Christian Bedouins: The forgotten people
Jan 2, 2017 21:02:20 GMT -4
Souriquois, Liza, and 1 more like this
Post by Nabatea on Jan 2, 2017 21:02:20 GMT -4
One a person hears of the word Bedouin or that ethnic group they imagine them to be mostly Muslims or of the animistic faith, but never to be a Christian. This community of Bedouin Christians lives mostly in Jordan. They are nominal Christians and at the same time Bedouin. Due to culture and traditions the Bedouin Christians often felt more related to the Muslim Bedouin population than to other Near Eastern Christians. Most Bedouin Christians belong to two large Bedouin tribes the Akasheh and Hejazeen.
Bedouin Christians: the phrase sounds a little strange. Of the Christian tribes in Jordan, there are two, the Hijazeen and 'Akasheh, who have only this century abandoned the nomadic life and even today raise goats and sheep as herdsmen. There are probably no Christians in the world so closely integrated into the religious and cultural matrix from which Islam emerged, the Hijazeen themselves tracing their origins to the Hijaz, the birthplace of Islam. They feel completely comfortable identifying themselves culturally with the world that produced Islam, a potentially disturbing suggestion to Christian Arabs of citied or agricultural provenance. Living in alliance with Muslim tribes as they have for centuries, these Christians of Bedouin origin offer a unique example of a Christian life that expresses itself in language very much shared with Islam.
Madaba is well known in Jordan as an important horse breeding centre. It also has a very large Christian population, so you may notice a great number of women without the "Islamic scarf" in the streets. What we call "the old town" dates mainly from "the Ottoman period" at the end of the nineteenth centure and the beginning of the twentieth. At this time, the Christian Bedouin who had settled in Madaba some thirty or forty years previously, had started to become traders and artisans, instead of making their living from their herds and flocks. They prospered and built churches and large houses for their families. If you look around you, you can see the juxtaposition of the old and the new just about everywhere!
Bedouin Christians: the phrase sounds a little strange. Of the Christian tribes in Jordan, there are two, the Hijazeen and 'Akasheh, who have only this century abandoned the nomadic life and even today raise goats and sheep as herdsmen. There are probably no Christians in the world so closely integrated into the religious and cultural matrix from which Islam emerged, the Hijazeen themselves tracing their origins to the Hijaz, the birthplace of Islam. They feel completely comfortable identifying themselves culturally with the world that produced Islam, a potentially disturbing suggestion to Christian Arabs of citied or agricultural provenance. Living in alliance with Muslim tribes as they have for centuries, these Christians of Bedouin origin offer a unique example of a Christian life that expresses itself in language very much shared with Islam.
Madaba is well known in Jordan as an important horse breeding centre. It also has a very large Christian population, so you may notice a great number of women without the "Islamic scarf" in the streets. What we call "the old town" dates mainly from "the Ottoman period" at the end of the nineteenth centure and the beginning of the twentieth. At this time, the Christian Bedouin who had settled in Madaba some thirty or forty years previously, had started to become traders and artisans, instead of making their living from their herds and flocks. They prospered and built churches and large houses for their families. If you look around you, you can see the juxtaposition of the old and the new just about everywhere!