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Tribal Christianity in the Karak Region of Jordan
A final word needs to be said about family, or tribal, affiliations with religion in the Karak region. The people of Jordan have a much more elaborate and extensive kinship system than we are familiar with in America.
There are a number of tribes on the Karak plateau, some Christian, and some Muslim. A complex set of political relations governs the relationships of one tribe to another. Peter Gubser's book,
Politics and Change in Jordan: A Study of a Small Arab Town and its Districts gives the best available analysis of this complex political situation.
The Christian tribes of the Karak region are the Halasa, Haddadin, Hajazin, 'Akasha, Sunna', Madanat, Zurayqat, Masanat, Baqain, and Masarwa. Most of the Christians in the region are found mostly in the following villages or cities: Karak, Qasr, Simakiyya, Hamoud, Adir, and
Ar-Rabba.
As already noted, the Christians in Simakiyya tend to divide their church affiliation between the Melkite Catholic and Latin Churches along tribal lines. The 'Akasha belong to the Melkite Catholic Church and the Hajazin to the Latin Church.
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