I once had tea with some bedouins in Jordan’s Wadi Rum around 2015 or so and these pictures could have been of that tea. The tent looked the same.
They were really nice people who just stopped some travelers for tea and a chat. They weren’t selling anything and wouldn’t take any gives or thank yous. Frequently when traveling you’ll get some fake hospitality experiences that end up just “gift shopping” but this experience was neat to me as they seemed just interested in travelers.
I wonder how frequently they do that as the road wasn’t super busy, but also wasn’t abandoned. We maybe spent half an hour and no else came by.
Also traveled that area, late 90s thru 2000. Somewhere with caves we went scrambling all over until through one hole a friend and I had clearly and unknowingly climbed into a families living room. Their first words (in Arabic), would you like some tea? You're english, right?
We hadn't realised (or ignorantly) but we were scrambling over a lived in area, peoples property. The reaction from everyone we randomly met was the same, warm, smiling.
The animals are in a line bunched up close and alternating facing so that one animal has its head on the shoulders of the two animals next to itself and looking towards their rear.
I haven't seen that before. More peculiar is that I can't see them eating anything. Normally when animals are milked, it's lunch (or dinner) time. They line up in front of their troughs and they're milked while they eat. Typically there's some kind of divider or railing to keep them more or less still also. Otherwise you need to have really well disciplined and calm animals or you'll get lots of hooves in milk pots and so on.
It's also very interesting to see how they dried their cheeses on top of their tents. These look like small, lactic cheeses. If they had a good source of salt they would probably be very high on salt both to help preserve and sanitise them and also to replenish the salt lost by the people to the heat of the desert. Anyway that must have been really strong cheese: sun-dried, very salty, goat's milk cheese. Yum.
These photos are of stunning quality. I'm not sure I've seen any 19th century photos that come close, even with retouching and postprocessing. But also the lighting is incredible. Like it looks more like something associated with a more modern (ie post-WWII) technique.
I didn't see any mention of the provenance of these photos. Anyone know?
Interesting that they say “taxation” of caravans was their source of income, so were they effectively grifters making caravans pay them for protection money?
Grifters is probably still on the euphemistic side -- one wonders what happened to those unable to meet "tax" bills. In the early 2010s present day Bedouins in the Sinai were widely reported to supplement their incomes by torturing would-be migrants from Africa to death unless their ransom money demands were met by the families or harvesting and selling their organs.
I think this is an interesting thing. If you scale the idea of 'country' down to the size of a tribe, then you can call it taxation, whithout any euphemism. They control/own the land, they decide the 'laws' on it. If that is good or bad for development of a region is another question.
I read that as a very polite way of saying that, historically speaking, they were widely regarded as thieves. As in, if you traveled in certain places of the desert without an armed escort, you would be robbed.
It depends on the specific tribe. But absolutely, yes, some of the Bedouin tribes were (and still are) in the "protection" business (in the criminal sense). Some tribes have other professions.
This article about the history of Greco-Roman Palmyra recently posted here [0] shows that Palmyra citizens made their living as caravan traders ferrying goods from India and China to the Roman empire across the Syrian desert.
It's likely that part of their success in doing so was by having effective alliances with Bedouin tribes of the region.
>"Palmyra’s role in all this was to help get the merchandise over the eight hundred miles that separated the cities and ports of Syria from the Persian Gulf and the sea route, by crossing the Syrian desert to the welcoming banks of the Euphrates and the fertile Persian territory; this was the annual adventure of the large caravans. The bartering and the palavers with tribal chiefs and the bribing of the Roman and Persian customs officers were done in Greek and Aramaic, the international languages of business."
So this "taxation" likely has a history going back over 2,000 years and would be a known feature of trading relations, not very different from paying a fee to use the Suez canal today.
They most probably were in possession of the monopoly of violence in those parts of the world and as such, like any other state, they exercised their rights to tax people.
I took an interest in the Bedouins after seeing the film Lawrence of Arabia, which features them. If you haven’t seen it and have a few hours to kill, you definitely should.
I highly recommend the book Lawrence in Arabia, by Scott Anderson, which puts that story in context. It follows four people active in the area at the time: TE Lawrence (who first went to the Middle East as an archaeologist), an American employee of Standard Oil, the leader of a Jewish spy ring working with the British, and a Turkish official. Very interesting.
"Arabian Sands" is an fascinating book describing travels though the empty quarter in Saudi Arabia and interactions with the Bedouin at a time when their way of life was about to start changing fast (1940s):
1898 is pretty early in the technology of photography, maybe I didn't read carefully enough, but I would like to know what was used to take these photographs. They are very interesting and look better than I would expect for 1898!
As to the history of photography, when these were taken Fenton's [in]famous pictures of the Crimean War were already 50 years old. Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky colour pics of the Russian empire are of about the same early 20th century vintage.
It's over 50 years after the invention of photography. Plate photography was already quite a robust technology at that point in time. Sensitivity and exposure times weren't too bad either. The first experimental color photographs were made some 20 years earlier.
“123 years from now, these images will be transmitted on a vast world wide information network. These small windows into your life will make impressions on the minds of thousands of future strangers across the globe. And incredibly, the magic of this journey through space and time, will be cheapened by embedded pop up ads.”
For those of you who saw the "instrument", noticed that it's a bagpipe, check out the huge range of bagpipes from round the world: http://www.bagpipesociety.org.uk/guide/
Smiling to cameras is a learned behavior, and not something unfamiliar adults do naturally. (Kids do more smiling in general and are less aware of cameras / less self-conscious about their appearance, so if you go somewhere without a culture of cameras and take candid shots, you’ll get more smiling kid pictures than smiling adult pictures.
My godparents are indigenous Maya peasants from southern Mexico, and until the last decade or two no adult in their village would ever smile to a camera, and certainly not in a formal portrait. Nowadays they are more exposed to mainstream Mexican/World culture, and norms are changing fast, but if you tell some adult you want to take their portrait you are still likely to get a very serious expression.
The reason I heard is that it took a long time to take a shot and was expensive. So you did not want to mess up a shoot with a smile. Better go for the safe option and put on your RBF.
When traveling in SE Asia maybe 20 years ago, locals would ask me to have their picture taken. The older people would just stand there stiff as a plank and absolutely no expression on their face.
Younger kids would put their index finger & thumb in the shape of a gun and hold that under their chin and they would smile.
When I take pictures of my own kids (toddlers) they also have no idea about smiling, you have to "teach them" but then you end up with super fake expressions.
Of course, now Saudi Arabia has changed a lot due to oil revenue and, then, construction of cities, especially near the coast of the Persian Gulf.
But in recent years, surprisingly, Saudi Arabia is well into farming! The have borrowed the idea used in dryer parts of the US called center point irrigation. So, from a central pivot, they have a long boom, on wheels, that goes round and round spraying water drawn from the center point.
For the water? There was lots of it in the area some thousands of years ago, and it accumulated in fresh water aquifers now some hundreds of feet down.
In addition, on their west coast, that is, along the Red Sea, there are some mountains and, surprisingly, moisture blows in from the west and generates rain in the mountains. Soooooo, they've been capturing the runoff from that rain and using it for more agriculture.
I've always wondered why desert nomads dress like they do. Given modern fabrics and constructions, would you chose to dress like this to go to the desert? I understand it is an area of extreme heat in the day and extreme cold when the sun goes down, the head and face protection I understand, but the flowing, multi-layered robes? The conjecture would be that they insulate more than disperse heat via evaporative cooling? Seems like we have cold-weather gears figured out with cold and high-altitude expeditions, but desert gears?
There are several reasons. One is that white fabric is transparent, and the sun will reach the skin. Black fabric blocks the sun, and the heat is kept in the upper robe, and doesn't penetrate inward.
Another reason is the structure of the garment - it's a robe that is open from top to bottom, this allows air currents to flow along the skin, drawing away moisture and cooling the person.
The heat of the sun acts as the engine that causes that airflow (i.e. it's worth slightly higher temperature, which will then cause the hotter air to rise up, and out the neck carrying moisture with it).
And finally, you don't want a sunburn.
Modern heat control is all about exposing the skin for the cooling, but it relies on shelter and sunscreen to block the sun.
If you can't block the sun then you want a garment to do it.
Polygyny, where one male mates with more than one female while each female mates with only one male, is thought to be the fundamental mating system of animals.
Interestingly they look and behave quite similar even today as one can see in southern Israel, some replaced camels with an old beaten Subaru 4x4 but they still used tents, grow animals and wear traditional clothes
[+] [-] prepend|4 years ago|reply
They were really nice people who just stopped some travelers for tea and a chat. They weren’t selling anything and wouldn’t take any gives or thank yous. Frequently when traveling you’ll get some fake hospitality experiences that end up just “gift shopping” but this experience was neat to me as they seemed just interested in travelers.
I wonder how frequently they do that as the road wasn’t super busy, but also wasn’t abandoned. We maybe spent half an hour and no else came by.
[+] [-] IndySun|4 years ago|reply
We hadn't realised (or ignorantly) but we were scrambling over a lived in area, peoples property. The reaction from everyone we randomly met was the same, warm, smiling.
[+] [-] cheese_goddess|4 years ago|reply
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZaZgfe2Gyk0/XqHI23JcnqI/AAAAAAAAW...
The animals are in a line bunched up close and alternating facing so that one animal has its head on the shoulders of the two animals next to itself and looking towards their rear.
I haven't seen that before. More peculiar is that I can't see them eating anything. Normally when animals are milked, it's lunch (or dinner) time. They line up in front of their troughs and they're milked while they eat. Typically there's some kind of divider or railing to keep them more or less still also. Otherwise you need to have really well disciplined and calm animals or you'll get lots of hooves in milk pots and so on.
It's also very interesting to see how they dried their cheeses on top of their tents. These look like small, lactic cheeses. If they had a good source of salt they would probably be very high on salt both to help preserve and sanitise them and also to replenish the salt lost by the people to the heat of the desert. Anyway that must have been really strong cheese: sun-dried, very salty, goat's milk cheese. Yum.
[+] [-] h2odragon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cletus|4 years ago|reply
I didn't see any mention of the provenance of these photos. Anyone know?
[+] [-] wincy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrec|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugee_kidnappings_in_Sinai
[+] [-] stkdump|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cobbzilla|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amitport|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcrh|4 years ago|reply
It's likely that part of their success in doing so was by having effective alliances with Bedouin tribes of the region.
>"Palmyra’s role in all this was to help get the merchandise over the eight hundred miles that separated the cities and ports of Syria from the Persian Gulf and the sea route, by crossing the Syrian desert to the welcoming banks of the Euphrates and the fertile Persian territory; this was the annual adventure of the large caravans. The bartering and the palavers with tribal chiefs and the bribing of the Roman and Persian customs officers were done in Greek and Aramaic, the international languages of business."
So this "taxation" likely has a history going back over 2,000 years and would be a known feature of trading relations, not very different from paying a fee to use the Suez canal today.
[0] https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/home/oasis-palmyra
[+] [-] paganel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] user3939382|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 618033988749894|4 years ago|reply
https://www.powells.com/book/lawrence-in-arabia-978030747641...
[+] [-] pimeys|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] publicola1990|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martinpw|4 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_Sands
[+] [-] craigching|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pvg|4 years ago|reply
https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/colony.html
As to the history of photography, when these were taken Fenton's [in]famous pictures of the Crimean War were already 50 years old. Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky colour pics of the Russian empire are of about the same early 20th century vintage.
[+] [-] skhr0680|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ginko|4 years ago|reply
For reference this color photo was made about 10 years after these: https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsc.03959/
[+] [-] hellbannedguy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dqpb|4 years ago|reply
- Bedouin Oracle, 1898
[+] [-] afandian|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ammmir|4 years ago|reply
Maybe cameras of the time were too big and serious looking, and everyone ended up posing.
[+] [-] jacobolus|4 years ago|reply
My godparents are indigenous Maya peasants from southern Mexico, and until the last decade or two no adult in their village would ever smile to a camera, and certainly not in a formal portrait. Nowadays they are more exposed to mainstream Mexican/World culture, and norms are changing fast, but if you tell some adult you want to take their portrait you are still likely to get a very serious expression.
[+] [-] ruph123|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stef25|4 years ago|reply
Younger kids would put their index finger & thumb in the shape of a gun and hold that under their chin and they would smile.
When I take pictures of my own kids (toddlers) they also have no idea about smiling, you have to "teach them" but then you end up with super fake expressions.
[+] [-] aemreunal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 4ad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jart|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noisy_boy|4 years ago|reply
---
T.E. Lawrence: My friends, we have been foolish. Auda will not come to Aqaba. Not for money...
Auda abu Tayi: No.
T.E. Lawrence: ...for Feisal...
Auda abu Tayi: No!
T.E. Lawrence: ...nor to drive away the Turks. He will come... because it is his pleasure.
Auda abu Tayi: Thy mother mated with a scorpion.
[+] [-] graycat|4 years ago|reply
But in recent years, surprisingly, Saudi Arabia is well into farming! The have borrowed the idea used in dryer parts of the US called center point irrigation. So, from a central pivot, they have a long boom, on wheels, that goes round and round spraying water drawn from the center point.
For the water? There was lots of it in the area some thousands of years ago, and it accumulated in fresh water aquifers now some hundreds of feet down.
In addition, on their west coast, that is, along the Red Sea, there are some mountains and, surprisingly, moisture blows in from the west and generates rain in the mountains. Soooooo, they've been capturing the runoff from that rain and using it for more agriculture.
[+] [-] baud147258|4 years ago|reply
though once the aquafers are empty, they won't refill anytime soon with the current precipitations
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] devchix|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|4 years ago|reply
Another reason is the structure of the garment - it's a robe that is open from top to bottom, this allows air currents to flow along the skin, drawing away moisture and cooling the person.
The heat of the sun acts as the engine that causes that airflow (i.e. it's worth slightly higher temperature, which will then cause the hotter air to rise up, and out the neck carrying moisture with it).
And finally, you don't want a sunburn.
Modern heat control is all about exposing the skin for the cooling, but it relies on shelter and sunscreen to block the sun.
If you can't block the sun then you want a garment to do it.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] okareaman|4 years ago|reply
https://web.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Pol...
I didn't realize there was a more specific form of polygamy that is thought to be the fundamental mating system of animals
[+] [-] chunyu_wang|4 years ago|reply
Their eyes seem quite large to me.
[+] [-] danlugo92|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allovertheworld|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2rsf|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flyinglizard|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonplackett|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] focom|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] garfieldnate|4 years ago|reply