Shallow patrilineal groups of this kind are found in many peasant societies - in Arab countries and in Asia (Granquist (1931), Peters (1964), Embree (1946). Srinivas (1952) etc., etc.) Since the non-overlapping groups defined by descent from a common ancestor through one sex only, it seems pointless to refuse them the name `lineage'. But it is true that this is no complex large-scale segmentary system such as is found in Middle East tribal society, and in other parts of the world (Peters (1960), Evans-Pritchard (1940), Freedman (1958) etc.). These lineages are in many.ways strikingly unlike the lineages of these larger scale systems both in form and function.
They can hardly be called corporate. (cf. Fortes (1953) p. 25, Evans-Pritchard (1940) p. 203.) They are not legal or jural persons in custom or in law. They own nothing in common for one exception, see p. 242), they have no common ritual symbols, teir leaders are not often clearly and formally recognised, and they are neither exogamous nor endogamous. More importantly, though it is impossible to belong to two lineages, it is possible for some households tacitly to contract out of lineage activities, and a few households with no close agnates have no lineage affiliation at all.
Their existence and persistence does not rely on the part they play as units in a larger system, but on the recognition and fulfilling of the special personal rights and duties of agnates to each other. It is the fact that the men of a number of households recognise both close relations of a general kind and the specific duty to defend each other that constitutes the group.