Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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Najdi town rulers set the pace for those who lived under their influence in the towns and
associated farm hinterlands, tribal chiefs shared power with the town's squirearchies, a
balance that was evident in the symbiosis the two major societal powers maintained. This
multiplicity of power precluded the emergence of a political leviathan that could impose
itself on all and manipulate the isolated regions' population into one nation. Within Riyadh
proper, social power was crystalized in the ruler and an upper privileged class comprising
the religious strata. Both commanded the key positions in the social structure.
Riyadh was a subsystem, it was part of the broader social order comprising rural
areas and pastoral nomads. In addition to its' somewhat more developed physical
structure, Riyadh's political vitality and economic centrality supported a social structure
constituting craftsmen, merchants, clergy and political aristocracy whose matrimonial
lineages both contributed to its prominence and determined the status of other families in
the town. Unlike the conjugal family unit characterizing the class structure of an industrial
society, the Najdi family structure was rigid, one which was based on the extended family
system which in turn fit into a complex network of a larger tribal organization, sometimes
straddling both those of towns and the nomads. The family was a comparatively closed
and inward-oriented, patriarchal unit. The husband ruled the unit and presided over its
outside engagements. The women spent a great deal of their daily life in familia tasks
within the confines of the household or the farm.
The traditional (Najdi) society, though classless and casteless in the literal sense, has
a social division of classes that has been maintained for centuries. The ruling elite derived
their command and power from a well established tribal majority. The larger families
whose members belonged to known tribal branches are derived from and organized into
gabilis, locals who belong to well-established and extended families whose pedigrees are
documented. There are also the khadhiris, families of "doubtful" origins. They do not
belong to the known Arab tribes. They descended from one or a combination of African,
Persian, or Indian origins and the like. There was also the slave population, largely of
African descent. They were bought or exchanged in the barter economy of Arabia or taken
as prisoners of war. These social divisions were deeply entrenched in the social fabric and
straddled both the social and economic spheres, so much so that some occupations became
associated with each social group. However, it must be noted that due to Islamic
teachings, a degradation into a caste-like segmentation was drastically alleviated. Sjoberg
(1960) agrees. He stated "Undoubtedly, the egalitarian orientation of the traditional