Ecology, knowledge, and trade in Central Arabia (Najd) during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Abstract

Most scholars dealing with Saudi Arabia still write its history by focusing exclusively either on political, economic, or cultural matters. For example, treatment of religious aspects in writings on politics and economy are often confined to some superficial remarks insufficient to clarify the interrelations among the Weberian dimensions of culture, politics, and economy, which still dominate writings on the region. On the other hand, many of those dealing with religious issues still seem to think that a treatment of religious developments alone provides us with valuable insights into the region’s history. While historians of other parts of the world and other countries of the Middle East have realized that an artificial isolation of dimensions of history-even if only for analytic purposes-should be considered a thing of the past, studies of Saudi Arabia still suffer from a serious lack of methodological sophistication, not only in this regard. Not surprisingly, anthropologists have become the better historians of the Peninsula in general and Saudi Arabia in particular. One possible method of applying up-to-date historical methodology on the Peninsula could be to focus on the various interrelations between the historical "dimensions," thereby identifying new directions for historical research concerning Saudi Arabia.