On instruments and their designers: the Ikhwan of Najd and the emergence of the Saudi state

Kostiner, Joseph

doi:10.1080/00263208508700631

Cited by 29 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…44 This led the regime to turn a blind eye to many of the religious and cultural activities of such groups, provided they weren't undertaken overtly. 45 Similarly, the experiences of the previous regimes made clear the necessity of forming amicable ties with powerful states such as Britain and the United States.…”

Section: The First State (1744-1818)mentioning

confidence: 98%

The Saudi State as an Identity Racketeer

Rich

MacQueen

2017

Middle East Critique

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Although substantial research has examined the Saudi state's symbiosis with the Islamic revivalist movement commonly known as 'Wahhabism', few studies have considered how the dynamics of state formation underpin this relationship. This article argues that a continuous and circular political logic has sat behind the Saudi state's patronage of the revivalist movement since 1744 and proposes a four-stage model that explains how and why the regime has maintained this support over this prolonged period. This article first outlines this model, then presents a detailed analysis of its persistent presence in the development of Saudi state authority in order to highlight the recurrent manner by which the state often has constructed the spiritual concerns of revivalists to counter challenges to its authority, a pattern demonstrated most recently during the Arab Spring and the war in Yemen. The effects of this model will continue to shape the decisions, policies and perceptions of the Saudi political elite for the foreseeable future.

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Section: The First State (1744-1818)mentioning

confidence: 98%

The Saudi State as an Identity Racketeer

Rich

MacQueen

2017

Middle East Critique

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“…However, as Ibn Saud's preachers convinced the tribes one by one, hijras (communal settlements) began to be established. The Bedouin tribes were unexpectedly united under the banner of the Wahhabi unifying identity (Kostiner, 1985).…”

Section: The Key To Military Superiority: Hijras and Ikhwanmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Conservative to Permissive: The Shift in Saudi Arabia's Management Approach in the Shadow of English Relations

AYBUDAK

2023

Anadolu Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi

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This study examines the founding period of the current Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with a particular focus on the role that Saudi-British relations played in shaping the nation's development. Experts believe that these diplomatic ties, which were established prior to World War I, were instrumental in enhancing Saudi Arabia's position in the region. Through its interactions with the British and its ability to adapt to changing global politics, the Saudi government learned to consider realpolitik in its decision-making processes. As a result, the main argument of this study is that the Saudi perception of Wahhabism underwent a transformation, shifting from a conservative interpretation to a more permissive one. Through this investigation, we aim to contextualize the evolution of the Saudi government's understanding of religion, starting from its highly uncompromising stance in the Arabian desert and culminating in the Kingdom's proclamation in 1932.

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“…The soldiers belonging to his army, which conquered much of the Arabian Peninsula in the 1920s and created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, called each other ikhwān, "brothers" (Andreotti 2013; Bocco and Tell 1994:108, 110-11;Kostiner 1985). This was not because they thought that they were real kin but because they believed in the politico-religious ideology of the By putting the word "tribes" in scare-quotes here, I am expressing my unease with its lack of precision 1 and my reluctance to use it as an analytical term.…”

Section: The Level Of Large-scale Poli0cal Organiza0onsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Uses of Kinship for Political Ends by Local Descent Groups in Jordan

Young¹

2022

Kinship

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Kinship is an important dimension of politics throughout the Middle East and, specifically, in Jordan. At the level of face-to-face negotiations, three kinds of kinship (common descent, affinity, ritual kinship) are invoked in Jordan to garner support from an actor's kin and create political ties. At the level of large-scale organizations -such as tribes -appeals are made to kinship norms to mobilize members of each organization and enhance group solidarity. At the macroscopic level of national politics, rhetoric about the "national family" is used to try to pacify groups who have lost political battles or who are politically marginal to the decision-making process. Analysis of politics at all three levels can be improved by paying careful attention to kinship. Introduc0onSome twenty years ago, Middle East anthropologist Richard Antoun pointed out that, in Jordan, "the domain of kinship cannot be separated from the domain of politics either at the behavioral or the symbolic-cognitive level." His remarks were the culmination of over thirty years of detailed ethnographic research in a northern Jordanian village, during which he wrote numerous case studies that showed the importance of kinship for political action (Antoun 2000:460). Andrew Shryock and Sally Howell, writing at the same time, also emphasized that recurring images of political relations and metaphors about politics in Jordan are drawn from the domain of familial relations (Shryock and Howell 2001). For anthropologists of the Middle East, this is still common knowledge. Several non-anthropologists have also applied these insights in studies of Jordanian legal institutions (cf. Gao 2015, Petersohn 2015). Unfortunately, many anthropologists working outside of the Middle East overlooked the importance of kinship for political action during the first decade of this century, when ethnographic studies of kinship and politics in other Kinship for Political Ends in Jordan Young world areas were in decline. This paper aims to contribute to the revival of interest in the relationship between kinship and politics among anthropologists by providing some brief case studies of this relationship in Jordan.Before presenting the ethnographic data, however, I should explain what I mean by "kinship" in the Middle Eastern context. In most Arabic-speaking societies, in particular, "kinship" consists of three kinds of relationships: 1) social ties based on shared notions of descent from a common ancestor; 2) social ties based on marriage -or, as anthropologists express it, on affinity; and 3) social ties created through ritual. For all three types of kinship, collective representations (such as kinship terminology and the rules for behavior that people are expected to follow in their dealings with kin) are invoked by individuals to justify and explain their treatment of kin. They also refer to kinship norms in order to elicit or demand the kinds of behavior from others that they believe they are entitled to as kin. Because a political agent can invoke kinship to elicit p...

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On instruments and their designers: the Ikhwan of Najd and the emergence of the Saudi state

Cited by 29 publications

References 2 publications

The Saudi State as an Identity Racketeer

The Saudi State as an Identity Racketeer

From Conservative to Permissive: The Shift in Saudi Arabia's Management Approach in the Shadow of English Relations

The Uses of Kinship for Political Ends by Local Descent Groups in Jordan

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