From Desert to Town

From Desert to Town sheds light on the sedentarisation and integration of Bedouin living in fellahin towns and villages in the Galilee, between 1700 and 2020. The purpose is to analyse the dynamics of the factors and circumstances that led to this migration. Official history has always lacked data on the Bedouin population in Palestine. Historians have recorded the biography of particular elites, and especially in the context of local warfare and tribal antagonisms, but have hitherto neglected ongoing migration from desert life to town life of Bedouin in the Galilee. The historical record is further complicated by the Bedouin themselves, who over time have been reluctant to register with governmental authority, whether Ottoman, British, or Israeli. This book brings together the available historical information combined with ethnographic data, from which it is possible to derive, analyse, and infer much information about Bedouin life in the Galilee over the past three hundredyears. The move from rur