During the time of the Prophet SAWS there are many reported Hadith describing interactions with the bedouins of the Arabian peninsula. However, until recently, I hadn't considered how the bedouins lifestyle was like in 2025. Were there even still any bedouins and nomads navigating the Arabian deserts? I was surprised to learn that in fact there still are, even with how modern Saudi Arabia has become in the last few decades and also surprised to learn of the challenges facing this lifestyle in the coming decades.
Why
What brought about this intreague? I recently watched a video from Johny Harris where he explored the Neom construction project in Saudi Arabia. If you're unfamiliar with either, johny Harris is a popular investigative journalist who publishes videos on YouTube, and Neom is a large in-progress construction project in Saudi Arabia to help reinvest oil funds into futuristic cities to rival similar cities like Dubai. While investigating Neom, Harris stayed in the desert with Arabian Bedouins. The resulting video was half about the construction and half about the lifestyle of the Bedouins. This gave a unique insight into a group of people that I'd only heard about from the Hadith of the Prophet SAWS.
Bedouins Today
According to TK the Bedouins started their nomadic lifestyle in the Middle East around 6000 BCE but around the 1950s most had migrated to cities either by economic necessity or by government intervention. However, in Saudi Arabia there are about TK Bedouins. Today they live in tribes of around 50 to 100 and herd animals like camels and goats.
