Bedouins: Nomadic Bedouins usually live in tents and move about the countryside grazing flocks of sheep and goats. Bedouins trade meat, skins, and dairy products with villagers they encounter in their travels. Bedouins are proud and extremely independent people, living by a moral code that emphasizes courage, generosity, and tribal loyalty. Few tribes still exist in the Syrian desert and grasslands of southeastern Syria. The tribe is ruled by the sheikh, or the chief, whose orders are always obeyed by tribe members.