Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
The proprietors of Amman's publishing houses do a brisk trade in books about politics and religion. They have also, in recent years, begun to profit from the growing demand for “tribal literature.” This new market, which emerged in the late 1970s, expanded greatly in the 1980s. It includes folkloric monographs (al ʿAbbadi 1989; al-ʿUzayzi 1984), genealogical compendia (Abu Khusa 1989), Bedouin poetry (al-ʿUzayzi 1991), introductions to tribal law (Abu Hassan 1987; al-ʿAbbadi 1982), and studies which, combining elements of all these genres, are packaged as “historical” works (al-ʿAbbadi 1984, 1986). The advent of a popular literature about the Jordanian tribes written by and for local Bedouin has been hailed in Jordan's national press as a new form of “patriotism,” and the oral traditions now being adapted to print are thought to convey a uniquely Jordanian heritage.