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In 1953, Werner Caskel produced a theory which he called "the Bedouinization of Arabia". In this, he maintained that around AD 100 Arabia was peaceful, dominated by settled states, with some non-tribal nomads who were simply "shepherds near the cities". He contrasted this with Arabia in the sixth and seventh centuries in which he claimed "the Bedouin form of society and ideo logy prevailed". The evidence he provided for this false dichotomy consisted of errors, misunderstandings and argumenta ex silentio, as was pointed out at the time, but his theory has nevertheless been widely accepted in the years which followed. In 1959, it was taken up and adapted by Walter Dostal who tried to explain the "Bedouinization" by producing a novel definition of the Bedouin as "camel-herders accustomed to fighting as rider warriors" and said that "Vollbeduinen" were only those who used the shadād or so-called "North-Arabian" camel saddle which, he imagined, gave them a secure seat from which to fight. In fact, however, there is no evidence at all that nomads in Arabia have ever fought from camel-back if they could possibly get off to fight on foot or on horseback. Nevertheless, in 1975, Richard Bulliet adopted Dostal's idea and took it further by claiming that the use of the shadād made camel-riders an almost invincible force and this produced "an alteration in the balance of political power in favour of the nomads". This gave apparent support to Caskel's idea that the North Arabian Bedouin were able to sweep to military and political domination of the sedentaries by the sixth century AD. The present examination of these theories shows that there is no basis to them and, in doing so, argues that what is known of nomadic life in Arabia between AD 100 and 500 suggests continuity both in its structures and in its relations with the sedentaries.

"Measuring Crime and Criminality focuses on how different approaches to measuring crime and criminality are used to test existing criminological theories. Each chapter reviews a key approach for measuring criminal behavior and discusses its strengths or weaknesses for explaining the facts of crime or answers to central issues of criminological inquiry. The book describes the state of the field on different approaches for measuring crime and criminality as seen by prominent scholars in the field. Among the featured contributions are: The Use of Official Reports and Victimization Data for Testing Criminological Theories; The Design and Analysis of Experiments in Criminology; and Growth Curve/Mixture Models for Measuring Criminal Careers. Also included are papers titled: Counterfactual Methods of Causal Inference and Their Application to Criminology; Measuring Gene-Environment Interactions in the Cause of Antisocial Behavior and What Has Been Gained and Lost through Longitudinal Research and Advanced Statistical Models? This volume of Advances in Criminological Theory illustrates how understanding the various ways criminal behavior is measured is useful for developing theoretical insights on the causes of crime."--Publisher's website