2Addressing these issues is a matter of political urgency and not solely of academic concern. Departing from the ideology of a ‘clash of civilizations’ between Muslims and non-Muslims, academic, military, and political actors in the United States and Northern Europe have, ever since the 1992 US intervention in Somalia, taken up the notion of tribe, purportedly founded on the principles of endogamy and descent, to legitimate a politically potent if self-deluding ideological amalgamation of close-kin marriage, Islam, and terror. We consider it essential for anthropologists to react to this ethical and substantive challenge to the legitimacy of their discipline [see González 2009].

4Indeed, the social, economic, symbolic, and political processes that establish the ongoing recognition of transgenerational continuity are encompassed by and account for the dynamics of human reproduction, a factor often overseen by political anthropologists. Annette Weiner analyses reproduction ‘not as a biological construct, but as a cultural concept in which the basic processes for reproducing human beings, social relations, cosmological phenomena, and material resources are culturally defined and structurally interconnected’ [1978: 183]. In this perspective, human procreation is shaped and entailed by diverse ways of ‘being human’ in society, with all this implies for the cultural interpretation of its material and immaterial components. A.F. Robertson [1991] takes this approach further by placing the social dynamics of human reproduction at the centre of the anthropological analysis of contemporary societies and states. He aptly stresses that the political-economic sphere is part of the social organisation of reproduction. To work towards this problematic in contemporary Muslim contexts, we suggest focusing here on the gendered dynamics of kinship as the prism and crucible of reproductive relations beyond flawed distinctions such as private vs. public, tribe vs. state, urban vs. rural, and indeed male vs. female.

Tribes and States after Kinship

7As recognized experts in tribal and ethnic affairs (classes were abandoned to sociologists), we anthropologists have long had difficulties in accepting the dissolution of the segmentary order characteristic, we theorized, of stateless societies once subsumed under the dominion of empires upon which the sun never set. No sooner had we come to terms with decolonization than we were hit by globalization. We were not amused. Modernity had not delivered the promised historical goods, thus forcing the discipline, engulfed in a conceptual void, to transcend purely local foci and question some long-enrooted We/They dichotomies. In despair, the state-bound, ersatz theory known as transnationalism was rushed to the front line to hold the fort while social scientists tried to negotiate an honourable ceasefire with globalization theory. Many then proclaimed urbi et orbi the ‘modernity’ of the tribe. This allows the external analyst to remain under the (agnatic) illusion that the secret of power in large parts of the world is to be discovered in a dialectic antagonism between tribe and state. This tension is the motor of hierarchy between ‘us’ and ‘them’, the West and the Rest. Yet, all this proves difficult to achieve solely by substituting deterritorialized ethnoscapes [see Appadurai 1996] for defunct empires and their very real imprint. Nor does the Eurocentric vision of Foucault prove of great avail to tribe theorists sometimes at pains to distinguish emic and etic levels of ‘tribal discourse’. Maybe the line is too fine to draw.

8The underlying economic and geostrategic processes subsumed under the notion of globalization in many regards led to a disempowering of the state structures modernity had borne. Inversely, this process reinvigorated ‘tribe’ as an artefact, just as post-Schneiderian ‘new kinship’ had definitively proclaimed the irrelevance of the genealogical method and lineage theory [see Schneider 1984 and Carsten ed. 2000]. The agnatically predicated ‘segmentary tribe’ was disarticulated, indeed, emasculated. When it abruptly ‘resurged’ into the conceptual field after September 11th, it appeared, however, as the only tangible unit of reference. Analysts, not least political scientists, seized it in their attempt to explain the perceived articulation of ‘Islam’ and ‘terror’. The tribe was thus resurrected, at least in certain media, brandishing a Koran and an AK-47. It operated as a placebo category, while scholars and journalists sought to come to terms with the urgent ‘reset’ of the concepts of state and war. As ‘tribe’ became accredited in public and political discourse, it was endowed with a new, transdisciplinary function. The issue at hand was no longer the ‘state vs. stateless’ dichotomy at the base of colonial anthropology, rather how to equate the regional yet transnational conflicts at hand with identifiable collective actors, albeit personified by very identifiable sheikhs or imams, liable to be understood through the prism of rational choice or behaviourist theory. This became eminently clear as the fall of Sòaddām’s regime led to what were depicted as re-enactments of dormant tribal solidarities articulated with broader sectarian or communitarian divides such as Shiite vs. Sunnite.

(i) that the HTS program creates conditions which are likely to place anthropologists in positions in which their work will be in violation of the AAA Code of Ethics and (ii) that its use of anthropologists poses a danger to both other anthropologists and persons other anthropologists study.

‘Tribalism’, ‘Incest’, and the ‘War on Terror’

12This postmodern state of the art is not only regrettable for the political anthropology of kinship and the gendered dynamics of reproduction at large [Robertson 1991; Weiner 1995] in shifting Muslim contexts and political orders. It has profound political implications, since it leaves the stage free for war-on-terror ideologists such as Harvard-educated anthropologist Stanley Kurtz. This polemist is currently senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center as well as a member of several think tanks such as the Hoover Institution. He is the author of a 2007 paper entitled ‘Marriage and the Terror War’, in which he popularizes key classical anthropological concepts of kinship and marriage in order to point out the purported correlations between Islam in the singular, close-kin marriage, and an Oriental complex of violence:

• 12 See too S. Sailer, ‘Cousin Marriage Conundrum. The Ancient Practice Discourages Democratic Nation-B (...)

Grasp the connection between Islam and Middle Eastern kinship [...] and you’ll have a far better chance of devising a long-term strategy for winning the war on terror [...] Parallel-cousin marriage has an effect precisely the opposite of the alliance-building interchange encouraged by cross-cousin marriage – and praised by Tylor and Lévi-Strauss. Instead of encouraging cultural exchange [...] [it] tends to wall off groups from one another and encourage conflict between and among them [2007, Part I].
Islam [...] functions more like a gigantic in-marrying lineage, whose solidarity is threatened by any individual member’s dishonorable exit [...] The ‘self-sealing’ character of Islam is part and parcel of a broader and more deeply rooted social pattern. And parallel-cousin marriage is more than just an interesting but minor illustration of that broader theme. If there’s a ‘self-sealing’ tendency in Muslim social life, cousin marriage is the velcro. In contemporary Europe, perhaps even more than in the Middle East, cousin marriage is at the core of a complex of factors blocking assimilation and driving the war on terror [2007, Part II]. 12

13Kurtz’s wild incest cum terror fantasies have, of course, nothing to do with an anthropological theory of kinship relevant to the ‘Middle East’. However, in the absence of a theoretically grounded alternative to Lévi-Strauss’ [1949] exchange and alliance theory as well as to functionalist lineage theory in societies that favour close-kin marriage in conjunction with broader local processes of elective kinship, who is able to contradict him with adequate arguments? In times of major conflicts focused on the ‘Muslim World’, where kinship and marriage is a core issue among geneticists, doctors of Islamic Law, feminists, and politicians, we can but agree with Robert Parkin’s words of warning:

Anthropologists must be in the conference hall too if they are not to find other disciplines making the running for them in areas they have traditionally considered their own – like the kinship of human societies [...] They will have only themselves to blame if they permit the distortions that may result to enter the public domain unchallenged and uncorrected [2009: 169].

• 16 Quoted in http: / / news.bbc.co.uk / 2 / hi / programmes / newsnight / 4442010.stm.

As we address problems of smoking, drinking, obesity, we say it’s a public health issue. The same should be applied to [cousin marriage] in the Asian community. They must adopt a different lifestyle [...] We have to stop this tradition of first cousin marriages. 16

15In other countries, the ‘Islamic headscarf’, or the prohibition of minarets, serves as a symbolic rallying point, a lightening rod able to deflect the diffuse threat of difference [see Abu-Lughod 2002].

16At the same time, in the Arab world, a complex, indeed somewhat more enlightened debate on consanguineous marriage has developed. It was sparked off firstly by biomedical considerations and then discussions on the religious acceptability of new reproductive technologies [Jam^ciyya 1995; Clarke 2009]. Beginning in the 1980s, broad-based statistical studies were undertaken to assess the genetic implications of kin marriage, and counselling centres were opened. Kuwait, however, introduced family support programmes that favour marriage among locals and, thus, cousins [see Dresch 2005]. In the Gulf, one cannot lightly raise in public the theme of consanguinity, linked to those of autochtony and citizenship. Still, scientists such as geneticist Hanan Hamamy of Amman [2003] have widened the scope of debate by publicly articulating the social and genetic aspects of the kin marriage debate, without enflaming religious sensitivities. One question, hence, that of the status and implications of cousin marriage, is posed from divergently connoted perspectives within and between distinct cultural and political contexts. The hiatus itself must first be explicated before the problematic can be delimited in reflexive sociological terms.

17The field is laden with an impressive set of negative pre-determinations. In addition to doctrinal rigidities in all the societies concerned, it encompasses the political history of imperialism, the abortive theoretical debate on politics, kinship, and reproduction, the failure of social science adequately to listen to and read in good epistemological faith actors, academic or otherwise, addressing shared questions in the societies analysed in different terms, and the ensuing kidnapping of the social sciences that serves the reinforcement of stereotypes and prejudice. Annette Weiner, however, offers us an analysis that facilitates objectifying this field. In her historical-epistemological critique of the notions of exchange and reciprocity, as developed in Inalienable Possessions. The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving [1992], she shows that reciprocity (gift and counter-gift) responds in fine to the need for an external, indeed metaphysical principle to justify the ‘rise of a free-market economy without state intervention’ [ibid.: 28]. Durkheim’s distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity enabled maintaining analogous oppositions between primitive and civilized humanity [see Roberts 2002], and, in the last analysis, between state and stateless societies, i.e. those based on the principle of segmentarity (tribes) and those exercising wider dominion (empires). Kurtz’s clever assertions suggest a causal link between the refusal of reciprocity on the part of Muslims, as epitomized by the denial of marriage exchange with non-Muslims, and that of commerce with non-Muslims in general [2007]. In short, Muslim ‘tribal solidarity’ outweighs the obvious benefits of ‘cooperation’ with the first-world, or possibly ‘emerging’ states that furnish the impetus of globalization. The axiom of ‘keeping-without-giving’ imputed to Muslim societies can inhibit both reflexivity in the social sciences and the degree of intercultural communication that would be required to define the field in non-conflictual terms.

What’s Wrong with Cousin Marriage? Towards a Theory of Kinship in Muslim Contexts

19It has long been apparent that neither functionalist descent nor structuralist alliance theory is in a position to explain kinship in societies of Southwest Asia and beyond, which have long valued the conjunction of patrilineal focus in the tracing of descent, the hòarām status of women – both sacred and forbidden –, and close-kin marriage, to the extent of constituting a fait social total. This theoretical void may be overcome by considering the key importance of nasab and its analogues, in other words the transgenerational continuity of patronymics and equivalents that structures and validates fluctuating social identities and networks, with all the rights, expectations, and duties thus conveyed. Such an approach requires adopting consistently a relational, Maussian methodology so as to overcome Eurocentric, bio-logical readings of kinship, gender, and procreation. Kinship will here be defined as culturally and historically specific, structurally interconnected sets of categories and processes shaping the transgenerational recreation of shared origins through recognized gendered procedures of ascription and affiliation of persons and collectives, such as relationally-defined kinship and descent constructs designated in Arabic, Berber, Persian, and Turkish as qabīla, ashīra, hòamūla, afus, tawshit, tabār, kabile, etc., and dubbed ‘tribes’, ‘clans’, or ‘lineages’ by anthropologists. Just as ‘modernity’, mainly in the guise of rapid urbanization, was supposed to entail the disappearance of the tribe et al. in the face of the state, so too was cousin marriage, itself the backbone of the tribe, said to be on the ebb. Yet, lo and behold, two generations into postcolonialism, Arabs, Berbers, Persians, and many others still marry their cousins, whereas actors who designate themselves as tribesmen continue to contest the state. Might there be some uncanny, still unnoticed relationship between cousins and citizens, be they tribespeople or townspeople, that might explain how they, mutually supporting each other, sustained and transcended the tidal wave of ‘globalization’?

22The emblematic concept of nasab is, we argue, central for understanding kinship in Muslim contexts. Together with musòāhara (affinity) and ridòā’a (kinship through co-lactation), nasab is one of the three legally recognized ‘bonds of kinship’, or qarāba, a term which literally means ‘closeness’ or ‘proximity’ in Arabic. The polysemic concept of nasab can only be defined in context, since it refers both to individual kinship affiliation, not least in the male line, and to ‘descent’ conceived of as a set of most often agnatically-focused network-structures in constant transformation. It also encompasses, however, ties of affinity, and is transmitted through patronymics (or, depending on the ethnographic context, through the name of a house, alhurma, i.e. the sacred honour of origins, etc.), and not (or not primarily) bodily substances such as blood, as non-Arabian authors sometimes presume [see Tarmānīnī 1989; Conte 1991 and 1994; Sa^cīd 2006]. Placed in this perspective, our first hypothesis may be put as follows: past and current debates, transformations, and reforms regarding kinship and reproduction in numerous societies of Afro-Asia focus on the structural tensions that obtain between the intergenerational transmission of agnatic descent affiliation and the transgenerational continuity of nasab.

23In some Saharan Berber societies, comparable tensions obtain with regard to the intergenerational transmission of uterine descent and the transgenerational continuity of kinship network-structures analogous to nasab. In either gendered configuration, the careful combination of marriages among close kin, distant kin, or non-kin, as well as the establishment of a wide variety of elective kinship bonds, are constitutive of nasab and enable its regeneration over time [Walentowitz 2003 and forthcoming a]. In diachronic perspective, descent constructs and categories referred to as nasab, or its equivalents, have little in common with classical anthropological unilineal or cognatic ‘descent’ or ‘corporate groups’ based on common ancestry or origin. The transgenerational continuity of nasab is an ongoing process of creation that is represented with simulated diachrony in the form of genealogical nasab or ‘tribal’ chronicles, often ossified under colonial rule [see Oxby 1996].

24These considerations lead to a second hypothesis: rather than vertical parent-child filiation, it is, we maintain, same-sex or opposite-sex siblingship which acts as the core feature of kinship systems in Southwest Asia and beyond. The constructs that have long been studied by anthropologists as expressions of unilineal segmentary kinship, indeed of an agnatic (or uterine) harmony ‘disturbed’ only by the ‘cognatizing’ effects of repeated close-kin marriage, appear in a very different light as soon as one places siblingship at the centre of analysis [Walentowitz 2003; Conte and Walentowitz 2006]. Siblingship is and remains a blind spot in anthropological kinship theory, probably due to the strength of the sibling incest taboo, as well as to Eurocentric and historically specific bio-logics of reproduction bound to the narrow realm of conjugal sexuality [Jamous 1991; Weiner 1995]. In the perspective of siblingship, posed as a primal bond and structural principle of kinship, nasab constitutes culturally and historically variable forms of genealogical network-structures that link a maximal number of sibling sets at each generation [Conte and Walentowitz 2006; Conte forthcoming a; Walentowitz forthcoming a; see also Shamy 1981 and Fogel 2006]. In accord with the local gendered dynamics of kinship, these sibling sets associate either brothers, or brothers and sisters. This second hypothesis is closely linked to our first hypothesis in that the transgenerational continuity of nasab is determined by the ways in which marriage and other elective kinship bonds combine over time with unilineal and/or cognatic kinship constructs. This stresses the centrality of legally and socially recognized legitimate marriage.

25Any marriage or sexual relationship not legitimized in terms of Islamic family laws would break such continuity in a manner affecting not only the partners, but equally their kindred and progeny for generations to come as well, one might argue, as their ascendants. We further contend that illegitimate unions and births, subsumed under the notion of zinā (‘fornication’), stand in analogy to ‘incest’ – for which classical Arabic, moreover, offers no specific designation [van Gelder 2005: 4] – in contrast to the abundant literature referring to nasab, genealogy, and origins [Balādhurī 1997; Sa^cīd 2006]. The pre-eminence of nasab in collective and diachronic perspective is neither negotiable nor reformable without fundamentally altering the corresponding socio-cosmic order through the introduction of ‘modern’ individualism as defined by Louis Dumont [1991]. Here both state and tribe are impaired.

The Recognition of Paternity: Names, Proximity, Legitimacy

26In contexts in which Islamic jurisprudential norms have force of law or custom, from London to Jokjakarta, but not least in Southwest Asia and adjacent regions, doctors of medicine and law, as noted above, are pressingly confronted with the task of deciphering and managing potential incompatibilities between contemporary interpretations of sharī^ca and the kinship-related consequences of new reproductive technologies [Jam^ciyya 1995; Clarke 2009]. All of these elements potentially affect the continuity of nasab. Physicians are concerned with the possible genetic effects of close-kin marriage between the children of siblings, as defined in the Koran (4, 23) and still widely practised in town and country. Politicians and jurists are faced with demands for the rapid reform of laws excluding the transmission of citizenship through the mother, which notably affect fatherless children [Tadayyon and Yoosefi 2008]. Feminists, for their part, advocate gender equality as regards the initiation of divorce, while denouncing violence against women, including honour crimes [Sharabi 1988]. These fields of ethical and social contestation may appear confusingly intermeshed. All may be better understood, we will argue, by (re)considering the key importance of nasab, as above defined. In contexts where Islamic jurisprudence is a recognized source of law, debate regarding the issues here addressed is constrained by Revelation and scripture. Further, in contexts in which Islamic norms vie with Christian, Jewish, or secular laws, or all at once as in the case of Israel/Palestine, the shifting balance of authority obtaining between legal, medical, political, and other social actors, as well as conflicting scriptural interpretations and legitimacies, becomes even more complex; yet, the perceived centrality of patrilineal focus in the tracing of descent in association with the sacred-forbidden (hòarām) status of women and close-kin marriage remains intact [Ricks 1986; Holy 1989; Copet-Rougier 1994; Barry 2008].

27What does this centrality imply in sociological terms? How to assess the feminine share in the constitution and maintenance of relations of proximity in the face of widely proclaimed agnatic pre-eminence? How does this conjunction of factors affect the overall distribution of power from the domestic context to state institutions? We here choose to address these questions through the conjoint examination of two largely invisible, inversely complementary institutions, one proscribed, namely full adoption through the conferral of the adoptive father’s name and ensuing inheritance rights (tabannī), and one largely silenced, namely marriage through the permutation of related (often sibling pairs) or unrelated spouses (badal). Tabannī, as associated with pre-Islamic practice [Conte 2003: 21-27], entails the establishment of marriage prohibitions between the adopting and adopted parties in accordance with those that obtain in fiqh among consanguine relatives, allies, and milk kin. This mode of affiliation was banned by Revelation: ‘Call them (adopted sons) by (the names of their fathers),’ enjoins the Koran (33: 4). In practice, however, one finds diverse interpretations of the notions of marriage (nikāhò) and recognition of paternity (iqrār, istilhòāq) manifest in an array of social practices one may subsume under the headings of ‘secret adoption’ [Bargach 2002] or ‘collective incorporation into a nasab’ [Salīm 1956-1957]. These enable those who wish to (or must) arrive at accommodations with legitimacy and naming to bring about effects for both individuals and groups exceeding the bounds of fosterage (kafāla). These vary in accordance with the locally prevailing balance between the principles and mode of application of sharī^ca and ever more extensive codified civil law.

30In Sunnite-majority countries in which civil marriage is not recognized (all other than Tunisia and Turkey), tabannī is forbidden by religious and codified law, but fosterage in the form of kafāla as well as secret adoption are practised, the frontier between the two being thin and contingent. De facto adoption is thus subsumed under the heading of hòurma or individual genealogical fiction. Law appears fully coherent with Revelation, but stands in stark contradiction to social practice. Seen collectively, legitimacy can only be maintained through a dual fiction, collectively by denying this contradiction outright, while engaging in widespread individual genealogical bricolage. In Orphans of Islam, the only detailed ethnographic work on secret adoption, Jamila Bargach observes:

In Morrocco the name is the nucleus of the crime [2002: 105].

31At once, she documents how, in a ‘fiction lived more intensely than the real’ [ibid.: 95], women may be led to part with their (illegitimate) newborn, whom are granted name and nasab by others, not least thanks to the complicity of hospital and court personnel. As corroborated by Palestinian qadi Abū Snayna, the word of the ‘father’ in matters of recognition is not to be contested a priori, rather accepted unless contradictory evidence emerges [Conte and Shehada 2008: 139; see too Sujimon 2002: 372-374]:

Official eyes are closed, and silently cooperate, as there is one less child to be put in a shelter [Bargach 2002: 110].

32What remains, however, is the fragility of the fiction: the adopted child lives under the constant threat of denunciation, not least in the context of ‘sibling’ rivalry regarding inheritance.

33Viewed from the Bosphorus, things look very different [see Aydos 2000 and Gençcan 2002]. The Turkish civil code recognizes the legitimacy of full adoption in the wider European sense. Yet, Revelation must be fully respected, and legitimacy guaranteed. The law distinguishes legitimate descent (düzgün soybaği) from illegitimate descent (düzgün olmayan soybaği), based on what was formerly termed ‘natural filiation’ (tabii neseb). The difference with regard to most other Sunni contexts is that ‘fabricated descent’ (yapinti soybaği) is today recognized as legitimate. Indeed, the revised Turkish civil code of 2002 abolishes the distinction between authentic (sahih) and non-authentic (gayri sahih) nesep [Kirkbeşoğlu 2006: 19]. Adoption, literally ‘taking a child’ (evlat edinme), may be granted by a civil court to married couples or singles over 30. Embryos cannot be adopted, but adults can, as long as a minimum age difference of 18 years obtains between parties [Aydos 2000: 118]. Formerly, the adopted child automatically received the name of the father. Today, an adult adoptee may opt to keep his/her patronymic. Adoption opens rights of inheritance. It does not affect nationality but enables its conferral if the adoptee’s father and mother are unknown while the adoptive parents are Turks [ibid.].

Marriage by Permutation and Siblingship: From Accounts of Origins to Power

36In Islamic prophetic traditions, the legitimacy of Revelation is constructed on the transgenerational continuity of nasab, even beyond such potent symbolic ruptures as the murder of Abel or the Deluge [Conte forthcoming a]. Yet, nasab is not to be reduced to unilineal patrifiliation or ‘patriarchy’. Nasab encompasses, rather, the processes, both structural and historical, that retrospectively enable the construction and reconstruction of geneologies through the transgenerational articulation of sibling sets. This ensues through the careful interweaving of marriages between cousins, on the one hand, and distant relatives and non-kin, on the other, notably through the medium of badal, i.e., we recall, the permutation of marriage partners, in particular of sibling sets, either related or not among themselves. The symbolic paradigm, or parable, of this procedure was related as follows in The History of al-Tòabarī (d. 923) [al-Tòabarī 1879, 1985] and taken up again, in particular, by Abū Ishòāq al-Tha^clabī (d. 1036) in his Lives of the Prophets [al-Tha^clabī n.d., 2002]: Cain and Abel were not born alone. Indeed, the senior Cain had a twin sister called Aqlīmā, whereas the junior Abel had a twin sister known as Labūdā [see too Aptowitzer 1922 and Kister 1988]. Under the circumstances, father Adam was ‘unable to observe the desired ‘disparity and mutual strangeness (of the partners)’ in pairing off his children [al-Mas^cūdī quoted by van Gelder 2005: 122-123]. But God inspired Adam. To ensure the birth of legitimate progeny, he forbade the union of twins and ordered the permutation of siblings: Cain was to marry Labūdā, and Abel Iqlīmā. In other words, the first rule of alliance, and thereby the foundational principle of kinship, was brother-sister badal.

37Yet, as we know, Cain rejected his father’s demand. He claimed that his twin sister was the more beautiful, and that it was his prerogative as elder brother to take her. Thereupon, Cain refused to acquiesce and, rebelling against his father and the Lord, slew his brother. Yet, Adam and Eve persevered, bearing forty pairs of opposite-sex twins! Tha^clabī relates:

When [Adam’s] children grew older, he would marry off a boy of one birth to a girl of the other birth. At that time, a man might marry any of his sisters that he wished except for his own twin sister that was born with him, for she was not lawful to him. All this was necessary in those days because there were no women who were not men’s sisters and who did not have Eve as their common mother [n.d.: 37, 2002: 74].

38Had Cain obeyed his father, his children and those of Abel would have been bilateral cross-cousins who could have intermarried while avoiding unions between siblings. But they would not have borne the patrilateral cross cousins that would have been required to ensure the direct patrilineal transmission of prophecy from Adam to Muhòammad. Still, there was no question of sibling incest becoming a norm. Tòabarī was already keenly aware of the necessity of resolving this key impediment and proposed an anthropologically aware and very cogent solution:

• 24 We thank Anke von Kügelgen for drawing our attention to this passage.

It was forbidden for the woman to marry her twin brother. She would be married by another one of her brothers. And the sons of Adam did not cease to do that until four generations had passed. And one married the daughter of one’s paternal uncle and the marriage to sisters ceased [n.d.: 223]. 24

39Thus to avoid sexual relations between brothers and sisters while maintaining the patrilineal continuity of the Prophetic pedigree required the successive combination of a prohibition of marriage among twins and establishing as initially preferential that between patrilateral parallel cousins.

40In her splendid monograph Marriage Conditions in a Palestinian Village, Hilma Granqvist [1931-1935] discovered that one quarter of the unions recorded in her exhaustive marriage census of the (today West Bank) village of Artas were concluded through badal. She recorded diverse types of permutation: two bothers marry two sisters; a brother and his sister respectively marry a brother and his sister; a man offers his sister to another and marries this man’s sister; a man gives his sister to another who offers his sister to a third man, who in turn marries his sister to the first man. All these combinations can proceed through simultaneous or deferred unions involving not only the actual spouses but equally their respective kin who organize and endorse the badal [ibid.: 109-119]. Happily, these observations were not influenced by the reductionist prism of functionalist segmentary lineage theory, still in gestation at the time. Nor were they stamped with the blanket axiom of male dominance. They offer a uniquely detailed and nuanced account of marriage practice, giving equal attention to marriage among kin, marriage among non-kin, and the overlapping mode of marriage by permutation. Much later fieldwork in Arab contexts simply overlooked the structural articulation between matrimonial proximity and distance thus demonstrated [see Conte 2000]. Some later analysts doubtless sensed that badal put into question the ‘preferential’ status of father’s brother’s daughter’s marriage proclaimed by descent theorists, while shedding a new light on the centrality of sibling exchange in a manner that did not fit in well with the notions of direct and generalized exchange advanced by alliance theory. In focusing on the isolated fact that one often finds more patrilateral parallel cousin marriages than other types of consanguineous unions, many researchers simply turned a blind eye to vast majority of marriages and created a tenacious theoretical artefact.

42The official genealogy of Sòaddām Hòusayn illustrates well the exclusively agnatic representation of political legitimacy characteristic of the Arab genealogical tradition (see figure 1).

43Graphically, men appear to beget men, who beget men, who beget men... Where are the women? If one introduces these into the diagram, a fully different picture emerges. In the case in point, the central element in the genealogy is not Sòaddām, rather his adulated mother, flanked by his mother’s brother, i.e. an opposite-sex sibling pair without whose complicity Sòaddām’s political ascension would not have been possible (see figure 2).

44Sòaddām married his mother’s brother’s daughter. The ‘weak agnatism’ of his genealogy was later compensated, however, by the unions of two of his daughters with grandsons of his father’s brother. Hence, the magic formula that crowned this strategy was none other than classical sibling badal: the two sisters married two brothers with whom they were agnatically related. Just as in the cases documented by Peters [1990], it was hoped by the actors that political kinship could best be consolidated through the rather confidential permutation of sibling pairs, thus maintaining the agnatic illusion connoted by Sòaddām’s official genealogy.

46At stake here, rather than any axiom of ‘male dominance’ as such, is the vital balance between the shared honour of women and men (sharaf in Arabic, asshak in Tamasheq) and their shared continuity of nasab or its analogues. This foundational convergence is not rooted in any male-female dichotomy. It results, rather, from the gendered dynamics that institute all social relationships recognized as legitimate.

47Where this equilibrium does not obtain, there can be no society and, by implication, neither kinship nor ‘tribe’, nor citizenship. Thus, according to the allegory of Koranic commentary [see Conte 1994, 2000], on the day of Creation, Rahòim (literally Uterus) arose and entreated God, al-Rahòīm, the Compassionate, ‘seizing Him by the waist’, to ‘bind Himself to those who remain bound to her and to cut Himself from those who cut themselves’ from her [Ibn Hòanbal 1948-1975, IV: 344, no 2956]. At stake here is not any manner of primordial, autonomous uterine kinship, opposed to a dominant form of agnatic kinship or ‘patriarchy’, endorsed by a lone masculine divinity, rather the foundational character of faithfulness in an all-encompassing kinship, beyond any essentialised gender opposition.

48In this regard, a gender-balanced Tuareg society offers an interesting example of the articulations of descent constructs, affiliation processes, and marriage dynamics. These articulations obtain notably through marriage by permutation among close-kin as well as among distant kin, which contributes to the creation and recreation of temet or ‘matricial kinship’ [Walentowitz 2004 and forthcoming a]. The core descent constructs designated as the ‘stomach’ (tedist) and the ‘back’ (aruru) have long been construed as the ‘matriline’, as opposed to the ‘patriline’, by anthropologists, who sometimes see them as an idiom of procreation [see Bernus et al. 1986; Bonte 2000a and 2000b]. More accurately, these constructs translate the ‘androgynic’ totality of the gendered body-person in its relational cosmos. The ‘stomach’ includes the multiple ‘cognatic’ ties of kinship born from an apical set of sisters and brothers, whose descendants retrospectively guarantee the transgenerational continuity of their father’s ‘back’. In other words, the stomach and the back are the two sides of the same coin: the back, patrilineal only in appearance, is the ongoing result of combined transgenerational alliance histories, which create, maintain, and possibly extend the ‘stomach’ over time and, thus, in turn strengthen the ‘back’. The latter corresponds to pre-eminently gynocentric sibling intimacy and the former to androcentric solidarities of alliance, which the sibling continuum develops and expands.

49In this system, there is no such thing as an endogamous, segmentary tribe or lineage, be it patrilineal or matrilineal. This system is driven by what one may term the autopoïetic dynamics of kinship, which give rise to intertwined, rhysomatic ‘tribal’ networks (tawshiten, sing.: tawshit) owing to the constant interrelating – through marriage as well as other processes of kinning – of shifting nuclei of shared kin, indeed the descendants of sibling sets, which are themselves related through marriage by permutation at each founding generation [Walentowitz forthcoming a; see also Brock 1986]. These closely related kin are competing among themselves for optimal mutualisation, while trying to include multiple others through distant-kin or non-kin unions. The system operates thanks to a form of ‘reciprocity’ through which relative difference emerges from relative sameness, and vice versa. Such reciprocity does not imply that absolute difference is a precondition of ‘exchange’. What Stanley Kurtz does, by contrast, is to reify absolute difference, thus negating relativity and relationality [2007].

50In the overall perspective all too sketchily outlined in this text, cutting the tie of kinship or being cut from it destroys relational legitimacy. From the standpoint of jurisprudence, this process may take several forms, all linked to the breach or absence of nasab: an act of fornication (zinā), whether or not it leads to birth, abandonment of a child and ensuing doubt as to its patronymic, the unfounded repudiation of a spouse, homosexuality in that it cannot found nasab, the betrayal of pacts of alliance concluded through terms invoking sharaf, asshak, etc. One cannot hence underestimate the centrality of the transgenerational continuity of nasab, as it relates to siblingship and the retrospective narrative of origins through marriage, and as opposed to the agnatic descent paradigm long dominant in anthropology. The deconstruction of this process of close ‘kinning’ [Howell 2006] is of essence to understand current debates and reform projects concerning personal status and citizenship in Muslim contexts. It clearly appears that any modification that might be construed as questioning the social and symbolic foundation (sibling intimacy and the continuity of patronymic or renown of the house, alhurma, etc.) and instruments (legitimate, close-kin marriage and badal) of nasab is not applicable. This excludes the introduction of full adoption as a category that would imply an obliteration of the patronymic (or matronymic) acquired at birth, an act forbidden in the Koran, the prophetic traditions, and Islamic jurisprudence. Indeed, notwithstanding the recognized social and ethical necessity of providing for the ‘illegitimate’ or parentless children of mass migration and the orphans of war, this would ‘cut the chain (silsila) of nasab’. Thus, fosterage (kafāla) is praised, but full adoption (tabannī) proscribed in fiqh. This perspective explains why the non-conferral of the mother’s citizenship to the legitimate lone children of absentee Arab fathers of distinct nationality derives, in contrast, from a negative interpretation of the agnatic ascription of the patronymic, and hence of nasab, in conjunction with the principle of territoriality: thus hundreds of thousands of initially legitimate ‘orphans of name’, notably in Egypt, have become de facto stateless, for deprived of nasab through the repudiation or abandonment of their mothers. Present on a very large scale from Pakistan to Morocco, such phenomena present an enormous challenge to actors, analysts, and politicians. From individual genealogies and networks to large-scale pacts of brotherhood [Salīm 1956-1957; Conte 2003], however, the flexible, elective nature of kinship dynamics in Muslim contexts has always allowed, and shall continue to allow, the affiliation of children without names or indeed of ‘sleeping children’ who stagnate and dally in their mother’s womb well beyond the ‘natural’ gestation period [Colin 1998]. In other words, individual as well as collective adoptive or integrative processes take place every day, in various ways, and are tolerated to a greater or lesser extent as long as they do not put the foundational principles of nasab into question.

Who Is Afraid of Orientalists?

51The structural functionalist tribal model tends to eliminate most of the complexities here alluded to. Why? The answer lies in good part in its naturalistic male bias, in the claim that it reflects emic perceptions. This is apparent in its long-dominant conceptual skeleton that revolves around the related notions of patriarchy, patrilineality, and endogamy. Correspondingly, in representing the genealogically formulated charters of tribes, mostly promulgated by men, analysts tend to marginalize women and their structural role while preserving the notion of transgenerational continuity of gendered power structures [Abu-Lughod 1989]. Male anthropologists and male informants often concur in this regard. Updated versions of the model [see Krauss 2004] are largely a-chronical and impervious to structural time. They seek to counterbalance analytical gender asymmetry by stressing individual female agency or mediation, instead of addressing the overall structural role of women in ‘Muslim’ kinship configurations. Women emerge as daughters and as wives, rather than sisters and mothers. They are depicted as figures of alliance rather than of descent. Such accommodations to feminist theory could lead one to oversee that, behind the curtains of functionalism, structuralism, and post-structuralism, evolutionism neither died nor faded away. Its spectre lingers on, clad in different mantels. In certain regards, however, one might be inclined to mourn the impetus evolutionism once brought to social science [see also Roberts 2002]. That of W.R. Smith [1885], drawing upon Bachhofen and McLennan, or that, more circumspect, of J. Wellhausen [1893], situated Mutterrecht and Vaterrecht in chronological sequence. Yet, these authors weighted both equally. If, with hindsight, one blends out the linear, sequential postulate underlying this vision, one is left with what could arguably be described as a structurally gender-balanced perspective. Seen in ideological terms, structural functionalists annulled structural diachrony and gender balance at one go, possibly in the silent hope of better depriving hostile Marxism of its politically powerful evolutionist teleology [Knight 2008: 69-70]. The residual paradigm was synchronic, presumptively perpetual patriarchy or, in more modern parlance, male dominance. It explains neither violence against women nor their pre-eminence in certain Muslim societies (i.e. Minangkabau, Tuareg).

52In view of this biased background, could the conceptual legacy of the 19th-century philologists and their key disciples be fully appreciated? Its strength lies in its theoretical coherence and novelty. Rather than an empty toolbox, we have received an extensive conceptual apparatus not bound by a specific theory (including evolutionism) or monopolised by a single school. It stresses the logical centrality of siblingship [Wellhausen 1884: 124, 127-129], a notion that was marginalized by the long-accepted ‘descent and alliance’ pair; the relativity of the endogamy/exogamy opposition [Wellhausen 1893]; the structural role of elective kinship and ‘affiliation’ [Goldziher 1889, I: 40 and 1893] in maintaining and regenerating performative descent constructs; a definition of exchange that is not subordinated to the assumption of a rule of exogamy [Granqvist 1931-1935]; and last but not least an awareness of the complex intertwining of gender asymmetry and political hierarchy [see Conte forthcoming b]. This is not little.

53Departing from this yet unclaimed legacy, formed before the emergence of structural functionalist and subsequently gender theory, new hypotheses can now be developed, as we have tried to suggest in this text. So too is it crucial, from the perspective of social science, critically but seriously to take on board the insights of the philologists, just as one should (re)read in contemporary perspective [see Citton 2007] texts and oral sources, old and new, in all relevant languages, so as to develop an interculturally intelligible political anthropology of kinship and reproduction. Reflexivity [Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992] implies rather more than presenting an analytical discourse referring to the (Oriental) Other [see Lindholm 1995], often revolving, even today, around the term-cluster ‘patriarchy-endogamy-segmentarity-tribe’ [see Krauss 2004]. Neither Orientalists nor Orientals hold this cluster to be binding. Rather, they situate the factor ‘tribe’ in a wide palette of relational configurations, ranging from individual relationships of love, hate, and honour [van Gelder 2005] to the destinies of dynasties and empires [Wellhausen 1902]. Were we fully to appreciate the scope of analysis thus suggested, we could hopefully place the foundations of a mode of reflexive analysis recognizing the differential symmetry of sources, while not adding either disciplinary or conceptual barriers to the conflicts and ‘security walls’ that today increasingly fragment social and political space in Southwest Asia and beyond.