Book Review by Steven Bowman: Blood and Honor: Our Cousins’ Justice

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Book Review by Steven Bowman: Blood and Honor: Our Cousins’ Justice
Bedouin Law from Sinai and the Negev: Justice without Government. Clinton Bailey. Published by Yale University Press, 2009. $70.00 pp.400

Two score years ago Clinton Bailey began his researches and sojourns among the Bedouin of the Negev and the Sinai Peninsula. Now, after a generation and several books on their proverbs and poetry, he presents a detailed study of Bedouin justice, a unique system of oral law that bears interesting synchronic and diachronic parallels with other tribal systems.[1]

Bedouin, being nomads, have no central government. Indeed settled populations have been their traditional enemies, or perhaps better argued, legitimate prey. Within Bedouin society there is a potentially Hobbesian chaos that threatens perpetual inter- and intra-tribal wars, at least that is how those raised on Lawrence of Arabia tend to view Bedouin society. The situation, as Bailey has analyzed it through many decades of research, is somewhat more nuanced as his latest study explains.

How does Bedouin society survive under such conditions, especially given its oral and unlettered condition? Bailey’s overlapping analyses are divided among six chapters: 1 covers general principles; 2 analyzes the tension between ’honor’ and ‘private might’; 3 examines the role of collective responsibility in the service of justice; 4 how private violence serves to achieve justice; 5 the complicated role of litigation and the authority of judges and witnesses; and finally 6 the laws pertaining to women, property, and sanctuary. An Afterword emphasizes that despite the apparent chaos of the system it works and is indeed a major human achievement, having survived for millennia.

Historically we can follow these nomadic groups for at least four millennia and perhaps even more. The ancient Egyptian Tale of Sinuhe has long been used by scholars to illuminate the world of Abraham, and of course our Book of Genesis records many customs and attitudes still evident among these Bedouin. One aspect of Bailey’s study is lacking however, and that is not his responsibility; namely a discussion of the mutual influence of biblical law and custom and subsequent rabbinic developments upon the customs and laws of the Bedouin tribes descended from Ishmael and Keturah among others. Also from an ethnographic perspective, the question arises how these Bedouin differ from the nomadic tribes of the Middle East and North Africa.

Clearly Bailey has given us important insights into the traditional and evolving society of the Bedouin of the Negev and Sinai and perhaps even more as they find themselves once again adjusting to a central Jewish society in Modern Israel as they had to do during the days of the Jewish monarchies of the First and Second Temple periods.

In addition, future researchers and ethnographers should study the practices and experiences of the dominant powers that ruled over Israel and adjacent lands and their attempts to control or at least temper the problems issuing from these unruly yet sophisticated nomads.

Bailey describes a society built on blood and honor. Since there is no overriding governmental law (unless backed by an army that can enforce its authority), each Bedu is responsible for his own life at all times. One of his best weapons is his protection of his honor defined by a complex and multi-faceted code which he will defend with his life or through a complicated system of negotiation involving other Bedouin – sheikhs, judges, elders, warriors, men of power – and subject to their greater honor and the responsibilities deriving from it.

Under certain circumstances, e.g., murder, he is allowed to kill a murderer or anyone dishonoring his women through violence, abduction, or rape. However, at any time the perpetrator or his kinsmen can ask for various kinds of truce so that the affair may be brought to arbitration, which, if accepted, becomes binding on both parties and their extended kinsmen – family, clan, tribe, sub-federation, confederation and allied groups that represent a sophisticated interlocking of different segments of the broader Bedouin society.

The responsibility of the elders and men of higher honor is to keep the level of violence to a manageable level so that the entire population does not explode into internecine wars that threaten its very survival. Each of the above groups has to weigh its chances of restoring its honor by various tactics – violence being carefully considered since warfare reduces the number of warriors whose primary duty is to protect the clan and tribal camp.

We recall the blessing to Rebecca in Genesis 24 that she may have many sons who form the wall to defend the camp. Women, too, have the right to kill in self defense or in revenge, but a woman can only thus be killed by another woman. A woman, even if she is married, can only be killed by a male member of her patrilinear family if she has dishonored her married tent and her husband’s options have not been arbitrated to a divorce. It should be emphasized that the men who are the protectors of the tribe are the only ones to function in the law; the women are protected but cannot be an active part of the society’s legal tradition.

Each insult, blow, wound, death has its compensation price, usually paid in camels but can be assessed in varying local currencies (Egyptian, Israeli, Jordanian).

However heavy the assessment, the possibility is immediately implemented by neutral men of honor to approach the recipient of the judgment and induce him to reduce the fine, which in most cases he will do in order to preserve his and their honor and occasionally that of the perpetrator! Honor in many cases supersedes the crime itself. The fined individual usually receives a guarantor who will stand for the assessed financial penalty. One option for the guilty party is to go into exile until the matter may be settled – however long it may take — sometimes extending over generations. If the perpetrator or his guarantor fail to fulfill the judge’s decision, then their names may be publicly blackened, a most devastating insult that stains their honor perhaps permanently unless they go through a humiliating set of public apologies.

Aside from murder, the other aspect of honor to be defended at all costs is that of the tent and the women belonging to it. More often than rape or suspicion of indiscretion is the abduction of a female [ancient ‘rape’ from the Latin to ‘carry off’] which is subject to strict rules. Usually the abductor has to send the father whose property he has stolen ‘the camel of abduction’ so that he will not embark on a vengeance chase. That acknowledgment of the abductor’s potential marriage plan will enable a truce (one of various kinds) so that the matter can be brought to arbitration with different stages including delegations (up to three attempts) of honorable men to begin preliminary negotiations.

Throughout these intricacies, as complicated as any primitive or even advanced society, Bailey brings numerous historical and contemporary cases which he analyzes for the reader. His citation of the various legal and social proverbs that serve as mnemonic devices for Bedouin oral traditions is a useful entrée to their thought processes. One leaves this study with renewed respect for the negotiating power of the nomads and their continuing diplomatic efforts to resolve death-deserving peccadilloes in the greater interest of the survival of their society. There is much here for the violent societies of the West and its varied legal systems to contemplate in its continuing endeavor to bring justice to the poor who are less valued than the widow, the orphan, and the poor among the nomads.

Professor Steven Bowman
Judaic Studies Department
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH 45221-0169


[1] Bedouin Law from Sinai & the Negev. Justice Without Government (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009).

Book Review by Steven Bowman: Blood and Honor: Our Cousins’ Justice

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