Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

43
ARABIA
Land surface feature*
Bnictiah Miles o so 100
Cultivated land, and available f>tr cultivation
Stepp«
i rrrrn
.« L-liLl Desert
,t
which a man’s hand will be against every man and every man’s hand against him, the security of a tribe and even its mere existence dsperds on its military power. Only by force can herds be kept safely, for raiding is the national sport of the Arabs. The blood feud illu,trates the place of tribal solidarity.16 The tribal complex co isisted of c’nrs r°’s*ed to one another through a comr*on bond of kinship connected in some distant past to their eponymous ancestor. To quote W.R. Smith: ”At that time the tribal bond ali over the Arabia, so for as our evidence goes, was conceived as a bond of

1 inship. All the members of the group regarded themselves as of one blood. This appear most clearly in the law of blood feuu, which in Arabia as among other early peoples affords the means of measuring the limits of effective kinship. A kindred group is a group within which there is no blood-feud. If a man kills one of his own kin he finds no one to take his part. Either he is put to death -by his own people or he become an outla_w and must take refuge in an alien group. On the other hand, if the slayer and slain are of different kindred groups a blood-feud at once arises and the slain man may be avenged by any member of his own group on any member of the group of the slayer.

The vOnstant intertribal feuds, sometimes over the murdered individual who belonged -to another kindred group and most of the time over amenities of subsistence which also took the form of looting and plundering of mercantile Caravan led to tremendous killing uninterrupted over months, involving a great tooi of human lives. Such a vendetta was one of the ordinary patterns of inter-tribal living. But more than the blood which was shed during inter-tribal feuds, it was not difficult to suppose that the blood, as both reality and symbol, constituted the highest bond of belonging and trust, affinity and sentiment.
A society based on the kindred group and male kinship presupposed a basic equality between its members. Equality as such required a system of authority to sustain it wherein the persona! prestige of the leader combined with his virtues of ^erierosily, hospitality, benevolence and moderation also rested on the number and the equality of his allies and dependents. The leader was called upon to assent to the unspoken will of those whom he liked to
Ibid