ARABS: ASSIMILATION AND SOCIAL CHANGEeration of the private blood-feud in Iraq by enforcing the responsi-
bilities of the clan (Ar. 'aqi/a) as a legal unit. At Basra, Ziyad held
families and tribes responsible for the behavior of their members.
Payment of the blood-price was assured by deducting the amount from
the pay of the guilty party or from that of his tribe. If the victim was
non-Muslim, half the normal blood-price went to the next of kin and
the other half to the state treasury. One example of the use of tribal
concepts in the process of detribalization in Iraq is the way in which
f:lanafllegal scholars took this practice as the precedent for extending
the concept of the 'aqila into a form of substitute kinship and applied
it to the joint liability of soldiers serving in the same unit and registered
in the same dtwan.^3
In fact, the very nature of the Arab tribal groups that had settled
in Iraq was being transformed in the course of the seventh century.
Large numbers of non-Arabs were drawn into a tribal social frame-
work as allies, mawalt, and slaves. The second generation in the gar-
rison cities after the conquest tended to be of mixed parentage and
were bilingual. Although the mothers of many "Arabs" were Persian
women, the use of patrilineal genealogies preserved an Arab identity
fora population that was in fact of mixed descent. In such circum-
stances, tribal identities provided an increasingly artificial framework
for social organization.
SOURCES OF STRATIFICATION
From the beginning this framework was being undermined by the
realities of the social stratification that cut across tribal identities.
Arabs had their own status distinctions based on age, lineage (Ar.
nasab), and nobility (Ar. sharaf). Status differentials in Arab society
were expressed in the way different groups required a larger or smaller
marriage gift (Ar. mahr) for their women, a higher or lower blood-
price for their members, or equality of status (Ar. kafa'a) for marriage
between groups. These devices not only served to establish differences
in status among different tribal groups but also among the clans and
families within a tribal group.
Among Muslims the equality of believers sanctioned by the Qur'an
3 R. Brunschvig, "'A~ila," EI(2), I, 388; idem, "Considerations sociologiques sur le
droit musulman ancien," SI3 (1955),69-70; Lammens, Etudes sur le siecle des Omayyades
(Beirut, 1930), pp. 91-92; J. Schacht, The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence
(Oxford, 1953), pp. 206-7.