ABSTRACT
Although they have always appealed strongly to English romantics (and eccentrics), nomads have generally acquired an evil reputation. Today, as in the past, the exponents of sedentary civilization have come to regard the word ‘nomad’ as a term of abuse and virtually synonymous with such expressions as ‘bandit’, ‘gypsy’, and more recently, ‘drop-out’. (Many of these connotations are implied in the Arabic bedu.) Of no fixed address, here today and gone tomorrow, the nomad’s capricious movements are judged to severely curtail his commitment to the state which is, by definition, sedentary and of fixed geographic location.
