who uphold the purity of the lineage by not marrying down. These marriages remain crucial in societies where tribal affiliation constitutes qualification for citizenship.
Yet tribal marriages are complicated because they take place within the limits of nation and often “tribal equivalence.” These protocols have serious consequences for women. Should they wish to marry a foreigner, native citizens may have to seek official permission, and, if denied, women may have to give up their citizenship, because children automatically inherit their father’s citizenship and its rights. In 1989, the state of Qatar passed a law, Qatari Law No. 21, which “banned certain categories of state employees from marrying foreigners at all: ministers and deputy ministers, members of the diplomatic service, officers of the armed forces, the police or intelligence service, and students on overseas study-missions” (Dresch 2005, 149). Far from being exceptional, the Qatari Law has its equivalents elsewhere in the Gulf (155).8
But none of the laws answer fully the larger question: who counts as foreign when the tribal and the national are confused? A foreigner might be a first cousin. For example, should the citizen of one state wish to marry his daughter to the son of a brother who had chosen another nationality, he will face a dilemma, since this nephew now counts as a foreigner. In an April 1999 colloquium in Ras al-Khaima on marriage to foreign women, some women participants demanded clarification for the definition of foreigner (Dresch 2005, 152). No clear answer emerged beyond a reversion to DNA as biological (i.e., tribal) proof of nationality. Conference organizers declared that the Emiratis’ distinguishing feature is “relationships of kinship and descent (al-qurba wa-l-nasab) among families within the state. This again harks back to the criterion of purity or authenticity. It connects tribal membership and citizenship rights to authentic (asli, original, noble) Arab customs and manners which originate from the (the society’s) Islamic belief and from ethical values inherited from (our) ancestors” (155). In fact, it is kinship and descent among families within the state that provide the biological definition, and the nod to Islam reinforces the ethical dimension. Since the notion of citizenship in the Arab Gulf is a recent invention, this insistence on nationals marrying each other can, and often does, undermine endogamous tribal bonds spanning the Arabian Peninsula.
The question of who can marry whom assumes added significance for rulers and their families. In her study of the political culture of leadership in the UAE, Andrea Rugh emphasizes the importance of tribal marriages in strengthening the status of the leader and his tribe: marriages consolidate blood ties, reward loyalty, and sometimes co-opt enemies (Rugh 2007, 82–95, 137, 191, 227).
Since the early 1990s, some governments have established a sunduq al-zawaj (marriage fund) that offers monetary inducements to marry within the nation-state. The UAE, for example, provides a 20,000-Dirham dowry, substantial funds for national weddings, and subsidies for children (Fox, Mourtada-Sabbah, and al-Mutawa 2006, 47; see also Bristol-Rhys 2011, 88; Longva 1997, 53). The marriage fund also underwrites the costs of mass weddings. In March 2000, 376 Dubai couples “were married off at once in an enormous televised ceremony, where questions of status among families were displaced by eulogies to Dubai’s crown prince and to the Federation’s leader, Shaikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi [. . .] The Fund represents a massive attempt at social engineering” (Dresch 2005, 148; see Hasso 2011, 72). In this case, nation trumped tribe and tribal equivalence. What mattered was the fact that citizens of the same nation-state were strengthening the national composition of the state and that, in the future, their children would swell the citizen roles.9 Tribal equivalence and compatibility, however, remain factors in deciding marriage partners.
When I asked some Qatari students about tribal equivalence and how to tell who is where in the tribal pecking order, they said that everyone knows.
“But how do you know?” I asked.
They shrugged, smiling at the strangeness of the question: “You can tell from the face to which tribe this person belongs. You can tell their status by the way they speak or act or dress.”
“Why does tribal status matter so much?”
“If you marry someone from an inappropriate tribe, you harm the tribe.”
What did harming the tribe mean? To look more deeply into the affective connection between tribal class and marriage, I asked several students in a class I was teaching at the Virginia Commonwealth University–Qatar (VCUQ) in the fall of 2010 to conduct surveys on the role of tribal class and on the importance of asala (or, authenticity and purity of lineage) in marriage.
Thirty men and women between the ages of 18 and 30 responded in full to an online survey about tribal status and the acceptability of marriage outside the tribe.10 One of the questions that the students had left optional was tribal name. To the students’ surprise, most of the respondents were happy to give the name of their tribe. Moreover, some even specified whether they were hadar or Bedouin.
A majority of respondents affirmed that elite tribe members should marry each other. One simply wrote: “Of course!” Another: “Yes, because our society is extremely tribal.” For another, the tribes are the “good pure part of society” (emphasis in the original).
In answer to a question about what makes a tribe elite, several insisted on the importance of deep roots in time and across space. A member of the Al Muraikhi tribe, for instance, wrote that her Bedouin tribe stretched in space to “KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), Kuwait, Qatar and UAE . . . some are in Bahrain too. We go back before Islam, i.e. more than 1400 years ago!” In other words, she perceived her status to derive from the geographic and temporal spread of her tribe. A man from the Al Suba`i tribe wrote that he could trace ancestors for over 1000 years; members of his tribe can be found “almost in all Arab countries.” An Al Murrah man also affirmed pride in his tribe. Careful not to seem arrogant, he added, “If my tribal habits is [sic] making others embarrassed I don’t show them or present it. Being around people who don’t belong to tribes, trying not to make them feel they lack something.” His self-evident tribal superiority, he presumed, would embarrass and even intimidate anyone without elite tribal affiliation. “I am asil Arab from the Arabian Gulf,” wrote one woman, using the Arabic term asil in her otherwise English statement.
Although the expectation to marry within tribal equivalence is widespread, the student survey probed personal feelings on the subject: would they accept a spouse from another tribal class? 70.6 percent said yes. One wrote, “I would choose to marry a person based on compatibility, respect, love, mutual understanding, etc. [sic] and not only based on their tribal origin or their last name!” Note that none of these affective criteria trump tribal origin. Instead, they become additive, desirable traits.
While they were not the majority, a third of the responses indicated that the partner’s tribal status, class, did indeed matter to them. The following is a sampling of these reactions:
“Lower social class affects my kids.”
“I do not accept other tribes and their customs.”
“When it comes to marriage it is very hard and rare to break the rules; basically we just can’t.”
“It is impossible for me to marry someone from another tribal class.”
How absolute this person was! Even political status cannot overcome lack of tribal equivalence.11
“The tribe must have hasab (noble descent) and nasab (tribal lineage)” (Khaldunian terms were here used seamlessly, almost reflexively, to denote status and kinship categories).
“Maybe
