The Origins of the United Arab Emirates

A Political and Social History of the Trucial States

Rosemarie Said Zahlan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138642942
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317244646
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The creation of the United Arab Emirates in 1971 ended a century and a half of the existence of the Trucial States in special treaty relations with Britain. This book, first published in 1978, describes the evolution of tribes and their rulers' authority over time, and the tribes' treaties with Britain as it sought to exercise imperial control over its trade routes. Analysing changes to society as well as the politics of the region, this book analyses the formation of the United Arab Emirates.

1	The Trucial States in 1919: Rule by Tradition

The United Arab Emirates occupies the southern shores of the Gulf, an area that has long been known either as the Trucial Coast, because of the treaties under which the tiny shaykhdoms scattered along the coast concluded a maritime truce with Britain; or as Trucial Oman, since it was from Oman, the territory occupying the south-eastern portion of the Arabian peninsula, that these treaties separated it. Its eastern extremity, a narrow strip of mountainous land known as the Shimayliyyah, cuts off from the rest of the present state of Oman (formerly known as the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman) its northernmost part, the Musandam peninsula. The UAE is thus bordered on the west by Qatar, on the south-west by the Hasa province of Saudi Arabia, on the south by the great sands of the Rub‘ al-Khali, on the north by the Arabian Gulf and Oman, and on the east by Oman and the Gulf of Oman.

The UAE has an area of about 30,000 square miles, which may be divided into three geographical sections. First, there is the land lying along the coast of the Arabian Gulf. The coast itself is characterised by numerous islands, reefs and shoals, making navigation hazardous; and the land along it is for the most part low-lying, barren and monotonous, especially in the south, around Abu Dhabi. Further north, however, around Ras al-Khaimah, it does support a degree of cultivation. Second, there are the inland plains, which are made up almost entirely of sandy desert. These run into the Rub‘ al-Khali on the south, and into a hilly area on the north, near Ras al-Khaimah. Third, there are the mountains in the east. These run north from Oman, through the UAE for about fifty miles, to the Musandam peninsula. The UAE section of the mountains is about twenty miles across, and on the east borders the Gulf of Oman. In consequence, this coast is far more dramatic than the Arabian Gulf coast of the UAE. The bulk of the UAE’s inhabitants live along its coasts, and, though there is a lack of sweet water there, certain inland oases, such as Buraimi, Liwa and Dhayd, have adequate supplies and therefore are important agricultural centres.

The harshness of the UAE’s geography is matched by the severity of its summers, which are long, oppressively hot and excessively humid; temperatures during the season can reach 120°F (49°C), and the combination of heat and humidity produces conditions not dissimilar from those of a steam-bath. The winter months, by contrast, are mild, with pleasant temperatures and a minimal rainfall. The UAE’s geographical position makes it subject to frequent dust-storms, which usually are accompanied by a strong north-west wind, the shamal. This adds greatly to the dangers of coastal navigation.

The area’s inhospitable geography and climate contributed substantially to its long isolation. This became more complete after the treaties with Britain, which curbed the seafaring activities of the people of the Trucial Coast and so restricted their main channel of communication with the outside world; they did not, however, discontinue fishing and pearling, and so remained expert sailors. Inevitably, though, the attention of the Coast’s inhabitants was largely turned inland; and the 1892 treaty called a final halt to any foreign contacts by them, except with Britain. The result of all this was a gradual withdrawal from all but the most essential form of social and economic intercourse with other peoples, and a preoccupation with local events that was lacking in any kind of awareness of their wider implications, either for the region or in the context of the British Empire. The remoteness of the people of the Coast caused them to live in a world where time was an unimportant factor. For their part, the British were not dissatisfied with their condition, but regarded them as savage and backward.

The most illuminating example of this occurred in December 1910. when a party of men from HMS Hyacinth, acting on suspicion of a traffic in arms, landed at Dubai to make a search. The townspeople were alarmed at the entry of the armed men, and strongly resented and resisted their presence. In the ensuing hostilities, four men of the search party were killed and nine were wounded. Immediate reprisals followed. A command issued jointly by the Political Resident in Bushire and the Naval Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies Division ordered the ruler, Shaykh Butti bin Suhayl, to pay a fine and deliver up certain arms within forty-eight hours; he was told that he would have to accept a British agent in Dubai and that a proper post office might be installed there as well. Although Butti paid the fine and surrendered the arms, he showed a marked fear at the possibility of a resident British agent: he knew that his people would be violently opposed to any such intrusion, and that it would in turn jeopardise his own position. The British authorities understood the realities of Butti’s predicament, and concluded that the Coast was too ‘wild’ a place for an agent to be accepted without a strong show of force; it was finally decided to defer the matter until a more propitious time.¹ In the inter-war discussions of British policy, this incident was used as a touchstone of the attitude on the Coast towards foreigners. It strengthened belief in the backwardness of the people there, though no questions were asked about why they were so insular as to refuse to have a British agent among them.

The history of the shaykhdoms before World War I was remarkably unaffected by developments elsewhere. Although, in the two decades preceding the war, the Gulf area became the arena of major competition between France, Britain, Russia, Germany and the Ottoman Empire,² the Trucial Coast felt little of this. The treaty of 1892, which had followed from the possibility that the French would try to extend their interests in the area, had effectively cut it off from the stream of events. It continued to be governed by political officers of the British government of India, and, instead of being a part of the Arab world, was more an extension of the Indian sub-continent. For example, since there was no local currency, the Indian rupee had become the accepted form of payment, except in the hinterland, where Maria Theresa dollars circulated. Furthermore, the largest foreign community in the region was made up of Indian merchants. The effect of all this was that India had the major share of the Coast’s foreign trade.

The conditions on the Coast were reflected in the population itself. In 1908, this was estimated at 80,000,³ and in 1939, just over thirty years later, it was estimated at the same figure.⁴ The restrictions of day-to-day living, the illiteracy of the people because of the general absence of educational facilities, and their ignorance of even the most rudimentary forms of public health all contributed to a high rate of infant mortality and a short life expectancy, which in turn resulted in zero population growth.

Although the population was static, a comparison of the population figures for the principal towns in the same two years (see Table 1) reveals that the people responded positively to the various economic and political challenges facing them. There was a great deal of internal migration, which demonstrates the dynamic nature of the society. When conditions in Sharjah stopped being conducive to socio-economic growth, Dubai and, to a lesser extent, Abu Dhabi became the new centres of the Trucial Coast. The people acted within the confines of the existing situation and responded to the economic changes by migrating to nearby towns. Thus, despite their long isolation and the poverty in which they lived, it is inaccurate to say that the people of the Coast had become atrophied. On the contrary, they had an innate sense of survival that defied the harshness of the conditions of life on the Coast.

Socially, they were divided into the bedouin (badu) and the settled people (hadar), the organisation of both being based on the tribe. The bedouin made up only 10 per cent of the total population, but the role they played far outweighed their actual numbers. They roamed the inland regions, with their camels, sheep and goats, in search of grazing land, moving about among the numerous wells that existed there. Their migratory habits were determined by the aridity of the land and the harshness of the climate, yet their mode of life provided ideal conditions for the strengthening of their tribal ties. As a rule, each bedouin tribe had its dirah, the land it habitually roamed, and the tribe roamed as a group. The leader of the tribe, the shaykh, was responsible for the welfare of his people in peace and wartime, and, depending on the size and strength of his following, was regarded as an independent leader, answerable to no one else; indeed, his friendship was usually sought by the rulers on the coast, for his control over a section of the hinterland and its people placed him in a position of great strength.

TABLE 1

Population of Principal Towns

	1908	1939
Sharjah town	15,000	5,000
Abu Dhabi town	6,000	10,000
Dubai town	10,000	20,000

The hadar lived in rural areas and towns. In the rural settlements in the inland oases, such as Dhayd and Buraimi, in the coastal region around Ras al-Khaimah, and in the Shimayliyyah on the Gulf of Oman, the cultivation of date and other fruit trees, some barley and vegetables were the main occupations. In the coastal towns, by contrast, the economy was centred on fishing and pearl-diving. The towns resembled each other, and generally were formed on the same pattern: a square stone fort with towers around it was the symbol of the ruler’s power; the houses of the ruler and leading men were made of stone, and the rest were of mats made with date-leaf stalks.

The system of government on the Coast was paternalistic. The ruler governed with absolute authority, but often consulted with his majlis (assembly of notables) on matters of outstanding importance. The position of the ruler was not always an easy one. The rule of primogeniture did not apply, and accession to power was often accompanied by ruthless family competition, with murder and bloodshed; fratricide and patricide were almost regular features of the pattern. Once in power, a ruler had to placate above all the members of his family, for the fact of their birth gave them the right to occupy the seat of power, and any weakness of or injustice by the ruler could unleash the enmity of his ambitious relatives. He therefore not only included them in his majlis and consulted them before taking any major decision, but also paid them a regular salary out of his income as ruler; not to do so would inevitably be to incur their wrath and would be very likely to bring about his downfall.

The ruler had to remain accessible to all his people and hear their petitions and complaints. He also had to prove his authority by extending his rule over the inland tribes, and often paid them large sums to ensure their loyalty. No government services or departments existed, no armies or police force, and communications were at the most primitive level. The ruler also had to contend with the terms of his shaykhdom’s various treaties with Britain, which he had to sign at his accession to confirm their validity. He also had to abide by all the formalities regarding the British authorities; for example, when the Political Resident sailed to a shaykhdom and had his standard raised, the ruler had to go on board to pay his respects. Furthermore, the resident Indian traders were regarded as British subjects and had to be treated with due care and deference, although no extra-territorial jurisdiction existed for them until 1946.⁵

Throughout the nineteenth century, and because of the successive treaties, Britain reinforced the separate identity of the shaykhdoms and helped the chiefs to establish themselves more securely. At the same time the focus of the area’s internal affairs shifted from the interior to the coast. This had much to do with the fact that Britain was primarily interested in the security of the route to India, and therefore recognised the authority of only those leaders who had jurisdiction over the coast. There therefore developed a marked difference between the settled society of the coastal area and the more turbulent society of the nomadic peoples of the interior. The emphasis on the coast became an established feature of Trucial politics in the twentieth century, and was not challenged until the 1930s, when exploration for oil began; the divergence between the coast and the interior then became glaringly obvious, especially when local tribal opposition prevented geologists from entering certain inland regions that the coastal de jure ruler of the territory had given them permission to enter.

Thus, despite the power and prominence of the coastal area, the role played by the hinterland cannot be overlooked. The foremost measure of a coastal ruler’s strength and prestige was his ability to command the tribes of the interior; his rise or decline in coastal politics could usually be measured by his ability to enforce his authority over the tribal chieftains in the area he claimed as his territory. Conversely, the extent of a ruler’s territory was governed by the extent to which the tribes roaming the area would support him in time of need.

There was thus an important interaction between the coast and the interior, and this directly affected the political structure of the area. One example is the persistence in the coastal districts of the bedouin custom of exacting diyah, or blood-money, that was the accepted form of compensation for the murder of a man where the ties of blood relationship were connected with the substitute of blood revenge. Another is the attempts that have been made during the present century, mostly without success, at exactly defining the boundaries of the shaykhdoms and their frontiers with neighbouring states.

Until it became known that oil might be found in the eastern part of Arabia, little attention had been paid to the delineation of boundaries in the Western sense. The desert law that governed societies throughout most of the Arabian peninsula did not concern itself with fixed boundaries: ‘The Arabian desert has sometimes been compared to the high seas. Caravans come and go like ships and nomads roam at will in search of grazing ….’⁶ One of the few accepted tests of the extent of a ruler’s territory was his ability to enforce the payment of zakat (a tax in return for the payment of which he promised his protection)⁷ on the tribes whose dirah was adjacent to his territory. Another was his capacity to protect these same tribes, and avenge any raids against them occurring within his precincts. Boundaries, therefore, fluctuated according to pastoral and political conditions, and could never achieve any degree of permanence—a consideration that is central to any understanding of the Arabian peninsula in the twentieth century.

Until the 1930s, when they began to receive regular payments resulting from oil and air agreements, the rulers’ revenues were restricted to customs duties (which in places like Dubai and Sharjah were substantial, and in Umm al-Qaiwain, by contrast, minimal) and the tax levied on every pearl boat of the shaykhdom. This latter tax was fairly large in all places, for, until the early 1930s, when the industry began to decline, owing to the world depression and the introduction of the Japanese cultured pearl, the pearling industry was the pivot of the economic and social structure of the Trucial Coast. The industry was well organised and functioned according to a regular and reliable pattern. The season lasted from May to September, when the sea was calm and the water a reasonable temperature, During this time, the fleets remained at the pearling banks, rarely returning to shore until the diving was over. Since pearling was such a vital source of income to the Coast, the fleets were large, and the majority of the able-bodied men in the towns were away from home working at the pearl beds for the entire four-month period.

The division of labour aboard the pearling boats was clear-cut and rigidly adhered to: captains, divers, haulers, cooks and apprentices all worked according to a well-defined plan that had evolved over centuries of practice. The divers had a hard and dangerous task: with wooden pegs closing their nostrils, to help them hold their breath, and with the aid of a rope anchored to the sea-bed, they dived into the sea and searched about for oysters. When they had found them, it was a race against time to remove them, and there were the added hazards of sharks and jelly-fish. If the diger tugged at the rope, the hauler had to pull him up instantly, or his life might...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Note on Transliteration
• Map
• 1 The Trucial States in 1919: Rule by Tradition
• 2 The Aftermath of War: Perpetuation of Control
• 3 The Challenge to Power: Brother, Nephew and Son
• 4 Maintenance of Power: Political and Social Fabric
• 5 Saudi Arabia and Iran: Outside Pressures
• 6 Establishment of the Air-Route: Test of Imperial Policy
• 7 The Preliminary Oil Concessions: Triumphant Enterprise
• 8 Territorial Claims: Saudi Arabia and Iran
• 9 Boundary Disputes: Chaos in Order
• 10 The Reform Movement of Dubai: The Beginnings of Democracy
• 11 The Exercise of Power: British Representatives
• 12 The Trucial States in 1939: The Dawn of a New Age
• 13 Epilogue: The Emergence of the United Arab Emirates
• Notes
• Appendix 1: Genealogy of the Ruling Families of the Trucial States
• Appendix 2: British representatives
• Bibliography
• Index