Nomadic Bedouin were bought and sold in medieval Crusader Jerusalem

Evidence

A charter issued by King Baldwin IV in 1178 enumerated and described a Bedouin tribe, the BeniKarkas, comprising 103 families, that was evidently subject to both gift and sale. Since the Bedouin within the borders of the kingdom were recognised as belonging to no particular glebe or manorial estate, they could be protected only by the crown or, as seems to have happened by 1180, by the Templars or Hospitallers. Despite the apparent autonomy attributed to them by both the Tractatus and other Western observers—an autonomy that was often simply a form of lawlessness— they were in fact a people with whom many of the conceptual attributes associated with Jews could also be linked. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 219

Categorization

• SHARE: This 1178 Baldwin IV charter enumerating a sellable 103-family Bedouin tribe is the kind of concrete medieval detail a historian friend would enjoy.