The Assimilation of Nomads in Egypt

T HE gradual transition from total nomadism to a completely sedentary life, in which agricultural pursuits replace the herding of flocks, is a well-known social phenomenon common to many parts of the world. There are, however, interesting variations, due to local conditions. Egypt offers a particularly suitable illustration. In Egypt, when nomads become assimilated, they are said to have become fellahin (singular, fellah), a word meaning literally tillers of the soil, but with a cultural and social significance beyond this. Egypt is a country of sharp contrasts. The narrow alluvial valley of the lower Nile and its delta, both intensively cultivated, lie between two vast deserts, the eastern excessively arid, the western containing a few scattered oases. These desert areas constitute some 95 per cent of the whole country. This juxtaposition of a region of great fertility and one of extreme barrenness, with scarcely any zone of transition, is almost without parallel. The waters of the Nile flood reach to the edge of both deserts; it is often possible to stand with one foot on the desert and the other on a cultivated field. However, a zone of transition can be artificially created, when parts of the border cultivable areas are occupied by pastoral people who are not interested in tilling the soil. Such artificial zones of transition have, in fact, existed in Egypt at certain times, in both the eastern and the western limits of cultivation, and have strongly influenced the relationships between nomads and cultivators. At present such transition areas are insignificant, having been steadily brought under cultivation of one kind or another. The population of Egypt is naturally concentrated in the region of intensive cultivation, but the adjoining deserts, though too barren in part even for nomads, are not at present, and have never been in the past, without their own inhabitants, whose ethnic and cultural composition may have changed from time to time, but whose role in the life of the country has remained almost unaltered. These desert folk are sometimes established on the borders of the cultivated lands (Fig. i) and maintain regular relations with the settled peasant population in their neighborhood. They are also established in the heart of the desert to the east or to the west, where they live their own lives, with a minimum of contact with the peasant people of

Ancient history · Assimilation (phonology · Geography · Linguistics · African history and culture analysis · Animal Diversity and Health Studies · History · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology

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