ḤAram and ḤAwṬah
ḤARAM AND ḤAWṬAH. Arabian society may be described as a conglomeration of individual tribal units normally in a state of war, truce, or alliance with other tribal units, whether these tribes are settled in villages and towns or are migratory herders. Unarmed traders, artisans, and peasants are subject to the noble (sharīf) tribes, who consider them weak (ḍaʿīf) and ignoble. Occasions inevitably arise when tribes, even if at war, must meet on neutral ground in physical security: to attend markets, to make political arrangements such as a truce, and for purposes of religion. Since tribal lords find it hard to accept the authority of their peers, when it becomes necessary for someone to preside over tribal arbitrations, to provide a secure forum for their meetings and even to impose certain sanctions upon them, they require an authority with supernatural backing to preside in territory not subject to tribal law. Consequently, they turn to a family regarded as having holy attributes, deriving supreme authority from a divine source, and so exercising the functions committed to it through a prophet or saint.
The institution known in ancient Arabia as ḥaram (and probably also maḥram), and in parts of contemporary south Arabia as ḥawṭah, is closely associated with such holy houses.
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