ABSTRACT
The social structure of traditional Middle Eastern communities has almost always been described as organized according to the principles of descent. Alliance has usually been overlooked and, in some cases because of the existence of preferential patrilateral parallel cousin marriage, even denied. Descent has been considered so important in Middle Eastern social structure that some scholars have seen it as the basic principle underlying the organization not only of small-scale local or tribal communities but of the total complex society, in spite of the existence since ancient times of such things as cities, states, and empires. According to Murphy and Kasdan, for example, ‘ideally, all Arabs, whether nomadic or sedentary, form a super-lineage, the member units of which trace common ancestry to the prophet Abraham’ (1959:21). They further state that ‘genealogies are almost the only means given within the formal social structure for ordering larger amalgamations’ (1959:23). According to Patai, ‘descent, which in Middle Eastern culture means patrilineal descent, is the only factor through which ego can relate to individuals or groups outside his own small world represented by his UDG [unilineal descent group] (1965:347-8).
