It provides seed pods for animals to feed on for 3 months, and flowers for 2 months. So sayaal provides check details fodder during maḥl.” Safeguarding the cultural keystone Trees and particularly acacias are such important resources to these desert peoples that they share a taboo against cutting down living (“green”) trees. “Killing a saganeeb (subsp. tortilis) tree is like killing a man,” said a Beja man of the Atman-Alyaab. There is a wide variety of justifications for safeguarding trees as a resource. Some are based on tribal law correlating kinship and territorial units with resource usage, while others are imbedded in social mores and belief systems. The justifications

are also based on or intersect with deep histories of accumulated TEK. Resource use rights correspond with political-geographical territories belonging to kinship groups of tribe (gabiila), clan (far‘a or ‘ayla Ar., gabiila B.), lineage (‘ayla or ‘ayaal Ar., dhiwaab B.), household (bayt Ar., g’a B.) and individual. These rights (ḥaqq Ar., damir Ababda, m‘araw B.) are regulated by unwritten tribal law, known as silif (B.) and ‘urf (Ar.) (Hjort af Ornäs and Dahl 1991;

Manger et al. 1996). At the largest territorial level, resources including trees, seasonal pastures and water resources nominally belong equally to all members of a tribe. Within a territory actual responsibilities for resources are increasingly associated with lower levels of the tribal hierarchy. Resources within a clan territory are common property of the clan and may be used as usufruct www.selleckchem.com/products/dabrafenib-gsk2118436.html else by non-clan members (whether from the same or different tribes) with the clan’s permission. Guests in Beja lands must acknowledge the rights of their host (often by giving gwadab B.: “token payment for use of land by the usufruct right holders to the owners”; Manger et al. 1996). In general guests’ animals can graze ephemeral vegetation and browse trees and take shaken products, but guests cannot “harm trees or dig wells (‘turn stones’).” Other uses of perennial resources including acacias (cf. above) are more restricted and vary among the culture groups. Among the Beja, acacias that

belong collectively to clan members are subdivided into effective responsibilities of households, according to their m‘araw right. The Hadandawa guideline is that a man has the right to use and is responsible for “the trees in the view from his home.” The rights and obligations are lost if a group leaves the land. When a tribal (sub)group moves, land and its resources can be taken by others. Therefore, for example, when Beja groups move seasonally, some families or family-members often stay behind to protect their rights in that specific area. Tribal law metes out punishment for violations, including cutting down green trees or pollarding trees without permission. Disputed issues are decided in gatherings (majlis Ar., meglis B.