Abstract
This chapter introduces the reader to the people, places and history of the borderland of Egypt and Libya. Basic facts and numbers about the Awlad ‘Ali and the territory they live in are presented, and the existing academic literature on the Awlad ‘Ali is discussed. The chapter shows the long-standing depth of the Awlad ‘Ali presence in the borderland. In a detailed journey into the borderland on both the Egyptian and Libyan sides of the border, a vivid impression of the region's current vitality is created.
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Notes
- 1.
Al-Qasr Rural Development Project (QRDP) was a German–Egyptian development project operated by the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) from 1990 to 2003. The GTZ is now the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ).
- 2.
Although the Awlad ‘Ali are only a small minority among the autochthonous oasis population and other groups, their role as traders, tenants of land and pasture has a great historical depth. See Walter Rusch and Lothar Stein, Siwa und die Aulad ‘Ali. Darstellung und Analyse der sozialökonomischen, politischen und ethnischen Entwicklung der Bevölkerung der Westlichen Wüste Ägyptens und des Prozesses ihrer Integration in den Ägyptischen Staat von Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts bis 1976 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1988).
- 3.
Administratively, Matrouh Governorate is divided into eight districts or centers, each of them known as a markaz. These are, from east to west: al-Hamam, al-Alamein, al-Dab‘a, Matrouh, Siwa, al-Nigila, Sidi Barrani, and Salloum. The governorate comprises eight cities, 43 villages and 182 subvillages.
- 4.
These numbers are rough estimations given by my key informants and the governorate administration in Marsa Matrouh in 2011. The official numbers of the Egyptian census speak of 400,000 inhabitants in the entire governorate of Matrouh; see Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, last modified 2015, http://www.capmas.gov.eg. Some Awlad ‘Ali politicians claim that there are more than five million Awlad ‘Ali residing in Egypt. Abdelsatar Hetita, an Awlad ‘Ali tribesman and journalist for the Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper, stated in a conference in Florence in 2014 that there were around ten million Awlad ‘Ali in Egypt. In any case, with below 3 percent of the total population tribal groups are a small minority in Egypt.
- 5.
For a more detailed account on the process of sedentarization see Thomas Hüsken and Olin Roenpage, Jenseits von Traditionalismus und Stagnation. Analyse einer beduinischen Ökonomie in der Westlichen Wüste Ägyptens (Münster: LIT-Verlag, 1998), 29ff.
- 6.
The ‘Obeidat are the leading tribe in the eastern part of Cyrenaica. Several men of the ‘Obeidat tribe have been part of the Libyan political establishment before, during and after Gaddafi. Well-known figures are Abdul Fatah Younis Al-Obeidi, minister under Gaddafi and leading general of the revolutionary forces, and Suleiman Mahmoud Obeidi, one of the young officers in the days of Gaddafi’s revolution, later general of the Libyan border troops in Tobruk, and one of the first generals to defect from Gaddafi in support of the revolution in 2011.
- 7.
All desert territories officially belong to the Egyptian state.
- 8.
The watan of the Awlad ‘Ali is divided into three different geographical zones (see Thomas Hüsken and Olin Roenpage, Jenseits von Traditionalismus und Stagnation. Analyse einer beduinischen Ökonomie in der Westlichen Wüste Ägyptens [Münster: LIT-Verlag, 1998], 25ff.): the coastal plain, the coastal escarpment (followed by a plateau) and the inland plain, after which the open desert begins. The coastal plain extends up to 10 km inland. It benefits from a large number of valleys and ephemeral riverbeds (wadi, pl. wadian) that deliver runoff water from rainfall during the winter months, and also has significant depths of fertile soil, thus making it the zone with the most intensive agricultural production. There are olive and fig orchards, other fruit trees, and farmers cultivate vegetables and cereals. Grazing land for sheep is limited by intensive agrarian farming, and only small flocks are kept. The plain ends at the coastal escarpment, which is followed by a plateau that extends up to 20 km inland. Here, wheat and barley fields are interspersed with natural pastures used by shepherds and their flocks. Figs and olives can be cultivated only in small depressions and upper wadian in this zone. The third zone begins 20 km south of the coastline and extends for up to 70 km into the desert. Here, grain cultivation decreases rapidly toward the south and is replaced by grazing areas for sheep, goats and camels. However, even this natural pasture disappears steadily after 30 km, and gives way to the open desert.
- 9.
As in the case of Egypt, these numbers are only rough estimations based on information given by key informants and local politicians.
- 10.
While the Qutu‘an see themselves as an independent tribe, many Awlad ‘Ali view them as part of their tribal confederation. Despite this dispute, relations between the two groups are thick and historically grounded (see Chap. 3).
- 11.
Presented in his essay “The Power of Shaikhs” in the edited collection of Peters’ essays cited above.
- 12.
This is also true of my and Olin Roenpage’s book on the economy of the Awlad ‘Ali: Thomas Hüsken and Olin Roenpage, Jenseits von Traditionalismus und Stagnation. Analyse einer beduinischen Ökonomie in der Westlichen Wüste Ägyptens (Münster: LIT-Verlag, 1998).
- 13.
See Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments. Honour and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley & Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1986), 280ff.
- 14.
For a cross-cultural comparison—including East Asia and Africa—on tribes and warfare, see Jürg Helbling, Tribale Kriege: Konflikte in Gesellschaften ohne Zentralgewalt (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2006).
- 15.
See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973).
- 16.
This is also the way the Awlad ‘Ali dress in Libya.
- 17.
The Awlad ‘Ali speak and understand Egyptian Colloquial Arabic as it is spoken in Alexandria or Cairo, but Egyptians do not understand their dialect at all.
- 18.
The Awlad ‘Ali fought in the First and Second Egyptian–Ottoman Wars (1831–1833 and 1839–1841) as Bedouin battalions. In the North Yemen Civil War (1962–1967), the Six-Day War (1967), the War of Attrition (1967–1970) and the October War (1973) (the latter three against Israel), they served as ordinary soldiers. In the short Egyptian–Libyan War (1977), Awlad ‘Ali soldiers were not involved.
- 19.
Omar al-Mukhtar (1858–1931) fought against Italian colonial rule in Libya for almost 30 years. He is a national hero in Libya and also among the Egyptian Awlad ‘Ali.
- 20.
Adel Rady speaks about 500,000 nights per season and has counted 48 hotels and resorts in the governorate. See Adel Rady, Profile of Sustainability in Some Mediterranean Tourism Destinations. Case Studies in Egypt: Marsa Matrouh , Al Alamein, Siwa Oasis (Matrouh Governorate), Final Report (FEMIP Trust Fund, 2011), 35.
- 21.
The revolution in Egypt and the subsequent political turmoil during the presidency of Mohamed Morsi between 2012 and 2013 severely affected domestic tourism in Egypt. When I personally spoke to the managers of the three most prominent hotels in Marsa Matrouh in 2012, they estimated a decrease in occupancy of more than 70 percent.
- 22.
According to informal information provided by the Matrouh governorate administration, the population of the city increased to around 30,000 people between 1990 and 2017.
- 23.
Tripolitania in the west, Fezzan in the south, and Cyrenaica in the east.
- 24.
Between 1993 and 1999, UN sanctions limited these practices.
- 25.
See note 19.
- 26.
According to customs regulations, one bag (with products purchased in Libya) per individual is tax free. The porters carry single bags with goods and commodities for traders. See Chap. 5 for details.
- 27.
See Donald P. Cole and Soraya Alorki, Bedouin, Settlers, and Holiday-Makers. Egypt’s Changing Northwest Coast (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1998), 65ff., and Hans-Detlef Müller-Mahn, Die Aulad ‘Ali zwischen Stamm und Staat, Entwicklung und sozialer Wandel bei den Beduinen im nordwestlichem Ägypten (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1989), 72ff.
- 28.
Alliances between tribes and Islamic reform movements are common in the history of the Middle East. In Saudi Arabia, the alliance between the House of Saud and the Wahabist movement even led to the formation of a nation-state; see Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia (London: Saqi Books, 1998). The special role of pious men or saints as mediators between the segments of a tribal system is also well documented by Ernest Gellner; see Ernest Gellner, Saints of the Atlas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).
- 29.
See Hans-Detlef Müller-Mahn, Die Aulad ‘Ali zwischen Stamm und Staat, Entwicklung und sozialer Wandel bei den Beduinen im nordwestlichem Ägypten (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1989), 82ff.
- 30.
The British colonial domination of Egypt began in 1882, and in 1914 Egypt became a protectorate of the British Empire.
- 31.
Libya lost almost one fifth of its population (around 300,000 out of a total population of 1.5 million) during the war of resistance against the Italians. This is the greatest loss of life proportional to population size in the entire colonial era worldwide.
- 32.
See Donald P. Cole and Soraya Alorki, Bedouin, Settlers, and Holiday-Makers. Egypt’s Changing Northwest Coast (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1998), 86ff.
- 33.
The losses certainly triggered the process of sedentarization. However, the settlement process had already started (albeit slowly) at the beginning of the twentieth century, initiated by the construction of a rail link between Alexandria and Salloum. At the railway stations various Bedouin groups of the Awlad ‘Ali could settle and use this infrastructure economically. In this way, the cities of Marsa Matrouh, Burg al-‘Arab, al-Hamam and others emerged.
- 34.
Sung-Joon Park uses the term “projectification” to identify the short-term approach of international donors in development in contrast to the long-term approach of state policies. See: Sung-Joon Park, Staging Global Public Health: Workshops, Technologies of Participation, and the Authorization of Knowledge in Antiretroviral Therapy in Uganda, Priority Programme 1448 Working Paper Series, edited by Ulf Engel and Richard Rottenburg, no. 6 (Leipzig and Halle: Adaptation and Creativity in Africa – Technologies and Significations in the Making of Order and Disorder (research programme), German Research Foundation, 2014), 4ff.
- 35.
See Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments. Honour and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley & Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1986), 280ff.
- 36.
See Dirk Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 139ff.
- 37.
See: Benedikt Korf and Timothy Raeymaekers, “Introduction: Border, Frontier and the Geography of Rule at the Margins of the State,” in Violence on the Margins. States, Conflict, and Borderlands, eds. Benedikt Korf and Timothy Raeymaekers (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 9ff.
- 38.
See: Hastings Donnan, “Anthropology of Borders,” in International Encyclopedia of Social & Behavioral Sciences, eds. Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001), 1290.
- 39.
The incident has become part of the political folklore of the Awlad ‘Ali in Matrouh and has been told many times ever since.
- 40.
The tribes of the Sinai Peninsula have been confronted and affected by the changing policies of two competing states (Egypt and Israel), and at times have been almost crushed between them (see Emanuel Marx, Bedouin of Mount Sinai. An Anthropological Study of Their Political Economy (New York: Berghahn, 2014). The Israeli occupation of Sinai (1967–1982) created an air of treachery around the Sinai tribes, who were seen as collaborators with Israel by the Egyptians. More recently, the involvement of the tribes in cross-border trade and smuggling into Gaza, organized human trafficking and the connections between some tribes and radical Islamist factions have further complicated relations between them and the Egyptian state. Israel, on the other hand, has erected a highly protected border, difficult to circumvent or penetrate. For the tribes of the Eastern Desert, Sudan did not offer equal economic opportunities in the way Libya did for the Awlad ‘Ali.
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Hüsken, T. (2019). People, Places and a Brief History. In: Tribal Politics in the Borderland of Egypt and Libya. Palgrave Series in African Borderlands Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92342-0_3
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