The Cultural Space of the Bedu in Petra and Wadi Rum

Proclamation: 2005

Member State(s): Jordan

Region: Arab Area

Associated themes: Cultural spaces; Oral traditions and expressions

The Bedu are semi-settled pastoralists who live in the southern part of Jordan, particularly near the sites of Petra and Wadi Rum within a region of semi-arid highlands and deserts. These conditions have allowed for the co-existence of settled and nomadic communities maintaining a complementary relationship.

　　Several Bedu tribes (namely the Bdul, the Ammarin and the Sa'idiyyin) continue to use the Nabatean water-collecting cisterns and caves near Petra. To the southeast of Petra, Wadi Rum is situated amidst vast semi-arid pasturelands. Today, several semi-settled Bedu communities inhabit this area, keeping alive the traditional pastoral culture and the knowledge and skills related to it. While these are common to most Bedu communities across the Arab world, the Bedu of Petra and Wadi Rum, as a result of specific climatic and geographic conditions and the contacts with settled communities, have preserved a specific knowledge related to the flora and fauna of the area, to traditional medicine, camel husbandry and tent-making craftsmanship, tracking and climbing skills, and rituals of coffee-making and hospitality. The Bedu have developed a profound knowledge of their environment, a great cultural creativity, and a complex moral and social code, all of which is expressed and transmitted orally.