The Arab concept of loyalties of kin
Regional, Culture, 7/6/1998

An additional approach to understanding the basic loyalties of kin and other solidarity groups in Arab society is to examine the classical notion of "Haasab," the esteem a person acquires through individual merit and deeds.

The specific modern terms and how they are elaborated vary considerably throughout the Arab Middle East, but the underlying ideas remain relatively constant. In practice, only specialists in genealogy can actively trace descent links in greater depth than three generations, whether the subject of enquiry is the great merchant families of Damascus or Cairo, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad in Morocco (Shurafa), or in Southern Arabia (As-Sada), or others. Considerable attention is given to the elaboration of ties among contemporaries. It is the belief in continuity of descent over long periods of time that plays an important role in claiming distinction in the present -- not necessarily the specific elaboration of such ties.

In Morocco, such ties of descent are often referred to as "closeness" (Qaraba). The terms carries contextual meanings that range from asserted and socially recognized ties of kinship to participation in alliances, ties of patronage and clientship, and common bonds developed through neighborliness. Closeness is constituted by compelling ties of obligation. However, they are honored in practice, such ties are considered to be permanent and enduring. In contexts other than those governed by Muslim inheritance law, closeness based upon family ties is generally not sharply differentiated from closeness based upon other grounds.

Most frequently, people seek to make the various bases for closeness overlap. The massive and rapid economic changes of the past few decades, the political upheavals that have seen the implantation of many self-declared "revolutionary" regimes in the Arab world since the 1950's, and the trebling of the Arab World's population since the end of World War I might be seen as indications of fundamental changes about to take place in the tenor of traditional patners of loyalty and association. Such transformations are underway, but are not inevitable consequences of such factors as changing economics and population growth. The most salient of these transformations is the coming of age for the first time of the educated masses.

Beginning in Egypt with the 1952 revolution, Morocco after independence in 1956, in Oman after the coming into power of Sultan Qaboos in 1970 -- to specify only three examples -- systems of mass education were instituted in the Arab states. Educational changes are notoriously slow to effect social change. Thus the first wave of villagers and urban proletariat to benefit from the greatly-increased access to schooling made available after Egypt's 1952 revolution only entered universities in the late 1960s, with comparable delays for other states. For the first time in the Arab world, education has given the non-elite in large numbers access to the "modern" world, and the disappointment of many with its unfulfilled promise.

The Arab Middle East as a whole appears remarkably conservative, but conservatism can be a vital, self-renewing force. Conservatism and the persistence of traditional loyalties in these areas should not be confused with stagnation.

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