Despite the critical political importance of tribalism throughout Syria, the ‘tribe’ remains a concept that poorly understood.6Indeed, understandings of the Middle Eastern tribe often come from orientalist or colonial frameworks. Under these frameworks, the tribe is either considered to be a far more important and unified entity than it actually is, or its importance is dismissed altogether.  Definitions and understandings of a ‘tribe’ vary, especially in the Middle East where the concept has been shaped by both historical practices and more recent social, economic, and political changes associated with modern state formation.  Indeed, academics and practitioners regularly debate the importance of the ‘tribe’ in the modern Middle East, and entire books have been written on the topic of tribalism and tribal boundaries.7Much of this section is drawn from Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, a collection edited by Phillip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner; The Ottoman Background of the Modern Middle East by Albert Hourani, and The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries by Andreas Wimmer were also consulted.  However, most practitioners do agree on two key characteristics of the tribe in the Middle East: the tribe is an socio-political identity and solidarity network; and a tribe is informed by shared kinship networks based on common paternal descent.8The degree to which there are true biological relationships between tribal members is often irrelevant – what is more important is the idea of a common ancestor that tribal members claim descent from. Indeed, it is not uncommon for tribal ‘founders’ to be almost mythical figures; it is the idea of a common ancestor, and the perception of kinship ties, that is perhaps more important than actual biological reality.  Mohammad Jamal Baroud, a prominent Arab social scientist, refers to the tribe using the concept of muhit hayawi ijtima’i, which is best translated as a person’s ‘essential social environment.9Please see: A Contemporary History of the Syrian Jazeerah: Challenges of Urban Transition for Nomadic Communities, published in 2013.  Fundamentally, tribal affiliation is an immutable characteristic; i.e. a member of the Jabour tribe cannot convert and become a member of another tribe, and that status will also inform behavior patterns within the broader socio-political environment.10To say tribal affiliation is ‘immutable’ is perhaps not entirely true. Individuals can theoretically be adopted into tribes, although this is extremely rare and often takes place with young orphans. Additionally, tribes can and have merged, though often in the distant past. Tribes can also break away from parent tribes, and several of Syria’s most prominent tribes are offshoots of larger tribes. However, this does not change the fact that there is an essential, unchanging, common ancestor-based component of tribal identity. For example, in Syria the Al-Bursan tribe is an offshoot of the Al-Weldeh tribe; this took place when a prominent Sheikh of the Al-Weldeh tribe, along with his kin, broke away from the Al-Weldeh in the 1940’s and became the ‘founder’ of the Bursan. However, while a prominent tribal leader can potentially form a new tribe, he cannot become a member of another tribe; he is either a member of the tribe of his father, or the founder of a new lineage.