 Tribes, tribes, tribes, they come in all shapes, colors, and sizes. We all have a primal urge to belong to some variation of a tribe or another. It's a vital element to our existence and without it, our social bandwidth would be a fraction of itself. But hold on, what I want to discuss aren't the tribes that entertain certain ideologies, follow extremist dogma, or promote some element of superficial togetherness. No, I want to talk about the real tribe stuff, the ones that are based on blood and ancestry. One's whose genealogies takes precedence over any other sense of belonging. Once while attempting to learn another content creator whom I had just met digitally and to collaborate with me on a new video, he explained to me that his creative content was strictly focused on pre-Islamic Arab history. That kind of put me in a corner. My world of content was one purely based on Arabic and Islamic history. My usual quick-wittedness would typically have provided me with an intelligent and perceptive response. But nothing came. I had misunderstood him. He strictly meant pre-Islam. I processed it as both pre-Islam and pre-Arab. In my confusion, I asked myself, what were Arabs like before Islam, or even before that? What were they like before being Arabic? My thoughts kept on moving, evolving, and funnily enough, bringing me back to the Arabs of today. If we strip modern Arabs of Islam and Arabic language, what's left? Is there a vivid characteristic within the fledgling Arab identity at the time that we still carry today, deep in our core, even though more than a couple of millennia have elapsed? And that's when tribalism came into my mind. Arabs till today are heavily influenced by tribal structure. It was so clear to me that this remnant of archaic times was still strongly alive and kicking along all the Middle East. It regulates who erred their friend, who they marry, and who they might align themselves with on various political, economic, and social realms. Modern Arab civilization is still entrenched with the us and them mentality, when even nationality is challenged by the loyalties towards one's tribe, pushing and pulling at the concept of citizenship and allegiance towards a single nation. You might be thinking that the whole world remains prisoner to the element of tribalism. Political affiliations, theological beliefs, social classes, and sports team loyalties are powerful examples of such tribal behavior. That thought is true to a certain extent, but when considering Arab tribalism, two fundamental elements set it apart from any other form of tribalism in existence today. The Arabic word for tribe is qabilah, and in the Arabian Peninsula, all tribes source their origin to two main, eponymous ancestors, adnan and gahtan, both of whom were descendants of Abraham and Ismail. Some of these main tribes are Anizah, Banu Khalid, Qawasim, Banu Tameem, Shamr, and Ajman. The list of main tribes exceeds 25 in number. Qabila names not only identified kinship, but also laid out a social class ranking of tribes based on purity of blood and ancestry. They were both superior and inferior tribes, and there are also other clans outside the tribal structure that were considered on less equal footing to the established tribes. These were not referred to as Qabilas, but as Khadivis. In today's Arab world, tribalism is still very strong across the Arabian Gulf, and mainly in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Other nations like Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine also have a majority of their population, prioritizing their loyalties to their own distinct tribe. Please subscribe to our channel, as it would support us greatly in generating more content that documents our Arabian and Muslim heritage, history, and culture. Now back to our story. So what sets Arab tribalism apart from any other typology? The first is how Arab tribalism remains fundamentally associated with blood relations. Yes, Arabs still find that blood is thicker than water. It also means that by default those who are related no matter near or far, capable or incapable, as long as they are recognized as part of the tribe, then they are automatically better and more deserving. Deserving of higher respect, elevated service, preferential treatment, and even at times financial benevolence. Now imagine this entitlement that one is granted is solely due to their belonging to a certain tribe. This can be in the form of special treatment in the work environment, expedited administrative processes, favoritism in sports team selection, and even a guaranteed constituency in political campaigns. Can you imagine the havoc this would cause if the main factor for selection of a candidate, employee, or athlete depended on their association with one tribe, clan, or ancestry? Anyways. The second element differentiating Arab tribalism from other forms is how it allows for the comprehensive invasion of self-identity by social identity. We all have two parts to our identity that reflect our existence. One, self-identity that defines who we are internally, and two, the social identity that reflects how our self-identity deals with the outer world. In Arab tribalism, the self-element has been overrun by the social. The individuality solely exists in the factors that have been granted them at birth, such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, and most importantly, the name, consequently allowing for the belonging to a tribe. All the rest, religion, talents, culture, mental and physical abilities, appearance, are all determined and controlled by the tribal momentum. In short, Arab tribalism, the individual, is secondary to the many. It's either you're in as part of us and you have to submit, or you're out and part of them if you want to choose to do things your way. And this is where the danger for the future lies, with the absence of self. And once that dynamic is set into an individual's core, then blood and relation become even more important and necessary for survival and progress, fueling each other into perpetuity. That's where we find ourselves as arrows, at a crossroads in our existence, when the ambition to maintain our family-centric priorities and values amid a fast-moving and individual-based modern world is intensely being challenged. But there is a healthy balance that exists, one that demands we find our personal dilution point of the blood that connects us to the tribe, one where we can decide as individuals that the choice outside of the family, or tribe's choice, is the right one, when we can accept the consequences of our actions based on our own self-identity and independence. And at that moment is when blood is no longer blood and dilutes into water.