Bedouin Bureaucrats by Nora Barakat;

Author:Nora Barakat;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

In the days after the Ayn Suwaylih attack in early May, Nahar al-Bakhit was taken into custody in Salt along with about sixty other Ê¿Abbadi and Ê¿Adwani men, as well as a few members of the Bani Hassan, a large tent-dwelling community attached administratively to the district of Ajlun (north of Salt), and townsmen from the nearby village of Fuhays. For Nahar al-Bakhit and his colleagues, the prolonged detention of so many of the leading men of the Ê¿Abbad and Ê¿Adwan in early summer, an important season for their agricultural projects just before harvest, would have been nothing short of disastrous. Once in prison, Nahar al-Bakhit quickly resumed his role as representative of the Manasir with the Ottoman authorities. Rather than collecting taxes or witnessing court cases, however, he aimed to secure the release of the men from his and other Bedouin communities from prison.

According to later depositions, Nahar al-Bakhit was at the forefront of an attempt by the imprisoned Bedouin, villagers, and townsmen to gather enough money from fellow prisoners and relatives to bribe Ottoman officials, from the police and local military all the way up to the county governor, to secure their release as initial investigations into the Ayn Suwaylih attack began.67 Al-Bakhit was well positioned to lead this initiative precisely because he had cultivated so many connections with local Ottoman officials through his work as headman of the Manasir. While in the Salt lockup, al-Bakhit met with a local military officer and reportedly gave him cash to pass on to the governor of Karak county, Cemal Bey.68 Beyond trying to secure their release through bribes, the prisoners also attempted to escape from the Salt lockup repeatedly in May and June. In late June, Cemal Bey used their escape attempts to justify moving the seventy detainees 140 kilometers south to the Karak castle (fig. 4.1), ostensibly a larger prison facility and closer to his own headquarters.69 This decision was even more disastrous for Nahar al-Bakhit and his fellow prisoners. Once in Karak, a twenty-four-hour ride on horseback from Salt, they would be effectively cut off from their family and business networks, and it would be extremely difficult to continue directing their affairs from inside prison.

After a journey on the newly opened Hijaz railroad from Amman to Karak, the prisoners were shown their new quarters: a section of the castle used as a grain warehouse for the military had been hastily emptied ahead of their arrival.70 Cemal Bey was later criticized for ordering the soldiers to imprison humans in a space meant for supplies: while bigger than the lockup in Salt, the prison was damp, low-ceilinged, and had sewage problems that quickly got out of hand.71 In subsequent depositions, al-Bakhit’s fellow prisoners described how once in Karak, he began two projects as the unofficial leader of the detainees. The first involved gathering more money for the guards and police at the Karak prison from his fellow prisoners, as well as his relatives. Nahar al-Bakhit was used to collecting money

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.