Alliances among the Arabs

Arabian society of pre-Islamic and early Islamic times consisted of units whose members shared certain legal responsibilities. They may be called co-liable groups. Originally the boundaries of any given co-liable group matched those of a certain descent group (that is, a group consisting of agnatically related males). However, the boundaries of all the groups were constantly shifting, due to segmentation on the one hand, and alliances on the other. Three types of alliances may be discerned. The paper discusses one of them in detail, using the term "hosting alliance" to designate it. This type of alliance amounted to inte-grating outsiders into co-liable groups.