Bedouin nomads traditionally regarded kingship as dishonorable servitude

Evidence

But among the ancient Arabs kingship often had a negative connotation. The Bedouin, like other nomads, dislike any kind of central authority. An Arabic word, liqa¯h, is explained as meaning “those who had never submitted to a king,” and there is a poem attributed to the pre-Islamic Arabic poet Abid ibn al-Abras in which he says in praise of his own tribe: “They refused to be servants of kings, and were never ruled by any. But when they were called on for help in war, they responded gladly.” — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 525

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Parallels the tension between desert autonomy and central authority in Ibn Khaldun’s asabiyya theory on state formation among the Arabs.
• CANDY: A pre-Islamic Arab tribe bragged they ‘refused to be servants of kings’ but rushed to answer war calls — a neat encapsulation of nomadic anti-authoritarianism.

Related

• Nomadic Bedouin culture prized refusal to submit to kings (similarity 0.94)