Photos from the Wadi Rum Desert Marathon

Wadi Rum Marathon
Images by Bedouin Heritage Project

The Wadi Rum Marathon is an endurance horse race through the desert’s surrounding the Wadi Rum Protected Zone. The event was reborn thanks to the contribution of Sheik Al-Maktoum of the Emirates and has been essential in recreating the horse culture of local bedouin. This year’s race was a qualifying event for international competition and covered 80km in total over three heats.

While Al-Maktoum was not in attendance this year, dignataries from Jordan and around the world were present to cheer on the riders and horses, alike.  Governed by an international community of animal rights specialists, controls are made at regular interviews ensuring the horses are coping well with the often difficult conditions.  Any horse not found to be in perfect health is disqualified imediately and checks were conducted between every heat.

Commencing at 6am and finishing by noon, the race is a perfect excuse for admiring the changing light and temperature of the late fall desert.

Bedouin Fire: music from the desert

BHP has released a first track, “Dancing Around the Fire”, from the upcoming Ep of recordings made live in the desert around the evening campfire. Salim Ali Lafi Zelabieh leads the melody on the Aoud while his family and friends dance and sing to the rythms of the drum.

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The music is authentic in it’s style and ambience with comments, jokes and laughing intertwined with poetry set to traditional melodies. The music has been set to photos from the desert, with sunset leading into a night by the fire…singing, dancing and laughing.

The Sedentarization of the Bedouin People

At the beginning of the 1970s a modernisation and urbanization process was exercised on the Bedouin which profoundly influenced their way of life and hence was detrimental to their traditions. This process involved housing the Bedouin in purpose built urban centres based on western planning models.

In reality, it is since the 50’s that some sort of modernising process has been inflicted upon the Bedouin people of Jordan involving detribalisation and sedentarization, through state sponsored agricultural projects and education.

Rum Village itself is an example of this production of cheap housing, mirroring the typical Jordanian suburb built during the 1970s, which was constructed around the Desert Patrol fort, the school and the rest house. Read more

Employment and Unemployment among Bedouin, excerpt

excerpt of an article why certain governments in the seek to settle the Bedouins and to decimate their herds, causing losses to the national economy and potentially reducing the Bedouin to unemployment, poverty and despair.

Amjad Nassar: The Jordanian Desert – Bedouin, satellite dishes and mirrors of stone

From Nassar’s “The Jordanian Desert” (extract) written after a visit to his homeland in 2000. It was originally published in French in the Paris Institute du monde arabe magazine QANTARA.

Short Bedouin stories, examples

A Jordan tourist gives some examples of Bedouin stories he has been told.