Medieval Crusader texts treated Bedouin nomadism itself as grounds for suspicion

Evidence

It is also striking that both the Tractatus and, under its influence, Jacques de Vitry treat the rootless Bedouin as a separate ethnic category within the Crusader States. In both sources, the distinguishing feature of Bedouin life, nomadism, is treated as a cause for suspicion. According to the Tractatus, Bedouin are wild by nature and live outdoors, having neither home nor homeland. They can be found wandering in many different provinces, guided by Fortune-by implication, rather than by Reason. Thus they cannot be trusted: sometimes they are friendly to us, sometimes to the Saracens, depending on whom they fear more at ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS CATEGORIES IN THE TREATMENT OF JEWS… — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 216

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: how settled societies have historically pathologized nomadism across cultures and eras — medieval Bedouin, Roma, Pentecostals’ ‘spirit-anchorless’ populations — as morally suspect simply for moving.
• XREF: Resonates with Milgrom’s law-merchant work on how geographic mobility undermines reputation-based trust mechanisms, and with anti-Roma prejudice scholarship.