ABSTRACT
The Bedouin, who once comprised 40 per cent of the population of the Gulf States and Oman, have already become folk-heroes for the
coastal communities, and although the town Kuwaiti or Qatari may curse a careless driver with the cry of. ‘a-aaa badawi! coffee gossip regales their desert sagas. For Westerners, too, the Bedouin encapsulate the romance of the desert. St John Philby, Bertram Thomas and Wilfred Thesiger were all great explorers of ‘Arabia deserta’,b u t Thesiger’s account of his epic trek in Arabian Sands remains the classic work.
