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THE ORIGINAL ARABS: THE INVENTION OF THE “BEDOUIN RACE” IN OTTOMAN PALESTINE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2018

Seraj Assi
Seraj Assi*
Affiliation:
Seraj Assi is a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Muslim–Christian Understating, Georgetown University, Washington D.C.; e-mail [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the symbiotic relationship between race and empire in British ethnographic discourse on the Arabs of Palestine. Drawing on the works of British explorers in late Ottoman Palestine, I show how native Palestinian Bedouin came to be viewed as a separate race within a hierarchy of Arab races, and how within this racial reconfiguration the Bedouin embodied not only an ideal model of racial purity, but also a racial archetype on which Arabness itself was measured, codified, and reproduced.

Keywords

BedouincolonialismethnographyPalestinerace
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , May 2018 , pp. 213 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Judith Tucker, Salim Tamari, Osama Abi-Mershed, Emma Gannage, and the IJMES anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on my article.

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