ents, but the bedouin was and still is the ideal of the "true" Arab. If you imagine the mythic role that the cowboy plays in the culture of the American West, you can grasp something of the importance of the Bedouin in Arab culture. A modern Saudi will often entertain an honored guest, or enjoy private moments with his family, not in his plush villa, but in a desert tent (Lacey, 1982: 522 23).
The early Muslims conquered an empire as large, and more enduring, than Alexander the Great, but the Arab peninsula today's Saudi Arabia fell back into anarchy as the centers of power and culture shifted to
...