Cultural area of the Bedouins in Petra and Wadi Rum

Cultural area of the Bedouins in Petra and Wadi Rum
Intangible cultural heritage
	Bedouin tent in Petra
Country:	Jordan
List:	Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity
Number:	00122
Admission:	2008

The Bedouin cultural area in Petra and Wadi Rum was included in the representative list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008 at the request of Jordan .

Bedu intangible cultural heritage

The Jordanian government, as the applicant, outlined the cultural heritage of the South Jordanian Bedouins as follows:

The Bedouins in the south of Jordan (they are always called Bedu in the context of UNESCO World Heritage , while Shamdin calls them Bedul ) are partly sedentary , partly nomadic communities. They live especially in the area of Petra and Wadi Rum in the semi-arid highlands and in deserts. A kind of cooperation has developed between the sedentary and the nomadic groups , so that both ways of life complement each other.

Some ethnic groups (Bdul, Ammarin, Sa'idiyyin) still use the water reservoirs created by the Nabataeans in the Petra area. They operate traditional herding and related activities.

The Bedu in Petra and Wadi Rum have an extensive ancestral knowledge of the regional fauna and flora , medicine , camel breeding and tent making. In addition, there is special experience in orientation in the field and in climbing. Overall, they are very familiar with their environment.

The Bedu have developed a complex moral and social code. Your entire knowledge is orally handed down . This also includes poems, stories and songs, which are often linked to specific places and connected to the history of the Bedu.

In the second half of the 20th century, the sedentary way of life became increasingly attractive to the Bedu. The children's education and health care improved for them, as did the quality of living. On the other hand, much of the traditional knowledge has been lost. Then there was desert tourism. The travelers' interest in supposedly “authentic Bedouin culture” has an adverse effect on the way of life of the South Jordanian Bedu.

The Bedu in the material world cultural heritage of Petra

A woman serves tea (Petra, 2004)

Camel rider (Wadi Rum, 2009)

The Nabataean city of Petra has been developed for tourism since 1920 and declared a World Heritage Site in 1985. Long before the tourists came, however, the Bedu had already settled in Petra, and for them World Heritage Site specifically meant that they should give way. A resettlement plan was decided in 1968, but it wasn't until the 1980s that forced resettlement began. The Bedu were settled north of Petra, among other things the government promised them that they could find work in the tourism sector.

In 2016, the Islamic scholar Sammy Shamdin lived as a participating observer in Umm Sayhoun, a settlement that was declared Beduin Village in 2008 with a sign at the entrance to the village . The sign was a result of the fact that the Bedouin culture had received the status of an intangible world heritage that year; most of the residents were not aware of this. For them, the entrance sign meant that they were not allowed to open any hotels or souvenir shops. Therefore they felt disadvantaged compared to the residents of the neighboring village, which had not received such a rating and lived from tourism. The fact that the government wanted to protect the traditional Bedu culture from changes with this requirement was also incomprehensible to the residents of Umm Sayhoun.

Action plan

An action plan by the Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development , which ran from 2006 to 2009, was dedicated to the endangered cultural heritage of the Bedu. His main focus was on collecting and passing on the orally transmitted knowledge, and secondly on researching the practical wealth of experience that the Bedu have in keeping camels and in weaving. These two areas of knowledge are also known as the pillars of Bedu culture.

Projects

At the end of 2014, the Jordanian government presented a report on the projects that had been launched since then in favor of the Bedu cultural heritage. One focus was numerous festivals with different topics. The report found that tourist agencies were interested in the Bedouin way of life in general and were particularly interested in cultural festivals, particularly those involving camels. Tourist excursions to Wadi Rum and Petra often supported heritage-related activities, "but such efforts should still be regulated."

In 2017, the UNESCO office in Amman, together with the Jordanian Ministry of Culture, organized a cultural heritage workshop in Mafraq, a desert city where many refugees live. During this workshop, Bedouins presented their culture of making coffee: roasting the coffee beans over the fire, grinding them in a mehbash and using a nice della , with which the coffee is served to the guests. Then we exchanged views on the numerous occasions where coffee is simply a part of the Bedu.