Chapter 6 examines the imperial practice of tax collection among the desert societies. Bedouin taxes could be collected with the consent and cooperation of their sheikhs. The chapter starts with an analysis of how coercive methods of tax collection failed to exact the nomadic duties and how the sheikhs played a crucial role in the process. Sheikhs persuaded their followers of the necessity of paying a moderate tax to the government, which demonstrates the role of the sheikh as agent of the empire. Although the tax was moderate, the great number of tribal animals made the amount a remarkable contribution to the provincial treasuries. The sheikly collaboration was in return for a quearter share of the collected taxes.

Chapter 1 is dedicated to demonstrating the failed imperial attempts to subjugate, pacify and ‘deport’ the Anizah and Shammar groups by force. During the 1840s and 1850s, and early 1860s, the authorities made several attempts to that end. However, the Anizah and Shammar successfully resisted the imperial project and remained in the lands they had occupied as pasturages mostly since the late eighteenth century in spite of the official objection. Their achievements stemmed from the lack of sufficient troops, which compelled officials to consent to the tribal existence. Again for the same reason, particularly in the 1850s, the tribal sheikhs occasionally helped the local governments to suppress local rebels and to expand their influence in the Arab countryside, which gradually led to the construction of a long-term compromise. In this way, theyforced the government both to recognize their existing privileges and to give them new ones. This occasional cooperation and ‘forced consent’ to tribal existence, however, did not transform into a systematized partnership as imperial officers still occasionally endeavoured to exile them into the desert and the tribes maintained their plundering and raids against the villages and caravans. The state of hostility continued to dominate state-tribe relations until the early 1870s although its intensity gradually decreased.