Tarabin Bedouin
Today this tribe resides in the Sinai Peninsula but also in Cairo, Ismailia, Giza, Al Sharqia and Suez, Israel (Negev), Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gaza Strip.
When the tourist industry started to bloom, local Bedouin moved into new service positions such as cab drivers, tour guides, campgrounds or cafe managers.
In some families, the women are not allowed to work outside the home.Tarabin Bedouin living along the border between Egypt and Israel have been involved in inter-border smuggling of weapons and aid to tribe members in Gaza,[1] as well as infiltration of prostitutes and African labor workers [citation needed].
According to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bedouin have no land rights in most countries in the Middle East, only users’ privileges,[8] and it is especially true for Egypt.
[9] The Gaza strip has Tarabin presence mainly in the southern part of the strip, during the Israel-Hamas war in 2024 a member of the tarabin tribe called Yasser abo Shabab lead his gang to steal aid convoys stealing 109 aid trucks in a single day in one instant [10] These events culminated into a face off against Hamas that resulted in the death of 20 members of the gang in a battle against arrow unit in the Gazan police in November 2024 [11] The abo Shabab clan of the tarabin tribe have distanced itself from these events disowning gang members and saying they don't represent the tribe but only themselves as individuals After the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, the Sinai Bedouin were given an unofficial autonomy due to political instability inside the country.
In modern times, in 1915, the Nijmat leader Hammad Pasha al-Sufi led a force of 1,500 bedouin under Turkish command in their attack on the Suez Canal.
The most prominent was the Satut, who in 1873, under Sheikh Saqr ibn Dahshan Abu Sitta, had to leave their traditional land following a blood feud and sided with the Tiyaha in the war between them and the Tarabin.
This was part of an effort to reduce Bedouin influence in Palestine by consolidating smaller clans into larger, fewer tribes, easier to control.
In other occasions, the Aydi family is associated with the التياها Tiyaha or الجبارات Jubarat tribes due to their involvement in trade, military, or land alliances.
They are part of the جذام Jidam and قحطان Qahtan[15] tribes, whose origins lie in southern Arabia in today’s Yemen, and who belonged to the عرب العاربة Arab al Aribah.
A manuscript of Ahmad Al Maqrizi from 1437, kept at the Leiden University, attests that the Aydi are direct descendants of the Jidam, and inhabited Southern Palestine and the areas between Cairo, Egypt and Aqaba, Jordany.
[23] According to the memoirs by Etienne Marc Quatremère's, a French orientalist specialized in languages and cultures of the Middle-East, the Aydi tribe, descendants of the Jidam, was established between Cairo and Aqaba.
[24] In 1263, a prince known as Muhammad Al-Aydi the Great was entrusted the responsibility of safeguarding the pilgrimage route from Egypt to Mecca, through an agreement with the fourth Mamluk Sultan of the Bahri dynasty, Al-Malik Al-Zahir Baibars.
[28][29][30] In 1370, Sultan Al-Malik Al-Nasir Muhammad Ibn Qalawun assigned Sheikh Ibrahim Ahmad Al-Aydi as the delegate of the Egyptian government for Ash Sharqia (a northeastern governorate of Egypt), Sinai, and Palestine.
A village in Ash Sharqia bears the name of the Ayed family, قرى كفور العايد Kura Kfur Al-Ayed.
They served as the trusted party responsible for ensuring the fulfillment of contracts between St. Catherine Monastery and the Bedouin tribes of Tur[33] (Mount Sinai region).
Thirty-five Bedouin tribes were in charge of the safety and well-being of the monks and pilgrims traveling to and from Saint Catherine’s Monastery, on the roads between Egypt and Syria.
[36] The Aydi tribe branch from the Negev is well known in the region for its medical abilities in traditional Bedouin medicine using amulets, talismans, stones, seeds and plants.
[39] With the development of modern medicine in the 18th century, the women of the tribe were sent abroad in neighboring cities (Cairo, Alexandria, Constantinople, Bagdad, Damascus) where family members lived to complete their medical studies and come back to the Negev region to practice.
[42] Maqam Al Hajja Hakimah,[43] located next to قرية زماره Zummara village in الشريعة Ash Sharia is the resting place of Dr. Hakmah Aydi, the founder of the Heritage from the Fragrance of the Land Museum and physician who completed her medical studies in Cairo in 1790.
Negev Bedouins believed that her soul helped women carry healthy babies if they prayed by her maqam or performed particular amulet processes.
With the creation of the "Heritage from the Fragrance of the Land" Museum تراث من عبق التراب (turath min abaqa al turab) around 1790,[44] the Aydi family used their collection as a means to preserve their ancestral knowledge and pass it down to the coming generations.
At the end of the 19th century, the Dr. Hissan Aydi Tarabin, the granddaughter of the museum founder used the collection to teach the Bedouins from the community to replicate objects and produce those needed for their everyday life.
[45] In 1898, the renowned painter Ilya Repin, who was working at the time as a professor of the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, visited the "Heritage from the Fragrance of the Land" Museum.
[48] The Permanent Delegation of the State of Palestine to UNESCO stressed that the family’s museology activities since the 18th century is the national pride of the country.
[citation needed] By 1931, there were roughly 17,000 of them in British Mandate Palestine[51] almost 90% worked in agriculture rather than solely raising livestock, and had clearly defined rules about land ownership.
As of process of sedentarization, it is full of hardships for any nation, since it means a harsh shift from one way of life to another – transition from wandering to permanent residence.
But due to their semi-nomadic way of life, Bedouin did not realize the need to register their ownership rights since it brought with it responsibility to pay taxes, and they suffered from it later.
After negotiations, all the local land claim certificate holders received money compensations and moved to Bedouin townships, where they built new houses and started businesses.
[61] The company is negotiating with the government a 30% of Israel's guaranteed solar power feed-in tariff caps set apart just for the Bedouin people.
