Caravan trade was always linked first and foremost to the political and economic situation in a wide

outside world, which sometimes comprised several continents. Nomads could sometimes join in this
trade, utilizing it in their own interests. But, as a rule, they neither created this trade, nor did they
determine its development and its fortune. Even amongst the Tuareg profits from the caravan trade
fluctuated considerably from century to century and from one group to another.

The great geographical discoveries and shift of trade routes at the beginning of the modern period
were a blow to intercontinental, and partly even to transcontinental caravan trade. In the long-term
perspective caravels became more important than caravans (cf. Hamb, 1979:381); just as the regular
armies of sedentary states which were equipped with firearms began to gain victories over the
irregular cavalries of nomads. However, in this respect cars were a much greater threat to caravans
than caravels were. As a whole trade with the sedentary agricultural and urban world was not
something from which nomads profited, but it was vitally necessary to them from the economic point
of view. More often than not it was not profit which they derived from this trade, but the elementary
means of existence.

Submission and the different forms of the dependence of nomads on sedentary societies
For nomads, and most particularly for nomadic aristocracies, not everything about incorporation in a
sedentary state' was negative. Cases are known where such incorporation was confined to more or
less formal acknowledge- ment of the state's sovereignty, frequently supplemented by an obligation
to provide military service. In this case the position of nomads was basically determined by two
factors: a simple alignment of their forces and those of the state, and the specific policy of the latter
with regard to nomads.

Such a situation, although it hampered nomads, nevertheless also involved certain benefits for them.
Along with increasing opportunities for exchange and trade, they also received payment for military
service. However, they never let pass an opportunity to pillage the sedentary population when the
right situation for this arose, for example if a government was weak or turned a blind eye to such
pillaging (see, for example, Lambton, 1953:139 on the situation under the Qajars; cf. Bates, 1971:
123).

Just as a dynasty which was nomadic by origin did not always put the interests of nomads before
those of its sedentary subjects, so a sedentary government could not always effectively defend the
interests of agricultural- ists before those of nomads. The submission and encapsulation of nomads
on the state level could be accompanied by their relative freedom on the local level. Nomads did not
always manifest loyalty to a dynasty, even if this dynasty had itself emerged from amongst them.
Even more difficult was it for a state to rely on nomads, quite apart from its sedentary inhabitants
whose way of life, culture and frequently even ethnicity were different from those of nomads. Right
up to the nineteenth century, and even to the twentieth century in some places (see, for example,
Salzman, 1979:441-4 on the Shah Nawazi Baluch) this situation was particularly characteristic of the
Near and Middle East, where states could not always effectively control the nomads who were more
or less formally under their sovereignty. The medieval history of Iran and North Africa can serve as an
example here. In Iran, from the eleventh century, nomads, in order to obtain and defend profitable
and privileged positions both with regard to the state itself and to its various groups, strata and
classes had to be powerful, that is centralized; this favoured the development of social stratification
amongst them. A weak state (and the state in Iran in this period was weak more often than not) in its
relations with the restless and recalcitrant nomadic element which, in effect, made up its basic mass
of warriors, looked for a way out by incorporating the nomadic aristocracy into the ranks of the ruling
class, bribing it with titles, official posts, gifts and lands. Thus in the fourteenth, fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, and sometimes even later, the chiefs of some nomadic tribes and their
subdivisions were nominated rulers of certain provinces and districts and frequently, after receiving
approval for this from their government, their duties became hereditary (Lambton, 1953:89f. ;
Petrushevsky , 1949:75f. ; Istoriia Irana, 1977:173, 190). Furthermore, nomadic leaders were
managers of those territories the revenues from which were marked out for one or other tribe. These
territories included not only pastures, but also arable lands on which there lived peasants who were
exploited. Admittedly, it should be borne in mind that in Iran, from the Saljuq period and most
particularly in the period following the fall of the Hiilagii's dynasty, there was no general opposition to
speak of between any nomads, on the one hand, and sedentaries and the state, on the other.
Different nomadic polities had different statuses in the various states on tne territory of Iran, even in
those states which had been created by nomads. Consequently, the leading positions in its own polity
did not always guarantee the nomadic aristocracy a corresponding position in the state, if only
because the state utilized the struggle for power between the different nomadic polities, setting off
one group of nomads against others. The only exceptions to this rule occurred when aristocracies
which were nomadic by descent lost their links with corresponding nomadic polities (Fernea, 1970;
Salzman, 1974:208).

Similar relations between nomads and states became most typical of North Africa after the
appearance there of the Banu Hilal nomads in the eleventh century, and different variations of such
relations continued to exist here for many more centuries, even in the periods of the strengthening
and centralization of state power (for a more detailed discussion of this point see Chapter 5).

'Thus, by degrees, these Arabs, settled for scarcely more than three- quarters of a century, came to
constitute a political force, on occasion a dominant one, and were to remain such until the beginning
of the twentieth century' (Julien, 1956a:118). But in North Africa the position of different nomadic
units within the same states also varied very considerably.

It goes without saying that situations such as those which have been described were, as a rule, very
favourable for nomads; however, they were not so very rare, particularly in places where nomads and
agriculturalists were not completely separated by ecological barriers. Otherwise the governments of
sedentary states sometimes invited individual groups of nomads into their lands on account of
internal political considerations andlor because they needed military assistance from nomads.

This, in particular, was the policy of the Samanids and Qarakhanids in Middle Asia (Barthold,
1963:382; Barthold, 1963b: 124). Admittedly, at the time of the Qarakhanid conquest the Turkic
guard of Samanids turned out to be unreliable, but this experience was not put to any good use.
When the Khwarazm-Shahs needed an army to pursue their conquests and strengthen their power in
the lands they had conquered they drew nomadic Qipchaqs into their service and intermarried with
the chiefs of the latter. Thus, under the Khwarazm-Shah Takish, a strong military estate was created.
However, this estate still had the traditional shortcomings, the conse- quences of which turned out to
be fatal for Khwarazm. The Qipchaqs were very unreliable when fighting nomads, but as if to make up
for this were ruthless in their plunder of sedentary territories which had been captured and set the
local population up against the Khwarazm-Shah. Furthermore, they turned out to be inclined to court
intrigues. In the reign of Khwarazm-Shah Muhammed they upheld his mother, Turkhan Khatun and
were in opposition to the Shah himself (Barthold, 1963:413, 445). Muhammed clearly did not trust
his army. Perhaps this was one reason behind the fatal decision to spread the army out over the
towns of Maveraunhnar instead of massing it together to go into decisive battle with the advancing
Mongols.

Both Sasanian Iran and Byzantium, and Rome before this, hired Arabsto safeguard their borders from
one another. In the Fatimid period the migrations of Bedouin tribes from Arabia into Egypt continued.
The Bedouins joined the army and thus became part of the ruling class. In Egypt the adverse effects
of the Bedouins' presence were felt very strongly. nus they were encouraged to migrate westwards,
which was the beginning of the Hilal movement (Marqais, 1931 :78; Semenova, 1974: 105).

Very different dynasties - the Ghaznavid, Timurid, Safavid and Mogul - were keen to employ Afghan
chiefs alongside their own troops and awarded them with lands for their services. A particularly large
number of Afghans emigrated to India during the period of the Lodi (1450- 1526) and Sur (1540- 55)
dynasties, in which they made up the ruling strata (Reisner, 1954:63). However, it is also known that
there were quite a number of cases in which the status of nomads within a sedentary state was more
ambiguous and not so beneficial for them, and especially not for ordinary nomads. The pressure of
state power was always felt, if not directly then obliquely, if not always in reality, then its potential
was always there. One of the most troublesome problems which nomads almost always faced
consisted in taxation and other obligations which states tried to impose upon them.

Even in medieval Iran nomads, especially those who did not come from privileged tribes were taxed
by the state (and this was quite apart from the military service they were obliged to contribute),
although at a lower rate than peasants (Petrushevsky , 19493312f.). There were particularly sharp
increases in these taxes after the reforms of Shah Abbas I and again in the reign of Nadir Shah.

Frequently entry into the structure of a sedentary state was less painful for nomads when this state
held sway over a large expanse of territory and successfully conducted a policy of conquest. For then
economic benefits bought political submission, the pillaging of aliens compensated with interest for
their inability to pillage 'their own' agriculturalists and townsmen.

As has been noted by Watt (1953:20), '. . . the Qur'an appeared not in the atmosphere of the desert,
but in that of high finance.' In a state in which Islam had recently emerged, the problem of the
Bedouins was felt very acutely. Although Muhammad neither liked, nor trusted Bedouins (see, for
example, Qurhn, Sura 49, verse 14), it was they who made possible the success of the state which he
had created (cf. on the other hand Asad, 1973:65-6). However, Muhammad was farsighted enough
not to try to change the basis of their social organization. From the Bedouins who, according to the
cynical phrase of Caliph Umar, 'furnished Islam with its own material' (Hitti, 1956:29) and of whom a
very considerable number had migrated from Arabia, all that was demanded was that they accepted
Islam, that is that they acknowledged the state's sovereignty. Evidently, it was only the benefits from
incipient conquests which guaranteed their loyalty to the new state and new religion. Arabia itself,
from the time of the first Caliphs up to the appearance of Wahhabism in the eighteenth century, had
almost no knowledge of a single Power and a single statehood, and the Bedouins were fairly
indifferent towards Islam.

'. . . It is true that on the Turkish borders the Bedouins, out of prudence, keep up an appearance of
being Muslims; but they are so lacking in reli- gious rigour, SO slack in their devotions, that in general
they are regarded as infidels, knowing neither the law nor the prophets. Indeed they are quite willing
to say that the religion of Mahomet was not made for them'.

To a certain extent history repeated itself when Wahhabism emerged. It was primarily in the oases of
Arabia that this teaching spread. But the notion of Jihad - a holy war against 'polytheism' - which was
being developed by Wahhabism resulted in practice in raids and military expansion, and this was
fairly attractive to Bedouins. If in the first years of the emergence of the Wahhabi state the Saudis
were constantly at war with the Bedouins, from the eighties of the eighteenth century they began to
work together more and more as allies (Vasilev, 1967: 125,13Of.), although a number of the imposed
limitations and the obligation to pay zakat (tax legitimately paid by Moslems on their possessions)
were clearly not to the Bedouins' liking. In essence the first state of the Saudis was created by the
elite of the sedentary towns and oases in Najd in order to halt the endless internal wars which made
normal conditions for production impossible, the struggle with the Turkish threat and common
military expansion under the banner of a reformed Islam. The nomadic aristocracy only temporarily
joined up with this elite, partly because of profits it could derive by doing so, and partly as the result
of compulsion. The Bedouins were always ready to cast off the Saudi yoke, as the wars of Mohammed
Ali which led to the complete destruction of the Saudi state showed. According to an interesting,
although unproven suggestion of Lattimore (1967:222-3), the broad policy of conquest pursued by
Tibet in the eighth century A.D. was conducted for the benefit of nomads, so as to capture their
interest and draw them to the Lhasa state. An analogy between this situa- tion and Muhammad and
his Bedouins inevitably suggests itself here. Frequently a sedentary state, even when it was stronger
and militarily had the upper hand, resorted to a policy of indirect government when dealing with
nomads, not wishing directly to alter their sociopolitical organization, particularly in its lower levels; it
was satisfied merely to encapsulate nomads within the limits of the state. As a result, sometime8
'administrative nomadic chiefdoms' of their own particular kind emerged. But such a policy in itself
already led to more or less marked social transformations. The nomadic aristocracy was sometimes
partially incorporated into the ruling classes. At the same time the help of the government and the
functions of the mediators between the state and ordinary nomads in a nomadic polity strengthened
the position of the nomadic aristocracy vis d vis the ordinary nomads (cf. Marqais, 1913:238ff. ;
Stenning, 1959:73-7; Barth, 1962:349; Irons, 1979: 371 ; Salzman, 1974; Salzman, 1979:433, 434ff .).
From the first century B.c., when part of the Hsiung-nu were forfed to acknowledge the sovereignty
of China, China conducted a policy of indirect rule with regard to the nomads she had subjected. This
involved her in supporting and bribing local nomadic aristocracies, and sometimes even in directly
interfering in the internal affairs of nomads, enabling their social organization to be transformed.
Thus the Mongolian elite, the leaders of the aimaks and khoshuns which became the permanent
territorial-administrative units under the Manchus, was included in the Ch'ing bureaucracy and
received a salary from the government, while at the same time it exacted dues from ordinary nomads
for its own use.

Chapter 4 part 3 Khazanov