice
led to the imposition, in 1879, of a British treaty prohibiting pearl workers from
moving to another jurisdiction to avoid payment of outstanding debts.172 By the
1950s, the British sought out tribal shaykhs to help manage certain areas – a
move which essentially led tribal relations to be ‘frozen in time’ since that period,
according to Rugh.173 Further, British-led militias in the Trucial States were often
called upon to protect these tribal leaders, further enhancing their position.174
The British payment of oil and air-landing concessions to tribal rulers personally
again enforced their authority, as it rendered them independent of their local
populations for financial support.175
The trajectories of Emirati ruling families, then, ‘are partly the result of
… the particular distribution of political power at the moment the British
were looking for local administrators’.176 In fact, the current structure of
the UAE reflects ‘a deliberate lack of British involvement in the Trucial
States’ internal affairs until a late date, leaving tribal loyalties and structures
largely unaffected’.177 When British authorities initially became involved in
managing the foreign affairs of the Trucial States through a series of treaties
in the nineteenth century, they essentially froze in place the existing tribal
power relationships at that time, with the Bani Yas eventually overtaking
al-Qassimi as the primary tribal force in the country.178 In this way, then, the
British managed to prevent indigenous challenges to the new arrangement,
‘thereby bringing an end to the previously described ebb and flow of tribal
politics’.179 Treaties with the British also, as described by Davidson, formalized
the primacy of coastal tribes and towns over those in the interior, which in turn
allowed these coastal rulers to more easily gain control of land from the interior.180
As William A. Rugh summarizes, ‘[t]he political system functioning today in
the UAE is essentially tribal and authoritarian. Each of the rulers of the seven
emirates holds his position because he is the senior personality in the leading
tribe of that emirate, and he is likely to be succeeded by his eldest son or brother.’181
Furthermore, then as now, leaders put in place ‘heavy subsidies to buy influence
and protection from other tribes’, with Lorimer describing the historical practice
of granting gifts to tribal leaders to maintain control over them.182 While in the
past, emirate leaders resorted to taxing their citizenry to raise necessary funds,
today the financial reserves of certain emirates, particularly Abu Dhabi, have
become ‘a mainstay for the federation’s continued cohesion [….] the issue was
rarely whether giving to the “have nots” was generous enough; but rather that
the “have not” tribal leaders did not want to give up any of their sovereignty in
exchange’.183 In fact, rather than demanding material benefits from the central
state, the constituent emirates initially hoped to maintain their independence
– with Ras al-Khaimah retaining its own military until 1996, the same year the
provisional constitution was made permanent.184
The individual emirates

Abu Dhabi, today the most politically powerful emirate and the country’s capital,
is under the leadership of the al-Nahyan family, which has long had connections
with inland tribes, strengthened after 1948 when Shaykh Zayed bin Sultan al-
Nahyan (r. Abu Dhabi 1966–2004; r. UAE 1971–2004), became then-Abu Dhabi
ruler Shaykh Shakhbut’s (r. 1928–1966) representative in the Al-Ain oasis, as
‘throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, Sheikh Zayed’s thirst for knowledge took
him deep into the desert, living alongside Bedouin tribesmen to learn all he
could about their way of life and connection to their surroundings’.185 Through
that position, Shaykh Zayed earned the respect and loyalty of the settled tribes
in the area, as he worked to improve conditions in the oasis.186
Notably, the al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, in addition to the al-Maktoum of Dubai,
trace their lineage to the Bani Yas federation, which comprises ‘20 subsections
originally centered around the Liwa Oasis’.187 Andrea B. Rugh asserts that, if
kin members of large tribes became politically problematic, they could have
been relegated to the category of outsider. Outside tribes, though not central to
decision-making, were important in maintaining security. For instance, tribal
rulers of present-day Dubai after its establishment in 1833 relied on the support
of the al-Qassimi to the east and the al-Nahyans to the west who were more
powerful. Indeed, Dubai lacked ‘military’ power yet had appealing harbour
facilities which neighbours often used in return for defending the emirate.188
On the other hand, Dubai, under control of the al-Maktoum family, remained
‘totally preoccupied with the development and emergence of its port as the only
one on the Trucial Coast’.189 As in Kuwait and Qatar, the shortage of fertile land
made settlement challenging and led people to coalesce around the coast; some
people even worked seasonally for the pearl trade before retreating into other
areas for other parts of the year.190 As pearling became more lucrative, ports grew
as did coastal towns alongside them. Still, the hierarchy of tribes that existed in
the desert was essentially mapped onto port cities and the pearling industry,
meaning that urbanization by no means ended tribal organization.191 As in
Qatar, where pearling was even more popular, a large number of expatriates
lived and worked in the UAE to staff the pearling industry.192 As late as the mid-
twentieth century, then, as Frauke Heard-Bey puts it, the creation of a state with
fixed boundaries was ‘out of tune with the traditional conduct of local politics
given that sovereignty over people was far from permanently binding, let alone
sovereignty over territory’.193
As elsewhere in the GCC, there was no tradition of primogeniture, yet the
oldest male relative of the previous ruler was often chosen for the position,
leading to considerable tension among male family members.194 This dynamic
led to violent successions in the al-Nahyan and al-Qassimi families, since
they were the most powerful and in the larger emirates; the stakes were lower
elsewhere, and so successions tended to be more peaceful.195 Indeed, the al-
Qassimi and Bani Yas, of which al-Nahyan was a part, were the primary tribal
groups in the present-day UAE through the end of the nineteenth century, with
the al-Nahyan traditionally ‘a land power’ and the al-Qassimi focused on trade
and maritime battles with colonial forces at sea.196
Once treaties were signed with the British, however, the al-Qassimi’s power
began to wane without a similar decline of the authority of the Bani Yas in Dubai
and Abu Dhabi, who instead became the primary tribal grouping by the end
of the century.197 Indeed, the British alleged that al-Qassimi’s so-called ‘piracy’
harmed trade in the Arabian Gulf, while members of the al-Qassimi family, such
as the current ruler of Sharjah Shaykh Sultan bin Mohammed al Qassimi in his
book The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf,198 have asserted that the British actually
wanted to stymie their maritime power to expand the East India Company; as a
result, the British demolished the harbour of Ras al-Khaimah in 1819 to destroy
the al-Qassimi fleet.199 The British, by virtue of their protectorate agreement,
imposed a series of treaties on local tribal leaders to stop maritime battles, the
most important of which was the Perpetual Treaty of Maritime Peace in 1853,
which led to the granting of British exclusive economic rights to the Trucial
States in 1892.200 The British divided territory once under al-Qassimi control
by recognizing the independence of Ajman and Umm al-Quwain; some locals
consider this measure as punishment for their having resisted British power.201
Due to British pressure, the al-Qassimi empire dissolved into the two separate
emirates of Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah, while the al-Nahyan has come to
control over 85 per cent of the total land mass of the present-day UAE.202 When
oil was discovered in Abu Dhabi, yet trace amounts were found in al-Qassimi
lands, it reinforced the power dynamic in favour of al-Nahyan. Ultimately, the
British managed to
freeze the principal power relationships of tribal groupings. Thus, the Al
Qawasim family and the Bani Yas tribal confederation which controlled what
are now the northern emirates and the emirate of Abu Dhabi, respectively, were
confirmed as the dominant elements within the Trucial States. The Bani Yas
eventually gained the upper hand in their rivalry with the Al Qawasim, largely
because the latter’s naval power had been eclipsed by the British and because the
Bani Yas were a broad, land-based confederation.203
Furthermore, because the British dealt with the Trucial States as a single unit,
their union into an independent state in 1971 seemed more natural.204 Indeed,
the British signed agreements with various tribal rulers from the Trucial States,
first with the rulers of Sharjah – in exchange for surrendering their own fleet
of ships, the British would provide protection.205 In so doing, ‘by the mid-
nineteenth century Britain had found a cost-effective means of maintaining a
strong influence over the area while containing indigenous power bases and
trade networks’.206 In Lord Palmerston’s words, ‘[a]ll we want is trade and land
is not necessary for trade; we can carry on commerce on ground belonging to
other people’.207 Despite British disinterest in internal affairs, gaining support
from the British became crucial to Emirati tribal rulers; without it, it became
difficult for some tribal leaders to retain their power.208
Emirati independence and the institutionalization of tribal

hierarchies
In December 1967, a Westminster white paper called for the closure of
British bases east of the Suez by 1971; the response from the ruling elite of
the UAE ‘was one of intense disappointment, as many felt that much of the
recent development work would stall or be undone without further British
support’.209 During this period, the seven Trucial States, in addition to present-
day Bahrain and Qatar, endeavoured to come together as an independent state.
When Bahrain decided to withdraw from the coalition over worries about
losing its independence, Qatar did the same, leaving the seven states of the
present-day UAE to negotiate among themselves. As Malcolm Peck describes,
this ‘process was elite-driven, quintessentially top-down. So long as the rulers
maintained the support of their extended families, clans and tribes, they could
act freely’.210
Once the provisional constitution was drafted and finally formally approved
in 1996, institutions came in place to replace what had previously been managed
by less formal institutions, such as a Supreme Council of Rulers composed of
the rulers of the seven emirates, a Federal National Council that acts in many
respects as a nation-wide majlis and federal offices in Abu Dhabi to manage
a united military, education system, healthcare and utilities.211 Abu Dhabi was
undoubtedly at the forefront of ensuring the union’s success, with Abu Dhabi
leader Shaykh Zayed al-Nahyan initially paying more than 90 per cent of the
federal budget.212 The arrangement of a federal judicial system also took away
from tribal rulers their traditional role of settling disputes through customary
tribal law, which had primarily been implemented to reconcile parties previously
at war, rather than punishing criminal offences.213
After the start of the oil era (oil was first discovered in 1958 and began to
be exported in 1960),214 as in the other GCC states, the balance of power in the
UAE began to shift in favour of the ruling families, as they were able to provide
services and funding rather than relying on the population for tax money.215
As a result, ‘many of the traditional extractive institutions fell into decline,
and eventually a new rentier relationship was born between the rulers and
their populations, a relationship that is still in evidence today’.216 Because the
leaders’ fortunes were increasing at the same time that pearling was suffering,
many merchants were actively in need of government assistance, which in
turn led them to ‘request their rulers to share their wealth and to allow much
more of it to be managed by the community in the interests of improving social
conditions and boosting indigenous development’.217 This dynamic spurred the

emergence of the merchants’ majlis movement in Dubai agitating for greater
public participation in political life. This movement, like early movements in
Kuwait for greater political participation, was led by merchants and claimed
that all Emirati citizens have ‘a vested interest in the continued integrity of the
traditional society with tribal shaykhs and rulers at its apex’.218
It should be noted that the UAE, like Kuwait and Qatar, also instituted a tiered
citizenship system to distinguish locals with ‘full citizenship rights’, as those who
could trace their families to the UAE to 1925 or before, locals with passports
who do not have full citizenship rights since they could not trace their lineage
to that date, and a bidūn population without any Emirati documentation or
documentation from any other country.219 Again, citizenship and access to state
resources were mediated on one’s familial connection to the land.
Due to the prevailing prevalence of tribal structure, leadership that has been
justified on the grounds of tribal links has increasingly come to focus on material
interests and patronage.220 This material wealth, notably, is unevenly divided
among the emirates, leading Abu Dhabi in particular to subsidize the northern
emirates.221 Social norms also vary among the emirates, largely due to their
different histories; indeed, Abu Dhabi is considered to be more conservative
with a more overt lingering tribal structure, as opposed to the more liberal and
historically outward-looking port of Dubai.222
Initially, neighbourhoods throughout the emirates were arranged by tribe;
‘[r]ulers reinforced the homogeneity of their neighborhoods by assigning lands
on the basis of tribal affiliation’.223 During the period of initial settlement into
towns, ‘the mix of tribesmen, merchants, Arabs, and non-Arabs requires stronger
authorities to keep peace, while the accumulated wealth and manpower gave
chiefs the resources to enforce order’.224 As a result, urbanization actually helped
perpetuate tribal power, at least initially, as in Kuwait and Qatar. Over time,
however, Emiratis sought housing not according to tribe but often according to
wealth, leading them often to live in compounds with non-kin.225
Nonetheless, because the federal government has come to supply healthcare,
education and employment to the vast majority of Emiratis, tribal links have
become more tenuous. Indeed, ‘[c]itizens no longer need tribal leaders or
the weight of tribal membership to secure basic needs’.226 Tribal strategies of
obtaining social and political capital, namely through marriage, conflict and the
creation of indebtedness, are much less useful in the present day.227 Socially, the
nomenclature of tribe has also been displaced with other allegiances, namely
the national.228
Further, and self-consciously given the individual emirates’ sometimes

reluctant and gradual union, national branding has become stronger, especially
in recent years with the introduction of a country-wide military conscription
programme in place since 2014 – a rather remarkable accomplishment given
that all emirates united their militaries only in 1996.229 Further, the Emirati
Government dubbed 2008 the National Identity Year, with the Ministry of
Culture, Youth, and Community Development charged with ‘reinforc[ing]
national efforts to protect and promote national identity’.230 Demonstrating the
extent to which such efforts have been effective, Emiratis seem to be able to
coalesce behind certain political leaders, namely Shaykh Zayed, who is seen as
the founder of the modern country, with Frauke Heard-Bey opining that the
response to his death demonstrated the extent to which statehood, rather than
tribal affiliation, had become of great importance.231 Tribalism, then, while
important in the justification of certain leaders’ positions, is not relevant on a
day-to-day level in the way it once was; it is more an ascriptive marker than a
determinant of social or political behaviour, while in the past tribal affiliation
was more often linked to political alignment. Indeed, Calvert Jones explains the
ways in which tribal affiliation has largely been replaced through state efforts at
social engineering to convert bedouins, who previously had the option of ‘voting
with their feet’ and leaving a locality into a ‘loyal bourgeois’.232
Conclusions
The histories of tribe-state relations in the countries under study undoubtedly

differ considerably. Nonetheless, in all three states, despite the shift from
nomadism to sedentary city life and despite the change in primary sources of
wealth from pearling and trade to primarily hydrocarbons, tribal identities
remain of critical social, and in some cases, political, significance. Tribes today,
though no longer providing the same level of material subsistence and political
protection they once did, still grant members a powerful social affiliation akin
to class in other political settings, proving their resilience even in super-rentier
environments.
Further, by housing ruling family councils in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, all
three of these countries have effectively reproduced a tribal structure in which a
council reaches a consensus on who the tribe’s – and by extension the country’s
– ruler should be. This can be regarded in a tribal context as an institutionalized
concept of leaders as ‘first among equals’.233 Tribal influence in state formation
can also be viewed through the lens of a ‘representative’ government, where the
manner in which government officials are selected demonstrates the significance
of tribal connections,234 by appointing members of the ruling family, and then
members of tribes who are traditionally aligned with the rulers, whether this
be from merchant or tribal elites. Even where an electoral system exists, then,
rulers can often be seen as encouraging tribal practices within that system.
Tribes therefore have been political and politicized both before and after oil yet
within different structures and to varying extents, as will be discussed at length
in Chapter 6.
At its root, however, the power of tribes arguably stems from the social
cohesion they have historically offered at a time such connectedness and unity
were critical to survival in harsh desert climates. James Onley even argues that
tribal codes of conduct, with their elaborate taxation systems and protection
honour codes, formed the basis of the Pax Britannica, thereby underpinning
colonial relationships in the Gulf region.235 In the chapter that follows, we trace
the ways in which tribes have evolved socially since the rise of urbanization and
globalization and how their social power has mediated both their political and
social relationships across borders and with national leaderships at home.
3
The social evolution of the tribe
Adherence to a tribal lifestyle in the Arabian Peninsula initially centered on

strict kinship policies, seasonal migration and securing access to water. From
a historical perspective, the social evolution of members of bedouin tribes has
followed a pattern of movement between the interior and the coast. To think of
interior tribes as insulated and socially enclosed within a desert enclave with
their kin is to understand only one part of their lives, however. A significant
factor in the development of interior tribes, even the most apparently insular, has
always been their interactions with others. Such interactions were historically
necessary to survival, since the majority of supplies, such as weapons, foodstuffs
and medicine, needed to weather the harsh conditions of desert life, and were
procured through trade rather than found in the desert itself.
Further, consider that, ‘prior to the discovery of oil, social life in Kuwait was
shaped by two dominant themes of the environment – the desert and the sea.
Agriculture had a very minimal influence’.1 The social evolution of tribal actors
in Kuwait was thus affected by three interlinked dynamics: the desert culture
that dictated social customs and political practices, the mercantile traditions of
maritime urbanites, and the immense changes that occurred with the discovery
of oil and changed state-citizen relations, introducing the concept of state-led
modernization projects to state citizens. With the exception of some agricultural
tribes in parts of the UAE and Yemen2 – a distinct set of bedouin society that can
be clearly differentiated from the group as a whole insofar as such a concept may
be applied – we can say that a very similar set of these influences can be applied
the social evolution of tribes in Qatar and the UAE.
Social evolution and migration to the coast
Members of tribes historically migrated from the inner peninsula to coastal

cities to trade or to seek seasonal work as fisherman and pearl divers. In the
1800s, many of these tribes stayed in coastal areas after arriving to take advantage
of the booming pearling trade and the influx of colonial administrations that
needed new skill sets and access to the inner hinterlands. The rates of social
and political integration of desert tribes into the many city states that appeared
on the coast of the Arabian Gulf varied in the three countries under study, with
Kuwait City becoming cosmopolitan at a faster rate than Doha and Abu Dhabi,
as documented in the previous chapter. This distinction was somewhat due to its
geographical proximity to Iraq, as the ‘upper reaches of the Gulf were a strategic
transit point for ships trading between Mesopotamia (new Iraq), the Indian
subcontinent and Africa’.3 Indeed, in Kuwait’s case, an urbanization project was
implemented well before the discovery of oil, with the ‘transition from nomadic
to sedentary settlement well underway by the middle of the 18th century [….]
By 1910, however, the population had jumped to 35,000, and by 1938 to 75,000
primarily as a result of the settlement of tribes’.4 By contrast, Thesiger recounts
that Abu Dhabi had only 2,000 inhabitants in the 1940s,5 and Dubai about
25,000, making it the largest city of the Trucial States.6 As for Qatar, the desert/
coastal divide was not as entrenched because many of the tribes present there
were semi-sedentary, and some, such as the al-Naʿim, ‘would migrate by boat –
with their camel, horses and sheep – to Bahrain’.7 Further, following the collapse
of the pearling industry in the 1930s and due to a Bahraini embargo meant to
re-establish its claim to Zubarah, David Commins estimates that as much as
one-third of the population of present-day Qatar migrated to Bahrain, al-Hasa
and other parts of the Arabian Peninsula.8
The historic emergence of city states along the coast and the rate of habitation
and settlement varied throughout the Arabian Peninsula, depending on a variety
of factors, such as the likelihood of raids, the abundance of watering holes and
the frequency of use of the natural harbours around which these first cities were
built. The ‘Bani Khalid, who were prominent in the overland trade by camel
caravans that passed through Arabia into Mesopotamia’,9 were the first to create
a settlement in the area of Kuwait City, establishing a summer base on the coast.
The first to inhabit these city states on a permanent basis as settlers were thus not
only of tribal origin but both merchants and warriors as well – a duality which
differentiated many large tribes from the bedouins of the interior, who would
herd cattle or raid to survive.
Much like the Bani Khalids who once controlled vast areas of the eastern
coast of the Arabian Gulf, the Bani ʿUtubs who had migrated from Najd in
central Saudi Arabia and lingered on the Qatari peninsula arrived in Kuwait
in the late seventeenth century. Even before this, however, there were traces of
The Social Evolution of the Tribe 49
a fishing village that existed in the region,10 as ‘the waters of the Arabian Gulf
also offered a livelihood to the fisherman based along Kuwait’s coastline’.11 This
dynamic meant that the newly settled tribes from the interior needed an entirely
different skill set that included ship-building, sea-faring and different types of
fishing. Although the al-Khalifa family of Bahrain were ‘the dominant family
in the Northern Gulf region’12 by the nineteenth century, the current rulers of
Qatar, the al-Thani, managed to displace them by moving the centre of trade and
economic power from Zubarah in the northwest to Doha in the south.
Coastal cities thrived because there were natural harbours in Kuwait City,
Doha and Dubai, which allowed all three to become entry points for the
transport of ‘trans-shipping goods, as well as a port of entry for rice, spices,
coffee and other commodities destined for the Arabian market’13 from a vast
array of corresponding ports of trade. The arrival of goods at coastal cities built
around natural harbour points also meant that there was a demand for bedouin
tribesmen who were skilled at moving these goods. Other tribes and traders
with already-established routes simply used these emerging cities on the coast
as pit stops with ‘camel caravans moving between Arabia and Aleppo in Syria’,14
stopping at coastal cities on the Arabian Gulf to trade and seek provisions.
As new-found affluence on the coast took shape and settled communities
interacted with foreigners and non-tribal actors, these coastal tribes retained
social and political behaviours developed in the interior, or at least modified
versions of them in the new urban setting. They still interacted with inner
peninsula tribes (bedouins), yet there was a clear socio-economic hierarchy:
a ‘merchant’ class which was not exclusively tribal emerged and cultivated
attributes and skills which were deemed more important in the city than tribal
values based on the necessities of desert life.
The relative abundance of coastal life would tip the scale towards the continued
settlement and ‘cooperative’ intermingling with others outside of immediate kin,
as tribes on the coast had to mingle with non-Arabs and other tribe members.
This cycle of settled life in entrepôt city states and ‘desert’ tribalism has been
documented as far back as Ibn Khaldun, who in the fourteenth century posited
that tribal culture would be subsumed by urban civilizations that served their
political and economic interests only as long as the state was strong – the
underlying idea being that a weakened state could lead to a resurgence in tribal
customs and more assabiya motivated behaviours. This dynamic was mainly
due to the strong kinship ties between members of a tribe that were cemented
by intermarriages, leading to a state of affairs even in settled areas where, as
Laurent Lambert describes, ‘power configuration among the tribesmen was
almost completely horizontal and participative, but not necessarily integrative

of non-fellow tribesmen’.15
This structure also meant that there were now settled tribes on the coast, and
a territorial system of social hierarchies within them according to the new skill
sets developed, along with further seasonal arrivals from the interior coming to
participate in new-found opportunities. As Abdullah al-Ghoneim documents
in Kuwait
[o]ur fathers who had lived through this difficult era of the Arabian Gulf ’s
history would recount to us how many of the sons of the desert (tribal bedouins)
who lived far from the sea would come to the Eastern shores and to Kuwait in
search of work and in hope of gaining the riches that selling a large pearl and
fulfilling their dreams (of prosperity) [would bring]. After each pearling season
these young men would return to their homes and recount tales of their life at
sea and the hardships they faced while trying to get sought after riches.16
Similarly, Thesiger documented that the badū of Liwa in present-day Abu Dhabi
emirate would go to Abu Dhabi city in the summer to ‘join the pearling fleet as
divers’.17 The transient nature of some of the bedouin tribes’ interactions with the
new coastal cities was also evident in Qatar, where the ‘majority of non-transient
tribes who grazed their stock … owed allegiance to the Saudis, whom they paid
jizya (tribute)’.18
It was not only the chance for a better life that forced tribes from the interior
to the coast, but also harsh conditions and a scarcity of water and food could
lead badū to migrate in great numbers, like their ancestors had done before
them. Even as late as the 1940s, drought caused a famine in the interior, and ‘a
large number of Bedouin migrated to the wells at Jahra, Subaihiyah and Subaih
[in Kuwait]’, meaning that the tribal connectedness to land that persisted for
centuries, continued even after the beginning of the oil era.19
Sedentary life and urbanization
It took more than two centuries for these small settlements to develop into
city states with a clear demarcation between inner city tribes and other
urbanites (hadar) and the exterior desert tribes (badū), and with varying
levels of mistrust between them, despite their historic social, economic and
political interdependence. One of the major shifts in this relationship came
with the availability of water to settled urbanites in one of the most arid and
water-poor regions in the world. Whereas in the desert the few wells and
natural water sources that existed belonged mainly to the tribe controlling that
territory, water relations in the city had to be more sustainable so that the
settlement could flourish; this is a prime example of the manner in which
tribes living in a settled area would eschew their insular world view in favour of
prosperity.20
Some anthropologists have argued that the need to band together to find
water and grazing land in the desert and protect those precious resources from
outsiders historically made it necessary for each tribe to ‘restrict membership
in order to preserve its sense of solidarity’.21 In coastal cities, however, this
attitude was not beneficial or applicable. Certainly, ‘[f]resh water was always at
a premium throughout Kuwait, especially as the population grew, not just in the
desert hinterland’.22 This scarcity affected agricultural cultivation and relations
with more fertile and water-rich neighbours, so that the coastal population had
to learn cooperation and trade to sustain their lifestyle, especially as the wood
and other materials used to build their vessels had to be imported, namely from
India and East Africa. Unlike in the interior where oasis-owning tribal shaykhs
enjoyed considerable power, water relations were more egalitarian in nature in
the coastal cities, although generally still dominated by powerful merchants or
traders. Lambert finds that water resource management in both Kuwait and Abu
Dhabi showed a similar pattern in their evolution from settlement to coastal
villages23 in that, ‘in both locations, during the nineteenth century, virtually
all water wells supplying potable water belonged to a particular tribal group
or extended family … to a specific community defined upon kinship’.24 Tribal
dominance was therefore transposed into urban life in some sense through the
arrangement of water supply in these areas.
Further, pearling – which existed as a trade and an industry on the Gulf coast
for millennia and involved both slaves and non-Arab agents – was also seasonal,
running from April to September, and, like life in the desert, was full of dangers
and hardships. This had a long-term effect on the manner in which members of
interior tribes engaged in the trade adapted to either city life or seasonal change,
and also defined social relations along the coast in communities where it dictated
a schedule, routine and reliance on income. Jonathan Fryer explains: ‘The divers’
return … was eagerly awaited by families and traders alike, as their success or
failure would have critical economic consequences for the community as well
as for individuals.’25 Prices fluctuated according to international demand, and
rulers levied taxes on pearls that were essential to state finances. As a result,
rulers ‘had to be careful not to appear to be demanding too much from the
pearl traders, who occasionally threatened to leave Kuwait and transfer their
operations to Bahrain or elsewhere’.26 Even in Qatar, whose settled merchant

class developed later than that of its neighbours, some tribal families had settled
before the al-Thani ruling family and received ‘exceptional rights and privileges,
including exemption from pearl taxation’,27 a facet of the relations between rulers
and traders which highlights the importance of commerce from pearling to
community members at all levels.
It should also be noted that one part of the social hierarchy of the pearling
economy included enslaved peoples, many from Mozambique and Tanzania,
due to the scale of the pearling enterprise. As Matthew Hopper recounts,
By 1905, the value of pearls produced in the Gulf exceeded the production of
all other parts of the world combined. At the peak of pearl production, the Gulf
pearl banks were worked by more than three thousand boats that employed
tens of thousands of men from Muscat to Kuwait. The pearling industry was
the largest source of employment in the region, and chronic shortages in labor
for diving created a demand for slaves. Enslaved divers from Africa became a
common sight by the late nineteenth century and were universally regarded as
the region’s best and most valued divers.28
Notably, the British ‘turned a blind eye’ to practices of slavery that persisted in
the Indian Ocean until pressure came from the League of Nations in the 1920s.29
After the manumission of slaves in the mid-twentieth century and independence
of the three states under study, many former slaves were naturalized into GCC
populations; further, they were given the choice to adopt the names of the tribes or
families which had enslaved them, allowing them to assimilate into the national
environment and challenging notions of nationality as linked to ethnicity in the
GCC.30 Qatar’s Bin Jelmood House at Msheireb Museums notably traces this
history of slavery in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf states’ involvement in it.31
The coastal network of pearl merchants and traders, like the nomadic tribes
before them, extended across the coast of the Arabian Gulf, as did its influence,
and therefore, even before oil, hinterland tribal people with no access to
independent wealth were sometimes seen by coastal rulers as a more suitable
‘security’ choice than merchant elites, in part due to the dependence of these
tribes for resources as opposed to the relative independence of merchants.
Thesiger refers to ‘the chronic insecurity of these parts, where jealous and often
hostile sheikhs relied on the uncertain support of the Bedu to maintain their
position’.32 It is this historical relationship that contributed to stereotypical
notions of members of the badū population working in the military or police
and being particularly reliant on ruling families for their livelihoods.
Colonialism and the evolution of tribes and rulers
Even though not involved in daily life or management within the states under
study, colonial intervention played a crucial role in the evolution of certain
tribes and the disappearance of others, with Kuwait arguably experiencing
the least intervention due to the late development of colonial interest in it,
unlike the coastal states to the south of the peninsula which had to contend
with colonial intervention for at least a century prior. As Sulayman Khalaf and
Hassan Hammoud put it, ‘[t]he overall political structure was made up of an
alliance among the three traditionally influential groups: the ruling family, the
merchants, and the tribal chiefs, all having their power relations balanced and
coordinated within a wider framework of British Imperial Gulf politics.’33
Trade with India accounted for much of the commerce in Kuwait, Qatar and
the UAE, and in 1877, the government of ‘British India had direct responsibilities
for relations with the Gulf, including Kuwait. As evident from British records,
the viewpoints of the Indian Office regarding Kuwait and the wider Gulf did not
always concur with those of the Foreign and Colonial Offices, and this could
lead to friction between them’.34 This conflict of agendas and interests would also
lead to friction between coastal and hinterland tribes themselves, as the coastal
tribes vied for the colonial representative’s confirmation of their position – one
that was constantly being threatened by interior and exterior assaults on their
authority. Large tribes also remained concerned about Ottoman interference, as
the fates of some tribes had been predetermined by their interactions, especially
in the north-eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Tribal leaders and city state
rulers thus had to manage relations both with world powers and local tribes as
a way of safeguarding themselves and assuring the security of their people. For
example, some could argue that ‘without the intervention of the British in 1868,
either Bahrain or Saudi Arabia may have subsumed the Qatar peninsula under
the al-Khalifa or al-Saud’.35
After 1899, when Kuwait became a protectorate of the British Empire, mostly
to prevent German or Russian expansion in the region and the continued
Ottoman and Saudi threats, it became clear that these arrangements were
often made with other ambitions or interests in the local rulers’ minds. Fryer
explains: ‘As Sheikh Mubarak was also involved in various feuds with tribal
leaders in Arabia, there was also some exasperation in London about the way he
seemed to be getting Britain entangled in the region’s affairs.’36 Qatar officially
became a British protectorate later than its neighbours, in 1916, yet the al-Thani
relationship with the British dates back to 1868 once Qatar was regarded as
independent from Bahrain, and so the British provided Qatari leadership with
greater domestic power. Indeed, ‘[o]il allowed the ruler to increase his distance
from the merchants, but to distance himself from the [tribal] shaikhs, he needed
British support’.37 In the case of the UAE, ‘following a series of raids against
British ships and other difficulties with local groups … the British signed a truce
with various Arab [tribal] leaders in the Gulf, hence the new name the Southern
Gulf region had acquired: “The Trucial States”’.38 Leasing land to the British
fleet, which marked the beginning of oil colonialism, meant that the politics of
inter-European competition in the area during the First and Second World Wars
would also play a considerable role in cementing some tribal leaders and city
state shaykhs as winners and displacing others. This dynamic would also have
a variety of repercussions on many tribes’ semi-nomadic lifestyle, effectively
ending it for some and perpetuating it for others into a situation of uncertain or
fluid citizenship that persists among some tribal populations today.
For example, the British High Commissioner to Mesopotamia, Sir Percy Cox,
reacted to Saudi King ʿAbdulaziz al-Saud’s territorial claims at a joint conference
by ‘drawing lines on a map himself ’, designating
two areas at the southern and western extremities of Kuwait, which he said would
be officially neutral, buffer zone. In principle it was to allow nomadic Bedouin
herdsmen to continue to have access to water and grazing without hindrance.
But later Sir Percy intimated that he suspected there was oil in the neutral zones
and that he believed that their designation as neutral territory would mean that
more than one country would benefit from sharing the oil resources.39
The impact of the discovery of oil and with it an increased level of colonial
intervention would hasten the social evolution of modern tribalism and new
power relationships in Kuwait first, and in Qatar and the UAE later. Thesiger
argues that a ‘state of anarchy [in the desert] is necessary to Bedu society’ but
also points out that the ‘desert has been pacified, and raids and tribal warfare
had been effectively prevented [across the peninsula]’.40 By the mid-1940s, the
encroachment by colonial powers and emergent independent states was a further
blow to this ‘necessary’ state of disorder; in combination with a consideration of
the geographic and social segmentation that was occurring due to both trade
and governmental interference, it is easier to understand how tribal customs,
which relied on a desert environment for both relevance and balance, could
become confused, disruptive and even obsolete. Indeed, it is a testament to their
strength that this was not always the case.
The rapid post-oil urbanization of the GCC states and the economic and
functional transformation of ruling elites and governance strategies affected
both the settlement behaviour and social networks of the bedouin tribes in these
states, with many of them forced to change their traditional seasonal migrations
and take on a static and sedentary urban lifestyle. Essentially, the borders that
had been arbitrarily decided (in all three cases by a British colonialist agenda)
forced these nomadic tribespeople to adopt nationalities, and they were therefore
forced to take a ‘side’ by tying their fortunes and futures to one ruling family
instead of being free to deal with a number of them to the tribe’s advantage, and
in a manner that might allow the tribe-first social values derived from nomadic
desert lifestyle not to interfere with the tribe’s ability to prosper. This was one
obvious hurdle to the tribal concept of citizenship, as it divided loyalty between
a state and a tribe (and sometimes even a family), and in many cases, despite
urbanization and a high degree of social integration, it is loyalty to the latter
that often persists, at least socially and in some cases politically. This dynamic
is problematic, particularly if we consider the fact that these two forces would
often be in opposition to one another.
Rulers, tribes and post-oil social evolution
The relationship between coastal state rulers and the tribes they ruled was
historically tenuous, marked by betrayals and shifting sides, until the discovery
of oil and later natural gas introduced modern state formations and changed the
situation to benefit ruling elites. Thesiger explains:
Previously the great Bedu tribes of the Najd and Syrian desert had dominated
central and Northern Arabia. All traffic between the oases, villages and towns,
the pilgrim caravans, everyone in fact who moved about Arabia, had to pass
through the desert, and the Bedu controlled the desert. They levied tolls on
travelers or looted them at will; they extorted blackmail from villagers and
cultivators and from the weaker desert tribes.41
Although some tribes had to pay the rulers in Saudi Arabia a form of tax for
protection from raids by other tribes, most maintained their independence
to some degree, with Thesiger even recounting tales of well-known ‘outlaw’
bedouins being part of Shaykh Zayed bin Nahyan’s entourage in the 1940s before
he became ruler of Abu Dhabi; these groups also often mediated between parties
more than they enforced a particular law.42 As Thesiger explains, ‘[e]ach of the
Trucial Sheikhs had a band of armed retainers recruited from the tribes, but
only Shakhbut [al-Nahyan] had any authority among the tribes themselves, and
he maintained his power by diplomacy, not by force’.43
Similarly, the role of the ruler in Kuwait was one that ‘guaranteed security
and administered justice in the community, while the merchants concerned
themselves with Kuwait’s material prosperity and raising funds for the Ruler, in
an effective partnership that characterized the dynamics of political power in
Kuwait until the development of oil three centuries later’.44 A member of Kuwait’s
merchant families recounts a tale told to him by his paternal grandfather that the
bedouins were not trusted to spend the night within the walls of old Kuwait,45
although there were some exceptions made for those who had come from long
distances and were hosted inside the homes of the merchants with whom they
traded. Abdallah al-Ghunaim, President of the Center for Research and Studies
on Kuwait, recalled that these bedouin traders were required to leave their
guns outside the city walls according to a historical text, but he had a different
explanation for them not sleeping inside the walled city. In his opinion, they
pitched their tents beyond the walled city because within it there were limited
public spaces that were in constant use, and there were no inns in which they
could or were likely to stay.46 These tribal bedouin groups were distinct from local
bedouins, and lived in tents around the walled city. These tribal networks were
used by the merchants of the city to trade goods that they brought with them
from the Levant and Baghdad and were paid because they knew the difficult
roads through the deserts and protected the merchant caravans from other
nomads. A transactional relationship thus emerged between these badū and the
settled urban population within the walled city, as even the ruling shaykhs would
negotiate with them for the protection of certain territories for which they were
responsible. This did not stop the practice of raiding parties however, and there
are photographs of bedouin raiders outside of Kuwait’s city walls taken by the
former British agent H.R.P. Dickson that are included in Claudia al Rushoud’s
book on his wife’s life in Kuwait Dame Violet Dickson: ‘Umm Saud’s’ fascinating
life in Kuwait from 1929–1990.47
As Khoury and Kostiner explain in the region more broadly, ‘[t]he bond
between the [tribal] chief and society are not necessarily institutionalized; they
tend more often to be based on personal or ad hoc arrangements’ to ensure a
‘considerable degree of political manoeuvrability and cultural and economic
autonomy’.48
When the last wall was torn down in Kuwait during the 1950s post-oil boom
and more tribes settled into an urban lifestyle, much of their independence
and purpose were lost, although they retained some characteristics of the tribe
Figure 1 MP Faisal al Duwaisan quoted on Awwal Kuwait News, tweeting on how

Iranian workers built the wall of Kuwait in 1770 to protect the city from the ‘ambush
of the deserts’ in an example of how the ‘wall’ and its connection to the inner city
hadar versus outer districts bedouins divide is still an identity politics issue to this
day. From AwwalKwt news Instagram account (2017).
despite the new ‘civilian’ state they had assumed as citizens, namely their tribal
family names and amir al qabīla, loyalty to a tribal shaykh distinct from the
ruling shaykh of the country in which they settled. Some social characteristics
were also retained, like al-ʿaniya, which is a community chest for the tribe that is
used by the tribal shaykh to help members of the tribe in need, especially for costs
associated with marriage. This is sometimes contributed to by the ruling family
in a specific country. Importantly, the removal of actual walls, which happened
only in Kuwait, illustrating how sharp the division between townspeople and
outsiders was, a division that is still being brought up by politicians today, and
the shift in trade that came post-oil boom helped to blur the lines between tribal
actors who had formerly been clearly distinguished on the basis of a purpose
which was now lost, or which had changed beyond recognition.
Post-oil relationships
The unease with which the ‘bedouins,’ as previously described, were regarded
did not disappear when they settled, even amongst their urban neighbours the
haḍar, and this discomfort coloured much of the socio-political divide that
plays out in tribal politics that will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 6.
It is important to realize that the social assimilation and political aspiration
of these tribes were also disrupted by the accumulation of wealth and social
evolution of other larger, ruling tribes. In fact, in Qatar, ‘[t]he commercial
activities in the 1950s caused an increased politicizing of the al-Thani. …
These initiatives created a political elite and new policy departing from the
traditional socio-cultural patterns’.49 So now a new class emerged with a
special signifier of ‘shaykhdom’ privileges, but without any of the previous
responsibilities associated with that word. A similar dynamic unfolded
in Kuwait and the UAE in the post-oil era, although the UAE is of course
divided among six ruling families. Nonetheless, ruling elites were positioned
in both a clear socio-economic band above both their citizens and tribes,
and thus were also burdened with justifying the centralization of authority
by providing rentier benefits to citizens – excesses that have proved very
costly two generations on and have caused further fragmentation due to some
instances of unequal division of these resources, particularly among outlying
tribal communities.50
The question of allegiance, of the contract between a citizen and the state
to which he/she belongs, and the duty that a tribe member has to his/her tribe,
has been a constant fault line in relationships between haḍar and badū citizens
as modernization projects mature and as globalization changes the social
compositions and economic positions of these states. If, as Emile Durkheim
argues, states are based on a ‘mechanical solidarity’51 where cooperation between
different ethnic, political and economic groups is necessary, tribal societies must
let go of much of their ethos to assimilate and become a cohesive part of new
states.
The argument that has been most pervasive in differentiating between the
loyalties of tribal citizens to their kin and those of haḍar is that the latter doubt
where the former’s loyalty lies because tribal people have another shaykh they
need to obey and other neighbouring countries where their tribe extends, and
this dual, and often transnational, loyalty may cause them to have agendas that
are not necessarily country-first in terms of orientation, let alone community-
first. Further, financial support comes from the tribe as well as from the country,
and so financial incentives for obedience come from both state and tribe, whose
coffers do not always align and may frequently run at cross purposes. As a result,
the social evolution of the tribe has meant that to some extent there is a tribal
community within the greater citizens’ community, with its own government
within a greater government system, even as far as crimes are concerned – what
Bassam Tibi has referred to as the ‘simultaneity of the unsimultaneous’.52 It should
be noted that concern about membership of a transnational group undermining
loyalty to the state extends beyond GCC anxieties about tribe and has indeed
extended to some of their policies towards members of transnational Islamist
organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood.53
For tribal shaykhs, there is an interdependence with the ruling elites that
belies this seemingly independent state, as tribal leaders have to ‘attract the
interest of more powerful rulers or heads of state, who could offer these leaders
official recognition’54 and gain access to petrodollar wealth in order to both
maintain their status as tribal leaders and replenish tribal coffers, as well as to
keep the tribe in check, especially in times of political strife. Consider an example
of this as when, during Kuwait’s 2012 Karamat Watan protests, many shaykhs of
large tribes stood with the government and ruling family against the actions of
largely tribal protesters who demanded political reform, thereby ignoring the
stance of tribal leaders. Similarly, in 2011, the al-Shehhi and al-Zaabi tribes in
the UAE held ‘spontaneous’ rallies to show support for the government after
the very high-profile arrests of five Emirati activists, some of them members of
these tribes.55 With the more recent political divide between Qatar and Saudi
Arabia during the Gulf Crisis, the Bani Hajar56 and al-Murrah57 tribal shaykhs
lost their Qatari citizenships after their refusal to denounce the actions of Saudi
Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Other tribal members of
Qatar’s ethnically bedouin, and therefore migratory, citizens ‘even managed to
secure dual nationality, enabling them to continue seasonal migration between
Saudi Arabia and Qatar’;58 this dual citizenship for some non-migratory tribes is
also found in Kuwait, although it is technically illegal. As much as tribes wield
independent social and to a degree political clout, they are also conscious of
the need to foster peaceful relationships with ruling families on whom they
have come to depend for their well-being and protection. Indeed, the advent of
oil wealth in many ways ushered in the symbiotic relationship between ruling
families and tribes described by Kostiner.59
Social change within the post-badū tribal cities
As Khoury and Kostiner explain, ‘[o]nly since the mid nineteenth century have
tribal populations in these areas [including the Arabian Peninsula] begun to be
incorporated, at different speeds and with different rhythms, into the modern
states that grew up in the Middle East’.60 The bedouin populations of the GCC
states did not differ in their post-urban evolution compared to other bedouins,
but they have retained a strong sense of identity, differentiation and a series
of cultural traditions: from poetry recitation and traditional sword dances to
playing traditional bedouin musical instruments, to camel riding and camping
in the desert, many of these becoming seasonal and luxurious pursuits in which
more and more non-bedouins engage.
Trade, commerce and a maritime economy meant that the city dwellers of
entrepôt pre-oil Arabian Gulf citadels, the haḍar, would require a measure of
assimilation from any tribal bedouins who wished to remain in the city and
prosper socially and financially. In Kuwait, the merchant Helal Fajhan al-
Mutayri (from the al-Mutayri tribe) married into and worked alongside the
merchant elite, so, despite their last name, his children became essentially
haḍar. This is one of the major themes in the assimilation of members of
bedouin tribes and their social integration into the coastal city structure; they
needed to have material means or a patron who elevated them socially and
politically so they could act as if they had means by proxy. In the June 1939
issue of Picture Post magazine, the Swiss journalist and lawyer A. R. Lindt
contributed two pieces on the pearl merchants of Kuwait, whom he had met
during his visit in 1937. He mentioned that Helal al-Mutayri would remark
angrily when questioned about leaving some of his vast wealth to charity: ‘I
have given much to my tribe! Is there a single Mutayri left hungry? What have
I to do with other tribe’s members?’61 Thus, even after assimilation, the social
expectation of a degree of taʿasub, or bias towards one’s kin persisted, and in
this case, kin can mean an entire tribe. As Sultan al-Qassemi points out, even
in the twenty-first century, ‘[p]erhaps the biggest disadvantage is that tribalism
is sort of an elite club that outsiders can never truly belong to’.62
The rapid modernization of the post-oil state brought with it many changes
to the social fabric of these small countries, especially with the introduction
of universal education and other benefits of the rentier state, such as free
government-subsidized goods and housing. As Thesiger put it, ‘[a]fter the First
World War, cars, aeroplanes, and wireless gave government for the first time
in history a mobility greater than that of the Bedu’.63 The changes introduced
by the encroachment of modern technology on the region effectively led to the
anthropological extinction of nomadic badū except for tiny numbers in parts
of the UAE; as with behaviours that had to be dropped in order to prosper
in an urbanized environment, prized badū skills that had once meant the
difference between survival and death began to become obsolete, inefficient and
unnecessary; they have also increasingly become performative, as discussed in
the chapter that follows.
Economically, tribes could no longer barter their skills or allegiance for
financial gain:
In northern and central Arabia, whilst the structure of tribal life was breaking
down as a result of the peace which had been imposed on the tribes and because
of administrative interference from the outside, the economy of Bedu life was
collapsing. Deprived of their inaccessibility, the tribes could no longer blackmail
the government into paying them large subsidies for their good behaviours.64
Despite these developments, for tribes that came late to these newly wealthy
city states, there persisted issues of belonging and loyalty that caused them to
agitate politically. For some, the fluid social position of the tribe within a state
itself and within intra-state relations means that they can continue to operate as
if they are in the desert and are able to bargain through ballot boxes or inherited
prestige with ruling elites much like they did in the past.
In the discussion of what tribal identity references in the GCC today, we
must look at the ways in which some parts of the lifestyle have been retained
or abandoned with settlement and urbanization. In any discussion of the
development of tribal attitudes and bedouin symbolism, we must first start by
looking at how the two words, badū (bedouins) and qabāʾil (tribes; singular
qabīla) are sometimes used interchangeably, and the subtle but important
differences between them. Bedouin is a descriptive word that is mostly a
romantic notion linked to an anthropologically distinct nomadic lifestyle.
Qabāʾil has emerged as the political word of choice to describe these former
nomads in Kuwait and parts of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE, and
is an exclusionary social marker because it at times negates, or at best demotes,
the tribal and historical ancestry of haḍar citizens. Both Ibn Khaldoun and Iraqi
social scientist Ali al-Wardi have described the destructive force of this tendency
to favour those from the same tribe, taʿasub, when brought from desert life into
the city. The first step in the tribes’ social evolution would then be to abandon
tribal nepotism, as modernity and urbanization brought them into close contact
with a more cosmopolitan community, and a more merit-based, trade-oriented
identity becomes more important than a lineage-based tribal identity or even
nation state identity. Some would argue that this type of nepotism remains
necessary to ensure social justice for tribal citizens, who would otherwise not
be given a fair chance due to continued economic and social marginalization,
despite the natural evolution from nomadic life to urbanization.
After the influx of oil money into state coffers in the 1950s, some members of
Kuwait’s ruling elite challenged traditionally wealthy merchants with a change in
the nature of their alliance with bedouin tribes who were outside the city walls.
For instance, some tribes were granted Kuwaiti nationality (with the rentier perks
of free housing, government jobs and the like), so that they would vote with
the government during elections.65 Consequently, these tribe members, much
like their counterparts in the rapidly modernizing Qatar and the UAE of the
1970s, would enter urban life through citizenship. However, even as they settled
into this sedentary citizenship, they retained tribal practices within urbanized
spaces of territorial claims, such that members of a tribe would take over a
particular neighbourhood, either by design or through encouragement from the
land-dispensing authority within the state. As a result, for instance in Qatar, we
find that ‘Doha neighbourhoods are effectively tribal neighborhoods and the
family council, or majliss, makes decisions about both personal and community
matters’.66 Though such arrangements have some clear benefits to the tribes, they
also pose some serious questions about inclusive citizenship, as ‘tribal members
who reside in tribally uniform neighbourhoods have more uniformly pro-tribal
voting practices [ ….] Similarly, tribesmen who marry within the tribe also favor
candidates from the same tribe’,67 thus perpetuating an insular and isolated social
and political existence which is clearly marked geographically as well.
In Kuwait, the division between the urban population and bedouins is more
solidified, and proximity to Basra and al-Zubair in Southern Iraq has arguably
made the merchants and urban dwellers more similar to the populations of Arab
capital cities like Baghdad, Beirut, and Cairo. The evolution of tribal bedouins
in Qatar and the UAE therefore differs from the process in Kuwait because
of this trajectory, which affected their social evolution on a broad scale. Sara
Assami claims that only since 2007 have ‘different tribes started to mix and live
together in single neighbourhoods. Qataris have also started to live in areas and
neighborhoods populated with expats.’68 This may be due to a mixture of new
central jobs that require a long commute from their traditional neighbourhoods,
and inflated land prices forcing others to abandon central neighbourhoods and
move farther away.
Conclusions
Some scholars and local interlocutors insist that tribalism and tribal practice are
a question of lineage, and that these are only associated with certain families of
bedouin descent, so a last name, for example, al-Mutayri in Kuwait, al-Murrah
in Qatar or al-Mansuri in the UAE is the best indicator of being tribal. However,
this oversimplifies the issue and largely overlooks the social evolution of tribes
after their settlement. Indeed, geographical and socioeconomic intersections
must be taken into account, such as how integrated into the greater urban
fabric an individual with a tribal family name is. In Kuwait, living within
inner districts among mostly haḍar is one indicator, while another is whether
children are enrolled in public or private schools. All of these factors are also
indicative of the possession of certain financial means, just as with the first
bedouin tribal members trying to ingratiate themselves with the haḍar city
settlers a century before was a mark of social status. As more members of these
citizen populations become intermixed, the divisions between tribal badū and
haḍar are likely to diminish further, even when the tribal haḍar distinction has
often also marked a class division as well or has been strategically politicized.
Nonetheless, some actors work to reproduce these divisions; for instance, a
video surfaced of Saudi Islamic scholar Saleh al-Fawzan at a conference in 2019
where he discussed a hadith which places the witness testimony of a bedouin at
lesser value than that of a town-dwelling haḍar, and provided justification for
such a statement by stating that haḍar are more educated than their bedouin
counterparts.69
Although the distinction between badū and haḍar has persisted even through
the evolution both of tribes and of countries of the GCC, and in some ways
has been encouraged, some aspects of tribal life have undoubtedly been lost.
In place of former practices and in an urban setting, then, we see an increasing
adoption of so-called bedouin-lite traditions and some efforts on behalf of
these states to institutionalize or memorialize their countries’ tribal pasts. The
negotiation between tribe and state therefore appears to be ongoing, as tribes
remain the largest independent groups in these countries that are still able
to exert autonomous power, albeit in different ways today than in the pre-oil
and pre-settlement past. Looking at tribal social evolution through this lens,
we can see how these governments’ selective use of tribes has resulted in both
the fragmentation and bolstering of national identity. When desert tribes most
recently settled in modern states in the Arabian Peninsula, many retained a
duality that harkens to their more independent past in when they were both
friends and foes to the coastal city states, and were always politicized, and which
al-Wardi argued can be internalized into a psychological struggle within one’s
character.70
Across the three country cases, regardless of social standing or political
system, most major tribes have also historically granted important political
buy-in and support for ruling families of the region, leading increasingly to the
identification of tribal affiliation with national belonging. Perhaps nowhere else
is the prevailing importance of these states’ tribal pasts better preserved than
in state-funded heritage projects. National and local museums of all three of
these states focus considerable attention on scenes from these states’ tribal pasts,
and so-called heritage sports like falconry and camel-racing continue to enjoy
prominence as homage to these states’ histories, which will be discussed in
greater detail in the next chapter.
4
Heritage production and branding of the

modern badū in state formation
Introduction
What Eric Hobsbawm refers to as ‘invented traditions’ aptly describes the use of
tribal practices as markers of heritage in the GCC states, which, though linked to
former practices as well as to supranational identities, have today become central
to the construction of national narratives.1 In Dawn Chatty’s words, ‘[i]nvented
traditions set up, support, and maintain kinship, oligarchy and other institutions
[….] Created or invented rituals and traditions serve several purposes: they
may establish or symbolize legitimate relations of authority or particular
institutions, and they also may be used to inculcate a set of beliefs or conventions
of behavior.’2 These invented traditions, then, are intended for both domestic
and international audiences and often, particularly in the three countries under
study, follow the pattern of these states’ tribal and desert-oriented pasts, which
have been reinvented and repackaged since independence.
As outlined in the previous chapter, relationships between large tribal
groupings and ruling families in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE have been critical to
the maintenance of a stable political status quo. After analysing the histories of
the states under study, we concede that, as Partrick posits, ‘selective re-imagining
of the past cannot avoid tribal identity.’3 Nonetheless, such an identity often has
been selectively inclusive of the identity of merchant elites who constituted settled
populations in port cities before the sedentarization of bedouin populations.
As a result, it has been necessary to find a way to unite citizens of these new
‘modern’ states into one mutable ‘model history’ in light of the contrast between
a history that relied on both desert culture and maritime trade. Miriam Cooke
discusses the phenomenon of instrumentalizing and modernizing tribal identity
at length, with particular focus on how political leaders in the Arabian Peninsula
have used tribal coherence to forge relatively united states in the present day
which pursue projects dedicated to heritage and preservation of their local

culture, often centred on these states’ tribal pasts.4 So-called bedouin pursuits that
are explicitly protected manifest themselves in modernization projects managed
by the state. Further, the persistent importance of tribal identifiers is apparent
with political appointments of members of particular tribes and through public
rhetorical references to a shared tribal past; at the level of national identity
through symbols of state with activities such as falconry (where the falcon acts as
a state symbol as well) and at the level of education and in national curriculum
planning – all of which are discussed further in this volume.
There is certainly room to assess the extent to which the notion of what
Cooke dubs the ‘tribal-modern’, a tribal identity that is no longer linked to a
lifestyle or to an occupation, has fostered or hindered a sense of national unity.
Indeed, modern desert sports, such as sand-surfing and off-roading, and the
more exclusionary but still popular pastimes of camel racing, falconry and
nabati poetry contests, are still widely prominent, yet historically excluded some
segments of the population.
These three states are also involved in some competition to project power on
the international stage and propel their new-found wealth and distinct national
identities outward, often using tribal tropes reminiscent of their pre-oil pasts to
aid national branding. Evidence of how these symbols function internationally
can also be found in the preferences of the ruling elite in these states to take
falconry trips to Iraq, Mongolia and Morocco, eliciting reference to their part
of an ancient shared, transnational tribal past. The more problematic aspects of
these symbols are also exemplified through such pastimes, in particular through
their relation to the neo-patriarchal values of the newly wealthy elite.
Regarding falconry specifically, Natalie Koch explains, ‘by precluding female
participation and embodying particular nationalistic narratives, falconry is
argued to be an “ethnicised”, gendered and altogether politicized practice,
providing a way for “Gulf nationals” political claims to their homelands … [to
be] constructed and affirmed through the ostensibly “apolitical” language of
heritage and sport.’5 Indeed, the fact that the practice of so-called heritage sports
is often limited to members of citizen populations makes them increasingly
important in fostering a nationalist foundation. Falconry across the Arabian
Peninsula is ‘a homeland narrative that hearkens back to an imagined primordial
Arab way of life’,6 while on the other hand ‘the ethno-nationalist, masculinist,
and elitist practices surrounding Gulf falconry today suggest that it is certainly
not a fixed ancestral pastime, but firmly embedded in very contemporary
power structures.’7 Falconry, then, like many other tribal practices and tropes
Heritage Production and Branding of Modern Badū 67
promoted across the GCC, is both firmly part of a shared past among nationals
and explicitly woven into existing state power structures.
In a similar way, camel festivals and camel racing have been relaunched in
modern ways, particularly in Qatar and the UAE. Sulayman Khalaf points out
that camel racing was not indigenous to the Emirates. Nonetheless, referring
to the ‘invention of camel culture in the celebration of annual camel festivals’,8
Khalaf argues that ‘the camel racetrack is a large stage upon which culture is
played out, reconstituted, or invented’ and where ‘collective representation and a
shared memory of an “imagined community” are played out’.9 The performative
aspect of national identity often appears linked to tribal traditions and tropes,
although in the case of Kuwait, heritage practices have been mostly linked to the
state’s maritime past, with the seafaring ‘Boum’ dhows being a state symbol on
currency and other official emblems.
Figure 2 The Kuwaiti ‘Boum’, a ship that exemplifies the sea-faring heritage trope
used as an identity marker. Courtesy of Hala Shaaban.
What is clear from a consideration of the history and origin of the badū from
antiquity to the current tribal-modern stratification is that the relationship
between tribalism and national branding is difficult to define. This is clearly
visible in the context of the representation of badū in media, poetry and
Western accounts of the Arabian Peninsula, where the bedouin is often
romanticized in fiction or stereotype whilst being ostracized in real life with
no apparent consciousness of this effect displayed on the part of either media
creators or consumers. In the 1940s, Wilfred Thesiger described this dichotomy
vis-à-vis townspeople who disparaged the poorer bedouins as ‘uncouth and
savage’10 while simultaneously admiring their ‘courage and their unbelievable
generosity … the hungry ragged men whom they had just been reviling had
been transmuted into the legendary heroes of the past’.11 Facey makes similar
remarks about the townspeople’s admiration of certain qualities of their shared
past with the tribal bedouins who lived on the outskirts of the settled cities of
the Najd, while simultaneously harbouring a deep resentment for many of their
behaviours.12
In a more recent example of the confusion surrounding badū heritage, an
interview with a group of Kuwaiti urban private high school girls13 showed
a consensus that their generation had no need for tribal practices or any
other form of ‘bedouinism’. They felt that this part of their heritage should be
confined to museums, textbooks and history lessons in the classroom. Attitudes
towards badū heritage in the context of national branding would thus seem to
point towards a favouring of bedouin-lite as it were: a subjective appropriation
of tribal customs within an unstable modern paradigm according to social
whims, as evidenced by the more incoherent aspects of ‘tribal-modern’ social
practices.
National dress, which is presumed to represent pre-oil dressing practices, is
another important marker of nationality and belonging. Khalaf traces how, in
the UAE, though common throughout the GCC, many nationals began adopting
Western dress to proclaim their modernity: ‘[H]owever, this social trend was
halted in the early 80’s. Emiratis as well as other Gulf nationals have now taken
the cultural position that you can be modern while at the same time adhering
to national dress, as dress has gained significant cultural and political meanings
that relate to the making of Emirati national identity.’14 While definitely a marker
of nationality and therefore in some ways class, its connection to a shared
bedouin past is becoming contested. Newspaper articles written in Kuwait have
suggested that the red checkered headdress is ‘alien’ to Kuwait, linked instead
to nomadic tribal populations,15 even though the red checkered headdress and
collared dishdasha remain a common choice among Kuwaiti men from all social
backgrounds. Rana al-Mutawa finds that it was the burqa rather than the abaya,
which has origins in the Najd, that was worn in the UAE in the pre-oil era and
that national dress today is far more homogenized than it was in the pre-oil era
as a means of fostering a sense of unified national identity, which excludes, for
instance, Persian headdresses, in order to ‘promote an image of a pure Arab and
Bedouin heritage and tradition’.16
Idil Akinci also confirms, through interviews with young people in Dubai,
the extent to which national dress helps to ‘(re)produce and consolidate the
boundaries [of] Emirati identity which is popularly imagined as Arab, tribal and
Bedouin’.17 In the Kuwaiti context, Anh Nga Longva describes the importance of
wearing national dress for women specifically ‘to illuminate the expatriates, not
least the men, on the attitude to adopt when interacting with Kuwaiti women’.18
With the influx of large non-national populations in all three of these states,
which house expatriate majorities, national dress therefore provides a marker of
status and distinction as ‘original’ inhabitants of these states.
Tourism has in turn placed an inordinate amount of focus on heritage in
this bedouin-lite sensibility, as it waters down some of the more problematic
and older tribal values of the desert in a manner designed to appeal to a wider
market; it also, crucially, as mentioned above, separates the ‘natural’ citizen
populations from the perceived newcomer citizens and essentially ‘outsider’
majority expatriate populations. In addition, emphasis on a tribal past which
is somehow considered more authentic or at least more rugged undermines
traditional understandings of the rentier state and rentier citizens, which is
that, as Beblawi puts it, ‘reward – income or wealth – is not related to work and
risk bearing, rather to chance or situation’.19 By emphasizing the hardships of a
tribal past, these states demonstrate (a) how much they have developed under
the leadership of their ruling families and (b) how much their wealth has been
earned after decades of hardship.
Tribal tropes are therefore projected outward, perhaps because of the
orientalist assumption that this part of the world lacks cultural capital.20 Local
and international tourism has driven forward the heritage industry, which has
largely relied on tropes from the past like camel racing, poetry, falconry, pearl-
diving and storytelling.21 Indeed, the first generation of national museums
recorded the ancient and recent past side by side and were ‘determinedly local in
their agenda of capturing and presenting traditional lifeways and archaeology’.22
New national museum projects on a much larger scale are considered to be

‘representing a “regime of globalisation” and a form of secular modernity that
excludes the singularity of the local’.23 Sites of heritage, then, have become
increasingly marketed to international audiences, taking into account the power
of such institutions for national branding as well as the importance of non-
national populations in these states.
Matthew Gray theorizes that the GCC states’ different experiences with
globalization dictate how they have constructed and expanded their heritage
industries, positing that Dubai was earlier exposed to the global economy
than was Qatar, and so has been relatively more open about accepting mass
leisure tourism and as a consequence has become more socially liberal than its
neighbours.24 Certainly, despite some similarities across heritage sectors, each
country, and arguably even each city, within the GCC has a distinct branding
effort: Dubai aims to be ‘the friendly, modern, open face of the Middle East and
is harmonious with Western culture, big events, and consumerism’, while Qatar
has concentrated on using its foreign policy and diplomatic initiatives, as well
as attracting major sporting events, to project its image abroad; Kuwait, on the
other hand, has invested less in the heritage industry and aims to be a regional
mediator and humanitarian partner rather than tourism hub.25
In all of these states, however, as Karen Exell and Trinidad Rico point out,
‘“the bedouin” is a key interlocutor in the heritage imaginations of the region, as
members of tribal populations demonstrate the marginalization of a pre-existing
ecology and livelihood, the stakeholders of legitimate ancestries and an authentic
cosmology that need to be performed, though the heritage representation of the
“Bedouin” as a single group from the past ignores complex tribal and ethnic
differences.’26 Below, we assess some of the most recent heritage efforts across
the three states under study to demonstrate the extent to which tribal tropes
remain important. As Gabriella Elgenius explains, this use of tribal and bedouin
symbolism is significant because of ‘the strategic use of symbols in identity
and recognition politics, which is in turn connected to debates and struggles
about membership, nationality, citizenship and integration’.27 It is worth noting
that these symbols have become prominent even beyond the heritage projects
outlined below. Indeed, Rania Kamla and Clare Roberts have documented
the rise of traditional symbols such as pearls, dhows, coffee cups and dallahs
(traditional coffee pots), horses and hawks even in financial reports of annual
reports of GCC companies listed on local stock markets.28 Below, however, we
detail how tribalism has aided state-building and heritage preservation projects
of the three states we examine.
Figure 3 The dallah (Arabian coffee pot), one of the more universal images
associated with the Arabian Gulf and especially the Badu. Courtesy of Hala Shaaban.
Kuwait
Perhaps the earliest example of how bedouin symbols took the international
stage as state symbols was the use of camels by the Kuwaiti national football
team, the first Gulf team to ever qualify for a World Cup, in the 1982 tournament.
An anthem for the team entitled ‘Our Camel Lovely Camel (Our Camel is a
Winner)’, and the mascot Haydoo, a live camel, were widely circulated.29 Drawing
additional attention to the desert motif, the head of the Kuwaiti Football
Association said the team would withdraw unless it was allowed to bring its
mascot to the tournament in Spain; as a result, a camel was flown from Morocco
and housed in the backyard of the hotel in which the team was staying.30 Since
that time, Kuwait’s heritage sector has certainly expanded and evolved, and
its national branding has moved on, but the new iterations have not made an
impression on the global stage in the same way.
While Qatar and the UAE have increasingly competed to host prestigious
and high-profile national museums and branches of international museums, the
Kuwaiti state has invested notably less in preserving its tangible heritage through
such museums. In fact, Kristy Norman documents how, after antiquities stolen
by invading Iraqi forces were returned to Kuwait and after much of the country’s
National Museum, which was first opened in 1957,31 was destroyed, it remains in
the process of being fully reconstructed and currently houses only one section on
heritage.32 This section, notably, primarily consists of dioramas depicting daily
life primarily in Kuwait City’s souq and port, thus hearkening back to a pre-oil
past. The current museum initially opened in 1983 was designed by well-known
French architect Michel Ecochard, representing substantial state investment in
the project, but proved to be unpopular, as people felt it was ‘forbidding, and
had little relation to its cultural environment in terms of material or design’.33 As
a result, we have seen other new heritage-linked buildings in Kuwait, discussed
below and like heritage buildings in the other states under study, linked explicitly
to the country’s architectural past or its geographical landscape. For instance, the
roof of Kuwait’s National Assembly building, according to Danish architect Jørn
Utzon, ‘references the iconic tent construction of the Arabian Bedouin people’.34
Lawrence Vale argues that the ‘billowy tent-like canopy possesses none of its
bedouin prototype’s crucial sense of impermanence’ and that ‘the covered plaza
hearkens as much to ship sails and a tradition of water-based merchant trade as
it does to nomadic desert tradition, an ironically appropriate, if unintentional,
homage to the actual source of modern Kuwait’s cultural and economic success.’35
In a sense, then, GCC citizens are now seeing their culture articulated through
the eyes of Western architects, much as it has previously been articulated by
Western travellers to the region.
Relatedly, Farah al-Nakib has documented ways in which the advent of oil
wealth altered urban forms in Kuwait, in many ways erasing the pre-oil past.
The government sought in the 1950s to create a new city, removing the past and
justifying doing so by portraying the pre-oil age as ‘a period of suffering and
Figure 4 Diorama from Kuwait’s National Museum taken on April 2019. The scene
depicts a traditional school. Courtesy of author.
hardship, which in turn contributed to legitimizing the new role of government’.36

In fact, in 1970, the Council of Ministers invited several members of merchant
families to discuss their position on banning traditional dhow boats from Kuwait
City’s waterfront, since they were linked to the country’s pre-oil past and not to
the state’s modern future.37
By the 1980s, however, after implementing a Master Plan that largely
destroyed Kuwait’s old town centre, the government recognized that heritage
would be important in attracting tourists and in demonstrating how advanced
Kuwait had become since its pre-oil days. Al-Nakib explains:
Tourism aside, the retention of pieces of the past on the urban landscape and
the creation of a deliberate contrast between old and new would unequivocally
prove just how far Kuwait had advanced in such a short amount of time. Visual
Figure 5 Diorama from Kuwait’s National Museum taken on April 2019. The scene
depicts a merchant selling wares in the old souq. Courtesy of author.
reminders of the more austere life of the pre-oil town would throw the city’s
lavish new structures […] into sharp relief.38
Reminders of the past would also demonstrate the extent to which the
government had managed Kuwait’s newfound wealth and had aided its
transformation into a modern state. Qatar and the UAE appear to have taken
largely the same approach, increasingly seeking to integrate new structures, often
designed by internationally renowned architects, with traditional architecture
like souqs in what al-Nakib dubs an ‘image-driven approach to oil urbanization
after 1950’.39
In the 1980s, then, Kuwaiti heritage preservation became increasingly
important with the creation of Qaryat Yawm al-Bahhar (The Seaman’s Day
Village) on the coast across from parliament as
Figure 6 Kuwait’s National Assembly building designed by Danish architect Jørn

Utzon is across the street from the Arabian Gulf. Courtesy of Hala Shaaban.
a recreational space in which traditional courtyard houses and coffee shops, and
reenactments of pre-oil maritime scenes such as shipbuilding and the return
from pearling were ‘displayed and performed in great detail’. Like the souq, the
historic life of the city’s seafront became musealized in a confined and controlled
space in which Kuwaitis were invited ‘to experience their past in actuality’.40
Souq al-Mubarakiyya, Kuwait City’s largest souq, was restored following the
Iraqi invasion and today is not only a social gathering place for both Kuwaitis
and non-nationals, but also sells a variety of food and clothing items, including
some traditional items related to desert life.
Sulayman Khalaf tracks Kuwaiti efforts to preserve national heritage through a
yearly government-sponsored celebration commemorating pearl-diving, rather
than the state’s tribal past: ‘[K]uwaiti sea pearling heritage (turath al-ghuos) has
become appropriated by the state as a kind of state folklorism.’41 Khalaf goes on to
describe pearling as ‘an invented tradition’, which is used to forge national unity,
as well as to portray the amir ‘as both the guardian of heritage and tradition
and a state modernizer, whose wise vision helped in the rapid development and
creation of a caring welfare society’.42 The primary heritage trope in Kuwait, then,
appears linked more to its seafaring past than to desert and camel culture which
is emphasized more strongly in Qatar and the UAE, as described below. In his
analysis of the use of the dhow in particular in Kuwaiti heritage projects, Gilbert
points out that the boat ‘represents a past when Arab wealth came from more
glamorous endeavours than selling oil’, noting that Kuwait’s mercantile prowess
was intimately tied to the use of the dhow which connected it across the Indian
Ocean; it is therefore also a symbol of Kuwait’s mobility and demonstrates how
connected it was with the rest of the world even in its early days, rather than the
inward-facing desert motif often presumed to dominate the Arabian Peninsula.43
In addition to government-led initiatives to preserve Kuwaiti heritage
through pearl-diving exhibitions and the souq restoration, efforts on behalf of
well-connected Kuwaiti individuals to retain heritage also exist. Sadu House,
built in the 1870s, today continues to house a collection of traditional weaving,
having been revived in the 1980s by a member of the al-Sabah ruling family as
a means of retaining this aspect of their heritage and passing them on to new
generations of Kuwaitis.44 Notably, UNESCO added Arabian Peninsula al-sadu
weaving to its Intangible Heritage list in 2020.45 In the view of the president of
Sadu House, Shaykha Altaf al-Sabah, no true bedouins remain, but we should
place importance on the tribal value system which has been left in their place,
particularly the aspects which are cultural rather than political in nature, and
as a result Sadu House today remains a space in which the next generation of
Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis can learn about traditional weaving.46
The Dickson House, where the British Political Agent H.R.P. Dickson once
lived, and the American Mission Hospital, today the Americani Cultural Centre,
also provide examples of older architectural forms that survived renovation of
the city centre and thus are considered important to heritage protection, though
not explicitly linked to tribal tropes. Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyya, like Sadu House,
was established by members of the ruling family and is professionally curated
and named after one of the world’s finest collections of Islamic art.47 Nonetheless,
Radhika Lakshminarayanan points out that there is great potential for Kuwaiti
heritage to be used more effectively to foster what is still a relatively nascent
tourism sector that would aid economic diversification away from hydrocarbon
resources.48 As she explains, at present ‘many of Kuwait’s museums emerged from
private collections, and their significance and value were constructed through
the collector’s interest and patronage.’49 Indeed, Kuwait lacks a ministry of
tourism, suggesting that much of the heritage preservation work has been done
both by and for domestic populations. Madeenah is one example of a grassroots
citizen-driven effort to preserve Kuwait City’s specific urban history through a

variety of curated walking tours.50 In the words of its managing director Deema
AlGhunaim, ‘many people in Kuwait exclusively navigate the city by car, and
spend their leisure time inside privately-owned spaces like the home, diwaniya,
and malls. Madeenah helps challenge these norms by stepping outside, slowing
down, and experiencing the city at a personal scale.’51
Although Kuwait has done less to preserve tangible heritage through, for
instance, a large and prominent national museum, heritage and national identity
of course remain important. Longva traces the use of specific speech patterns,
as well as ‘the careful choice of children’s names, the strict observance of
marriage rules, were some of the mechanisms used to produce what was, at any
particular moment, consensually defined as Kuwaiti identity.’52 An example of
such a signifier of bedouin ancestry that many members of the tribal population
have retained – and that some ruling and political elites adopt as a measure of
‘authenticity’ – is their accentuated pronunciation of certain words and letters,
which differs from haḍar pronunciation. For example, in Kuwaiti, when the
letter jīm, usually pronounced as a ‘j’, is not changed into a yaa in words like rajal
[man], this is a signal of tribal bedouin pronunciation. These quotidian markers
of identity and belonging, which hearken back to Kuwait’s pre-oil past, serve
as an important part of cementing a distinct Kuwaiti identity and demonstrate
that not all aspects of Arabian Peninsula culture are easily encapsulated in the
traditional Western museum format, an observation also made by Exell and
Rico, which leads to a misjudgement common in Western critiques that ‘there is
no heritage’ in these states.53
In 2018, the world’s largest new cultural complex, the Sheikh Abdullah Al
Salem Cultural Centre, opened as part of Kuwait’s National Cultural district.
The centre houses a natural history museum, science museum, space museum,
Arabic Islamic science museum and a fine arts centre. The structure itself is
hyper-modern, as is the second site attached to the cultural district, Al Shaheed
Park, which houses a Remembrance Museum and Habitat Museum, the
first focused on critical moments in Kuwaiti history and the second focused
on Kuwait’s natural habitat. The third component of the cultural district, the
Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre, whose design was inspired by Islamic
architecture, was completed in 2016 and hosts a variety of cultural events,
particularly concerts. None of these new sites is specifically focused on heritage
preservation, however, in contrast to the large museum complexes built in Qatar
and the UAE, and there is no specifically national museum in this complex.
Instead, there appears to be a focus on linking Kuwait to the broader world
through natural history and science, specifically Arabic Islamic science, as well
as putting in place smaller locally focused collections. Again, unlike Qatar’s
national museum and the UAE’s Zayed Museum, the design of this complex
is not based on a tribal or desert motif, suggesting perhaps a desire to move
beyond the tribal and local at least in heritage discourse and focus on Kuwait’s
past and present role as a regional entrepôt.
Qatar
Qatar has more self-consciously than Kuwait sought to use its heritage,
particularly as linked to its past, to distinguish itself from its neighbours. Similar
to Kuwait’s earlier introduction of Haydoo the camel, Qatar’s symbol when it
hosted the Asian Games in 2006 was ‘Orry’ the Oryx – an animal indigenous to
the Arabian Peninsula whose statue remains prominently displayed on Doha’s
corniche. More recently, since the National Museum of Qatar, which opened
in 2019, was constructed, at the design of Jean Nouvel, in the shape of a desert
rose, this symbol has become increasingly used in national branding. It is also,
critically, as Suzi Mirgani points out, a symbol distinct from the camel, oryx,
dallah coffeepot, and falcon since it is a symbol only used by Qatar among
its neighbours (although not necessarily unique to Qatar alone) – something
increasingly important to Qatar over the course of the GCC crisis between 2017
and January 2021.54 Further, the desert rose is being used in promotional videos
for the Qatar-hosted 2022 World Cup: one such video features a young Arab boy
walking through the desert and picking up a desert rose before coming upon an
oryx and then reaching the sea.55 Alexandra Bounia explains that this symbol
was selected carefully, as it is the geological result of what happens when land
and sea meet – in essence uniting the tradition of the desert (badū) and of the
sea (haḍar); she goes further to posit that it also is more inclusive of non-Qatari
populations because it is a new symbol, rather than one linked explicitly to the
country’s past. In her words:
The desert rose becomes a very convenient social and political symbol that takes
the emphasis away from the ‘two culture’, the Bedouin people and the Hadar/
town people, or away from the division between Qataris and the ‘others’ living in
their country. Desert roses with no particular cultural value in Qatar before, have
been identified as the right symbol for the new era. They take the emphasis away
from the traditional symbols of local culture to something neutral, reworked,
but at the same time something that brings the attention back to the land, the
natural environment and the ‘deep’ relationship of the people to their land. It
makes the claim to origins that is very familiar from national museums in other
parts of the world as well, it makes the point that Qatari people are related to
the sand, ‘are ‘ancient’ and ‘naturally’ local but also rare, valuable and fragile.
It thus provides a material focus that aims to generate sentiments of national
belonging and emotional attachment to the nation, becoming a tool of ‘political
pedagogy’.56
The construction of the National Museum of Qatar itself and the fanfare at its
high-profile opening in 2019 demonstrate a concerted effort on the part of the
state to preserve Qatari heritage in museum form. In fact, the museum houses
within it the site of Qatar’s first national museum, constructed in 1975 at the site
of the original amiri palace and thus is a self-conscious effort to subsume Qatar’s
history under an al-Thani-focused narrative; it also seeks to bring together
under this narrative both the tribes who lived in the desert and the merchants
who focused on pearling and the sea for subsistence.
Qatar Foundation also recently created four museums in Mshreireb Properties,
housed in an area that historically has been home to expatriates and is today
being re-vamped, much like Doha’s Souq Waqif, to its former state. The Msheireb
Museums include the Mohammad bin Jassim House, which explains the restoration
of Msheireb as a means of restoring and preserving ‘architectural heritage;57 the
Company House, which traces the history of the discovery of oil in Qatar through
‘first-hand accounts of the men who laboured not just to provide for their families
but also to lay the foundations for their emerging nation;58 the Radwani House,
which replicates a traditional Qatari home; and the Bin Jelmood House, which
traces the history of slavery in the Arabian Peninsula and Indian Ocean. The
project, rather than focusing on a shared tribal past, outlines some of Qatar’s
pre-oil past through preservation of the Msheireb area, as well as demonstrating
how oil changed the state and shedding light on hardships linked to both the oil
industry and to international trade when slavery was still common in the Arabian
Peninsula and Indian Ocean.
Other projects seek to link Qatar to the broader world. Katara, a development
with art galleries, restaurants and a beach, as part of the Cultural Village
Foundation, is named for the ancient name given to the Qatari peninsula, thus
invoking its ancient past.59 According to its website, it ‘serves as a guardian
to the heritage and traditions of Qatar and endeavours to spread awareness
about the importance of every culture and civilization’ as part of ‘the most
multidimensional cultural project of Qatar’.60 In a similar war, the Museum of
Islamic Art, designed by IM Pei based on inspiration of the Ibn Tulun Mosque of
Cairo, focuses on Qatar insofar as it is part of the broader Islamic world. There is
a tendency then, to move away from shared tribal tropes to the creation of new
symbols and to emphasize Qatar’s place in the broader Arab and Islamic world.
This trend also reflects Qatar’s efforts, particularly under the previous Amir
Shaykh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani (r. 1995–2013) to enhance Qatar’s global
standing through such endeavours, as well as through an activist foreign policy.61
Qatar’s efforts at national branding have therefore been self-consciously
pursued and projected onto the global stage. Tarek Atrissi, who was responsible
for creating a unique font for Qatar’s branding,
was directed to make Qatar appear modern and progressive but also reverent of
its traditions and cultural heritage. It must be characterized not by blind growth
but by sustainable development and refined luxury. It should be clear that Qatar
held a unique position ‘at the heart of the Arabian Gulf, a meeting point for East
and West’ [….] Finally – and perhaps above all, given the frequency with which
this directive appears in Atrissi’s project documentation – Qatar’s identity had
to stress its ‘Arabic flavor’.62
This desire for so-called ‘Arabic flavour’ has often been translated into the use
of Arabic calligraphy or architecture, or in the reproduction of desert-associated
objects like the desert rose, dallah or camel. In this way, Qatar has taken a different
tack by reintroducing the symbol of the desert rose, one which connects Qatar
to natural place but not necessarily to tribal life; it also self-consciously brings
together both desert and port-focused life as a geological representation of the
result of the meeting of land and sea.
The UAE
As Frauke Heard-Bey notes, heritage and identity in the UAE are complicated
compared to their neighbours due to their division into relatively autonomous
emirates until 1971 and their traditional loyalty to tribe which has historically
pledged allegiance to one of the emirates’ rulers rather than necessarily to the
country’s leadership.63 She goes further to explain that:
In a federation, in which the basis for the individual member states was the
historical allegiance of the tribal people to the leader of their society, the
challenge to the coherence as a national entity is rooted in the strong attachment,
which each national retains to his or her ‘home’ emirate. This attachment is
bound up with the traditional role of the individual in his tribal society as well
as with diverse new economic opportunities, which the Rulers of the individual
emirates have sought to encourage over recent years. Yet this strong regional
identity is being amalgamated into an equally strong national Emirati identity.64
As in the other two states under study, the UAE houses side by side the modern
and the tribal. As an example, the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority announced in
2004 plans to develop Saadiyat Island’s Cultural District to include the Louvre
Abu Dhabi, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the Zayed National Museum and
Performing Arts Centre, with a separate Maritime Museum. Zayed Museum,
dedicated to Emirati history, is also meant to include a falcon conservation
centre, thus including the traditional and tribal alongside the cosmopolitan
and modern.65 It is important to note that museums that are not exclusively
focused on national history or tradition, like the Louvre and the Guggenheim,
can also be used as national images, as has arguably also been the case with the
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.66 Indeed, Jean Nouvel designed the Louvre Abu
Dhabi, which opened in 2017, specifically to tie the structure to its setting within
the UAE. Nouvel, who also designed the National Museum of Qatar, devised the
building as ‘“inspired by the cupola, a distinctive feature in Arabic architecture”
but also “from the palm trees of Abu Dhabi.”’67 The design was intended to create
‘a moving rain of light, reminiscent of the overlapping palm trees in the UAE’s
oases’, again underlining the importance of connecting national museums to
the national environment in which they are situated – particularly if they are
designed by non-nationals.68
The design of the Zayed National Museum by Norman Foster is meanwhile
based on feathers of a falcon and is thus meant to create ‘an iconic symbol for the
nation’, much in the same way as the desert rose in Qatar.69 Indeed, the falcon is
even in the UAE’s (and Kuwait’s) official national emblem, as well as the national
bird of Qatar. Falcons were once critical for hunting, and so falconry was not
merely a sport a generation ago; rather, falcons were a sign of wealth among
bedouin families.70 The UAE has positioned itself as a leader globally in falconry,
housing the world’s largest falcon hospital and hosting the International Hunting
and Equestrian Exhibition (ADIHEX) in Abu Dhabi.71 What was once critical to
the survival of individual and independent tribes has become ornamental – and
state-funded.
Dubai, in contrast to Abu Dhabi, has appealed more to the increasingly
globalized world and ever more international crowd it attracts.72 Further, because
it is not the state capital, it perhaps has less of a burden to provide symbols
for the nation. Dubai has diversified its economy through its focus on tourism,
finance, logistics and ports and real estate. Shaykh Rashid al-Maktoum, ruler of
Dubai until 1990, was said to have been very aware of the need to diversify; as
he explained, ‘[M]y grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a
Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his
son will ride a camel.’73 In Dubai, then, as in Kuwait, the leadership brought in
foreign assistance to plan Dubai along essentially ‘a clean slate’.74 Dubai Tourism
Vision 2020, launched in 2013, was focused on making the city a top choice
for international business and leisure.75 Marketable authenticity is preserved in
specific locations: Heritage Village Dubai in the Al Shindagha neighbourhood
provides a replica of traditional Emirati life, and a similar such village exists
in Abu Dhabi. Further, the restoration of Bastakia in Dubai provides a
representation of old, pre-oil Dubai.76
Matthew MacLean notes that, in 2014, heritage festivals were held in Qasr al-
Hosn in Abu Dhabi, Fujairah Heritage Village, Ras al-Khaimah, al-Qattara Oasis
in Al-Ain, al-Wathba in Abu Dhabi and Liwa.77 As Oliver Picton documents,
such heritage villages ‘become places where nationals can practice imagining the
nation and manage their local and global identity [….] They provide a means
through which the state can produce and appropriate heritage knowledge and
control its dissemination to the public. This is an exercise of statecraft, using
heritage in state formation.’78 It is also, at least in the individual emirates, a means
of maintaining their distinct identities vis-à-vis the leading emirates of Abu
Dhabi and Dubai. Local heritage villages allow for the recreation of local scenes
often untouched by the presence of the federal state itself.
In Abu Dhabi, seat of the country’s capital, however, camel culture, in addition
to falconry discussed above, has become increasingly important through
camel festivals and races run by the ruling family. As documented by Khalaf,
‘[f]raming these cultural celebrations with Badu poetics and cultural aesthetics
gives greater credence to the idea of asala (cultural authenticity) for the Emirati
national community, which currently perceives itself as seriously threatened by
shifting and powerful global forces’.79 He further explains that ‘Badu complaints
about the loss of their traditional camel wealth and skills are balanced by the
timely insights and realization of the national leaders that the preservation and
revival (ihyaʿ) of camel traditions are perfect cultural material for building the
state’s ideological and political identity.’80 Indeed, even the camel racing stadium
is constructed to resemble a tent, demonstrating the extent to which it is meant
to call back to a pre-oil, and very much tribal and bedouin past, all through a
state-led and state-funded effort.81
Aside from camel culture, the traditional form of nabaṭī poetry is also explicitly
preserved throughout the UAE. Million’s Poet on Abu Dhabi TV, organized by
the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage and sponsored by Crown
Prince of Abu Dhabi Shaykh Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahyan,82 grants large
cash prizes to the poets judged to be the most skilled.83 On his personal website,
Shaykh Mohammad bin Rashid, ruler of Dubai, states:
Nabati poetry has been a feature of life in the Arabian Peninsula since the
sixteenth century. In certain eras, this poetry was the only record of historical
events […] Nabati poetry shows the natural creativity of the Gulf ’s inhabitants
and represents their roots in this land. It is their everyday dialect. A strong
dialect, slightly removed from classical Arabic. It should be studied so that it
may be preserved.84
Again, we see efforts to preserve intangible components of Arabian Peninsula

heritage as a means of strengthening national cohesion and identity. Another
interesting instance of this revival of nabaṭī poetry is the ruler of Dubai and
Emirati Vice President Shaykh Mohammed bin Rashid’s release of several poems
in the nabaṭī style, often praising various rulers of the UAE and commenting on
current events, including the GCC crisis, discussed in detail in Chapter 5; these
are available on his website and are often also published on his Instagram page.85
Notably, other members of the GCC ruling elites have attempted to demonstrate
their poetic abilities as well, perhaps most publicly Prince Khalid al-Faisal bin
ʿAbdulaziz al-Saud, governor of Mecca province in Saudi Arabia.86
Heritage sports and the practice of traditional poetry also help provide a
means of anchoring Emirati national identity in something unchanging, fixed
and certain, within an otherwise increasingly cosmopolitan and culturally
chaotic world. In this context, the sport provides a means of not only
maintaining a sense of Emirati national identity amidst rapid modernization
and globalization by providing strong links with the UAE’s ancestral past, but
more specifically emphasizing the cultural authenticity of the minority Emirati
national community who feel ‘seriously threatened by shifting and powerful
global forces’.87
The barjeel, or wind tower, is another symbol common to the GCC but used
mainly in Emirati heritage preservation; it was initially brought to the Trucial
States from Bandar Lengeh in present-day Iran88 to provide ‘a pre-electric form
of air conditioning’ and as such as a symbol of wealth and the ability to maintain
a permanent residence.89 It has become a symbol of national identity, particularly
in Dubai but used less in areas like al-Ain and Liwa, which were affiliated with
land-based bedouinism rather than sea-based merchant identity.90 In fact, as

MacLean documents,
criticism of the barjeel intersects closely with an understanding of the Emirati
national identity as essentially bedouin, relegating the Ajam, Baluch, and other
Emiratis to a secondary status. As one Emirati told me, ‘We are pure Emirati. We
never lived anywhere else but here …. Lots of what people call Emirati dialect is
foreign … but only pure locals can point out the mistakes.’91
This statement reflects the dichotomy between local and foreign or imported
which remains to this day and which affected in particular the assimilation of
the UAE’s very sizable majority expatriate population, discussed in greater detail
below.
It is worth noting that heritage practices and traditions vary across the seven
constituent emirates of the UAE. As MacLean points out, in smaller emirates like
Umm al-Quwain and Ras al-Khaimah, which attract fewer Western expatriates
than Abu Dhabi and Dubai and which have experienced relatively slower
development due to their lack of hydrocarbon resources, ‘there is less immediate
need for state-driven heritage preservation. In some respects the creation of
heritage districts resembles gentrification.’92 Picton also notes that Sharjah in
particular has sought to maintain status as the UAE’s cultural capital through its
designated heritage area and ‘tends to represent Sharjah’s culture and heritage
as something distinct with an essence and geographical boundary’.93 Each of
the individual emirates, then, has the freedom to elaborate on its own cultural
traditions, which are, notably, not always linked to a tribal past yet also do not
directly challenge the role of the leading ruling families of al-Nahyan and al-
Maktoum; instead, they affirm social distinctions across emirates and allow for
the preservation of a variety of heritage practices.
Common tribal tropes
As described in detail above, all three governments of the countries under

study are currently engaged in sponsoring projects that attempt to wed past and
present, and which are also used to construct a contemporary national identity
through the union of these two aspects of cultural heritage. Further, the national
identity they are seeking to promote undermines notions of rentier citizens
benefitting easily from their country’s natural resources; by revisiting and
highlighting the hardships of the past, this trope of rentier citizens is rightfully
called into question, and a more nuanced vision of these states’ histories and of
citizens’ relationships to natural resources therein has emerged.
As the fostering of unique national identities and nationalisms in all three
of these states currently operates from the top down, however, the selective
embrace of bedouin pursuits has made tribal activity the standard by which
others measure their sense of belonging. This may in turn have led nationals
of bedouin descent to more openly cling to tribal practices despite social and
economic changes; it might also contribute to the additional ‘othering’ of non-
national populations living in these countries.
Further, what is often painted as an authentic maintenance of badū heritage
is, in fact, subject to the needs of the modern tourist industry rather than the
requirements of realistic historical representation. This is natural for a group of
countries that relies on a specific image to drive tourism, but the more harmful
difficulty as a result of this image comes when national offices fail to recognize
the disparity that underpins it, particularly in the inevitable process of editing
involved in creating national museums and symbols. In the view of Sophia al-
Maria, for instance, ‘He [Shaykh Khalifa bin Hamad al Thani] did two things
to ensure that Qatar would not lose its cultural heritage. He built an ambitious
museum of the state and sea, and he strengthened his military by drafting the
symbolic old guard of Arab honor, the Al-Murrah Bedouin: my family.’94 Al
Maria goes on to describe a neglected display in the Qatari National Museum
of the al-Murrah bedouins as a metaphor for both their historic use by ruling
regimes and their current alienation.95 Meanwhile, Philip Khoury and Joseph
Kostiner explain that ‘[a]fter the discovery of oil, nomadic tribes were forced to
abandon their traditional way of life and integrate into the new petroleum-based
economy.’96 Put simply, the difficulty in authentic heritage being represented in
national branding efforts stems from the fact that state-led identity projects are
interested in historical reality insofar as it can produce palatable and politically
coherent displays in heritage villages, museums or at cultural festivals. The
danger of this practice lies in a fundamental corruption of the accurate history
behind national identity in a way that makes truth very difficult to untangle
from fantasy. As Exell and Rico put it, ‘a homogeneous, timeless, “legendary”
past serves to conceal potentially contradictory and politically awkward tribal
histories’ which may undermine state-led narratives that have at the centre
ruling families.97 The tribal tropes commonly used also complicate not only the
historical ties these countries had with international populations but also their
current relationships with their expatriate majorities.
Nationalizing Bedouin-ism: Relationships

with expatriate populations
Ali Alraouf argues that a tribe’s ‘relation to the land is a form of existence
and therefore, when you look at the heritage of urbanism, when you look at
the traditions, the customs, the way of life in Qatar, you will see very clear
physical manifestation … in specific areas’.98 It is reasonable to posit, then,
that this physical connection explains why large regions within the three states
under study are divided into neighbourhoods meant for specific tribes and
why in all three states, the settlement of tribes happened to prevent tribal
divisions, leading to a form of ethnic ghettoization.99 As Thesiger puts it, ‘[t]
hey (bedouins) make no allowance for the stranger. Whoever lives with the
Bedu must accept Bedu conventions, and conform to Bedu standards.’100 While
certainly an exaggerated claim, the expectation to marry within the tribe is still
viewed as a forgone conclusion for many, especially if these individuals want
to retain their sense of specifically tribal identity, as well as strengthen local
familial ties. Further, the emphasis of tribal tropes in nationalist discourse
underlines the importance of a primordial connection to the land for citizens.
Indeed, social underpinnings of nationalism are emphasized inside the
Arabian Peninsula, often through tribal tropes; there exists ‘a nationalist-type
sensitivity to the impact of foreign residents, who are perceived as diluting
local identity’, perhaps best evidenced by citizenship laws in these states,
discussed in the previous chapter.101
Taking into account the tribalism involved in geographic segmentation, it
could therefore be argued that the practice of withholding citizenship from non-
nationals married to national women is more of an enforcement of a tribal tradition
rather than an Islamic one. Amal al Malki, Dean of Hamad bin Khalifa University
– and a Qatari woman married to a non-national herself – suggests that it is an oft-
cited fear that granting citizenship to the children of a national woman married to
a non-national will cause ‘demographic’ confusion, or diffuse national identity.102
Others argue that ‘tribal cohesiveness is also reflected in the efforts of the Gulf
states to restrict citizenship … the tremendous influx [of non-tribal Arabs] since
1940, has caused the naturally restrictive nature of tribal society to reassert itself
to prevent a further dilution of tribal identities.’103 Institutional encouragement
of nationals marrying nationals, whereby nationals receive 2000KD each (6600
USD) upon marrying Kuwaitis,104 as well as free housing or a generous housing
loan for a Kuwaiti couple, is an extension of this tribal mentality. Similar incentives
are awarded for intra-national marriages in Qatar and the UAE.
As Neha Vora and Natalie Koch highlight, ‘what makes nationalist discourse
and nation-building agendas of the Gulf so powerful is the fact that they have
relied heavily upon purifying the imagined citizen “self ” from the non-citizen
“other” – often through recuperating the Western Orientalist repertoire.’105
Indeed, as they highlight, heritage sports and symbols of indigenous culture,
like pearling, dhows, wind towers and features of desert, as well as the use of
national dress, demonstrate in daily life the enforced and permanent distinction
between citizens and non-citizens, which in turn shapes how heritage discourses
are created and maintained.106 So strong is the division between so-called
‘original’ GCC citizens and non-nationals that Longva asserts that the GCC
states could be dubbed ethnocracies: ‘that brand of nationalism that views
the nation as a “natural” and ethnically “pure” community, as opposed to its
liberal conceptualization as a community based on equal rights and duties.’107
Connection to the land and to a pre-oil bedouin past is thus a means of mediating
between in-group and out-groups.
Perhaps the present-day version of this demonstration of ‘rightful’ connection
to the land is heightened populism, which is seen most clearly in Kuwait, in
the face of the implementation of austerity measures. With Kuwaiti citizens
concerned about the effects of austerity measures introduced after 2014 on
their own well-being, there has been increasing focus on taxing expatriates
rather than citizens who are seen to have more of a claim to the Kuwaiti state
and even removing expatriates to address the state’s demographic imbalance;
similar such language is emerging elsewhere in the GCC states as a means of
avoiding consequences of austerity measures that governments now insist they
will implement due to the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Former Kuwaiti Member of Parliament Safa al-Hashem was the most
outspoken in her criticism of the expatriate population having gone so far as to
call the demographic imbalance (the majority of the population is expatriate) an
‘unnatural invasion’;108 she has also opined that expatriates should be charged for
‘the air they breathe’ in Kuwait.109 Some measures to shift the financial burdens of
austerity onto expatriates in Kuwait include the introduction of new health care
costs for non-nationals,110 parliamentary approval to place fees on remittances,111
the introduction of fees on companies that employ ‘excess’ foreigners of over 50
per cent of their total workforce,112 and an increase in work permit and transfer
fees for expatriate workers.113 This type of populist rhetoric and these policy
changes have been welcomed by many in the Kuwaiti population, particularly
those who want to preserve what they consider the tribal, or traditional, nature
of the state.
Notably, such populist, anti-expatriate language has intensified since the onset
of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the GCC states increasingly pushing measures
to nationalize their workforces as a means of ensuring that citizen populations
do not bear the brunt of the economic downturn.114 Kuwait alone has pledged to
decrease its expatriate population from 70 per cent to 30 per cent of the total,115
and parliament has finalized a bill to reduce the number of expatriate workers
by allowing the cabinet to determine the maximum number of expatriate
workers that the country needs in a variety of specialized fields.116 Similar policy
measures are perhaps being taken throughout the GCC, with populist dynamics
also at play, yet less easily observed since they lack parliamentary politics of the
type seen in Kuwait.
Stereotypes and collective identity
On a broader scale, modern Arabian Peninsula culture tends to be tied to two

prevalent stereotypes of the region: first, that it is an area defined by tribalism,
and second, that the construction of the modern state and its cosmopolitanism,
have undermined and threatened this traditional culture in a very clear-cut
conflict. In confronting these stereotypes, several key questions about the
formation of national identity and heritage culture in the contemporary GCC
emerge, especially where the management of this identity is closely linked with
ruling elites’ ambitions for their respective countries and their continued control
of the citizenship narrative. In Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, the historicizing of
national identity is intractably linked with the countries’ pre-oil pasts, which is
seen as somehow more ‘authentic’ than the post-oil era; states foster collective
memories of shared pasts and contemporary cultural expressions around a
singular model of political cohesion, identity and authority, which is very much
tied to the notion of ‘desert diplomacy’ and relies on the tribal model of a shaykh
leading his qabīla as its heart.
In an example of this tribal shaykh and desert diplomacy motif, this image
from the Al_Saud_instagram account shows Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince
Mohammad bin Salman hosting a dinner at the Camel Festival in Tayef in
September 2018 for UAE Crown Prince Mohammad bin Zayed and two of his
brothers Shaykhs Sayf and Nihayan, as well as Prince Nasser bin Hamad al-
Khalifa from Bahrain, Shaykh Abdallah al-Sabah from Kuwait, Prince Khaled
bin Faisal from Saudi Arabia and Sayed Asad bin Tareq from Oman. The post,
emphasizing historical ties between those countries and set at a heritage-linked
Figure 7 In an example of ‘desert diplomacy’, this image from the Al_Saud_

instagram account, shows Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman
hosting a dinner at the Camel Festival in Tayef in September 2018 for UAE Crown
Prince Shaykh Mohammad bin Zayed and his brothers Shaykhs Sayf and Nihyan bin
Zayed, and Prince Nasser bin Khalifa from Bahrain, Shaykh Abdallah al Sabah from
Kuwait, Prince Khaled bin Faisal from Saudi Arabia and Sayed Asad bin Tariq from
Oman.
festival, demonstrates that ruling families of the region are grounded in historical
and social legitimacy and also are linked by their shared past; indeed, they are
portrayed behaving as members of the same family. It is also symbolic of GCC
unity, despite missing a representative from Qatar since this was at the height of
the Gulf crisis.
Another example of the use of tribal tropes as a means of demonstrating the
strength of personal and political ties among leaders of the GCC was illustrated
in coverage of the growing friendship between Abu Dhabi Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman in 2017. Their connection was widely reported in the Western press as
having begun at an overnight desert camp in Saudi Arabia. As reported in The
Wall Street Journal, ‘[t]he heirs to the throne in Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates hardly knew each other until they enjoyed a beloved Gulf pastime
together – an overnight camping trip in the vast Saudi desert, accompanied by
trained falcons and a small entourage.’117 The desert is therefore reimagined by
the Western press as a place where political leaders can engage in traditional
pastimes and solidify their personal ties to one another.
The Emirati Government in particular has focused its national branding
energies on preserving and displaying a curated cultural heritage that is closely
tied to a specifically ‘bedouin’ past, in which exhibits, symposiums and historical
festivals reflect this desert-oriented nationalism, despite an otherwise largely sea-
faring history. In Qatar and Kuwait, national identity narratives also focus on the
hardships that faced older generations, simultaneously promoting a nostalgia for
the simplicity of the past and pride in the rapid economic development, growth
and modernization of contemporary reality. An example of this can be found
in Sulayman Khalaf ’s contribution to the body of work focused on both camel
racing in the Arabian Peninsula generally118 and Kuwait’s pearl-diving heritage,
which details the Kuwaiti Government’s attempts to (re)construct and (re)invent
Kuwaiti identity through the annual Kuwaiti Seaman’s Day and Kuwait Desert
(Bedouin) Day, and argues for the importance of these events in constructing a
contemporary Kuwaiti identity.119 By revisiting and highlighting the hardships of
the past, this trope of rentier citizens is also rightfully called into question, and
a more nuanced vision of these states’ histories and of citizens’ relationships to
natural resources therein has emerged.
At times, state-led attempts to modify the construction of modern national
identities in the apparent image of a set of ruling elites have – as mentioned
previously – resulted in the suppression or erasure of other, nonconformist
forms of indigenous Gulf, or khalījī, cultural expression and self-expression.
This is due to the fact that, when a specific national vernacular and identity
is favoured in all three countries, it is a tribal, bedouin-lite version that often
excludes other demographic identities and subgroups as not being germane
to its desired narrative and presented set of perceptions. Nonetheless, the
growing demand for economic reform in the GCC highlights the varying
impacts that economic development can have on national identity. This
dynamic has become increasingly apparent to those concerned with the
authentic creation of a national identity, as the treatment of tribal elites in
the economic diversification projects of modern states has had a growing and
direct effect on the relationship between political stability, economic growth
and national identities. Consequently, debates about political reform, economic
growth, the distribution of power and their impact on the constitution and
negotiation of national identities continue to demonstrate a tension between
the ‘ruling bargain’, so to speak, and the assemblages of political-economic
power within tribal demographics, and socio-economic transformations that
evolve with the advent of new citizenship models. The use of desert culture in
the construction of national identity and citizenship values – and the emphasis
on selective bedouin tribal customs in National Day celebrations and in other
state-controlled means of national identity promotion – may have, as predicted
by Salzman,120 negatively affected the evolution of a merit-based, tolerant and
inclusive social ideology in the GCC, to varying degrees in its three wealthier
states: Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE.
Any examination of public and private attitudes towards non-tribal
nationals, migrant workers and gender and familial roles in both a historical and
contemporary context demonstrates the complex and dichotomous relationship
between so-called ‘modern’ de-tribalized values and the reality of tribalism as
practiced in the GCC today. To be clear, the political and personal reasons for
the continued presentation of tribal and bedouin values as the cornerstone of
an ‘authentic’ national identity in the GCC underpin some serious and obvious
conflicts between these and urban modernization projects in the three states,
global ambitions, the various sociopolitical consequences of these projects and
ambitions, in addition to highlighting the ways in which modern states have
failed to provide a robust enough sense of belonging to replace tribal values.
The juxtaposition of state projects of glamorizing the bedouin ancestor and a
fractured image of glorification and inherited mistrust can be seen in educational
coverage of bedouin tribes, who are presented as folk heroes fighting with their
rulers against other villainous bedouin tribes, who in turn are attempting to
ransack urbanized centres and coastal towns.121
The progression of GCC bedouin-ism on the regional stage
On the main website of private Zayed University, under the heading of ‘The
Story of the UAE,’ the prevailing mythology of bedouin values is woven into
the formation of national identity as a decisive narrative, which is at once true
and rather misleadingly over-simplified: ‘the Bedouin Tribe was the principal
building block of the UAE.’122 Not only that, but the language used to describe these
ancestral bedouins as ‘proud’ and ‘resourceful’ reveals the obvious preference
institutionally bestowed on that history instead of on the fishing villages that are
mentioned in the same sentence devoid of admiring descriptions, even though
they may have been equally proud and resourceful. In fact, it is also a way to bind
and promote the UAE and link it culturally to other countries, such as Morocco,
by participating in events such as the UNESCO recognized Tan Tan Moussem
Festival in South Morocco, which brings together more than thirty tribes and
other nomadic people through ‘a showcase of music, popular songs, heritage
games, poetry evenings, oral traditions and performances featuring horses and
camels’.123 This bedouin-lite identity takes on an even more significant role in
terms of the soft power marketing strategies of states like Qatar and the UAE due
to their race to capture regional cultural capital space as briefly discussed at the
opening of this chapter. Museums that focus on national heritage and document
the story of the nation reinforce the need to homogenize that story, which makes
bedouin identity central to that unique narrative. In short, ‘history, identity,
culture and heritage are exploited in order to pave the way for social and national
development.’124 The Vision plans of all three of these states, discussed at length
in Chapter 5, further showcase the extent to which state-formulated notions of
traditional values are incorporated even into plans for economic diversification.
National Day celebrations across the coastal GCC states emphasize a sea-
faring bedouin template, displaying varying degrees of ‘a process of cultural
fusion’,125 which was once a common factor in newly independent post-colonial
states’ bids to assert an identity in which an oppositional occupying ‘other’ was no
longer omnipresent. The bedouin desert cultural identity in itself is exclusive and
hostile to outsiders outside of trading purposes, as it is based on genealogy; one
is either born into it or is not. The urban sea culture identity allows for a multi-
ethnic citizenship model, and to a certain extent, it is based on merit and mutual
service; if enough financial success is accomplished, a family can, in this tradition,
elevate itself to the merchant class irrespective of creed, tribe or ethnicity. The
relatively late arrival of the badū to the new GCC cities and their inability to
break into the merchant elites’ stronghold on most financial and commercial
institutions, resulting in their perceived over-reliance on government salaries,
has become an inflammatory topic today and has made bedouin youth especially
susceptible to the political opposition, seen most clearly in Kuwait.
Nepotism, which is inherent in tribal family values (one common refrain
is ‘me and my brother against my cousin, and me and my cousin against the
stranger’), also means that, to guarantee jobs within the government, urban
dwellers looking to enter the labour market who are not of bedouin descent have
sometimes formed coalitions that are based on family, ethnicity or belonging to
an ideologically linked political party, which is in turn potentially threatening to
social harmony and national equality. The erosion of a multi-narrative history
in favour of the hegemony of bedouin family culture does not bode well for
political and social rights of the expatriate majority living in the GCC states,
nor does it produce a healthy social paradigm for urban bedouins, who are
trapped in a clash between a featureless bedouin-lite tourist-oriented culture
and an overly refined, unbalanced set of conservative values which are no longer
naturally kept in check or even made necessary by desert life. National policies
which entrench these bedouin family values, such as financial incentives for
marrying nationals in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, or the negation of citizenship
rights to children of national women married to non-nationals, can be seen as
an extension of a tribal mentality that focuses on the need to preserve bloodlines
and are sometimes in direct conflict with international treaties that many of the
GCC countries have ratified. Further, as intra-GCC conflict emerged between
2017 and 2021, tribal allegiances were also increasingly instrumentalized, as
discussed at length in Chapter 5.
The patronage and quid pro quo assumptions inherent in the placement of
bedouin family values within the GCC national structure, coupled with the
welfare state’s provision of social services such as housing, education, medical
coverage and even employment, in addition to tribal markers demonstrating
one’s genealogical proximity to ruling families, have added to this sense
of entitlement and the expectations of government jobs of a certain status
irrespective of skill and qualification. The rise of an anti-migrant labour rhetoric
and nationalization of labour policies that have gained a stronghold in some
of the GCC states over the past ten years and that are presented as a solution
to youth unemployment, instead of a much-needed overhaul of education and
training, are examples of policies that could arguably stem from tribal family
values and are not in the long-term interest of an aspirational region that wants
to compete on a global level.
Conclusions
As GCC countries continue to open themselves up to international scrutiny

by marketing themselves as financial, cultural and tourism hubs, and while
some countries such as Qatar and the UAE invest heavily in residential projects
marketed towards foreign investors, a re-evaluation of GCC tribal family values
that underpin national identity becomes imperative from a security and planning
perspective. We need to examine not only how tribal family values have shaped
GCC citizens’ attitudes towards large foreign populations residing within their
borders and affected human and labour rights for private and public-sector
employment, but also how they have also governed relationships internally with
other national groups considered less ‘authentic’ or ʿasil. Further, it is instructive
to see the extent to which government-led heritage projects rely on traditional
tribal tropes, whether as a means of recognizing the historical role of tribes or in
hopes of co-opting tribes as independent centres of political and social capital.
In light of recent political activity in the region, it is also important to assess
whether the central alignment with ruling regimes still exists for most self-
defined bedouin families, or whether the tribal cross-border identity still take
precedence, and if so, how national identity fell short of their needs. In many
parts of the GCC, state-run media and education could focus more attention
on alternative aspirational models so that young people can adopt work and
social ethics that rely on personal competence rather than tribal allegiance or
kinship. In imagining what this future citizen will look like, the re-examination
of bedouin family values and its various intersections with national identity
construction must be re-visualized in more implementable and inclusive
strategies for the smaller GCC countries to be able to circumvent some of the
issues discussed here, and for others that may find that the over-reliance on this
singular, nostalgic and increasingly out-of-touch model is no longer the only
suitable anchor for national identity. In the chapter that follows, we trace the
ways in which tribal belonging and tribalism more broadly are increasingly
integrated into the modern and cosmopolitan societies and polities of the GCC.
5
Tribalization of traditionally non-tribal

actors and future impact of the resurgence
of tribal rhetoric
As has been demonstrated in the preceding chapters, tribes, though no longer

of critical importance as providers of material benefits to populations of the
countries under study, remain significant in political rhetoric and social practice,
as well as heritage discourse. Importantly, then, tribes in the Arabian Peninsula
demonstrate the extent to which tribe and state can successfully coexist; indeed,
as Dale Eickelman describes, ‘tribes in the GCC region have always coexisted
with states and empires.’1 Further, as has been explained at length in preceding
chapters, the British managed to gain a foothold within the Arabian Peninsula
largely due to their connections with tribes; forging a relationship or signing
a treaty with British authorities, in turn, granted tribes greater political access
and social capital, and indeed tribes with which treaties were signed remain of
critical importance today. Their importance goes far beyond merely the political,
however, largely due to the fact that social and political lives remain very much
linked in smaller states of the Arabian Peninsula.2
Further, the fact that tribes have coexisted so well and for so long with
indigenous state structures in the GCC, which grew with the advent of oil
wealth, demonstrates the flexibility and durability of these structures, in
addition to calling into question assumptions often made about the activities
and attitudes of tribes. Indeed, in Eickelman’s words, ‘[t]ribes in the GCC states
can be remarkably urban, educated and transnational. Tribes may not always
have official standing, but they remain strong in the social imagination and
often are the only tolerated civic associations. Tribes and genealogies work and
have a powerful resonance in linking the noble imagined past to the present,
and make social life civil and predictable.’3 Not even long-standing tribal orders,
then, are static in the Arabian Peninsula today. In this chapter, we demonstrate
the ways in which tribalism remains relevant both to political and social life
in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, with implications beyond these three states,
influencing regional foreign policies and intra-GCC relations as well. In so
doing, we examine the ability of tribal structures to influence policymaking, as
well as culture and society more broadly.
The valorization of tribal values
From a genealogical perspective, most of the ancestors of the native population

of the GCC states – including the majority of their ruling families – are of tribal
origin. For some segments of the national populations of these three states,
such as with the majority of Qatar and the UAE, the evolutionary process from
a nomadic bedouin lifestyle to settled urbanization in towns and cities is still
relatively new, as discussed in Chapter 2. As Exell and Rico explain, ‘a single
generation separates two distinct lifestyles, resulting in feelings of anxiety and
a desire for preservation of “the past” on the part of the older generation and a
lack of knowledge of this earlier lifestyle on the part of the younger generation.’4
Further, because of the shared genealogy of much of the citizen populations
of these three states, the easiest point of reference in the formation of national
identity has often involved the use of kinship blueprints and bedouin values,
merging these with the necessary citizenship practices required by a functioning
and modern state. In theory, this practice might allow a society to retain the best
traditions necessary for authentic cultural preservation while also making room
for progressive social practices to flourish. The official exaltation of bedouin
family values and kinship traditions (such as a strong allegiance to blood lines,
intermarriage and patriarchal hierarchy) and the prevalence and continued
importance of those values in both public and personal spheres among urban
and bedouin settled communities make the study of idealized ‘bedouin’ family
values and tribal ethics essential to understanding the evolution, and probable
future, of national identity in the three states, with wider implications for the
other GCC states.
In order to examine the extent to which bedouin ‘values’ are consciously
used as a kind of standard template in the formation of national identity and
state investments in encouraging so-called core values through social practices,
state education, public policies and state-run media channels, the use of both
personal interviews and a more comparative analysis is necessary. As Abdul
Rahman H. Al Said puts it,
Tribalization of Non-tribal Actors 97
[t]he process of national integration has been accelerated by the revolution

in communications … the state’s ability to introduce visible and significant
economic changes is augmented by its access to powerful and persuasive means
of communication such as radio and television …. The reluctance to be a part of
a larger unit was to a considerable degree curbed and neutralized. Earlier … the
whole area was governed by a compartmentalized mentality, a result, to a large
degree of the prevailing state of geographical insulation.5
Put simply, we must contextualize attempts to bind national populations

together by merging bedouin pursuits such as poetry recital, camel racing and
falconry, with the sea-faring and pearl-diving narrative of the urban dwelling
merchant classes cast against the background of the tribal heritage of the ruling
elite that govern these states – practices described in greater detail in Chapter 4.
It is also important to consider the extent to which state-led efforts at heritage
preservation have been successful in elevating bedouin-lite pursuits to a higher
status and leading to the adoption of certain so-called ‘tribal’ or traditional
values. Consider as an example how the mid-1980s onwards saw camel racing
evolve into a method of reaffirming bedouin culture in opposition to global
values, as well as a means of applauding the leadership of the UAE in particular,
regardless of the extent to which it was historically relevant to the country or to
the population that attended such events.6 Such an affirmation was particularly
relevant as the expatriate population in that state steadily increased, making the
Emirati population an ever smaller minority eager to maintain its distinctness.
Tribal reaffirmation thus takes a number of – frequently contradictory –
forms. These can range from emphasis on the equestrian prowess of Dubai’s
current ruler and its crown prince to trans-global falconry pursued by members
of ruling families and are also apparent in the reaffirmation of the need for
‘consensus’, or shūrā, in each amir’s visits to different ‘tribal celebrations to
acknowledge the physical presence of a tribe’7 every National Day. The manner
in which tribal elites and rulers make regular visits to tribal and merchant elite
majālis also allows the ruling elites within each of these GCC states to perpetuate
the notion that they are originally tribal, and therefore still somehow ‘bedouin’
and that the tribal practices are a crucial part of their identity, and by extension,
vital to the country’s national identity and notions of citizenry. Visiting majālis
also becomes a means of bypassing sometimes extensive bureaucratic red tape
that exists in these countries to voice opinions to tribal leaders, who in turn can
more easily communicate these issues to the ruling families.8
Celebrations surrounding National Day are also, importantly, centred on
members of ruling families who united tribes or brought the nation together.
Kuwait’s National Day, 25 February, marks the date in 1950 when Shaykh
ʿAbdullah al-Salim al-Sabah, the eleventh ruler of Kuwait and the first amir of
the independent Kuwaiti state, took power. Since 2007, Qatar’s National Day, on
18 December, has marked the date on which Shaykh Jassim bin Mohammed al-
Thani became ruler in 1878 and is credited with having unified various tribes in
the Qatari peninsula; previously, Qatari National Day was held on 3 September to
mark Qatari independence from British protectorate status. Emirati National Day,
2 December, marks the UAE’s independence and unification under Shaykh Zayed
al-Nahyan. Nonetheless, at each of these celebrations, citizens tend to organize by
tribe, further demonstrating the re-emergence of this social form throughout the
three states under study.9 As Alshawi and Gardener put it, referencing the Qatari
case but relevant to all three under study here, ‘the day seeks to commemorate the
ascendancy of a levelling nationalism over the varied pre-statal social topography.’10
It is interesting to note that the different, and sometimes competing, national
identity projects in each state have simultaneously succeeded in convincing
formerly nomadic tribal populations to assimilate into the new social structure
of the modern state, while also advocating for certain traditions and practices
centred on loyalty and obedience to the ‘shaykh of shaykhs’, the country’s ruler,
to be upheld. The structures underpinning the value systems of traditional
Arabian Peninsula families, as maintained by bedouin tribal people, such as
family honour, tribal kinship allegiance and respect for patriarchal authority,
have been adapted in creative ways to access power by both ruling elites
and bedouin families through traditional and electoral political and social
manoeuvrings. Again, as Alshawi and Gardner note, tribal power is still
‘located squarely within the state’, with membership to a certain tribe often
mediating access to government jobs and other state resources; as a result,
‘[t]he idiom of the tribe serves as a framework by which this form of social
power is established and aggrandized. In relation to the state, tribalism provides
a mechanism by which a sub-statal form of solidarity is articulated.’11
The conservative and restrictive elements of traditional tribal family life,
which dictate a clear hierarchal delineation between gender, generational
and extended kinship roles, have been highlighted by the national identity
construction processes implemented by these states, each of which hopes to
find an integrated template for how far these traditional definitions and roles
have changed with exposure to oil revenues, greater access to education and
migration. This selective retention and homogenization have arguably led to
the failure of national identity to displace ethno-tribal identity for families in
Kuwait, for example.
A distrust in the state’s ability to ensure social justice has also led families
who have turned away from the extended bedouin tribal model and adopted
the settled national citizen model to search for their bedouin roots or to become
‘tribalized’ themselves, in an attempt to access this powerful lobby as tribe
becomes more influential in spite of its largely urban setting. In this context, the
difficulties surrounding national branding and identity are made clearer as a
source of their own continuing difficulties. As Gengler et al. posit in the Qatari
case, which we believe is widely applicable throughout the three cases under
study,
[b]y engaging with other well-connected individuals in private, then, Qataris
may be able to circumvent a bureaucracy in the public sphere whose inefficiency
inspires more frustration than confidence. If one can resolve a personal problem
or avoid governmental red tape by exploiting influential societal contacts, why
wait in line at a ministry behind a dozen foreigners or, say, petition one’s local
representative?12
The majlis system then provides a parallel means of accessing power, often
through tribal lines but also through broader social networks as well.
It is interesting to note that, even in these countries’ Vision documents,
which outline their progress towards economic diversification, the importance
of preserving ‘traditional’ values is still highlighted, demonstrating the hope
that modernization will not diminish the importance of tradition, often linked
to the tribal. Vision 2035 for Kuwait specifies the need to ‘preserve the values
of Arab-Islamic identity’. Further, it identifies the need for the Vision to be
implemented ‘under the umbrella of a supporting institutional body, which
accentuates national values, preserves social identity and achieves social
development’.13 More explicitly stated, the Vision also specifies the goal of
‘consolidating the values of society, preserving its identity, as well as achieving
justice, political participation and freedoms’.14 Similarly, Qatar National
Vision 2030 highlights a range of future objectives for the country, including
the development of an education system that roots Qatari youth in ‘Qatari
moral and ethical values, traditions and cultural heritage’, without identifying
what exactly these values are and as economic development continues.15 The
document goes on to state:
the greater freedoms and wider choices that accompany economic and social
progress pose a challenge to deep-rooted social values highly cherished
by society. Yet it is possible to combine modern life with values and culture.
Other societies have successfully molded modernization around local culture
and traditions. Qatar’s National Vision responds to this challenge and seeks to
connect and balance the old and the new.16
Qatar’s Vision therefore very self-consciously tries to balance Qatar’s past values
and present modernization, without specifying what exactly constitute the
past values or how they may conflict with or remain compatible with goals of
modernization.
While the individual emirates also have their own tailored documents
addressing economic diversification, the national UAE Vision 2021 diligently
promotes the civic responsibility of upholding ‘Emiratis’ solid national character
as a main source of inspiration for the protection and preservation of national
identity’ and describes the latter as a ‘crucial matter of national pride and social
stability […] in the face of increasing multiculturalism’.17 To that end, then, intra-
Emirati marriages are specifically lauded: ‘Marriage among Emiratis is a vibrant
facet of our culture and will remain fundamental to building strong and stable
households, and bonding them together [….] Deep and enduring family ties
will shape our nation’s future success and provide an essential anchor in an ever-
changing world.’18 Placing family at the centre of Emirati society reflects tribal
values that promote family above all else, and the Vision even dubs families
‘the living fabric of our culture, and the guardians of our values’.19 To that end,
the importance of elders within Emirati families is also specifically guarded
in the Vision document, noting that ‘[t]heir central presence serves as a constant
reminder both of where we have come from, and of where we must go.’20 Family
once again remains at the centre of the document, as do ‘moderate Islamic
values, and a deep-rooted heritage to build a vibrant and well-knit society.’21 The
past is therefore positioned as the source of distinctly Emirati values that will
propel the country forward; family, notably, is specified as being central to this
project of modernization and economic diversification.
By implementing ambitious Vision projects, the super-rentiers, then,
endeavour to wean themselves off of their dependence on hydrocarbon wealth
and in so doing perhaps put in place a new social contract with citizens,
including potentially altering the formerly symbiotic relationship between state
and tribe. In Saudi Arabia, one tribe has already clashed with the government
over its projects related to Vision 2030, with the Huwaitat tribe claiming that the
government seeks to build the megacity Neom on land belonging to the tribe and
seeing Neom and the associated Vision 2030 as ‘an elite version of Saudi society,
one designed simply to shut them out’.22 Although similar such clashes have not
taken place so explicitly in the countries under examination here, it is possible
that new state-led projects focused less on heritage and more on commercial,
and specifically touristic, appeal could undermine state relationships with

tribes and specifically with conservative tribal values. Further, even in
modernized and highly globalized economies, there is still room for preference
for tribal manoeuver. For instance, one large international oil company
approached one of the authors hoping to understand more about tribal elders
in Kuwait, in the hopes that the company would manage to be assisted in their
operations through the support of a tribally represented Member of Parliament
(MP). Tribal figures therefore provide a valuable entry point even for large-scale
companies working in the region, despite efforts to even the playing field for all
citizens in the economic sector and to modernize and diversify these economies
more broadly.
Tribal values and the new citizen
The above Vision documents demonstrate to the extent to which, as Alshawi and
Gardner argue, ‘one of the building blocks of contemporary Qatari identity, [is]
one that congeals around conceptions of family, clan and tribe.’23 This is true for
all three countries examined in this volume. One important aspect of bedouin
social culture for state-funded national identity construction revolves around
loyalty and obedience to patriarchal authority; further, bloodline becomes an
important means of determining one’s distance from power in a monarchical
arrangement. An insular world view, in which identity is largely linked to
genealogy, has been preserved and cultivated by the settled and urban citizen
populations of the states of the Arabian Peninsula, even as they have abandoned
many of the other trappings of tribal bedouin life, including some which might
naturally exist to balance out this insularity, but which no longer have a place
within the new artificially pressured construction of ‘tribal-modern’ social
practices. Others remain very much in place, with the tribal adage of keeping
marital relations and material wealth within close cousins: ‘our oil stays in our
pan’. Both emphasize the importance of retaining loyalty and resources within
close-knit kinship-based alliances in a manner which has very real repercussions
to the individual’s concept of what citizenship consists of at any given moment,
as well as the citizen’s concept of the role of the state and the extent to which it
can be trusted.
The bedouin ethos of self-censorship, tribal honour and regulated social
hierarchies were all crucial for survival in the desert, and for that and for
religious reasons, communal strife (fitnah) is avoided at all costs in this culture.
Especially in times of strife or geopolitical strain, there is a constant reminder

that obedience to walī al ʿamr, literally translated to ‘commanding guardian’,
as both an Islamic value and a core national value in the states of the Arabian
Peninsula. It is important to note that this blind allegiance is not actually
common in traditional bedouin or tribal life, where consensus, or shūra, is of
critical importance. This consensus is often downplayed in national identity
construction. The bedouin tribal leader is not necessarily the eldest male but
tends to be chosen since he is deemed to be the wisest, with the warrior leader
or shaykh al-shidād being lower in the hierarchal structure than the social needs
leader or service leader, or shaykh al-bayān.24
The emphasis on service and the needs of the tribe above individual needs
has manifested itself in Kuwait’s electoral process through the creation of the
aforementioned ‘service’ MPs, many of whom have hailed from bedouin-tribal
backgrounds and have at least historically tended to privilege the housing,
medical and employment needs of their own kin before those of other members
of the electorate in their respective districts. In recent years, again seen most
clearly in Kuwait, bedouin tribal values of freedom, individual choice and the
prevailing importance of the bloodlines and defending ‘inherited honours’ have
re-emerged in oppositional rhetoric within political bedouin-ism. The bedouin
values around which this rhetoric revolves may easily be exploited and re-ignited
in times of frustration or crisis, as seen in the last round of protests in Kuwait
(2010–2013). As previously mentioned, this phenomenon also has a polarizing
effect politically, resulting in tribal cohesion as the result of animus from outside
the immediate community benefitting from a certain MP’s actions. While Qatar
and the UAE lack elected parliaments with the political power of Kuwait’s, and
so tribal blocs as political parties have not emerged, tribal political ambitions
still exist, as they remain important representatives of their communities in what
elected bodies do exist, described in detail in the next chapter, and in informal
institutions like majālis.
The political Badū
Given that the states under study are highly urbanized, ‘bedouin’ and ‘tribe’ are
now more political and social terms that are used to inspire a romantic notion of
a certain code of behaviour, to designate socio-economic value to an individual
or group, or to inform certain reformulations of heritage used by the state. The
tribe today is essentially a social phenomenon, and in light of the rapid changes
occurring in the region and the deep-rooted xenophobia and bicultural anxiety
deriving from the influx of both modernity and large numbers of expatriates
who have not been assimilated into the community, the importance of tribal
allegiances has been passed on and revered even among youth groups as a
cornerstone of national identity. For instance, when former Kuwaiti Education
Minister Saud al-Harbi of the al-Harb tribe was questioned in parliament, he
used poetry of the traditional style as a means of defending himself, while other
MPs pointed out his connection to the tribe, demonstrating how omnipresent
tribal connections are even in institutionalized political life.25 Further, those
without tribal lineage, or ʿasīl, continue to be designated a lower rung in the
sociopolitical hierarchy across most of the GCC states. Consider the following
as a further elucidation of this phenomenon:
The coming of oil revenues at the end of the 1940s marked a new turning point
in the history of the Bedouin and the state. The recruiting of Bedouin into state
institutions, in particular through the creation of the National Guard and the
religious police, become more widespread and helped to propagate among
the nomads the image of the state as a redistributor of wealth which in turn
aided in accentuating state intervention and discernibly modified the economic
system of the Bedouin tribes. The modernizing ideology did not aim at settling
different tribes together in the same locality. On the contrary, it was thought
that tribal homogeneity would further enhance the chance of success of these
programmes.26
In the absence of recognized political parties in all three states, and particularly
in Kuwait which has the most active and independent elected body, the tribe
has for many become a powerful lobby group in spite of urbanization and
modernization and has caused further confusion within the national identity
debate as we have previously discussed. The somewhat ad hoc nationalization
of bedouin families in Kuwait27 has made the electoral structure of Kuwait’s
parliament more easily manipulatable by a resurgence of tribal kinship policies,
and ironically, led to the most powerful and vocal opposition movement in the
GCC, spearheaded by bedouin MPs, which resulted in the historical removal
of a ruling-family Prime Minister, Shaykh Nasser al Sabah, in 2012. As Shafeeq
Ghabra explains,
The tribes that once barely scratched out a living in Kuwait City have become a
new center of power. Because of their high birth rates, bedouins today account
for an estimated 65 percent of the total population. Although they have become
the numerical majority, the former urban majority – in particular, the leading
merchant families – have remained the dominant political and economic group,
retaining control of the private sector. This new and evolving reality has created
social tensions and political contradictions that have contributed to the rise of
oppositional politics and populism among the bedouin majority.28
In grander terms of GCC national identity projects, bedouins have been

difficult for national governments to handle, since they span across geographical
borders, and their allegiances can be to the tribal leader, rather than necessarily
to the sovereignty of a specific nation or ruler. It is indeed interesting for that
reason that state heritage projects excepting Kuwait’s have tended to glamorize
and promote the badū past. The issue of dual citizenship and contested loyalties
can arise when border disputes are at stake or in the revocation of Kuwaiti
citizenship from a former bedouin tribal MP and two of his family members.29 It
can also become a problem when an opposition grows too powerful or can arise
in the form of a neighbouring country’s attempt to control and influence political
decisions in another state, such as through bedouin political representatives
with dual citizenship in national assemblies and parliaments able to act in
two different countries at once. The transnational nature of tribes has further
manifested into a major logistical and social problem for tribes and states as the
GCC crisis between Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt on one side, and
Qatar on the other persisted between 2017 and 2021, resulting in the fracturing
of interconnected tribes along citizenship lines over the course of the crisis.
Political influence of tribal markers: The rise of

tribalism in international affairs
When it comes to domestic political life, tribal structures are critically important
in propagating informal institutions like dīwāniyyāt and majālis as well as in
determining the compositions of cabinets and often mediating access to key
decision makers. Further, we demonstrate in Chapter 6 the way in which tribal
ties influence electoral behaviour in states with and without parliamentary
elections. Of course, in the Kuwaiti case, tribal campaigns are far more organized
than elsewhere, since campaigns there tend to centre on political blocs, rather
than on personalistic and largely apolitical campaigns seen in Qatari and Emirati
elections at present. Nonetheless, we find that tribal links to candidates make
people more likely to vote in their favour, even when tribal blocs do not exist,
discussed at length in the chapter that follows.
In recent years, while the level of the influence of tribal affiliation in the
political sphere has arguably remained somewhat steady, it has become
increasingly important in international affairs, particularly over the course of

the GCC crisis that lasted between June 2017 and January 2021. The use of
tribal identifiers was documented during times of crisis, as demonstrated in
previous chapters where we have examined instances when tribes have come to
the defence of governments, particularly during the protests of 2011, described
in greater detail in Chapter 6, and the 2017–2021 GCC crisis is no exception.
Indeed, over the course of the crisis, which saw Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia
and the UAE cut off land, sea, air and diplomatic ties with Qatar in June 2017,30
we saw the extent to which tribal ties could be re-energized, with both sides
aiming to deploy tribal actors to bolster their positions.
Because tribes are, by their nature, transnational, certain tribal actors were
co-opted by one side of the crisis or another to mobilize support for their cause.
For instance, in September 2018, the al-Ghufran clan of the al-Murrah tribe
of Qatar, which also has many members in Saudi Arabia, called on the United
Nations Human Rights Council to take action on a complaint it submitted
about the Qatari Government, claiming that the tribe had, between 1996 and
2004, experienced ‘racial discrimination, forced displacement, denial of return
to their homeland, imprisonment and acts of torture that led to psychological
damage and death within the Qatari intelligence prisons’.31 Leaders of the tribe
further claimed that 6,000 members had their Qatari citizenship revoked, most
notably that of Shaykh Taleb bin Lahom bin Shreim in August 2018 and fifty-
four members of his family belonging to al-Murrah tribe.32 Shaykh Sultan bin
Suhaim al-Thani, a member of the Qatari ruling family living abroad, called this
situation ‘the largest forced displacement in the world’, in terms of population
proportion since the total population of Qatari nationals at the time of the
expulsion of 5,000 members numbered around 200,000.33 Also in September
2018, the al-Ghufran clan accused Qatar of building stadiums for World Cup
2022 on land belonging to it, submitting a letter of protest to FIFA demanding
that Qatar be stripped of its right to hold the tournament.34 A delegation of
the tribe organized a protest at the Broken Chair in Geneva, and the Egyptian
Organization for Human Rights held a meeting focused on this issue on the
margins of the UN Human Rights Council in September 2018.35
The roots of conflict between the Qatari Government and the al-Ghufran
clan can be linked to domestic politics. Initially, 118 officers from al-Ghufran
clan serving in the Qatari military were said to have been involved in trying
to restore the rule of Shaykh Hamad bin Khalifa’s father Shaykh Khalifa in
1996 after Shaykh Hamad had overthrown him, and twenty-one of these
were ultimately taken to court or jailed.36 Many members of al-Ghufran have
left the country since that time, claiming that they faced discrimination in
finding employment.37 In fact, in 2005, before a Saudi-Qatari rapprochement,
Qatar expelled thousands of members of the al-Ghufran to Saudi Arabia after
removing their Qatari citizenship, leading many to settle in the eastern al-Ahsa
region of Saudi Arabia where many remain today.38
Perhaps most explicitly, Shaykh Taleb bin Lahem bin Shraim, the head of al-
Ghafran tribe, is said to have fled to Saudi Arabia after his citizenship and that
of fifty-four of his Qatari relatives were revoked; he also claimed to have been
penalized for refusing to insult Saudi Arabia.39 Shaykh Taleb was one of many
al-Ghafran leaders who met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman
in September 2017 in Saudi Arabia; at this meeting, Shaykh Sultan al-Murri is
said to have accused Qatar of resorting to ‘lies and attempts to distort the tribes
of Qatar in order to tear up the tribal social fabric in favour of the minority of
Iranians’.40
The al-Murrah tribe more broadly is said to have supported a coup attempt
to overthrow Shaykh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani in 1996 and thus has
arguably been deployed against the Qatari regime in the past. One article in
The Washington Post goes so far as to trace the entire GCC crisis to efforts made
by al-Khalifa family of Bahrain, with help from the al-Nahyan family of Abu
Dhabi, to overthrow the al-Thanis in 186741 (a similar article was published
in Arabic on Al Jazeera).42 The article, like many others, places the blame for
the recent crisis on ancient tribal feuds without taking into consideration new
geopolitical realities and personal rivalries. While tribal arrangements certainly
affect politics and international relations in the GCC states, they are rarely the
sole determinant of behaviour. Nonetheless, the al-Murrah tribe became very
publicly entangled in the GCC crisis, with some fifty members having been
expelled from Qatar, discussed at length above. While this act shows the extent
to which national power has subsumed tribal authority, it also highlights the
degree to which tribal membership is still considered an important identifier
in modern GCC states to the extent that it can be instrumentalized by national
governments to suit narratives linked to regional rivalries.
Demonstrating efforts to make the reign of Shaykh Hamad and his son the
current amir appear contested, in September 2017, at the start of the crisis,
Emirati and Saudi media were promoting Paris-based businessman Shaykh
Sultan bin Suhaim al-Thani as a potential replacement for Shaykh Tamim.43 In
September 2017, he was shown on Al Arabiya television addressing thousands of
members of the Bani Hajar branch of the Qahtan tribe in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern
Province, many members of which live in Qatar; he called for a crackdown
on Qatar during that appearance and thus seems to have been involved in
efforts to mobilize other members of this tribe, some of whom have historically
held two GCC nationalities against Qatar.44 On the Qatari side, members of
the Bani Hajar tribe signed a statement proclaiming their loyalty to the amir
Shaykh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in June 2017, with clans within that tribe
signing onto the statement that was issued largely in response to Saudi efforts to
mobilize fellow tribe members against Qatar.45 Over the course of the blockade,
there was greater emphasis in Qatar on the state serving as the tribe in a revival
of nationalism; in National Day celebrations of 2017 for the first time, all tribes
came together under one tent instead of in their traditional tribally segregated
arrangement to dance the ʿardah, a traditional dance usually performed by men
wielding swords.46 Further, the hashtag #Gbeelty_Qatar (my tribe is Qatar)
emerged on Twitter shortly after the imposition of the blockade, with many
users changing their surnames to al-Qatari or al-Qataria to emphasize national
rather than tribal or familial loyalty.47 As depicted in the below cartoon by Saad
al-Muhannadi, a Qatari cartoonist for al-Watan newspaper, there was a feeling
that the Saudis instrumentalized a revival of tribalism to isolate Qatar.
In another instance demonstrating the comingling of national and tribal
identities, Nawaf al-Rashid, who is of Saudi origin yet became a Qatari citizen,
Figure 8 Image drawn by a Qatari cartoonist, meant to illustrate Saudi Arabia’s

perceived meddling in tribal affairs over the course of the GCC crisis (2018).
from a clan that had historically existed in rivalry with the al-Saud and is now
bound by kinship and intermarriage to them, was ‘kidnapped’ in May 2018 in
Kuwait at a gathering of the Shammar tribe of which he is a ‘prince’, and returned
to Saudi Arabia at the request of the Saudi government.48 It remains unclear if
members of his tribe or state forces were behind this act. This incident recalled the
2003 ambush killing of his father Talal al-Rashid, on a hunting trip in Algeria.49
Sultan al-Qassimi recounts how then Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin ʿAbdulaziz
sent a private jet to bring Talal’s body back to Saudi Arabia to indicate respect
not only to the al-Rashid family but to the Shammar tribe more broadly, as well
as to quell conspiracy theories about the killing.50 Such incidents can be taken
to demonstrate the extent to which tribes today are under the control of state
structures and can potentially be used by them, yet it should not be overlooked
that these states still need to at least maintain the appearance of, if not supporting,
at least not completely alienating major tribes on the international stage.
On the whole, when examining the political role of tribes extending beyond
the non-tribal, the GCC crisis demonstrates the clearest example of a conflict that
was not at its base about tribal distinctions yet increasingly became entangled
with tribal loyalties. It also shows ways in which tribal loyalties can selectively
be emphasized and mobilized depending on political circumstance, not only
domestically but also across borders. Perhaps more obviously, tribal practices
continue to be promoted even in the non-tribal mainstream, suggesting that
states find at least a limited degree of utility in emphasizing a tribal past. One
example of this use of tribal practice in the mainstream, specifically in the
GCC crisis, was Dubai ruler and Emirati Vice President Shaykh Mohammed
bin Rashed al-Maktoum’s use of nabaṭī poetry to address issues with Qatar. In
June 2017, at the onset of the crisis, he posted a nabaṭī poem on his Instagram
account entitled ‘The Clear Path’, in which he urges Qatar to return to the fold of
the GCC: ‘Of one origin, people, existence / one flesh and blood, one land and
faith […] Yet Qatar turns to the nearby stranger, to the weak.’51 Notably, Shaykh
Mohammed bin Rashid in his poem highlights a familial and inescapable
connection among the states of the GCC, suggesting their recent rift had at its
root the issue of Qatar looking beyond the Arabian Peninsula and its affiliated
tribes for alliances. This use of poetry and emphasis on familial links, or ‘blood’
ties, are not limited to this poem or to poetry more generally, but rather have
become increasingly widespread, as described in detail below. Since the end
of the GCC crisis, interestingly, we have seen less public discussion of the role
of tribes and tribalism in foreign policy, suggesting its role, at least in Western
public imagination, is confined to conflict rather than its resolution.
Tribal social practice
Despite the manipulation of tribal identity for domestic political or geopolitical

gain, the influence of tribal social practice into the non-tribal sphere has been
largely an organic process, considering the fact that much of these states’ citizen
populations identify with tribal backgrounds. More recently, however, such
efforts to reintroduce the tribal or traditional into spheres not usually associated
with either have become re-energized, often by state authorities themselves, as
described in detail in Chapter 4. It is unclear whether this revival of the tribal
is directed from a grassroots desire to become more connected with local
traditions, especially as expatriate populations grow, or whether they are part of
state-sponsored efforts to brand their countries in a way that is palatable to local
populations. Because school curricula today tend to be standardized, students
do not receive formal education about genealogical data for their own tribes or
others. This has led, in Eickelman’s view to
a significant decline in the ‘local knowledge’ needed for many young adults
to manipulate the specifics of their genealogical ties, but a rise in an ‘invented
tradition of genealogical heritage that ties many citizens to the modern state.
Put another way, there has been a recalibration of what constitutes valued social
and economic knowledge. Claims of ‘noble tribal descent, like citizenship in a
country in which the majority of inhabitants are non-citizens, is a marker of
prestige and higher social status that does not necessarily replicate the ability to
link the wider claims to heritage, hierarchy and ‘tradition’ with local knowledge
or contemporaries.52
It is perhaps precisely because local knowledge of this type is not prized in

knowledge economies that it is being revived in other realms.
Efforts to reinvigorate the field of traditional nabaṭī poetry have been very
public, particularly in the UAE. While the UAE’s Million’s Poet is a show as well
as monthly magazine focused on poetry and cultural heritage, Prince of Poets
is another Emirati television programme aimed at explicitly reviving the art
of nabaṭī poetry in the present day.53 These poems use nabaṭī or badū dialect,
with competitors seeking to win a cash prize. These poems were also seen as
expressions of nationalism in the post-blockade political environment, and
the work of Maryam al-Kuwari has documented the ways in which the use of
traditional tribal shela songs were used as means of demonstrating one’s Qatari
identity during the GCC crisis described in detail above.54 Further, attempts in
the UAE have also been launched to preserve al-Shehhi dialect of Emirati Arabic
traditionally used exclusively by that tribe, which traditionally has inhabited

remote areas of the UAE in the northern emirates.55
Beyond poetry and dialect, a variety of heritage projects described at length in
Chapter 4 often tend to promote narratives of Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE as, at
their nature, tribal, Sunni and masculine. Stories in newspapers throughout the
Arabian Peninsula document the merits of efforts to preserve certain tribal-linked
heritage activities, including, for instance, sword dancing in the UAE,56 the ʿardah
in Qatar,57 camel racing in Qatar58 and falconry in the UAE,59 to name a few. That
so many of these activities are promoted across borders demonstrates the extent
to which they trace their origins to tribal, rather than national, history. Today,
however, such practices can be promoted as components of unique national
identities, rather than simply being reproduced specifically by or even for tribes.
Nonetheless, features of tribal life are ubiquitous in state-managed heritage revival
projects, with the state today even consciously working to promote tribal practices
which in the past may have been considered threatening to their power.
A small portion of scholarship on rentier state theory addresses state efforts
at promoting shared identity. Hootan Shambayati highlights the oft-overlooked
importance of cultural issues in these countries: ‘Under normal conditions
challenges to the state are economically motivated. Under rentier conditions,
however, moral and cultural issues form the basis of the challenge.’60 Despite
this statement, which underscores the need for GCC governments to provide
ruling ideologies or national myths for their populations, the field of literature
on rentier state theory largely neglects the importance of culture and heritage
in states benefitting from natural resource wealth, which has led to general
scholarly neglect of the pervasive role of tribes in social life and in national
identity. Indeed, as acknowledged by Alshawi and Gardner, ‘[t]hrough elections,
National Day celebrations, and the social prerequisites by which access to the
state and its resources is achieved, individuals are increasingly called upon to
express and utilize the consanguineal linkages of tribe.’61 We now see the extent
to which tribal links have pervaded both political and social life in the GCC
states under study, despite these states’ advancement in many other ways. That
states now are able to manage national myths, and particularly the role of tribes
within them, highlights the extent to which tribal identity has been co-opted
by, or at the very least changed by, national governments in the present day.
This dynamic does not mean, however, that tribal identity will become any less
relevant in the coming years.
In fact, the appeal of this tribal identity seems to extend beyond than the
confines of those from tribal descent, or merely as part of a national identity
project, and attach itself to some deeper level of belonging. As Shafeeq Ghabra
explains in the Kuwaiti case,
Tribal people [in Kuwait] came with an interest in assimilation in the beginning
of the 60s and the 70s. There was a universal trend towards ‘melting pots’.
Now there is power and privilege in a political system where there is a refusal
of assimilation. These identity politics include a backlash of the marginalized.
Political differentiation is based on family background [tribal/merchant] with
statements such as ‘al-balad qamat ʿala ahl al-dīrah’ (translation: the country was
built by inner city folk, meaning the urbanized ḥaḍar). This tribal phenomena
is mutable rather than static, for example the Al-Kandari family are not tribal in
origin but are increasingly behaving like a tribe.62
Ghabra references the al-Kandari family, an increasingly politically powerful

family in Kuwait with four MPs in the 2016 National Assembly and two in the 2020
National Assembly, as well as the former Secretary General of Kuwait’s National
Assembly. The family, as Ghabra explains, has come to mimic tribal political
behaviour associated with larger tribes by using their numbers and connections
to promote a sense of Kandari solidarity, especially during elections. As Lambert
notes, ‘[t]he Al Kandari … a small tribal group that had migrated from Persia at
the beginning of the twentieth century; were occupying the professional niche
of water carriers in the city of Kuwait.’63 Ali al Zoghbi, the former Dean of the
college of Social Science at Kuwait University pushes this argument about the
political instrumentalization of tribal practice further:
Despite us being in the age of technology, we still find that the people are
yearning to go back to past and trying to find an identity and origin (tribal or
bedouin) to be a source of pride and a vehicle for electoral relations. In this
particularly political use of bedouinism we find that there is a bias towards
the nostalgic bedouin identity that has been discarded by our grandparents
for a specific electoral political agenda. This bedouin cover is not exclusive to
those who come from bedouin or tribal roots or those who are geographically
bedouins, for example, the merchant elite candidates in districts too use it in
their attempt to get votes in primarily tribal area such as Sulaibikhat.64
Although it may be amplified by the tribalization of political rhetoric in Kuwait,

the persistent appeal of the tribal identity and certain tribal behaviours exists
outside of the strictly political realm. The ‘stickiness’ of this tribal identity can be
seen described in literature such as Kuwaiti poet’s Sulaiman al Huwaydi’s famous
poem from the 1960s ‘Ṣāḥibī Labs al-Burqa’ (my [special] friend is wearing a
burqa), which describes how his female love interest suddenly took on the habit
of wearing the face cover because she was influenced by her bedouin neighbour’s
habits.65 This desire to affiliate with some or several of the behaviours and habits
associated with people of tribal descent, to ‘tribalize’ a non-tribal identity persists
today and is magnified by the use of social media (which is discussed in greater
detail in Chapter 7).
Further demonstrating the persistent role of large tribes, the al-ʿAzimi tribe
is widely acknowledged to be the largest in terms of numbers in Kuwait,66
traditionally reflected that strength in numbers with representation in
parliament and cabinet posts in government. In the spring of 2019, the al-ʿAzimi
(or ʿAwazim) tribe negotiated the payment of 10 million KD ($34 million) to the
family of a murdered female media figure that was killed by a policeman who
was a member of the tribe in 2000.67 Notably, the tribe had received permission
from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour to publicly hold this fundraising
drive, setting a new precedent in Kuwait. According to The Kuwait Times, the
campaign ‘succeeded in collecting the amount within a few hours through
electronic payments to the Awazem Charity Foundation’,68 but what was even
more interesting was the public show of support and donations from non-tribal
Kuwaitis and other tribal Kuwaitis who did not belong to this tribe. For example,
Kuwaiti makeup artist Hanan Dashti, who belongs to a Kuwaiti family of Iranian
descent and has no kinship connection with the al-ʿAzimi tribe, was quoted on
tweets on the AlMajliss69 account to have declared her intention to donate 15,000
KD ($50,000) to the fund to release ‘our brother’ because her success was built
on the patronage of tribal female clients, and her donation was confirmed by
the official appointed by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour to oversee
the fundraising drive in an article in Al Rai newspaper.70 This show of solidarity
with a tribe to which one does not belong and to tribal practices of which many
in Kuwait disapprove (the backlash against the blood money drive is discussed
further in the Conclusion) needs to be examined further to determine whether
it is a survival or marketing tacit when there are clearly larger numbers involved,
or if it is motivated more by admiration of this tribal communal strength and a
desire to be associated with it.
Mohammed al-Murr, a former Speaker of the UAE’s Federal National Council
(FNC), argues that the UAE has not seen this same appeal for tribal behaviours
because, although some regions like Abu Dhabi have tended to see voting on
tribal lines during the course of the FNC’s tenure, the government does not
promote those who provide preferential treatment to their kin, commonly
known as service MPs, so it does not serve ambitious candidates to market
themselves along tribal lines and recall bedouin folklore as it does in Kuwait.71
In his opinion, in the UAE, this tribal nepotism is therefore not encouraged or at
least not rewarded as it arguably is or has been in Kuwait. However, al-Murr does
concede that there is some attachment or resurgence of some tribal practices
in the UAE. He suggests that, since all traditional societies try to balance past,
present and future identities, the pace of the change in the Arabian Peninsula can
lead to an upheaval, especially in the age of the internet. Although the tribe may
not offer the same political value as in Kuwait in a highly mixed environment
like the UAE, with both naturalized and “original” citizens, the tribe gives one
a sense of authenticity as a social value.72 The tribe is therefore a symbol of
stability, but many of the manifestations of it in the UAE are more evident in
folklore than in practical everyday life.
In al-Murr’s opinion, there has been a seminal shift in the position of the
tribe within the geopolitics of the Arabian Peninsula recently, since ‘after the
Gulf crisis the nationality wins over the tribe.’73 And yet, the opposite sentiment
surfaced as well. The rift between Qatar and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the
UAE encouraged different shows of tribalism both online (discussed further in
Chapter 7) and in real political terms even while pushing against the traditional
tribal imagery cultivated in national identity and heritage revival projects.
In the months following the start of the Gulf crisis, Qatar hosted a major
modern art exhibition in Berlin called ‘Contemporary Art Qatar,’ which
included 300 works reflecting the kingdom’s ‘rapid change into a cultural
and commercial hub’.74 Although many of the artworks at the exhibition had
a modern interpretation of tribal and bedouin symbols, the works showcased
included non-national young artists residing in Doha. This desire to move
away from a nationality underlined by tribal exclusion (discussed further in the
Conclusion) towards a more globally appealing pluralistic nationality model has
been motivated by the crisis and by the need to rely on solidarity from non-tribal
Qataris and non-nationals residing in Qatar.
The question of tribal identity as political currency resurfaced after the
Arab Spring and the GCC crisis as one of national belonging; if nationalism
is based on ‘loyalty’ to the existing ruling regime and tribes were expected to
be both loyalist and royalist, it was easy to leave those who didn’t comply out
of national identity. In Kuwait, it meant that some tribal figureheads involved
in the protests would lose their nationalities75 as would their family members.
These nationalities were only reinstated after years of bargaining and guarantees
of shows of loyalty and repentance from these individuals and from the mostly
tribal MPs who were lobbying the government for reinstatement, including
backing down from political action that would target a member of the ruling
family, after ‘growing tension between the government and the parliament
amid threats by some lawmakers to grill the prime minister’.76 This dynamic
carries with it complications for a future where many of these GCC countries
position themselves as knowledge economies in keeping with their future Vision
documents for their countries, whilst preserving traditional culture and values
that are seen as critical to their national identity.
Maryam al-Kuwari argues that what she considers the recent resurgence of
tribalism, both domestically and in the international arena, can be explained by
‘the failure of states to implement viable projects of national identities in addition
to pursuing contradictory policies in this respect’.77 In the context of the GCC
crisis specifically, al-Kuwari argues that the blockading states were attempting
to weaken the position of the Qatari Government and thereby create a power
vacuum to be filled by tribes.78 More broadly, she also considers the inability of
states in the GCC ‘to achieve economic diversity and social justice’ as rendering
it impossible for these states to complete the social contract they entered into at
independence, which leaves them weak in the face of resilient tribal political and
social bonds.79
Conclusions
The main questions raised in this chapter were related to the enduring appeal
of tribal behaviours, even among traditionally non-tribal and even non-Arab
actors, and to what extent they have been a disruptive force. While we cannot
predict how this re/tribalization will be used and by whom, we can attempt
to track the ways that it continues to manifest itself independently of states in
ways that derail publicized national unity branding agendas. This chapter also
tried to tackle the questions posed by the previous two chapters of whether
‘bedouin-lite’ branding still serves the state’s purpose in the knowledge economy
era by making tribes static and a relic of the past if they can so easily manifest
themselves or mobilize within and outside of the state’s designated role,
especially if the use of desert tropes in national branding and heritage projects
focus inevitably leads to the exaltation of bedouin and tribal values. Beyond that,
appealing to a tribal identity as a prejudicial preference for representation can
spill over into the tribalization of non-tribal families and entities. One example
of this is a supposed attempt in 2019 by members of the Mutayri tribe in Kuwait
Oil Company to ensure a tribal representative in the board of that company’s
union.80
Figure 9 An account that claims to be representing the interests of members of

the Mutayri tribe in Kuwait Oil Company advertises a committee that will ensure a
representative from the tribe in the union board of 2020–2022. Both the Twitter and
Instagram accounts were shut down.
Although tribes undoubtedly have lost a great deal of their political clout
under the expansion of central state authority in the Arabian Peninsula’s rentier
states, they still retain importance as the most coherent social and political
forces in the region, even influencing foreign policy to some extent. Certainly,
in a somewhat unexpected development, tribalism came to the fore in the recent
intra-GCC division, as tribes were compelled to demonstrate their fealty to
one state or another, demonstrating the extent to which, again, tribe, though
subsumed into the state system, is still an important marker of identity and often
of political preference. Further, as we will show in the chapter that follows, tribal
membership appears to have significant influence in the outcomes of electoral
politics in the Arabian Peninsula, with tribe often substituting for party brand in
states in which political parties remain technically illegal.
6
Electoral tribalism
Introduction: Elections and tribes in rentier states
Substantial existing scholarship has argued that resource rents privilege political
elites within the state while quelling independent political pressure from below –
whether by repressing such groups outright or by obviating their need to exist in
the first place. Michael Ross, in his discussion of the so-called ‘oil curse’, suggests
that resource-rich governments are more likely to ‘prevent the formation of
social groups that are independent from the state and hence that may be inclined
to demand political rights’, although this may be a feature of authoritarianism
more generally in the region.1 It also becomes less relevant when examining the
lasting social and political impact of tribes which predated the discovery of oil
and the formulation of modern nation states, as mentioned in the introductory
chapter.
Other studies outside of the rentier states of the Arabian Peninsula have
demonstrated the degree to which clientelistic relationships, of the type
described by rentier state theory, motivate political mobilization. In the
Egyptian case, Mohammed Al-Ississ and Samer Atallah find, in their study of
the 2011 elections, a strong positive correlation between public employment and
political mobilization generally, and more specifically for voting in favour of
the candidate associated with the regime.2 They discover that patronage had a
stronger mobilizing effect than did political ideology, yet less of a mobilizing
effect than did specifically pro-change ideology.3 Although Egypt is obviously
a very different case from the states covered here, it is worth considering the
implications of these results in GCC rentiers. Indeed, in rentier states, public
sector employment for citizens has long been a part of the rentier arrangement:4
Kuwait’s public sector was reported in 2017 to comprise 74 per cent Kuwaitis,5
compared to over 75 per cent in Qatar as of 20206 and 60 per cent Emirati as of
2018.7 If government employment is positively correlated with political support
for the political status quo, then, in these states we would expect substantial
support for ruling regimes which has plainly not been the case in Kuwait,
which experienced a widespread opposition boycott of parliamentary elections
between 2012 and 2016. Work by Mark Tessler, Amaney Jamal and Carolina
de Miguel further challenges the link between patronage and political leanings,
finding through the Arab Barometer that ‘individuals who use patronage are not
more likely to support the regime.’8 This conclusion, they posit, suggests that
clientelism is primarily a material rather than political arrangement.9
Ellen Lust advances our understanding of the relationship between clientelism
and elections by describing elections as providing an opportunity for competitive
clientelism, rather than a meaningful means of reviewing policy options under
certain conditions, which may be applicable to rentier environments. As she
explains, in authoritarian contexts,
elections provide elites and their supporters an opportunity to compete over
special access to a limited set of state resources that they can then distribute to
their clients [….] By doing so, elections aid ruling elites’ ability to grant special
privileges to local elites, creating among contending elites and their followers
a belief that they will have access to state resource – if not today, then in the
future – and establishing an incentive structure that tends to return pro-regime
legislatures.10
As a result, in Lust’s view, the political status quo tends to be protected through
elections, rather than questioned through them, making a transition to
democracy or even progress towards major political reform unlikely and thus
delinking elections from democratization.
In terms of the study of how the clientelism inherently involved in rentier
arrangements intersects with elections and tribalism, conventional wisdom
suggests that citizens vote for members of their tribes in an effort to secure
either material gain or enhanced access to political power. As one Kuwaiti
interviewee put it, ‘badū vote for their candidate, even if he’s a piece of wood.’11
The perception that the tribal vote is essentially a means to disburse goods or
power to one’s own tribe and to preserve the political status rather than a means
to pursue certain political ideological goals, however, is not entirely backed by
empirical observations. In the below, we trace electoral patterns in Kuwait, Qatar
and the UAE across different very elected institutions to demonstrate (a) the
extent to which tribal voting patterns matter and (b) the degree to which they
wield independent political power.
Electoral Tribalism 119
The Kuwaiti case: Tribes in parliament
Historical background
Kuwait is an anomaly in the Gulf, a wealthy rentier state that nevertheless houses
a vocal parliament historically containing political blocs ranging from Salafis
to secular leftists. As described in greater detail in Chapter 2, with the majority
of the citizen population Sunni and Arab, the major division in Kuwait exists
between fully urbanized long-time citizens (ḥaḍar) and more recently naturalized
tribal figures (badū, bedouin, or, more recently, qabalī), many of whom received
Kuwaiti nationality only in the 1960s or after. As mentioned previously, Kuwaiti
citizenship policies, which distinguished between people who had settled in
Kuwait City before or after 1920, have sharpened the badū-ḥaḍar division,
arguably more than any other state on the Arabian Peninsula, due to how
entrenched the merchant population had been from an early era in particular.12
Citizenship policies notably excluded tribes that had not yet been settled and
thus did not have documentation of their presence in the state, thereby limiting
the number of people who received ‘original’ citizenship. Some badū managed
to gain citizenship by joining the military or through ministerial decree; they
were thus labelled citizens through naturalization. Though equal before the law,
members of the naturalized category were barred from voting or running for
parliament for thirty years. As a result, as Farah al-Nakib notes, ‘whatever the
intentions, the nationality law’s emphasis on origin played a significant role in
fixing the badū as newcomers. This was exacerbated by developments after 1967
when, in exchange for electoral loyalty to counter the nationalist opposition
in parliament, the government began granting citizenship by decree to tens of
thousands of nonlocal badū, mostly from Saudi Arabia.’13
State housing policies between the 1950s and 1980s further cemented the
division between these two segments of the population, putting in place a
physical segregation highlighting the existing social divisions between badū and
haḍar.14 Bedouins were housed in areas farther from the city centre that were
‘self-contained’, obviating the need for them to leave their neighbourhoods and
thus further isolating them socially from the ḥaḍar population.15 Because they
generally lived in outlying areas that were developed later than the city centre,
the badū tended to receive state services of lower quality than did haḍar, as
well as smaller housing plots, though some new and improved housing projects
followed the Iraqi invasion in the late 1990s.16 This geographic distinction has
also, notably, meant that members of the badū population have been clustered in
similar electoral districts (for example, present-day Districts IV and V) as a result.
Despite the fact that tribal populations may have received government
services of lesser quality than did haḍar, what services and employment the
Kuwaiti Government has provided the bedouin communities in decades past
are widely seen as fostering a greater reliance on the state, and particularly the
ruling family. Coupled with the ḥaḍar’s alleged reticence to allow them into
well-paying private sector jobs, bedouins are considered to be more reliant on
government jobs than the average Kuwaiti – especially the military, despite the
fact that all Kuwaiti citizens remain part of the welfare state. Longva observes
that ‘a critical attitude toward the government is an important feature in the
definition of hadhar identity. In contrast, badū are said to revere governmental
authority and their attitude to the ruling family has been deprecatingly
subsumed by several hadhar as “obsequious hand kissing.” Badu, they say, are
brought in to serve the government’s purposes.’17 Although tribe-state relations
have changed significantly since Longva’s publication, this reputation remains,
particularly among much of Kuwait’s ḥaḍar population today, even while tribal
and badū MPs are increasingly active in the political opposition. Interestingly,
if this relationship were purely clientelistic, it would make sense for the badū
population to have received more from the state than have the ḥaḍar, yet it seems
that, instead, historic isolation and independence of the former group have led
them to remain reliant upon independent informal institutions.
Electoral dynamics
The arrangement of parliamentary elections, particularly voting districts, has
taken into consideration both the political and geographic division between the
ḥaḍar and badū, suggesting that the government is aware of the reputation of
tribal populations traditionally being loyal clients. Notably, ahead of the 1981
elections, the first since the suspension of the legislature in 1976, the number
of electoral districts was increased from ten (with five representatives each) to
twenty-five (with two representatives each) arguably as a means of bolstering
loyalist badū representation. The 1980 law thereby ‘effectively consolidated
the trend of tribalism’ and increased political standing for a portion of the
population that had historically been loyal to the government, thereby curbing
opposition from liberals in parliament.18 The number of tribal constituencies
increased, with the share of seats to badū increasing from nineteen in the 1963
polls to twenty-seven in 1985.19
The process of simultaneously integrating the badū politically and segregating

them socially and geographically may have initially fostered dependence on
the state, making tribal populations a ‘safe’ constituency for the government
to encourage to run for office, but eventually tribal groups began to recognize
their political capital and demand power on their own terms. Following the
Iraqi invasion in 1990 and the restoration of the Kuwaiti Parliament in 1992,
tribes have moved to be less reliably loyal supporters of the Kuwaiti Government
and more interested in pursuing their own interests within the political system.
Brown suggests that, although the government had previously promoted tribal
representation to insulate itself from criticism from the ḥaḍar, tribes have grown
increasingly aware of their political interests and have at times have used their
political clout and coherence to block government initiatives.20
Having traditionally garnered substantial parliamentary representation,
tribal MPs changed their tactics, recognizing their substantial political capital
and having come to realize the unequal treatment they had been receiving from
the government. As al-Nakib explains,
[t]he fact that the tribal deputies now represented such sizeable populations
made it difficult for the government to buy them out, as MPs began listening to
their constituencies instead. This resulted in numerous interpellations of cabinet
ministers (popularly known as grillings) by tribal MPs; in 2007, for instance,
Minister of Health Ma‘suma al-Mubarak was grilled for a fire that broke out in
Jahra’s only hospital, killing two patients.21
Since the early 1990s and even more so during protests that emerged in Kuwait
in 2012, some prominent tribes have become important components of Kuwaiti
opposition. Musallam al-Barrak in particular is an important popular opposition
figure. Though he hails from the al-Mutayri tribe, he has spoken out against the
use of tribal primaries, described in greater detail below, as exclusionary22 and
has attracted followers far beyond that group. And although other such tribal
politicians do not always explicitly cite inequalities they have faced as members
of the badū population, ‘decades of exclusion, marginalization, and inequality
help explain why their badū constituents support them.’23
In a state lacking formal political parties, it is unsurprising that tribal identity
has in many ways substituted for a party ‘brand’ and that tribal coherence has
been critical to limiting competition in the general election to prevent vote-
splitting. Indeed, because they are social as well as political organizations, ‘tribes
have greater capabilities in terms of organizing themselves and in coordinating
between the different candidates to agree upon the tribe’s representative in the
parliamentary elections.’24 One such informal institution is the organization

of these tribal primaries, held in local dīwāniyyāt and aided by the fact that
members of the same tribe tend to be concentrated in specific residential areas,
which again contributes to their cohesion, both socially and electorally.
Notably, such elections were initially organized only by the state’s largest
tribes, such as al-‘Azimi, al-Rushayda, al-Mutayri and al-ʿAjman. Al-ʿAjman
was the first to establish primary elections in al-Ahmadi constituency in 1975 in
an effort to gain a seat in an area traditionally dominated by al-‘Azimi tribe, but
the practice has spread since that time.25 As Ghanim Alnajjar explains,
From only two such primaries in 1975, the number rose to 15 in 1996. Tribes
who controlled more than 15% share of votes in a district could consider holding
a primary. Most tribal candidates who won primaries then won comfortably
in the general elections. The government, for its part, had found the method
favourable to its political ends, since tribal candidates had generally been loyal
to the government. However, the tide shifted and some tribal candidates became
critical of the government, while many tribesmen expressed opposition to the
primaries as anti-democratic, mostly because of the unfair competition within
the tribe itself. The general public mood turned against the continuation of
tribal primaries. As a result, the 1996 Parliament issued a law banning primary
elections in general, and tribal primaries in particular.26
Since the 1970s, then, tribal dīwāniyyāt have hosted primary elections some two
months ahead of the official parliamentary polls, at which time the dīwāniyya
‘is transformed into an operations room’, demonstrating tribes’ ability to adapt
to modern political structures.27 Leading up to the polls, tribal leaders establish
committees to recruit and announce candidates, as well as to run and count
primary votes. Members then cast their votes, with each getting two, at a separate
meeting of the dīwāniyya, after which the top two are declared winners.28 Once
the winning candidates are announced, tribe members pledge their support in
the elections for these figures. Such activities have become advanced with new
technology, as tribe members can cast votes via text message or by taking photos
casting their votes with telephone cameras.29 There was even discussion in 2009
about holding a tribal primary for the newly united Shammar-Zafir tribes in
the fourth district on a commercial airline flight as a means of avoiding security
personnel who have periodically sought to crack down on tribal primaries which
remain technically illegal.30
This level of organization encouraged the Salafi Community to create
primaries in the 2000s.31 Political blocs tend not to announce their candidates
until after tribal primaries have been completed, in an effort to determine their
Figure 10 An Al-Qabas newspaper archive article describing how pre-election

banquets raised the price of sheep in Kuwait in 1996.
prospects of winning in tribal constituencies: if they are unlikely to win, such

blocs often do not participate in the polls. On the other hand, ‘sometimes in
consultation with the different tribal groupings, these political organizations
announced their candidature in specific constituencies if they felt that there

are higher prospects of winning the election.’32 Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood
political blocs have even managed to make inroads in tribal primaries, especially
where the candidates are also members of the tribes in question. Notably, the
electoral system shifted in the 2008 elections, following the 2006 mobilization of
the Nabiha Khamsa (We Want Five) movement, which advocated for a decrease
in the number of electoral districts from twenty-five to five as a means to reduce
opportunities for gerrymandering and vote-buying, particularly through service
MPs. Almost immediately, however, electoral results raised concerns of some
observers that subsequent parliaments would be ‘overwhelmingly Islamists
and tribal’ and that ‘tribalism and sectarianism were [still] strong during …
campaigns’.33
Generally, though, secular left-leaning or independent candidates have
opposed tribal primaries on grounds that those who win elections are seen
as representatives of their tribes rather than of their constituency as a whole,
undermining democracy in Kuwait by promoting a ‘tribal’ rather than
democratic political mentality.34 Likewise, the influence of the larger tribes can
limit the ability of candidates from smaller tribes to win elections.
The system of tribal primaries, then, influences the workings of elections
beyond the coordinating effects of tribal identity on its own. Still, while tribal
primaries make it more difficult for candidates outside of these affiliations to
win seats in parliament, several youth activists and former MPs have in recent
years spoken out against tribal primaries, refusing to take part in them. Perhaps
most notably, Musallam al-Barrak managed to win a seat in parliament in 2009
despite having boycotted the primary on grounds that it was exclusionary.35
Further, ‘youth groups and activists made their presence felt by holding seminars
to raise awareness of the issue, and announcing their support for candidates who
refuse to take part in the primary processes.’36
The government has also taken limited action against tribal primaries in
recent years, although they have technically been outlawed since 1998.37 Tétreault
observes that ‘it is unclear why the law against tribal primaries was suddenly
applied for the first time in the unscheduled 2008 election campaign, but the
most likely reason is that the large tribes, whose choices had the best chances
of finding themselves in parliament, had become too strong to ignore.’38 Tribal
leaders protested this crackdown in the 2008 and 2009 electoral campaigns yet
have continued to face pressure in preserving this informal institution, which has
spurred something of a sea change in tribal politics in Kuwait.
Despite seemingly moving towards the broad-based opposition, Kuwait’s
larger tribes suffered losses in November 2016 – the first election that most of
the opposition took part in since the introduction in 2012 of a single non-
transferable vote system (SNTV); under the previous system, each citizen was
granted four votes. Smaller tribes asserted themselves for the first time, at the
expense of the larger tribes that tend to dominate with their sophisticated system
of primaries. Because Musallam al-Barrak remained in prison for insulting the
amir at the time of the election, his al-Mutayri tribe was divided about whether
to run, and only one member of the tribe won a seat – a major setback for a group
that tends to hold about four seats. Three of the other largest tribes in Kuwait
– al-ʿAjman, Matran and al-‘Azimi – also faced losses, winning only seven seats
instead of their usual fifteen.39 These large tribes took on new strategies like
listing candidates by name rather than tribe, which appeared to have failed.40
The al-‘Aniza tribe, which usually has one or two seats, gained four in the
2016 election, and tribes that usually go unrepresented won at least one seat
each.41 Jahra, which comprises almost one-third of the fourth, tribal-dominated
constituency, won six of the district’s ten seats, as opposed to its usual two to
three.42 In the fifth constituency, the al-ʿAzimi and al-ʿAjman which used to win
four seats each of ten won one (al-ʿAzimi) and two (al-ʿAjman).
The December 2020 parliamentary election saw further representation of
large tribes, with tribes winning twenty-nine of the fifty elected seats compared
to twenty-six seats in 2016. Notably, the composition of tribes changed in
this election, with large tribes doing particularly well in Districts IV and V,
traditional tribal strongholds, at the expense of smaller tribes, suggesting better
vote coordination in the more recent election, despite restrictions put in place
due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Overall, al-ʿAzimi won seven seats, compared
to three in 2016, al-Mutayri six compared to two in 2016 and al-ʿAjman four
compared to three in 2016; these gains on behalf of large tribes demonstrate
their continued political capital, especially when compared to smaller tribes
which had made temporary gains in the previous election. Notably, however,
tribal dominance is not complete, with two Islamist candidates winning seats in
the predominantly tribal Fifth District despite having not participated in tribal
primaries.43
Freer and Leber have also found, analysing data from the Arab Barometer
collected in 2014, that tribal populations of Kuwait do not appear to have a
different understanding of democracy as more transactional than do non-tribal
members of the population.44 Further, using statistical analysis of voting returns,
they find that tribes are over-represented in districts where their votes overall are
under-represented by size of districts (Districts IV and V).45 There is variation
among tribes, however; the introduction of an SNTV system led smaller tribes
to be overrepresented and larger tribes underrepresented in the 2016 election.

As they explain:
In 2016, for example, tribe-affiliated Kuwaitis made up around 75 percent of
voters in Districts IV and V but took 19 seats (95 percent) in parliament. Yet
despite the fact that voters in District IV and V made up an estimated 55 percent
of the electorate in 2016, they competed for just 40 percent of available seats (i.e.
20) in the National Assembly.46
As a result, they conclude that tribes do not have an unfair advantage over other
Kuwaiti political blocs yet point out that their ability to coordinate votes is a
reality of the Kuwaiti system, even if tribal agendas may be shifting away from
solely tribal loyalties to more focus on ideological issues.47
The extent to which tribal primaries impose so-called ‘party’ discipline is
contested, then, with the 2016 election demonstrating issues with large tribes
uniting around solely around the candidates who won primaries. The Kuwaiti
case, on the whole, however, reveals the extent to which patronage efforts have not
always aligned with traditionally loyalist groups; in fact, because the government
provided less handsomely for people in outlying districts, these badū became
increasingly politically organized and today have become part of a broad-based
political opposition. Weaknesses of the state, or at least shortcomings in services
provided in badū areas have helped to fuel tribal political consciousness in this
case. When the political system is considered inefficient or unresponsive, tribes, as
essentially informal social and political institutions, are considered more effective
in caring for their constituents. And today we see increasingly oppositional large
tribes willing to take on the state and in so doing take on additional roles from the
previous generation of ‘service MPs’, who tended to focus less on political reform
and only prioritize securing material benefits for their own tribe. In advance of the
2020 parliamentary elections, tribes still used informal (and technically illegal)
primaries to narrow down the number of candidates they put forward in the polls,
particularly in Districts IV and V, despite restrictions in place due to the Covid-19
pandemic.48
The Qatari case
Because Qatar’s settled merchant population emerged in Doha later than in
Kuwait City and because of the large size of the ruling family relative to the citizen
population, privileged clients have tended to come from within al-Thani family
and from a small number of merchant families, rather than a large organized
merchant or tribal elite. As in Kuwait, tribes in Qatar have traditionally been
considered a support base for the ruling family, perhaps because they have not
historically been involved in ideological politics and have been important in the
military and police. As in Kuwait, at least until arguably the 1990s, tribes in
Qatar also have served as important supporters of the political status quo and
further guarantors of al-Thani authority.
Nonetheless, because Qatar’s merchant class has historically not been as
cohesive as the Kuwaiti, tribal support was never critical to maintenance of al-
Thani rule or of political stability. While merchant elites periodically organized
themselves, as in the 1960s alongside the region’s Arab nationalists, as discussed
in Chapter 2, there has never been a major domestic threat to the political status
quo, at least from outside the al-Thani family.
Electoral dynamics
Qatar currently lacks an elected legislative authority, political parties and
meaningful independent political civil society organizations. This arrangement
is set to change, however, with Amir Shaykh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani
having announced in November 2019 that a committee was formulated to make
preparations for an elected Shura Council, as is stipulated by the constitution.49
In November 2020, the amir confirmed that Qatar would hold elections for the
Shura Council in October 2021, recognizing this change as ‘an important step
towards strengthening Qatari advisory traditions and developing the legislative
process with wider citizen participation’.50
Elections for the country’s Central Municipal Council (CMC) are, as of 2021,
the country’s only polls. The CMC was first elected in 1999, with polls held
every four years thereafter (1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019) under suffrage
for Qatari citizens over eighteen. The body has twenty-nine members whose
role consists of advising the Ministry of Municipal Affairs about issues in the
country’s seven municipalities. Because the body is an arm of the Ministry of
Municipality and Urban Planning and because political parties remain outlawed,
candidate’s campaigns are apolitical and focus on ‘local issues such as road
building, family life and improvement of public health and the environment’.51
The body itself therefore differs greatly from the Kuwaiti parliament, as it is
‘[r]esponsible for municipal affairs, agriculture, buildings and road, food quality,
garbage disposal, and public health’.52
In terms of electoral structure, Luciano Zaccara calls these polls ‘technically

faultless’.53 The country is divided into seven municipalities: Ad Dawhah, Al
Daayen, Al Khor, Al Wakrah, Al Rayyan, Madinat al Shamal and Umm Salal.
These districts have largely been drawn according to the tribal districts that
predated them, making it unsurprising that many Qataris vote along tribal
lines.54 Fromherz explains the extent to which these elections facilitate and in
fact highlight the prevailing importance of ties to powerful tribes: ‘While the
Municipal Council remains relatively powerless, those elections thus can be
an effective way of diffusing and dividing the claims of non-royal Qataris. In
the same way the tribal Emirs were transformed into Rais al-Baladiyya […]
but given no real power, so too will tribes themselves be transformed into
geographical constituencies for a body with no real power.’55 As a result, the state,
while actively bureaucratizing tribes, has not eliminated them completely. As
Fromherz points out, ‘one’s extended “tribe” or family’ remains the fundamental
determinant of an individual Qatari’s social position and future.’56 While we
have documented the ways in which this is true in other sectors of life in Qatar,
it is most easily traced through election returns, wherein certain candidates have
withdrawn due to pressure to support the family or tribe’s preferred candidate.57
Ali Alshawi’s study of the 1999 CMC elections demonstrates the unique
mobilizational capacity of tribes. Indeed, he discovered that 62 per cent of
his tribal respondents voted and that 64.45 per cent among them voted for a
member of their own tribe versus 33.44 from another tribe and a mere 2.11 per
cent for a candidate not affiliated with a tribe.58 In his study, the al-Murrah tribe
was the largest winner (and also the largest tribe).59 Similarly, Qatar University’s
Social and Economic Research Institute confirmed the importance of personal
connections in voting. Survey data in 2015, which was collected from 811 Qataris
who were asked about why they vote revealed that 14 per cent responded that
their relationship to the candidate was the deciding factor.60
Zaccara has discovered additional information about those who contest
CMC elections using data from the 2003 polls. These data revealed that the
majority of successful candidates were civil servants working either in ministries
or municipalities.61 He suggests that such positions grant greater ‘exposure’ to
candidates or that they hope to use their position on the Council to become
closer to policymakers and gain access to better jobs.62 While the majority of
candidates do not appear to be from tribal backgrounds, they do tend to have
this characteristic in common. Further, and importantly, CMC representation
seems to be balanced with other political institutions in the state: no member of
the ruling family or major merchant families tend to participate in CMC polls,
Determinants of Voter Behaviour in Qatar, 2015 “Qatar Central Municipal Council,” SESRI Policy,
Policy Snapshot No. 1 (June 2015): sesri.qu.edu.qa/web6/publications/documents/1-CMC-English.
pdf.
since they are represented in government, largely through appointed positions

in the Cabinet or Shura Council.63 It will be interesting to observe how this shift
in representation is affected by Shura Council elections.
Although the CMC has limited political power, again marking its difference
from the Kuwaiti elected body, its members have voiced definite preferences for
certain policies, specifically for expanding the body’s remit. Indicating its desire
to hold more sway, in 2014, the Council requested that the Ministry of Municipal
affairs and Urban Planning grant it the right to ‘probe, detect violations of law,
collect evidence, and refer the matter to the authorities concerned’ – a request
that was ultimately denied.64 As a means of increasing its power among local
constituents, however, the CMC created an online platform to collect complaints
directly to members.65 Nonetheless, of those 166 recommendations made over
the course of its tenure, only 59 (35.5 per cent) were addressed by the authorities,
while the remaining 109 are still ‘under consideration’, revealing how little power
the body has to effect policy changes.66 During the most recent elections, held in
April 2019, local press covered calls from Qatari citizens to expand the power of
the CMC beyond merely advising the ministry.67
Some of the CMC’s requests also reflect a desire for a more conservative
social environment, which would align with so-called ‘tribal’ or traditional
values discussed in the previous chapter.68 Some of these requests involve
calls for greater gender segregation through, for instance, the reinstitution of
so-called family days in Qatari malls that prohibit the entry of single blue-collar
males into shopping centres,69 an increase in the number of female taxi drivers
and female-only seats in public buses,70 and the enforcement of a 2011 directive
banning men from selling women’s clothing and other products for women.71
That the Ministry of Municipality and Environment chose in 2016 to implement
a ban on men from Al Khor Park twice, rather than once, per week, with a ban
on unaccompanied men, implies that it is aware of CMC and other Qataris’
social preferences.72
Because elections are not based on political blocs and because election
returns do not have a major effect on political life, perhaps the best example
of tribes exerting political pressure in Qatar is not through the ballot box, yet
more closely related to regime politics. As previously mentioned, the al-Murrah,
Qatar’s largest tribe, have proven particularly difficult for the government to
manage due to their traditionally powerful position due to their size and their
historic relationship with Saudi Arabia. As Kamrava explains, however, ‘[t]he
state’s efforts aimed at marginalizing the Al Murrah tribe have ironically led to
their increasing self-awareness and, at times, expressions of grievance against
the state.’73 The al-Murrah tribe’s political role was again highlighted in the Gulf
crisis, as discussed in the preceding chapter.74
As in Kuwait, tribal substructures allow Qataris access to power through
different, uninstitutionalized means. By using tribal ties, Qatari citizens, like
Kuwaitis, can bypass state structures that are often slower to respond and more
cumbersome to access, leading to a much more personalized (and sometimes
more effective) system.75 Reflecting the belief that tribes are effective power
brokers and informal institutions in the Arabian Peninsula is the fact that a
group of Yemeni families in Qatar petitioned the amir in 2016 to allow them to
form an officially recognised tribe, al-Yafaʿi.76
The Emirati case: A segmented tribal landscape
As mentioned previously in greater detail, the tribal structure of the UAE differs
from that of the other super-rentiers due to the state’s federal system which
divides the country into seven distinct emirates with six ruling families, who
joined forces to form an independent federal state. At the emirate level, ruler-
appointed executive councils have been instituted in all emirates, with Umm
Al-Quwain the last to do so in 2011.77 In each, ‘the mix of personalities would

still today not be very different if the members were chosen by the ballot box,
because tribal leaders are trusted representatives of their communities, and a
local businessman, who has made good, may be entrusted with public affairs.’78
Such councils thus serve as a means of managing emirate-level affairs while
also granting a seat at the table, so to speak, to notables, particularly those from
large tribes.
Local authority is also preserved through article 23 of the Emirati
Constitution, which states that ‘the natural resources and wealth in each emirate
shall be considered to be the public property of that emirate’.79 In other words,
constituent emirates are not required to share their wealth with other members
of the union. This proviso has sparked considerable domestic political debate, as
the leading emirates could potentially use it as a means of guarding their wealth
from the poorer emirates. Further, it should be noted that ‘[a] network of close
family intermarriages also connects all members of the Emirates’ ruling families
without exception [….] this inter-marriage network has been overlooked
as an element that has no doubt contributed to the survival of the UAE as a
federation.’80
Electoral dynamics
The UAE houses one partially elected body, the Federal National Council
(FNC), which is chosen by a percentage of Emirati nationals and, like the
Qatari CMC, holds non-binding advisory power in a variety of federal
government matters. The council is more limited in scope than is the Qatari
body, however, as the government-appointed Council of Ministers determines
which issues the FNC can debate and is not legally bound to heed the FNC’s
suggestions.81 As a result, at its inception, the FNC ‘resemble[d] more closely
a traditional consultative diwan [council] or majlis [assembly] than a modern
representative body’.82 Nonetheless, article 93 of the Emirati Constitution
grants the FNC the right to question ministers and request explanation of
issues related to its jurisdiction.83 Further, the Ministry of State for Federal
National Council Affairs has voiced a desire to ‘establish a supportive
environment that encourages political participation among UAE citizens’
and ‘empowers the FNC to fulfil its role as a support unit for the executive
authority, while remaining close to the people and their issue[s]’.84
The body itself has forty members from all seven emirates, half of whom since
2006 have been elected to serve four-year terms and the other half appointed
by the Supreme Council of Rulers, which comprises the leaders of the seven
emirates and is an important policymaking body federally. Forty delegates were
considered sufficient since the electoral college had been selected ‘among the
leading merchant families and tribal elders, who had always had the confidence
of their people and were seen as the community leaders’.85 By law, Abu Dhabi
and Dubai must each have eight seats in the FNC, while other emirates have
either six or four seats each. As of 2011, the Federal Election Council has been
promoted as a means of raising political awareness, particularly among voters
under forty years old who are some 60 per cent of eligible voters.86
Aside from the federal distinction, FNC elections also differ from polls held
in Kuwait and Qatar in that universal suffrage for citizens is not implemented;
rather, an electoral college is used to vote for members of the FNC and has
gradually grown over time. In the first elections in 2006, the electoral college
comprised only about 1 per cent of the total Emirati population of voting age,
yet the pool was expanded in 2011 to about 13 per cent of the population,
again in 201587 to 224,279 members, or less than half of the Emirati national
population,88 and most recently in 2019 to 337,738 members.89 Despite increases
in the voting pool, one 2015 study revealed survey results to random sample of
1,800 Emirati members of the electoral college, which revealed that 73.3 per cent
of members were from Abu Dhabi and that 44.8 per cent worked in public sector
jobs, revealing a somewhat common profile of elected members of the FNC,
not dissimilar to the profile of Qatari CMC candidates in their tendency to be
publicly employed.90 Notably, the FNC was the first legislative body in the GCC
to elect a female Speaker in 2015, and in 2018, President Shaykh Khalifa bin
Zayed al-Nahyan stated that female participation in the FNC would be increased
to 50 per cent in the next election in October 2019, stating ‘women are half of
our society: they should be represented as such.’91 This top-down endorsement
of women in political leadership meant that in the 2019 elections 35 per cent of
the newly elected FNC members were women.92
FNC elections demonstrate the degree to which tribal ties and family
relations affect voting patterns in the UAE. As Sultan al-Qassimi notes, ‘it was
not uncommon to read of voters who proudly pronounced that they only voted
for family members and no one else. In fact, in Abu Dhabi, the largest of the
seven emirates, members from the al-Ameri tribe won three out of the four
available parliamentary seats.’93 This dynamic, which yields benefits for large
tribes, may be part of the regime’s strategy in selecting the small portion of the
citizen population on whom it has bestowed the right to vote.94 Survey data
from 2015 confirmed that emirate of origin for FNC candidate was a major
voting criterion for 50.5 per cent of Emiratis, suggesting that people are more
likely to have personal connections, granting candidates from Abu Dhabi an
advantage due to the history of that emirate redistributing its resources, its
position as the country’s capital, and the fact that it is the most populous and
largest of the seven emirates.95 In line with the trend of voting for someone
with whom the voter has a personal relationship, 47.3 per cent of Emirati
voters expressed that personal knowledge of or relationship with a candidate
influenced their vote.96 The survey also revealed that 43.4 per cent of Emiratis
consider kinship with the candidate in voting, demonstrating the prevailing
importance of tribal and family ties even in institutionalized political life.97 The
same survey revealed that winning candidates in the 2011 polls did not come
from large tribes, suggesting either the limited influence of large tribes, their
inability to agree on a single candidate as seen in Kuwait in 2016 or that these
tribes are represented in other bodies of government, such as the Cabinet or
emirate-level councils.98
Nonetheless, the FNC, like Qatar’s CMC, has often favoured conservative
policies of the type traditionally supported by members of the badū or of
Islamist groups.99 In 2014, for example, the FNC called for legislation to ban
women from working late at night in shisha cafes and advocated for the addition
of a mandatory breastfeeding clause in a child’s rights law.100 One member also
famously called for a federal law banning revealing clothing in 2012.101 The
current FNC has voiced concerns on issues ranging from financial relief during
Covid-19102 to the rise of bullying in schools.103
In addition to including some tribal notables, the FNC also traditionally
included Emiratis with business interests.104 In J.E. Peterson’s words, ‘the
government needs to pay close attention to the FNC because the council’s
members are all fairly important people among the small number of UAE
citizens.’105 Notably, and because of its composition, the FNC has by no means
uniformly approved all laws submitted to it, with the body expressing particular
concerns in the 1980s about the penal code and more recently about the
vulnerability of poorer citizens, particularly those in the northern emirates,
to economic changes.106 Still, the central government, rather than the FNC,
determines spending priorities, making it difficult to confirm whether members
of the FNC are striving to secure material disbursements of patronage. Instead,
though the FNC has limited institutional power, ‘having a seat at the table
ostensibly to look out for the interest of the community and also to ensure that
the best representative of the community or tribe or Emirate is available in the
decision-making circles.’107 Members of the FNC, many of whom are from large
tribes, have periodically exerted pressure on the government by voicing their

support or disapproval of certain policies, as well as their desire for greater
institutional power,108 yet tribes have also played an important role in voicing
their backing of the existing political authority, particularly during the Arab
Spring when the government was under some pressure to implement political
reforms.
As previously mentioned, when five activists were imprisoned on charges
of insulting the leadership (the so-called UAE5) after a petition was circulated
demanding that the FNC be granted greater political authority, thousands
of members of tribes gathered to reaffirm their loyalty to the president in
May 2011.109 Interestingly, then, the tribes, who have at times been accused
of disloyalty to nation states, in that instance helped to promote nationalistic
sentiment. Tribes ranging from al-Shehhi – one of whose members is human
rights activist Ahmed Mansoor who was one of the UAE5 – to al-Zaʿabi
gathered to ‘show solidarity and support to the government’.110 It was also
reported that most Abu Dhabi tribes gathered to file a joint lawsuit against
the individuals known as the UAE5 themselves.111 Al Zaʿabi tribe went so far
as to hold a rally, calling it ‘a spontaneous popular response to the calls lately
to renew allegiance to the wise leadership of President His Highness Shaikh
Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice-President and Prime Minister, Members
of the Supreme Council and Rulers of the Emirates and the Crown Prince of
Abu Dhabi’.112 Leader Ahmad Jumaa al-Zaʿabi went on to explain: ‘[T]he tribal
meetings held recently are not strange or new to the traditions of the UAE.
Tribes in the country spare no national occasion for renewing their loyalty to
the wise leadership of the country.’113
Meanwhile, a leader of al-Shehhi, ʿAbdullah bin Leqios al-Shehhi, said that
he believed in the authorities’ impartiality and thus trusted them to handle
the case of fellow tribesman and human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor
appropriately.114 He added that ‘all members of Al Shehi tribe pledge full loyalty
to the government and leadership of the country and reject outright any act
that violates such a relationship.’115 In addition, al-Hammadi tribe reaffirmed its
support for the regime. Tribal leader Dawood al-Hammadi stated: ‘[W]e follow
in the footsteps of the other tribes of the nation to show solidarity and support
to the government and to file official complaints against the five individuals who
insulted our national figures.’116 The tribes most eager to proclaim their loyalty
to the Emirati leaders, interestingly, appear to have come from outlying areas,
where traditional culture is more common than in cities that have grown quickly
in the past few decades and have arguably eroded tribal culture to some extent.117
Conclusions
The arguments presented in this chapter do not provide a conclusive answer

to whether electoral democracy and tribal policies are a bad fit or a natural
progression, but the chapter does offer a glimpse of what electoral tribalism
could mean for the future of more participatory governance in these three
states. A closer examination of the evolution of tribal politics in Kuwait, which
houses the most competitive legislative elections of the three states under study,
indicates the extent to which tribalism influences voter choice and mobilization.
Indeed, former MP Mubarak al-Duwailah says that now that competition and
discrimination have become intra-tribal as the strongest fakhith, or segment of
the tribe, forces its choices on the rest of the tribe during primaries. Having
run in tribal primaries in the 1980s and legislated against them in the 1990s,
al-Duwailah believes that their outcomes are unacceptable in terms of the
quality of tribal MPs reaching parliament and that the ruling elite want to return
tribes to their former servile position.118 This echoes sentiments that the tribal
media figure Mohammed al-Wushaihi made following the 2012 Karamat Watan
protests about tribes needing to stop the habits that make them seem dependent
on the goodwill of ruling elites, including that of seeming eager to marry their
daughters to ruling elite members.119
Some Kuwaiti academics assert that both tribal primaries and ‘service’ tribal
MPs were created by the government to control votes. This structure of bartering
services (which Professor Abdulhadi al-Ajmi designates as basic citizens’ rights)
for allegiance means that these representatives are then forced into voting for
the state’s benefit and not for the benefit of constituents. He makes an interesting
suggestion that oil was not found within Kuwait City walls but in the grazing
lands that traditionally belonged to nomadic desert tribes, who never asked for
compensation for those oil rents.120 What happens, though, if and when tribes
continue to gain more power through ballot boxes and make that a formal
request, especially since tribal academics are now speaking openly about the
matter on television?
In response, Kuwait’s ruling elite has cultivated specific forms of electoral
and cultural tribalism in order to circumvent the power sharing enshrined in its
constitution. Now that these tribes have their own agendas, what will the state do
to reassert control, and what lessons are in this evolution of tribal electoralism
for other states? Ghanim al-Najjar argues that individualism, which is taking
over even within the tribe, will be one of the greatest game changers. He believes
that tribal MPs refusing to engage in primaries are becoming more in number
and that change will come from this refusal and from the government as well, as
tribes become increasingly confrontational and need greater funding provisions
through medical, jobs and other service parameters that the state may be unable
to bear.121
As illustrated by the above, tribal allegiances continue to have tangible political
consequences, which are perhaps easiest to observe in elected bodies though by
no means limited to them. Indeed, tribal affiliation and state-tribe relations have
a major effect on relationships between governments and citizens, as has been
shown in previous chapters. Further, it is logical that, in the absence of political
parties, ascriptive identities like tribes come to the fore, and so the composition
of these elected bodies is unlikely to change in the short to medium term unless
electoral laws are altered and political parties are granted legal status. What is
more surprising, and indicative of the power of the states under study, is the way
in which ascriptive tribal identities have selectively been mobilized in support
of state power and government control. The ‘spontaneous’ expressions of loyalty
on behalf of tribes in the UAE have perhaps helped to cement their continued
influence, as has their adaptation to the modern era through, for instance, the
use of social media, as examined in the chapter that follows.
7
Tribal intersections in the digital age
New media in the GCC
Social media platforms have become a sociopolitical game changer in the GCC,
with civil society organizations, opposition groups, individuals, tribes and
governments using these channels to exert influence and bring about change,
and they are ‘growing in importance as a new tool for the royal families to have
a dialogue with people effectively and win the hearts and minds of the citizens’.1
Further, with the Covid-19 pandemic having forced more and more aspects
of social and political life online, such platforms are set to become only more
important in the short to medium term.
In technical terms, the region has the highest penetration of mobile phones in
the world, alongside introduction of the latest 5G Technology which makes the
internet fast, efficient, and readily available.2 According to the latest statistics,
the GCC countries have the highest penetration rates in terms of social media
platform users among their populations, especially Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
and Instagram.3 Qatar has the most active users on a daily basis, out of all
Facebook users in the country, followed by the UAE4 (both countries have almost
90 per cent penetration),5 while, as of 2017, Kuwait had the highest penetration
rates of active Twitter users with Kuwaitis generating most Tweets per day in
the Arab region.6 As of January 2019, 98 per cent of the population (4.1 million
out of a total population of 4.2 million) in Kuwait were internet users.7 Similar
trends appear for Instagram use, with Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE leading the
Arab region in terms of penetration.8 According to the latest statistics in 2020,
99 per cent of the populations of Kuwait,9 Qatar10 and the UAE11 are on social
media.
Across the region, most discussions on Twitter take place in Arabic12 and are
often aptly described as the virtual ‘street’ for political movements. GCC users
access Twitter and other social media sites mostly through their mobile phones,13
and with most of the national population in the twenty-five and under age
bracket,14 people in the GCC are often early adopters of social media platforms.
Almost half of the people surveyed for the annual Arab Social Media Report
stated that they owned multiple accounts on a single social media platform.15
Social factors such as gender segregation, formal hierarchies within families
and the lack of physical public space for debate have led to these new technologies
to become the marketplace for social, political and material wares. The novelty
of ‘having a voice’ in politically restricted and socially conservative societies is
especially important in a GCC context. Social media provide a platform not only
for political discussions and political dissent (for instance, Kuwait’s Karamat
Watan protests in 2012, the largest in Kuwaiti history, were organized through
an anonymous Twitter account16) but also for bypassing social taboos, as a secret
life can be conducted from the privacy of the bedroom and under a pseudonym
without the watchful eye of a strict family. The usage of online social media
forums through blogs and websites that held discussions on identity, social-
political discourse and a variety of topics concerned with religion, art, literature
and history before social media tools became prevalent, makes it natural that
questions of tribal identity should migrate online also.
Fadi Salem claims that ‘informational flows taking place through social media
have been informing – and misinforming – public opinion and influencing
policy development and political communication.’17 He finds that during
2015 and 2016 especially, ‘social media played a critical role in shaping public
opinion internationally and on national levels, during numerous major events
with global implications.’18 In his opinion, as ‘big data’ and artificial intelligence
(AI) applications mature and societal penetration rates increase, not only do
these data-rich applications ‘provide deep insights into public views, sentiments,
needs, behaviors and activities in numerous countries at unprecedented
granular levels’,19 they also create new opportunities, as well as new risks, and
will continue to do so as they increase in sophistication and insidious influence.
These practices in the post-truth era of fake news and bots have ‘undermined
traditional information mediums, triggered foreign policy crises, impacted
political communication and disrupted established policy formulation cycles’.20
Work by Marc Owen Jones has confirmed the growing use of misinformation
particularly on Twitter throughout the GCC, particularly the weaponization of
bots in the wake of the GCC crisis between 2017 and 2021.21 So it is clear that
there have been considerable political reactions to the impact of social media
on patronage and sociocultural relationships in the GCC over the past ten
years. In response, governments of GCC states have implemented a variety of
Tribal Intersections in the Digital Age 139
new legislation, namely laws governing cybercrimes, to help govern these newly
mobilized space of public discourse.
When examining the roles of tribal factors online, there are many intersections
between how the societies and governments of the GCC states use social media
across the Arab region and how individuals affiliated with tribes are using them.
The same factors that affect the adoption of social media across the Arabian
Peninsula led to the importance of its adoption by tribes, especially as there is a
political element to having a platform that is relatively unrestricted by borders or
the whims of a specific ruling elite. Over the past decade, the growing impact of
the phenomena on public engagement, online participation and social inclusion
has provided a means for GCC citizens and expatriates alike to gain greater access
to power and more attention from governments with regards to their needs. It
has also proven an effective way for tribes to have a voice, a virtual extension of
their territory online. And yet some problems persist despite the availability of
this ‘open’ space, as, across the board, women remain underrepresented online,22
which can be seen as an extension of traditional gender roles to the virtual space
and a continuation of tribal practices that seem to give women less of a voice
than men. As social media users continue to influence governance and public
policy in the region, are tribal forums online a way to show that the tribes matter
(or should matter more) to the government in this space as well?
Tribes online and domestic politics
The answer to this question may lie in examining tribal websites and Facebook
and Twitter pages. There are thousands of sites dedicated to each tribe, and even
to smaller clans within these tribes. The al-ʿAjman tribe, which in 2018 was
estimated to have more than 35,000 voting members in Kuwait (see Figure 11),23
for example, has several websites with many forums and pages dedicated
to poetry24 that glorify the tribe and its place in the history of the Arabian
Peninsula, a calendar for events related to the tribe, and special pages that can
only be accessed with a password once the user has been verified as a member of
the tribe. The same site has its own Twitter account @alajman_net, but looking
up the tribes name on Twitter or as a hashtag #‫( العجمان‬al-ʿAjman) reveals an
endless array of news sites, historical sites and geographical specificity like
‫العجمان_في_الكويت‬# (al-ʿAjman in Kuwait). Searching for al-ʿAjman on Facebook
in 2018 reveals the Iraqi arm of the tribe among many other personal and group
pages, and an endless array of Instagram posts, including 605,000 posts just for
Figure 11 Table from Al-Qabas newspaper showing the number of voters per major
tribe in Kuwait in 2018.
the hashtag #‫( العجمان‬al-ʿAjman). Similar sites appear for the other prominent
tribes such as al-Mutayri and al-ʿOtayba and for Qatari and Emirati tribes like
al-Mansuri and Bani Hajar. Interestingly, the Saudi Ministry of Culture and
Information in July 2019 banned the use of social media handles to represent
specific tribes and regions of the country, demonstrating how popular such
groups are presumed by governments in the region to be.25
As Thesiger explained in the pre-social media era, ‘Bedu are always well
informed about the politics of the desert. They know the alliances and enmities
of the tribes and can guess which tribes would raid each other.’26 Tribes in the
information age are no different and can be seen displaying the same eagerness
for dissemination and collection of information. The first part of this online
migration of tribalism can be witnessed in online tribal forums, which have
recently been converted into Twitter and Instagram accounts, as tribal networks
move from the actual to the virtual and stake a claim to an equally important
and active presence online. Richard Koch argues that the secrets to successful
networks are when people with common interests join them, ‘the growth
[will be] coming relatively easily from member activity’.27 When members of a
certain tribe congregate on a social media platform, it is for the same reasons
Figure 12 Social media platforms highlighted an incident allegedly involving

members of the ʿAjman tribe in Kuwait’s National Petroleum Company, despite local
newspapers not mentioning the tribe; this post was shared widely on Twitter and
WhatsApp in 2017.
they do so in real life, a sense of belonging, to share tribal news and to exchange
information that is important to the tribe, especially calls for fazāʿa, which is a
tribal call to arms in aid of a fellow tribe member. Reactions against these tribal
practices and criticisms of how they disrupt the flow of work and social relations
have been a constant theme in urban areas. Still, social media images and stories
can be more widely shared across badū and haḍar populations. For instance,
in Kuwait, social media highlighted an incident allegedly with members of
the al-ʿAjman tribe in Kuwait’s National Petroleum Company, although local
newspapers did not mention the tribe (see Figure 12). According to WhatsApp
reports of this incident, when a young tribal man was denied access to the
Mina Abdallah port refinery because he had an iPad with him (photography is
prohibited), an altercation ensued with the officer on duty that led to the latter’s
hospitalization after his kinsmen from a local dīwāniyya joined in to defend
their fellow tribesman.
Other manifestations of tribal behaviour online are interesting because they
seem to involve exaggeration, perhaps because of the well-documented silo
effect on online networks,28 of existing issues offline. There are many examples
of this in the amplification of the badū/haḍar social dynamic, with a competing
mistrust between the two, with ‘horrors’ and ‘revelations’ by the latter of an
errant tribalism gone rogue.
Tribes online and international affairs
Between June 2017 and January 2021, the GCC crisis, as discussed in Chapter 5,
ignited its own cyber cold war, and tribes were largely caught in the middle of
this struggle for dominance between Qatar on one side and Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi
Arabia and the UAE on the other. Tweets from 2017 that convey the opposing
sides of the crisis were abundant, such as one that contained an alleged link to
video footage of the Yam tribe, which has clan members across the Arabian
Peninsula, designating Qatari Amir Shaykh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani ‘a
traitor’,29 a problematic stance even before the resolution of the Gulf Crisis in 2021,
as it encourages GCC citizens to openly criticize ruling elites. Simultaneously,
there were Qatari tweets that promoted a sense of national unity with the hashtag
‘Qatar is my Tribe’ used on even topics that were not directly related to the crisis.30
The fragmentation of identities online meant that for the first time people could
choose which state they want to belong to, despite even geographical differences
– an arrangement that is troublesome when national loyalties are at stake. In
fact, this fragmentation became codified, with the implementation of a law in

the UAE in 2017 that made it illegal to ‘show sympathy’ for Qatar on social media
or through other means.31
A quick online search for tribes of Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE reveals an
Arabic Wikipedia page that claims to list tribal classifications in each country
(only the UAE had a similar page in English), as well as many specific forums
dedicated to a single tribe or tribes that belong to a specific region. Depending on
the Wikipedia links chosen, the number of listed tribes in Kuwait as of February
2021 was nineteen, in Qatar they number thirty and fifty-four in the UAE. Some
of these tribes like ‘Harb’ appear in all three countries, and others would appear
in only two, like ‘al-Khater’ who appear in the listed tribes of both the UAE and
Qatar. This list demonstrates how well-suited the transnational nature of tribes
is to the cultivation of a cross-border existence online, as well as how codified
and apparent their online existence is today.
Tribal social evolution and gender
The desire to embrace a metropolitan lifestyle and reject the rules and contradictions
of tribal loyalty is an issue that has resurfaced throughout the evolution of the
Arabian Peninsula’s urbanized tribes. Modern GCC citizens of bedouin descent
have tried to resolve this dichotomy with a foot in both worlds and have identified
education and financial independence as vital to achieving this, as pointed out
by Hessa Saad al-Muhannadi in her study of Qatari women and tribalism.32 She
highlights differences even among tribes, stating that women from badū and haḍar
tribes are affected by tribal customs and values, yet that ‘Bedouin tribes are more
conservative in their acceptance and openness to women’s modern roles than the
Hadar tribes.’33 It is important, then, to take into account internal variation when
it comes to tribal attitudes towards women. Further, as Violet Dickson, wife of the
British Political Agent H.R.P. Dickson in Kuwait, said in a 1972 edition of Saudi
Aramco World, bedouin women and elders were, in a very real physical sense,
trapped by their surroundings after the start of state modernization processes that
led to sedentarization: ‘They feel trapped in there. And a Bedouin woman never
had to learn how to keep a house clean. She’d no idea. She didn’t really sweep
or anything, because she could just move their tent and get on a clean spot.’34 In
general, women are subject to social pressure to conform to tribal values that often
cost them considerable independence in practical terms; to understand this and
to judge whether tribal values have a place in modern urban social units, we must
examine the ways in which traditional tribal values and city life can both clash
and complement one another. Is there a place for tribal custom in modern society,
or does it need to be tempered to the point of total assimilation to allow tribal
members to function in a modern, urbanized social unit?
Hind al-Mutairi is a niqab-wearing poetess from a powerful Arabian
Peninsula tribe. She caused uproar with her poem ‘Waīl al Qabīla’ or ‘Woe to the
Tribe’ which she recited to a mixed audience at the 2015 Jeddah International
Book Fair. This action led her to be banned by the then Governor of Mecca,
Prince Khalid al Faisal, from participating in other cultural events. The poem is
a feminist diatribe against the restraints placed on women within tribal society
and caused many tribal men to demand her persecution; they also tried to force
a formal apology for speaking ill of tribal customs, garnering a popular hashtag
#hind_almutairi_reviles_the_tribe. The poetess responded to this attack in
tweets and letters, demonstrating her unrepentant stance against the restrictions
that many tribal practices place on women. She tweeted about her poem in
Figure 13 Tweet by Sarah Alajmi in response to the murder of Fatima Alajmi where
she says that re-educating tribal men is the moral responsibility of the tribal shaykhs
since allegiance is to the tribe and not to the state in Kuwait (2020).
reaction to the forced divorce of a tribal woman – Salma – from her husband of
thirteen years and father of her five children as he was of non-tribal background,
and thus an unfit match by tribal standards.35
Another young woman fell victim to a bloodier fate due to the same crime
of marrying outside her tribe in 2020 in Kuwait. Fatima Alajmi died after being
shot in the head by her brother while recovering in the intensive care unit of
Mubarak Hospital after having been shot by another brother the day before. She
was also pregnant, and the motive behind this double homicide was that she had
married outside the tribe without her siblings’ consent, even though her father
had accepted the match.36 Young women from the same tribe as the victim, like
Sara al-Ajmi37 and Fatma al-Ajmy,38 took to Twitter to berate the shaykh of the
tribe for not speaking up about such tribal ‘honour’ crimes which have been
covered more frequently in the Kuwaiti press lately and question the validity of
tribal allegiance if it surpasses that to the state and if it remains gendered and
Figure 14 Tweet by Fatmah Alajmy in response to the murder of Fatima Alajmi and
Hajar AlAasi decrying the silence of tribal shaykhs and tribal social media accounts
around the murder of tribal women, which she compares unfavourably to tribal
blood money drives to release male murderers.
not inclusive of the basic protection of women from family violence. Sadly,
another tribal sister-killing incident occurred in December 2020, with the death
of Kuwaiti Parliamentary Guard Sheikha al-Ajmi.39
While women are not invited into the tribal majālis and are not part of the
traditional system of tashāwur or consultation that takes place within a tribe,
social media has given them highly visible platforms from which they can make
themselves heard both within and outside the tribe, thereby giving birth to a
brand of tribal feminism that can only exist online. Another manifestation of
this online tribal feminism can be seen in the hashtag #Kuwait’s-women-against-
(candidates)-elected through tribal primaries40 and corresponding movement to
boycott the results of tribal primaries (in which tribal women do not get to vote)
held prior to the 2020 elections in Kuwait, though it is unclear whether tribal
women started this movement or whether it was started by women outside the
tribes.
Other evidence of the difficulty tribal mores can cause women offline, in
particular in a modern urban setting, are plentiful. Haya al-Mughni has pointed
out that such difficulties are pervasive in established urban tribes as well as the
more recently settled bedouin population. She describes how the merchant class
and elite Kuwaitis similarly control women through arranged marriages and by
placing a great deal of responsibility on these women for the preservation of
family honour: ‘[T]hose of the elite and the merchant class have been the most
eager to preserve the kin relations from which they gain prestige and access
to many privileges. Their loyalty to their own class has often superseded their
loyalty to members of their own sex,’ up to and including issues surrounding
their right to marry and bear children if a socio-economically suitable match
is not available to them.41 This is particularly relevant to contemporary tribal
women if we consider that in pre-urbanized tribal societies, marriage outside the
tribe was only done out of necessity to forge an alliance, which meant that, ‘as a
result, birth into the right family tended to be the only way to become a member
of a tribe.’42 Latifa al Subaie – a Kuwaiti woman from a self-identified bedouin
family – articulates this conflict as anxiety and a constant pressure to conform
to tribal honour which forces young people, especially women, to be viewed and
to view themselves not as individuals but as parts of a more important collective.
Decisions in this system of strict hierarchy are often made for them and not
by them.43 Shahd Alshammari explains how, in the fictional representations of
bedouin women’s writing, value is assigned to female anatomy and sexuality. She
describes this value as ‘simultaneously double-edged’, as it is ‘rendering women
invisible, depriving them of any other function, equating them with horses that
are meant to be kept, controlled, and made use of. Just as a horse’s bloodline
is examined, and it is crucial for its value to be established, women’s value is
derived from their linkage to purity and noble asl lines.’44
It may be easy in the face of increasing Westernization to take a negative
attitude towards social customs that have, in some ways, outlived their usefulness,
but let us consider how tribal habits can also complement urbanized life. Hissa
al-Dhaheri from Abu Dhabi believes that there is a positive association between
women of tribal ancestry and ideas of competence and dependability in contrast
to the image of what we might call ‘spoiled urban girls’.45 Munira al-Kuwari, a
member of a prominent Qatari tribe, also argues that maintaining tribal customs
and units can confer benefits on social groups and neighbourhoods; these
can include safekeeping and safeguarding of neighbours, keeping potentially
damaging secrets, engaging in communal problem-solving, and being able
to seek help from fellow tribal members at any hour of the day or night.46 It
is perhaps doubly important to consider the community ties that arise from
tribal mores as beneficial in an age when social media and the fast pace of
life and technology are causing increasing alienation both within and without
community groups. A Qatari student from a bedouin background described a
patronizing attitude from some ḥaḍar urban women towards her and women
like her, with an expressed desire to ‘save’ or ‘civilize’ them that did not take into
account their deep identification and pride in their badu identity.47
However, some Qatari tribal women have voiced a desire for less tribal
rigidity and more mixed neighbourhoods to force tribes to ‘adapt to different
values and be embarrassed with covering up drug use and other anti-social
behavior within the tribe’.48 For some women, the benefits do not erase the
problems that an overly dogmatic adherence to tribal mores without regard for
practicality and health-directed changes may cause. Sara al-Haroun finds that
‘social problems and health risks can increase as a result of having a tribe isolated
in a single neighborhood [through increased] consanguineous marriages, which
can sometimes result in birth defects.’49 Studies have proved ‘this centuries-old
custom of intermarriage has had devastating genetic effects’.50
The social evolution of tribal women has also demanded that they retain
tribal conservatism, sometimes at the expense of more practical customs. While
men have retained some markers that hint at bedouin descent to some extent,
the traditional burqa for women has given way to the more overtly religious
niqab in Kuwait.51 In Qatar and the UAE, the batoola has seen similar changes,
having fallen out of fashion with younger women completely. The clash between
gender and assimilation in a tribal context is further complicated by the work
of AlNajjar and Allagui, who argue that, in the UAE, women’s empowerment is
part of the national branding project of the post-oil modern state.52 Since many
of these branding projects rely on ‘invented tradition’53 that we dub bedouin-lite,
the struggle between modernity and tradition in terms of gender representation
takes place within a prism of retention, invention versus adaptation and historical
revision. As Page puts it, ‘the Emirati woman is honored for her femininity,
beauty, respect for tradition, and staying “in place.” It is stylish to be traditional.
Modernity must be tempered by tradition.’54 The same sentiment applies where
selective aspects of modernity are practiced to reproduce the tribal system with
a modern sheen, often through bedouin-lite practices.
A close examination of the rights that remain denied to female citizens of these
states leads to the supposition that, despite supposedly modern advancements,
including discussion of these issues online, urbanized tribal units with a strict
adherence to tribal values suffer from the negative aspects of tribal culture, in
spite of the modern tweaks that are made to such strictures in many cases, as
discussed by Amal al Malki, Dean of Hamad bin Khalifa University, in al Jazeera
interview.55 Women in these states are frequently denied the right to pass on their
nationality to their children or to marry without the consent of a legal guardian
as an enforcement of a tribal tradition rather than an Islamic one. Although tribal
customs have a place in city life for those of bedouin origin, it seems clear that
they must coexist with and assimilate into the requirements of modern urban
life. Tribal mores evolved for a reason and do, in some ways, protect the health
of communities, yet it seems that the cost of their retention is higher for women
than men. In the context of tribal social evolution over time, it is thus clear that
whilst some aspects of tribal custom have evolved to be retained in a changing
world, other aspects remain confusingly, and at times destructively, at odds with
contemporary social needs; social media provides a means of discussing these
issues more openly than ever before and so could spur change.
Tribes, youth and society
In a similar vein, Alshawi and Gardner posit the question: ‘[N]ow that most of
people in question are no longer attached to this particular pastoral/nomadic
mode of production, why does tribalism persevere?’56 They argue that ‘by
Khaldun’s logic, economic well-being should correlate with the erosion of tribal
solidarity.’57 They apply the same principle to increased education and a so-called
‘modern’ lifestyle and identity, but if we consider the wealth and depth of history
that lies behind tribal social norms – as well as the efforts of governments to
perpetuate select elements of this in pursuit of a stable national identity – the
issue is not so easily addressed through pure logic.
Tribal youth of both sexes continue to display some engendered practices in
conforming to stereotypes that display tribal bias and traditional gender roles
despite their urbanized status. In a study examining young voters’ attitudes to
candidates based on gender conducted by Kuwait University in 2016,58 differences
between the male and female candidates were found based on responses to the
following question: ‘How important to you is tribe and tribal belonging? Is it
very important, somewhat important, not important, or do you not belong to a
tribe at all?’ Respondents who said that tribal belonging was important to them
were statistically more likely to support a male candidate, and female candidates
did not receive a similar boost from tribal respondents.59
This result can be explained by the way in which tribes organize candidates
internally. Perhaps it is more difficult for female candidates to find their place
in a tribal context, and thus ‘tribal students may be more likely to think that the
male candidate will be successful and support him.’60 A similar study conducted
at Qatar University a year earlier displayed similar results, such that it became
clear that the question of gender roles within a tribal social frame is a persistent
one across age groups. Bethany Shockley posits that,
[i]t appears that the main issue that conservative and tribal students have
with a female candidate is related to voting and electoral support and not in
her inherent abilities or competence. Thus, an interesting puzzle emerges,
if female candidates are actually rated higher than males for this measure of
overall competence, why do these groups of students consistently favor the male
candidate when it comes to actual electoral support?61
There are clearly changes in how GCC youth, including members of tribal
populations, regard authority figures. Blind obedience is no longer the norm,
as can be seen by the level of engagement of youth online in political debates.
Nonetheless, the cohesiveness of the tribe as a social and political unit within
the modern GCC state is not under threat by these more independently minded
young people, and ‘although some tribes may trace their lineage to some heroic
figure, the real identity of the tribe lies in the people that currently compose
it. In the tribe lies an individual basis for his or her sense of self-esteem on the
honor of the tribe as a whole.’62 We see many examples of how the revival of
tribal identity by young people is now becoming a cornerstone for individual
and collective identity on the social and political front among young people who
have never experienced any tribal component to their lives besides an urbanized
one. Tribal youth remain important as voters and revivalists of tribal practices,
in addition to the invention of new ones such as the numbers recently used by
young tribal men especially to denote their tribal allegiance (101 for al-ʿAjman
tribe and 404 for al-Mutayri, for example).63 Though there are some theories
about the origin of these numbers (radio frequency symbols for the regions
inhabited by these tribes, or numbers assigned to these tribal members of the
armed forces by the Saudi army), it remains unclear whether these numbers
signify anything beyond the fact that they point to a resurgence of tribal identity
amongst younger people.
Further, although nuclear families are increasingly replacing extended family
structures and tribal neighbourhoods in the three states under study, how far
the respective countries and their nationals have moved away from ethno-
tribal identities and embraced the modern citizenship model still varies greatly,
even within each country and across specific time periods. Further, with tribes
adapting to modern life and to modern technology, it is less likely that tribal
identity will become eroded. An Emirati website and Instagram page titled ‘My
Ancestors; A Source of Pride and Glory’ (see Figure 15) that seems to be run by
female high school students from Ras al Khaimah reaffirms the importance of
tribal belonging, providing a breakdown of all the tribes in the UAE, a map of
the most prominent tribal grouping in the peninsula, and even categorizes the
national population of the UAE into different ethnic groups; Arab tribes, who
are the ‘original inhabitants of the UAE’, and five other categories.64 And yet,
Sultan al Qassemi argued in 2013 that tribal, and geographical, affiliations are
diminishing in importance in the UAE, in an article entitled ‘In the UAE the
only tribe is the Emirati’.65 Nonetheless, it remains to be seen whether those who
still define themselves as ‘badū’ (second- and third-generation urban settlers
from bedouin backgrounds) will rely on tribal identity in order to achieve social
justice and political clout if the new wave of GCC leaders continues to move
away from a conservative brand of identity and embrace a more fluid, inclusive,
multi-ethnic one in future.
Conclusions
As demonstrated above, tribes have successfully migrated online as cohesive

units, granting them a means of communicating both with their members
and with the national and international population more broadly. This online
Figure 15 A map detailing the larger tribes of the Arabian Peninsula from the UAE
history kin website.
presence also makes it more likely that their presence in political and social life
across the Arabian Peninsula will persist. Nonetheless, members of tribal female
and young populations are increasingly engaging in debates about the utility of
continued adherence to tribal practices, which could contribute to their further
modernization in the coming decades but is unlikely to lead to the demise of the
importance of tribal social identity, and in fact social media appear to have, in
some ways, enabled tribalism. Indeed, tribalism and familiar tribal practices may
offer some sense of stability and continuity in a world that is rapidly changing,
especially for young people, but could also increasingly exist in tension with, for
instance, the creation of knowledge economies and propagation of feminism
across the Arabian Peninsula.
What remains to be seen is how much social media will duplicate the spread
of tribal ideals and enable them. Indeed, tribal identity seems easily replicated
across the internet. For instance, one popular cat meme includes a cat dressed in
traditional clothing with a dallah, dubbing him shaykh al-qabīla (see Figure 16),
demonstrating the extent to which tribal symbols have become a cultural
shorthand easily and readily reproduced. Alternatively, social media could prove
to be a space for pushback and pluralistic conversations that bring forth young
and female voices that are not usually revered in tribal circles, as well as a safe
and open space for non-tribal citizens to confront some of the tribal practices
that they see as damaging to national unity, as discussed further in the next
chapter. As tribalism continues to appeal to the young, and to the politically
ambitious, it will be interesting to track whether tribal women are going to be
able to simultaneously rebel against the tribal codes that discriminate against
them in terms of leadership and limit their independence, while still retaining
pride in their ‘bedouin roots’ and pride in their tribal ancestry.
Figure 16 Cat meme with caption ‘Shaykh of the tribe’ (2018). This account is now
closed but the meme itself was widely shared.
8
Conclusion
In the Introduction of this book, we stated that this study would not be a
review of the anthropology or ancestry of tribes, or the various definitions of
‘bedouinism’; instead, it has been an attempt to look into the modern usages of
such labels as a collective set of sociopolitical behaviours within the framework
of the super-rentier state. It is clear from a historical perspective that the clash
between politics, geography and social norms in an urbanized environment
that informs a large part of badū identity coheres with the issues surrounding
questions of contemporary national identity. It also becomes clear through a
long-term historical view of these questions that archaic aspects of tribal custom
are not necessarily beneficial to the health of a robust national identity, even
where that identity relies on an inherent tribal nature or structure. As Gardner
explains, ‘[t]he baggage of anthropology’s abandoned preoccupation with a
social evolutionary framework nonetheless reverberates into the contemporary
era. Tribalism retains a connotation of primitiveness, and it continues to be
framed as a social form antithetical to modernity or otherwise problematic to
development.’1 Despite such ‘baggage’, it may even be reasonable to suggest,
based on historical evidence, that, despite institutional meddling, tribal culture
in urban environments will eventually regulate itself on the basis of the principle
underlying its customs being one of a nomadic people; that is to say, tribal
custom will eventually evolve to do what is best to perpetuate the health and
prosperity of the tribe and its members, even when that means letting fall by
the wayside customs which were once vital to the tribe, but now fall outside the
realm of social evolution.
However, this tribal evolution will always be coloured by the state’s agenda,
and especially by what ruling elites think will serve their interests best. In fact, it
was not uncommon for the very process of state formation to ‘encourage already
existing tribes to reach an accommodation with the state authority in order to
retain their autonomy or to create new tribes that might organize themselves
around other, more dynamic loyalties … thereby enabling them to oppose the
state and even seek independence from it’.2 Indeed, as Kostiner has highlighted,
the relationship between tribe and state became symbiotic as GCC governments
accrued enough wealth to take over the role traditionally occupied by tribes of
providing materially for their members.3
In one opinion piece published in Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas entitled ‘Tribe
or Country?’4 the former editor-in-chief of Kuwait’s National News Agency,
Iqbal al-Ahmad, argues that the resurgence of tribalism is a direct threat to
nationalism and good citizenship values.5 This opinion has recently been echoed
in a Saudi Shura council member’s suggestion that it become mandatory for all
citizens to remove their tribal last names from their government-issued identity
cards.6 Further, a bill presented to the Shura Council in Saudi Arabia in 2016
proposed fining those who boast about tribal ancestry to incite discrimination
up to one million Saudi Riyals ($266,600) and a fifteen-year jail sentence among
other measures to promote equality and respect in Saudi Arabia.7 The late Amir
of Kuwait’s oldest son and the late ex-Minister of Defense Shaykh Nasser Sabah
al-Ahmad al-Sabah declared in an interview with China’s National Television
station as part of the move to modernize Kuwait and market the Silk City planned
for the country’s north that he believes that tribal representation in electoral
parliament results will ‘diminish soon’.8 This could be seen as an indication
that some members of the government in Kuwait also share the concern that
tribalism and tribal practices are an impediment to the ‘progress’ embodied by
future development plans like Kuwait’s Vision 2035.
The coastal GCC city states encountered their first wave of population growth
with inner peninsula tribe members joining the seasonal trade and pearling
industry that brought with it social, economic and political adjustments, some
more uncomfortable than others. Each newly naturalized wave of migrants to
these growing states disrupted the political and social status quo, and much of the
backlash that can be traced historically against bedouin and tribal populations
can today be seen playing out against expatriate populations who have joined
the workforce of the post-oil economy GCC states. Despite that significant
demographic shift from bedouin tribal migrants to an influx of expatriates,
much of the resentment and mistrust against the original ‘new settlers’ remain
ingrained and have grown because of the latter’s growth in strength, visibility and
numbers in places like Kuwait. The 2012 Karamat Wattan (A Nation’s Dignity)
protests delivered with them some uncomfortable questions about tribe
members’ loyalty to the state and those who rule it, especially with Musalam al-
Barrak’s infamous ‘we will not allow you’9 speech that was seen as a breach of the
Conclusion 155
amir’s constitutional position of being above reproach and landed the MP in jail
for two years, effectively ending his political career.
The idolization of figures who have used tribal rhetoric and loyalties to
gain political power has been a point of contention and part of the backlash
against tribalism and tribal behaviour in Kuwait. Liberal journalist and political
commentator Ahmad al-Sarraf ’s tweet on the displays of respect and reverence
that the arresting officers from the Mutayri tribe showed Musallam al-Barrak by
kissing his nose during his arrest demonstrate what he considers to be ‘erosion
of national unity’ through ‘a government sanctioned’ promotion of tribal values
over ‘loyalty to the country’.10 In a consecutive tweet on the matter, al-Sarraf
holds the government and ruling elites responsible for allowing tribal primaries
and allowing geographic and social tribalism to thrive.
This tension between the modern placement of tribes in the GCC states and
the needs of ruling families and nation states to preserve and readjust the status
quo has been grappled with in other scholarly works that attempt to identify
their place within the shifting identity politics of the region. The proceedings of
one academic workshop on the topic summarize these debates well:
While the basis of tribes in economic scarcity and nomadism have been
eliminated by policies of sedentarization, urbanization, and state building,
‘political tribalism’ – a concept first outlined by the Kuwaiti sociologist Khaldoun
al-Naqeeb – is very much a reality. Indeed, one participant [of the workshop]
argued that leadership in the Gulf is an extension of tribalism in modes of
governance, providing a mentality and set of relations where political roles and
resources are distributed, in part, on the basis of kinship.11
Patronage from the government or from ruling family members is seen by

many as being directly involved in cultivating tribal identity. In Kuwait, tribes
are encouraged to hold intra-tribe football cups12 and partake in an annual
inter-tribal football cup in Jahra. Najla al-Homaizi posted an angry tweet on
1 November 2017 in reaction to the suggestion of creating a tribal shaykhs’ council
in Kuwait that would look after the needs of each tribe – a recommendation put
forth by a distant member of Kuwait’s ruling family.13 Al-Homaizi, who belongs
to one of the more prominent merchant families in Kuwait, stated in her tweet
that, if haḍar or Shi’i Kuwaitis had made a similar suggestion, it would have
caused an uproar and provoked accusations of discrimination and sectarianism.
This sense of tribalism being both uniquely threatening to national values
and uniquely positioned to question them is the crux of fears about sustained
tribal influence. Concern about the role of tribes in political life in Kuwait led
thirty-three Kuwaiti civil societies and NGOs to sign a petition to fight against
the practice of tribal ‘billboards’ seen at Kuwait University in June 2018,14 which
aimed to offer services to high school graduates from specific tribes. The petition
decried these billboards as discriminatory and in violation of Articles 7 and 8
of Kuwait’s constitution.15 Such actions, however, have not discouraged some
Figure 17 A candidate from the Shammar tribe declares that he will be in the
service of his tribe ‘and its interests’ when he is elected to office (2020).
Conclusion 157
2020 parliamentary election hopefuls from repeating that same technique in

their tribal majority districts (see Figure 17).
Following the al-Azimi blood money fundraising campaign that was
discussed in Chapter 5, many voices joined the chorus criticizing tribal practices,
especially when the Bani Malik tribe of Iraq took offence at a statement made
by the Kuwait-based shaykh of the al-ʿAzimi tribe, which led the latter to issue
a formal apology and send a tribal envoy to Basra to reiterate his apology after
the Kuwaiti Consulate there was attacked in response.16 In this way and in others
discussed elsewhere in the book, inter-tribal issues can travel across borders and
complicate regional relations for modern states, perhaps seen most clearly in the
GCC crisis.
Without a doubt, Kuwait’s electoral politics have shown that for many this
anti/pro tribal stance has political currency and major consequences to the
electoral landscape of that state.17 Musallam al-Barrak, who was once considered
the most potent symbol of tribal opposition to Kuwait’s government and who
often received the overall highest number of votes when he was running for
office despite voting against women’s political rights in 2005, demonstrates that
even someone as charismatic and politically deft as he is still feels the need for
a ‘tribal’ background story for demographic clout, which is symptomatic of
what Lambert calls the ‘new tribal urban politics’.18 Kristin Smith Diwan has
a different outlook on the same issue; for her, al-Barrak represents a different
type of tribal politician, as his appeal has extended beyond his al-Mutayri tribe.19
He has refused to participate in his tribe’s primaries, on grounds that they are
undemocratic and has sought cross-ideological political allies in his fight against
corruption rather than merely relying on his tribe’s support, perhaps signalling
a change in mobilization tactics among prominent members of Kuwait’s large
tribes.
It is not surprising that the most visible of these tribal resurgences and the
reactions against them have thus far taken place in Kuwait. Besides the obvious
benefits of ‘identity entrepreneurship’, whereby political actors fan these
movements to ‘construct differences and reinforce boundaries between their own
groups and other groups’,20 Kuwait has a longer history of open political debates,
both inside and outside of parliament, than the other two states discussed in this
study. Kuwait’s demographic reality also comes into play with tribal politics, since
the number of haḍar youth is lower than that of tribal districts.21 This imbalance
has made the tribe of more significance economically, politically and socially.22
Nonetheless, the manifestation of tribalism undoubtedly exists socially, with
wasta (favour based on kinship or nepotism) particularly effective for members
of large or well-connected tribes. Indeed, government-provided employment

exists in all three states, meaning that jobs are often granted not on the basis
of merit, but rather on the basis of being members of certain tribes or other
well-connected social groups; in Kuwait, for instance, MPs who represent tribal
constituents often refer to merchant elites and the government ‘oppressing’ other
demographics.23 Further, the national branding projects of these states made it
imperative to focus on a homogenous story tied into a tribal bedouin past as
demonstrated in Chapter 4, but this has been problematic because not only do
such narratives deny the background stories of the non-national majorities of
these populations, but they also deny the different ethnic backgrounds of non-
tribal nationals and tribal nationals who do not come from the Arabian Peninsula.
And yet, as we have seen, some scholars like Shafeeq Ghabra believe families like
al-Kandari, described in Chapter 5, have become ‘tribalized’ by electoral politics
and now behave like a bedouin tribe would in terms of allegiance to kinship
in voting matters and other aspects.24 Many tribes in Qatar and the UAE also
come from hwala backgrounds, meaning that they are coastal tribes from Arab
descent that have migrated to and from present-day Iran at various times, but
such populations are often excluded from national identity projects.
The adoption of AI and automation will force a measure of meritocracy on
job hires and other governmental processes which will have a disruptive effect
on the forces that contribute to and control tribal political identity. As Richard
Koch explains, ‘[t]oday the world’s twenty richest cities are magnets for talent
with high concentrations of knowledge and money.’25 If nationalism is based
on loyalty and jobs awarded on that basis, it is very difficult to reconcile this
premium on ‘loyalty’ with the ambitious development plans of all three states
governments. As it stands, the status quo, with an emphasis on nepotism and
tribal or other types of wasta is the antithesis of the necessary foundation
for a knowledge-based economy, which is a stated goal of all three states
examined here. Changes to foster such economies and diversification projects
are particularly urgent, as dependence on oil revenues does not seem to be as
stable an income guarantee for the state as it was in the past, especially in the
post-Covid-19 era. The need for economic diversification has led to real estate
for residency programs in both Dubai and Doha,26 even though there has been
much resistance from the native population to give further rights to even half
Qatari non-nationals as a threat to ‘national identity’.27 Interestingly, the UAE,
in January 2021, became the first state in the GCC to offer a path to citizenship
for non-nationals with specialized skills, including investors, medical doctors,
engineers and artists, who can, in the words of Shaykh Mohammed bin Rashid,
Conclusion 159
‘contribute to our development journey’.28 While none of its neighbours

has followed suit, this change will likely contribute to further conversations
surrounding national identity and belonging, examining ‘tribal values’, as well
as the role of expatriates in the GCC, particularly after the Covid-19 pandemic.
This desire to make the GCC states friendlier to foreign investments and
foreign residents is only likely to continue, as the focus on becoming more
economically competitive increases. As Koch predicts, ‘[b]y 2030, more than
70 percent of the world’s people will live in cities, with most of them located
within fifty miles of the sea … the demographic concentration, economic
weight, and political power of today’s coastal megacities makes them … the
key units of human organization.’29 When we examine the somewhat anti-
tribal evolution of Dubai in comparison to Abu Dhabi, Doha or Kuwait City,
we might get a glimpse of what the future of the GCC coastal cities looks
like if they want to appeal to a wider global audience and not just their local
and regional demographics. In order to feed their growth and development
during the modernization phase, GCC countries have attracted huge numbers
of expatriates over the past five decades, causing them to have the highest
population growth rates as a region (from 4 million in 1950 to 46.5 million in
2010)30 according to UNFPA. In order to become competitive on a global level
and to attract high-skilled innovative workers, global cities rely on their ability
to attract global talent: ‘As the number of global migrants surges, connected
and open cities feature ever-higher percentages of foreign-born residents.’31
Though this was somewhat already the case in GCC, it may be challenged by a
resulting revival of tribal thinking and initiatives that are aimed at ‘preserving’
national identity by continuing to favour nationals over non-nationals and
tribal nationals above all others.
Because tribal identities and affiliations remain important social and political
markers even in a modern and urbanized Gulf, it has become increasingly
difficult to define what exactly is ‘tribal’. Certainly, the tribe is less in evidence as
a tangible political structure than in the pre-oil era, yet its influence is still felt
in political institutions of the state, as well as in social life more generally. The
tension between tribe and state, as has been shown, however, is not unresolvable,
and, in fact, in some ways the relationship is symbiotic. Although tribes initially,
like states, aspired to sovereignty and self-sufficiency, today they have been
incorporated into structures of the rentier states discussed here as government
power has grown with the advent of hydrocarbon wealth in the 1950s. While
in situations of government breakdown like Libya and Yemen tribes have
demonstrated their ability to surface as autonomous groups providing the
same services that weak governments are unable to provide, they still serve
as important markers of citizenship, especially in the GCC states, and their
members can become important partners to ruling families.
As Steffen Hertog explains, oil-linked development has altered the pre-
existing social order most drastically when it comes to tribes; in his words, ‘states
are omnipresent and social groups have become subservient to and dependent on
them. The history of Arabian state-building is a history of the political decline of
independent social groups – and tribes, however important they remain as social
identity markers, are at the sharp end of this process.’32 In a similar way, then,
merchant classes that once provided loans and even collected taxes for the state in
some cases have been replaced largely by apparatuses of the modern rentier state,
although merchants have been more easily able to continue their commercial
endeavours than were tribal populations that relied on animal pastoralism for
their wellbeing.33 Pockets of influence nonetheless remain for merchants and
tribes alike, yet their ability to influence politics and political decision-making
tends to be mediated by ruling families, who have sometimes hoped to avoid
becoming entangled with tribal or family ties by hiring technocrats without such
backgrounds.34 Hertog describes state co-optation of tribes in Saudi Arabia as
the process of bureaucratizing these groups: governments ‘locally empowered
select sheikhs through the assignment of administrative functions (e.g. giving
them the right to attest individuals’ personal status) and the ability to act as
intermediaries vis-à-vis the state on behalf of their tribe. These local privileges
have declined over time, however, as states have grown and increasingly become
able to reach out to all part of society directly.’35 Further, in 2008, King Salman
bin ʿAbdulaziz, then governor of Riyadh, wrote an official letter in response to
a discussion about the al-Saud family’s tribal roots on a Saudi television show to
clarify the family’s tribal affiliation, demonstrating that such ties are important
even for those in the centre of political power.36
This dynamic is slightly different in smaller states of the GCC examined here,
since leaderships tend to be more easily accessible in the smaller states than the
larger countries of the Gulf. Even in the largest state in the GCC, Saudi Arabia,
however, the Ministry of Information has clarified that no one other than
officially sanctioned religious and tribal leaders can call themselves shaykhs,
with the Ministry of Interior in control of determining who qualifies as a shaykh,
a clear state co-optation of tribal titles and perhaps more broadly indicative of
the state’s authority over that of tribes.37
Because they have adapted to newly constructed political and even urban
structures, tribes today are in fact quite modern, a claim explored by other
Conclusion 161
scholars yet often centring on the state’s role in propagating or promoting

tribal identity rather than the role of tribe members themselves in this process.
Certainly, we see evidence of this claim through tribes’ use of social media,
branding and the increasing prevalence of tribalism and tribes in tourism,
particularly in Gulf states, as well as their involvement in key political issues
of the day like the GCC crisis. While Cooke is correct in her assertion that ‘the
tribal is not the traditional and certainly not the primitive’, she seems to portray
the tribal as exclusively instrumentalized by the state when in fact tribal tropes
are recreated by and perpetuated from the grassroots as well.38 Indeed, tribes
remain socially the most important organizing factors within the Gulf, with
tribal alignment taken into account often for marriages, hiring decisions and
with tribal structures even used at times to mediate conflicts or to influence
policymaking.39 In Cooke’s view, however, nationalism and tribalism remain at
least somewhat in conflict, since the former is under control of state governments:
‘Nationalism did not erase tribalism so much as shift its focus. Nationalizing
tribal identities while still insisting on their importance, modern regimes held
tribal lineage in affective tension with the national identity.’40 Cooke cites state
efforts to manage tribal identities to demonstrate the political salience of tribes
by discussing, for instance, Qatari Law No. 21, which banned some public
sector employees, particularly those in the diplomatic service or armed forces,
from marrying non-Qataris, as well as the Emirati policy of providing a 10,000
Dirham ($2,700) dowry for marriages between Emirati nationals.41 In fact,
Qatar’s Shafallah Medical Genetics Centre shows that 30 per cent of marriages
are between cousins, demonstrating the power of tribal or at least familial
structures in determining marriage matches.42 Tribes remain important socially,
Cooke contends, since ‘the idea of the tribe connotes aristocracy, and it remains
absolutely salient for symbolic power and wealth distribution at home.’43 Beyond
that, however, tribes also remain significant avenues for access to economic and
political power, as demonstrated in the previous chapters, as well as more simply
and at a more granular level providing social networks.
Both Cooke and Calvert Jones discuss the role of the state in sponsoring
projects focused on heritage and therefore often on the tribal. Indeed, Abu
Dhabi’s Heritage Village, Sharjah’s Museum, Dubai Museum, as well as the
national museums of all three countries portray the largely tribal, Sunni and
masculine origins of these states, with particular focus on activities like camel
racing, falconry and pearl diving, some of which continue to be organized
in these states and are usually linked with members of the ruling families, as
documented in the Koch’s work. While Cooke may overstate the power of heritage
symbols as ‘undergird[ing] modern political power’, that these symbols are

propagated and reproduced at the state level implies their importance to the
political leadership.44 Cooke opines that ‘tribal and family kinship idioms and
vocabulary are used not only to personalize political relations and secure greater
allegiance to the state in such a small country, but also because kinship language
is, after all, a political language, and as such remains meaningful to large segments
of the population.’45 We have argued, however, that kinship language is not solely
political, but also social. Because the political and social tend to be connected in
tight-knit societies, and especially in states with few institutionalized means of
political participation, tribal social power becomes politicized. In the Kuwaiti
case, we see how tribes adapt to political environments with organized electoral
campaigns for parliament, with the other cases demonstrating how even less
politically consequential elections provide opportunities for the political salience
of tribes to become clear. Voting for a fellow tribe member, for instance, is at
once a political and a social act, and it is very difficult to divorce one from the
other in the case of tribes of the Arabian Peninsula.
Further, it is worth pointing out that this type of blind political allegiance
on the basis of social ties rather than merit is being labelled as tribalistic and
deleterious even in the West. US Senator Jeff Flake in October 2018 famously
called for American politics to reject ‘destructive partisan tribalism’.46 He went so
far as to state that ‘tribalism is ruining us. It is tearing our country apart. It is not
the way for sane adults to act and most importantly, ultimately, the only tribe to
which any of us owed allegiance is the American tribe.’47 Even in the American
context in which most citizens do not have a tribal past of the same type as the
Arabian Peninsula, then, allegiance to a body other than the state is portrayed as
problematic and linked to tribe, illustrating the extent to which the notion of the
tribe as exclusivist and divisive exists in the political lexicon globally.
In the Arabian Peninsula specifically, however, Jones, in her discussion of
‘the making of citizens, 2.0’, provides important insight into the state’s role in
crafting nationalism and citizens themselves yet falls into the mistake of, in our
view, discussing the instrumental aspect of tribal identity without taking into
consideration that tribal tropes are reproduced socially at a grassroots level. She
makes a valuable contribution to the literature about social engineering in the
GCC, focusing on the role of Emirati leaders in converting their citizenry from
bedouins into ‘a new kind of citizen, one who is more modern in the eyes of
rulers, more globalization-ready, and better prepared for the post-petroleum
era’.48 In so doing, she discusses at length the variety of educational, symbolic and
rhetorical efforts of the Emirati state to engender nationalist sentiment of the
Conclusion 163
type that is considered beneficial to the Emirati state, yet she largely overlooks
that state’s tribal history. As she explains, ‘social engineers are succeeding in
making citizens more proud and more nationalistic’49 as she discusses the ‘new
paternalism’ of the state, which envisions itself as nudging its citizens towards
change for their own good and using what she dubs ‘“feel good” nationalism.’50
Part of this nationalism and broader sense of khalījī identity has undoubtedly
involved the reproduction of tribal tropes.
We began this book with the goal of breaking down the meaning behind
oft-repeated statements about the essentially tribal nature of the smaller states
of the Arabian Peninsula. By first tracing the historical relationships between
rulers of these states and their tribal populations, we revealed ways in which
the state has helped to propagate certain tribal identities even in the modern
era. We then assessed the ways in which heritage projects like those cited above
invoke tribal identities, clarifying the extent to which they are produced as
primarily state initiatives or from the grassroots. The book then focused on
five areas of tribal influence in the present-day Arabian Peninsula: the social
sector, the political sphere, the electoral arena, online through social media
and in influencing non-tribal identities. In our examination of the role of tribes
in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, we have found that qabīla in the twenty-first
century remains potentially the most important determinant of social and
political behaviour.
It is therefore crucial that we continue to study the ways in which tribes have
evolved and continue to adapt to new circumstances in the states they inhabit.
Ultimately, tribalism as a concept remains very relevant in all the states of the
Middle East, even though tribes themselves have limited power in stable states
of the region like those studied here, wherein governments have taken over the
functions that were once the purview of tribes. The relationship between tribe
and state is therefore neither static nor predictable, and definitions of tribe,
badū and qabīla can mean different things to different people at different times,
being at once personal and communal. As a result, such markers often manifest
themselves at the intersection of the state and the individual, making the
continued study of this relationship all the more important to anthropologists,
sociologists and political scientists alike.
Notes
Chapter 1
1 Neil MacFarquhar, ‘Tahseen Bashir, Voice of Tolerance in Egypt, Dies at 77’, The
New York Times, 13 June 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/obituaries/
tahseen-bashir-voice-of-tolerance-in-egypt-dies-at-77.html.
2 Frauke Heard-Bey, ‘The Tribal Society of the UAE and Its Traditional Economy’, in
United Arab Emirates: A New Perspective, ed. Ibrahim al-Abed (London: Trident
Press, 2001), 101.
3 ‘Whispered Dissent in the UAE: No Sheikh Up There’, The Economist, 17 March
2012, https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2012/03/17/no-sheikh-
up-here.
4 Justin Gengler, Mark Tessler, Darwish al-Emadi, and Abdoulaye Diop, ‘Civic Life
and Democratic Citizenship in Qatar: Findings from the First Qatar World Value
Survey’, Middle East Law and Governance, vol. 5, no. 3 (2013): 7.
5 Scott J. Weiner, ‘Kinship Politics in the Gulf Arab States’, The Arab Gulf States
Institute in Washington, Issue Paper 7, 22 July 2016, 3–4.
6 Richard Tapper, ‘Anthropologists, Historians, and Tribespeople on Tribe and State
Formation in the Middle East’, in Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East,
ed. Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1990), 56.
7 Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner, ‘Introduction: Tribes and the Complexities
of State Formation in the Middle East’, in Tribes and State Formation in the Middle
East, ed. Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1990), 5.
8 Dawn Chatty, ‘The Nature, Role and Impact of Bedouin Tribes in Contemporary
Syria: Alternative Perceptions of Authority, Management and Control’, in Tribes and
States in a Changing Middle East, ed. Uzi Rabi (London: Hurst, 2016), 146.
9 See Mark Allen, Arabs (London: Bloomsbury, 2007) for more on the differentiation
of tribal lines along purity of descent.
10 Khalil AbdulKarim, Quraish: Min al Qabila Ia alDawla al Markaziya (London: Sina
Books, 1993).
11 See, for instance, Gail Buttorf, ‘Coordination Failure and the Politics of Tribes:
Jordan Elections under SNTV’, Electoral Studies, vol. 40 (2015): 45–55; Courtney
Freer and Andrew Leber, ‘Defining the “Tribal Advantage” in Kuwaiti Politics’,
Middle East Law and Governance (forthcoming).
Notes 165
12 Miriam Cooke, Tribal Modern: Branding New Nations in the Arab Gulf (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 2014), 11.
13 Ibid., 10.
14 Ibn Khaldun’s the Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, translated by Franz
Rosenthal, ed. N.J. Dawood (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969),
98–9.
15 Steve C. Caton, ‘Anthropological Theories of Tribe and State Formation in the
Middle East: Ideology and Semiotics of Power’, in Tribe and State Formation in
the Middle East, ed. Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1990), 87.
16 Charles Lindholm, ‘Kinship Structure and Political Authority: The Middle East
and Central Asia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 28, no. 2
(1986): 346.
17 William Thesiger, Crossing the Sands (Dubai: Motivate Publishing, 1999), 139.
18 Allen, 27.
19 Caton, 88.
20 Richard Tapper, 65.
21 Ibid., 68.
22 Khoury and Kostiner, 7.
23 Bassam Tibi, ‘The Simultaneity of the Unsimultaneous: Old Tribes and Imposed
Nation-States in the Modern Middle East’, in Tribes and State Formation in the
Middle East, 128.
24 Joseph Kostiner, ‘The Nation in Tribal Societies: Reflections on K.H. al-Naqib’s
Studies on the Gulf ’, in Tribes and States in a Changing Middle East, ed. Uzi Rabi
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 223.
25 Ibid., 224.
26 Steffen Hertog, Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats: Oil and the State in Saudi Arabia
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 4.
27 Kostiner, 229.
28 Philip Carl Salzman, ‘Tribes and Modern States’, in Tribes and States in a Changing
Middle East, 217.
29 Michael Ross, ‘Does Oil Hinder Democracy?’ World Politics, vol. 53, no. 3 (2001):
347.
30 Ibid., 334.
31 Ibid., 347.
32 Hootan Shambayati, ‘The Rentier State, Interest Groups, and the Paradox of
Autonomy: State and Business in Turkey and Iran’, Comparative Politics, vol. 26,
no. 3 (1994): 308.
33 Ibid., 310.
166 Notes
34 Courtney Freer, Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf
Monarchies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
35 Cooke, 60–1.
36 Ibid., 63.
37 Khaldoun al-Naqeeb, ‘Political Tribalism and Legitimacy in the Arab Peninsula’,
Paper presented to the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, January 1992, 2.
38 Ibid., 3.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid., 4–5.
41 Ibid., 3.
42 Ibid., 6–7.
43 Ibid., 5.
44 Sulayman Khalaf and Hassan Hammoud, ‘The Emergence of the Oil Welfare State:
The Case of Kuwait’, Dialectical Anthropology, vol. 12, no. 3 (1987): 349.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid., 351.
47 Ibid., 353.
48 Patricia Crone, ‘Tribes and States in the Middle East’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society, vol. 3, no. 3 (1993): 357.
49 Ibid.
50 Khalaf and Hammoud, 346.
51 Ibid.
52 Ali Alshawi and Andrew Gardner, ‘Tribalism, Identity and Citizenship in
Contemporary Qatar’, Anthropology of the Middle East, vol. 8, no. 2 (2013): 56.
53 Ibid., 56–7.
54 Cooke, 237.
55 Ali Alshawi and Gardner, 48–9.
56 Nadwa al-Dawsari, ‘Tribal Governance and Stability in Yemen’, Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, April 2012, 4, http://carnegieendowment.org/
files/yemen_tribal_governance.pdf.
57 F. Gregory Gause III, Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab
Gulf States (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994), 11.
58 Ibid., 25.
59 Christopher M. Davidson, The United Arab Emirates: A Study in Survival (Boulder,
CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005), 198.
60 Ibid., 198–9.
61 A. Ann Fyfe, ‘Wealth and Power: Political and Economic Change in the United
Arab Emirates’ (PhD diss., Durham University, 1989), 14.
62 Ibid.
63 Shadi Hamid, ‘There Aren’t Protests in Qatar – So Why Did the Emir Just
Announce Elections?’, The Atlantic, 1 November 2011, https://www.theatlantic.
Notes 167
com/international/archive/2011/11/there-arent-protests-in-qatar-so-why-did-the-
emir-just-announce-elections/247661/.
64 Abdulhadi Khalaf, ‘Rules of Succession and Political Participation in the GCC
States’, in Constitutional Reform and Political Participation in the Gulf, ed. Gulf
Research Center (Dubai: Gulf Research Center, 2006), 42.
65 Davidson, 199.
66 Eran Segal, ‘Political Participation in Kuwait: Dīwāniyya, Majlis and Parliament’,
Journal of Arabian Studies, vol. 2, no. 2 (2012): 138–9.
67 Calvert Jones, Bedouins into Bourgeois: Remaking Citizens for Globalization
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 11–12.
68 Ibid.
69 Courtney Freer, ‘Clients or Challengers?: Tribal Constituents in Kuwait, Qatar,
and the UAE’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2019): 1–20. DOI:
10.1080/13530194.2019.1605881.
70 Ibid., 20.
71 Ammar al Sanjari, Al-Bedu Bi’yoon Gharbiyeh (Beirut: Arab Cultural Center
Publications, 2008).
72 Saud al Mutairi, ‘Relocating Our Popular National Heritage through the Writings of
Western Explorers’, AlRiyadh, 27 June 2010, http://www.alriyadh.com/538518.
73 Mohammed al Bughaili, Al-Qabila wa-l-Sultah, Al-Hirak al-Siyassi al-Qabali fi-l-
Kuwait, Afaq Books, 2012.
74 Abdelrahman al Ibrahim, Kuwait’s Politics before Independence: The Role of the
Balancing Powers (Berlin: Gerlach, 2019).
75 Abdulrahman Alebrahim, ‘Problematising the Eurocentric Terminology in
the Social History of the Gulf States’, LSE Middle East Centre Blog, 12 October
2020, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2020/10/12/problematising-the-eurocentric-
terminology-in-the-social-history-of-the-gulf-states/.
76 Michael Herb, ‘A Nation of Bureaucrats: Political Participation and Economic
Diversification in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates’, International Journal of
Middle East Studies, vol. 41, no. 3 (2009): 376.
77 Ibid., 383.
78 Ibid., 382.
79 Michael Herb, The Wages of Oil: Parliaments and Economic Development in Kuwait
and the UAE (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 2.
80 Freer, Rentier Islamism, 6–7.
81 A dīwāniyya (plural dīwāniyyāt) is an informal meeting, which has long been a part
of Kuwaiti political life. Such gatherings, hosted by members of the ruling family,
politicians, and private individuals, are most often convened in homes and cover
topics ranging from social life to religious ideology to politics. With the Covid-19
crisis, many such gatherings have moved online, though tribal groups especially
have continued to hold them in a physical space, defying governmental health
measures that expressly forbid large gatherings.
168 Notes
82 The majlis (plural majālis), similar to Kuwait’s dīwāniyya, is a crucial element of

civil society. Such meetings are hosted by rulers, as well as by private citizens.
Chapter 2
1 Mehran Kamrava, Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (Ithaca, NY : Cornell University
Press, 2013), 110.
2 Ibid., 111.
3 Allen J. Fromherz, Qatar: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 18;
Andrea B. Rugh, ‘Backgammon or Chess? The State of Tribalism and Tribal
Leadership in the United Arab Emirates’, in Tribes and State in a Changing
Middle East, 71.
4 Jill Crystal, Kuwait: The Transformation of an Oil State (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1992).
5 Mohammed Suleiman Al-Haddad, ‘The Effect of Detribalization and Sedentarization
on the Socio-Economic Structure of Tribes of the Arabian Peninsula: Ajman Tribe as
a Case Study’ (PhD Diss., University of Kansas, 1981), 112–13.
6 Jacqueline S. Ismael, Kuwait: Dependency and Class in a Rentier State (Gainesville,
FL: University Press of Florida, 1993), 27.
7 Ibid., 23.
8 Ibid., 27.
9 Sultan al-Qassemi, ‘Tribalism in the Arabian Peninsula: It Is a Family Affair’,
Jadaliyya, 1 February 2012, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4198/tribalism-
in-the-arabian-peninsula_it-is-a-family-.
10 Crystal, Kuwait, 75.
11 Ismael, 27.
12 Mary Ann Tetreault, Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary
Kuwait (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 34.
13 Helen Mary Rizzo, Islam, Democracy, and the Status of Women: The Case of Kuwait
(New York: Routledge, 2005), 11.
14 Crystal, Kuwait.
15 Al-Shamlan, Qtd. in Ismael, 35.
16 Hussein Sheikh Khaz’al, tarikh al-kuwait al-siyasi, Vol. 1, (Kuwait: Dar al Hilal,
1962), 18.
17 Ismael, 49–50.
18 Crystal, Kuwait, 12–13.
19 Ibid., 13.
20 Ibid., 14.
21 Ibid.
Notes 169
22 Anthony B. Toth, ‘Tribes and Tribulations: Bedouin Losses in the Saudi and Iraqi
Struggles over Kuwait’s Frontiers, 1921–1943’, British Journal of Middle Eastern
Studies, vol. 32, no. 2 (2005): 145–67.
23 Claire Beaugrand, ‘Borders and Spatial Imaginaries in the Kuwaiti Identity’,
Geopolitics, vol. 23, no. 3 (2018): 551.
24 Ibid., 149.
25 Ibid., 153.
26 Beaugrand, 552.
27 William Facey, Riyadh the Old City from Its Origins until the 1950s (London: Muze
Media, 1992), quoted in Saud al Mutairi, ‘The Relationship between the Desert
and City Dwellers of Najd before the Unification of the Kingdom’, AlRiyadh, 17
December 2019, http://www.alriyadh.com/1793769.
28 Crystal, Kuwait, 18–19.
29 ‘Brief History of Kuwait Oil Company’, Kuwait Oil Company, 2012, https://www.
kockw.com/sites/EN/pages/profile/history/koc-history.aspx.
31 Farah al-Nakib, ‘Kuwait’s Modern Spectacle: Oil Wealth and the Making of a New
Capital City, 1950–90’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle
East, vol. 33, no. 1 (2013): 8.
32 Ibid., 7.
33 Anh Nga Longva, ‘Nationalism in Pre-Modern Guide: The Discourse on Hadhar and
Bedu in Kuwait’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 38, no. 2 (2006): 172.
34 Ibid.
35 Christopher Davidson, Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009), 19.
37 Farah al-Nakib, ‘Revisiting Hadar and Badu in Kuwait: Citizenship, Housing, and
the Construction of a Dichotomy’, International Journal of Middle East Studies,
vol. 46 (2014): 11.
38 Ibid., 11.
39 Ibid., 12.
40 Beaugrand, 556.
41 See Professor Abdulhadi al Ajmi’s responses in Al Qabas TV’s Amma B’ad Show on
‘Kursi al Qabila’ https://alqabas.com/watch/5801258-.
42 Hamad H. Albloshi, ‘Stateless in Kuwait’, The Arab Gulf States Institute in
Washington, 8 November 2019, https://agsiw.org/stateless-in-kuwait/.
43 For more detailed discussion of this legislation and of the origins of the bidūn issue,
see Albloshi.
44 Al-Nakib, ‘Revisiting Hadar and Badu in Kuwait’, 12.
45 Ibid., 12.
46 Ibid.
170 Notes
47 Ibid., 20.
48 Ibid.
49 Longva, ‘Nationalism in Pre-Modern Guide’, 176.
50 Ibid., 182.
51 Al-Nakib, ‘Revisiting Hadar and Badu in Kuwait’.
52 Nathan J. Brown, qtd. in Jamie Etheridge, ‘Kuwaiti Tribes Turn Parliament to
Own Advantage’, Financial Times, 2 February 2009, http://www.ft.com/cms/
s/0/65994920-f144-11dd-8790-0000779fd2ac.html#axzz3qcIBNCWf.
53 Ibid.
55 Alanoud Alsharekh, ‘Youth, Protest and the New Elite: Domestic Security and
Dignity in Kuwait’, in The Changing Security Dynamics of the Persian Gulf, ed.
Kristian Ulrichsen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
56 Jill Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 26.
57 Ibid., 26–7.
58 Historical Overview of Qatar, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Website https://mofa.gov.
qa/en/qatar/history-of-qatar/historical-overview.
59 Ibid., 27.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid., 27–8.
64 Ibid., 33.
65 Fromherz, 17.
66 Ibid., 18.
67 Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf, 5.
68 Ibid., 5.
69 Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Creation of Qatar (London: Croom Helm, 1979), 16.
70 Ibid., 17.
72 Ibid., 28.
73 Ibid., 33.
74 Fromherz, 54.
75 Ibid.
76 Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf, 30–1.
77 J. E. Peterson, ‘Tribe and State in the Contemporary Arabian Peninsula’, LSE Middle
East Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science, 12 July 2018,
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2018/07/12/tribe-and-state-in-the-contemporary-
arabian-peninsula/.
Notes 171
79 History Repeating … How Abu Dhabi and Bahrain placed Qatar under siege 150
years ago https://www.aljazeera.net/midan/intellect/history/2018/9/18/
‫أبوظبي‬-‫حاصرت‬-‫هكذا‬-‫يتكرر‬-‫التاريخ‬
80 Ibid., 39.
82 Ibid., 140.
83 Ibid., 28.
84 Ibid., 17–18.
85 Fromherz, 58.
86 Ibid., 60.
88 Fromherz, 61.
89 Zahlan, The Creation of Qatar, 48.
91 Fromherz, 61.
93 Ibid., 40.
94 Fromherz, 52.
95 Ibid., 52.
96 Ibid., 62.
97 Ibid., 66.
98 Ibid., 70.
101 Crystal, 5.
103 Ibid., 23–4.
104 ‘QP History’, Qatar Petroleum, 2020, https://qp.com.qa/en/AboutQP/Pages/
QPHistory.aspx.
105 Kamrava, Qatar, 110.
106 Ghassan Alkhoja and Wael Zakout, ‘Land Sector Reform Is Key to Successful
Diversification of Kuwait’s Economy’, Arab Voices, World Bank Blogs, 26 August
2019, https://blogs.worldbank.org/arabvoices/land-sector-reform-key-successful-
diversification-kuwait-economy.
107 Cynthia O-Murchu and Simeon Kerr, ‘Bahrain Land Deals Highlight Alchemy
of Making Money from Sand’, Financial Times, 10 December 2014, https://www.
ft.com/content/b6d081a2-74b8-11e4-8321-00144feabdc0.
110 Ibid., 47.
111 Ibid.
112 Ibid.
172 Notes
113 Ibid.
114 Fromherz, 138.
115 Ibid., 145.
116 Ibid.
117 Ibid., 62–3.
118 David Commins, The Gulf States: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012),
188.
119 Ibid., 188–9.
120 Fromherz, 157.
121 Article 17, Law No. 38 of 2005 on the acquisition of Qatar nationality 38.2005,
2005, https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/542975124.pdf.
122 Rizzo, 47.
123 Amnesty International Country Report, Kuwait 2019 https://www.amnesty.org/en/
countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/kuwait/report-kuwait/.
125 Ibid., 40–1.
126 Ibid., 41.
127 Ibid.
128 Ibid.
129 Ibid.
130 Ibid., 41–2.
131 Ibid.
132 Ibid.
133 Ibid., 47.
134 Ibid., 43.
135 Fromherz, 37.
136 Ibid.
138 Ibid., 44.
139 Ibid., 45.
140 Ibid.
141 Ibid.
142 Ibid.
143 Ibid., 48.
144 Ali A. Hadi Alshawi, Political Influence in the State of Qatar: Impact of Tribal
Loyalty in Political Participation (PhD diss., Mississippi State University, 2002), 94.
145 Ibid.
146 Birol Baskan and Steven Wright, ‘Seeds of Change: Comparing State-Religion Relations
in Qatar and Saudi Arabia’, Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2 (2011): 96–111.
148 Ibid.
Notes 173
149 Ibid.
150 Ibid., 43.
152 Ibid., 136.
154 Fromherz.
155 Umm al Quwain, The Official Portal of the UAE Government, https://u.ae/en/about-
the-uae/the-seven-emirates/umm-al-quwain.
156 Hendrik Van Der Meulen, The Role of Tribal and Kinship Ties in the Politics of
the United Arab Emirates (PhD Thesis, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,
1997).
157 Davidson, 11.
158 Rugh, ‘Backgammon or Chess?’, 63.
159 Ibid.
160 Ibid.
161 Official website of Shaykh Mohammed bin Rashed al Maktoum https://
sheikhmohammed.ae/en-us/RulingFamilyDubai.
162 Website of the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Washington DC https://
www.uae-embassy.org/about-uae/history/sheikh-zayed-bin-sultan-al-nahyan-
founder-uae.
163 Davidson, 16.
164 Ibid., 19.
165 Ibid.
166 Ibid., 21.
167 Gause, 22–3.
168 Jill Crystal, ‘Civil Society in the Arabian Gulf ’, in Civil Society in the Middle East 2,
ed. Augustus R. Norton (New York: E.J. Brill, 1996), 262.
169 Frauke Heard-Bey, From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates: A Society in
Transition (London: Longman, 1982), 162.
170 Rugh, ‘Backgammon or Chess?’ 71.
171 Ibid. 64.
172 Ibid.
173 Ibid.
174 Ibid., 65.
175 Ibid.
176 Crystal, ‘Civil Society in the Arabian Gulf ’, 266.
177 Malcom Peck, ‘Formation and Evolution of the Federation and Its Institutions’, in
Perspectives on the United Arab Emirates, ed. Edmund A. Ghareeb and Ibrahim al-
Abed (London: Trident Press, 1999), 123.
178 Ibid.
179 Davidson, 31.
174 Notes
180 Ibid.
181 William A. Rugh, ‘The United Arab Emirates: What Are the Sources of Its
Stability?’ Middle East Policy 5, no. 3 (1997): 18.
182 Davidson, 19.
183 Frauke Heard-Bey, ‘The United Arab Emirates: A Quarter Century of Federation’,
in Middle East Dilemma: The Politics and Economics of Arab Integration, ed.
Michael C. Hudson (London: I.B. Tauris), 148.
184 Rugh, ‘The United Arab Emirates’, 21.
185 Website of the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Washington DC https://
www.uae-embassy.org/about-uae/history/sheikh-zayed-bin-sultan-al-nahyan-
founder-uae.
186 Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Origins of the United Arab Emirates (London:
Macmillan, 1987), 191–2.
187 Website of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed al Maktoum, https://sheikhmohammed.
ae/en-us/baniyastribe.
189 Zahlan, The Origins of the United Arab Emirates, 192.
190 Davidson, 11.
191 Ibid., 12.
192 Ibid.
193 Heard-Bey, qtd. In Kaja Kuhl, ‘Urban Citizenship and the Right to the City in
Cities in the United Arab Emirates’, SSIM Paper Series, vol. 11 (2012): 10.
195 Ibid.
196 Zahlan, The Origins of the United Arab Emirates, 14–15.
197 Ibid.
198 Sultan Mohammed al Qassimi, The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf (Routledge, 1988).
200 Ibid.
201 Ibid.
202 Ibid., 64.
203 Peck, 123.
204 Ibid., 124.
205 Davidson, 29–30.
206 Ibid., 30.
207 Ibid.
208 Zahlan, The Origins of the United Arab Emirates, 31.
209 Davidson, 44–5.
210 Peck, 128.
212 Ibid.
Notes 175
213 Ibid.
214 ‘Our History’, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, 2019, https://adnoc.ae/en/about-
us/our-history.
215 Davidson, 37.
216 Ibid.
217 Ibid., 39.
218 Frauke Heard-Bey, ‘The United Arab Emirates: A Quarter Century of Federation’,
in The Arab Dilemma, ed. Michael Hudson (New York: Columbia University Press,
1999), 147.
219 Manal A. Jamal, ‘The “Tiering” of Citizenship and Residency and the
“Hierarchization” of Migrant Communities: The United Arab Emirates in
Historical Context’, International Migration Review, vol. 39, no. 3 (2015): 602.
220 Heard-Bey, ‘The United Arab Emirates: A Quarter Century of Federation’, 147.
221 Ibid., 148.
223 Ibid., 71.
224 Ibid. 64.
225 Ibid., 71.
226 Ibid., 75.
227 Ibid., 76.
228 Ibid.
229 Heard-Bey, ‘The United Arab Emirates: A Quarter Century of Federation’, 135.
230 ‘Conference to Debate UAE National Identity’, Emirates 24/7, 7 April 2008, https://
www.emirates247.com/eb247/companies-markets/conference-to-debate-uae-
national-identity-2008-04-07-1.216582.
231 Frauke Heard-Bey, ‘The United Arab Emirates: Statehood and Nation-Building in a
Traditional Society’, The Middle East Journal, vol., 59, no. 3 (2005): 367.
232 Jones, Bedouins into Bourgeois, 38.
233 Thesiger, 139.
234 Helen Chapin Metz, ‘Tribal Nature of Gulf Society’, in Persian Gulf States; Qatar,
ed. Helen Chapin Metz (Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, Library of
Congress, 1993).
235 James Onley, Britain and the Gulf Shaikhdoms, 1820–1971: The Politics of
Protection, Center for International and Regional Studies Georgetown University
School of Foreign Service in Qatar, Occasional Paper No. 4, 2009, 2.
Chapter 3
1 Khalaf and Hammoud, ‘The Emergence of the Oil Welfare State’, 343.
176 Notes
2 William and Fidelity Lancaster, ‘Tribal Formations in the Arabian Peninsula’,

Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy, vol. 3, no. 3 (1992): 145–72.
3 Jonathan Fryer, Fueling Kuwait’s Development; The Story of Kuwait Oil Company
(London: Stacey International, 2007), 17.
5 Thesiger, 128.
6 Ibid., 134.
7 ‘Tribal Society, Qatar’, Fanack Chronicles, 12 December 2016, https://fanack.com/
qatar/society-media-culture/society/tribal-society/.
8 David Commins, The Gulf States: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 150.
9 Fryer, 19.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 20.
12 ‘Tribal Families in Qatar’, Religious Literary Project, Harvard Divinity School,
https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/tribal-families-qatar.
13 Fryer, 20.
14 Ibid.
15 Laurent A. Lambert, ‘Water, State Power and Tribal Politics in the GCC’, Occasional
Papers vol. 14, Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown
University School of Foreign Service Qatar, 2014, 4.
16 Abdallah al Ghoneim, Transcripts from the Pearling Era (Kuwait City: Center for
Research and Studies on Kuwait, 2017), 125.
17 Thesiger, 122.
18 ‘Tribal Society, Qatar’.
19 Fryer, 54.
20 Thesiger, 152.
21 Helen Chapin Metz, ‘Tribal Nature of Gulf Society’, Persian Gulf States; Qatar,
Country Study Series, ed. Helen Chapin Metz (Washington, DC: Federal Research
Division, Library of Congress, 1993).
22 Fryer, 21.
23 Lambert, 4.
24 Ibid.
25 Fryer, 24.
26 Ibid.
27 ‘Tribal Families in Qatar’.
28 Matthew S. Hopper, Slaves of One Master: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the
Age of Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), 82.
29 Ibid., 11.
30 ‘The Multiple Roots of Emiratiness: The Cosmopolitan History of Emirati Society’,
Open Democracy, 15 February 2018, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-
trafficking-and-slavery/the-multiple-roots-of-emiratiness/.
Notes 177
31 ‘Bin Jelmood House’, Msheireb Museums, 2021, https://www.msheirebmuseums.

com/en/about/bin-jelmood-house/.
32 Thesiger, 139.
34 Fryer, 25.
36 Fryer, 28.
38 Fryer, 27.
39 Ibid., 37.
40 Thesiger, 31.
41 Ibid., 30.
42 Ibid., 149.
43 Ibid., 130.
44 Fryer, 20.
45 Author’s Interview, Kuwait, 26 September 2017.
46 Author’s interview with Dr Abdallah al Ghunaim, 20 December 2018.
47 Al Rashoud, Claudia Farkas, Dame Violet Dickson: ‘Umm Saud’s’ Fascinating Life in
Kuwait from 1929–1990 (Kuwait: al-Alfain Printing Press, 1997).
50 Al-Nakib, ‘Revisiting Hadar and Badu in Kuwait’.
51 Ernest Gellner, ‘Cohesion and Identity: The Maghreb from Ibn Khaldoun to
Emile Durkheim’, in Muslim Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981), 89.
52 Bassam Tibi, ‘The Simultaneity of the Unsimultaneous: Old Tribes and the Imposed
Nation-State in the Modern Middle East’, in Tribes and State Formation in the
Middle East, ed. Phillip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1990), 127.v
53 Freer, Rentier Islamism.
55 Anna Zacharias, ‘Tribes in Show of Unity with the Government’, The National,
2 May 2011, https://www.thenational.ae/uae/tribes-in-show-of-unity-with-
government-1.440622.
56 ‘Qatar Revokes Citizenship of Tribal Leader, Poet’, Saudi Gazzete, 1 October 2017,
https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/518415.
57 ‘55 Members of Al Murrah Tribe Stripped of Citizenship’, Economist Intelligence
Unit, 25 September 2017, http://country.eiu.com/article.aspx?articleid=1165924500
&Country=Qatar&topic=Politics&subtopic=Fo_5.
178 Notes
59 Kostiner, 224.
61 Abdallah al Ghoneim, 104.
62 Al-Qassemi, ‘Tribalism in the Arabian Peninsula’.
63 Thesiger, 31.
64 Ibid.
65 Khalil Haidar, ‘Dr Omar al Dosari and the Social Situation in Kuwait
(9/10)’ AlJarida, 25 February 2017, https://www.aljarida.com/ext/articles/
print/1495646970367188600/.
67 Alshawi and Gardner, 53.
68 Sara Assami, ‘Tribes and Neighborhoods’, Building Doha, 7 February
2017, http://sites.northwestern.edu/buildingdoha/2017/02/07/tribes-and-
neighborhoods/.
69 Sheikha bin Jasim (@SheikhaBinJasim) Twitter, 12 September 2019, https://twitter.
com/ShaikhaBinjasim/status/1172013315104608256?s=08.
70 Mohammed Bazzi, ‘The Tribal System Is Iraq’s Key Asset in the Fight against ISIL’,
The National, 15 October 2014, https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/the-tribal-
system-is-iraq-s-key-asset-in-the-fight-against-isil-1.605889.
Chapter 4
1 Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in The Invention of Tradition,

ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983), 1.
2 Dawn Chatty, ‘Rituals of Royalty and the Elaboration of Ceremony in Oman: View
from the Edge’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 41, no. 1 (2001):
39–40.
3 Neil Partrick, ‘Nationalism in the Gulf States’, LSE Kuwait Programme, October
2009, 16, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/55257/1/Patrick_2009.pdf.
4 Cooke, 85.
5 Natalie Koch, ‘Gulf Nationalism and the Geopolitics of Constructing Falconry
as a “Heritage Sport”’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, vol. 15, no. 3 (2015):
523.
6 Ibid., 528.
7 Ibid., 537.
8 Sulayman Khalaf, ‘Poetics and Politics of Newly Invented Traditions in the Gulf:
Camel Racing in the United Arab Emirates’, Ethnology, vol. 39, no. 3 (2000): 244.
9 Ibid., 249.
Notes 179
10 Thesiger, 30.
11 Ibid., 31
12 Facey, Riyadh the Old City from Its Origins until the 1950s, quoted in Saud al
Mutairi, ‘The Relationship between the Desert and City Dwellers of Najd before the
Unification of the Kingdom’, AlRiyadh, 17 December 2019, http://www.alriyadh.
com/1793769.
13 Author’s interview conducted in Kuwait, 6 October 2014.
14 Sulayman Khalaf, ‘National Dress and the Construction of Emirati Cultural
Identity’, Journal of Human Sciences, no. 11 (2005): 235.
15 ‘The Shamagh in Summer Is a Foreign Phenomena That Is Intrusive on Kuwaiti
Society, Only Bedouins Wear It’, Sabr Newspaper, 11 May 2011, http://www.sabr.
cc/2011/05/11/3887/.
16 Rana Khalid Almutawa, ‘National Dress in the UAE: Constructions of Authenticity’,
New Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 6 (2016): 3.
17 Idil Akinci, ‘Dressing the Nation? Symbolizing Emirati National Identity and
Boundaries through National Dress’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 43, no. 10
(2019): 14.
18 Anh Nga Longva, ‘Kuwaiti Women at a Crossroads: Privileged Development and
the Constraints of Ethnic Stratification’, in Arab Society: Class, Gender, Power and
Development, eds. Nicholas S. Hopkins and Saad Eddin Ibrahim (Cairo: University
of Cairo Press, 1997), 413.
19 Hazem Beblawi, ‘The Rentier State in the Arab World’, in The Rentier State: Nation,
State and Integration in the Arab World, eds. Hazem Beblawi and Giacomo Luciani
(London: Croom Helm, 1987), 52.
20 Karen Exell and Trinidad Rico, ‘“There Is No Heritage in Qatar”: Orientalism,
Colonialism and Other Problematic Histories’, World Archaeology, vol. 45, no. 4
(2013): 670–1
21 Ibid., 674.
22 Ibid., 676.
23 Ibid.
24 Matthew Gray, ‘Heritage, Public Space, and Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary
Dubai and Qatar’, Journal of Islamic Area Studies, vol. 9 (2017): 9.
25 Ibid.
26 Exell and Rico, 674–5.
27 Gabriella Elgenius, ‘National Museums as National Symbols: A Survey of Strategic
Nation-Building and Identity Politics; Nations as Symbolic Regimes’, in National
Museums and Nation-Building in Europe, 1750–2010, ed. Peter Aronsson and
Gabriella Elgenius (London: Routledge, 2015), 146.
28 Rania Kamla and Clare Roberts, ‘The Global and the Local: Arabian Gulf States
and Imagery in Annual Reports’, Accountancy, Auditing and Accountancy Journal,
vol. 23, no. 4 (2010): 471.
180 Notes
29 ‘Haydoo.Our Camel, Lovely Camel’, 248am, 4 December 2006,https://248am.com/

mark/interesting/haydoo-our-camel-lovely-camel/.
30 Ibid.
31 Kuwait’s National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, 2020, https://www.nccal.
gov.kw/pages/monumentsandmuseums/kuwaitmuseums.
32 Kristy Norman, ‘Intangible Challenges in the Management of Tangible Cultural
Heritage in Kuwait’, Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, vol. 16,
no. 2 (2014): 136–7.
33 Ibid., 136.
34 David Langdon, ‘AD Classics: Kuwait National Assembly Building/Jorn Utzon’, Arch
Daily, 20 November 2014, https://www.archdaily.com/568821/ad-classics-kuwait-
national-assembly-building-jorn-utzon.
35 Ibid.
36 Al-Nakib, ‘Kuwait’s Modern Spectacle’, 9.
37 Ibid., 11.
38 Ibid., 24.
39 Ibid., 25.
40 Ibid., 24.
41 Sulayman Khalaf, ‘The Nationalisation of Culture: Kuwait’s Invention of a Pearl-
Diving Heritage’, in Popular Culture and Political Identity in the Arab Gulf States,
ed. Alanoud Alsharekh and Robert Springborg (London: Saqi in association with
SOAS, 2008), 63.
42 Ibid., 68.
43 Erik Gilbert, ‘The Dhow as Cultural Icon: Heritage and Regional Identity in the
Western Indian Ocean’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 17, no. 1
(2011): 64.
44 Norman, 138, 141.
45 ‘UNESCO Adds Kuwait’s Al-Saudi Weaving to Intangible Heritage List’, Kuwait
News Agency, 16 December 2020, https://www.kuna.net.kw/ArticleDetails.aspx?id
=2946053&language=en.
46 Author’s interview with Sheikha Altaf al Sabah, Kuwait, September 2014.
47 Norman, 141.
48 Radhika Lakshminarayanan, ‘Heritage Tourism in Kuwait: Prospects for Economic
Diversification’, Journal of Arabian Studies, vol. 9, no. 1 (2019): 92–112.
49 Ibid., 99.
50 ‘All Tours’, Madeenah, http://www.madeenahkw.co/all-tours.
51 Mai al-Farhan, ‘Madeenah: Exploring Urban Development in Kuwait City’, The
Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, 20 March 2017, https://agsiw.org/
madeenah-exploring-urban-development-kuwait-city/.
52 Anh Nga Longva, ‘Kuwaiti Women at a Crossroads: Privileged Development and
the Constraints of Ethnic Stratification’, International Journal of Middle East Studies,
vol. 25, no. 2 (1993): 414.
Notes 181
53 Exell and Rico, 681.

54 Suzi Mirgani, ‘Consumer Citizenship: National Identity and Museum Merchandise
in Qatar’, Middle East Journal, vol. 73, no. 4 (2019): 564.
55 Alexandra Bounia, ‘The Desert Rose as a New Symbol for the Nation: Materiality,
Heritage and the Architecture of the New National Museum of Qatar’, Heritage and
Society, vol. 11, no. 3 (2018): 211.
56 Ibid., 225.
57 ‘Mohammed bin Jassim House’, Msheireb Museums, 2020, https://www.
msheirebmuseums.com/en/about/mohammed-bin-jassim-house/.
58 ‘Company House’, Msheireb Museums, 2020, https://www.msheirebmuseums.com/
en/about/company-house/.
59 ‘About Katara’, Katara, 2020, https://katara.net/About-Katara.
60 Ibid.
61 See, for instance, David B. Roberts, Qatar: Securing the Global Ambitions of a City-
State (London: Hurst, 2017).
62 Shannon Mattern, ‘Font of a Nation: Creating a National Graphic Identity for
Qatar’, Public Culture, vol. 20, no. 2 (2008): 484.
63 Heard-Bey, ‘Statehood and Nation-Building’, 367.
64 Ibid., 375.
65 Sarina Wakefield, ‘Museum Development in the Gulf: Narrative and Architecture’,
Architectural Design, vol. 85, no. 1 (2015): 26.
66 Bounia, 214.
67 Ibid., 216.
68 Ibid., 219.
69 Ibid., 217.
70 Sarina Wakefield, ‘Falconry as Heritage in the United Arab Emirates’, World
Archaeology, vol. 44, no. 2 (2012): 283.
71 Ibid.
72 Bikramaditya K. Choudhary and Nian Paul, ‘Transforming Dubai: Oasis to
Tourist’s Paradise’, Contemporary Review of the Middle East, vol. 5, no. 4 (2018):
353.
73 Shaykh Rashid bin Saeed al-Maktoum, Qtd. in ‘Youth Must Pay Heed to Our
Leader’s Advice’, The National, 12 March 2017, https://www.thenationalnews.com/
opinion/youth-must-pay-heed-to-our-leader-s-advice-1.62743.
74 Choudhary and Paul, 352.
75 Ibid., 354.
76 Djamel Boussaa, ‘A Future to the Past: The Case of Fareej Al-Bastakia in Dubai,
UAE’, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, vol. 36 (2006): 125–38.
77 Matthew Maclean, ‘Suburbanization, National Space and Place, and the
Geography of Heritage in the UAE’, Journal of Arabian Studies, vol. 7, no. 2
(2017): 175.
182 Notes
78 Oliver James Picton, ‘Usage of the Concept of Culture and Heritage in the United
Arab Emirates – An Analysis of Sharjah Heritage Area’, Journal of Heritage
Tourism, vol. 5, no. 1 (2010): 80.
79 Khalaf, ‘Poetics and Politics of Newly Invented Traditions in the Gulf ’, 244.
80 Ibid., 246–7.
81 Ibid., 249.
82 Samuel Spencer, ‘Million’s Poet: Abu Dhabi’s Prestigious Poetry’, Culture Trip, 1
November 2016, https://theculturetrip.com/middle-east/united-arab-emirates/
articles/million-s-poet-abu-dhabi-s-prestigious-poetry-program/.
83 Norman, 141.
84 ‘Nabati Poetry’, Website of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid https://
sheikhmohammed.ae/en-us/nabatipoetry.
85 ‘Poetry’, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, 2020, https://
sheikhmohammed.ae/en-us/Poetry?Category=Latest%20Poems.
86 ‘Khalid al-Faisal, sha’er l-i-l-“amra” wa amir al-shu’ara’ katab fi-al-hub
wa-al-hikma wa-l-ghazal wa-al-hamasat al-watania [Khalid al-Faisal, the poet
of princes and prince of poets, wrote about love, wisdom, and patriotism]’, Al-
Khaleej, 4 November 2015, https://www.alkhaleej.ae/-‫والحكمة‬-‫في‬-‫كتب‬-‫الشعراء‬-‫وأمير‬
‫األمراء‬-‫شاعر‬-‫الفيصل‬-‫خالد‬/‫ملحق‬-‫الوطنية‬-‫والحماسة‬-‫والغزل‬-‫الحب‬
87 Khalaf, ‘Poetics and Politics of Newly Invented Traditions in the Gulf ’, 244.
88 The Barjeel; the Air of an Authentic Era, AlKhaleej, 19 May 2019, https://www.
alkhaleej.ae/2020-05-19/ «‫»لبراجيل‬-‫هواء‬-‫الزمن‬-‫األصيل‬/‫ملحق‬-‫الصائم‬/‫مالحق‬-‫الخليجا‬.
89 MacLean, 170.
90 Ibid., 172.
91 Ibid., 173.
92 Ibid., 168.
93 Picton, 77.
94 Sophia al Maria, ‘The Way of the Ostrich or How to Not to Resist Modernity’,
Bidoun, Issue 11 (Summer 2007), http://bidoun.org/articles/the-way-of-the-
ostrich-or-how-not-to-resist-modernity.
95 Ibid.
96 Hossein Askari, Conflicts in the Persian Gulf: Origins and Evolutions (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 47.
98 Assami.
99 For examples from Qatar, see Assami; for examples from Kuwait, see Farah
al-Nakib, Kuwait Transformed: A History of Oil and Urban Life (Palo Alto, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2016).
100 Thesiger, 13.
Notes 183
101 Partrick, 34.

102 ‘Why Arab Women Still Have No Voice’, Interview with Amal al Malki,
Al Jazeera English, 21 April 2012, http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/
talktojazeera/2012/04/201242111373249723.html.
103 ‘Tribal Nature of Gulf Society.’
104 Kuwait Credit Bank, 2020, https://www.kcb.gov.kw/sites/arabic/Pages/SocialLoans.
aspx.
105 Neha Vora and Natalie Koch, ‘Everyday Inclusions: Rethinking Ethnocracy, Kafala,
and Belonging in the Arabian Peninsula’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism,
vol. 15, no. 3 (2015): 548.
106 Ibid., 549.
107 Anh Nga Longva, ‘Neither Autocracy nor Democracy but Ethnocracy: Citizens,
Expatriates and the Socio-Political System in Kuwait’, in Monarchies and Nations:
Globalisation and Identity in the Arab States of the Gulf, ed. Paul Dresch and James
Piscatory (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 119.
108 Ahmed al-Naqeeb, ‘MP Safa al-Hashem Renews Call to Tax Expats Pockets, Tap
Remittances’, Arab Times, 17 September 2019, https://www.arabtimesonline.
com/news/mp-safa-al-hashem-renews-call-to-tax-expats-pockets-tap-
remittances/.
109 ‘Kuwaiti MP Reportedly Receives “Death Threat” for Anti-Expat Remarks’, Gulf
Business, 18 September 2019, https://gulfbusiness.com/kuwaiti-mp-reportedly-
receives-death-threat-anti-expat-remarks/.
110 ‘Ministry Announces Expat Health Fees Increase Today’, Kuwait Times, 1
September 2017, https://news.kuwaittimes.net/website/ministry-announces-expat-
health-fees-increase-today/.
111 ‘Kuwait Parliament Committee Approves Fees on Remittance by Expatriates’, The
Peninsula, 2 April 2018, https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/02/04/2018/Kuwait-
parliament-committee-approves-fees-on-remittance-by-expatriates.
112 ‘Kuwait Introduces New $830 Fee for Companies Employing “Excess” Foreigners’,
Gulf Business, 5 September 2017, https://gulfbusiness.com/kuwait-introduces-new-
830-fee-companies-employing-excess-foreigners/.
113 B Izzak, ‘Work Permit, Transfer Fees Raised up to KD50 – All Kuwaitis, Farms,
Industries Exempt from New Power Tariffs’, Kuwait Times, 19 April 2016, https://
news.kuwaittimes.net/website/work-permit-transfer-fees-raised-kd-50/.
114 Jamie Etheridge, Simeon Kerr, and Andrew England, ‘“They want us to leave” –
Foreign Workers under Pressure in the Gulf ’, Financial Times, 28 July 2020, https://
www.ft.com/content/77c2d7db-0ade-4665-9cb8-c82b72c2da66.
115 ‘Kuwait Vows to Slash Expat Population from 70 to 30 Percent’, Arabian Business, 4
June 2020, https://www.arabianbusiness.com/politics-economics/447747-kuwait-
vows-to-slash-expat-population-from-70-to-30-percent.
184 Notes
116 Saeed Mahmoud Saleh, ‘Reducing Expats from Kuwait Bill Finalized; Maids
Exempted’, Arab Times, 21 September 2020, https://www.arabtimesonline.com/
news/assembly-panel-finalizes-report-on-demographics-bill-domestics-exempt/.
117 Margherita Stancati, ‘Saudi Crown Prince and UAE Heir Forge Pivotal Ties’, The
Wall Street Journal, 6 August 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-crown-
prince-and-u-a-e-heir-forge-pivotal-ties-1502017202.
118 Khalaf, ‘Poetics and Politics of Newly Invented Traditions in the Gulf ’.
119 Khalaf, ‘The Nationalization of Culture: Kuwait’s Invention of Pearl Diving
Heritage’.
120 Salzman, 217.
121 See Kuwait’s National Curriculum Social Studies historical references for examples
from al Jahra Battle and others.
122 ‘The Story of the UAE’, Zayed University website, 2020 www.zu.ac.ae/main/en/
careers/living/story.aspx.
123 UAE participates at Morocco festival to celebrate Bedouin culture, Dubai 92, 12
May 2016, http://dubai92.com/uae-participates-at-morocco-festival-to-celebrate-
bedouin-culture.
124 Pamela Erskine-Loftus et al., Representing the Nation: Heritage, Museums, National
Narratives, and Identity in Arabian Gulf States (London: Routledge, 2016).
125 Ali Mazrui, Cultural Engineering and Nation Building in East Africa (Chicago:
Northwestern University Press, 1972), 278.
Chapter 5
1 Dale F. Eickelman, ‘Tribes and Tribal Identity in the Arab Gulf States’, in The
Emergence of the Gulf States: Studies in Modern History, ed. J. E. Peterson (London:
Bloomsbury, 2016), 226.
2 Freer, Rentier Islamism.
3 Eickelman, 237.
5 Abdul Rahman H. Al Said, ‘The Transition from a Tribal Society to a Nation State’,
in Saudi Arabia: A Modern Reader, ed. Winberg Chai (Indianapolis: University of
Indianapolis Press, 2005), 84.
6 Madawi Al Rasheed, ‘Dubai: Global City and Trans-national Hub’, in Trans-
national Connections and the Arab Gulf, ed. Roland Marshal (London: Routledge,
2005), 93.
7 Assami.
8 Gengler, Tessler, Al-emadi, and Diop, 7.
Notes 185
10 Ibid., 54.
11 Ibid., 56–7.
12 Gengler, Tessler, Al-Emadi, and Diop, 7.
13 ‘Kuwait Vision 2035 New Kuwait’, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the State of Kuwait,
2019, https://www.mofa.gov.kw/en/kuwait-state/kuwait-vision-2035/
14 Ibid.
15 ‘Qatar National Vision 2030’, 2020, https://www.gco.gov.qa/en/about-qatar/
national-vision2030/.
16 Ibid.
17 ‘UAE Vision 2021’, 2020, https://www.vision2021.ae/docs/default-source/default-
document-library/uae_vision-arabic.pdf?sfvrsn=b09a06a6_6.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ruth Michaelson, ‘“It’s Being Built on Our Blood”: The True Cost of Saudi Arabia’s
$500bn Megacity’, The Guardian, 4 May 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/
global-development/2020/may/04/its-being-built-on-our-blood-the-true-cost-of-
saudi-arabia-5bn-mega-city-neom.
24 Mark Allen, Arabs (London: Continuum Press, 2006), 16.
25 Musaed al-Hajery (Musaid_Alhajery), Twitter, 11 September 2020, https://twitter.
com/musaed_alhajery/status/1304352996428480512?s=12.
26 Martha Mundy and Basim Musallam, The Transformation of Nomadic Society in the
Arab East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 85.
27 Shafeeq Ghabra, ‘Kuwait and the Dynamics of Socio-economic Change’, in Crises in
the Contemporary Persian Gulf, ed. Barry Rubin (London: Routledge, 2002), 113.
28 Ibid.,114.
29 Mona Kareem, ‘Kuwait Targets Opposition by Revoking Citizenship’, Al-Monitor,
3 October 2014, https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/10/kuwait-
opposition-citizenship-revoked.html.
30 Patrick Wintour, ‘Gulf Plunged into Diplomatic Crisis as Countries Cut Ties with
Qatar’, The Guardian, 5 June 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/
jun/05/saudi-arabia-and-bahrain-break-diplomatic-ties-with-qatar-over-terrorism.
31 ‘UN Receives Letter from Qatari Tribe Accusing Doha of Discrimination’, The
National, 17 September 2018, https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/un-receives-
letter-from-qatari-tribe-accusing-doha-of-discrimination-1.771240.
32 Ibid.
33 ‘Sheikh Sultan: Qatar Tribe Expulsion World’s Largest Proportionate Displacement’,
Al Arabiya, 18 September 2018, https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/
186 Notes
gulf/2018/09/18/Sheikh-Sultan-Qatar-tribe-deportation-is-world-s-largest-forced-
displacement.html.
34 ‘Qatar Accused of Building World Cup Stadiums on Land Stolen from Persecuted
Tribe’, Arab News, 24 September 2018, http://www.arabnews.com/node/1377201/
middle-east.
35 ‘Qatar Tribe Details Violations at Doha’s Hands’, Gulf News, 20 September 2018,
https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/qatar/qatar-tribe-details-violations-at-dohas-
hands-1.2280761.
36 Ibid.
37 ‘Qatar: Families Arbitrarily Stripped of Citizenship’, Human Rights Watch, 12 May
2019, https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/05/12/qatar-families-arbitrarily-stripped-
citizenship.
39 James M. Dorsey, ‘Saudi-UAE Push to Mobilize Tribes against Qatari Emir’,
Huffington Post, 19 November 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/saudi-
uae-push-to-mobilize-tribes-against-qatari-emir_us_5a1105eae4b0e30a958507c3.
40 Ibid.
41 Liz Sly, ‘Princely Feuds in the Persian Gulf Thwart Trump’s Efforts to Resolve the
Qatar Dispute’, The Washington Post, 13 May 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/world/princely-feuds-in-the-persian-gulf-thwart-trumps-efforts-to-resolve-
the-qatar-dispute/2018/05/13/7853cc88-39cf-11e8-af3c-2123715f78df_story.
html?utm_term=.799fee49fbdf.
42 History Repeating … How Abu Dhabi and Bahrain placed Qatar under
siege 150 years ago https://www.aljazeera.net/midan/intellect/history/2018/9/18/
‫التاريخ‬-‫يتكرر‬-‫هكذا‬-‫حاصرت‬-‫أبوظبي‬
43 Dorsey.
44 Ibid.
45 ‘Qatari Members of One of the Largest GCC Tribe Renews Loyalty to the Emir’, The
Peninsula, 10 June 2017, https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/10/06/2017/Qatari-
members-of-one-of-the-largest-GCC-tribe-renews-loyalty-to-the-Emir.
46 ‘Tribes Pledge Loyalty to Emir’, The Peninsula, 19 December 2017, https://www.
thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/19/12/2017/Tribes-pledge-loyalty-to-Emir.
47 ‘One-Year Blockade against Qatar: Revisiting the Identity in Qatar between Tribal
and National’, Through Nawal’s Eyes, 31 May 2018, https://nawalaqeel.wordpress.
com/2018/05/31/one-year-blockade-against-qatar-revisiting-the-identity-in-qatar-
between-tribal-and-national/.
48 ‘Qatari National Arbitrarily Held Incommunicado’, Amnesty International, 18 June
2018, https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE2385812018ENGLISH.
pdf.
49 ‘Saudi Poet Dies in Algeria Ambush’, BBC News, 29 November 2003, http://news.
bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3249672.stm.
Notes 187

51 @hhshkmohd Instagram account, 27 June 2017, https://www.instagram.com/p/
BV2P3oQDTG7/.
52 Eickelman, 236–7.
53 Hala Khalaf, ‘Two Television Shows, One Goal – To Revive Arabic Poetry’, The
National, 27 January 2015, https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/two-television-
shows-one-goal-to-revive-arabic-poetry-1.117011.
54 Maryam al-Kuwari, ‘The Use of Shela Poetry in the Gulf Crisis and Its Impact on
the Qatari National Character’, Talk presented at Gulf Studies Forum, Arab Center
for Research and Policy Studies, December 2018, https://www.dohainstitute.
org/en/Events/Gulf_Studies_Forum/Fifth-Round/Pages/VideoGalleryPage.
aspx?VideoFolder=theme1-session5&speakerID=37263.
55 ‘The Way Some People Talk’, The National, 13 April 2016, https://www.pressreader.
com/uae/the-national-news/20160413/281539405119416.
56 Anna Zacharias, ‘In the Northern Emirates, Sword Dancing Connects People to
Their Past’, The National, 30 January 2018, https://www.thenational.ae/uae/in-the-
northern-emirates-sword-dancing-connects-people-to-their-past-1.700267.
57 ‘The Ardha: A Show of Nobility’, Qatar Tribune, 7 May 2017, http://www.qatar-
tribune.com/news-details/id/63144.
58 ‘How Qatar Has Moved Camel Racing into the 21st Century’, The Telegraph, 3
October 2018, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/24-hours-in-qatar/camel-racing/.
59 ‘The Treasured Sport of Falconry in the United Arab Emirates’, CNN, 2 February
2017, https://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/01/middleeast/gallery/falconry-uae/index.
html.
60 Shambayati, 310.
62 Author’s interview with Shafeeq Ghabra, Kuwait City, 27 September 2014.
63 Lambert, 7.
64 Author’s interview with Dr Ali al Zoghbi, Kuwait City, 10 September 2014.
65 ‘Poetic Beats’, Al Riyadh Newspaper, 9 July 2011, http://www.alriyadh.com/648941.
66 ‘Kuwait’s Largest Tribe Defies Election Boycott’, Gulf News, 24 June 2013,
https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/kuwait/kuwaits-largest-tribe-defies-election-
boycott-1.1201204.
67 ‘Awazem Swiftly Raise 10 Million in Blood Money’, Kuwait Times, 30 April 2019,
https://news.kuwaittimes.net/website/awazem-swiftly-raise-kd-10m-in-blood-money/.
68 Ibid.
69 See Almajliss Twitter account, 26 April 2019, https://twitter.com/almajlliss/status/
1121885697860829189?lang=en.
70 ‘450, 000 KD Pledged to the Awazem Fundraising Drive’, AlRai Newspaper, 18 April
2019, https://www.alraimedia.com/Home/Details?id=11ebc45c-860a-4ff2-aeae-
17200bc1198d.
188 Notes
71 Author’s interview with Mohammed al Murr, Kuwait City, December 2018.

72 Ibid.
73 Ibid.
74 Kate Conolly, ‘Qatar’s Dynamic Young Artists Showcased in Major Berlin
Exhibition’, The Guardian, 10 December 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/
artanddesign/2017/dec/10/qatars-dynamic-young-arists-showcased-in-major-
berlin-exhibition.
75 ‘Kuwait: Government Critics Stripped of Citizenship’, Human Rights Watch, 19
October 2014, https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/19/kuwait-government-critics-
stripped-citizenship.
76 ‘Kuwait Reinstates Revoked Citizenships’, Gulf News, 23 October 2018,
https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/kuwait/kuwait-reinstates-revoked-
citizenships-1.2292862.
77 Maryam al-Kuwari, ‘Tribe and Tribalism: The Trojan Horse of GCC States?’ in
Divided Gulf: The Anatomy of a Crisis, ed. Andreas Krieg (London: Palgrave, 2019),
38.
78 Ibid., 38.
79 Ibid., 50–1.
80 From the @mutairikoc Twitter account (2019), now closed.
Chapter 6
1 Ross, 334.
2 Mohamad Al Ississ and Samer Atallah, ‘Patronage and Electoral Behavior: Evidence
from Egypt First Presidential Elections’, European Journal of Political Economy,
vol. 37 (2015): 17.
3 Ibid.
4 Herb, The Wages of Oil, 21.
5 A. Saleh, ‘Kuwaitis Make Up 74 Percent of Public Sector Employees’, Kuwait Times,
19 February 2017, http://news.kuwaittimes.net/website/kuwaitis-make-74-percent-
public-sector-employees/.
6 Jueun Choi, ‘Qatarisation: Qataris to Fill 60 Percent of Workforce in State-
Owned Private Sector Companies’, Doha News, 8 July 2020, https://medium.com/
dohanews/qatarisation-qataris-to-fill-60-percent-of-workforce-in-state-owned-
private-sector-companies-ea8e149bed81.
7 ‘Salary Hopes of Emiratis Now “More Aligned to Expats” – Hays’, Arabian Business,
14 September 2019, https://www.arabianbusiness.com/politics-economics/427060-
salary-expectations-of-emiratis-now-more-aligned-to-expats.
Notes 189
8 Carolina De Miguel, Amaney Jamal, and Mark Tessler, ‘Elections in the Arab
World: Why Do Citizens Turn Out?’ Comparative Political Studies, vol. 48, no. 11
(2015): 25.
9 Ibid., 25.
10 Ellen Lust, ‘Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East’, Journal of Democracy,
vol. 20, no. 3 (2009): 122.
11 Author’s interview with a Kuwaiti political scientist, Kuwait City, November 2017.
14 Ibid., 14–15.
15 Ibid., 21.
16 Ibid.
17 Longva, ‘Nationalism in Pre-Modern Guide’, 173.
18 Kamal Eldin Osman Salih, ‘Kuwait Primary (Tribal) Elections 1975–2008: An
Evaluative Study’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 38, no. 2 (2011):
148.
19 Ibid.
20 Nathan J. Brown, Qtd. in ‘Kuwaiti Tribes Turn Parliament to Own Advantage’,
Financial Times, 3 February 2009, https://www.ft.com/content/77289444-f193-
11dd-8790-0000779fd2ac.
22 Kristin Smith Diwan, ‘The Politics of Transgression in Kuwait’, Foreign Policy,
19 April 2013, https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/04/19/the-politics-of-transgression-
in-kuwait/.
23 Al-Nakib, ‘Revisiting Hadar and Badu in Kuwait’, 24–5.
24 Salih, 142.
25 Ibid.
26 Ghanim Alnajjar, ‘The Challenges Facing Kuwaiti Democracy’, Middle East Journal,
vol. 54, no. 2 (2000): 245–6.
27 Salih, 146.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., 147.
30 Author’s interview, Kuwait City, 15 September 2019.
31 Salih, 147.
32 Ibid.
33 Hamad Albloshi and Faisal Alfahad, ‘The Orange Movement of Kuwait: Civic
Pressure Transforms a Political System’, in Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle,
Democratization, and Governance in the Middle East, ed. Maria Stephan (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 229.
34 Salih, 153.
190 Notes
35 Kristin Smith Diwan, ‘The Politics of Transgression in Kuwait’, Foreign Policy, 19 April
2013, https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/04/19/the-politics-of-transgression-in-kuwait/.
36 Ibid.
37 Mary Ann Tétreault, “Political Activism in Kuwait: Reform in Fits and Starts,”
Taking to the Streets: The Transformation of Arab Activism (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2014), 281.
38 Ibid., 282.
39 Kristin Smith Diwan, ‘Kuwait’s Snap Parliamentary Elections Bring Return of the
Opposition’, Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, 29 November 2016, http://
www.agsiw.org/kuwaits-snap-parliamentary-elections-bring-return-opposition/.
40 Ibid.
41 B. Izzak, ‘Tsunami of Change Dumps Old Guard by the Wayside’, Kuwait Times, 27
November 2016, http://news.kuwaittimes.net/website/tsunami-change-dumps-old-
guard-wayside/.
42 Ibid.
43 Daniel L. Tavana and Abdullah alKhonaini, ‘Kuwait Voted This Weekend: Who
Won?’ The Washington Post, 8 December 2020.
44 Freer and Leber.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 Yasmena al-Mulla, ‘Unauthorised, Informal Primary Elections Held in Kuwait’,
Gulf News, 7 September 2020, https://gulfnews.com/amp/world/gulf/kuwait/
unauthorised-informal-primary-elections-held-in-kuwait-1.73684411?__twitter_
impression=true; ‘45 alf nakhib yadalun bi-aswathihim fi-fariat al-dayirat al-
khamsa!’ (45,000 voters cast their votes in branches of the fifth district!), Al-Jarida,
4 September 2020, https://www.aljarida.com/articles/1599152536842986400/.
49 ‘Qatar Takes Step toward First Shura Council Election: QNA Agency’, Reuters, 31
October 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-qatar-politics/qatar-takes-step-
toward-first-shura-council-election-qna-agency-idUSKBN1XA1CH.
50 ‘Qatar to Hold Shura Council Elections Next Year: Emir’, Al Jazeera, 3 November
2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/3/qatar-to-hold-shura-council-
elections-next-year-emir.
51 Louay Bahry, ‘Elections in Qatar: A Window of Democracy Opens in the Gulf ’,
Middle East Policy, vol. 6, no. 4 (1999): 122–3.
52 Mehran Kamrava, ‘Royal Factionalism and Political Liberalization’, Middle East
Journal, vol. 63, no. 3 (2009): 416.
53 Luciano Zaccara, ‘The Role of the Central Municipal Council in the Institutional
Process in Qatar’, paper presented at Gulf Research Meeting, 28 June 2015, 1.
54 Fromherz, 31.
55 Ibid., 148.
Notes 191
56 Ibid., 110.
57 Zaccara, 4.
58 Alshawi, 94.
59 Ibid., 114.
60 ‘Qatar Central Municipal Council: Public Knowledge, Perceptions, and
Engagement’, SESRI Policy Snapshot No. 1, June 2015, 2.
61 Zaccara, 9.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid.
64 Walid Slaiby, ‘Ministry Rejects CMC Plea for Powers to Detect Violations of
Law’, Qatar Tribune, 14 April 2014, http://archive.qatar-tribune.com/viewnews.
aspx?n=494FF23B-6ADE-4793-82C0-64F86CBB502C&d=20140416.
65 Walid Slaiby, ‘CMC Unveils Website to Receive Complaints’, Qatar Tribune, 5
November 2014, http://archive.qatar-tribune.com/viewnews.aspx?n=0927DF62-
02F4-4D00-94C2-30B4666D4BF3&d=20141105.
66 Zaccara, 12.
67 Sidi Mohamed, ‘Entrust CMC with More Powers, Say Voters’, The Peninsula, 17
April 2019, https://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/17/04/2019/Entrust-CMC-
with-more-powers,-say-voters.
68 Freer, ‘Clients or Challengers?’, 13–14, 17–18.
69 Heba Fahmy, ‘CMC Calls on Qatar’s Malls to Revive “Family Day” Policy’, Doha
News, 17 November 2015, https://dohanews.co/cmc-calls-on-qatars-malls-to-
revive-family-day-policy/.
70 Heba Fahmy, ‘CMC Calls for Expansion of Female Taxi Service in Qatar’, Doha
News, 29 December 2015, https://dohanews.co/cmc-calls-expansion-female-taxi-
driver-service-qatar/.
71 Heba Fahmy, ‘CMC: Women in Qatar Uncomfortable with Male Salespeople’, Doha
News, 29 March 2016, https://dohanews.co/cmc-women-in-qatar-uncomfortable-
with-male-salespeople/.
72 Peter Kovessy, ‘Qatar Ministry Bans Men from Al Khor Park Thursdays’, Doha
News, 4 April 2016, https://dohanews.co/qatar-ministry-bans-men-al-khor-park-
thursdays/.
73 Ibid., 111.
74 ‘Head of al-Murrah Tribe Confirms Qatar Revokes Family’s Citizenship’,
AlArabiya English, 14 September 2017, https://english.alarabiya.net/en/
features/2017/09/14/Head-of-al-Marri-tribe-confirms-Qatar-revokes-family-s-
citizenship.html.
75 Justin Gengler and Mark Tessler, ‘Civic Life and Democratic Citizenship in
Qatar: Findings from the First Qatar World Values Survey’, Middle East Law and
Governance, vol. 5, no. 3 (2013): 7.
76 Interview with political scientist, Doha, Qatar, 14 March 2016.
192 Notes
77 Yasin Kakande, ‘Umm al Qaiwain Forms Last of UAE’s Executive Councils’, The
National, 12 July 2011, http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/umm-al-
qaiwain-forms-last-of-uaes-executive-councils.
78 Heard-Bey, ‘Statehood and Nation-Building’, 369.
79 Article 23, United Arab Emirates Constitution.
81 Ali Mohammad Khalifa, The United Arab Emirates: Unity in Fragmentation
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979), 48.
82 Peck, 131.
83 ‘The Federal National Council’.
84 ‘Political Participation., United Arab Emirates Ministry of State for Federal
National Council Affairs’, 2021, https://www.mfnca.gov.ae/en/areas-of-focus/
political-participation/.
85 Heard-Bey, ‘The United Arab Emirates’, 135.
86 Mohammad J. Al Yousef, ‘Sara Falaknaz: Committing to Service in the UAE’s
Federal National Council’, The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, 18
November 2019, https://agsiw.org/sara-falaknaz-uae-federal-national-council/.
87 Davidson, The United Arab Emirates, 194.
88 ‘NEC Adopts Electoral College Comprising 224, 279 Members for Federal National
Council Elections 2015’, WAM Emirates News Agency, 5 July 2015, http://wam.ae/
en/details/1395282898463.
89 ‘Electoral College List for 2019 FNC Elections Announced’, Emirates News Agency,
30 June 2019, http://wam.ae/en/details/1395302771137.
90 Abdulfatteh Yaghi and Osman Antwi-Boateng, ‘Determinants of UAE Voters’
Preferences for Federal National Council Candidates’, Digest of Middle East Studies,
vol. 24, no. 2 (2015): 219.
91 ‘Women to Have 50% Representation in UAE Federal National Council’, Gulf News,
8 December 2018, https://gulfnews.com/uae/government/women-to-have-50-
representation-in-uae-federal-national-council-1.1544258767491.
92 ‘35% of Newly Elected UAE FNC Members Are Women’, Khaleej Times, October 6,
2019, https://www.khaleejtimes.com/news/general/35-of-newly-elected-uae-fnc-
members-are-women-1-.
94 Ibid.
95 Yaghi and Antwi-Boateng, 225–6.
96 Ibid., 226–7.
97 Ibid.
98 Ibid., 227–8.
99 Author’s interview with researchers, Ras al-Khaimah, 3 March 2014.
Notes 193
100 Ola Salem, ‘FNC Passes Mandatory Breastfeeding Clause for Child Rights Law’, The
National, 21 January 2014, http://www.thenational.ae/uae/government/fnc-passes-
mandatory-breastfeeding-clause-for-child-rights-law.
101 Ola Salem, ‘Call for Federal Dress-Code Law in the UAE’, The National, 12 June
2012, http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/call-for-federal-dress-code-law-
in-the-uae.
102 Samir Salama, ‘FNC Members Demand Banks Provide COVID-19 Relief Packages’,
Gulf News, 18 May 2020, https://gulfnews.com/uae/government/fnc-member-
demands-banks-provide-covid-19-relief-packages-to-clients-1.71562231.
103 Samir Salama, ‘FNC Concerned about Rising Incidents of Bullying in UAE
Schools’, Gulf News, 8 December 2020, https://gulfnews.com/uae/government/fnc-
concerned-about-rising-incidents-of-bullying-in-uae-schools-1.75747407.
104 J.E. Peterson, The Arab Gulf States: Steps toward Political Participation,
Participation (Praeger, New York, Published with the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, Washington, DC. The Washington Papers 131, 1988), 96.
105 Ibid., 97.
106 Ibid.
107 Yaghi and Antwi-Boateng, 227.
108 Samir Salama, ‘FNC Demands Stronger Role in UAE Budgeting, Execution of
Motions’, Gulf News, 9 November 2013,https://gulfnews.com/uae/government/fnc-
demands-stronger-role-in-uae-budgeting-execution-of-motions-1.1253129.
109 Abdullah Al-rasheed, ‘Emirati Tribes Reiterate Loyalty to Rulers and State’, Gulf
News, 10 May 2011, http://gulfnews.com/your-say/your-reports/emirati-tribes-
reiterate-loyalty-to-rulers-and-state-1.805585.
110 Ibid.
111 Ibid.
112 Ibid.
113 Ibid.
114 Abdullah Al-rasheed, ‘Key Tribes to Reaffirm the Importance of National Interest’,
Gulf News, 29 April 2011, http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/general/key-tribes-to-
reaffirm-the-importance-of-national-interest-1.800683.
115 Ibid.
116 Ibid.
117 Sultan al-Qassemi, ‘How Urbanization Is Changing Emirati Identity’, Al Arabiya
News, 18 October 2011, http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2011/10/18/172378.
html.
118 AlQabas TV show ‘Amma Ba’d’ 2020.
119 Mohammed al Wushaihi Talk Show, AlZiadiq8 Blog, 13 May 2013 https://
alziadiq8.com/22920.html.
120 AlQabas TV show ‘Amma Ba’d’ 2020.
121 Ibid.
194 Notes
Chapter 7
1 Ito Mashino, ‘The spread of social media in the GCC and the potential for its
use in B2C business’, Mitsui & Co. Global Strategic Studies Institute Monthly
Report, March 2019, https://www.mitsui.com/mgssi/en/report/detail/__icsFiles/
afieldfile/2019/06/25/1903e_mashino_e.pdf.
2 Ibid.
3 Fadi Salem, ‘The Arab Social Media Report 2017: Social Media and the Internet
of Things: Towards Data-Driven Policymaking in the Arab World’, vol. 7
(2017). Dubai: MBR School of Government, 63. http://www.mbrsg.ae/HOME/
PUBLICATIONS/Research-Report-Research-Paper-White-Paper/Arab-Social-
Media-Report-2017.aspx.
4 Ibid., 34.
5 Ibid., 35.
6 Ibid., 44.
7 ‘Number of Social Media Users in Kuwait Hits 3.9 Million’, The Times Kuwait, 23
April 2019, https://www.timeskuwait.com/news/number-of-social-media-users-in-
kuwait-hits-3-9-million/.
8 Salem, 59.
9 Simon Kemp, ‘Digital 2020: Kuwait’ 18 February 2020, https://datareportal.com/
reports/digital-2020-kuwait.
10 Simon Kemp, ‘Digital 2020: Qatar’, 18 February 2020, https://datareportal.com/
reports/digital-2020-qatar.
11 ‘UAE Social Media Usage Statistics (2020)’, Global Media Insight, 29 April 2020,
https://www.globalmediainsight.com/blog/uae-social-media-statistics/.
12 Salem, 51.
13 Ibid., 53.
14 Holly Ellyat, ‘The Gulf ’s Trump Card Is Its Young People, but Governments Mustn’t
“Spoil” Them, Business Leaders Say’, CNBC, 10 May 2018, https://www.cnbc.
com/2018/05/10/the-gulfs-youth-is-our-trump-card-but-governments-shouldnt-
spoil-them-business-leaders-say.html.
15 Salem, 9.
16 Hamad H. Albloshi, ‘Social Activism and Political Change in Kuwait since 2006’,
Rice University’s Banker Institute for Public Policy, Issue Brief, 9 August 2018, 4,
https://www.bakerinstitute.org/files/13381/.
17 Salem, 7.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
Notes 195
21 Marc Owen Jones, ‘The Gulf Information War: Propaganda, Fake News, and Fake
Trends: The Weaponization of Twitter Bots in the Gulf Crisis’, International Journal
of Communication, vol. 13 (2019): 1389–415.
22 Salem, 66.
23 Al-Saidi, Saleh. ‘Qara’at fi-al-sijil al-intikhabi 2018’ [Reading the electoral
register 2018]. Al-Qabas. 31 December 2018. https://alqabas.com/article/617997-6-
‫من‬-1-2018-‫االنتخابي‬-‫السجل‬-‫في‬-‫قراءة‬.
24 See, for examples, the dedicated pages on this 2018 Alajman Website http://www.
alajman.net/nsab.html.
25 ‘Al-mulahaqat satal al-al-snapchat … al-alam tabda hajb suhuf al-qabaili wa-l-
manatiq’ (The Prosecution will extend to Snapchat … The media [ministry] begins
with blocking the newspaper of tribes and regions) Mazmaz, 29 July 2019, https://
mz-mz.net/1338393/.
26 Thesiger, 20.
27 Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle (London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2017),
331.
28 For more on the silo effect and audiences on social media networks like Twitter,
read Alice Marwick and Danah Boyd, ‘I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately:
Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience’, New Media and
Society Journal, vol. 13, no. 1 (2011): 114–33.
29 Tweet from Faisal al Salem, @K_F711, 29 September 2017.
30 Tweet from Ibn Qatar @AlMullaAmeer, with a video a reading of Quranic verses,
29 September 2017.
31 Ismail Sebugwaawo, ‘Strict Action against Anyone Showing Sympathy with Qatar:
UAE’, Khaleej Times, 8 June 2017, https://www.khaleejtimes.com/nation/abu-dhabi/
strict-action-against-anyone-showing-sympathy-with-qatar-uae-.
32 Hessa Saad Al-muhannadi, ‘The Role of Qatari Women: Between Tribalism and
Modernity’, M.A. thesis, Lebanese American University (2011).
33 Ibid., 71.
34 ‘A Talk with Violet Dickson’, Aramco World, November/December 1972, https://
archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/197206/a.talk.with.violet.dickson.htm.
35 ‘Poet Hind al Mutairi Comments on Her Banning and Says She Will Pursue This
with a Complaint to the Poet Prince’, Akhbar 24, 22 December 2015, https://
akhbaar24.argaam.com/article/detail/253937.
36 Yasmeena al Mulla, ‘Pregnant Woman Shot Dead by Brother Inside Hospital ICU’,
Gulf News, 10 September 2020, https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/kuwait/kuwait-
pregnant-woman-shot-dead-by-brother-inside-hospital-icu-1.7376007.
37 Sarah al Ajmi’s Twitter Feed https://mobile.twitter.com/sajjjmiii.
38 Fatmah al Ajmi’s Twitter Feed https://twitter.com/fatmahalajmy/status/
1304360679172902919.
196 Notes
39 ‘Arab Governments Are Doing Too Little to End Honour Killings’, The Economist,
6 February 2021, https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2021/02/06/
arab-governments-are-doing-too-little-to-end-honour-killings.
40 Rusd Kuwait Twitter Feed https://twitter.com/rsd_kuw/status/13052262574461952
04?s=20.
41 Haya al-Mughni, Women in Kuwait: The Politics of Gender (London: Saqi Books,
1993), 17.
42 ‘Tribal Nature of Gulf Society’, US Library of Congress. http://countrystudies.us/
persian-gulf-states/17.htm.
43 Author’s interview with Latifa al Subaie, Kuwait, 8 October 2017.
44 Shahd Alshammari, Literary Madness in British, Postcolonial, and Bedouin Women’s
Writing (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 128.
45 Author’s interview with Hissa al-Dhaheri, Abu Dhabi, 3 July 2017.
46 Assami.
47 Author’s interview with students at HBKU, Doha, 25 March 2018.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Johns et al., ‘Kuwaiti Population Subgroup of Nomadic Bedouin Ancestry-Whole
Genome Sequence and Analysis’, Genomics Data, vol. 3 (2015): 117. https://www.
sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213596014001299.
51 Alanoud Alsharekh, ‘Bedouins in Kuwait: A Collective Destiny’, Nuqat Cultural
Series, Kuwait City, April 2014, https://youtu.be/hDHbAfl9lWg.
52 Ilhem Allagui and Abeer Al-najjar, ‘From Women Empowerment to National
Branding: A Case Study from the United Arab Emirates’, International Journal of
Communication, vol. 12 (2018): 68–85.
53 Cooke.
54 Janis Teruggi Page, ‘Images with Messages: A Semiotic Approach to Identifying
and Decoding Strategic Visual Communication’, in The Routledge Handbook of
Strategic Communication, ed. Ansgar Zerfass and Derina Holtzhausen (New York:
Routledge), 325.
55 ‘Why Arab Women Still Have No Voice’, Interview with Amal al Malki,
Al Jazeera English, 21 April 2012, http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/
talktojazeera/2012/04/201242111373249723.html.
57 Ibid., 52.
58 Bethany Shockley, Perceptions of Female Candidates: A Field Experiment from
Kuwait. Draft dated 31 October 2017.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid., 8–9.
61 Ibid., 11.
Notes 197
62 ‘Tribal Nature of Gulf Society.’

63 ‘Tribal Symbols’, Kuwait National Forum, 9 March 2009, http://www.nationalkuwait.
com/forum/index.php?threads/68870/.
64 My Ancestors; A Source of Pride and Glory, https://uaehistorykin.wixsite.com/
uaehistory/—c218f.
65 Sultan al Qassemi, ‘In the UAE the Only Tribe Is the Emirati’, Gulf News, 1
December 2013, https://gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds/in-the-uae-the-only-tribe-
is-the-emirati-1.1261996.
Chapter 8
1 Andrew Gardner, ‘On Tribalism and Arabia’, LSE Middle East Centre Blog, 18
August 2018, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2018/08/02/on-tribalism-and-arabia/.
3 Kostiner, 223.
4 Iqbal al Ahmad, ‘Tribe or Country?’ AlQabas Newspaper, 13 February 2018.
5 Ibid.
6 Faisal Al-fadel, ‘Shoura Council Member Wants Name of Tribe Removed
from Saudi IDs’, Saudi Gazette, 28 February 2018, https://saudigazette.com.sa/
article/529471.
7 ‘A Million Riyals and a 15 Year Jail Sentence for Inciters of Racial or Ancestral
Discrimination’, Okaz Newspaper, 16 August 2017, https://www.okaz.com.sa/
article/1565316.
8 Al Qabas newspaper Instagram account, 29 December 2018, https://www.
instagram.com/p/Br–W7egnDj/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1il9l1lav605l.
9 ‘Kuwait: Ex-MP Mussallam al-Barrak Freed on Bail’, BBC News, 1 November 2012,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20165318.
10 8 January 2018 tweets from https://twitter.com/ahmedalsarraf1.
11 Gulf Societies in Transition: National Identity and National Projects in the Arab Gulf
States Workshop Report, The Arab Gulf States in Washington, Washington, DC, 10
June 2016.
12 See the official Twitter account of the Anizah tribe football cup, https://twitter.com/
b6olat_3nzh?s=03.
13 See Najla al Homaizi twitter account, https://twitter.com/najla_alhomaizi/status/92
5639344479666176?s=08.
14 ‘NGOs React to Tribal Billboards in Kuwait University’, AlAnbaa Newspaper, 8 June
2018.
15 ‘NGOs: Against Tribalism and Sectarianism and a Return to the Rule of Law’,
AlQabas Newspaper, 8 June 2018.
198 Notes
16 ‘The Sheikh of the Awazem Issues an Apology to the Women of Iraq’, CNN Arabic,
2 May 2019, https://arabic.cnn.com/middle-east/article/2019/05/02/kuwait-busra-
women-video-apology.
17 For more on this political interplay, see Alanoud Alsharekh, ‘Youth, Protest and
the New Elite; Domestic Security and Dignity in Kuwait’, in The Changing Security
Dynamics of the Persian Gulf, ed. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen (London: Hurst, 2018),
173.
18 Lambert.
19 Kristin Smith Diwan, ‘The Politics of Transgression in Kuwait’, Foreign Policy, 19
April 2013, https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/04/19/the-politics-of-transgression-in-
kuwait/.
20 Toby Matthesien, ‘Shi’i Historians in a Wahabi State: Identity Entrepreneurs and the
Politics of Local History in Saudi Arabia’, International Journal of Middle Eastern
Studies, vol. 47, no. 1 (2015): 32.
21 Alanoud Alsharekh, ‘Youth, Protest and the New Elite; Domestic Security and
Dignity in Kuwait’, 175.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Author’s interview with Dr Shafeeq al Ghabra, Kuwait, 21 September 2014.
25 Koch, The 80/20 Principle, 337.
26 ‘Advisory Council Approves Draft Law on Permanent Residency’, The Peninsula, 29
May 2018, https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/29/05/2018/Advisory-Council-
approves-draft-law-on-permanent-residency.
27 Alanoud Alsharekh, The Status of National Women Married to Non-nationals in the
GCC, UNDP publication for Kuwait University, 2015.
28 ‘UAE to Offer Citizenship to “Talented” Foreigners’, BBC News, 30 January 2021,
30 Alanoud Alsharekh, ‘Youth, Protest and the New Elite; Domestic Security and
Dignity in Kuwait’, 166.
32 Steffen Hertog, ‘The Political Decline and Social Rise of Tribal Identity in the GCC’,
LSE Middle East Centre Blog, 25 July 2018, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2018/07/25/
the-political-decline-and-social-rise-of-tribal-identity-in-the-gcc/.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 ‘Al-amir Salman yua’kid intisab al-Saud li-qabilat Anaiza ba’d khilaf dar bi-qanat
al-Mustaqila al-fada’ia ‘ala nisab al-Saud’ [Prince Salman confirms the affiliation
of al-Saud to Anaiza tribe after a dispute took place on the Independent Satellite
Notes 199
Channel over the lineage of al-Saud], Mrasey Online Newspaper, 25 April 2008,
https://www.mrasey.org/sa/11981.html.
37 Hertog, “The Political Decline and Social Rise of Tribal Identity in the GCC.”
38 Cooke, 7.
39 Hertog, “The Political Decline and Social Rise of Tribal Identity in the GCC.”
40 Cooke, 36.
41 Ibid., 39–41.
42 Ibid., 47.
43 Ibid., 65–6.
44 Ibid., 104.
45 Khalaf and Hamoud, 353.
46 Seth McLaughlin, ‘Jeff Flake Calls for Ending “Destructive Partisan Tribalism” in
New Hampshire’, AP news, 2 October 2018, https://apnews.com/article/20ccd5711c
75572a1283bce22672c1f3.
47 Ibid.
48 Jones, Bedouins into Bourgeois, 11–12.
49 Ibid., 263.
50 Ibid., 277.
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Index
Abdulaziz, Salman bin 160 Bahrain 14, 22, 29–30, 32–3, 43, 48, 52–3,
Abdul Aziz, Sultan bin 108 62, 104–5, 113, 142
Ahmad, Amir Shaykh 34 Bani Hajar tribe 31, 35–6, 59, 106–7, 140
al-Ahmad, Iqbal 154 Bani Khalid tribe 22, 48
al-ʿAjman tribe 23–4, 28, 30, 35, 38, 42, Bani Malik tribe 157
125, 139, 150 Bani Tamim tribe 28
al-Ahmadi constituency (1975) 122 Bani ʿUtub tribe 22–3, 28–9, 48
and social media 139, 141–2 Bani Yas tribe 37–8, 40–1
al-Ajmi, Abdulhadi 135 al-Barrak, Musallam 28, 121, 124–6,
al-Ali tribe 38 154–5, 157
Allen, Mark, Arabs 5 The Battle of Jahrah 24, 26
Alshawi, Ali 11, 36, 98, 101, 110, 128, 148 Beaugrand, Claire 24, 26
al-Ameri tribe 132 bedouin/bedouinism 1, 3, 14, 16–17, 24,
al-Anaza tribe 22, 28, 198 n.36 26, 38, 40, 45, 47–50, 55–6, 58, 60,
al-ʿAniza tribe 125 62, 66, 68–70, 77, 84–5, 90–1, 94,
Arab Barometer 118, 125 98–9, 101–2, 112–13, 119–20, 143,
Arabian Gulf 42, 48–50, 52, 60, 71, 75, 87 146–7, 158
Arabs 26, 35, 44, 119 bedouin lite 17, 64, 68, 91–3, 97, 114,
Arab Spring 10, 113, 134 148
artificial intelligence (AI) 138, 158 family/tribal values 96–7, 102
asabiyya (group solidarity) 4–6 of GCC states 60, 92–3
Asad, Sayed Tareq bin 88 nationalizing 86–8
asala (cultural authenticity) 8 social evolution of 47, 63
assimilation 58, 60–1, 84, 144, 147 traders 56
Atallah, Samer 117 Bedu 52, 54–5, 61, 86, 140
Atrissi, Tarek 80 bidūn jinsiyya (without nationality) 26, 44
authentic/authenticity 11, 69, 77, 82–3, 85, big data 138
88, 91, 94, 96, 113 British 29
authoritarian/authoritarianism 23, 40, British India 53
117–18 and Kuwait 23
al-ʿAzimi/al-Awazim tribe 3, 24, 28, 122, and Qatar 32, 53–4
125, 156–7 and Trucial States 42
fundraising 112 and UAE 39, 41–2
Brown, Nathan 28, 121
badū 2–4, 11, 13–14, 18–19, 21, 25–8, 35, Al bu ʿAinan tribe 36
50, 52, 56, 59, 68, 78, 82, 85, 92, bureaucracy 1, 32, 36–7, 97, 128, 160
118–21, 126, 133, 142–3, 147, 150, burqa/niqab/batoola 69, 111–12, 144, 147
153, 163
and had.ar 63–4, 119–20 Caton, Steve C. 5–6
political 102–4 citizens/citizenship 9–11, 13, 15, 18, 19,
resettlement of 36 26, 54–5, 62, 86–8, 91, 93, 96, 99,
social change within post-badū 60–3 104, 109, 113, 117, 160, 162–3
222 Index
dual 60, 104 Dubai 31, 37, 39, 41, 44, 49, 70, 81–4, 132,
Emirati 44, 133, 198 n.28 158–9
full citizenship rights 44 Dubai Tourism Vision 2020 82
GCC 87, 139, 143 Duwailah, Mubarak 135
Kuwaiti 26, 34, 87, 104, 119–20 al Duwaisan, Faisal, on wall of Kuwait 57
modern 150
multi-ethnic model 92 Ecochard, Michel 72
and non-citizens 87 economy 7, 11, 24–5, 29, 31, 42, 60–1, 70,
Qatari 34, 36–7, 60, 105–6, 127, 114, 154
129–30 demand for economic reform in GCC
tribal values and 101–2 91
coastal tribes/rulers 18, 40–1, 47–50, dominance of governments 8
52–3, 55 economic depression 25, 32
collective identity 88, 90–1, 149 economic diversification 76, 81, 91–2,
colonialism/colonial intervention 5, 46, 99–101, 158
48, 53–5 knowledge-based 114, 158
Cooke, Miriam 4, 65, 161–2 pearling enterprise 52
Tribal Modern 9, 66 petroleum-based 85
cosmopolitan/cosmopolitanism 48, 62, 81, egalitarian 5, 23, 51
83, 88, 94 Egypt 104–5, 117, 142
Covid-19 pandemic 18, 88, 125–6, 133, Eickelman, Dale 95, 109
137, 167 n.81 elections 4, 8, 11, 15, 37
Cox, Percy 54 and clientelism 118
cross-border identity 26, 35, 94, 143 electoral politics 5, 15, 20, 98, 111, 116,
Crystal, Jill 22–3, 25, 28–30, 35 157–8
municipal council 17, 34
Dashti, Hanan 112 parliamentary 21, 27, 118, 135, 156
Davidson, Christopher 38, 40 in Kuwait 119–26
democracy 8, 118, 125 in Qatar 126–30
electoral 16, 135 in the UAE 130–4
mobile 38 tribal pre-election rallies 123
desert culture 13, 17, 22–3, 30, 47, 49–51, and tribes in rentier states 117–18
54, 62, 64–5, 78, 91–2. See also sea employment 15, 26, 35–7, 44, 93–4, 102,
culture 117, 120
camel festivals/racing 60, 64, 66–7, 69, and discrimination 106
76, 82, 90, 97, 110, 161 government jobs 117–18, 120, 158
hierarchy of tribes in 41 public sector jobs 15, 94, 117, 120
Shaykh Zayed and 40 equality 5, 93, 154
desert diplomacy 88–9 ethics, tribal 94, 96, 99
Dickson, H. R. P. 56, 76, 143 ethnic/ethnicity 25, 35, 37, 52, 66, 87,
Dickson, Violet 143 92–3, 150, 158
discrimination, racial 105–6, 135, 154–6 ethno-tribal identity 98
diwan 38, 131 Exell, Karen 70, 77, 85, 96
dīwāniyya (dīwāniyyāt/dīwāwīn) 12, 15, expatriates 11, 15, 26, 34, 37, 41, 69, 86–8,
104, 122, 142, 167 n.81 93, 103, 109, 154, 159
Diwan, Kristin Smith 157
domestic politics 13, 16, 104–5, 109, 131, Facebook 19, 137, 139
139–42 Facey, William 24, 68
Index 223
Faisal, Khaled bin 88–9 activities/sports 64, 66, 70, 81, 83, 87,
al Faisal, Khalid 144 110, 161
feminism, tribal 146, 151 camel racing/riding 60, 64, 66–7,
Freer, Courtney 13, 15, 125 69, 76, 82, 90, 97, 110, 161
Fromherz, Allen J. 29, 33–5, 37, 128 falcons/falconry 64, 66, 69, 78,
Fryer, Jonathan 51, 53 81–2, 90, 97, 110, 161
pearl-diving 35, 69, 75–6, 90, 97,
Gardner, Andrew 11, 98, 101, 110, 148, 161
153 cultural 9, 84–5, 88, 90, 99, 109
Gause, F. Gregory III 12 festivals 67, 82, 85, 88–90, 92
gender 91, 98, 139, 149 in GCC states 65
honour killings (see honour crimes, of Kuwaiti 74–7
tribal) national 11, 75, 92
segregation 130, 138 preservation of culture/heritage 13, 51,
tribal social evolution and 143–8 66, 70, 74–7, 82–4, 96–7, 99–100
genealogy 92, 95–6, 101, 109 of Qatar 78–80
geopolitics/geopolitical 102, 106, 109, 113 sea-faring 67
Ghabra, Shafeeq 103, 111, 158 tourism 69–70, 76, 85, 161
al-Ghoneim, Abdullah 50 of UAE 80–4
al-Ghunaim, Abdallah 56 Hertog, Steffen 7, 160
globalization 13, 46, 59, 70, 83, 162 hierarchy of tribes 5, 41, 43–5
group feeling 4–5 social 4, 9, 50, 52
5G Technology 137 sociopolitical 103
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) 2, 5, 7, hinterland tribes 22–3, 29, 48, 51–3
9, 11–18, 23, 25, 33, 35, 37, 41, 43, al-Homaizi, Najla 155
52, 55, 59, 61, 64–5, 67–8, 70, 87–8, honour crimes, tribal 144–6
90–6, 103–4, 107, 110, 114, 154–5, Huwaitat tribe 100
159–60 al Huwaydi, Sulaiman, S.āh.ibī Labs al-
Gulf Crisis 59, 78, 83, 90, 105–6, 108, Burqa 111–12
113–14, 130, 142, 157, 161 hwala 35, 158
rentiers 117 hydrocarbon resources 18, 45, 76, 84, 100,
and social media 137–9 159
youth 149
Ibn Khaldun 4–5, 10, 49, 62
had.ar 4, 18, 25, 27–8, 35, 50, 58–60, 62–4, al-Ibrahim, Abdelrahman 14
77–8, 119–21, 142–3, 155, 157 independent groups 8, 18, 64. See also
hadith 63 social groups
al-Hamid, Sulaiman bin Muhammad 22 India 51, 53
al-Hammadi tribe 134 Indian Ocean 76
Hammoud, Hassan 10–11, 53 slavery in 52, 79
al-Harbi, Saud 103 individualism 135
al-Harb tribe 103 inhabitants 25, 30, 48, 69, 150
al-Hashem, Safa 87 Instagram 83, 88–9, 108, 115, 137, 139–40,
Heard-Bey, Frauke 41, 45, 80 150
Herb, Michael 14 insular/insularity 47, 51, 62, 101
heritage(s) 3, 9, 13, 17, 27, 35, 72, 97, 102, interior tribes 28, 30, 40, 47–9, 50–1
110, 113, 161–2. See also symbols/ invented traditions 65, 75, 148
symbolism Iraq 2, 34, 48, 63, 66
224 Index
Islam 9–10, 12, 86, 99, 102, 148 and social media 137, 142–3
Al-Ississ, Mohammed 117 Souq Mubarakiyya 75
state housing policies 119
al-Jalahimah family 22, 28–9 state symbols of 71–8
Jones, Calvert 13, 45 tribal identity in 27–8
Jordan 4, 6 urbanization in 48
Vision 2035 of 99, 154
Kaban tribe 35 walled city 56, 135
Kamrava, Mehran 21, 32, 130 water resources in 51
al-Kandari family 111, 158 Kuwait Oil Company 24–5
Khalaf, Sulayman 10–11, 53, 67–8, 75, advertisement on social media 114–15
82, 90 al-Kuwari, Maryam 109, 114
khaleeji identity 90, 163 al-Kuwari, Munira 147
al-Khalifa family 22, 28–32, 35, 49, 53, 106
Nasser bin Hamad 88 Lambert, Laurent 49, 51, 110
Khoury, Philip S. 3, 6, 56, 60, 85 language, tribal 10, 14, 92
kin/kinship 5, 7, 9, 21, 47, 49, 51, 61, 94, Leber, Andrew 125
96, 98, 101–3, 108, 112, 146, 157, legitimacy 7, 9–10, 19, 32, 90
162 Libya 2, 159
Koch, Natalie 66, 87 Lindholm, Charles 5
Koch, Richard 140, 158–9, 161 lineage, tribal (ʿasīl) 40, 44, 62–3, 103,
Kostiner, Joseph 3, 6–7, 10, 56, 60, 85, 154 149, 161
Kuwait 1–4, 6, 14–15, 19–31, 33, 36, 41, Longva, Anh Nga 27–8, 69, 87, 120
44, 53–4, 62, 65, 87–8, 90, 93, 102, Lorimer, John Gordon 29, 40
104, 108, 112–13, 135, 155–7, 159 loyal/loyalty, tribal 5–7, 28, 39–40, 59, 61,
austerity measures 87 80, 101, 104, 107–8, 119, 143, 158
Boum (ship) 67 Lust, Ellen 118
Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyya 76 l-Zaʿabi, Ahmad Jumaa 134
Dickson House 76
expatriate population 87–8 MacLean, Matthew 82, 84
Karamat Watan protests (2012) 59, majlis (majālis) 12–13, 16, 36, 38, 43–4,
138, 154 62, 97, 99, 102, 104, 131, 146, 168
Madeenah 76–7 n.82
National Assembly building 75 al-Maktoum family 40–1, 84
National Day of 97–8 Shaykh Mohammed bin Rashed 108
nationality 25–6, 62 Shaykh Rashid 82
National Museum 72–4 al Malki, Amal 86, 148
number of voters, tribes 140 Mansoor, Ahmed 134
parliamentary election in 119–26 al-Mansuri/al-Manasir tribe 35, 63, 140
political participation 44 maritime 30, 38, 41–2, 47, 60, 65, 67
preservation of heritage 74–7 marriage(s) 44, 77, 161
role of ruler in 56 arranged 146
Sadu House 76 consanguineous 147
sea pearling heritage (turath al-ghuos) intermarriages 49, 96, 108, 131, 146–7
of 75, 90 intra-Emirati 100
Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural intra-national 86
Centre 77 with non-national 86
Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural merchant class 21, 30–1, 35, 39, 46, 48–9,
Centre 77 52, 56, 84, 93, 97, 127, 128, 146, 158
social life environments in 47 Mesopotamia 48
Index 225
The Middle East 4, 60, 70, 163 national identity 2, 9, 17, 19, 24, 45, 66–9,
migrants/migration 47–50, 91, 98, 154, 83–5, 88, 90–2, 94, 96–9, 101–4,
159 110, 113–14, 149, 153, 158–9
online 140, 150 nationalism 10, 85–7, 90, 98, 107, 109,
seasonal 47, 55, 60 113, 154, 158, 161–3
modernity 62, 68, 70, 103, 148, 153 nationality 25–6, 52, 60, 62, 68, 70, 113,
modernization 47, 59, 61, 66, 83, 90–1, 148
99–100, 103, 143, 151, 159 nationality law 36, 119
modern nation state system 4–5, 7, 117 National Museum(s) 69–70
Morocco 66, 72, 92 of Kuwait 72–4, 77, 119
al-Mualla family 38 of Qatar 78–9, 81, 85
al-Muhannadi, Hessa Saad 107, 143 Zayed National Museum of UAE 78, 81
multiculturalism 100 nation state 4–7, 11, 18–19, 62, 117, 134,
al-Murrah tribe 30, 35–6, 59, 63, 85, 128, 155
130 nepotism, tribal 62, 93, 113, 157–8
and GCC crisis 106 new media 14, 19, 137–9. See also specific
al-Ghufran against Qatari Government companies
105–6 nomadism 11, 26, 62, 153
al-Murri, Shaykh Sultan 106 nomadic tribes 1–3, 11, 37, 55, 92, 96, 98
al-Murr, Mohammed 112–13 pastoral 11
Muslim Brotherhood 59, 124 non-Arabs 44, 49, 51, 114
Muslims 26 non-state actors 14
Shiʾi 37, 155 non-tribal identity 19, 28, 49, 86, 91,
Sunni 15, 25, 35, 110, 119, 161 108–9, 112–14, 125, 145, 152, 158
al Mutairi, Hind, Waīl al qabīla/Wor to Nouvel, Jean 78, 81
the Tribe 144
al-Mutayri (Matran) tribe 24, 28, 61, 63, oil era 25, 34, 36, 43
121–2, 125, 140, 150, 155, 157 colonialism 54
Helal Fajhan 60 oil rents 1, 7, 18, 135
oil revenues 8, 24–5, 33, 37, 98, 158
Nabiha Khamsa (We Want Five) pre-oil era 69, 159
movement 124 Oman 14, 29, 32
al-Nahyan family 40–2, 84, 106 Najd 22, 28, 48, 68–9
Shaykh Khalifa bin Zayed 132, 134 al-Otayba tribe 140
Shaykh Mohammad bin Zayed 83, 88, Ottoman Empire 23, 29, 31, 34–5, 53
90
Shaykh Shakhbut 40, 56 paternalism 163
Shaykh Zayed 40, 43, 45, 98 patronage system 5, 32, 36, 38, 44, 76, 93,
Shaykh Zayed bin Sultan 40 112, 117–18, 126, 133, 138, 155
Sheikh Zayed bin Nahyan 38, 55 Perpetual Treaty of Maritime Peace (1853)
al-Najjar, Ghanim 122, 135 42
al-Nakib, Farah 25, 27–8, 72–3, 119, 121 Persia 35, 111
al-Naqeeb, Khaldoun 9–10 Picton, Oliver 82, 84
national branding 17, 45, 66, 68, 70, 72, poetry and dialect
78, 80, 85, 87, 90, 99, 114, 148, 158 Million’s Poet TV show (UAE) 83, 109
National Day celebrations 11, 91–2, 97–8, nabati poetry 66, 83, 108–9
107, 110 Prince of Poets TV show (UAE) 109
national dress 68, 87 shela songs 109
burqa 69, 111, 147 policy-making process 2, 12, 16, 20, 37,
red checkered headdress 68–9 132, 161
226 Index
political groups 10, 12, 17, 19 rule of al-Thani family in 33–4

political identity, tribal 18, 82, 158 settlement policies in 36
political mobilization 8–10, 117, 135 Shura Council 16, 127, 129, 154
political role of tribes 7–8, 12, 16, 18–19, and social media 137, 142–3
108, 130 tribal identity in 34–7
political units 1, 30, 32, 149 Vision 2030 of 99–100
prophet Muhammad 3 Wakrah 36, 128
Zubarah 28–9, 48–9
qabīla (qabāʾil)/qabīlī 2–4, 62, 88, 119, 163
subdivision of 2, 135 Rashed, Sheikh Mohammed bin 38
Qahtan tribe 106 Rashid, Shaykh Mohammad bin 83, 158
al-Qasim, Abd al-Karim 34 al-Rashid, Talal, killing of 108
al-Qassimi (Qawasim) family 37–42, 61 al Rashoud, Claudia Farkas, Dame Violet
piracy 41–2 Dickson: ‘Umm Saud’s’ fascinating
Sharjah Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed life in Kuwait from 1929–1990 56
(The Myth of Arab Piracy in the reaffirmation, tribal 97
Gulf) 42 religion 5, 10, 21, 116, 138
Sultan 108, 132 rentier states/rentierism 1–2, 6–10, 13,
Qatar 2, 6, 14–17, 19–21, 28–38, 41, 43–4, 15–17, 20–1, 43, 61, 69, 84–5, 110,
47–8, 50, 53–4, 58–60, 62–3, 65, 67, 119
70, 72, 74, 77, 90, 92, 94, 96, 102, elections and tribes in 117–18
104, 107, 113, 158 super-rentier states 15–18, 45, 100, 130
Anglo-Qatari Treaty (1916) 32 Rico, Trinidad 70, 77, 85, 96
ʿardah (traditional dance) 107, 110 Ross, Michael 8, 117
Bidaa 30–1, 36 Rugh, Andrea B. 38–9, 41
Bin Jelmood House (Msheireb Rugh, William A. 40
Museums) 52 al-Rushayda tribe 3, 28, 122
and British 32, 53–4 al-Sabah family 22–5, 28, 76
Central Municipal Council (CMC) Khalid al-Faisal bin Abdulaziz 83
elections 127–30, 132 Shaykha Altaf 76
Contemporary Art Qatar exhibition, Shaykh Abdallah 88
Berlin 113 Shaykh Abdullah al-Salim 98
cultural heritage/state symbols of Shaykh Mubarak 23–4, 53
78–80, 85 Shaykh Nasser 103
Doha 29–32, 34, 36, 48–9, 62, 113, 126, Shaykh Nasser Sabah al Ahmad 154
158–9 Shaykh Sabah bin Jabir 22
al-Ghufran against Government of
105–6 Salafis 15, 119, 122, 124
Katara 79 Salman, Mohammed bin (Crown Prince)
labour law (2004) 37 60, 88, 90, 106, 198 n.36
Msheireb Museums 79 Salzman, Philip Carl 7–8, 18, 91
municipalities of 128 al Sanjari, Ammar, Al-Bedu through
National Day of 98, 107 Western Eyes 14
Nationality Law of 1961 36 al-Sarraf, Ahmad 155
National Museum of 78–9, 85 al-Saud family 29, 53, 108, 160
parliamentary election in 126–30 ʿAbdulaziz (Ibn Saud) 24, 29–30, 32,
Qatari Law No. 21 161 54
Rais al-Baladiyya 128 instagram account of 88–9
Rayyan 36, 128 Saudi Arabia 14, 23, 25, 33, 35, 48, 53,
Index 227
59–60, 62, 90, 104–8, 113, 119, 130, and domestic politics 139–42
142, 160 and international affairs 142–3
Riyadh 24 tribal feminism 146
Shura Council in 154 social practices, tribal 68, 95–6, 101,
Vision 2030 of 100 109–14
scholarship 1, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, 17–18, 29, socio-political behaviours 3, 17, 49, 58,
110, 117 153
sea culture 30, 47, 78, 92. See also desert solidarity 4, 11, 51, 98, 112–13, 134, 148
culture Kandari 111
sectarianism 124, 155 mechanical 59
sedentarization/sedentary 9, 22, 24, 26, 28, sovereignty 32, 40–1, 104, 159
38, 45, 48, 62, 65, 143 state-building 160
and urbanization 50–2 al-Sudan tribe 30–1, 36
segments of the population 3, 23, 39, 66, symbiotic/symbiosis 5, 7, 10, 24, 60, 100,
119, 162 154, 159
settlement/resettlement of tribes 22, 28–9, symbols/symbolism 27, 61, 70, 161–2.
30, 32, 36–7, 38–9, 44, 48–51, 55, See also heritage(s)
61, 63, 86 dallah (Arabian coffee pot) 70–1, 78
Shambayati, Hootan 8–9, 110 of Kuwait 70–8
Shammar tribe 108, 156 of Qatar 78–80
Shammar-Zafir tribes 122 of UAE 80–4
al-Sharqi (Sharqiyin) family 38
shaykhs, tribal 38–9, 51, 54, 56, 58–9, 88, taʿasub 61–2
155 Tapper, Richard 3, 6
al-Shehhi tribe 59, 109, 134 tax/taxation 25, 38, 40, 43, 46
Abdullah bin Leqios 134 pearl 24, 51–2
Shraim, Shaykh Taleb bin Lahem bin for protection from raids 55
106 al-Thani family 29, 31–4, 36–7, 49, 52, 58,
shūrā 10, 97 79, 106, 127
single non-transferable vote (SNTV) Ahmad bin Ali 33
system 125–6 Muhammad bin Thani 30–2
slaves/slavery 31, 37, 51 relationship with British 54
in Indian Ocean 52, 79 Shaykh Abdullah bin Jassim 31, 33
social engineering 13, 45, 162 Shaykh Ali bin Abdullah 33
social evolution of tribes 47, 58–9, 62–4, Shaykh Hamad bin Khalifa 15, 33, 80,
153 105–6
and colonialism 53–5 Shaykh Jassim 31, 34–5
and gender 143–8 Shaykh Jassim bin Mohammed 98
and migration to coast 47–50 Shaykh Khalifa bin Hamad 15, 33, 85
post-oil 55–6, 58 Shaykh Sultan bin Suhaim 105–6
social groups 8, 10, 39, 117, 147, 158, 160. Shaykh Tamim bin Hamad 16, 106–7,
See also independent groups 127
social identity 7, 18, 99, 151, 160 Tamim 142
social media 136–7, 151–2, 163. See also tribal identity in 34–7
specific companies Thesiger, Wilfred 68
and al-ʿAjman tribe 139, 141–2 Thesiger, William 5, 48, 50, 52, 54–5, 61,
Arab Social Media Report 138 86, 140
and GCC 137–9 Tibi, Bassam 7, 59
and tribes tourism 69–70, 76, 81, 85, 161
228 Index
trade/traders 23–4, 29–30, 37–8, 41–2, UAE5 134

48–9 United Arab Emirates (UAE) 2, 6, 13–17,
bedouin 56 19–22, 25, 32, 35, 37–45, 47, 53–4,
by camel caravans 48–9 62–3, 65, 67–8, 72, 74, 77, 90, 92,
harbours 41–2, 48–9 94, 96, 102, 104–6, 113, 142, 150,
with India 53 158, 162–3
pearling industry 24, 29, 31–2, 35, 39, Abu Dhabi 37, 39–41, 43–4, 48, 50–1,
41, 43, 45, 48, 51–2 55, 82, 84, 112, 132–4, 159
transient/non-transient nature of tribes 50 Al-Ain oasis 40
transnational group 59, 66, 95, 104–5, 143 barjeel (wind tower) 83–4
tribal identity 2–3, 9, 21, 25, 45, 61–2, empowerment, women’s 148
65–6, 109–11, 113–14, 121, 124, Federal National Council (FNC)
138, 151, 155, 161, 163 elections 16, 19, 43, 131–4
desert 49 Fujairah 38
in Kuwait 27–8 Guggenheim Abu Dhabi 81
in Qatar 34–7 heritage festivals 82
by young people 149–50 independence and tribal hierarchies
tribalism 2–3, 6–7, 9, 13, 16–18, 20–1, 27, 43–5
45, 61, 63, 70, 86, 88, 91, 94, 96, 98, individual emirates 40–2
108, 114, 116, 118, 120, 124, 135, Liwa Oasis’ 41
140, 142–3, 151–5, 157, 161–3 Louvre Abu Dhabi 81
electoral 19, 46 (see also elections) Million’s Poet TV show 83, 109
and GCC crisis 107 at Morocco festival 184 n.123
in international affairs 104–8 National Day of 98
and Islam 10, 12 National Identity Year (2008) 45
linkages of 11 northern emirates 39, 44, 110, 133
and national branding 68 parliamentary election in 130–4
political 9–10 post-oil era 58–60
tribalization 111, 114 Ras al-Khaimah 37, 40, 42, 150
tribal politics 1–2, 16, 40, 58, 102, 111, Sharjah 37–9, 42, 84
121, 124, 126, 135, 157–8 and social media 137, 143, 151
tribal primaries 15, 28, 121–2, 124–6, 135, state symbols of 80–4
146, 155, 157 Supreme Council of Rulers 43
tribal values 8, 11, 17, 49, 69, 76, 91, Umm al Quwain 38, 42, 130–1
96–101, 143–4, 148, 159 Vision 2021 of 100
and new citizen 101–2 Zayed National Museum 78, 81
tribe and state 4, 6–8, 14, 19, 45, 55, 64, 95, United Nations Human Rights Council
100, 136, 154, 159 105
tribes. See specific tribes urbanization 36, 41, 44, 46, 48, 61–2, 74,
Trucial States 38–9, 42–3, 48, 54 96, 103
and British 42 post-oil 55
Twitter 19, 137, 140, 195 n.28 and sedentary life 50–2
al-ʿAjman account 139 urbanized 3, 25, 36, 61–2, 91, 102, 119,
#Gbeelty_Qatar (my tribe is Qatar) 143–4, 147–50, 153, 159
107, 142 Utzon, Jørn 72, 75
#hind_almutairi_reviles_the_tribe al-Wardi, Ali 62, 64
144
Karamat Watan protests 138 wasta 157–8
tweets on honour crimes 144–5 water resources management 50–1
Index 229
Westernization 147 Yemen 2, 12, 47, 159

WhatsApp 19, 142 youths, tribal (and society) 93, 103, 124,
Wikipedia 143 148–50, 157
al-Wushaihi, Mohammed 135
al-Zaʿabi tribe 59, 134
al-Yafaʿi tribe 130 Zaccara, Luciano 128
Yam tribe 142 Zahlan, Rosemarie Said 31, 37
230
231
232

Courtney Freer, Alanoud Al-Sharekh - Tribalism and Political Power in The Gulf - State-Building and National Identity in Kuwait, Qatar and The UAE-I.B. Tauris (2021)

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Tribalism and Political Power

State-Building and National Identity in

Alanoud al-Sharekh and Courtney Freer

BLOOMSBURY, I.B. TAURIS and the I.B. Tauris logo are

First published in Great Britain 2022

Copyright © Alanoud al-Sharekh and Courtney Freer, 2022

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. viii constitute

Series design by Adriana Brioso

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

ISBN: HB: 978-1-8386-0608-4

Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

1 MP Faisal al Duwaisan quoted on Awwal Kuwait News, tweeting

What is the qabīla?

A considerable amount of the existing scholarship concerning tribes in the Middle

Caton, while suggesting ways in which a tribal monarchy can be politically

on society. Even in the absence of a common definition of tribe, some scholars

expression.32 As a result, a major part of regime legitimation involves tying rulers

Cooke’s conclusion harmonizes the existence of tribalism with rentierism

mobilization of individuals and social groups’.38 Al-Naqeeb goes on to imbue

or its leadership.61 The informal institution essentially constitutes ‘the substance

strongest support system for their citizens.76 In addition to providing extensive

discussion will lead to a scholarly consideration of whether societies in the small

Goals of this book

Given the extensive scholarship already conducted on tribes in the Arabian

While there is substantial historical and anthropological scholarship about

The way forward

The historical relationship between badū

In this chapter, we endeavour to trace ways in which monarchical institutions

Great Depression was underway globally.28 Oil was discovered in commercial

Tribal identity in Kuwait today

portion of present-day Qatar in the early eighteenth centuries;58 although they

Nonetheless, the al-Thani family managed to secure their position of power

land distributions – a practice that continues to this day – resulting in the

The Al-Thani family’s rule

Tribal identity in Qatar today

to exert more control; it also managed to control religious messaging by relying

The individual emirates

Emirati independence and the institutionalization of tribal

conditions and boosting indigenous development’.217 This dynamic spurred the

Further, and self-consciously given the individual emirates’ sometimes

The histories of tribe-state relations in the countries under study undoubtedly

The social evolution of the tribe

Adherence to a tribal lifestyle in the Arabian Peninsula initially centered on

Social evolution and migration to the coast

Members of tribes historically migrated from the inner peninsula to coastal

almost completely horizontal and participative, but not necessarily integrative

Sedentary life and urbanization

operations to Bahrain or elsewhere’.26 Even in Qatar, whose settled merchant

Colonialism and the evolution of tribes and rulers

Rulers, tribes and post-oil social evolution

Figure 1 MP Faisal al Duwaisan quoted on Awwal Kuwait News, tweeting on how

Social change within the post-badū tribal cities

Heritage production and branding of the

which pursue projects dedicated to heritage and preservation of their local

New national museum projects on a much larger scale are considered to be

hardship, which in turn contributed to legitimizing the new role of government’.36

Figure 6 Kuwait’s National Assembly building designed by Danish architect Jørn

citizen-driven effort to preserve Kuwait City’s specific urban history through a

Again, we see efforts to preserve intangible components of Arabian Peninsula

land-based bedouinism rather than sea-based merchant identity.90 In fact, as

Common tribal tropes

As described in detail above, all three governments of the countries under

Nationalizing Bedouin-ism: Relationships