One of the most important differences between settled people and tribal people is the way they perceive and understand political power and authority, and not only the fact one is settled and the other nomad.

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In a settled state or empire, the most important and obvious characteristic of rule is and was the bureaucracy. Any revolution or change in a settled society meant a conquest or takeover of the administration and bureaucracy.

Some changes or new directions might happen, but in general conquest simply meant removing the top leaders of the state and replacing them with new ones.

For settled states conquest usually meant expansion of one´s own territory, whereas for nomads it meant conquest of...

settled peoples, or seizing the property of others. One of the most important complaints of settled folk against nomads is that the latter exploits the lands and the fruits of others, which gave them a reputation of being anti-productive and purely exploitative.

A good example of this is the current conflict between nomad Pashtun Kuchis and settled Hazaras in some regions of Afghanistan, where Kuchis raid or attack the lands of Hazaras in order to steal their properties, harvest or land.

The way tribal and settled people perceive leadership is also different. While for tribal people in general, a leader is not questioned (there are some exceptions to this), in settled societies the ruler is just another piece in the massive bureaucracy. If the ruler protects...

his people and insures justice to all, everything was well. If he failed, revolt happened and the ruler lost his legitimacy, which sometimes was linked to a "divine mandate".

The military support for rule on the steppes is different from settled states. On the steppes the army was composed of the fighting men of the tribe: "Ordu" in Turkic or Mongolian ("The Horde"), "Kara" in Persian or "Heer" in German. Settled states usually had professional...

or established armies of various kinds. When the Persians established their empire under the Achaemenid family, their "kara" became a "spada" or professional army.

Fin.