ABSTRACT
The term ‘tribe’ is a most problematic notion, with a long history. The accepted view used to be that a tribe is a territorial organization headed by a leader (chief, shēkh) with its own culture, and sometimes also its own religion. It has also been claimed that the tribe is a society in miniature, a framework which provides all the needs of the people it embraces. But bedouin belong to many types of organization, of which the tribe is one. For example, an individual tribesman belongs to a nuclear family, to an extended family, to a descent group and to many different networks of kinship and trade. In addition to all these, he also belongs to the organization known as the tribe, an organization which controls territory and can exist without formal leadership.
