Examining modern state formation in the Middle East, historians have traditionally focused on central state institutions and nationalist movements which were predominantly centered in urban settings. Recent scholarship, however, has increasingly turned its gaze to the interior of the Ottoman and post-Ottoman territories, showing that actors and places that were historically deemed marginal to, or even threatened by, the processes of modern state-building were in fact actively involved in, if not central to, the development of state institutions. Barakat’s Bedouin Bureaucrats is a welcome contribution to this increasingly vibrant historiographical field. By rethinking the concept of the “tribe” and through stressing Bedouins’ deeply rooted historical connections to land, agriculture, and modern state institutions, her book sets new standards in studying Bedouin actors in the Middle East.