Honour Is in Contentment: Life Before Oil in Ras Al-Khaimah (UAE) and Some Neighbouring Regions 3110223392, 9783110223392

Table of contents :
Contents
1 Social matters: social infrastructure, premises and practice
Ownership, territory, and residence
Group identities and their references
“The poetics of dwelling”
2 Sea people, ahl al-bahr, and how they lived
Sea trading and carrying
Pearling
Fishing
Changes in coastlines
3 Livelihoods and living on the coastal plains or sayh, and the sands
Waters, soils, and livelihood options
Livelihoods and profits, ma'ash wa fa'ida, and living
4 Ru'us al-Jibal mountains; livelihoods and living
Waters, soils, environments
Livelihoods and living in the Ru'us al-Jibal
5 The western Hajar mountains; livelihoods and living
Waters, soils, and environments
Livelihoods and living in the western Hajar
6 Distribution, trade, investment, credit and debt
The second section describes the activities of traders
7 Ruling and Rulers
Local terms for persons fulfilling roles in aspects of ruling
Local descriptions of ruling in the past
Rationales of ruling
Changes from the discovery and development of oil
8 'What happened to turn our world upside down?'
A brief economic history of the area
Changes in traditional sources of profits
Date growing areas inland from the coast
Sands
Ru'us al-Jibal
Western Hajar
The transformation through modernisation
9 Back to History
The Gulf coastal towns and places on the Shamailyya and Batinah coasts
Date garden areas of the Sirr
Sands
Ru'us al-Jibal history is presented as tribal history; Dhahuriyyin; Shihuh; and Habus
Western Hajar
Bibliography
Index
List of Figures
Plates

Citation preview

William Lancaster and Fidelity Lancaster Honour is in Contentment

Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients Beihefte zur Zeitschrift „Der Islam“

Herausgegeben von

Lawrence I. Conrad und Benjamin Jokisch

Neue Folge

Band 25

De Gruyter

William Lancaster and Fidelity Lancaster

Honour is in Contentment Life Before Oil in Ras al-Khaimah (UAE) and Some Neighbouring Regions

De Gruyter

ISBN 978-3-11-022339-2 e-ISBN 978-3-11-022340-8 ISSN 1862-1295 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lancaster, William, 1938⫺ Honour is in contentment : life before oil in Ras al-Khaimah (UAE) and some neighbouring regions / William Lancaster and Fidelity Lancaster. p. cm. ⫺ (Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift “der Islam”, ISSN 1862-1295 ; Neue Folge, Bd. 25) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-022339-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-3-11-022340-8 (e-ISBN) 1. Human geography ⫺ United Arab Emirates ⫺ Ra’s al-Khaymah (Emirate) 2. Ethnology ⫺ United Arab Emirates ⫺ Ra’s al-Khaymah (Emirate) 3. Ra’s al-Khaymah (United Arab Emirates : Emirate) ⫺ Social life and customs. 4. Ra’s al-Khaymah (United Arab Emirates : Emirate) ⫺ Social conditions ⫺ 20th century. 5. Ra’s al-Khaymah (United Arab Emirates : Emirate) ⫺ History ⫺ 20th century. 6. Petroleum industry and trade ⫺ United Arab Emirates ⫺ Ra’s al-Khaymah (Emirate) I. Lancaster, Fidelity. II. Title. III. Title: Honor is in contentment. GF696.U5L36 2011 953.57⫺dc22 2010043072

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. © 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York Printing and binding: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ⬁ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

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Preface The material on which this book is based was assembled as an archive at the request of HH Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr al-Qasimi, the then Deputy Ruler of Ras al-Khaimah and Director of the National Museum. HH Shaikh Sultans aim was to record information about how people had lived their lives before money from oil transformed life in the Emirate and the whole region. HH Shaikh Sultan considered that the young were growing up unaware of how their predecessors had managed their lives in the past, and that former ways of life, based on local resources and traditional social practice had value that should be known – or at least available – to the younger generation. Anthropologists from outside the region were considered to be more suitable than local personnel for this task. There are some tribal histories and collections of local knowledge about buildings, date cultivation, traditional medecinal practices, and crafts, but no region-wide recording of earlier economic and social practices and processes. HH Shaikh Sultan was anxious that politics should not be part of the archive. However, as former processes of ruling came into conversations to explain aspects of former particular economic or social activities, and as most local processes of rule concerned the resolution of disputes and the enabling of economic and social activities, these sorts of politics were acceptable. Information, from observation and discussion, was collected in five six- monthly periods between October 1997 and April 2004, and a shorter period in spring 2005. It had been hoped to record conversations on tape, but the great majority of informants were unwilling. Most did not want their conversations to be attributed by name, so a convention of tribal or place identity was used in the archive, although many, especially those met with frequently, were known by name and acted as references when inquiries moved to a new area or new people were met. Finding knowledgeable and interested people took time. Even if individuals were retired, many were engaged in family enterprises like date gardens, farms, goat herds, or fishing boats; with small and large businesses of different sorts; occupied with local administration, or other local matters: people were busy. It seemed as if information more than a gen-

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eralised life was hard in the past but we were independent and looked after ourselves had to be earned by knowledge on our part from observations on land- and seascapes, from previous conversations with others, from previous experience or the reading of published sources. Many individuals in all areas were generous with their time and knowledge, and we are immensely grateful. People asked how we knew we were getting correct information, if the suppliers of information were unwilling to have their names attached. Initially, the only check was experience of similar work in other parts of the Arabian peninsula – Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia, and two areas in southeast Oman. When it was explained that information given would be recorded in the archive, translated into Arabic, and available at the National Museum in Ras al-Khaimah, people viewed the archive as a potential public good and were willing to contribute by carefully describing and explaining their former activities. Informants evaded discussion of matters considered not the concern of the archive. Information was checked by observations in many localities, and by repeated discussions on the topics with other people in the same and other localities, and when possible, from published sources. These constant checks and the accumulated material established generally agreed facts, by an indirect consensus. Some confusion arose over the different ways Arabs and Europeans use language. As Watt (1973; 315) says, Arab speakers tend to describe an immediate situation in its particular context, whereas Europeans tend to talk and listen in terms of general definitions. There may therefore be a tendency by enquirers and readers to assume generalisations across social groupings, locations and time whereas the speaker is describing a specific point. Local speakers consciously use literary devices, such as metonymy and metaphor, for effect in narratives and some poetic descriptions, whereas when speaking of jural or economic practices, their use of words is precise. Local discourses on tribal ownership and movement are predicated on sets of premises, with users switching between these sets in a single short speech. To outsiders, these switches are confusing, whereas local audiences hear them as compressed shorthands and comprehend the missing unspoken modifying words. Listening for what is not said is important. Information, knowledge, has been worked for by the speaker; it has cost time and effort, and become a possession. A speaker will communicate what, in his or her opinion, his audience need to know, rather than all he knows on that topic. Speakers select their words, taking into account what time is available, the degree of interest, the composition of the audience, the concern to transmit the infor-

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mation, and so on. Arab terms with no English equivalent are left in Arabic, with an English explanation; these words have precise meanings that elucidate local practice, and using an inexact English term at worst changes local meaning and at best confuses. An archive depends on peoples memories of what they themselves experienced, of what they heard from their parents, grandparents, and others. Some individuals are interested in the past and seek to find out more from the knowledgeable old, perhaps especially in a period of rapid transformations; others are not, and see no purpose in such an exercise. Memory is essentially individual, but shared individual memories by related families or by tribal groupings may be used to maintain or construct identities, to put forward claims on land or other resources, or to construct relationships with other families or groups seen to be useful in the new economic and political situations. Assemblages of memories of past ways of life have illuminated processes and techniques of production, distribution, and labour; adaptations to change; celebrations and loss; and facets of daily life. History is the establishment of facts about the past in the furtherance of knowledge, usually by documents. In this society, families do have documents recording the transfers of property or the settlement of disputes, but these are private property and not for the public domain. Recognised facts concerned with tribal histories within the society are knowledge held by a few old men regarded as authorities, and transmitted orally to a few younger men considered by these experts as worthy successors. Even these experts preface their remarks by such phrases as “only God knows the truth but in my opinion, and this is what I was told by X….” Other people mentioned historical facts which concerned the economic and political transformation of the society in the 20th century through external events, and the change in the role of rulers following the establishment of the Permanent Maritime Peace in 1853. A few informants had libraries containing western historical works in English or in translation, and Omani and Gulf authors. To establish historical facts to check the memories contained in the information we were being given, we went to the standard European and Arab sources, in translation where necessary. The checking of historical information against memory on the whole meant that dates could be refined for information from memories, and also raised some queries about details of information in Lorimers Gazetteer. Contributors to the archive used language according to the quality of their information and their attitude to it. When passing on generally ac-

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cepted information or when not sure of its accuracy, they prefaced remarks by “They say…”, while when speaking of violent events in which they themselves had not participated they used the passive voice, as Juhany (1983; 13) mentions for pre-Wahhabi chronicles of Nejd, where the authors were men of law and preferred not to pronounce judgement. We as authors have difficulty in deciding whether to use the ethnographic present or the past, given that what informants are talking about is the past, although they themselves often used the present – or in Arabic the uncompleted – tense. Of course, to some extent, the activities of the past do continue; gardens are cultivated, mountain fields are used if there has been rain, boats are repaired, people celebrate weddings, sort out local disputes, and so on. Nor is the ethnographic material itself without time, of necessity it is bound up with change and history as much as continuities. Many local people, especially the young, said they wanted the archive material in Arabic in book form, together with historical material from the wider region; this has been achieved and published as “Al-cizz fil-Qina¯ca” by al-Saqi Press (Beirut and London) in 2007. This book is for an English-reading audience and aims to be an ethnographic description of the small tribes of the Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah and the wider region in which they participated. The area of study is a rough triangle 180 kms by 120 kms by 110 kms from Musandam in the north to Wadi alQawr in the south to the Gulf coast in the west and the Shamailiyya coast in the east. Its population of more than 20 tribes (depending on where the line is drawn between tribe and confederation) recognise a shared social system, with a wide range of distinct regional livelihoods. Much of the ethnographic interest of the region comes from its varied and distinct environments in a relatively small area, and the large number of small tribes and parts of larger dispersed tribes, whose concepts of tribe and tribal ideology and social practice not only resemble each other but also in many respects those of tribes across the Arabian peninsula. The ethnographic description starts with social matters of tribe, family and community, social infrastructure, premises, practices, and identities. Identities are framed by tribal idioms, and in addition, by the idioms of region and livelihood. Livelihood is as much about profits and markets as it is about subsistence, and depends on labour and investment. These two, labour and investment, are tightly linked to debt and credit. Some scholars, such as al-Turki and Cole (1989), see the market as a unifying structure of traditional Arab society; others, like Serjeant ([1970] 1991; 197), see credit and debt to be the economic unifier between regional pro-

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IX

ductive strategies, while yet others such as Lienhardt (1993; 92 – 101, esp.97) and Lancaster (1997 [1981]; 43, 73ff) see the unifier as the system of moral relations based on the fundamental premises of Arab tribal societies which emphasise generosity and individual autonomy, and which enable the decentralised political arenas to function. Political, jural, religious and social processes also have dynamic unifying functions across tribes, regions and livelihoods. Arbitration by rulers as the last resort for dispute settlement provided political and jural unifying relationships, while the collection of zakat by rulers had economic, political and religious relationships across tribes, regions, and production. Marriage practices gave unifying networks between tribes and regions, as did local political processes of dispute settlement. While local people describe themselves in tribal identities and identities from region and livelihood, these descriptions obscure connections between tribe, region and livelihood that manifest themselves through economic and jural processes such as labour, profits, debt and credit. These processes themselves are necessary because of the geography of the area, with diverse environments in the study area, and the role of the study area as part of the wider region of the Gulf, the north west Indian Ocean, and the southeast Arabian peninsula. This geography and its effect on livelihoods and living are described in chapter 2 for the sea coasts, chapter 3 for the coastal plains, the date gardens, and the sands, chapter 4 for the Ruus al-Jibal mountains, and chapter 5 for the western Hajar mountains. Chapter 6 describes the distribution of surpluses by gifts, exchange, barter, or sales to traders or at markets; together with the existence of profits or surpluses, the role of credit or debt, and labour. Chapter 7 is concerned with ruling and rulers, and chapter 8 describes the loss of traditional sources of profits and economic transformation. Chapter 9 discusses shifts over historical time in tribal identities and territories, and local ideas concerning these processes. The ethnography describes ways of life that in many respects have vanished. In so doing, much of the information is presented in informants own words, as more straightforward than an authorial voice. Archive material was collected between 1997 and 2005, but depended on memories of life before 1970, so for some aspects information was not available; techniques or activities were too long ago. The contribution of the authors is to link information from archive contributors to published material from scholars and earlier travellers in the region. Much of the information challenges the conventional view that before oil wealth, life in the region was impoverished and must always have been so. Information given

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generously and patiently by many, many people provides a view of a society that considered the well-known hadı¯th “Honour is in contentment”, inscribed on a house in 1132AH/1719 – 20AD at ar-Rawdhah in the Ruus al-Jibal, to epitomise how they lived in the past.

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Acknowledgements Our primary thanks must go to HH Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr Al-Qasimi, Director of the Department of Antiquities and Museums of Ras al-Khaimah, to whose foresight and encouragement this research is due. Worried that a younger generation of Emiratis would grow up with little idea of their local history or how their grandparents had lived, Shaikh Sultan commissioned the authors to compile an archive by talking to older people and local historians. The present volume is based on that archive, of which the original is now lodged at the National Museum of Ras al-Khaimah. To indicate the exceptional role played by HH Shaikh Sultan it was reported that, during our period in the field, this was the only serious social research taking place in the U.A.E. We are also very grateful to HE Shaikh Khalid bin Majid Al-Qasimi, Manager of the National Museum of Ras al-Khaimah, for his interest and support as well as for providing us with an institutional home. Graham Honeybill, General Manager of the National Bank of Ras alKhaimah, was indefatigable in his support and amazingly adept at finding funding. We are also grateful to Christian Velde, Resident Archaeologist at the National Museum, for his help and introductions to those on the archaeological circuit. The Staff of the Museum provided much needed bureaucratic backup and aid in acquiring all the permits and other paperwork in order to move around freely throughout the U.A.E. Shanth Lakshman, Secretary to HH Shaikh Sultan, was wonderfully helpful in suggesting and opening ways and means unknown to us. His arranging of access to people in high places was of great assistance. We profited from Beatrice de Cardi, the doyenne of Emirati archaeology, who shared her memories of conditions, places and people in a past now beyond the recall of most. Major Tim Ashe, formerly of the Trucial Oman Scouts (as it was then), provided us with introductions and useful reminiscences. We are grateful to Dr. Iona McCleery of Leeds University for indicating those Portuguese documents worth examining as well as translating them for us.

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Acknowledgements

The local Amirs were immensely helpful and a prime source of information as well as providing us with introductions to knowledgeable people in their area. The same is true of local historians. The number of people with a real, informed interest in their local history was extremely impressive. On occasion we felt that we were really just co-ordinators of a huge body of material waiting to be collected. In a very real sense almost everyone was a local historian, those with no information or interest in the past were few and far between. We are grateful for access to the Qasimi Library of Arab Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter. They provided us with access to material found almost nowhere else in Britain. This enriched our sources and analysis. The same may be said of the London Library which is the home of many obscure and hard to find volumes. As usual, Orkney Public Library was indefatigable in obtaining material via the Interlibrary Loan Service. Thanks also to Fran Gray for help with the photographs and Orkney College (especially Amanda Brend) for improving the maps and diagrams. Our greatest debt, of course, is to all those hundreds of men, women and children who provided the raw material for this book. Even if they had little information themselves, they were always willing to take us to relatives or friends who might have useful knowledge. This book is dedicated to them.

Contents 1 Social matters: social infrastructure, premises and practice

1

Ownership, territory, and residence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Group identities and their references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “The poetics of dwelling” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

26 35 36

2 Sea people, ahl al-bahr, and how they lived . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Sea trading and carrying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pearling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fishing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Changes in coastlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

46 56 60 68

3 Livelihoods and living on the coastal plains or sayh, and the sands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Waters, soils, and livelihood options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Livelihoods and profits, maash wa faida, and living . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

4 Ruus al-Jibal mountains; livelihoods and living . . . . . . . . . . 137 Waters, soils, environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Livelihoods and living in the Ruus al-Jibal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

5 The western Hajar mountains; livelihoods and living . . . . . 191 Waters, soils, and environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Livelihoods and living in the western Hajar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

6 Distribution, trade, investment, credit and debt . . . . . . . . . . 239 The second section describes the activities of traders . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

7 Ruling and Rulers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 Local terms for persons fulfilling roles in aspects of ruling . . . . . . . . 304

XIV

Contents

Local descriptions of ruling in the past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 Rationales of ruling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 Changes from the discovery and development of oil . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

8 What happened to turn our world upside down? . . . . . . . 376 A brief economic history of the area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Changes in traditional sources of profits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Date growing areas inland from the coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ruus al-Jibal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Western Hajar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The transformation through modernisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

383 410 431 437 441 448 458

9 Back to History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 The Gulf coastal towns and places on the Shamailyya and Batinah coasts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Date garden areas of the Sirr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ruus al-Jibal history is presented as tribal history; Dhahuriyyin; Shihuh; and Habus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Western Hajar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

471 501 511 514 529

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569 List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 581 Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583

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1 Social matters: social infrastructure, premises and practice Oil and the wealth it brought transformed society in the wider region. People repeatedly used phrases like “Our world turned upside down” to illustrate the transformations of economic and political life, and the attitudes and processes underlying social life. Many of the old thought their lives had been better in the past, although virtually everyone appreciated modern state funded healthcare, electricity and piped water, cars and roads, education and secure employment by the state. A few considered federal laws and bureaucratic procedures to be better than customary law and the need to seek out mediators to resolve disputes. However, many were critical of the new dominance of money in the economy and the role of money in breaking down former patterns of cooperation and support within and between social groupings, and the importance of reputation as an honourable person. An elderly Bani Shamaili said, The big change is that now no-one is generous or keeps open house or cooperates with their neighbours. Now, everyone lives in a house with locked gates, and keeps themselves to themselves. The reason? Money! Before there was much money, people lived in a stone house or a date tree branch house or whatever, and they saw everyone who was passing, and we all passed the time of day together. We shared work, we co-operated with each other. Now, we buy the time and labour of other people, and we keep our money for ourselves.

A group of Rahabiyiin commented on the loss of independence; All of us here are old enough to remember life from before. In our opinion, life was better then. We had everything we needed. We could make money for what we needed to buy, we were rich, by which we mean we were selfsufficient, we didnt need help from anyone. And we were independent. Yes, life is good now with the new houses and electricity and the rest of it, but now no-one can do anything without money. And money means jobs and with jobs we arent independent.

A Shihi thought a morality had been lost; “Life in the past was both more enjoyable and better in a moral sense. If you had enough to eat, you were content, you didnt want more. People valued each other from what each person did, their behaviour, their character. Now, nobody has any way of

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1 Social matters: social infrastructure, premises and practice

valueing anyone except through money, and everyone wants more and more money.” Others commented that they had lost an ability to be at ease and a sense of purpose in their lives; a Sharqi remarked: “There are advantages to modern life, obviously. But in my opinion, life was better in the past. We were comfortable in our hearts, murtahiin bi qulbna. We knew each other, we sorted things out amongst ourselves, we knew what we were doing, we looked after ourselves.” The area of study (figs 1 – 3; 585 – 588) extends, north to south, from the Omani province of Musandam, Ras al-Khaimah Emirate, the Shamailiyya coast of Sharjah and Fujairah Emirates, and bu Baqra in the Omani Batinah. The Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah is in two blocks: the northern section from Shaam to south of Jazirat al-Hamra and inland to east of Ghayl; and the southern from Shawqa, Asimah and Masafi to Munaiy and Wadi al-Qawr. These two blocks constituted the Emirate of Ras alKhaimah because in general the inhabitants turned their faces towards Ras al-Khaimah town and the branch of the Qawasim family who ruled there; they used the Qasimi ruler of Ras al-Khaimah as an arbitrator of last resort, they used the market at Ras al-Khaimah among others, and accepted the responsibility to pay the zakat tax to the ruler. Traditionally, there were no fixed, defined, territorial boundaries between rulers, no nation state, and no concept of citizenship. Political allegiances were fluid and flexible, tax collection the responsibility of the ruler, and tribes in the interior and remote coasts managed their own affairs. The arbitration of unresolvable disputes was the reason for involving a ruler, while rulers regarded tribes as sources of fighting men although a rulers summons to arms might – or might not – be answered. Arbitrations of final resort by rulers to disputes between tribespeople were politically integrative processes, whereas rulers summons to arms might or might not integrate tribespeople, depending on whether they were being asked to fight in defence against an outside aggressor, or to support a ruler against another for personal gains. This region has varied environments: the coasts, the coastal plains or sayh, the sands, the mountains of the Ruus al-Jibal, and the western Hajar mountains. In the past, people lived from a range of economic activities developed from the natural resources of each area, which provided livelihood and profits, and people used their main resource as one means among others of identification. The nature of ownership and development of resources, labour, and systems of distribution required the movement of goods and people within and between areas of the Emirate

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and outside. The market, in its widest sense, was a major integrative institutionalised process. The following is a brief and simplified account of the main places and tribal groups visited often in collecting information from people of the former Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah and those who had regularly used its markets or summered in its date garden areas. The description starts on the Gulf coast, north to Musandam, south down the Shamailiya coast to the northern end of the Batinah; then the coastal plain inland of Ras al-Khaimah town; the sands; Ruus al-Jibal mountains; and finally, the western Hajar mountains. Jazirat al-Hamra belongs to the Zaab tribe, who traditionally lived from the sea, pearling and trading; they also traded by land between the coasts, and gradually acquired date gardens at Khatt and on the coastal plain. Ras al-Khaimah town is inhabited by Ahl Ras al-Khaimah, Al Ali, Al bu Muhair, a few Naim, Iranians, Baluch, and the Qawasim ruling family. It lived from the sea, pearling and sea trading and carrying. Traders owned date gardens at various places inland on the coastal plain. Maarid is inhabited by Al Ali, Shihuh, Zaab, Murri, Iranians, and lived from the sea. Rams town is inhabited by Shihuh, Tunaij, Mansuri, Suwaidan, Darawish Naim, and Iranians, and lived from the sea; Ramsawis had date gardens at Dhaya. Khor Khuwair belongs to Bani Hassuun Shutair Shihuh, and lived from fishing, pearling, and date and grain cultivation. Ghalilah is Bani Assad Shutair Shihuh, and lived from fishing, date and grain cultivation. Shaam is Shutair Shihuh, and lived from the sea, its date gardens and grain fields. The small places on the west coast of Omani Musandam are Bani Hadiya Shihuh, and lived by fishing, some coastal trading, and formerly pearling, with date and grain cultivation. The Bani Hadiya shaikhs of the bin Malik family lived at Bukha and Khasab, which also had Iranian traders. On the northern Musandam coast, after Humsi, Dhahuriyiin own Nudhaifi, Qana, Shimm, and Sibi; Bani Shutair Kumazarah own Ghubb Ali, Qabbah, Gharam, and Kumzar; and Dhahuriyyin own Filim, Muntaf, Shabbus, Shaisa, Hablain and Mansal on the north-east coast. Bani Shutair Shihuh places lie south of Ras Sakkan, including Qabil, Kima, Shariya, Haffa, Karsha, and Dibba Baiah, where the Bani Shutair Shihuh shaikh lived. All these places lived from fishing and some coastal trading,

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and their inhabitants owned grain fields in the mountains and flocks of goats. Dibba Baiah has large date gardens and grain fields, and is the start of the Shamailiyya coast. Dibba Husn belonged to the Qawasim of Sharjah, and is inhabited by Dhahuriyiin, Iranians and others; the groups living there have changed over time in written records, partly as a result of the political and administrative separation of Qasimi Dibba Husn from Sharqi (rulers of Fujairah Emirate) Dibba Ghurfa, and lived in by Sharqiyiin. The people of both lived from the sea, pearling, fishing and trading, and from date and grain cultivation. The northern end of the Shamailiya coast south to al-Bidiya is inhabited by Sharqiyiin, who lived from fishing and date cultivation. The area from Zabara to Khor Fakkan is administered by the Qawasim of Sharjah; the people are Naqbiyiin and Iranians who lived from the sea, fishing, pearling and trading, and from date cultivation. From Qidfa to Fujairah is part of Fujairah Emirate; the people are Sharqiyiin who lived from fishing, pearling and date cultivation. South of Fujairah to the border with Oman at Khatma Mlaiha is administered by Qawasim of Sharjah; Kalba is inhabited by Naqbiyiin, Zaab, Kunud, and Iranians, who lived from fishing, pearling, and date cultivation. Khor Kalba is inhabited by Zaab, who lived from fishing, sea trading, and date cultivation. The Batinah coast begins at the Omani border. The northernmost coastal places, Murair and Bu Baqra, were ports used by the people of the southern enclave of Ras al-Khaimah Emirate in the western Hajar. Bu Baqra is inhabited by Zaab, Bani Jabir, Baluch and Fuhud, who lived from the sea, fishing, pearling and trading, and from cultivating dates, tobacco and limes. The settlements in and around the date gardens on the coastal plain inland from Ras al-Khaimah town begin in the north at Ghaylan and Shimal, inhabited by Bani Saad Bani Hasasna Shamaili at Ghaylan, Bani Khanabila Shamaili at Shimal Fowk and Wadi Hajil, and Bani Hasana Shaimaili at Shimal Tahat. The people of Ghaylan and Shimal Fowk lived from date and vegetable cultivation and pottery; Khanabila Shamaili of Wadi Hajil from firewood collection, goats, pottery, and grain; those of Shimal Tahat from date and vegetable cultivation. Ghubb and Hudaiba are inhabited by small families, who worked in date gardens. Hail is inhabited by Ahl Hail who are Bani Maqbil Shihuh, who lived from their date gardens and animals. Fahlain belongs to Naqbiyiin, who lived from date cultivation and their goats. Khatt is lived in by Naqbiyiin, Zaab and Habus, and lived from its date gardens.

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The sands of the Jiri plain stretch from south of Ras al-Khaimah town to the foothills of the western Hajar. The tribes who use the sands are mostly Khawatir, a few Ghafalah and Masafirah, who in the past lived from their animals. The people of the western Hajar mountains live in those valleys with permanent flowing waters. From the north and west, Idhn, western Wadi Kuub (the eastern end belongs to Sharqiyiin) and Ghayl belong to Mazairi, who lived from date cultivation, goats, firewood and charcoal. Asima belongs to Mazairi and Shaairah, who lived from date and mango cultivation, and animals. Maydaq is administered by Fujairah, and inhabited by Sharqiyiin, who lived from date and grain cultivation, and animals. Wadi Nasiim is administered by Fujairah, and inhabited by Sharqiyiin, who lived from animals and charcoal. Wadi Sfuni and its branches belong to Mazairi and Quwayyid, who lived from date and tobacco cultivation, animals, and honey and charcoal collection; Wadi Baqarah belongs to Mazairi and Naqbiyiin. Shawqa and Wadi Shawqa belong to Quwayyid, who lived from cultivating dates and grain, and from animals. Wadi Sfai belongs to Mazairi, and a few Jalajil and Maharza, who lived from date and tobacco cultivation, animals, and charcoal. Wadi Fay, Wadi Ayaili, and Wadi Barid are owned by Maharza and Dahaminah, who lived from date, tobacco and grain cultivation, and animals. Western Masafi belonged to Maharza, eastern Masafi is Sharqiyiin and Fujairah administered; both lived from date, mango and fruit cultivation, and animals. Daftah, near the head of Wadi Ham, belongs to Naqbiyiin, who lived from date and grain cultivation, and from animals. Madha and al-Ghuna, in the foothills west of Khor Fakkan, are Omani administered, and belong to Bani Saad, who have links to Shihuh; the inhabitants lived from tobacco, date and grain cultivation, and animals. Wadi Munaiy and Munaiy belong to Dahaminah, who lived from tobacco, date, and grain cultivation. Nuslah and eastern Wadi al-Qawr belong to Dahaminah, who lived from tobacco and date cultivation; western Wadi al-Qawr and Wadi Mlah belong to Bani Kaab, who lived from animals, date and tobacco cultivation. The people of the Ruus al-Jibal are Shihuh, Habus, and Dhahuriyiin, with Sharqiyiin in the area of overlap between the Ruus al-Jibal and the western Hajar. Fujairah Emirate administers the overlap area of Wadi Khabb and Wadi Fay, belonging to Sharqiyiin who lived from their animals, firewood, charcoal, and honey collection. Ras al-Khaimah Emirate administers the southwestern part of the Ruus al-Jibal. South of Wadi Bih belongs mostly to Habus, who followed the bin Malik shaikhs of

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Bukha, and lived from animals, firewood and honey collection, and grain cultivation. North of the Wadi Bih belongs to Bani Shutair Shihuh, who lived from their animals, grain production, firewood and honey collection, and some pottery. The Ruus al-Jibal north of the UAE-Omani border belongs on the west to Dhahuriyiin and Bani Hadiya; Kumazarah Shutair Shihuh inland from the northern coast; Dhahuriyiin inland of the northeastern coasts; Shutair Shihuh in and above northern Wadi Bih and its branches to Jabal Raan al-Harim, and across to the east coast to Lima, and south of ar-Rawdhah; Hadiya Shihuh at ar-Rawdhah and north of Jabal Raan al-Harim, and north of Dibba Baiah. The people lived from animals, grain cultivation, firewood, charcoal and honey collection. The majority of people who used to live in the sands, the Ruus alJibal mountains, and the drier valleys of the western Hajar now live away from their home areas, as it is no longer possible to make a living in these areas and people live from state employment, and because in only a few locations in such areas was it possible for governments to provide services such as roads, electricity, piped water, schools and so on. Oman has provided these services at ar-Rawdhah in the Ruus al-Jibal, and in the bigger wadis. Ras al-Khaimah provided similar services at alSaadi in the sands; in the western Hajar, at the earlier main centres of population; and in the Ruus al-Jibal in the lower Wadi Bih, Wadi Ghalilah, and Wadi Shaam, and along the edges of its foothills. Over the study area there are at least 20 tribes, from the most inclusive local usage of tribal identifier, using the five natural environments described by local people. The methods of study depended on meeting people where they lived or worked, enquiring about matters of life before oil, and being passed along individual networks to other or more knowledgeable persons. Continually expanding networks were built up across the study region. Sometimes we met individuals, sometimes family groups, sometimes small groups of men, who might suggest a local knowledgable specialist in the field of knowledge under discussion. Mazairi and Dahaminah in the western Hajar often directed or introduced us to the local tribal Amir for correct information, especially about questions of tribal history and ownership. Large groups of tribesmen prepared to discuss a topic and produce a consensual view of such questions, as mentioned by Montigny (2005; 19 – 20) with Naim in Qatar did not appear to occur in the study area, perhaps because the Naim had an awakened interest in their tribal history from changed relationships with the new Qatari ruler. In the study area, the words of a knowledgeable and respected tribesman, whether an amir or other tribal spokeman, or as an individual,

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was held by others to be authoritative since this person discussed the matter as a responsible representative of the tribe, tribal section, or community, and so consensual. Accounts of tribal histories were typically brief, structured around whether the tribe had come into the area or always been present; whether it had sections in other areas; genealogical and political relationships with other tribes and rulers; and areas claimed. These tribal histories provided a tribal identity, an account of how a tribe was where it was, and an image of self belief and group reputation. Tribal histories that used the classical Arab tribal genealogies to place the tribe were heard from Zaab, Khawatir, Darawisha Naim, Tunaij, Mazari, Bani Kaab, and Shihuh. The Amir of Zaab at bu Baqra said the Zaab were originally from Nejd, they had come into the region at an unknown date but before the arrival of the Portuguese; they had branches in Zanzibar and east Africa where they are known as Zabun, and in southern Syria and northern Jordan, where they are known as Zuubi. A respected Khatri said Khawatir were from Al bu Khuraiban Naim, and had come from the Buraimi area more than two hundred years ago. An elderly Darawisha Naim said the Darawisha were from Al bu Shamis Naim; his sixth grandfather had come, as an individual, from Sunaina southwest of Buraimi. A Tunaij said they were a section of Bani Qitab who came to Rams from Dhaid probably in the mid to late 18th century. The Amir of the Mazari at Idhn and Ghayl said Mazari were originally from Bani Tamim, and had come into the area at an unknown date and were already Muslims when they came. Mazari in Ras al-Khaimah Emirate assume they are part of the Mazari section of the Bani Yas of Abu Dhabi; to support this, the Amir recalled that in the hungry years of the 1940s, some Mazrui families moved from Liwa in Abu Dhabi to Ghayl. Mazari of Wadi Sfuni and Wadi Sfai considered they were among the original inhabitants of their area. No Bani Kaab knowledgeable in tribal history was met, but Kaab said they were part of the main body of Bani Kaab in northern Oman and that they were an old tribe. Shihuh said the name was given by outsiders to small tribes who were, with Dhahuriyiin and Sharqiyiin, the original inhabitants of the Ruus al-Jibal because they withheld (sh -H – H) sadaqa from Abu Bakr because they governed themselves and looked after their own. Some Shihuh say they are from Shanuah Azd, others from Malik bin Fahm Azd, and others that they were already living in the Ruus al-Jibal when the Azd arrived from Yemen. Not everyone was interested in discussing this aspect of life in the past; an elderly Shihhi said, “History? We didnt have history, we led

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our own lives; rulers had history.” An younger and educated Shihhi commented, “The old man is quite right in a way, because tarikh (history, literally, to date) is about rulers and changes of rulers or in ruling. Shihuh manage their own affairs and dont see these as changing in the mountains.” An old man at Munaiy in the western Hajar remarked: “All the history of Munaiy took place before Shaikh Saqr bin Sultan took over more than fifty years ago, and there hasnt been any since.” It was unclear whether he meant “we had history when we ruled ourselves but since we are part of a larger polity we have no influence on ruling and so no history” or “since Shaikh Saqr took over, there has been no change of ruler, and so no history.” Another view of history was concerned with the continuation of a moral social order expressed through the right functioning of tribal communities as government, hukm. History happened when this just moral order was disrupted by evil actions of its members, or from outside by other tribes, rulers or agents of distant foreign powers, such as the Portuguese or the British. Disruption was ended by a re-establishment of moral order, negotiated by tribespeople through precepts of justice, generosity and compassion, and agreed by all participants. This view was put forward vigorously by tribespeople in the Ruus al-Jibal and the western Hajar, the sands, and in the towns of Rams, Shaam and Ras al-Khaimah. This idea of history as recurring cycles of disruption and re-establishment of communal moral order outside time is similar to those of other Arab polities (eg Dresch 1981; 179: Lancasters 1999; 14 – 16: Wilkinson 1987; 6) in decentralised political arenas where unity between participants came about through cultural solidarity and local identities (Doumani 1995; 19 – 20). Locally, people talk about the coming of Islam to mean either the bringing of the Faith by Amr ibn al-As as the Prophets emissary early in the 7th century AD, or the bringing back of people to true Islam by the Wahhabis at the end of the 18th century AD, “when people had wandered from the faith”, demonstrating local ideas of the cyclical nature of time. A few tribespeople placed the peoples of the modern Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah in the linear chronological history of the traditionally educated. This starts with the migration of the Azd in the centuries before Islam from Yemen to Oman, where Arab tribesmen were practising oasis and mountain agriculture, herding, fishing, and trade by land and sea; the bringing of Islam by Amr ibn al-As, and its acceptance by the Azdite Julanda rulers of Oman, who had Dibba as their port and market for Indian Ocean trade; the death of the Prophet Muhammad and the with-

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holding of zakat by part of the population from his successor, Abu Bakr; the wars of the Ridda over the Arab peninsula and the battle of Dibba. Some add they have read that contemporary Omani chronicles described the Ridda war in Dibba as local skirmishes, later incorporated by the classical Arab historians to the Ridda wars in general, and so brought the area into classical Islamic history. The following centuries saw the rise of Julfar on the Gulf coast, the prosperity from trade of the Arabs, the Mongol invasion of Iran, and later the arrival of the Portuguese and the beginning of a transformation of Indian Ocean trade. After this period, the Arabs recover their coasts from Portuguese and later Persian control, Oman suffers the Hinawi-Ghafiri civil war and further wars over trade and access to resources between Omani rulers based in Mascat and Suhar, Qawasim shaikhs on the Gulf and northern Shamailiya coasts, and Qawasim and other shaikhs on the Persian coast. The Wahhabi revival of Islam was brought to the region by Wahhabi agents and Naim tribesmen from Buraimi, and eventually accepted by Zaab, the people of Rams, and the Qawasim rulers. Clashes over sea trade in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf between the Qawasim, Oman, and the British were regarded by the British as piracy; Ras al-Khaimah and other pirate towns were bombarded by the British on three occasions, and in 1820 the Maritime Peace was imposed. The Maritime Peace, followed by the Perpetual Truces during the 19th century, began the slow transformation from a region living from its own efforts and firmly based in the Indian Ocean economy to one tied into contemporary global economy, as a part of an oil-producing nation state. Few local people, even those who referred to this linear history, had any biographical details about participation in these events by their forebears. The only mention was by a Shihuh, who said his fifth or sixth grandfather had been a sadiq, sent to summon the Shaikh of Abu Dhabi to the signing of the Maritime Peace at Ras al-Khaimah in 1821. Biographical or autobiographical details by many men and some women provided information on past ways of livelihood, construction of shelters, stores, boats, food processing and meals, clothes, and past times. Movement between seasonal areas of production and distribution was essential for most, and achieved partly by kinship networks that extended throughout the region, partly by seasonal arrangements by groups moving between summer and winter areas, and by a variety of protective arrangements by groups taking goods for sale to markets on the coasts or at Buraimi. Movement after a killing for protection to arrange compensation

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rather than vengeance was achieved by the absolute right of the killer to demand protection from a stranger. Integration across the region (and outside it) was achievable by institutionalised political processes between rulers and tribespeople; economically by markets for resources, goods and labour; by the need for passage at local level; and socially by networks of kinship and marriage. Social groups regarded themselves as separate jural entities and structurally equal, and while they may have been at dispute between themselves, they shared generally accepted values and practices. The premises (muqaddima) of a society are those ideas on which its practice is predicated. The premises, the imperatives or driving forces, are abstract values. Serjeant ([1962],1981; 41), in a discussion of haram and hawtah, the sacred enclave in Arabia, wrote “In areas as far apart as Kuwait and Hadramaut, it (customary law, basically the same all over Arabia) is known as Taghut.” Talking about this with a respected and knowledgeable Shihhi, he said he knew Taghut to mean a despot, like Saddam Hussein, but he could see it could mean absolute rules of behaviour, what cannot be withstood. Others approach the concept of premises from the idea of total dishonour if customary absolute rules of behaviour were ignored. This was the reaction of a young man when talking about the rights of date garden owners to shares of floodwater from a natural flood channel; could these shares be increased by one or some owners? He was appalled: That would be haram (forbidden)! Flood waters come from God and cannot be tampered with, each garden gets what comes to it naturally. All the other garden owners using this channel would be completely justified in coming and beating me up. My family and my community would shame me into changing everything back to what it had been, and they would be very angry. I would have shamed them deeply.

Premises fall into two categories. Firstly, those practices to do with the individuals path through the stages of life and which enable him or her to enter fully communal life; naming, circumcision for males, marriage, and burial. Secondly, those which are the cement of social practice – compassion, generosity, mutuality, protection, defence and the responsibility to avenge a murder by blood or blood-money, an insistence that individuals are responsible for their acts, the right to make a living in an honourable manner. There are no options, these have to be done. The ways in which these premises are achieved are customs; burial is a Taghut, how you bury a body is custom, addat. Social practice is behaviour predicated on the fundamental premises, as exemplified from the ethnographic material.

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When explaining crucial aspects of social practice, people used particular examples. Some focussed on protection and hospitality, which underpinned dispute settlement and the care of the needy. Managing dispute settlement and supplying the needs of the unfortunate were essential to the functioning of society. A group of Habus explained, Someone who needed protection in the mountains went to a wadi and fired his gun or shouted. When someone answered, or he saw someone, the protection seeker shouted Ana dakhlik, I am under your protection. The person who had answered or been seen had to protect him, and became a middleman, like a broker, and sorted out the affair. If he felt he wasnt capable of doing this, he put the affair in the hands of someone who could.

A Shihhi remarked: Hospitality and generosity (karama) were very important in the mountains. If the men were away, women gave hospitality, just as they did protection. Hospitality and giving protection are fundamental to the morality of the people of the Ruus al-Jibal, the bida. The person seeking protection must put his head covering round the neck of his protector, that is the custom.

Concerning hospitality to the wider community at specific occasions, a Habsi said, In the past, we would kill two goats for a wedding. Both goats, heads and all, were served on bread or rice. After the two trays had been seen by the guests, half the meat was taken off each tray and kept back for the second and subsequent sittings. The importance of the heads and keeping back half the meat for other guests were laws, not customs. It had to be done.

That is, members of the wider community, who identified themselves by attending a wedding, all had to be fed equally. An elderly Shihhi in Dibba Baiah considered sharing of common production through contributing to be crucial; sharing through contributing encapsulated a morality of economic behaviour, and his corollary of attempts at dominating and the withdrawal of sharing encapsulated a political morality. He said, The most important part of being Shihhi was the sharing of everything, that was essential. This included any Shihhi along this coast or who happened to be here. To share, a man had to contribute, because then he had something to share. Sharing means contributing, except for those who are too old or infirm. If someone started getting too strong and taking from the weak, he was forced to leave because we wouldnt share with him any longer.

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So far, all the examples have come from people of the Ruus al-Jibal, but people in other areas had similar views. A Mazrui focussed on bedu identity to exemplify proper values, saying, “The Mazari are bedu … weve been here ever since we arrived, minding our own business and getting on with life. We managed everything from our own efforts, we depended on no-one.” A man from Ahl Ras al-Khaimah commented on the need in the past for reputation as a good man for full participation in life; “Trust and reputation have no meaning now. In the past we lived by trusting people of good reputation. A man worked hard to acquire and keep a good reputation.” The various concepts identified above – protection, hospitality and generosity, sharing and contributing, jurally identifiable communities managing from their own resources and activities, the exercise of trust and the building of reputation – were predicated on the fundamental premises, and provided a common morality and so a common honour. Linked to these was content, the acceptance of what was available, of not wanting more. This social morality of content was not concerned only with material things, although that was important, but extended into valuing individuals from their behaviour and so creating reputation and endorsing trust. The emphasis put on co-operation, sharing resources, the desirability of resolving disputes by the provision of protection and mediation, the management of resources by owners, and being content with what one had, requires relations of working with others from family and wider working family groups to local and more distant communities. Working with others was a moral duty, and achieved by social practice based on knowledge of family relationships and kin networks, customary law, and a recognition of people as individuals equal in the sight of God. Working with was as relevant in the use and development of natural resources for livelihood and profits. People throughout the study region were highly conscious of working with their natural environments, of noticing and knowing what was possible. Croll and Parkin (1992; 16) point out, “People do not just adapt to environments, they make them, shaping them from both materials and the possibilities they see in the habitat and the surrounding life forms.” Social infrastructure sums up the institutionalised processes that maintained traditional economic and political life of the social groups using the region, and enabled participation in the wider region and beyond. These processes have many cross references, and explications depend on audiences and contexts.

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Individuals become participants in the social infrastructure at birth; he or she is known as the son or daughter of his or her father, and is a member of the nuclear family and its inclusive groups derived from descent through males up to and including tribe and tribal confederation. The following explication is for a man; women remain members of their natal families after marriage, but are rarely mentioned in genealogies. A man knows his line of descent of actual men to his grandfather and sometimes great-grandfather. From that, he belongs to a named tribal section descended in the male line from a common male ancestor, and of an actual genealogical depth greater than five generations. A number of such descent groups comprise a named tribal section: a number of named tribal sections make up a named tribe. A Shihhi from al-Khanabila tribal section said, A tribe, a qabila, must have more than five forefathers before you reach the ancestor who has given his name to the group. If you dont know more than five generations, you are probably an affiliate of the tribe whose name you use rather than a member by descent. I know my genealogy for the first five forefathers; then I know these five generations came from Qdur who is much further back than a real five generations, and I know that Qdur is the son of Hurrais, and Hurrais was the son of Khanbul. And I know that Qdur had four sons by one wife, which is where I fit in, and that he had another wife by whom he had more sons. I cant do this for the other sons of Hurrais. Each person knows his own.

Local terminologies for levels of incorporation in a tribe vary but fulfil the same function. A Bani Hamad Shihhi explained, The name Shihuh was applied to us by outsiders. The main divisions, Bani Shutair and Bani Hadiya, are really confederations, not descent groups. The tribe is the Shihuh and that is the qabila. The Shutair are a fakhdh (pl. fukhudh), which is literally thigh and so section, but Shutair can also be called qabila (pl. qabail), tribe. Shutair are made up of aila (pl. awail), families, like the Hamad, the Qiyashi, Mahbiib and the others, but they can be also be called fukhudh, sections. The Hamad divide into five awail, families, like ours. This aila goes back four or five generations. Our family name, Hamad, is just a name, it wasnt the name of an ancestor.

A Hadiya commented, The only confederation, ashira, is the Shihuh, all the other groups are qabila. All the qabail, tribes, are equally distant to each other. The fact that Shutair and Hadiya are talked about as two distinct groups is an historical accident, it means only that their members went to different shaikhs. A tribe does not work as a unit. The khamsa is the group of descendants in the male line from a common ancestor five generations back; a man follows his son

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into the sixth generation. If there is a killing inside the khamsa or sometimes the qabila, the perpetrator flees a long way away, to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain. It is usually possible for the victims family to forgive from karama, generosity of spirit, and after a year or two or more, and the payment of compensation, the killer can return, although some never do.

An Ahl Rawdhah Shihhi used butn, womb, for the divisions within Ahl Rawdhah. A Tunaiji from Rams said, “Tunaij are part of Bani Qitab, who are also known as al-Qitba and Qitban. Al-Qitba have three sections, qabila; Tunaij, Sharara and Qitba. The Tunaij go into families, awail.” A Naqbi at Fahlain stated, “Naqbiyiin do not have named tribal sections, fukhudh; our sections are called buyut (sing. bayt), houses, and so are the families that make them up.” At Ghayl, a Mazrui said, “We Mazari have named fukhudh, sections, and these are made up of ibn amm, descendants through males from a common ancestor three generations back.” In general conversations, the elastic use of tribal terms reconciles a structurally based, descriptive terminology with the actual groups on the ground, whose present composition and ownership of landed assets have in part come from tribal processes in the past. People thus tie themselves into mainstream Arab society, distinguish themselves from other similarly constituted groups, and equate terminologies. Given the depth of time people say these tribes have been in existence, the tribal sections and the groups of families that compose them shift and slide through the aggregation of generations. As an example, a Habsi said, The Rashidu are the original inhabitants of Haila and the Habhub came later, but still a long time ago. Habhub live mostly on the north side, Rashidu on the south. In all Haila, there are four or possibly five awail, wider families. All these families together are generally called Bani Ahala; the old name was Bani Saad but none of us use this now.

It is possible to join a tribe, usually through protection or employment. A Shihhi remarked: People often came in from outside, often for protection after internal killings. They would work as labourers in date gardens or as share croppers on arable land. After a while they would make enough money to buy a date garden or marry into a family who owned a date garden. I could name for you, without having to think, half a dozen families who did this just around here, and there are plenty of others. My neighbour, for example; he is now Bani Shamaili, but his father came from the Dhahira and married a Shamailiyya and lived here and bought some land.

A Murri explained,

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My grandfather was from Al Murrah and settled in Abu Dhabi town. He had a boat and traded between Abu Dhabi and here carrying firewood. He married a Shamailiyya, and my father married a Habsiyya. I have this farm from my father who inherited it from his mother, and I sold two small mountain fields I got from my mother. Because I work this farm in Shimal and live near, many Bani Shamaili say we are really Bani Shamaili – because we are here, doing things and being neighbours, were part of the community. But properly speaking, Im Murri; tribal identity is through the father.

Several people pointed out that in the past, Rams appeared to be inhabited mainly by Tunaij, because many people living or working there took that name because it was the name of their employer or protector. The custom of workers assuming the name of the family who employed and protected them during their period of employment was common at all coastal date garden areas that employed people. Groups also move from one tribe and become part of another. A wider family, aila, al-Haramsha of Bani Idaid Shihuh had lived at Sabtan, high in the Ruus al-Jibal. Two or three hundred years ago, they moved to Khatt, because they wanted land. Over time, they married with their neighbours, Habus in Wadi Nagab, and moved in with them, so that they became Habus. A Shutairi explained, Most Haramsha who have become Habus dont know they were originally Shihuh, although some do. In 1970, when people had to register to get citizenship papers, Haramsha registered themselves as Habus. The idea of an original group of identity wasnt important to them. What mattered was that they identified themselves with where they were. Who they were was where they were.

In Qidfa, on the Shamailiyya coast, a young man stated his family belonged to a very small tribe. When they had lived in Madha, they had become Madhani as members of the Madha community; when they moved to Qidfa, they became Sharqiyiiin to outsiders, while to the Qidfa community, they were known as Madhani or their small tribal name of origin. This man considered, like others, that the genealogies and migrations of tribal histories were actually idioms that expressed ideas about the past rather than factual knowledge, “as no-one really knows what happened so long ago.” A Shihhi commented, Genealogy isnt really that important for tribes. Take the people of Salhad, the tribe of Ahl Salhad; its a tribe made up of four descent groups which have no genealogical links. Nor do the tribes that make up Ahl Rawdhah. Khanabila Bani Shamaili arent from Khanabila Bani Shutair, they are all sorts of people who have come together and made themselves into a

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tribe; shamal can mean an association. A tribe is often a collective, like Tuwar Salim of Bani Hadiya, they are made up of Bani Zaid, Ahl Qida, Ahl al-Harf, Ahl as-Sij, and al-Aqba. But everyone knows who they are, because they are there on the ground, owning places and doing things. You dont need a genealogy for that.

A Dahamini of the western Hajar made the same point about tribes in that area. Bani Shamaili Khanabila and Shihuh Bani Shutair Khanabila provide insight into the dynamics of tribal names and internal social processes. Members of the two groups disagree within and between each group as to whether they are one and the same, or separate and different. A Bani Shutair Khanbuli commented, In my view, Khanabila Bani Shamaili are not as a group related to Khanabila Bani Shutair. Some individuals in the two groups might be related to each other, because Bani Shamaili, like all coastal plain groups, are very mixed. People on the coastal plain came from Iran, Oman, bedu, Shihuh, anywhere; there were Shihuh who came down from the mountains and bought date gardens and whose descendants stayed down. At some point in the distant past, Khanabila Bani Shutair made an ahad, an oath of friendship to treat the other as ones own, with Bani Shamaili who were given Ghabbas. These Bani Shamaili said they would take the name Khanabila as a witness to the agreement. Both sides are both right and wrong; the two groups were not the same although some families in them might well be, and they then became the same although not all the people in the two groups are the same. Now the two are the same if you look at the name, or different if you think about the internal social processes over the years. But the two are parts of the same community.

A remark by a man in Ras al-Khaimah town summed up the above, when he said, “People were always changing their tribal affiliations. It doesnt really matter, tribal names are almost like labels, to be used.” Marriages for tribes in this area are like those throughout the Arabian peninsula. Women remain jural members of their natal family after marriage. Since women rarely enter the formal genealogy of male descent lines or formal political life, their marriages draw some groups closer and distance others. In this sense, women generate social processes. Women inherit from their natal family and in turn leave property to their children. Inheritance from women could be, in theory, a factor in changes in patterns of land ownership over time although in practice the men of her natal group usually buy back this land in the next generation. People from all regions considered that their marriages were similar to those of all other Arab tribes over the peninsula. Arab tribal marriages

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are described as a man marrying his bint amm, conventionally in the literature, his fathers brothers daughter, his first cousin. But the amm is also the group descended in the male line from a common ancestor three to five generations further back, and many men marry from within this group, so the girl is his second or third cousin, and also his bint amm. Marrying a first cousin, an actual bint amm, is usually regarded as unnecessary, since the families should be close enough anyway. Marrying from the three to five generation amm where families are beginning to become distant pulls the marrying families closer and separates them from others. Marriages are also made to girls from other tribal sections, and these girls are usually already close in the female line, since a previous marriage between the families will have been made in an earlier generation. The less common marriages are to a girl from a different and often distant tribe, but again she may well be related through women as wider families and tribal sections favour a few marriage links renewed down the generations with one or two distant tribes (Lancaster 1997 [1981]; 45 – 54: Lancasters 1992; 357). A Shamaili, describing marriages in general, said, Tribes here are like tribes everywhere else. Men make the networks through which they do things through women. Some marriages are made between people who are closely related, some to women less close, and some are made a long way out so that there are extant links to people in areas a long way away if we need to go there. Actual first cousin marriage is rare, Id say not more than one in twenty. Usually the couple are fairly closely related in some way, or from the community … anyway, from the ghuraiyib (from gharib, nearby) those who are close to us. Marrying outside the Shamaili is fairly common and always has been. We marry with people from Rams, Ras al-Khaimah, Ghalilah, Shaam, Shihuh and Habus.

For this man, like others, the community was seen almost as a tribe, but instead of being founded on real or assumed descent was based on an idea of closeness, brought about by living, working and marrying together, but without jural or political identity. Commenting on kinship networks, a Shihhi at Ghalilah said, Maybe half of all the marriages here are to people outside. The most important outside marriages were to people we knew because they came here every year for their dates. The depth of time over which such marriages have been made is huge, because there are such intertwining networks of relations through male descent (amm) and through women (khall). The amm was never a group on the ground, it was used for identity (i. e. for jural purposes). My wife comes from Umm al-Qawain, from a family who came every year for their dates, and we are related, as my grandfathers

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mother came from the same family. I have relations in the Batinah, from a man who fled the Batinah, came here and married my mothers grandmother; then his trouble was sorted out and they went back. These networks from women, and including former neighbours and workmates, enable people to move all over the place, the networks bring people closer together. Through Musandam, the coasts, the mountains, Oman, Qatar, anywhere, there will be links people can pick up. Having relations all over the place gave people more opportunities of getting a living.

In reality, these networks brought some individuals and their families from particular tribes or places closer, but not others. A Dhahuri remarked: “There is and always has been widespread intermarriage within Dhahuriyiin sections and between Dhahuriyiin, Shihuh, and Kumazarah. The khuwayil (pl. of khall), the relations and connections through women, are important.” Another Dhahuri said, We marry mostly within our own section in Wadi Shaam. We make some marriages to other Dhahuriyiin sections the other side of the Ruus al-Jibal in Oman. That is why a few people here have land and relations at Hablain and that area. We make a few marriages with Bani Hadiya. But we never marry with the people of Shaam, and although we got our dates at Bithnah in Wadi Ham, we never made any marriages there, it was a purely commercial relationship.

Similarly, at Asima in the western Hajar, a Mazrui said, “The people of Asimah are Mazari and Shaahirah. But there are also others living here, Khanajira, Abdali, Kaabi and others. Asima is mixed because of marriages, it has always been so.” The Dahamni Amir at Nuslah considered that repeated intermarriage between tribes made for peaceful neighbours and easier dispute settlement; There werent raids or fighting between the Dahaminah of Nuslah and Washahat at al-Aswad, and Dahaminah upstream at Rafaq, Fashgah and Munaiy and Bani Kaab at the head of Wadi al-Qawr. There were of course disputes between individuals or families, but these were all sorted out by respected older men because we are all related through women (khuwayil) and connected by marriage (nusayib).

A Mazrui demonstrated the multiplicity of kinship relations between individuals brought about by marriages over the generations between families and sections, saying “This man is my nasib because he is connected to me through marriage, my khall because our mothers were sisters, and my ibn amm because we are descended in the male line from the same great grandfather.” This intermeshing within and between families, sections of tribes, and tribes functions through the individuals thus related and connected; it does not and cannot create new bounded and discrete groups. An individuals intermeshed networks spread thickly across one land-

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scape and thinly into others. Family marriages over time are one factor that maintain local communities, and relations through women are often those that men mention when describing the reasons for the presence of members of a residential group. Naqbiyiin and Sharqiyiiin also remarked that, before oil and the nation state, all local social relationships were those of descent from men and women, and connections by marriage, and that the social behaviour between such people created communities. Shihuh at Hail on the coastal plain remarked: “In the past, we knew all our neighbours, as they were our relations through our mothers and fathers. We used to eat together regularly, each house fed the others as their turn came round, and this was right and proper.” A Maharza at Masafi said, “It was so simple before. I married his sister, he married my daughter, and so we were all tied together through the duties of kinship.” A Shihhi pointed out that living together in the past was not so simple; “Marriage is only lawful if the brideprice (mahar) is paid; wealth must go from the mans family to the girls family. You cant just exchange women, that isnt lawful in Islam.” A Tunaiji in Rams commmented “That is so, and exchange marriage cannot exist, although of course over time it does. Wealth goes from one family to another, and after a few years or a generation or two, it comes back again with another marriage. A very high brideprice is asked when the family or the girl want to discourage a suitor, it is a polite way to refuse, especially if the man is from the wider family.” Mahar, as a group of items of value, has to be collected together by the affianced and his family and given to the bride and her family before the wedding can legally take place. Its basic purpose is to provide goods for the new household, and presents for the brides family as tokens; for her father or brothers, to compensate for the loss of labour her departure will cause and/or the cost of raising her, and to comfort her mother for her loss. A very high brideprice could indicate to an undesired suitor that he was not wanted, or that the suitor was from a group distant to his potential bride and that her family were unsure of the support within his wider family for the match; if his wider family supported his choice and saw the proposed marriage as an advantageous new alliance for them, members of his wider family provided parts of the brideprice. Generally, the brideprice was provided by the young man and his close family. This, together with the ability to support himself and a wife and family, took time, so most young men married between the ages of twentyfive to thirty while their brides were aged thirteen to sixteen or seventeen. Mahar had three kinds of goods, for each of the three recipients. A Da-

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hamni at Nuslah pointed out “The mahar always had parts that needed money; jewellery and clothes for your bride, and things for the house; her father or brothers wanted guns or swords or money, and her mother had to have a customary present as well.” A Haslamani Shihhi said, “The bridegroom has to give the girl a present that is hers outright. A typical present would have been three pairs of shoes, three complete changes of clothing, and silver jewellery. And the man had to provide the house, and of course he had to be able to keep himself and his wife.” In some families or under some circumstances, a brides father chose to give all or most of the mahar to the newly married couple. The process of marriage was described by an elderly Habsi; A young man fancies a girl. Maybe he has seen her at a wedding, or at the date gardens in the summer – he has seen her somehow. Initially, he gets a cousin to sound out her brothers or cousins. After a while, he gets his parents to approach her parents. If the marriage is thought suitable, mahar is discussed and agreed. It usually takes about a year from the approach to the wedding, because of gathering together the money, but it can take a lot longer. Then a date for the wedding is agreed, and the arrangements start getting underway. The night before the wedding, the brides family give a feast for the women of both families and communities. The next day there is the wedding, and the grooms family give a feast for the men of both families and the communities. If it is very big, feeding five hundred to a thousand men, the bridegrooms close and extended families and the community help with gifts of goats, a camel, a sack of rice. On the morning of the wedding, the guests begin to arrive. Groups from tribal sections and tribes assemble in their traditional places. For example at this wedding, Naqbiyiin gather in the mountain over there, and Shihuh and others gather up that way. Each group is welcomed separately and invited down with bursts of gunfire and singing. When everybody has arrived we eat – meat and rice. Then we pray at midday. After this, there is a lull, during which the wedding contracts are signed in private. At sundown, everyone eats again – meat and rice. After that the drumming and dancing really get going, and go on as long as anyone wants, up to midnight or later.

An elderly Sharqiyya commented on another side of courtship: In the past, there were girls who werent virtuous. If a girl had been going with a young man, she would be married to him as soon as possible. Their families got together and made them marry. If the young man didnt want to, the shaikh went to him and told him to marry her, they could divorce later. Sometimes the man disappeared, and then her family hid the girl, and when she had the baby, it never breathed. When I was a girl, there was a girl who was careless. The young mans parents refused to let him marry her; they said if she had been loose with him before marriage, she could be loose with another man after marriage. Her parents didnt know

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what to do, they were almost beside themselves because time was passing. In the end, they went to a black magician, and he cast a spell, and the girl died. But that was better than her father having to kill her.

Given the importance local people place on marriage, it is worthwhile paying attention to wedding celebrations, as the various events encapsulate important public aspects of tribal society. The above description of a Habus wedding focused on the public male guests and their actions: their arrival in sequence in tribally identified groups, the hosts invitations to enter with gunfire and singing, reciprocated by the guests, the communal eating in groups of the hosts meat and rice, prayers, the signing in private of the wedding contracts, more communal eating, and celebratory drumming and dancing. It left out the brides arrival with her close family, the details of the arrivals of the groups of male guests, a boys dance, and details of the evening drumming and dancing. Observation provided more details. The bride and her close family arrived near the house. The bridegrooms mother and other women of the family went to welcome the bride and her female relations, who followed their hostesses to the house. The brides male relations moved towards the mens area, and they and their hosts fired their guns into the air in several bursts, reaching a crescendo when the two were fifty metres apart. Boys aged between eight and twelve, with a few older ones, performed a hopping dance between the two groups, hurling (blunt) swords into the air and catching them as they fell. The hosts and guests sang alternately, the hosts welcomed their guests formally in line, shaking hands and rubbing noses when appropriate, guests seated themselves and were offered refreshments of cold drinks, haris (pounded meat and grain), and fruit. The groups of men from eight different tribal sections and tribes collected in their places in the mountains, in sight of the wedding house. Each announced the start of their descent, in a known order, by firing guns and set off down the mountainside, firing, yowling or growling, and shouting and singing when in earshot. In turn, each group paused, waiting until the host fired eight to ten single shots into the air as a sign for them to descend into the wadi and climb up to the house. Each group sang as they went down and up, and their hosts sang a reply. When about 50 metres away they paused, while the boys repeated their hopping dance and threw their swords. Then each was formally invited in, greeted, seated himself and was offered refreshments. This took two and a half hours. Very old and distinguished guests were welcomed

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with deafening intensities of gunfire. The women, with the bride seated on a throne, could be seen on the verandah of the house or standing in the shade of walls, watching the arrivals. Drumming started and stopped, scent and incense circulated. Drumming started again with a different beat, continuing for an hour. During this, three more large groups arrived, two in cars and one from a distant mountain; they were greeted in the same way. Midday prayers were followed by communal feasting in groups on meat and rice. Many people left. After evening prayers, about 70 men were present, 50 of them drumming and dancing, and women watched from the verandah and the roof. Two different dances were performed. In one, two lines of men faced other, each dancer holding in his right hand a sword, camel stick, or jirz (small axe common for Ruus al-Jibal tribes). Drummers drummed between the lines. One line of dancers portrayed old men, whose posture and sticks gradually faltered from the upright to collapse; the other line were the vigorous young men, who stepped forward, leapt and threw their swords; each line sang words that fitted their explicitly sexual role. In the other, two lines of singers faced each other; in between were dancers holding raised camel sticks or swords who shuffled slowly around in tiny steps, and two young men with swords who danced and intermittently threw their swords into the air, leapt, and had mock sword fights leaping and clashing their swords; at intervals, every man with a sword stood still and made his upright sword quiver. This Habus wedding was agreed to be typical of traditional Ruus alJibal weddings except that before oil wealth, the numbers of men at weddings was smaller and more local. The increase in numbers of men attending who know the hosts from work but not the family means that women no longer assemble outside and dance. In the past at Shihuh and other weddings, in the mountains and the date gardens, a line of unmarried men danced opposite a line of unmarried girls in their best clothes and jewellery. A Mazrui stated, Weddings here at Asimah are exactly the same as they are with Shihuh and Habus. The drumming, the dancing and singing, the sword throwing and gunfiring, its exactly the same. People arrive here in groups, having gathered in places according to where they come from. Then they come in in order, and are greeted in groups and fed in groups – just the same. And the food is the same. We marry Shaairah, Khanajira, Abdali, Bani Kaab and people come to the weddings from all over, Dibba, Masafi, Fujairah and Wadi al-Qawr.

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Wedding celebrations centre on the arrival of the bride at the bridegrooms house and the signing of the wedding contract. Without these, there would be no wedding. These events are conducted in private, it is only the women of the bridegrooms family that greet the bride and her female escort, and the wedding contract is signed in private before the qadi. Mens events are outside, at a distance from the house, for large numbers of men, highly visible and loud, but ordered and with formalities. These men assemble to celebrate publicly a wedding that symbolises the potential for a new family, a continuation of family, section, tribe and community into the future. The gathering of different groups in traditional places who start and advance only when summoned by the host avoids potential conflict. Their arrival at the wedding area in a known order, the reciprocal singing of verses by guests and hosts, and the formal line of greeting recognise the different neighbouring groups as guests who come to celebrate a marriage and acknowledge the requirement to behave properly. The reciprocal singing, preceded by the growling or howling, and the dances themselves designate the occasion as joyous and one of celebration. Shihuh call the assemblage nadba which Thomas (1929; 81) describes as A kind of tribal war cry, the use of which is not limited to martial occasions, but is freely indulged in at all times of rejoicings and Hanthal (1987; 279 – 80) as The songs and dances associated … with all popular joyous occasions. The reciprocal singing and the dances are said to be particular to Shihuh and Habus, and so provide a demonstration of local communal identity. That the same songs and dances are performed at Mazrui weddings illustrates practices common to both mountain regions, but with local identities in the words of the songs and possibly in details of the dances or drum beats. Bani Shamaili call the first dance described above as razga, blessing, and appropriate at a wedding. The second dance is like the ardah, widespread in the Arabian peninsula (Adra 1998; 415); Thomas (1929; 82) mentions the quivering of swords in Shihuh dances as like a sword dance he saw at Mirbat in Dhofar, southern Oman. Thomas saw these dances as uncouth, whereas Adra (1998; 93), analysing Yemeni tribal dances, sees the main mens tribal dance as a performance of skill and a demonstration of honour … and all that it means to be tribal. The skills of these dances require not only intricacy on steps or acrobatic prowess, but the ability to coordinate ones movements with others and with music in a small space, as do those of being a tribesperson – to be very much aware of what others are doing and to adapt and coordinate with them. Given the way people in the mountains talk about dance and

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drumming, it may be assumed that they too see these as demonstrating skill, endurance, strength, and coordinated co-operation, and a symbolic representation of what it means to be tribesmen, while those performing the duet are individual virtuosos. These weddings are particularly associated with the tribespeoples of the mountains, the Ruus al-Jibal and the northern end of the western Hajar. A Tunaiji in Rams said Tunaij did not dance at weddings, the only dancing was by hired semi-professional dancers, women from ex-slave, gipsy (zuttut), or bayadir (agricultural workers) families, and the only men who danced would have been khanith, transvestites. This may have been common to the larger towns on the Gulf coast, as no Zaabi or Ahl Ras al-Khaimi mentioned dancing at all, whereas mountain peoples talked enthusiastically about dancing and drumming. The absence of dancing by guests at community celebrations in Gulf coastal towns may indicate less cohesive social groups ; coastal towns are said by all to have more incomers as traders and employed seamen, and in the immediate hinterland, as employed agricultural workers. However, Shihuh in Rams, explaining how the town functioned before oil, emphasised that the inhabitants worked as a community, or a series of communities, connected by marriage, work, and residence. Given tribe as an identifier, the significant grouping for individuals is the wider family in the male line from three or five generations, called aila, butn (pl. butun), or ibn amm. It is from and through this group that a man will probably find a wife, from whom he will inherit, who support him in protecting his assets and whom he helps in defending theirs. This group with whom he cooperates and combines is not a co-residential, named and exclusive group but a flexible combination of mobile individuals, some present, some absent, of three to five generations depth, with a core of men close to him through women. Similarly constituted dynamic groups are found across the peninsula, for example, in large bedouin tribes of the northern Arabian peninsula, such as Shammar (Fabietti 1990) and Rwala (Lancaster 1997 [1981]; 173), farming tribes in northern and central Jordan (Antoun 1972; 48 ff.: Lancasters 1995; 104, 112) and merchants of tribal descent in Sukhne Syria (Metrals 1989). Although such groups are called ibn amm, butun or aila, they are not congruent with those persons defined strictly by male descent; these groups are informal ibn amm, aila or butun. The individuals in these informal productive groups have networks to others, and communities, jamaat, are constructed to include neighbours and connections as well as blood relations.

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We are all one community is emphasised over and over again. While tribally identified groups are relatively rigid and bounded, jamaat are essentially flexible and plastic because they are ego-centred. A community is inclusive, it takes in individuals and families at a locality for the time they are there, on the tacit understanding that all abide by a shared acceptance of the need to keep the peace so that all can pursue their livelihoods. Communities are social constructs and being ego-centred, do not and cannot compete with tribe. In Jaalan, each small tribe in south-east Jaalan described their historical relationships with the others in conflicting and ambiguous terms but invariably ended with “But we are all one jamaa” , the jamaa being “The people who live, work and marry here” (Lancasters 1992; 347 – 348). The jamaa here is quite clearly dynamic and for production, for livelihood, and directly comparable to the informal working productive ibn amm and aila. Tribespeople of the north Karak plateau in central Jordan talked of jamaa as families and their informal extended networks. (Lancasters 1999; 68). Jamaat in the study region of Ras al-Khaimah and environs describe general communities of individuals and families who own, or have associations with productive resources, and live and work for some time in a locality, who make many marriages between each other, and cooperate and coordinate their productive activities. Large northern camel herding tribes like Shammar and Rwala do not talk about jamaat but ibn amm. Jamaa are associated with small tribes owning resources in small areas of a particular type of environment and who get some of their livelihood and profits from other areas in different environments; their economics are multi-resource and mobility is essential. Shammar and Rwala are large tribes living in large areas of environments that vary in natural resources and need markets, and in bad years they need to move outside their normal areas, but they do this by contracts of various sorts; their economics too are multi-resource and mobility is essential. Men of small tribes extend their networks by marriages across their community, whereas those of large tribes cover as many resources by marriages between tribal sections and tribes. The purpose is the same, the method is the same, the label is slightly different.

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Ownership, territory, and residence In customary law, the accepted use of natural resources for livelihood confers ownership by association. The development of natural resources so as to make these more productive and profitable confers ownership outright in Islamic and customary law. The natures of available soils, the sources of waters, and the resulting types of profitable crops affect ownership, collective or individual, and the amount of control over its alienation. The regions natural environments have become covered over time with these differing methods of ownership and rights to access. Everyone can identify the different environments, used and owned by named tribes with their various methods of livelihood. People of the region talk about the tribal or communal ownership of land as gained by always having lived there or by movement into empty land, or in a very few cases of small and limited areas, by the sword. Changes in parts of tribally owned areas are said to come from purchases by tribal sections or wider families from similar groups of the original tribal owners, as with the sale of places in Sall Alaa in Omani Ruus al-Jibal by a Dhahuriyiin section to Qiyaishi families of Bani Shutair Shihuh; a Dhahuri explained, Siima, Asfal, and Ghabbina in Wadi Sall Alaa all belonged to Qdur Dhahuriyiin. The Shihuh who now live there had always wintered there, and wanted to buy land for winter houses. Small pieces of land for house sites were sold to individual Shihuh by individual Bani Qdur, although the whole process of selling was arranged by the then madruub of Bani Qdur and Bani Abdullah Muhammad. This was at least a hundred and fifty years ago, in the time of Sultan bin Saqr al-Qasimi (died 1866), and long before the period of his troubles (c.1850 – 66). Gradually the Shihuh who had winter houses in these places acquired fields around by purchase and marriage. No Bani Qdur have houses at these places now, although they do have rights to most of the fields and the haram, since letting others use fields by rent or use means responsibility and a degree of management. This is shown by the fact that the madruub has to give permission for any group of outsiders to visit. This especially concerns weddings, when all the various groups of guests assemble in their right places and come down to the wedding place, and so the bridegroom and his family as hosts are on home territory.

Such sales are usually a result of population increase, decrease, or movement within the wider region for economic or political reasons. Tribespeople also sell fields to individuals outside the tribe but of the community, and these fields are the less valued. The gradual accumulation of land over time by purchase can alter the tribal composition of an area and in-

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deed form the focus of a new tribe; this is said to be why Habus are so called, as their first important purchase of mountain fields was on Jabal Hibs. Changes in small pieces of tribally owned lands may also develop when individuals from other sections or tribes inherit land from women of neighbouring tribes or sections who married across, especially if there were a series of marriages over time. Over a generation or two, these fields or shares of fields or gardens may be exchanged for others so tribal ownership is maintained; sometimes the womans male relations buy back the land transferred by inheritance. Occasionally transfers cause real friction, to the point where there is a tribal consensus that women will no longer inherit land but money or other wealth. Undeveloped land, watered by rainfall, and used for grazing and the collection of fodder and firewood, is tribally and communally owned. Developments, such as wells and caravan collection points, are owned by the family/ies, wider family/ies, or tribal section/s that developed and maintained them, and who therefore can transfer ownership by sale or gift. Complexes of terraced grain fields fed by channelled rainwater were built in the mountain areas and on the plains adjoining the foothills. The areas in which these field groups are situated are tribally owned, while the fields are owned individually or in shares by the descendants of those who originally developed them through inheritance, or who purchased them from such an owner. A field and its water channels are a unity and cannot be separated. As these fields were used to grow grain, and grain is an annual crop, labour for grain production over time sometimes gave a claim to use of that land. While most grainfields were worked by owners, a few owners with many fields allowed a family with not enough land the use of one of their less productive fields. Trees growing on grain fields may be owned separately from the field, and some highly desirable tree species are owned by several owners in shares. These fields are associated with houses, animal shelters, mill houses, granaries, threshing floors, and communal cisterns. Houses and animal shelters were built and maintained by individuals; millhouses, granaries and threshing floors by people from a wider family; and cisterns by individuals from wider families of the community owning the fields. Owners had the right to dispose of their property by inheritance, gift or sale, but only to fellow tribespeople or to tribespeople connected through women – the community. Mountain date gardens, watered by channelled rainwater and water from raincharged springs, were built on suitable soils below or alongside springs in tribally owned lands, and owned by the descendants of those who developed them. These gardens may be sold or given by the owners

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only to members of the tribe or community, although they may be rented to outsiders. Date, mango, lime and other fruit trees are owned and sold or given by owners to fellow tribespeople or community members because fruit trees are developed, they are productive for many years, and need pruning, fertilising, and picking, as well as watering and manuring. Commercial date gardens of the plains on the Gulf and Shamailiyya coasts required the digging of wells and the making of water channels, as well as the planting and care of the trees. In some areas, the construction of terraces was important for date gardens. All coastal plain date gardens are watered primarily from yazara wells, and winter flood flows of rainwater are important. Watering date trees from yazara wells needed workers to lead bulls up and down walkways to raise the water, and in this area garden work was largely carried out by employed cultivators rather than owners. The formal attitude of coastal town dwellers was that coastal plains were empty land, where tribes of the mountains and foothills owned wells and groups of fields and buildings used seasonally for grazing animals and collecting firewood. Settled tribes on the coastal plains owned developed date gardens on tribal land, and in some places merchants or members of ruling families from outside owned date gardens on such land. Trading families from coastal towns usually owned date gardens on the plains inland from the town. Degrees of ownership of land, up to total control as to disposal by an individual, change as the amount of investment and the length of time for the investment to mature mounts; as the source of water moves from rainfall through channelled rainfall, rain recharged springs, to wells dug in individual gardens and raised by bulls; and the lack of communal ownership of the original land. Communal ownership also existed under the sea at particular fishing areas, while coasts and creeks were tribally owned. People of the regions under study talk about territory in slightly different ways, reflecting the particular assets of each area and the historical perspective of the population. The usual word is dira, whose root means to make the rounds, to administer and thus comes to mean territory, owned region. Not every tribe or area has a dira; some coastal tribes like the Zaab, the populations of Ras al-Khaimah town and Rams, and some settled tribes do not have a dira. A Zaabi from Jazirat al-Hamra explained “Zaab dont have a dira, that is why we aquired date gardens all over the place – Khatt, Kilwa, Kalba, and Shinas, for example. We deliberately married out to get land; either the children would eventually

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inherit the land from their mother which she handed over to her husband to work, or the man bought the land from his father-in-law. We needed gardens for our own supplies. Buying or building summer houses in date garden areas, like Fahlain, put us in good places for trading. Zaab were sea traders, and the main item we traded was dates.” Haram could be used as an alternative to dira; the Naqbiyiin coastal town of Kalba was reported (IOR/15/1/14/39) to have no haram outside the four walls of the town where its inhabitants could exercise rights. Some, like a Naqbi at Daftah, considered dira to be associated with Shihuh and other Ruus al-Jibal tribes who moved between resource areas over the seasons unlike Naqbiyiin who did not, as each Naqbiyiin settlement lived from owned resources at that place, whether inland as at Daftah or Fahlain, or on the coast, as at Kalba. Zaab, like the populations of Ras al-Khaimah town, Rams, and Kalba, got their livelihood and profits from the sea, from sea trading and pearling, they were sea-people and settled or hadhr. A Dhahuri from Wadi Shaam explained, Dhahuriyiin have people who live from the mountains and people who live from the sea, pearling, fishing and trading. We dont have any sea places on the western coast of the Ruus al-Jibal, but we do on the northeastern coast, and we have been at Dibba Husn for about fifty years. On the coast, each group is known by the names of the places it owns and lives from. This division of livelihood and resource areas is not a tribal division, because all tribal sections have parts who live from the sea and parts who live from the mountains, and we are all bedu because we move between our resources.

A Shihhi from Ghalilah, on the coast north of Rams, also connected the ownership of a dira with the area used for livelihood. He said, Each tribe of the Shutair and the Hadiya has exclusive rights to a given territory, all the tribal area is held within these territories. There is no vacant land, there is no dead land, it is all owned by named groups in accordance with custom and tradition. Within these tribal areas, there are informal associations with smaller units, but these are not bounded. Ghalilah is a region which goes back way into the mountains and out to the sea to the depth of seven fathoms. The parts that some people use for their livelihood, that is their dira. The dira of Al Ahmad Bani Shutair in the region of Ghalilah divides up into haram, which means prohibited to non-members, and these go with the fakhdh, the named unit of families from a common ancestor five generations back. We dont mean literally five generations, but further back than a man can remember real people. A haram was owned by a fakhdh or section, and each haram is a block from the sea straight into the mountains until it comes up against another haram belonging to another section which runs down the mountains to the sea on the east coast. We talk

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about haram as blocks, but people work its land and water and trees in farij which are more like separate distinct points on a network of productive areas in the mountains. Dira are where a person makes his living, where his resources are, because his tribal identity gives him the rights of ownership. And so people talk about their personal dira which comes down to fields and cisterns and houses and trees they own through inheritance in the male line or through exchange between families in the male line, and these dira are in the scattered farij within their tribal dira. People talk about their tribal dira as a solid block, but of course most tribespeople also have claims on and use resources in other tribal dira or haram because of marriages and inheritance through women over the generations. This is a good thing, people can move between areas. All farij, except some of the very small ones, are shared with families from their tribal sections, although there may well be a core family or families.

A Khanbuli Bani Shutair described where Khanabila fukhdh have their land around al-Aini; al-Aini is owned by, it is the dira of, Bani Qdur, part of the Khanabila. Each part of Bani Qdur has a part of al-Aini; Bani Ali have al-Khabbah, Bani Harus have al-Ukaiba, Bani Hurrais have al-Rakba, and Bani Khanbul have al-Uwaina. Hudaid was the brother of Qdur, and Bani Hudaid have al-Musaylif, a separate area to the southwest. Ar-Rshud Khanabila own al-Abyath, south-east of al-Aini. The Khanabila dira is bigger, it takes in most of Wadi Bih between the Ghabbas and Wadi Aini, and we have part of Lima and a bit of Dibba Baiah. Each of us as individuals has land at other places through our mothers or grandmothers.

At Lima, the coastal plain, the sayh, was divided between the different groups. A Shihhi explained, A wide band behind the beach belonged to the Hurrais; the south side as far as Bait Bani Mansur and out to the centre belonged to Bani Ali; further up to the east and into the Wadi Bih belonged to Bani Mazyud; the north side to Bani Hassuun; the rest I dont know about. This land could be used for grazing household goats, collecting firewood, cutting fodder, and so on. Its use was exclusive to the owners. It was not a dira, dira were only in the mountains, and it wasnt a haram. It didnt have a category name that I know, it was just owned.

Ahl al-Hajar of the western Hajar mountains and tribespeople of the Jirri plain and the sands also used dira for tribally owned resource areas. A Dahamni from Ahl al-Hajar said, “The Dahamina have their dira from Khadra at the top of Wadi al-Ayaili, down the Wadi al-Ayaili to Nudiid, the last farij before the border with Sharjah, and the whole of Wadi Munaiy to al-Fashgah, Huwaylat and Nuslah.” Dira sometimes have fuzzy edges. The Amir of Munaiy described the Dahamina dira as “Nuslah,

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Rafaq, Fashgah, Qawr, Khurus, Huwailat, Munaiy and Ayaili; and its people are, in order of numbers, Dahaminah, Kaab, Maharza, and Quwayyid.” At Ghayl, a Mazrui stated, “We, the Mazari, have our dira where our date gardens and our fields are. They are our dira because we live from them and they have always belonged to us. The grazing areas we use in the sands and in the mountains is ours because there is nobody else there, because we have always used it, and that makes it our dira.” In the sands, a Khatri said, “My grandfather made his garden at Tawi Umm al-Araj in 1932 because it was in his dira, it was in the dira of the Khawatir. No one who wasnt Khawatir could have done this.” People talk much more about farij than they do about dira, rather as they talk more about jamaa than they do about qabila (tribe) or fakhdh (section). The jamaa are those with whom a person spends most of his time, with whom he lives and works. He and his family live and work while residing in a series of farij. His jural identity comes from his tribe, the tribal dira encompasses the places where there are fields, houses and cisterns, but he participates in a series of communities at their farij. Farij are the totality of people and productive resources – for example, fields, cisterns, houses and trees; or boats, beaches and fishing grounds. Because people owned and worked resources at different places within their dira, a family or its members did not live at one farij, but moved between those where they owned resources. This was especially so in the Ruus al-Jibal, but also in the sands and the western Hajar. Explaining movement between farij in the Ruus al-Jibal, a Salhadi Shihhi said, “People werent together most of the year. After people had sowed their wheat, they went off, maybe two or three families together with their goats into small grazing areas. They were at a farij, but they werent there in person. A farij came together for sowing and harvesting and other work for the community, but otherwise people were in small groups.” A Bani Lasmi Shihhi at Isban remarked: “The number of people here changed all the time as people and families came and went. Every person here had at least three or four other places up in the mountains and down in the wadis, and in each place they had fields to cultivate, and honey and firewood to collect, so people were always coming and going.” A Khanzuri Bani Hadiya commented, “A tribe, a qabila, did not work as a unit; nor did the smaller descent groups within it. Each person has their fields in different places, and gets their dates from different places. Each person has his own property and makes his own decisions.” Dhahuriyiin, Kumazarah, and Shutair Shihuh the north eastern coast of Musandam are sea people, but also have grain fields on the lower slopes

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of the coastal mountains, and move to the fields for sowing and harvesting. Moving between farij, or fariq as Ahl al-Hajar say, in the western Hajar is also the norm. A Mazrui in Wadi Sfuni said, Everyone had houses in the three or four fariq where they had their gardens and fields up and down the different wadis in the area. We moved between the fariq as we needed to for the work in each of the gardens we owned, we didnt have to move far because we had everything we needed near at hand. The water at Habn wasnt reliable so for the main part of the summer we moved to our date garden at Athbat over that way, where the water was reliable.

Maharza, Jalajil, Dahamina and Bani Kaab all spoke constantly of fariq, and confirmed that winter fariq were smaller and more scattered than the summer fariq which were near reliable springs or wells and the date gardens. Some Bani Kaab and Mazari families lived from animals that grazed the lower mountain slopes and drier valleys. These families had black goathair tents, buyut shair, and their encampments were manazil, like those of bedu families in the sands. A herding family made its own decisions where their animals would graze and water, so their manazil were constituted like fariq, with individual families coming together or separating depending on work, natural conditions, and long association with particular areas. The inhabitants, Ahl al-Bahr or sea-people, of coastal places such as Jazirat al-Hamra, Ras al-Khaimah, Shaam, Dibba Baiah, and bu Baqra, also referred to the residential areas within each as farij, described as comprising the buildings and the inhabitants. This differs from the statements of owners of houses in mountain farij, where farij are nodes of residence tied to production, although in a way so too are farij in the coastal towns, and it is possible that coastal farij included mooring and landing places, storage of fishing nets and traps, salting pits, and places where boat crews could be found. The jural aspect of mountain farij, where fields and houses cannot be sold without the permission of other farij members, is like that of farij in Arab towns in general, as described by al-Naim (2004), based on research in Hufuf, and a similar situation should probably be understood for the coastal locations of the study region. Al-Naim states that the lay-out of the buildings of a neighbourhood are the expression of the social inter-relationships between the resident different extended and nuclear families of the section, a farij is social relationships transferred to physical relationships. He points out that locally farij is derived from far-

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aja, the openings in the walls used by women, showing the importance of relationships through women in the structure of local communities. Inheritance, irf, and the right of pre-emption, shufaa, are the processes that manage farij; inheritance manages expansion or re-use by the need to allow others to reach their parts of the farij, and the right of pre-emption by the necessity for an owner to first offer his buildings to his neighbours, so that they do not have to let in outsiders. These conditions also exist in the farij of the region, using inheritance and the requirement to sell only to fellow tribespeople. Harat is used for buildings, it is a collection of buildings. A Dhahuri in Wadi Shaam explained, “harat al-Awaili is only houses, animal shelters, and granaries. The people who lived there had their fields elsewhere.” A Ramsawi described the earlier residence patterns of tribal sections in Rams as harat, and at Hudaiba a young man said, “Hudaiba was divided into five harat, and a harat was the houses and the date gardens.” A Mazrui in Wadi Sfai commented, “The buildings used to be part of fariq, but now they are harat, because although people continue to use their fields and gardens, they dont use the houses. So the houses have become buildings without people or gardens.” Buyut, houses, are small, isolated groups of stone stores and shelters built against mountain sides in the Ruus alJibal, and seasonally used by goatherders with their flocks. So far, so good. People described types of buildings associated with residence and production in terms of individual and tribal ownership of and access to resources, together with relationships to other members of the community. The terms used do not translate into western categories of town, village or hamlet, which is why farij, harat, and manazil will be used in the text. These terms are constituted differently from the western city, town, village and hamlet, words which themselves conceal legal concepts of central administration. Bilad (Lane 1994 [1863]; 246 – 7) is a general term, whose root means remained, stayed, dwelt, and more generally, A country, land, district … any portion of the earth or land, comprehended within certain limits. The word was used by people in the study area in the sense of district, for tribally owned areas of the coastal plains cultivated as date gardens where people lived in their date gardens, like Shimal, Hail, and Fahlain. Settled Bani Shamaili said, Before, we lived in our date gardens. There were no villages. A cluster of date gardens had a centre, which was a tower, or a ghurfa – a mudbrick, two-storey watchtower, storeroom, majlis and family quarters – like Siba, where the leading local family lived. Shimal was a bilad, its lands stretched from Wadi Hajil and Wadi Shusha in the east to the coast at Mataf.

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Dibba Baiah was also described as a bilad, made up of a collection of farij around a centre, where there was the fort and the mosque, and where bin Salih had his tower. Haiyir was not a farij, it was a qurya because it was where the Naqbi expert in customary law lived, and he collected up the zakat tax for Muhammad bin Salih, the Shaikh of Dibba Baiah.

Qurya translates as village and was used by people to describe their permanent settlements in opposition to those used seasonally by people who moved between resource areas. An Imam at Khatt remarked: “Khatt was a qurya because the inhabitants didnt move and there was always a shop. A village has a shop.” On the Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts, people said all the settlements were qurya because they lived there all the time, moving only between winter and summer houses in the village land. Inside a village, its people organised themselves into farij; a Jabri at bu Baqra explained “bu Baqra is in mixed furjan (pl. of farij) and inside a mixed farij there will be guum Balush, guum Jabri, guum Zaabi.” No local person pointed it out, but there appears to be a correlation between places described as qurya and those said not to have a dira or haram, tribally owned lands extending beyond the area of settlement. This correlation seems to be confirmed by the Shihuh settlements on the Gulf coast, whose inhabitants said they had lived mostly from cultivation and fishing and spent most of their time there, although they had mountain fields where they grew grain. These settlements are listed as farij by Hanthal (1987) while Zimmerman (1981; 44,48) describes their inhabitants as settled, hadhr. The inhabitants of qurya therefore lived from the sea or from date gardens, although conversely people living from the sea or date gardens did not necessarily inhabit villages. Ras al-Khaimah town was a madina, a city, because it had a Friday mosque and a qadi (Islamic judge), a ruling family and their fort, and a market. The town was inhabited in the winter, but in the summer people who did not go to the pearling moved to the date gardens just inland. Inside the town, the inhabitants lived in farij identified by tribe or location, and inside a farij, by guum – a small, loose group, identified by family.

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Group identities and their references Members of the groups of the region have a wide variety of constructed identities; by language – Arabic, Persian, or Baluch; by jural identities as tribespeople or members of families, and to which ruler they went for arbitration; settled (hadhr) or nomadic (bedu); occupational, and regional. Most were Arabic speakers, with Iranians and Baluch groups in coastal towns, such as Ras al-Khaimah town, Khor Fakkan, and bu Baqra, and Baluch in Shimal. Inhabitants of coastal towns frequently described themselves as Khalijis, Gulfis, and pointed out that members of Sunni tribes of the south Iranian coasts had always moved between that coast and the Gulf coast (Montigny 1996; Najmabadi 1988), as participants in the economy of the Indian Ocean. Which town a family moved to was to some extent based on relationships between the incomers place of origin or present residence and that of the projected destination, as incomers had to be accepted; for example, families from Lingah in Iran usually went to Ras al-Khaimah town or Sharjah town, as the Qawasim, rulers of Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah, had ruled Lingah until the first decade of the twentieth century. Jural identity, essential for all aspects of living, is acquired at birth by descent in the male line, for all families and tribes, Arab, Iranian or Baluch. Tribe assumes male descent, spoken about in genealogical terms. While genealogies are accepted as valid for relatively recent periods, the further back genealogies go, the less authoritative they are held to be for current named groups. Descent in the male line and its genealogies is known to be assumed for some individuals and groups, as some come in through protection, while others, now recognised as tribes, are said to have come together from a variety of disparate small groups. The division between hadhr, settled, and bedu, mobile, has some political overtones. Hadhr groups, as settled populations, have relationships with rulers, usually involving the payment of taxes. Bedu groups, being mobile, claim independence and the control of their affairs. Tribes may have hadhr sections and bedu sections, as do Shihuh, Dhahuriyiin, Tunaij, Mazairi, Quwayyid, and Bani Kaab. Settled groups of Zaab at Jazirat alHamra and Tunaij at Rams identify themselves as bedu from genealogical and historical references. People also have identity from their means of livelihood. Hadhr populations follow occupations as sea traders, fishermen, pearlers – bahriyya or ahl al-bahr; cultivators of dates – mazari, ahl an-nakhla, or if employed, bayadir – or tobacco – mazari; or traders on land – tujjar.

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Bedu populations move between resources. They may live from their animals – bedu – providing meat or dairy products for sale, or using camels and donkeys to carry goods and people. They may work as fishermen – sayyadiin – for profit, and move between the coasts and fields they cultivate for subsistence. They may cultivate wheat – mazari – in different areas in the mountains, herd goats for meat or dairy products, and collect honey and firewood for sale. They may work as bayadir, employed labourers in date gardens, in bad years. These identities come together in regionally based terms, which use a mix of historical references and recognition of environments on methods of livelihood. Thus while Tunaij and Zaab consider themselves to have bedu historical and genealogical antecedents, by location and livelihood they are bahriyyin, sea-people, as are the people of all the coasts. The bedu tribes, Khawatir, Ghafalah, and Musafariin, use the sands and the Jirri plain. People of the Ruus al-Jibal are tribally identified as Dhahuriyiin, Kumazarah, and Shihuh, but all identify themselves as bida, the original developers. Families further describe themselves as bedu, living from animals; mazari, farmers; siyadin, fishermen or ahl al-bahr, living from the sea. Tribes in the western Hajar mountains describe themselves as Ahl al-Hajar using the region as the referent, and by occupation as mazari or cultivators of irrigated gardens; bedu or shawi if living from their animals; or bayadir if employed as cultivators. These social categories based on pragmatic local communites are lateral or horizontal, they are not layered into a vertical hierarchy. Local communities and their members may not always be in harmony, but share accepted codes of values and tastes.

“The poetics of dwelling” Ingold (2000), examining formations of knowledge based on intuitive understanding and resting on perceptual skills, concluded that these do not make alternative indigenous science, but are more akin to a poetics of dwelling. Local people were clearly aware of having a knowledge of their environments based in feeling [and] consisting in the skills, sensitivities and orientations that have developed through long experience of conducting ones life in a particular environment … People must already be situated in a certain environment and committed to the relationships this entails (Ingold, 2000; 25).

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When people in the mountains, beaches, gardens, and wadis talked about their places, words poured out of them. They noticed so much, they paid attention to so much, and demonstrated long intimacy with trees, plants, slopes, rocks and stones, soils, water seeps and flow channels, creeks, sea currents and conditions, and the seasonal changes in these. They emphasised that they had worked with the soils, flood flows, springs, and rocks to build fields, gardens, water channels, cisterns and wells. Each mountain wadi, each drainage basin, and each coastal area at the mouth of a wadi is recognised to have its own particular features. Explaining differences in cistern construction, a Shihhi commented, “each wadi is different and no two groups of people do things in the same way.” One interpretation would be each wadi is different and so no two groups of people do things in the same way; a second might be, each wadi is different and so (just as) groups of people are. On the Batinah coast, a Mazrui at Aqr remarked: “All these wadis coming to this coast are different and their people make their livings slightly differently.” People of all regions recognised the mountains as the foundation of all, and trees to be the source and basis of livelihood from the land. Rival (1998; 7), editing papers on the anthropology of trees, considers societies have a need to find within the natural environment the material manifestation of organic processes that can be recognised as similar to those characterising the human life cycle, or the continued existence of human groups which for the ethnographies of her contributors are trees. In the region of study, mountains and the earth and water that come from them are the primary carriers of symbols, with trees almost as important. These carriers of symbols of anthropological discourse are regarded rather as signs from God, His ayat, by the Muslim tribespeople of the study region. Schimmel (1994; xii) writes: The creatures are signs; the change between night and day is a sign, as is the loving encounter of husband and wife; and miracles are signs …: they all prove that there is a living God who is the originator of everything. These signs are not only in the horizons, that is, the created universe, but also in the human souls, that is in the human capacity to understand and admire; in love and human inquisitiveness, in whatever one may feel, think, and experience.

The linkages made by local people between natural features of each local environment and their inhabitants, the successors to those who shaped them, are based in their awareness of the signs from God. The perception of carriers of symbols or signs from God surely existed before Muhammads revelation, although enhanced by its authority, because so many of

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the symbols or signs were implicit in the words of the Arabic language. Schimmel (1994; 116) mentions that for Arabs, their language was already powerful and Muhammads miracle had to be connected with language, as Jahiz argued, while Moses performed magic miracles in consonance with the Egyptians trust in magic, and Jesus was the healer in a culture where healing was highly appreciated. The Quran is poetic; and the people of the study region as Muslims, Arabs, and inhabitants regard their environment in poetic, or symbolic, terms. Jibal, mountain, has connotations of to shape, fashion, create and people of the two mountain regions consider in a lexical and a poetic sense their mountains to be the foundations of the entire region and themselves the original inhabitants. The people of the Ruus al-Jibal, literally the heads of the mountain, are the bida, those who began. The people of the western Hajar are the ahl al-hajar, the people of the stone [or mass, or stony places]. It is the mountain heights that enable clouds to gather and rain to fall more abundantly than over the lowlying sands to the southwest. The rains flow down the mountainsides, recharging springs and wells and flooding mountain plateaux, plains and sands, refreshing trees and shrubs and causing annuals to burst up through the soil, and refreshed the seas, benefitting fish and pearl oysters. The two mountain blocks are recognised to have different hydrologies and geologies. People point out that the Ruus al-Jibal mountains have sall, plateaux, on their inland faces, whereas the western Hajar has only one, at Sall Lukhkham, above Wadi Fay where the two mountain systems meet and intermingle. The heights of the western Hajar are bare rock, but many of its wadis have wide grazing areas or permanent flowing springs used for irrigating date gardens and fields. There are springs in the Ruus al-Jibal but these are used for people and animals. The western Hajar has wells, the Ruus al-Jibal has cisterns – the former has upwelling waters, the latter has collectable surface waters. The action of rains on the mountains gradually over the ages creates rocks, stones and soils of different qualities, which local people recognise as having come from the mountains. People talked of hajar for rock and stone in general; hasa for hard building stone; tin for cultivable silts and clay. Soils, ardh, are talked about in terms of their capacities to hold water, their fertility, and their capacity to anchor trees. In the Ruus al Jibal loose stones were used to shape the sall into terraced fields with built channels to carry water to the grain crops. These fields were waab, from a root meaning to embrace, contain, as their stone walls contained the earth; the root w--b also means to uproot, and weeding be-

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fore tilling and sowing was essential. In the western Hajar, loose stones were used to build walls to protect date gardens from floods, and to construct shallow terraced grain fields. At places in both mountain systems, people carved on rock faces (Lancasters, fc.a). Loose stones of various kinds also ultimately come from mountains, and were used in most sorts of structures for animals, for houses for people during their lifetimes, and for graves. Some people of coastal towns used coral rock from the sea bed or from Tunb Island for houses, others used mudbrick or hard stone from the mountain foothills, or built shelters of date palm branches; people of the sands made goathair tents; but all had headstones on their graves. Many mountain and coastal farij have sanam – mounds – of stones, pre-Islamic tombs that present inhabitants think of as the tombs of ancestors or predecessors, and thus explain or account for their ownership of the place. Sanam were also equated with mazar, places visited by Muslims to pray and sacrifice, like the building at Ras Shaikh Masud. It was said that people had made small private mazar to pray to God about matters that formal Islam did not encompass. The stones used in private mazar and those representing graves in wellknown mazar did not represent any concept but merely helped the supplicant to focus his or her mind, as the qibla of a mosque marks the direction of Mecca and so the direction of prayer. This idea is like the statement by Schimmel (1994; 58); everyone has his or her own qibla, the place of worship to which one turns intentionally or unintentionally. Some place names in the Ruus al-Jibal describe the place, often in a poetic manner, while the names of others symbolise what the place means to its users. Bani Shamaili named some of the places in and above Wadi Hajil; Those wide, gentle slopes high up on both sides of the mountain are as-Sall. Sall means to draw forth, to ressemble a basket. That cleft over there is Saut al-Miya, because the noise, saut, of water pouring down in a storm is like guts, miya, rumbling. That area and its farij is Luqsaifa; q-S-f is to do with being brittle, breaking easily, and that is exactly how the rock there behaves. The old farij at the head of the wadi is Lughshaib, and I cant remember exactly, but it is something to do with the rocks (the dictionary meaning of gh-sh-b is burnished which is how the rocks appear in afternoon sunshine). Ghabbas means the last of the darkness before sunrise, and the first of the dark after sunset and Wadi Ghabbas has exactly that.

A Bani Shutair Khanbuli explained, The side wadi below Wadi Salhad is Wadi Mitan, from T--n, to pierce, and it does indeed pierce the mountain, it is a way up to al-Abyath and al-Aini.

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The mountain ridge beyond Salhad is al-Asm. Asm is a word for a high ridge but it is also an attribute of Allah, and it means something like the protector of danger from within oneself, its what stops you killing someone if you are quarrelling. The cistern in the wadi below is Birkat al-Uma, the sardine cistern. There is a story about it. A man called Hamad organised a work party to build the cistern. It is customary to feed the work party with meat but he didnt have a single goat to kill. The only food he had was some dried sardines. He was so ashamed he went up to al-Asm and built the pillar of stones you see today. In my opinion he built the pillar of stones so that he didnt have to work with the men digging the cistern and watch them eating the sardines. He worked, but on his own, and built this pillar that marked the track, and could be used to give the call to prayer. And the cistern is known to this day as Birkat al-Uma.

Arabic words themselves are often multi-layered with meanings; a Dhahuri commented that Jabal Raan al Harim provided a sort of rough boundary between Dhahuriyiin to the north and Shihuh to the south. Raan means (Lane 1984 [1863]; I, 1107) a long mountain, a large prominence on a mountain, both of which describe the mountain. Harim (I, 556) means the appertances or conveniences that are in the immediate vicinity; the thing that one protects and in defence of which one fights; and so, women and household. All three meanings of harim build on and interact with each other, while gazing at the long mountain with its prominence and reflecting on its position as a major watershed, and the position of the two tribes. The Shihuh section, Bani Hadiya Khanazira, whose dira includes farij north and east of the mountain call the mountain Jabal Khanazir. Trees, shajar, are recognised to be the source and basis of livelihoods from the land, and the numbers and health of trees are considered to be a reflection of the prosperity and well-being of communities. Each environment is characterised by a number of livelihood options, which in turn are associated with species of trees, some cultivated and some natural. Local people would describe cultivated trees to be those like date, lime, mango and other fruit trees which provide from their fruit livelihood and profits. These trees are cultivated in gardens, owned by individuals who may dispose of them at will, and depend on peoples care to produce and reproduce. Natural trees grow where they will, do not depend on people for their existence, but are owned communally by people of the locality. They provide browse for domestic animals, shade, pollen for bees, and dead wood for firewood; local people may coppice them for wood for buildings and tools, lop the branches for fodder, collect fruit, leaves, gums or roots for seasonal foods, medicines, cosmetics or craft use. The

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two categories have degrees of elision. Natural trees may be allowed or encouraged to grow by houses for shade, by animal shelters for browse, at garden walls, field boundaries and at watering places; at all these sites, young trees are often protected against animals. Cultivated trees may become natural trees because the owners no longer care for them, as with feral date trees, or there are cultivated tree species such as sharisha (melia azedarach) and hinna (lawsonia inermis) which are frequently bought and grown in house gardens for shade, as if they were natural trees. Natural and cultivated trees embody various ideas about social and economic relations. Shade, zhull, is vitally important, as necessary protection from a dangerous sun rather than mere relief from heat. The word zhull means shade and protection, and so trees in this capacity become a metaphor for social and political relations. Local people describe all perennial plants as shajar, as opposed to annuals, aishb, or if weeds in gardens, darra (harming, injurious). Shajar comes from a root meaning that which has become complicated or intricate or confused (Lane 1984 [1863]; 1, 1506 – 7) and therefore, trees or shrubs, although also of affairs. That is, plants which do not end in their first year, but develop stems or trunks, branches, and produces seeds or fruits, and become intricate and complicated. People associate particular tree species with each environment: in the coastal date gardens, date and salam (acacia arabica); for the coastal plains, samra (acacia tortilis); for the sands, ghaf (prosopis cineraria) and samra; for the Ruus al-Jibal, samra, sidr (zizyphus spina-christi) and miz (prunus Arabica); in the western Hajar, date, sidr, and samra. In addition to providing shade and food for people and animals, these trees also provide wood. The branches and trunks of date trees or nakhla are used as building material; using date leaf-stems (yarid) for shasha (light boats) and arish (summer or temporary shelters) obviously does not need the tree to be cut down, while felled date trunks are used for roof beams for houses. While trees are shajar, wood for building or timber in general is khashab or hashab and comes from living trees. Most wood for building is coppiced, as it is needed for roof beams in houses of different sorts, mosques, and shelters, or for tools; sidr and samra coppice well. Just as a general concept of trees is separated into species, some woods are further identified. Salam are big, longlived trees, and relatively uncommon; the wood was used for keels, stem and stern posts for locally built boats, and called gharrat. Ghaf was also used for keels and so on, but its wood did not change its name, while samra provided ribs. In the Ruus al-Jibal, there are two sorts of sidr; the rarer and larger has wood favoured for drum making and

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when cut called ud; but when sidr is felled – or a large enough branch or side trunk cut – and wood used for the solid doors of Ruus al-Jibal houses, the wood is khashab. Dead branches or trees are hattab, literally firewood, which is their use. Shajar are not only intricate in themselves, they are also quite complicated to think about. Not only do shajar move to the state of being khashab and then to hattab, not only do they grow and regrow after lopping or coppicing, but their wood in buildings may be used and reused in successive renovations. In the Ruus al-Jibal, roof beams and doors are commonly used for at least three renovations at roughly fifty year intervals. Important fruits of some trees had their own names; the fruit of sidr are nebk, while the fruit of nakhla (date palm) changed their names according to the degree of maturity. In some ways, the line between animate and inanimate is fluid, linked to the proper functioning of natural things. Trees are living, but so is wood, khashab, it continues in another form. Mountains and stones are not animate but enable life so in some poetic sense they epitomise life. Water, under natural conditions is alive, hayy, with its own characteristics; it is sweet, sulphurous, gypsumy, salty. Water that becomes too salty is said to have become aqq, recalcitrant or disobedient as if one were speaking of a child. When trying to clarify the repertoire of agricultural tools, it was explained that the important part was to get the work done, it did not really matter whether the preferred tool for the job was used or an alternative. Similarly, when trying to sort out types of pot, people said that while some types of pot had been preferred for particular tasks, in general, they had used whatever pot had been available. This flexibility in the use of material goods was apparent in the achievement of particular goals (dispute settlement, selling of produce) through social tools; if a preferred mediator or particular market was unavailable, there was always an alternative. Tools, material or social, are made by their users. Human beings and natural features, on the other hand, are givens, created by God and “signs from God” and carriers of symbols. Human beings, created with the five necessities, – sight, hearing, hands to work with, feet to walk on and a heart to understand with – thus form part of Gods overall creation, largely through work for a livelihood and profits. Thus the human body itself appeared to be regarded as a “given” and as such had to be cared for by washing, scenting, clothing and adornment (Kanafani 1983). The use of the body in carrying out work was described in inflexible terms: “we carried firewood on our backs with our hands by our shoulders; we carried jirba (waterbags) with head straps with our

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hands by our ears” were both common declarations throughout the region. The manner of carrying the work knife by men tucked into the waistband of their wizra was similarly seen as inflexible and used as a means of distinguishing men from women in crude rock-carvings. In the landscape, people walk using the whole foot rather than the heel coming down first in the ground followed by the sole. This manner of walking disturbs the ground less, important on scree-covered slopes, and allowing narrower paths, i. e. causing less disturbance. People are adept at accommodating physical movements to the varied features of of the different environments; a Shihhi remembered his grand-mother “ bounding down the mountainside like a goat”. Just as their feet are skilful with the ground, so are their hands in moving and using stones. In work and relaxation, people are always aware of what others are doing, and adapt and co-ordinate their movements. How people talk about the mountains, water, and trees of the study area as the foundations of life for all, and the manner in which talking and thinking about mountains, water, and trees requires and enables concepts of the social infrastructure and its practice are examples of what Fernandez (1998; 103) calls The way … such images, which are found in nature, have been used to give order to nature, and especially to give moral order to the nature of human relationships. As Muslims, the people of the study area are part of the Abrahamic tradition, and accept the creation of the world by Allah for man to live from, and therefore to take care of it, and to be content with it. Many stressed mutualities between natural environments and the livelihoods that are so enabled. One mutality was made between mountains, the associated dews, rains, rocks, stones, soils, and trees with goats, camels, crops, bees, and people. Another was made between mountains whose foothills extend under the seas and rains with sea fishing and pearling. These mutualities were seen as manifestations of Gods generosity and mercy, not only for people but for all His creation. These mutualities are mediated by ownership and work that enable people to live and provide protection and care to developed features of the natural world, and further mediated by tribal premises and processes that require coordination of livelihood activities by the participants. Ownership of natural features such as basins of soils, springs and seeps of water, trees, or underwater mounds by development and transmission by inheritance or purchase assumes obligations to protect and conserve for future generations as well as present rights to use. Territory is as much about customary associations of natural features with wider families and tribal sections through obligations of protection and

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rights to use as it is to do with marking a locality with structures. In all natural environments, attention, work, and prayer develop livelihood and make social relationships. At Munaiy in the western Hajar, residents refer to the falaj daudi, the underground water channels through the gardens, by placename to outsiders, but among themselves by the names of those who built and repaired them. An old man said, “Using the names of the people for aflaj (sing. falaj) commemorates the long, long ago ancestors of the people who had rights in the falaj and organised its building in the beginning. The users of each falaj were a community, the falaj bound that community, they were the same.” Work also ensured that, within mens capacities, environments stayed beneficient. Storms and floods damage field and garden walls, wash away paths and badly sited houses. Damage is regarded as inevitable, but lessened by skilful construction and regular maintenance. Creeks silted up and sandbars built up, to be washed away in storms. Water could become salt and rains could fail. All environments, sources of livelihood and communities were ultimately bound together through the need for rains from the mountains to recharge springs and wells, a binding together parallel to the social binding of kin networks and economic and political practice. When rains failed, people prayed “and because they needed rain for their trees and crops and animals, God made rain to fall.” The corollary now, when people no longer depend on their traditional sources of livelihood but employment, is that when rains fail, people pray but they no longer pray properly, with all their hearts. And a following corollary is that they are no longer really one community, morally bound together.

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2 Sea people, ahl al-bahr, and how they lived The ahl bahriyya, the people who lived from the sea, of Ras al-Khaimah Emirate dwelt in Jazirat al-Hamra, Ras al-Khaimah, Maarid, Rams, and Shaam on the Gulf coast. The seas of the Gulf, al-Khalij, and the Indian Ocean, Bahr al-Hind, offered opportunities for trading and carrying goods by sea, fishing, and pearling. Many men followed more than one occupation, depending on the season. Men from the coasts of Omani Musandam, Shamailiyya (now Sharjah and Fujairah Emirates), and northern Batinah of Oman also lived from the sea. Information about sea trading came from former sea traders who recalled voyages from the late 1920s and 1930s, during the second world war, and from after 1945 up to the late 1960s. Engines for trading and long distance fishing boats came in for locally owned boats in the late 1940s and on; the earlier voyages people remembered were by sail. The first engines were small and fairly inefficient, so initially seasons of sailing and times taken were not much affected, although this changed later. The major commercial pearling on the Gulf banks stopped being profitable in the 1920s, although it continued to the 1950s. Pearling in creeks and off the coasts of the Ruus al-Jibal and Shamailiyya coasts for seed pearls and mother of pearl was always on a smaller scale and less profitable, but continued until the 1960s. Commercial fishing traditionally divided into salting large fish for food, drying sharks and small fish for fertiliser and animal fodder. With the exception of drying sharks, these continue, although fresh fish for urban markets is now more important. A saying common to peoples in the Gulf and around the Indian Ocean was The sea belongs to God, the land belongs to us. That is, in customary law land becomes owned by its development, but the sea as sea cannot be developed. In the study region, coastal areas, shorelines, and areas of the sea bed up to known depths of water were associated with local populations for coastal fishing, pearling (but not the Great Pearling on the Gulf banks), and fish trading. Structures on the seabed to enhance fish aggregations were owned by individuals, as were particular places off Dibba Husn and Sumbrayir where a commercial fish species congregated. But the seas in general were open to all inhabitants of the Indian Ocean littorals for sea trade and carrying and major pearling. In

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these economic activities, what enabled trade, carrying, and serious pearling were boats, cargoes, equipment, and investment, which came from the activities of people on land. For many sea-people, traders and pearlers, it was the ownership of boats, goods and investments that conferred identity and made them what they were. The seas were like roads leading to and from markets and resources. While the sea belonged to God, coasts and their markets and harbours belonged to people. Access to these harbours and markets for buying and selling, for safety from storms and for repairs, and for supplies of food and water was gained through customary social practice, of right behaviour, and mediated by networks of kinship and work, and through mosques.

Sea trading and carrying Former sea traders recalled that in their time, whether using sail or engine, sea trading was sometimes trading on their own account and sometimes carrying for land merchants. On both types of voyage, crew members traded on their own accounts on a small scale. The crew were paid a share of the earnings of the boat, according to their responsibilites. Many trading boats carried goods and passengers, who were usually traders with their goods, or people looking for work. Villiers (1940; 17 – 18) voyage from south Arabia to east Africa and then to Kuwait was in a Kuwaiti sailing bu¯m whose owner and nakhudha traded on his own account, the crew traded in small ways for themselves, and the boat would go where there seemed the most chance of earning profits. A Ramsawi explained, A ship owner carried goods for merchants as merchants stay on land, and each crew member traded on his own behalf in anything he could afford to buy and thought would sell. It was very small stuff. Sometimes the ship owner acted as an agent for a merchant, sometimes the merchant had an agent on board or in the ports we went to. When a ship owner got to a port, sometimes he acted like an agent and sold the goods and bought other goods with the money for trading somewhere else, or there might be a merchant in the port wed arrived at who wanted goods carried elsewhere and gave him money for that.

The man who owned or was responsible for the boat, its crew, and goods, on that voyage was the nakhudha; the mate or steersman was the rubban or muallim. There were books, dafatir, of sailing instructions that contained astronomical tables of the lunar mansions and latitudes of ports

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and headlands, and often used with an astrolabe, shinab. An elderly sea trader said, I know a bit about how an astrolabe is used. Here are the different metal plates that line up with the star signs on the outer rim. Each plate represented a part of the Indian Ocean at a different season. We used these to find the latitude. We knew what speed we were going at, and we knew which direction we were sailing in. Once we knew the latitude, we could work out whether or not we were right for where we were going, and adjust our course accordingly.

Former nakhudha and muallim also mentioned using a finger system to measure the height of the sun or the pole star to determine latitude, noted by Hourani (1995; 107) as a common practice for centuries. Sea routes were memorised as poems, discussed by Serjeant (1970; 198) and by Tibbetts (1971) in his translation of the late 15th century works of the navigator, Ahmad b Majid al-Najdi, said to have born in Ghubb, near Ras alKhaimah town. These poems included the dates of departure from various ports to catch the monsoon winds for Indian and African destinations, seasonal winds, currents, reefs and whirlpools, landmarks, sheltered bays and anchorages. Elderly seamen knew these poems had existed, but had no details. King (1985; 215) describes the knowledge of Arab navigators as practical science, belonging to a folk tradition of simple astronomical knowledge based on the lunar mansions, together with an intimate knowledge of shorelines, seas, and seasonal weather conditions. It is clear from local information and from published sources that those who lived from trading by sea were part of a dense economic, social, and cultural web covering the north west Indian Ocean and its coasts. The owners, nakhudha, and crew often had families in more than one port, might well move between a series of home bases over a lifetime, or move from a home base to another overseas to build up resources before returning to their original home or somewhere near. Lienhardt (1993; 88, 98) illustrates this for people of Failaka, an island off Kuwait, and Sheriff (2004) for Suris and others from from coastal towns of Oman and the Gulf. Sheriff (2004; 106) used information from the National Archives of Zanzibar, concerning the rights of dhow owners to use British or French flags, to show that individuals from the Gulf and Oman sailed to Zanzibar and then went to northern Madagascar, the Comoros, or Djibouti. This was a longstanding practice, as when the French arrived in these places in the mid 19th century, Omani and Gulfi Arabs had already established plantations there and carried their produce in their ships. Among them was a Ras al-Khaimi, Salim bin Muhammad al-Badi,

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who first sailed to Zanzibar, and then settled in Butin, in northern Madagascar, where he became wealthy, and in 1892, returned to the Gulf with three dhows and thirty slaves (Sheriff 2004; 108). As trading voyages by sail ended during the late 1940s, archive informants had been youths with no detailed knowledge of sailing skills or management of the boat, crew and goods. Villiers (1940), an experienced seaman in Western ocean going sailing ships, was interested in Arab sailing techniques and made two voyages, one in a Yemeni zaruq, the Shaikh Mansur, and the other in a Kuwaiti bu¯m, The Triumph of Righteousness. During his two voyages, he became impressed by the skills in seamanship and navigation of nakhudha. Sailing for eight days from Aden to Jizan on the east side of the Red Sea, in the Yemeni zaruq, an open boat with a lateen sail, without navigational aids, decks, or leadline, he wrote, She somehow wandered along cheerfully, and she had been sailing like that for at least thirty years in one of the most dangerous seas in the world … Why have decks, when no sea broke on board? Who needed charts, when Ahmed (the nakhudha) knew every reef and every headland, every strip of beach and every rock by eye, from long and close personal association? (1940; 6 – 7). The experiences of his second voyage, aboard The Triumph of Righteousness, from Aden along the east African coast to Zanzibar and Rufiji, then returning along the south Arabian coast and up the Gulf to Kuwait, further impressed him with the outstanding seamanship of the nakhudha, and their knowledge of how to use the seas, the winds, and their boats (eg 1940; 29, 62, 74 – 77, 217 – 228, 273 – 4). He was equally admiring of The sense of peace and well-being (1940; 24) on both boats; There was no yelling, no bullying, no slave-driving. Those Arab sailors had long ago learned how to work together in peace for the common good, and all necessary employment went on so calmly and smoothly in that vessel that I was three months aboard before I realised the system of command (1940; 32). All crew members, except the carpenter and the cook, took part in all the work of the boat, swinging the yard, trimming the sails, bailing, rope making, sail making and repairing, cleaning the hull and so on, in a regular routine (1940; 31 – 5), and were worked hard (eg 1940; 178 – 181, 183 – 186; 220). The lack of privilege and the payment in shares of the boats earnings according to responsibilities contributed to a sense of common purpose in a common enterprise, together with the recognition of the worth of each member, and brought about the sense of peace and well-being on the two boats. Elderly former sea traders and seamen of the study region confirmed the working and economic condi-

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tions and the peace and calm of life on board, a further acknowledgement of the local view that “Honour is in contentment.” The key to sailing voyages in the Indian Ocean was the monsoon system, whether a voyage was coasting to or from India or East Africa, or going directly to these destinations from the Gulf. Voyages made by former sea traders often combined coastal sailing and deep sea sailing. A Zaabi from Jazirat al-Hamra and a bu Qaishi from Ras al-Khaimah town said, The long distance trading boats were big abwam (pl. of bu¯m), of three to five hundred tons carrying capacity, and locally built. There were two trading seasons or mawsim using the two monsoon winds, one for India and the other for east Africa. Trade depended on the monsoon winds, and a voyage lasted nine months – that was when we sailed. In July or August we went up the Gulf, taking salt fish and fresh dates to Dubai and Kuwait. In Kuwait, we picked up dried dates from Basra, or we went to Basra to get them. We took these to India on the monsoon. Then we got a bulk cargo of roof tiles from Mangalore near Calicut on the Malabar coast. We waited until the monsoon changed and sailed to east Africa where we sold the roof tiles and bought building wood, especially roof beams, chandal, and big carved wooden doors. These were bulk cargo for the Gulf, and we sailed back here on the southwest monsoon.

A former sea trader at Maaridh recalled, In the days when we sailed using monsoon winds, we left Ras al-Khaimah port on the first of September and we left India to return home on the 15th of May. My first voyage was with my father when I was fifteen. We had a khotia, it held five hundred tons. First we went to Karachi and we had to wear round the whole way (ie like tacking, but because of the sails and their rigging, the boat makes a series of long figures of eight; Hourani 1995; 110, fig 2, and Villiers 1940; 24 – 5) because the wind was against us and it took twenty five days. We unloaded dates there, and went on down to Kuchi, right down in the south by Sri Lanka. Then straight across to Mombasa, that was sixteen days.

Indian and East African ports were the destinations for the big boats – abwam, baghalah or khotia – from Ras al-Khaimah town. At this date, the triangular voyage linking the western Indian port of Mangalore with east African ports depended on the demand for clay roof tiles in east Africa. The work of seamen, nakhudha and crews, on long distance sailing voyages, was described by Villiers (1940). The nakhudha was the man responsible for the boat. On shore, (1940; 48), he tried to be paid for delivered cargoes, searched for new cargoes – including passengers, often small

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traders or people looking for work (1940; 57 – 59) and judged their quality, and bought goods to trade on his boats behalf. He found new business through meetings with other nakhudha. At sea, (1940; 67ff), he sailed the boat, delivered goods and passengers to their destinations, settled disputes and fights among passengers and crew, led them in prayer, controlled their comings and goings, and attended to all their needs, except medical. He was a master shipwright, a master sail maker, and a master rope maker. He knew where to sell things, he knew a good agent from a bad, and a solvent man from an insolvent. He piloted the sixty foot bu¯m into crowded ports and landing places, and controlled her in bad weather; he decided the pace of travel and the route, he navigated, and he dealt with port authorities. The seamen raised and lowered the huge sail in winds, they moored the boat at ports, and they hauled the yard up and set sail on leaving ports, they loaded and unloaded cargoes and overhauled the cargo, they mended sails, made rope, oiled the new sambuk the carpenter had made on the voyage, they beached the bu¯m and cleaned its hull every four months – which meant taking down the main mast and the rigging, replacing them, and kedging the boat in at high water, and traded in small ways on their own accounts. Seamen kept a close eye on their nakhudha as they were paid in shares of the boats profits, and any action on his part in not increasing the ships earnings affected their future shares; a crew complained to another of their nakhudhas decision to wait for the monsoon rather than fetching mangrove poles or delivering corn locally. Some sea traders made round voyages from the Gulf to India and back again. Zaab traders from Jazirat al-Hamra took pearls, seed pearls, mother of pearl, and dates to India and brought back clothes, material, scent, spices and medicines, and other small luxuries. A Zaabi remarked that trading boats, like fishing boats, were nearly all family owned by a father and adult sons, or brothers, perhaps a man and close cousins, or even neighbours; women also invested in family boats. The co-owners, one of whom was usually the nakhudha, made a partnership which owned shares in the boat. Another said that while this pattern of ownership was common, most people preferred to own outright; his grandfather had owned his bu¯m and was its nakhudha. A nakhudha chose his crew from the best men available, who normally agreed to crew for one voyage. A Naimi trader in Ras al-Khaimah town said, In the past, everything came from India, mostly by way of Iran. My father owned his baghalah and traded between here, Iran and India. We knew

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about the east African trade, but we didnt take part in it. He collected up dates from places in the Gulf and took them to India. In India and what is now Pakistan he took on wheat, which included grain from Australia. At that date, nothing from Australia came here directly, but always through India, just as did all the things from Europe and America, like gramophones and radios. He also exported wheat from the mountains here. The mountain men sold or exchanged some of their surplus grain here on the coast and all these small amounts were collected up by small traders like us, and sold further up the Gulf.

The sea trader from Maaridh remembered his father and others sailing to Chennai and Rangoon for rice. A Kumazari at Khasab remarked “In my childhood, there was a big trader here, of Iranian origin. He had two or three abwam that went to India and brought back wood for boat building and repairs, clothes, material and stuff. I can just remember the boats, but my father told me about him, and that was more than sixty years ago.” Several people mentioned that scrap metal, iron, brass and copper, was a normal part of the cargo to Iran or India on such boats. Small traders bought scrap metal from people, collecting it up; then they themselves, or a trader with a small boat who had bought the scrap, took it to Iran or India and sold it for recycling. Others went to East Africa, where they took mainly dates and salt, and brought back mangrove poles for roof beams, chandal, which mostly went further up the Gulf. The bu¯m, the Triumph of Righteousness, in which Villiers sailed c.1938 brought chandal from the Rufiji, failed to sell them in Masqat as traders there had no money, but sold them well in Bahrain to an agent of ibn Saud for his building programme, financed by oil royalties (Villiers 1940; 258). An elderly date trader in Ras al-Khaimah town explained, I owned my own boat and usually I was the nakhudha. I wasnt a real muallim, I coasted. I did one trip a year because we were sailing. I sold my roof beams in Dubai and went on empty up the Gulf, buying dried dates in Qatif and Kuwait, and a few cheap carpets in Iran. All the crew traded in things they bought themselves – Iranian salt, cloth, and so on. We went down to Khabura in Oman where I bought more dates, and then I coasted as far as Mukalla. From there we went to Hafn in the Horn of Africa, then to Mogadishu, then to Mombasa, selling dates and carpets and salt where they wanted them. Then I cut across to Zanzibar and Dar as-Salaam for the chandal and some cloves.

A few boats brought back occasional cargoes of slaves; a Zaabi at bu Baqra said these slaves had been taken up to Hamasa, a Saudi village at the Buraimi oasis. The Naiimi whose father had traded between the

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Gulf, India, and Iran recalled his father had inherited the baghalah from his father, who had made his money slave trading from east Africa. The former sea trader in Maarid said his father had taken pilgrims from Lingah to Jiddah and then escorted them to Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage. As most trading boats had some passengers, who acted as ballast, pilgrims were presumably carried when the date of the pilgrimage coincided with the sailing season to the Red Sea and East Africa. Other people in the region recalled pilgrims travelling by land to Mecca. Other boats traded to the Omani or Iranian coasts, or within the Gulf. In Ras al-Khaimah, a Murri said, “My grandfather started off in Abu Dhabi town, he had a small boat, a jalbut. He brought dried Basra dates down here and took firewood back. Then he married here in Shimal and moved down.” At Ghalilah, a group of elderly men explained “We did take our salt fish in our own boats along the coast as far as Abu Dhabi, but most of it was bought up by bigger traders who took it up to Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq and Iran.” A group of elderly men at Shaam remembered, There were four trading abwam in Shaam, they were small abwam owned by families and had a crew of twenty. The crew was made up of men around who were looking for employment, and they might or might not be relations or neighbours.They all traded as far as Abu Dhabi in the Gulf, places along the Omani coast as far as Masqat, and on along the coast to Zanzibar. They coasted, they didnt go to India or East Africa proper. Mostly they went from here with salt fish, onions, limes, and water to Sharjah, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi. And four times a year they went to Iran for salt.

At Bukha, an old man said that when he was young, a few men would take a jalbut to fishing places along the Musandam coasts and buy up matut, dried small fish, and sell them in Masqat. In Jadi, Bani Ali Bani Hadiya recalled taking salt and dried fish by boat to Ras al-Khaimah and Dubai, and spring onions and melons to Khasab by boat. At Khasab, a Kumazari said, “Here is an old photograph of our sailing batil. We went fishing, pearling and trading in it. We traded dried gaisha, the very small fish, and other things, we went to Masqat, Dibba, Kumzar and Dubai.” The trade in matut for animal feed and fertiliser for date trees was noticed by Thomas in the late 1920s, when they were exported from Khasab to the Gulf States and Bahrain; salt tuna was taken to Lingah, and firewood, charcoal and sheep by boat to the Gulf coast at the end of the pearling season ([1929] 1987; 467). Dhahuriyiin at Dibba Husn said, When our fathers and forefathers lived in Musandam at Filim and Shaisa before the late 1950s and 60s, some of us traded by sea; mostly to Basra,

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taking up our salt fish for dates, but we also went to western India, Masqat, Zanzibar and East Africa. We went anywhere there was business and money to be earned. That wasnt all of us, but there were traders among us, as there were men who worked as seamen and rented out space in their boats to traders.

An Iranian trader remembered small Ras al-Khaimah boats, jalbut and shuai or sambuq, taking firewood and fresh water up to Abu Dhabi town. A large amount of this relatively local sea trade was producers of salt and dried fish taking their goods to coastal markets in their fishing boats; some by local traders who bought local products – salt and dried fish, firewood, vegetables, melons, or water – and taking these to Sharjah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi town; and from the 1950s and 1960s, Iranian and Iraqi traders bringing down dates from Basra or Minaw for sale and buying salt fish. These traders partly or largely replaced small sea trading by producers on the Gulf coast because from the mid to late 1940s, the local young men who would have been the boat crews were working in Kuwait or Hasa. There were no memories of sea trading by local traders in their own boats on the Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts, with the exception of Zaab at bu Baqra. Elderly Shihuh at Dibba Baiah explained, There was a time when local Shihuh owned abwam and sambuq and traded to India and Zanzibar, and elsewhere, but that was before our time, before the 1930s. From the 1930s to the 1950s, Dibba Baiah was used by traders from Dubai, Ajman and Ras al-Khaimah who came here to buy their goods from Iranian and Indian boats. The bigger trading boats anchored off Dibba Baiah and local people went out in their fishing boats and unloaded the goods and brought them ashore. Then the goods were loaded onto local camels and donkeys, and carried across to Dubai and elsewhere.

Naqbiyiin at Khor Fakkan said that in their time, Khor Fakkan had not been an important port, Kalba had been the port. At Kalba, Naqbiyiin knew the town had been called Ghallah and the main port on that coast, but had no memory of locally owned trading boats; they remembered trading boats from outside coming in, and the unloaded goods being carried across to the Gulf coast on locally owned donkeys and camels. A Zaabi at Khor Kalba recalled Zaab boats from bu Baqra collecting salt fish and tobacco for trade. At bu Baqra, a Jabri remarked “My grandfather, who was a boy in the early 1920s, remembers there being so many boats here at that time. Boats being repaired, boats being built on the beach, trading boats coming in with rice and coffee and dates, and taking out tobacco and salt fish.” Lorimer (1908 – 15; 11 A and B)

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states that c.1906 Khor Fakkan owned 4 or 5 sea-going boats, Kalba ten, and Khor Kalba five to six, along with higher numbers for all coastal towns on the Gulf and Musandam; Lima had eight, and Dibba Baiah, fourteen. The figures show an earlier importance of sea trading and local boat carriage for goods and passengers. The coasts of the study area fall into three; the Gulf coast (fig. 1; 585), the coasts of the Ruus al-Jibal and Musandam (fig. 2a; 586), and the Shamailiyya /Batinah coast (fig. 3; 588). Using the information above, only the big trading boats – bu¯m and baghalah – from Ras al-Khaimah town and Jazirat al-Hamra made the three sided deep sea voyages. Other boats – bu¯m and sambuq – from places on the Gulf coast travelled in the Gulf and to India or east Africa, or the Gulf and to India or to Zanzibar by coasting. Small boats, small sambuq, jalbut, and shahuf, of Gulf coastal places travelled in the Gulf, and to the Iranian coast. Boats – batil and zaruqa – from places on the Musandam coasts went regularly to Basra and places in the Gulf, to Iran, the Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts as far as Masqat, and sometimes to western India or Zanzibar. There were no locally owned trading boats on the Shamiliyya and Batinah coasts in the lifetimes of informants except at bu Baqra, although at Dibba Baiah and Khor Kalba people knew there had been locally owned trading boats. In the Gulf coast towns, people remembered Iranian trading boats using the ports and harbours, and in the 1950s and 60s, Iraqi boats. Along the Musandam coast, people at Khasab mentioned Kuwaiti and Bahraini boats coming to buy; at Kumzar old men recalled Qatari, Iraqi and Omani boats calling in for water and trading; and at Lima, people said Iranian and Omani boats had come in. In Dibba Baiah, old men recalled Omani and Indian boats anchoring offshore, and unloading goods into local fishing boats which also brought out new cargo; Iranian and Indian boats also used Khor Fakkan, Kalba, and bu Baqra in the same manner. The Musandam coastal places managed their trading with their own boats. The entrepots for the lower Gulf coast were Sharjah and particularly Dubai; Sharjah had replaced Ras al-Khaimah town after 1819, and Dubai had replaced Lingah after Persia had incorporated the former Qasimi port into its Imperial Customs Service during the first decade of the 20th century. Heavy and bulky cargoes from east Africa, like chandal for roof beams, wood for boat building and repair, and grains from India were delivered to Gulf towns by Arab and Iranian baghalah and abwam, and Indian khotia. Smaller cargoes from India and Iran – salt,

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grains, cloth, clothes, coffee, spices, sewing threads, metal goods – might be taken round Musandam into the Gulf, but were often unloaded from abwam and ganja (the east coast name for khotia) at Shamailiyya ports. People at Dibba Baiah mentioned merchants from Ajman, Sharjah, and Ras al-Khaimah collecting goods at Dibba Baiah, while at Khor Fakkan and Kalba people talked about goods going to merchants in Dubai and Sharjah. At bu Baqra, Zaab recalled that in the winters, Zaab boats bringing goods from India landed the goods there, and these were taken across to Jazirat al-Hamra. From all these places, goods were taken across land routes by locally owned donkeys and /or camels to the Gulf coast towns. From Dibba Baiah, Wadi Fay and Wadi Qalidi led to the Jiri plain and then to Ras al-Khaimah or to Dhaid and then Sharjah and Dubai. From Khor Fakkan and Kalba, the route went up Wadi Ham to Masafi and on to Dubai and Sharjah. bu Baqra had routes up Wadi al-Qawr to Buraimi and Munaiy, or to Wadi Ham and on to Jazirat al-Hamra. The advantage for trading ships to unload at places on the Shamailyya coast was that they did not have to sail around Musandam, and saved time for a non-locally owned boat, since there were useful cargoes of salt and dried fish, tobacco, and dried limes to be taken up. Some Shihuh at Dibba Baiah explained, Long distance trading boats used the marafi, harbours, on the east coast because it was difficult to get round Musandam before boats had engines. These were places like Lima, Shariya, Haffa and Zayyi, they were all harbours for shelter in bad weather. Some boats did unload at or off Lima, and the goods were brought by small boats here. Haffa was a harbour of security, not trade. The seas at Musandam are choppy, there are whirlpools and strong currents, and the winds change quickly. No one liked sailing there. That was the reason for boats to use this coast. The bigger boats like baghalah anchored off the coast and unloaded their goods into local fishing boats which acted as lighters. Smaller boats, like badan from Oman, beached on the shores.

A Kumzari said smaller sailing boats had had real problems sailing around Musandam, but the local batil and zaruqa were built to cope with the conditions, and made voyages to Masqat, Iran and up to Basra. The former sea-trader from Maarid commented, I dont remember any particular problem sailing through Bab Musandam, except the winds were tricky. This was with my father, in a 500 ton khotia. I remember one time we had been to Basra for dates which wed taken to Masqat and unloaded. Then we had loaded other dates for India. On the way, a terrific storm blew up, but we managed to get into Khor Fakkan.

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That was the real point of Khor Fakkan, it wasnt so much a port as a safe harbour, a safe anchorage in storms. Several boats were lost in storms and their crews drowned.

Naqbiyyin at Khor Fakkan confirmed this, saying, “Khor Fakkan was never a major port. Boats came here to shelter in bad weather; if the bad weather set in, then they unloaded here, it was an alternative to Kalba. The security of its harbour was the reason for the presence of boatbuilders and repairers at Khor Fakkan.”

Pearling Diving for pearls in the Gulf had been an important part of the regional and local coastal economies for centuries, along with sea trading and fishing. Pearling became most profitable during the course of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries. With the development of artificial pearls during the 1920s, together with the world depression of the 1930s, the market for pearls collapsed, many merchants became bankrupt, and local economies suffered. Pearling continued, because low quality pearls and mother of pearl could be sold, and the rare high quality pearls kept their value, but overall profits were low. Most serious pearling stopped during the 1940s, with the prohibition of the inheritance of debt, and the growing oil industry brought new sources of earnings to Kuwait and Hasa, although it lingered on until the 1960s. Few clear memories of pearling remained when information was collected. Local people separated pearling into serious pearling and other pearling. Serious pearling was by organised crews of divers and haulers using big boats on the pearl banks off Abu Dhabi in the summer, gaith; other pearling was by individuals in creeks and shallow waters at coastal places throughout the year. Serious pearl divers hoped for pearls, lulu, but also mother of pearl, sadaf; other pearlers were looking for large pearls, but expected to find seed pearls, qummash, as well as mother of pearl. Old men of Ras al-Khaimah Emirate recalled going to the serious pearling on boats belonging to Jazirat al-Hamra and Ras al-Khaimah town. If men from places further north wanted to pearl seriously, they went on boats from those towns. A Zaabi from Jazirat al-Hamra pointed out that Zaab had always lived from trade, pearling and fishing. Some were tawwash, traders or brokers who bought pearls from the nakhudha of the pearling boats and sold them on to the really big pearl merchants

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who were all banyan, Hindus. Villiers (1940; 306 – 311) describes how the ideal was to buy a big pearl whose value was unrecognised by the nakhudha or crew; this was rare, as nakhudha were alert and unwilling to sell to a small trader when they had hopes of a rising market, and preferred to wait to visit the big pearl merchants in Bahrain or Bombay. Some boats had to sell to get money for more dates, rice, or water. When a tawwash arrived, the nakhudha produced the pearls, kept in separate parcels according to the bank they came from. The traders examined each thoroughly, and at last asked the nakhudha to name a price for a parcel. The trader offered a little over half the amount the nakhudha had asked, and these offers were made and refused for an hour or so. Then, suddenly, the trader would ask his partner what he thought the pearls were worth, not in words, but by pressures on the fingers and joints of his and his partners hands, under a cloth. Each finger, joint, and degree of pressure had an exact mathematical value. Eventually, the price originally offered by the tawwash was accepted, and the money in silver rupees handed over. At the end of the season, the tawwash gave the pearls he had bought to a bigger merchant, often his father, who took them to Bombay for sale. It was the banyan who put up the money for the pearling boats, financing repairs, supplies, and the support of the crews families during the season. After the pearling season Zaab fished out of Jazirat al-Hamra and boats that had been to the pearling then went fishing off the Hasa coast. The young men who dived for pearls on the Gulf banks in the summer worked as crew members on long distance fishing or sea trading boats in the winters. A Ras al-Khaimah man said, “The main season for pearling on the banks was in the gaith from June to September. It was four months of very hard work.” In 1939 Villiers (1940; 305 – 321) accompanied a pearl buyer on a two month trip to Kuwaiti pearling boats at the banks, visiting diving boats and watching divers he had sailed with from east Africa to Kuwait. He describes the daily pattern of work, the ten dives made by each diver before a rest period while the second set of divers worked, the fatigue and cold felt by divers, and noted they were too weak to do any of the work on the ship, which was the task of the haulers or tenders – the tenders knew no rest and the divers no warmth, and the skill of the nakhudha in finding and clearing the pearl beds. As a professional sailor in ocean going sailing ships, he wrote, Judged by any standard I know, compared with any form of marine hardship I have experienced, or seen, or read about, pearling in the Persian Gulf can be terrible indeed … I found nothing to admire in that romantic industry, except the courage

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and fortitude of their crews. A man from Shaam, in his nineties, remembered: I always went pearling on boats from Ras al-Khaimah town. When we went pearling we knew where we were by using a compass and keeping account of how many hours we had sailed. When we thought we were nearing our destination, we tested the sea bottom with a lead weight with wax on the underneath. This brought up a sample of the seabed – sand, gravel, mud, or whatever – and then we knew where we were. There must be good rains for good pearls, just as there must be for good fishing. Boats from this coast, especially Dubai, used to go to Socotra for pearling, it was a very good area; it took from twenty to forty days to sail there.

Men from Khasab went in the summer to Abu Dhabi and Dubai by boat, and then joined a crew on the pearling boats, as did men from Kumzar. Qidfa men went pearling on Dubai and Sharjah boats. Naqbiyiin from Luluiyya, Khor Fakkan, and Kalba had pearled on Gulf boats. An elderly Naqbi and his associates at Kalba remembered, “Most people from here and the other places along this coast went over to the Gulf coast for the pearling. I went pearling and I can give you the names of many of the pearl banks and the creeks where we opened the oysters. We went pearling from big boats on the Gulf banks because it was more profitable than pearling here.” At bu Baqra, a Jabri remarked, “Men from here did go pearling. Some went across to Jazirat al-Hamra and went pearling on Zaab boats from there, but most went to Khor Fakkan and went on to Dubai and Sharjah from there. Zaab also went pearling off Ceylon and Socotra in the winters, but now no-one remembers the details.” In the western Hajar, at Munaiy and Nuslah, old men said a very few men had gone from those places to the pearling in the Gulf, probably working as haulers. Other men pearled locally, some diving from their fishing boats when the water was warm enough, others wading in creeks in the winters. A Ras al-Khaimi remarked, I never went to the big pearling, but we used to pearl at any time of year after wed finished fishing. We fished from dawn to eleven in the morning. When we had sold the fish, we got back in our boats and then dived around the underwater hillocks, nudud, and brought up the oysters. Then we put up an awning and slept. After afternoon prayers, we opened the oysters.

In Rams, an elderly man recalled, In the high summer, gaith, some people like me combined fishing with pearling. At this time of year, we were fishing with traps which we set around rocky hillocks on the seabed. This is where oysters live. And the

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water was only about five fathoms deep, so we set the traps and then dived for pearls. These were the small seed pearls and we also got mother of pearl and there were good markets for these in India.

An old man at Shaam said, “I did work on the big pearl boats but I preferred to pearl on my own, diving in the creeks. A lot of people here preferred to do this, and we dived most of the year. Khor Khuwair was a good place for pearls.” At Khasab, men pearled for themselves on their own in the winters, in the coastal creeks. Shihuh at Dibba Baiah remembered, “We went pearling, but not on big boats from Ras al-Khaimah. We dived from our own boats along the Musandam coast in summer. A diver had a box with sides only, although later the box had a glass bottom. The diver looked through the box to see where the pearl oysters were, and when he saw a good one, he dived down and got it.” Dhahuriyyin at Dibba Husn said, The Awanat who used to live here were into pearling and pearl trading, especially seed pearls, they were the tawwash. Most people dived off this coast anywhere the water was shallow enough, so to about fifteen fathoms, or ba. We ourselves used to dive off Hablain and Shaisa.

Naqbiyiin at Kalba asserted, “Men did dive for pearls here, as there are small pearl banks off the shore. The oysters are small and the pearls are good quality but there arent many of them.” People of the region stated there had been no major pearl merchant in Ras al-Khaimah town within living memory. The nearest pearl merchants were in Dubai and Bahrain, and the really big merchants were Hindu Indians in Bombay. A Zaabi explained, There were smaller pearl traders, tawwash, among Zaab at Jazirat alHamra who went out to the big diving boats and bought pearls from the nakhudha of the pearling boats and sold them on to the really big pearl merchants who were all banyan, Hindu. It was the banyan who put up the money for the pearling boats. A few Zaab were bigger pearl merchants than tawwash but not really big.

Awanat at Dibba Husn were said to have been tawwash who bought up seed pearls and mother of pearl for taking to India for resale. Shihuh at Dibba Baiah pointed out that their pearling for seed pearls and mother of pearl was important enough for a tawwash to come to buy.

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Fishing Local people divided fishing into fresh fish for daily food and fishing for trade and profits. The needs of the community must be supplied before any fish is taken for salting or drying for trade. After that, big fish were salted, sharks were dried and oil obtained from the livers, and very small fish dried. Only Zaab from Jazirat al-Hamra and bu Baqra, and some from Ras al-Khaimah town mentioned long distance fishing. Fishing has supplied a profitable salt fish export trade for centuries. The coastal sea from the border with the Emirate of Umm al-Qawain to Maarid is seen as different from the sea off Rams, Ghalilah and Shaam to the north of Ras al-Khaimah Emirate and continuing into Omani Musandam. The sea off Jazirat al-Hamra and Ras al-Khaimah town is shallow and with a sandy or muddy bottom, with few rocky areas, and is considered to require somewhat different fishing practices. The sea off the more northern coast is regarded as providing better fishing areas with deeper inshore waters, rocky coasts and areas of seabed, with wadis bringing down flood fresh water and sediments from the mountains. The greater extent of the coastal plain inland from Ras alKhaimah town and Jazirat al-Hamra absorbs most of the flood waters and silt brought down by wadis from the mountains. The Shamailiyya coast from Dibba Baiah to Khor Kalba and the northern Batinah coast are washed by shallow seas of the Gulf of Oman, a northern branch of the Indian Ocean; the sea bottom is mostly sandy or muddy, with rocky areas in places. Fishing for the fresh fish trade Long distance fishing supplying a fresh fish market was practised by Zaab from Jazirat al-Hamra and fishermen from Ras al-Khaimah town; Zaab from bu Baqra; and Dhahuriyiin from Larak island, Iran. Fishermen from Jazirat al-Hamra and Ras al-Khaimah town went in their boats for four or five months in the winter to fish using traps, gargur, all the way along the Saudi coast, from the al-Hasa coast to Ras Tannura, near Kuwait. This fishing ended by Unification in 1970. The reason for this long distance fishing was that the local market for fresh fish was small, whereas the al-Hasa market was developing fast. Informants were definite that this method of fishing had been practised before boats had engines (so before the late 1940s or early 1950s), and continued

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to the late 1960s. Opinions were divided whether or not it had developed in response to the loss of profitable pearl fishing and the development of the oil industry in al-Hasa. Zaab from bu Baqra went long distance fishing, amila tawila, south of Suhar. Dhahuriyiin and other fishing crews of five to six from Larak (Nadjmabadi 1992) went long distance fishing by lanj (locally built wooden boats with diesel engines) off Kuh-e Mubarak, some 125 kms from Larak, for a season starting in September. These fishermen also used gargur, setting them in groups of ten to twelve at a place, with more clusters of traps at distances of two to three kilometres apart. After two to three days, the traps are lifted, and the fish put into ice boxes. Half the catch was the property of the lanj owner, and the other half to the crew in shares. Fishermen might take the fish to a market like Bandar Abbas and sell it to traders, or sell to traders who took it to markets. The makers of the traps and men who stayed to protect the women and families while fishermen were away received a proportion of the profits. Local fishing Fishing for trade took place at all times of year except for high summer, gaith, from June to September. In the gaith, most men were pearling or at the date gardens, and any fishing was for fresh fish for the family and neighbours, and carried out with hooks and lines or traps. Fishing for local consumption of fresh fish took place in creeks, off the beach and in deeper water, and used mostly traps, nets in daghwa fishing, and hooks and lines. Harpoons were used for whale sharks off Rams and Shaam. Selling fresh fish locally for a living was viable only in Ras alKhaimah town; other communities who lived from fishing sold salt or dried fish caught in nets, the usual commercial practice from Rams around the Ruus al-Jibal and Musandam coasts, and along the Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts. People outside Ras al-Khaimah town who wanted fresh fish went to a beach from which people were fishing and helped, thereby becoming short-term members of the community and so getting a share of fresh fish. Jazirat al-Hamra and Ras al-Khaimah fishermen fished using traps, beach nets, long nets in the sea, and skar nets across creeks. A Zaabi recalled, When we used wooden boats, oil from shark livers was necessary for oiling the wood. We used to fish for sharks, and for this the nets were set just

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above the sea bed, as sharks swim just above the bed. The nets had stone weights tied at places along the lower edge, and long ropes to floats along the upper edge. This made them hang upright in the sea.

A former fisherman from Ras al-Khaimah town elaborated, The boats we used were shahuf (pl. shahahif), small wooden boats with sails and oars, they were workboats, amila. When I was young, we fished off the beach called Suddru. At dawn, we rowed out for about an hour to the owned areas, mashadd, of the sea bed where fish were known to gather for feeding, sleeping and spawning. Mashadd were owned by a community of up to fifteen fishermen, or to be accurate, they owned the right to use these areas. The right to use mashadd was heritable but only if the inheritor worked as a fisherman; if he went off to work at something else, he gave up his right. If a man had only daughters, they inherited his rights, and their husbands used their wives rights because women didnt fish. These were the areas where we set the traps. People identified their traps by the floats. We raised the traps, took out the fish, rebaited the traps and put them back. The bait, shibba, was seagrass that we collected along the creeksides and made into balls with dried very small fish; the dried fish dissolved in the water and attracted the bigger fish. When we had done all that, we rowed back and sold the fish to fish-sellers. In the late winter when the qanad, kingfish, come, we set nets in the sea, hanging in the water near the surface. If there was a good catch of qanad and other firmly muscled fish, we kept some back, cleaned them, split and salted them, and laid them out to dry. We also had skar, long nets, tens of metres long, that hung from poles. We used these in the creek, but only on an evening rising tide. So then we waded out into the creek, drove in the poles, and attached the nets. We came back at dawn when the tide was low, collected the fish and took them to the fish sellers. Ghubaib are like small qanad, greyish and a bit longer than a draa (elbow to finger tips), and they arrive close to the shore in the early summer, sayf. We salted and dried these, too; salt qanad and ghubaib are very good to eat in the gaith. We also caught whitebait, barriya, in beach nets and dried them for ourselves and for sale. Our nets were made from cotton imported from India; women span it into thread and men netted.

A fisherman at Rams explained: Our fishing is like fishing at Ghalilah and Shaam and on up the coast, and like them, we own our seas out to the depth of seven fathoms. This is because the mountains here continue out to sea, so the sea is deeper with rocky areas. We have four fishing seasons: now it is nearly the end of autumn, kharif; then we have winter, shitta, followed by early summer, saif; and then high summer, gaith. We only fished for ourselves in the gaith, the rest of the time we fished for profits, and mostly we used nets and traps. All the fish above what the community needed each day was split, cleaned and salted in big stone tanks, birkat, on the beach.

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We used small wooden boats, three to four metres long, with a crew of two to four men. They were called tarrad or shahuf, and went out only by day. Bigger wooden boats, sambuk, ten to twelve metres long, with sails and oars, and a crew of six, went right out to sea and fished at night. They put down very long nets and raised them in the morning, this was hawwal fishing. About fifty years ago, these boats got engines, and then we called them lanj. The nakhudha wasnt in charge, he was the one responsible for the enterprise because he was the most expert. He knew by experience, he had in his head maps of the sea and the currents, and the temperatures at different levels, and what feeding possibilities these meant, and how these varied according to the season of the year and the phases of the moon. Each fishing fleet here has a block of sea for its fishing with nets and hooks and lines, but when using traps they can move out of their blocks because they need rocks for traps. Fishing boats were part of the family enterprises, as were the nets and traps and so on, and families co-operated within the community. Boats were usually owned between two to four closely related men because they were relatively expensive, and they were the ones who used the boat. Sometimes they were joined by a man who didnt have a boat but had a net or traps. The owners of the boat took half for themselves and the boat; the nakhudha took half of the rest; and the crew shared what was left. Women never went fishing, the only times they were on the beach were to collect shellfish.

Other fishermen in Rams remembered different aspects of fishing. One said, I dont remember boats going out overnight. My father fished in the winters from his own boat, a shahuf. People also had huri, dugout, which they used mostly in the creeks. Amila was the name given to boats that carried out the long nets for catching the big fish like qanad and ghubaib in the winters. These long nets were cotton, and the thickness of my little finger. The qanad and so on were split and salted in big tanks by the beach. I can remember caravans of two hundred camels taking them to Buraimi but salt fish went everywhere – Dubai, Iraq, Oman … The nets, laykh, for beach netting or yaruf, werent as thick, but they were very heavy. Yalbut, jalbut, had crews of ten or twelve and they went out for a whole day to put down and collect the catch from the really big traps, garagir, in deep water. All the areas under the sea were named, and so were the mounds, nudud, we made out of stones to set our small gargur on.

Two others remembered harpooning large sharks from shahahif, and using the oil pressed from the livers for oiling boats. Fishing in the creeks was permitted only for the community, and used 10 cm square meshed laykh nets and finer meshed salyah nets; maashi, nets held in place with poles, were set across the mouths of small creeks to catch fish brought in on the tide. Yil nets, long bags with a fine mesh, were set in the sea off the beach for barriya. The 5 m wide mouth was propped

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open with sticks, while the end of the bag was closed off with a detachable piece of mesh. Men waded through the sea up to their chests in the water, driving the shoal into the bag. When the bag was full, someone carried it up the beach, unhooked the end, emptied out the fish, and they started again. Lienhardt (2001; 128) writing about Rams in the early 1950s mentions fishtraps made from wire, and the very long nets were either made to order at piecework rates or bought ready made. Another recalled, “A few people did have huri here, they were for one man only and used in the creeks. But I dont think they were made from hollowed out logs as you saw in Oman.” In Ghalilah, elderly Shihuh commented: We fished seriously only in the saif, from March to the end of June, because in the winter we were working on the mountain fields. The barriya arrive at the beginning of saif or, as we say now in March, and we caught them with yil nets, long tube-like nets with a very fine mesh. We used yil nets from boats or from the beach. We also caught ghabbab (longtail tuna), khabbat (barred mackerel) and assad (yellowfin tuna) with laykh, large meshed nets made from lif, the fibre of date tree trunks, or raw cotton imported from India, in what we called daghwa fishing. Two or three small boats carried a net out and set it behind a shoal the fishermen had spotted, and the nets were hauled into the beach. The ropes at the ends of the net were made from asq, the peeled stems of date bunches, but where the ropes had heavier wear, where the floats and weights were attached, we made the ropes from abbaf, fibre made from the fan palm and imported from Persia. Later on, we had nets with smaller mesh, called salyah, and these became part of daghwa fishing, which we also called amila. We used traps, gargur, and we made small ones from asq and the large ones from khaws, the peeled stems of date branches. We had mashadd, privately owned land under the sea, for using traps and hooks and lines; but we didnt have private areas where we set nets, we set nets where we thought those fish would come. There were places in the sea called jisra where we caught qanad, and there were rules for fishing for qanad and barriya, the commercial species that were salted or dried. When the qanad came, the boats took turns to go out, and when the barriya came, it was the boat that got their net down first that had the right to that shoal. The catch of commercially valuable species was shared; the owner of the boat took half if he had provided the nets as well, and the other half was shared among the crew in proportion to their skill. We know there was a time when we didnt have mashadd, which we use for privately owned natural feeding places of fish. We also had a kind of mashadd called lahaf, foothills, which were built mounds of stones under the sea that grew the green sea-grass that young fish like to eat, and we know some of these were made a long time ago. It was people from four Shihuh groups in Ghalilah and Khor Khuwair that fished, it wasnt everybody. A man started fishing by being able to make a net or a boat. Having got – lets say – a net, he got together fifteen to twenty people for hauling in the

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net, and he took half the fish; it was the same with a boat. The people who helped in the boat and on the beach made a share agreement, a sharika, for that days fishing with the owner or owners of the boat and the net. Everybody got paid in shares of fish, if there were any, and of course, all in the community – the old, widows, the infirm – got fish if they wanted them. Each day the share agreements were between different people according to who was working or going out, and it was all people of Ghalilah. So fishing was done through a series of share agreements. And a few people had a slave, abd, or two, and they fished.

At Shaam, some elderly Shihuh said, We fished mostly in the winters, using nets, lines and traps, up to the mid1970s. Before the 1960s we had shahahif like everyone else. In daghwa or amila fishing, fishermen rowed around looking for shoals of fish. The crew who saw a shoal first had the right to the shoal, they set the net behind and round the fish, and the net was hauled into the shore. Lifha fishing used lines from a boat or the shore; the hooks were baited with meat, fish, or shellfish, and the lines were weighted with a lead weight. With the lines we caught ghabbab, assad, and khabat, almost any fish can be caught using a line. But for jash, trevally, we used an unweighted line and baited the hook with feathers; we pulled the line fast along the surface of the sea so the feathers jumped in the water. We also caught jash in traps, and at that time the gargur traps were set close in, they were never set far out because there were so many fish. In the saif we were fishing for the very small fish and the deep sea fish like qanad, kingfish, that follow them. In the gaith, we didnt fish. Sand sharks, caught in fixed nets set just above the sea bed, were an item of the old fish trade.Young men used harpoons to hunt chir, whale shark. Chir are huge, absolutely enormous, and spotted; the flesh is uneatable, but the liver gives up masses of oil for oiling boats. Mashadd for us are the floats marking our traps, not areas of owned sea bed. Fishing with traps and hooks and lines was for the community, it wasnt really commercial, and people put down their traps and lines in named parts of the sea bed that belonged to families or groups of families, an ibn amm. Net fishing for the market was different, people put the nets where they thought the fish would come. A hundred years ago there were khawadim who were servants and paid in money. Usually they stayed with a family for two or three years and then moved on, and they fished and worked in the date and vegetable gardens. I know this because thirty five years ago I was interested in when people had slaves, and I asked an old man who was then seventy five.

Another added, “I had a shasha that I made from the ribs of date palm branches and other bits of the date tree when I was a youth. They were good little boats because a youth could make it himself from stuff that was around, and start fishing.”

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An elderly fish trader said, “A few people people did have abid or khawadim, but most didnt and did their work themselves. We were wholesale traders, jumla, and we took salt fish to traders or traders came to us.” Moving north around the Musandam coast, men used the same methods of fishing by beach netting or yarif, netting by a partnership of four or five boats in open water or daghwa, or setting fixed nets or hayyal/ hawwal (archive informants and Zimmerman 1981; 139ff). At Kumzar, old men remembered that their women helped with the fishing, making nets, hauling nets into the beach, laying fish out for drying and turning them. If men were away and a shoal of fish came in close, women took out a boat, put a net around the shoal and brought it ashore. A Dhahuri at Hablayn recalled, In the past, we made our livings by fishing, and we made our profits from selling salt fish to traders. Although we were fishermen, we also had goats and we had fields on which we grew grain. These fields were at plateaux in the nearby foothills and behind little bays. So we had all our milk products and grain, and fresh fish we caught; and for money for dates and things we needed we sold the salt fish and the dry fish.

In Lima, a Shihhi explained, Those eleven ruined buildings were all for salting and storing fish, the heavily muscled fish like qanad and ghubaib, caught in long nets mostly between February and April as they move north. We set the nets along the small inlets along Ghubbat Qabil by attaching one end to a rock on the cliff and set the other end in the sea – hawwal fishing. This is a good place for fishing because the water is shallow and so the qanad and ghubaib cant avoid the net when they come in after the small fish. The nets stay in place for a week to ten days, and we visit them twice a day to take out the fish. After that, the nets are taken up for cleaning and mending. The traps, gargur, are in deeper water. Before we had outboard motors, we used to stay in these places for five to six days, cleaning and salting the fish before taking them back to the eleven storehouses in Lima. Most of the year, we caught barriya by yaruf fishing and dried them into matut. The nets are really long; the central section has a very fine mesh, the outer sections have a coarse mesh. The net is set behind a shoal, and as it is hauled into the beach, the outer sections encourage the fish to move into the centre so that by the time the net reaches the beach, all the fish are in that section. Then they are loaded into sacks or baskets and taken to the drying grounds, murwah. Here, fishermen, sayyadin as-samak, are fishermen, alongside the hadhri, the settled with gardens, and bedu who lived from animals. But no-one only fished, a fisherman worked in date gardens belonging to others here, but he might well own numbers of goats, date trees, or a garden in other pla-

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ces looked after by other people. And a bedu might have a son who was a fisherman, and a hadhri might own a share in a fishing boat. The men who went pearling here in the summer were mostly fishermen, but anyone who wanted to did so. It isnt fixed, it is up to the individual.

On the Shamailiyya coast, at Qastaniyya in Dibba Baiah Shihuh recalled, “We were here some of the time in the winters, and we fished then, and we were here in the gaith, and we fished then as well. In winters and summers, we sold the fish we didnt need for ourselves or the community to people from Dibba Baiah who salted fish.” Shihuh at Dibba Baiah said, We lived mostly from fishing, from barriya and from ghubaib and qanad. Barriya we caught mostly in the summer, though the shoals can turn up at any time of year, and for these we used really long nets made of small, fine meshed nets joined together. These fine meshed nets used to be made from bai, hemp from India. Ghubaib were caught in short nets. Ghubaib and qanad were split, sprinkled with salt and dried on the beach; we didnt use tanks, we did dry salting, not wet.

Walker (1996; vol 4, 524 – 5) presents Captain Stockdales 1963 report on Dibba Husn which described khabbat fishing there and off Sumbrayir. Khabbat were caught in November and December and the best places were in water 5 ba or 25 ft deep. Sharqiyyin at Sumbrayir told Captain Stockdale that there were many such places between Ghalilah al-Dilwain and Rhul Dadna, owned by Sumbrayir Sharqiyyin, and two off Dibba Husn, one off Dibba Husn itself and the other at Ghalilah al-Fasila. These places were known and identified by landmarks in the hills. The khabbat spots were bought and sold between Sharqiyyin and inherited. Most were fished by the owner and four to five companions, using a fixed net with a smaller mesh than that used for qanad and ghubaib, and left down for a day only. Barriya were fished for all the year round, but in summer the sea was often too rough. A shahuf with a crew of sixteen put a net behind a shoal, and the net was then hauled into the beach by a team of fifteen men on each end. At Qidfa, an elderly Sharqi remarked that he had lived from fishing and date gardening; his wife commented that women had worked hauling in beach nets, cleaning and mending nets, and sorting and laying out fish for drying and salting. A Zaabi at Khor Kalba remarked “We fished in the winters, when we lived in our houses by the beach. Our boats were shahahif. We salted great amounts of fish. In my memory, salt was our biggest import, and salt fish the biggest export. And we dried huge numbers of gaisha.”

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In bu Baqra, a Zaabi said, People here lived from the sea as well as their gardens. The long, long nets were called dara, and a long time ago we made them from lif, and then from cotton. We used them for the very small fish, uma or sardines and barriya, which are called gaisha when they are dried for fertiliser. Uma are caught south of Barka, barriya to the north. Our other nets were likh, only the Ras al-Khaimah side had yil nets. The crew of an amila, fishing boat, could be ten, fifteen, or twenty men. These were the bigger boats that went further out. They got paid in shares, which were calculated on what work they did, how much they provided to the enterprise. For example, the owners of the boat and the owners of the equipment got a share. The boat owner ended up with between a quarter and a third of the profits after the fixed costs had been taken out, but the proportions varied from boat to boat.

A Jabri explained how a shasha was made: Everybody here used to have a shasha which they made themselves. You collected up yarid, the dry stems of date branches, and soaked them in the sea for twenty days. Then you built the shasha and soaked it for another twenty days in the sea. Then it was ready for use. In the winters we lived in stone houses on the beach and fished. Our fishing boats were amila, huri and shasha; modern fibreglass boats with outboard motors we call grab but Ras al-Khaimah calls them tarrad. We went out early in the morning in our amila or shasha and were back by midday. Three boats would take out a net between them and set it in the sea just beyond an undersea ledge where the water deepens. Then the net was hauled onto the beach by twenty men or so on each end.

Yaruf, jarif, beach net fishing, was also commercially important at Shihr in Yemen (Serjeant 1995 [1980]; 193 – 203) and the Omani Batinah coast, described by Miles (1994 [1919]; 402 – 3) and Donaldson (1980). Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol. 2, 1138) reported that profits on salt and dried fish varied from 5 to 40 %.

Changes in coastlines Storms over the mountains bring down floodwaters, gravels and silts to the coastal plains and the coasts. These deposits, combined with movements of sand and muds of the sea bottom by currents and storms over the sea, build up sandbars across the mouths of the large creeks at Ras al-Khaimah town and Rams. Occasional violent storms over the mountains and sea cause tremendous pressures from flood and storm waters

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which break through the sandbanks and change the coastlines. A Ras alKhaimi remarked, A poem by the local poet, bin Dhahir, refers to a big flood before his time, when heavy rains and a storm at sea combined to bring the sea almost up to Hail. It isnt clear at what date bin Dhahir was writing, but probably in the 17th or early 18th centuries. It must have been like the storms here in the 1950s, when the channel from the creek at Ras al-Khaimah town to the sea opened up again. People have a lot of different dates for that event. Maybe there were a series of very stormy years and people talk of the event that made the most impression on them. My mother insists there wasnt a storm, the night was still; and then suddenly, the sea was surging past our house and into the creek. The coastline is unstable, it shifts. In 1959, 1961, Ras al-Khaimah town was an island; there was the creek that had opened up and let the sea in again, and there was a second creek between Khuzam and somewhere around Shaikh Khalids palace.

An al-Ali said, “We, the al-Ali, used to live on the point of the creek, but most of that land was washed away in storms. That must have been in the late 1940s or early 1950s” (Lienhardt 2001; 117, the point had gone before 1953 – 4). A man at Maarid remembered, “One winter when I was a small child, there were tremendous rains. Water was standing two metres deep in Nakhil, and that was the time when the creeks were cut through and opened up again. Before that, the creek at Ras al-Khaimah town had its main entrance up at Khor Khuwair.” A Zaab commented that when the creek had opened up again, Ras al-Khaimah town regained some of its importance as a port, and his grandfather, a trader to India, had moved to Ras al-Khaimah from Jazirat al-Hamra to take advantage of the larger boats using Ras al-Khaimah creek. A former sea trader and present boat builder at Maarid commented, The local systems of sweet and salt water, the tides and coastline soils are really complicated. They shift constantly and act upon each other in ways that cannot be foreseen. When I was a boy, the coastline was where the big mosque behind my workshop is now. And the water in a particular well would be sometimes fresh and sometimes salt. Some wells were affected by tides in ways that were obvious, but with others it was less clear. Where the big cinema in Nakhil is now, then it was beach and there was a good well right on that beach and its water was always sweet. But other wells further inland would be sometimes sweet, sometimes salt. It depended on rainfalls and floodwaters, and tides. At Ras al-Khaimah town, the biggest tide is in late summer, in August. Partly this comes from normal seasonal high tides, and then there is often a north wind then, and that makes the tide higher, too. Another reason why these tides are so high is that the snowmelt from the mountains of Turkey finally arrives at this end of the Gulf. Tides all over the Indian Ocean are complex and localised. The big tides

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at Masqat are different, while in East Africa the big tides come in June and July.

At Ghalilah, a Shihhi said the creek, khor, there had finally silted up thirty years ago. At Lima, a Shihhi remarked, “This old graveyard has outlying graves to the east; they say the graves in between were washed away by the sea a very long time ago. More recently, a creek that entered the sea has silted up; I never saw it but old men remember fishing for biyah, grey mullet, in it.” On the northern Batinah coast, the sea is encroaching. At bu Baqra beach, a Jabri remarked: “These stone houses used to be lived in thirty years ago, and now only the back walls remain. And in front of them there used to be a line of arish, summer shelters, which now would be in the sea.” Coastlines – sawahil Going north from Jazirat al-Hamra on its sand spit and creek, the coast is made up of sandy beaches with mud flats or sabkha, mangroves or qurm, and reeds along the tidal creeks at Ras al-Khaimah and Rams. Sand bars build up parallel to the coast where the large creeks enter the sea. North of Rams to Khor Khuwair is a long sand ridge with a small creek and marsh behind, backing on to a small coastal plain at the debouchement of a mountain drainage system. At Ghalilah and Shaam the sand ridge continues, and the creeks are small or silted up. North of Shaam and continuing around the Ruus al-Jibal, the coast is cut up into small coves separated by mountain spurs coming down into the sea. The northern tip of Musandam falls into rocky islands, and the east coast is cut with bays (dawha), inlets (khor), and small coves (ghabbat) to Dibba. The Shamailiyya coast has long sandy beaches and coastal plains where the western Hajar drainage systems enter the sea. The coastal towns of Dibba, Khor Fakkan, Kalba, and Khor Kalba are each at the mouth of a main wadi drainage system. Creeks and beaches were used for boat anchorages and shelter. Where there were no creeks, boats were either beached or unloaded into smaller boats. On many creek sides and beaches, boats were built, repaired, cleaned and oiled. Khor Fakkan was mentioned as the best harbour on the Shamailiyya coast for shelter in bad weather, a good place for cleaning and repairing boats, and for trading boats to wait for new cargoes. Large trading boats were built at Ras al-Khaimah town, Maarid,

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and Khor Fakkan while small trading boats and fishing boats had been built at Ras al-Khaimah town, Maarid, Rams, Ghalilah, Shaam, Bukha, Khasab, Kumzar, the Dhahuriyiin coastal places, Lima, Dibba Baiah, Dibba Husn, Khor Fakkan, and bu Baqra. Sorting, drying and salting fish took place on all beaches. A salt and dry fish trader in Shaam said, My father and I bought fish from fishermen, split them open and rubbed salt on them, and then laid them in the birkat, a pit dug out of the sand and lined with saruj, mortar made from burnt earth and shells. We had two of these, and they were big, about ten metres by eight. We employed anyone who was looking for work to break up and pound the salt to a fine powder. The salt came from Iran, brought by local abwam.

Barriya are dried into gaisha or matut on level stretches of firm sand or shingle, marked out with posts and decked with rag flags to deter gulls, crows and foxes. Sorting, washing and mending nets and traps is done on all beaches, as was the processing of shark and other fish livers and the skins of oily fish into oil for oiling boats and greasing rollers. A man at Rams remembered people collecting sea salt from little flat pans they had made; this salt was grey and dirty looking, whereas rock salt from Iran was white and looked clean. Shellfish of various sorts were collected for bait, and for eating fresh or dried, from the sands and muds that each species prefers. At Rams and Ras al-Khaimah people talked of hamur as the best shellfish. A man recalled, The women and children collected hamur in the old days when the men were away at the pearling in the summers, and people collected them at other times too. Sometimes we left them in their shells till they opened and then we ate them, or we took out the meat and laid them to dry in the sun, with salt sprinkled over them, and we put cloths over them to keep off the flies and cats. They were good fresh, but dried they were absolutely delicious.

Shellfish also went inland. A Mazrui at Ghayl remembered, “Men who went to the coast to sell things in the winters often brought back fresh fish or shellfish. You can see the shells around now in the farij in the wadis.” People in Munaii said, “If we didnt have coffee cups, we used large shells that people had brought up fresh from the coast. And there was a sort we used as pipes for tobacco.” A Shihhi from Lima identified these as du¯k. Many beaches had wells for drinking water for people and animals. Usually wells were just inland from the beach, behind a ridge of sand,

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and dug through sabkha to lenses of freshwater from rainwater and flood flows from the mountains. People mentioned three or four wells at Dihan, south of Ras al-Khaimah town; at Suddru west of Ras al-Khaimah town; at Rams, in the bin Salih complex; a public well at Khor Khuwair; and two wells at Ghalilah, both by the ridge of sand. One of the two was called Tawi Shirra, the watering place, and its water was free for local people, including all those who spent summers there. Between Shaam and Khasab, every settlement had one or more beach wells, and Kumzar has a famous well at the head of the wadi. Lima had beach wells, while among the wells at Dibba Baiah was al-Katiib, known for its sweet water. All the settlements along the Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts had wells on or just behind the beaches. On land along side creeks, above the tide mark around the mangroves, and behind the sand ridges grew a variety of trees, bushes and grasses grazed by camels, cattle and goats. Areas like Jirfal and Hulayla, inland from Maarid and Rams, are noted for their grazing.

Coastal towns: livelihoods and living The coastal towns in Ras al-Khaimah Emirate are Jazirat al-Hamra, Ras al-Khaimah town, and Rams; further north, in Omani Musandam, Bukha and Khasab; on the Shamailiyya coast, Dibba Baiah in Oman, and Dibba Husn, Khor Fakkan, and Kalba, all ruled by Sharjah Emirate. All are built between creeks and the sea, and with hinterlands of coastal plains. This section includes some references to livelihoods based on the sea from the late 1940s, with the development of the oil industry in Kuwait and Hasa, and later in Abu Dhabi from 1960, and discussed further in chapter 8. Zaab of Jazirat al-Hamra were traders by land and sea, pearlers and fishermen. Some were tawwash, traders who bought pearls from the nakhudha of pearling boats and sold them to the Indian pearl merchants who financed the pearling boats. Dates were a main trade item; sea traders carried dates from Basra to Jazirat al-Hamra and Ras al-Khaimah town and to Kilwa (now part of Fujairah town) and Kalba on the Shamailiyya coast, land traders bought dates from local date growing areas around Ras al-Khaimah town and on the Batinah coast. On the whole, young men traded by sea, fished and pearled; older men traded and carried goods on land. A Zaabi remarked,

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My grandfather moved to Ras al-Khaimah after the creek opened up after the storms because he was mostly a trader. He had a store at the site of one of the old town walls. He hired space on big boats, usually to carry dates, and he brought in salt from Iran. In 1960, Jazirat al-Hamra had three large abwam. One or two of these belonged to the shaikh, and most people had shuai, general purpose wooden boats with engines. By the mid-1960s, Jazirat al-Hamra had seven or more large boats using Ras al-Khaimah creek because after the storms it was better than ours. Ive been told that making a living from trade in the 1920s was difficult, and almost impossible in the 1930s.

Another recalled, Everyone who wasnt fishing spent the summer in date gardens around Ras al-Khaimah town, Dibba, and the Shamailiyya coast from Kalba to Shinas. We had gardens everywhere on the sayh by the 1960s, the work was done by bayadir families.

Jazirat al-Hamra was in four furuj; Gharbi, Miyan, Shimali and Sharqi. Most houses were rectangular and one storey, built from sukhr, blocks of shelly mud, and coral-blocks, biyim, with roofs of mats, sand and gravel over roof beams of chandal or quartered date palm trunks. Coral blocks are porous, so the passage of air from outside cools the interior. The shaikhs house on the creekside was larger and had wind towers (Dostal 1983: fig. 4; 589). There were masajid, buildings for community prayers, a Friday mosque, shops, and stores. Some houses and masajid had handsome carved wooden doors from East Africa. A Zaabi described his childhood home, from c.1950 to the early 1960s, My father was a pearl trader to India, and most of the things in our house came from India. The bedframes were made from Indian woods (see Lewcock 1978; plate 63c) and they were hung with Indian cloth. In the walls there were niches filled with porcelain teapots, coffee cups, bowls and plates from China but bought in India. This was the china we used. We had rectangular mirrors from India, some had writings from the Quran, or places you could put a photograph, or little paintings – I remember one with a little red aeroplane. And we had radios, clocks and windup gramophones from India. My father brought back clothes and shoes from India. My grandmothers wedding dress came from India, it was turquoise silk. The material was brought to her family; when the women had decided what patterns they wanted embroidered on it, it was sent back to India with their instructions. Brides shoes, painted and with high heels and soles, and scent, and the big painted trunks for brides clothes all came from India. Those painted trunks and the big carved ones from Africa or India stayed in the houses here, women took smaller, plainer trunks when they went between houses at different times of year. Women spent a lot of their time sewing and making

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embroidery on a pillow, and the silver embroidery threads were buffed up with a cowrie shell. My mother had a woven trunk from Africa for her clothes, with a raised section for storing jewellery. We had brownish glazed pottery from Africa, white pottery from Iran, local earthernwares from Wadi Hajil for cooking and storing food in, and red earthernware coffee pot and cups, and incense burners from Lima. This small pot was for heating butter before it was clarified, and this large one we used to serve haris – the wheat and the meat were pounded up in a sidr-wood mortar. We stored food in five large Wadi Hajil storage jars; one for flour, one for salt fish – salt qanad or salt sardines, one for rice, one for dates, and one for water. We kept clarified butter in glazed stoneware jars from India; they came here filled with pickles, after we had eaten the pickles, we stored butter in the jars. We cooked over firepits, we used charcoal or firewood. The floor mats, food mats and covers, baskets and fans, were all made locally from date leaf stems and leaves.

A woman from the al-Shamsi trading family had been brought up in Jazirat al-Hamra. She said, I saved some of my mothers clothes when she died some years ago, and I am glad that I did. My husband is Shihuh and his grandmother was from the Bani Shamaili, and she was very old indeed when she died a year or two ago. Her family cleared out all her old clothes and now they wish they hadnt. But nearly everyone gets rid of the clothes when a relation dies. Women often keep old clothes while they are alive because the material is often good and they can use it again, it saves money. Look, this dress, kandura, has the oldest material called budama, silk, with tiny gold medallions woven into the cloth; when it was reused, it had this bead embroidery round the neck and the opening. I think this bead embroidery is called faulaq, but Im not sure. The cuffs of these sirwal, drawers, are lined with very old material called bughaylan, because it is striped in brown and white. This red dress – the cloth is braisim, not cotton or silk, better, and comes only in this red, green, blue and pink. The body of the dress has embroidered flowers using dark blue, green, blue and yellow, and that motif is called btaira. The solid panel on the front yoke is khawr khaws, dense lines of chain stitch. My mother did a lot of khawr khaws embroidery, but I cant. This pattern of narrow stripes of green, red, and yellow is called ruasa. The material, for this dress, dark green with a small all over dark diamond pattern is called bitta and the style of embroidery is new, it mixes braid and beads. The braid is called kajua and we make it on a cushion. The material for this bright pink dress is called buanna because the gold circles are the size of the small Indian coins; each one has been stitched individually, and the neck and cuffs have khawr khaws embroidery. You can have emboidery round the neck and front yoke like these, or panels from under the arms to the knee, or a front panel, or round the hem. Or over the whole dress, but that wouldnt be solid embroidery, but broken up into little repeat patterns. The old materials came and went, a particular type would be available

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for four or five years and then it was gone, and something else came in. But maybe after twenty or thirty years, it was back. This is what I call an agliya but my husbands family call a thaub. I bought it from an old woman who didnt really want to sell it because it had been her grandmothers wedding dress, so it must be between eighty to a hundred years old. Agliya were wedding dresses, then worn at festivities, then for ordinary wear. The important facts are that it was just below knee level in the front, and longer, down to the ground, at the back, and it was transparent, so you wore a dark dress underneath. It has bands of different colour cloth sewn in, and the embroidered front panel was sewn on an old piece of material and then sewn into place; and it has embroidered small sprays of flowers, btaira, on the body of the dress. But I think these may have been redone later, because the thread is too coarse. Because the agliya was short in front, the silver embroidery on her sirwal would have come up to her knees. The more embroidery the better, because the longer the silver bits were, the longer your legs looked. All the embroidered panels were made to be moveable, that was important. Old dresses were mended and patched, and then turned into small girls dresses or patchwork for cushion covers. I have this old shaila, the black we wrapped round our heads. This is before the sort we wore when I was a girl in the eighties, when shaila was decorated with big bits of silvery metal. This has much finer silvery metal decoration, possibly from the sixties, early seventies. Abaiyya, the long black cloaks came in during the seventies, but now they are coats rather than cloaks.

Several old men pointed out there had been no big merchants in Ras alKhaimah during their lifetimes; merchants had been in Dubai and possibly a few in Sharjah. Ras al-Khaimah had been a local centre with big and small traders. Some sea traders did not own a boat but rented space on one. A very old man from Ahl Ras al-Khaimah said, My father died when I was two, so I was brought up by my grandfather who was a trader, and I was a trader with him. We rented space on a bu¯m with four or five other traders who rented a boat between them. Sometimes the boat was local, sometimes it was Indian or Iranian.We traded anything we thought would sell, and went up and down the Gulf, to India and East Africa. During the war in the early 1940s, it was quite profitable going to east Africa. We took tiles from Mangalore and sold them to the British at Mombasa and bought mangrove poles for roof beams, mostly for Kuwait and Basra, and tea and sugar to smuggle back. There was good money in tea and sugar. In the late 1950s or early 60s, I stopped being a sea trader and I had a general store, a shop where I sold everything. But I gave that up several years ago.

Another man recalled:

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When I was a young man, in the days of sail, I went to east Africa with Basra dates and came back with roof beams for Kuwait, Qatar, Hasa and Dubai. Later on, I took firewood from here to Dubai and brought back rice, wheat, flour, cloth, building materials … anything I saw or what people asked me to get. Later on again, I was a building contractor and bought and sold land as well.

Another former trader said, Later on, I didnt go to sea myself, I built and repaired wooden boats, I imported wood, and I had a building supplies business. There was a good living in repairing and building boats. In the late 1950s and early 60s, Ras al-Khaimah creek was as full of boats as Dubai creek is now. For every boat in the water, there were three beached, being cleaned or repaired.

A date garden owner explained how he had made his money: This was after the war when baghala had engines and a crew of forty men or more, carrying dates to India, tiles to east Africa, chandal to Kuwait, dates back home. The nakhudha was responsible for carrying the merchants goods, and the merchants had agents wherever the boat went to buy and sell goods. We carried gold to India from Dubai; boxes of gold bars were hidden among the sacks of dates as part of a normal run. The agent signed a large denomination rupee note, gave half to the captain and sent the other half to India. The nakhudha knew where the pre-arranged meeting place would be, and once the boat was on its way, a coded telegram was sent to the agent in India. He gave the other half of the rupee note to the captain of a small fishing boat who was told where to meet us. When the two halves of the note met, the gold was handed over, the fishing boat shot off, and we made our way to the port we were bound for. I had a good wage as the mechanic on the boat, I was also the navigator and I got a wage for that, and I got a percentage of the gold profits. I didnt go into carrying people up to Kuwait, Id made my money and I took over the farm Id inherited from my mother.

A former Head of Customs said, My father had a boat, we were a trading family. From the early 1940s to the late 1960s, he, like other people, took people going for work up to Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Dammam, and made sure they found people they knew at their destinations. He was also a private postal service, a busta, he took up letters, honey, clarified butter, home produced food, and brought back letters, money, sacks of rice and flour, returning workers and the goods they had bought, like pumps, for their families here. He charged for each item, and of course, fares.

A Naimi explained sea livelihoods in the early 1960s: There were two steamboats, the Damara and the Duwakhir, and I think they were British owned. They went from Bombay to Dubai to Bahrain

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to Kuwait and back again. Both boats carried passengers and bulk goods, they were a main way for goods to come in from India to Dubai. Some of the busta were on these boats, and there were other steam launches which took people up to Kuwait and had busta working on them. Dubai was the hub for this area, and all the bulk goods like rice, cloth, tea and so on came to Ras al-Khaimah from Dubai on local abwam and other boats, which took up vegetables and bulk dates to Dubai. Dried and salt fish was a separate trade by smaller traders in smaller boats, and that went all over the place.

Some traders spoke more of the trading that went on in Ras al-Khaimah town itself. An Arab trader spoke of his father and himself selling wood, chandal for roofs, and wood in baulks from India for boat repairs and building. They also sold Iranian pottery as a sideline, but not Wadi Hajil pottery. An elderly Iranian trader explained, My father started this shop at the end of the 1930s, because there was absolutely nothing in Lingah. He sold paraffin, oil and diesel that we brought from Abadan, and dates and salt from Iran. We took back to Iran dates and coffee, we bought the coffee in Dubai. We bought salt fish here and sold it in India and bought rice, sugar and tea which we sold in Iran and here. I can just remember people buying rice or wheat or barley by the kilogram or half kilogram, which shows how little money there was. In the shop, everything was sold for cash, because salt fish was the only thing there was to buy here.

Another Iranian trader said, My father came from Iran before I was born. At that time he was in partnership with al-Assad, who later became a very big trader and moved to Dubai. My father stayed here, by that time he had married a Habsiyya. He traded in dates from Minawa in Iran and from Basra, a good steady trade. Like all the other traders, my father exchanged money. A silver toman was valued at 104 rupees or riyals; the traders exchanged a toman for a hundred rupees, the other four were their commission. Toman, like Maria Theresa dollars, were going out of use; the coins in use were rupees, anna and baisa. My father also traded in charcoal. Mountain women didnt usually sell their goods in the market, they sold them to a trader. So they sold their charcoal to my father and their vegetables and eggs or cheese and clarified butter to Muhammad Nawb across the way.

A man from Ahl Ras al-Khaimi commented: I lived from fishing when I was a young man in the late 1950s and 1960s. I had rights to fish in a named area, mashadd, I had a boat, samah, and I was part of my community, jamaa. I inherited my boat from my father, but the boat was used by my uncle and my cousin because I was still small, and my

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mother always got a share of the profits. My father, like most people, had bought the boat on credit. We didnt sell our fish ourselves, fish sellers sold fish and took ten per cent of the price as commission. And we dried the very small fish and we salted others, and sold these. The fishing and a little local pearling supported me and my mother. We lived in Suddru, between the fort and the sea. The fishing gave us money to buy dates, rice and flour, vegetables, firewood, clothes, bedding and household goods as we needed through the year, and we rented an arish at the date garden where we went in summer. We didnt work for our dates. We werent well off, but we had what we needed and we werent in debt.

In addition to traders, fishermen, seamen and pearl divers, boat builders and repairers, people mentioned house builders, men who dived for coral blocks for building and fetched stone from the Tunb islands for building and grinding stones, agents, tailors, servants, and healers. A Baluch said, My grandfather lived in Dihan and went pearling in the summer, and the rest of the year he was a builder. He built the family room at the fort where the ruler lived. His father, as a young man, had gone to Oman as a trader, and then to Ras al-Khaimah, I think in the 1890s. He returned to Baluchistan to get married, but when my grandfather and his brother were small boys the family moved back to Ras al-Khaimah because there were local power struggles and they didnt want to get involved. He brought in wheat and rice from Baluchistan, he hired a boat or space on a boat, and I think he took back guns and ammunition.

A herbal pharmacist specialising in womens complaints and childrens illnesses said his cures were plants, plant gums and minerals; earlier, bida from the mountains had supplied these, but now he imported them from Iran and India. Another medical practitioner treated, Joints, sprains and livers. I learnt from my mother who was very good at wasm, burning at points along nerve pathways, but I dont do it. There is a very good woman in Shimal who does it, she is excellent. I work within a proper system and I had a long training. Sometimes I send people to the hospitals or to specialist bone-setters. And I have a small shop selling tools, rope, camel sticks, walkingsticks, jirz, swords, ammunition belts …

A neighbouring trader remarked, “Both those practitioners make a good living; they have many clients and they charge quite a lot.” The ruler, members of the ruling family, and bigger traders employed servants, agents, and retainers. The ruler had armed guards and soldiers. Other professionals included the qadi and mutawwa, the Islamic judge and the local religious teachers and scribes. An elderly fish trader explained,

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About Ras al-Khaimah town in my boyhood. Starting at the fort, where the ruler lived, towards the point on the sea side was Farij Ahl Barra. On the creek side was the old suq, Farij al-Mahara, and the small traders and the Iranian traders lived there, and then al-Miyan, the anchorage. On the sea side was the Old Mosque, now under renovation again, and fifty years ago the shuyukh and the big traders and their retainers lived around the old mosque. From there along the spine was Farij al-Yudi, where I lived. Right on the point was Farij alAli, but a lot of that was lost in the big storms of the late forties, and the Al Ali spread out to Suddru, Maarid and Miyan. Suddru was outside the town, and only a few people lived there. Dihan was further south again along the beach, and there were five or six Baluch families who had come in the time of the ruler before Saqr; they were employed to carry water on donkeys into the town, and they lived in round houses with pitched roofs called kukh.

The owner of an old stone store in the old suq said, This store and the others like it in this street are at least a hundred years old, maybe more. They have lasted so well because they were built not with mountain stone, but with stones brought from the island of Great Tunb. Saruj, local waterproof lime mortar, always slips off local stone, but Tunb stone is coral and shelly, and saruj stays stuck to it.

The traders market had shops and stores around a rectangular open space with a gate that was locked at night. An elderly man remarked, In the winters, people lived in the town in khaimah, houses with roofs that used ridgepoles, and finished with date palm stems; the walls were coral block, local mountain stone, or mudbrick. Other houses had roof beams finished with mud, and these roofs had a slope so rainwater ran off. Building a house was simple. For a permanent house, a man asked the ruler for permission, and if he didnt already own a plot, he bought building land; there were always bits of land being sold for building. Then he built his house. If it was a temporary house, an arish, people could build where they wanted. In those days, water came from the wells in the sands, beyond Dihan. The water was drawn up from wells worked by bulls looked after by slaves, and the water went into a qanat, a built channel which flowed through the town. Extra water came from Fulayyah way and it was brought round on camels, some bedu made this their work. There wasnt a town wall, but there was a boundary, and animals were meant to be outside it.

A former fisherman described the house he grew up in: I was born in 1948 and I lived in Suddru where all the buildings were khaimah, built from screens, daan, made of khaws, dried leafy date palm branches, tied with rope made from abbaf imported from Iran. Most houses were two screens long by two screens wide, because screens were made or bought in standard sizes. The roof, tir, was also khaws, which rested on the ridgepole, mad, and the ridgepole was supported at either end by long poles,

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chandal. The roof was covered in green army canvas; English canvas was thicker, more waterproof and cost more than Indian canvas, and people had which they could afford or preferred. The door was made from bought wood, and had a lock. Inside, on the right, was the gitaa which was only for washing and took up about a quarter of the space. For answering calls of nature, everyone went to the beach. The washroom had a water jar, khars, a cement floor, and a drain to the outside. I think the cement came from Japan and cost one and a half rupees a bag. Richer people had the whole of their floor cemented, but ours was covered with date leaf mats from Iran, called hasir. The walls were hung with lightweight split reed matting called tahib, made by Iranians. In the back lefthand corner was the sleeping area, which could extend all along the back wall. We used dawsak, cotton quilts five or six inches thick, as mattresses; Iranians in the market made them from raw cotton and cotton waste, I can remember them beating the cotton with wooden rods to fluff it up. We slept on these and covered ourselves with lihaf, thin cotton quilts, and everybody had pillows, masiddi, set up around the walls for sitting against during the day. The only other item in our house was a mirror, two feet high and about ten inches wide, with pictures on. We didnt have many clothes, I had one kandara, a long garment with a front opening, and a wizra, a long length of cotton folded in front and worn around the lower body. The kitchen was a separate building, with a roof of yarid, dry date palm stems. We cooked on firewood which we bought by the load or half load, depending on how much money we had. Small boys like me scrounged small bits of wood around the town. We cooked in a tannur, an oven made of mudded stones, and baked bread in a taba, a small tannur. Later on we had a primus, chuli, from Sweden, they came from Kuwait in the sixties. For cooking, we had two aluminium cooking pots, about a foot in diameter; one for rice, one for fish. We had two aluminium trays, the bigger one was put on the floor, and the smaller held the rice and fish and was put on the big tray. We had a large spoon, milas, for the rice, and a smaller one, hashuga. We drank out of a kas, only it wasnt glass, it was a white aluminium mug, and before that, we used a cutdown pineapple tin. Only the shuyukh and rich traders had real glasses and rich traders might have five or six large metal trays. We ate himr, clams, which they call dawj in Rams. My mother cooked them with onions, she boiled them, all our food was boiled. They were delicious, wonderful; people thought they were eating meat. Tus, large topshells, were the other shellfish we ate regularly. We ate local foods – dates, rice, fish, bread, milk and milk products; there was no shop food. White radishes and spring onions were the only vegetables. There was fruit in season; bananas from Oman, mangos from Masafi and Idhn, and limes. Oranges came from Kuwait and apples – which werent red in those days – from Iran. Tinned beans and tomato paste came in the 1960s. Ive been told about the hungry time in the 1940s, how people got rations of tea and sugar and stuff from the British army; my family, like others,

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sold their rations as they had plenty of dates. We ate lots of fish, fresh in the winter and salt in the summer. We had meat maybe once a month; we would buy a bit, or wed get a share if a neighbour killed a goat. The most meat I ever had at one time was when I was about ten. A whole lot of Habus came into the town, they landed at the ferry point. They were wearing short wizra, halfway above their knees, and they were firing their matchlocks with one hand and waving their swords with the other, and doing that yelling into their armpits (nudba – Lane, a call, summons). They were celebrating something, because they were met by Shaikh Saqr and Shaikh Sultan, and they all went back to the fort. The Habus killed male goats, tais, and handed out the meat to everyone. I got a kilo, it was the most meat I had ever had in my hands. Other people got the same, or a head, or the lights … The Habsi who was doing the slaughtering was eating little globules of mesenteric fat, beautiful and white, all the time he was skinning and cutting up the carcasses. My father died when I was a baby, and in a way the shuyukh looked after me. I used to help around the fort. I remember two English officers arriving off a boat to see Shaikh Saqr, and they brought quantities of fruit. I helped set the fruit out on trays. Before people ate, an enormous metal kettle, full of warm water, was carried in for people to wash their hands. Drinking water came from three or four wells on the beach at Dihan; it was good sweet water and the water rose and fell with the tide. My parents were buried in a graveyard between the roundabout after the bridge and the old market. It has been built over, theres no sign of it. Burials were carried out by the family. The family washed the body if there was enough water, dug the grave, and placed the body in the grave. And the whole farij went to the burial.

In Maarid, a boatbuilder, who had come with his father 60 years ago, remembered two boat building and repair yards in Ras al-Khaimah town and two in Maarid at that date. Now only he makes and repairs traditional working wooden boats, powered by internal diesel engines, although a new yard specialising in wooden racing boats has started up. He builds abwam and brig, either on commission or for himself, and the boats being repaired are mostly shuai or sambuk. He explained, I do everything by eye, as did my father and grandfather, and my forefathers for as long as anyone knows. I have a wooden measure, addad, that I made; its the only measure we use, apart for some of the metal work where we use gauges. The wood used to come from India, teak or sah, and jangli-wood. Now I buy where I can – Malaysia, Pakistan, East Africa. Engines came in about fifty years ago. My workers are all craftsmen from the Malabar coast. Now, the boat. We start with the keel, bis, and this used to be teak but is now a wood called plau. Then we make the stempost, miyi, and the stern, attifr. The strakes are mallach, and the first four strakes on the keel are awal

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mallach, thani mallach, thalith mallach, rubi mallach. Then we put in temporary ribs, agubi khaftu, to carry the planks one above the other, and act as moulds, firmat. As the shape of the hull develops, we call the curve the shib and the overhang is the chant. Then we get to the gunwales, traj, the singular is trij. Back down inside the hull, the temporary ribs come out and the real ribs, atfa, are put in from short to long. After the fifth plank, we have the panelling for the bottom of the hold, talbis. We use caulking, hazm pl. ahzam, between each plank. The planks dont overlap, they are edge to edge (carvel built). The big baulks fixed to the sides standing up above the gunwales are the suwaris, there are five of them – al-goyim, al-diggal, al-wast, al-jail, and al-funni. The strengthening struts across the boat are the mushayata, and the small struts from the scuppers to the gunwales are idhoya. The deck is sath. The long bits sticking up at the sides are the goyim. Scuppers are anja, and the bit from the scuppers to the gunwales is the burga. The inner planks that raise the gunwales are the thabrida. The prow is the satura, and its supports are suwabir. The raised deck is the qashtil, the raised afterdeck is the nim, and the rail round the afterdeck is the rayil. The stern hung rudder is the sukkan. The mast is ad-digga, and the smaller after or fore masts are digga kalami. Masts were made from fanabrim, fanasa, and fanin, all woods from India. Ropes, habl, are now nylon but used to be coir, kambar, or sometimes, from lif, and blocks and pulleys are gaffaf. We have always had nailed boats. Metals used to come from India, although I have heard that in the time of Ahmad bin Majid there were metals in the Ruus al-Jibal. We used to make nails here, but not now. We used to have one iron nail, one copper nail; iron nails are stronger, copper nails dont hold as well. Now it is all iron nails, wrapped in cotton as they are hammered home – that was always the way. Sails, shirra, were sewn here, and always white. The sailcloth came from India, Bahrain, Oman or Pakistan, and every boat carried spare for emergencies. We continue to use a pitsaw set up on the beach to take the planks off the logs. It takes longer, days or even weeks, but we get four or five planks to a log instead of three with a mechanical saw. Power tools are too hot for the wood, and my workmen dont use them. To oil the boats, we used oil from pressed dried sardines, uma; shark oil is very good too, but the best oil was from the livers of whale sharks, chir. We burnt shells to make nura, the white anti-fouling paint to prevent damage from boring marine worms.

Two men added more details about living in coastal towns. The older, the boatbuilder, said, In the winters and through to early summers, we lived in jiss-plastered houses with pitched roofs, khaimah, made of leafy date palm branches. These houses were completely waterproof and cool, and easy to keep warm in winter. In the gaith, we went to the date gardens with everyone else, and there we lived in an arish. Traditional khaimah began to disappear when cement and blocks came in, which I think began in the very late 1940s, early 1950s. When we built the stone houses, we built as high as we could reach, and then moved along and did as far as we could reach again. Because the stones

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were much the same shape and size, the walls ended up looking like level lines of stones, although we hadnt laid a line of stones, and then another line and so on. We built the corners first, and then pillars at intervals along the wall, and filled in with thinner wall sections that incorporated wall niches, kainuz, or panels, darish, that drew in cooling breezes. We used great amounts of lif rope for the roof and for strengthening lintels over doors and windows. The jiss plaster was for fine work, ordinary mortar was a mixture of cowdung, earth and sand, called saruj.

The younger recalled: Maarid had about twenty to thirty houses when I was a boy, mostly arish, some khaimah, the Sirkal house, and the row of stone stores and shops that are still just there. The sea came right up to the stores then, and there was a tower at each end of Maarid. Most houses had a well in the courtyard, but the water was too brackish to drink. People used the water for cleaning, washing – but we didnt do a lot of washing – and cooking. Men and boys went to the sea to wash, women and girls used the well water. Drinking water came from Hudaiba by donkey; each carried four four-gallon jerrycans. The men who did this were local tribesmen who worked as pearl divers and haulers in the summers. Most families had two to five goats, who took themselves off in the mornings to as-Sull, where the big trees are, and one or two old men collected them, watered them, and took them off behind the gardens to the sayh. Before sunset, they were brought back to as-Sull, and found their way home. Most people had at least two months supplies in their houses. The only vegetables were white radishes, spring onions, tomatoes and aubergines – the last two had just come in. People had little gardens in their yards.

Before oil wealth, people in Rams had three options for profit: fishing, sea trading, and pearling. Old men explained, Most men did all three, switching between them according to the season or the year, what other family members and the jamaa were doing, what they felt like. There were always people who lived from fishing and their date garden, or from their mountain fields and the date garden, and did a little trading, any combination is possible.

In the lifetimes of informants, Ramsawis who pearled or worked as sea trading crew members went on boats belonging to Ras al-Khaimah. In Rams, two old men considered that while a man and his family could live from fishing and save a little money, fishing did not provide profits enough for investment, whereas pearling could, and quoted the examples of their fathers, who had pearled in the summers and fished in the winters. From their pearling profits, one had bought a jalbut, and the other a date garden in Dhaya. A Tunaiji said,

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My grandfather was a carpenter who worked up and down the coast from Rams to Bukha, and he owned a date garden in Dhaya. He worked on land, and he built boats, as well as doors, bed frames with carved legs, cabinets, trunks, cupboards, window shutters, pulley wheels for yazara wells and so on, and he traded a bit in spices and medicines from India. I have all his tools at home. Many years ago, I saw a fishing boat he had built, derelict in the creek here; hed used local woods for the keel and ribs, and imported wood for the planking. Later on, he worked in Kuwait for twenty years, he had two jobs at the same time; he was a school janitor and a crew member on a fishing boat. Boat building in Rams finished before 1960. Ive been told that people built boats from local woods, like ghaf or sidr for the keels, samr for the ribs, and imported wood for the planking.

A younger mans uncle had been a professional healer and magician, sahar, skilled in black and white magic. Old men discussed harat (the quarters of the town), building techniques, and the bin Salih buildings by the creek. Rams had three harat; a Tunaiji said, “Before modern times, Ramsawis lived along the creek; Tunaij had their houses in the middle where the towers are, and beyond them to the west were Maraziq.” Lienhardt (2001; 121) wrote in 1953 – 4 that at the eastern or Persian/ Farsi farij lived Persians/Farsi/ Iranians, some Awaimir families and a Sudan family; at the central or Tunaiji farij, most of the Tunaij had been driven out, and its inhabitants were Suwailim and Manani; and the western or Bani Humud farij, lived in by Maraziq. An elderly Naimi who had lived in Rams up to 1951 remembered no Awaimir but several Sudan families in harat al-Farsi; Suwailim who were Tunaij, and Manai in the Tunaiji harat; and Maraziq had gone. Hanthal (1987; 95) was told these Suwailim were Shihuh (Tuwar Salim) from Bukha and Khasab, who came in the early 1960s; a Shihhi from Bukha and living in Maarid said Shihuh from these places had come down in the 1930s as well as the early 1960s. Others in Rams were of the opinion that there had always been Shihuh mostly from Bukha and Khasab living in Rams, but the Rams population was usually described as that of its ruler, typically brought in by an outside power, such as the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah. All houses were khaimah, with gabled roofs of leafy date palm branches and walls built of mountain stone, hasa. Stones were hacked out of the mountain sides and loaded onto special frames carried on camels. Mudbrick was common, and made using formers to hold the mud. From the early 1950s, people made jush, blocks of shelly mud and cement. Everybody could make building mortar, juss, from earth burnt with yarid and palm waste for two to four days. Jiss was fine plaster made from burn-

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ing shells or white and yellow quartz pebbles from a nearby mountain slope. Jiss plaster was the last coat put on interior walls, where it was also used for decorative friezes; the friezes were simple geometric patterns made by pinning wooden moulded boards to the walls, and slapping the jiss against the moulds; when the jiss was dry, in less than a day, the boards were taken down, and the frieze was done. A Tunaiji said, The bin Salih, who were the rulers here before 1948, had a series of houses along the creek, with a mosque, three wells, a market, and a tower at the end of the creek. This ghurfa, a complex of two and one storey buildings (fig. 5; 590), belonged to Muhammad bin Salih. The roof on the second storey of the liwan was yarid. The fancy corners on the womens building are tarabish (sing. tarbush), they were for prettiness. The household that used this complex was around seventy people, including twenty black slaves. The panels in the walls of the bin Salih houses that let in cooling breezes are darisha. People use the same word for these panels that direct fresh air and for windows set low in the walls, because both funnel in cool air but not sunlight.

These ghurfa, with plastered walls, decorative friezes, and rows of arched darisha were typical of the house complexes of rulers and big merchants. The bin Salih houses are like Bait Sirkal in Maarid, the earlier parts of the shaikhs house at Jazirat al-Hamra, and the bin Malik houses at Bukha. These houses, like those of richer traders, were built by builders, either employed, and/or from the labour and skills of men already employed as servants or retainers. Many men knew how to build, and built their own houses with help from family and neighbours. At Khor Khuwair, a Bani Hassun Shihuh said, We had date gardens, we had grain fields near the gardens, and we fished – beach netting or yaruf, and hawwal, when boats went out late in the afternoon, set the nets, and were back by sunset; next morning they went out and cleared the nets. Occasionally we took the salted fish to Dubai for sale, but usually we went to Ras al-Khaimah or Umm al-Qawain. So we had money to buy what we needed.

At Ghalilah, old men explained, Before we had engines for the fishing boats, shuwahif (shahahif), the boats were smaller, narrower, and double ended. We made and repaired them ourselves on the beach. All the heavy parts, the keel, stem and stern, were made from local sidr/zizyphus spina-christi, salam/acacia arabica, and sharisha/melia azedarach, and the ribs were samra/acacia tortilis. The boat builder in Maarid is right, samr cant be nailed; but if you drill into it first, you can put a nail in. All our boats were nailed. The planking was wood we bought. Later on, we bought boats from Ajman. We hauled the

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boats up the beach on rollers greased with shark oil, widak, which we bought, or we used sulh which we made by boiling up fish livers and oily skins, or we used rancid clarified butter, there was always lots of butter that had gone off. If someone here didnt have a boat and he wanted to go fishing, he made himself a raft, nataba, from qurb, the thick ends of date branches. He put his traps on the raft and swam out, pushing the raft in front of him; I did that when I was a young man, most of us did. Everyone could net, and we made nets from lif when there wasnt any money, and from cotton from India when we had some money. The Indian cotton came partly treated in a lumpy mess. The women span it to the thicknesses needed for the different sorts of net, and the men netted. When a net was finished, it was wrapped tightly round a pole and boiled for a week; this kept the net straight, it didnt tangle itself up. We made rope, too. General purpose rope was made from lif; the raw lif was soaked, beaten until it went into strands, and then it was left to dry. We spun the strands into rope by rubbing them together with our hands and then rolling them along our thighs, dampening them from time to time. Asq were soaked for four or five days, split and woven into ropes used for hauling in nets and for the yazara wells. For floats, we used qurb, which we pierced with a hot nail so we could thread rope through and tie them to the nets. We had four or five salting tanks on the beach, each about eight metres by five, quite shallow and lined with plaster, yiss. We made yiss from sabakha, a type of clay. We mixed it with water, beat it well, made it into little cakes and left them to dry. We made the cakes into piles, and covered the piles with anything that burnt, and set fire to them. When they were cool again, we broke up the cakes and pounded them to powder. Then we mixed the powder with water and used it like cement for anything that needed water kept in or out, like the salting tanks on the beach, or water tanks and channels in the date gardens. What with our fish and grain, our dates and goats, we lived well. We did trade but not much, we didnt need to. We are talking of the late 1930s, 1940s. At that date, no-one really lived on the coast, people who came for dates in the summer lived up on the sand ridge with everyone else. The date gardens and the houses were up against the mountain, and fishermen visited the coast and lived in arish. Zakat was dates, dates were taxes. Zakat was collected by the Amir, the spokesman for the community to the outside. He recorded the yields of the date trees and assessed each person. A man paid ten per cent of his crop. The Amir collected it and sent the amounts on to Qawasim shuyukh in Ras al-Khaimah town, who used most of it to pay their soldiers.

In Shaam, a group of elderly Shihuh explained, The men of Shaam could be divided into four, depending on their main economic activity: those who cultivated date gardens, fishermen, those who lived from the mountains, and those who pearled. In the past, and all of us can confirm this, there was never any shortage of food. We had plenty to eat. What was lacking was money. Money was the only thing we lacked, we were rich in things to live on. Zakat on dates and grain was paid in sacks,

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one out of every ten, and on goats it was one or two in forty. Fishermen paid in money, and when there wasnt any money, a whole days catch of fish was taken by the Amir of Shaam and delivered to the Qawasim. Before the 1960s, we had ordinary narrow, double ended fishing boats, like those at Rams and the coasts of the Ruus al-Jibal, that we built ourselves on the beach. We bought sailcloth in Dubai and made the sails ourselves. After 1960, boats were wider, with a flat stern for the outboard motor, and we made them like Ajman boats with wood we bought from the company. At all dates, the boats were hauled up the beach on wooden rollers greased with rancid clarified butter.

Two very old men recalled that pearling was profitable; one said his father had lived from pearling before the mid 1920s, and when his father died c.1940, his share of his fathers wealth was a thousand rupees, which was a lot, enough to set up a man as a trader twice over. The other, who went pearling probably in the late 1920s and 30s, said he invariably paid his debt and had money over each season. The elderly fish trader pointed out they really had needed very little money, as they had their own fish, goats and cows, dates, wheat and barley; if they needed more grain, they got it from the bida in the mountains. There were never any shortages. He also described house building: In the old days, we built our houses from our own materials. We had yarid, we had the trunks of date trees, stones were lying about, and a house eight metres by four took about a day. Especially if members of your family, neighbours and friends helped. Of course, you had to feed your helpers, you had to give them a good meal of goat and rice or goat and bread. The old stone houses were on the ridge above the beach (fig. 6; 591), and that was where we lived unless we moved to the date gardens in the high summer.

The elderly fish trader recalled, Every local place of prayer, masjid, had a mutawwa, who worked at the fishing and in their date gardens like everyone else. Some of the older ones had little schools (Eickelman 1983: 164 for most Omani villages), and some of the younger ones did a bit of teaching. Teachers were paid on Thursdays, when the children put rice or coffee in the teachers laps. There was a qadi who drew up any necessary documents, and he charged a fee.

The same basic self-sufficiency with profits largely from salt and dried fish, as a part of the same region that worked together, continued around the coastal regions of the Ruus al-Jibal at Jadi, Hana, Khasab, Kumzar, with Dhahuriyyin of the north-east Musandam coast, Lima, and Dibba Baiah. A Hani fisherman remarked that their batil had came from Kha-

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sab and Kumzar, but they had also bought used wooden boats from Ras al-Khaimah and Jazirat al-Hamra. In Khasab, an elderly Shihhi remarked they had lived from their fields and gardens, and a little fishing. A boatbuilder said his family had lived from boat building and repairing for at least three generations and probably more; others got their profits from salt and dried fish, or pearling away in the summers and locally in the creeks in the winters, and most people had fields and/or gardens. He added, Ive been told that long before I was born, clothes – wuzra and gitra – came from Masqat and made in the interior of Oman. When I was a child, we ate dates, aish, fish and coffee. Aish was occasionally rice, but usually ground grain mixed with milk or buttermilk. When I was twelve or thirteen, I was taken to Iran. I saw cars for the first time, and I was taken to the cinema. It was a cowboy film, lots of horses galloping around, and I was terrified they would come out of the screen and get me. Like the first time anyone here saw aeroplanes – we all lay down on the ground in fright! We had a radio, but it only got London and India, so it wasnt very interesting. There was no football when I was a boy, football came in after Qabus. We played games with a short bit of wood that you put on a stone and hit with a long stick, and it flies up, and the boy whose bit of wood went the furthest won (takka, Musil 1928; 257 – 8). And we swam and fished, and worked on the boats and played on the beach … we had a good time.

His cousin, also a boatbuilder, commented: We build and built boats on commission, we never built a boat and hoped someone would buy it. The buyers paid bit by bit and, eventually, we got our money. Before, there were two boat builders and repairers at Bukha, we were here in Khasab, and there were more at Kumzar. People at Mukhi, Hana and so on repaired their boats themselves because everyone knew about wood. They might have bought a new boat from us or they might have built it themselves. We built nailed boats, shuai, shawahif, and zaruqa, and sewn boats, like batil. Batil are the same design as shawahif, but have steering oars, not rudders. Before 1970, batil were all sewn, but after that we nailed the planks although the stem is still sewn. The local woods we used were qarrat from Qida, Lima or Dibba, and sidr or sharisha from Dibba or Lima. The wood for the planking was teak from India, but we got it from Dubai, before by boat and now by lorry. At present, we are repairing a batil my grandfather made a hundred years ago on the beach across the road. Everything has been replaced apart from the original planks. The stem and stern posts are sewn onto the body of the boat with kumbar, coir, rope over coir padding; the coir comes from the Comoros and I buy it in Masqat or Dubai. Kumbar rope is made like any other, you wet it and beat it, and roll it on your thigh. When boats had sails, the sailcloth came down from Dubai, and we cut and sewed the sail on the beach. Sails were sewn in vertical sections; it was a community effort, every-

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one came and helped sew. The stitches were quite loose, because it was better for the seams to break in a storm than the material; you could mend a seam easily, but split sailcloth meant a patch.

A Dhahuri said, “Dhahuriyyin on the northeast coast didnt on the whole have high mountain fields. Their fields were were on the lower coastal mountains or in the wadis. So they grew grain and had goats but their profits came from fishing.” At Lima, a group of Shihuh pointed out: In the past, no-one lived from one resource. People at Lima itself were fishermen and had date gardens because the work fits together, just as mountain people had high fields and goats. And of course, fishermen and date gardeners had relations in the mountains, and vice versa. Anyone could do anything, and people changed; a fisherman might inherit mountain fields, or become keen on goats, there was always money in goats. The fishermen did a great deal of salting fish – there are the remains of nearly a dozen salting tanks and storehouses, and they caught and dried gaisha. Everyone could build a boat, although some families were known to be more skilled than others, and everybody could make nets and ropes. Two families were potters and made a wide range of items that went all over the place. Now it is the women who make only incense burners and medicine plates.

A young man said, The old houses were all bait gufl with sitting places in front and at the sides, and separate kitchens and other small buildings. It was easy to build into the cliff because the rock lies naturally in big ledges. Some of these houses have underground rooms that were refuges, and one is said to have a tunnel going down to the sea.

Dibba Baiah was made up of thirteen farij, twelve of which belonged to Shihuh and one to Naqbiyyin. A Haslamani listed: al-Musayyih, lived in by mixed Shihuh; Sayh al-Hawami, also mixed Shihuh; al-Maqta belongs to Bani Lassam; al-Haiyir is owned by Naqbiyyin; Saqattah belongs to Maqadihah; al-Waab is Khanabila; Tawiya belongs to Bani Lassam; Khabbat Sawr belongs to Ahl Salhad and Ahl Maqam; Hail belongs to Ahl Hail; and there is Wust al-Madina where Muhammad bin Salih, Shaikh of Bani Shutair had his tower, and it had the qalaat, the mosque and shops, and the office and residence of the Omani wali. Qastaniyya, Insur, and Karsha were the other three.

Most farij were inhabited seasonally, such as Qastaniyya, where Shihuh said, We were here some of the time fishing, and some of the time we were up on our mountain fields growing grain. We preferred being up there and we came down only for the dates or because the water in the cisterns was fin-

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ished. None of us were traders, traders were Iranians or from Masqat and we sold them live goats and clarified butter.

A group of elderly Ahl Hail explained, We lived here all the time. In our time, from the 1930s to the 1950s, we lived mostly from fishing and from carrying goods for traders to Dubai and elsewhere. The fishing was gaisha and dry salted ghubaib and qanad, and traders came to buy them. We built our own boats, marakib, mostly using wood from India, and we had experts, ustadh, some of whom came from India. All the necessary ironwork for the boats was made by Baluch gipsies, zuttut, who lived at Harat al-Zuttut at Sumbrayir. We made the very fine mesh nets for barriya fishing from bai, which came from India in huge bales the size of a car, and we bought it by weight. The women cleaned it, washed it and spun it into yarn, and the men netted the nets. And we made nets from lif and cotton. We made ropes from lif and kambar, we didnt use abbaf here, it is dwarf palm and comes from Iran. We dived for pearls from our boats along the Musandam coast in the summers; the harvest, including the mother of pearl, was big enough for a pearl trader, tawwash, to come here from the Gulf coast. In the 1950s and 60s, the mother of pearl was going to Japan. Profits from pearling were good. We grew most of our grain in or behind the date gardens. Even in the bad years of the 1930s and 40s, there were no real shortages here. We had everything we needed, the lack of money wasnt a real problem. Between the mountains and the coast, there was self-sufficiency; the coast had dates and fish, the mountains had grain and goats. Later on, in the 1950s and 60s, most of our young men didnt go to Kuwait for work, but for money they worked on boats smuggling gold to India; most boats carried gold hidden among the general cargo. Before, we had winter houses and summer houses. Winter houses were khaimah or karin, made from arish by which I mean date tree stems without the leaves. Some people, the richer ones, had mudbrick houses. There were several mudbrick houses around the old qalaat, and as far as the big sidr tree; from there to the shops and the main mosque were the vegetable gardens and grain fields. By that second big sidr was where the mutawwa had the Quranic school that I went to, and the qadis house was the other side of the qalaat, between it and the date gardens. The date gardens came as far as the shops and market, and they were full of arish that people lived in for the summer and were collapsed when they went away. There has been a market in date trees and date gardens for ever, so no one area of the date gardens ever belonged to a group. Several of these complexes of buildings and a few fields and cisterns or houses and beaches made up a community, a jamaa, like a harat. The people who made up the community were the people who cooperated with each other; they werent all necessarily related, but they were all connected through marriage and work. The men would meet for coffee and breakfast, and they might have the midday or evening meal together, but they would definitely meet for coffee after the evening meal. Everyone in those days

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was in bed and asleep by halfpast nine at night. We ate dates, fish, and bread, and a very little rice, a man might buy four kilos a year. A long time ago, cotton goods, cloth and bedding, came from far away and came into Dibba by boat. I know cotton was grown here in the mountains, but it was never important here although it had been in Oman. Cotton material was so cheap, half a dirham would keep a person in cloth for a year! A man needed only two lengths, because we wore only a wuzra and a kamiz. The only locally spun textiles here were woollen rugs, blankets and saddle bags for camels and donkeys made in the mountains by the bedu from their animals. These woollen goods were never, or hardly ever, sold because everyone got them from their khuwaiyil or nasaiyib. Zakat was really in our hands, but we did pay zakat to the Shaikh of Dibba Baiah, and it went into the Bait al Mal, the treasury. How fishermen paid we dont remember, but we know they did. The Naqbi hakim of Haiyir collected up the zakat for Muhammad bin Salih, Shaikh of Dibba Baiah, but when that started we dont know.

In 1963, Captain Stockdale of the Trucial Oman Scouts was in Dibba Husn to sort out border disputes between Omani Dibba Baiah, Dibba Husn ruled from Sharjah, and Dibba Ghurfa that followed the Sharqi Shaikh of Fujairah. His report (Walker 1996; vol 4, 513 – 542) notes that at Dibba Husn, there were two owned spots in the sea for khabbat fishing, and more off Dibba Ghurfa and Sumbrayir. This fishing was highly profitable; in a good season, a man might make Rs 5,000. Barriya fishing was also profitable, with a good catch making Rs 1,000. The only tax referred to as zakat was on dates, at one jirab in every twenty; the grain tax was one mun in every ten; goats were taxed at one in every forty; dried barriya fish paid Rs 2 on every 100 mun, and there was a market tax of Rs 1 on every Rs 10 worth of fish sold. A pearling tax was in abeyance. At Sumbrayir, two elderly men said, The metal workers were all Baluch, Saffarin, travellers. They didnt live in Harat al-Zuttut because they were always on the move between one place and another, doing metalwork for people. Harat al-Zuttut was where they were when they werent anywhere else. At Unification they became nationals and most of them have garages and workshops, but not here, all over the Emirates.

On the Shamailiyya coast at Qidfa, a Yamahi Sharqi said, Here in Qidfa, there were people who worked the sea as fishermen, there were people who cultivated, and there were people who had camels and were carriers. People of any of these groups owned or rented date gardens. Carriers took goods down to Khor Fakkan and collected stuff, but they mainly took salt fish and dates to Dubai and Sharjah and brought back rice, cloth, clothes and so on. They were carriers by land. The shaikh of

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Qidfa made his income from zakat. He collected the zakat on dates and grain and some of this was sent to the Shaikh of Fujairah, and the rest stayed here for the shaikh and the wali.

On the Batinah coast at bu Baqra, a group of Zaab commented, Before the 1950s, people here lived from the sea, fishing and pearling, and from dates. Trading and fishing boats were built on the beach here in the 1920s. There were skilled boat builders who had come from India and East Africa, and one family is still here. Pearling had been important here, but it stopped. People from here, when times were hard, went to India to work as small traders. Small trading is what a man does if he has no other resource from which to live. The little dried fish, gaisha, were very important here, from Barka to Kalba. They were very good fertiliser, and they were taken inland to tobacco growing places. In the 1950s and 60s, in the winters, Zaab boats brought goods from India and east Africa here, and the goods were landed here and taken across to Jazirat al-Zaab – al-Hamra – by camel. From the mid 1940s through the 1960s, a lot of men here went to work in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. A Jabri said his mothers grandfather, who was Zaabi, had been a big trader, taking pearls to Iran and bringing back dates to the Batinah; He had so many silver coins that when he wanted to clean them he had to use two or three of those really big cooking pots they use at weddings.

He explained, Bu Baqra is in mixed furjan, and inside a farij there are gu¯m Balushi, gu¯m Jabri, gu¯m Zaabi. We lived in these sea coral houses, buyut, on the beach in the winter, houses with flat roofs and doors that locked. Some roofs rested on chandal, others had quartered date tree trunks, and the trunks were sawn, date wood doesnt split. There were a few small stone buildings with pitched roofs, khaimah, that were additional storerooms or other small rooms built in the 1960s, and these roofs were corrugated iron, zincu, covered with yarid. The earth for finishing off the flat roofs came from behind the houses and in front of the graveyard. The really big house complex with the big courtyard belonged to bil Oun, a merchant who was here in the summer. The main parts were rebuilt in the 1960s, but most of it is older and built from sea coral. The womens quarters were diagonally opposite the main majlis, mens meeting room, and the womens quarters had decorative top corners and mouldings around the door. The mosque on the beach has a pulpit, minbar, and a separate small minaret. It was rebuilt about seventy years ago, so in the early 1930s, by community enterprise, a hashad. Everyone worked for three or four days when they had time, and did another few days when they had time again and so on. The roof was chandal, then yarid matting, then earth, and it had wooden drainpipes to carry rainwater away. The walls were built from coral rocks men brought up from under the sea; coral rock from underwater is better quality than stuff off the beach. The small bits of coral from shaping blocks and the mucky bits were burnt to make

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the jiss for mortar and plaster. The separate minaret, the outside covered area, the decorative panels and the electricity were put in later, during the 1960s. It is no longer a mosque, because now we live beyond the gardens, and the new mosque is there. Its now a masjid where prayers are said and readings given.

In Aqr, a Mazrui said, That mound at the top of the beach was a watch tower, and boats coming in here used it as a mark. In the past, people lived in the gardens, and they worked their gardens and fished. We made shasha from materials from the date gardens and went fishing in them. All these little places along the coast were lived in by different groups of people who got their livings in slightly different ways. At midday prayers, by which time people had finished fishing, the whole beach from Shinas to Kalba was marked with lines of people praying. It was a wonderful sight, one no longer seen.

Each of these places differed in some degree from the others, although all were variations on the common themes of living from sea by sea trading, pearling and fishing, together with nearby commercial date gardens, and opportunities for trading by land. The region separates into three – the towns of Jazirat al-Hamra, Ras al-Khaimah, and Rams on the Gulf coast; the Shihuh places of the west and east coasts of Ruus al-Jibal and those of Dhahuriyiin, including Dibba Baiah; and the Shamailiyya and northern end of the Batinah coasts. Ras al-Khaimah town and Jazirat al-Hamra, and Rams to a lesser extent, were involved in commercial long distance sea trade and pearling from boats owned by traders in those towns. Shaam people partook in these activities by employment, paid in shares of profits, on Ras al-Khaimah boats, as were a few Zaab from bu Baqra on boats owned by traders in Jazirat al-Hamra. Shihuh and Dhahuriyiin also lived from the sea, but on the whole fished, pearled and traded more within their localities. Some combined fishing and pearling with date gardening and lived in their coastal locality all the year, as on the western Ruus al-Jibal coast (with the exception of Ghalilah) and on the eastern coast at Lima, Hail, and Wust al-Madina at Dibba Baiah. Dhahuriyiin and Shihuh on the eastern coast and Shihuh at Ghalilah fished and pearled and cultivated grain in the lower mountains and had animals, but lived on the coast seasonally. These groups sold their surpluses with local small traders and traders from a long distance, as well as exchanging or giving products mutually to people linked by kinship in the mountains. Qidfa on the Shamailiyya coast had some links to Khor Fakkan by trade and to Fujairah politically, but took most of its surpluses of salt

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fish and dates to Dubai on the Gulf coast using camels and donkeys owned by the part of its resident population who did not produce fish or dates. People in Khor Fakkan, Kalba and Khor Kalba talked much more of selling tobacco, dates, fish and so on to traders with boats from Oman and Bahrain, or Iran and Iraq. Bu Baqra also sold tobacco, dried limes, fish and so on to traders from Oman, and was used, like Dibba Baiah, as a port for unloading goods for land transport to towns on the Gulf coast. Here, camels were hired from local groups who lived from animals. No group considered they had lacked anything they needed; there had been no shortages of food, because of what came from the natural environments and the passing seasons, the multi-resource local economies, and the social relations and networks that stretched from one local economy to another, and from the obligation to supply all in the local community with necessities. Some considered they had been rich in the past. Local inhabitants as individual members of small communities were aware of the diverse environmental resources available in local areas and their potential for development for livelihood and profits, but as members of wider communities they pointed out that social relations between areas and performance of the daily requirements of Islamic practice assumed unifying bonds. Another example of local manifestations masking essentially similar processes and concepts is housing. People built what they needed, what they had the time, labour or money for, using local materials, and they owned their buildings. They built where they did because they had a reason to be there, they were part of that community – as they were in other places where they had other houses. In coastal towns, there were specialist builders employed by the richer traders and the ruling family who needed larger and more specialised buildings. Photographs and drawings of a Zaab complex in Jazirat al-Hamra, the Sirkar complex at Maarid, the bin Salih complex at Rams, and the bil Oun trading complex at bu Baqra are lodged in the archive at the National Museum in Ras al-Khaimah. These buildings have affinities with those of Tarut and Jubayl in eastern Saudi Arabia recorded by King (1998; 200 – 207). Panels built into the walls to catch breezes, referred to as bad girr in eastern Saudi Arabia (King 1998; 208); as badjirr in Bahrain by Majed (1987; 23 – 25); and by Lewcock (1978; 53 and plates 103, 104) as wind-catchers in Kuwait and Bahrain, were called darish in Rams and Ras al-Khaimah town. Costa (1985; plate 7: 1991; 61 – 63) notes the presence of these on the Omani Batinah coast and in Khasab in Musandam. Agios (2002;

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172), discussing parts of a trading ship, says that windows were daricha, a Persian word, and clearly related to darish, used locally in the coast towns for panels built into the walls to funnel breezes, and in the date gardens of the coastal plains for large openings in the walls to let in breezes. The association of the Persian word for both a rather sophisticated and a straightforward method of ventilation is an illustration of the close relationships between the Arab and Iranian coasts of the Gulf, said by some coastal dwellers to confer a specific khaliji, Gulfi, identity. Locally, badjir refers to windtowers, which existed at a few houses in Jazirat alHamra, the rulers fort at Ras al-Khaimah town, a Zaab traders house in Maarid, and the shaikhly complex at Khasab (Costa 1991; 63). Windtowers built in Dubai in the early to mid twentieth century were built by Iranian builders from Bastak (Coles and Jackson 1975). As virtually all the examples of windtowers in the study area are on the coast, with an Iranian traders house at Khatt with two wind-towers the exception, and built by rulers and bigger traders, it is probable that the windtowers of the area were built by Iranian builders, and further evidence of the close relationships between traders on the Arab and Iranian coasts. The winter and summer houses of ordinary people along the coasts were variations on the khaimah and the flatroofed house, built in local materials by their owners for their particular needs and preferences. A man needed in his house a room where men of the farij coming in from public spaces could meet, a secure store, a room for women and children to go about their business in privacy, a kitchen, an animal shelter, and access to alleys connecting the quarters of other women of the wider family. Buildings physically constructed the farij, and the social relationships between members built the community. These connections also existed in traditional boats of the Gulf and the northwestern Indian Ocean, perhaps more so for the larger trading boats than for the smaller multipurpose boats. Some former sea traders mentioned they had used trading boats owned by locals, Iranians or Indians for their voyages to India or East Africa, and others said they had themselves been nakhudha on both local, Iranian or Indian built trading boats. For example, a former sea trader of Iranian origin had sailed on the trading baghlah owned by his father when they lived in Lingah in Iran, they had then owned and sailed an Indian khotia, and a locally built small bu¯m, and he then built abwam and brig (a Pakistani design) for himself and on commission for traders in the Gulf and Somalia. The boats he built for himself traded to India and Somalia, with cousins as nakhudha.

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There is a considerable body of literature which discusses types of traditional boats used in the Gulf and the western Indian Ocean; Lorimer (1908 – 15, 11B, 2319 – 2332), Villiers (1940), LeBaron Bowen (1949), Dickson (1949; 473 – 80), Ministry of Information and Culture, Oman (1979; 107 – 165), and Agios (2002) are the most informative but focus on different areas and aspects. The discussion here is based on what knowledgeable people contributed to the archive. The basic and obvious distinction of boat types is that between being double-ended, mudabbab, or square-sterned, bir-riga; then, the function of the boat and the shape of its hull; there are also differences in the stern or bows, or both; and as Agios (2002; 31 – 32) comments, In general, they [many Arabs] were not bothered with classifying their craft; only shipwrights and nakhudhas cared about refinements of nomenclature. Traditional wooden boats mentioned by informants: Baghala – large trading boats with carved transom sterns, called khotia if made in India and ganja if built in Sur, Oman. Bu¯m – large double-ended trading boats, with a straight, pointed stemhead. These replaced baghala as they were cheaper to build but held as much cargo, faster, and safer in a following sea. One seen under construction at Maarid, 1998 – 9. Brig – large trading boat, Pakistani design, one seen under construction at Maarid c. 2000 – 1. Sambuq – trading or fishing boat, transom stern, engine, from Iraq. Also built at Khasab, and repaired at Maarid. Used at Rams for the bigger wooden fishing boats that took out the long nets for hawwal commercial fishing, and synonymous with amila. Shuai – offshore fishing boat, very like sambuq, transom stern, engine, lower end of Gulf and Sur. Seen at Dibba Husn, some built at Khasab, repaired at Maarid. Jalbut – small trading and fishing boat, sail and oars, in the Gulf, seen at Ras al-Khaimah. At Ras al-Khaimah, described as double ended, for fishing and trading up and own the Gulf. At Rams, fishing boats with a crew of ten or twelve that went out for the day, using big fish traps, garagir, in deep water. Samah – small fishing boat, double ended, sail and oars, Ras al-Khaimah; also referred to as amila, workboat. Wider than a tarrad. Huri – Ras al-Khaimah, a long, thin, double-ended boat made from one piece of wood or from yarid, used by two men. In Rams, a small double-ended fishing boat for one or two men used in creeks. In Khor Jerama, SE Oman, a dug out canoe used in creeks. On northern Batinah

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coast, any short, stubby boat, whether made from one piece of wood or not. Al-Hijji (2001; 8) has a photograph of a huwairiyyah (a small huri) in Kuwait, 1937. Tarrad – an alternative for shahuf at Rams, now a small fibreglass fishing boat. Shahuf – local fishing boat, sails or oars, double-ended. Agios (2002; 105 – 107) examines the relationship between the baqqara, formerly a pearling boat and seen abandoned in Kalba, and the shahuf. Seen at Rams and at places round the Ruus al-Jibal coasts. Built at Rams, Ghalilah, Shaam, Bukha, Khasab. Ras al-Khaimah, a single-ended and lightweight fishing boat. Hashb – used at Jadi for local fishing and trading boats when carrying goods for trading to Khasab or Dubai. Batiil – in Musandam, fishing, trading and pearling boat, doubleended, low pointed prow with small deck, high sternpost, stern rudder. Seen being repaired at Khasab and Kumzar, and built at both places. Formerly all sewn, now only the stempost is sewn. At Khasab and Kumzar, described as quite different to Gulf batil. Batil – in Gulf and Omani coasts big pearling boats. Mentioned only at Maarid as an example of a long ago boat. Zaruqa – fishing and trading boat, double ended, high stempost. All nailed, and with the stempost cut so that its inner face is a wedge between the ends of the planking. Seen being repaired at Khasab and Kumzar, and built at both places. Markab (pl. marakib) – used at Dibba Baiah for their former trading boats. Badan – fishing and trading boats, seen at Murair, mentioned at Bu Baqra, Kalba, and Dibba Baiah, and at Rams as coastal trading boats from Oman; also called amila on northern Batinah coast. Double ended, with a high sternpost. This is different to the badan seen at ar-Ruwais, SE Oman, which old men there recalled sailing to East Africa and, in one bad year when the winds failed, paddling back. Grab – fishing boats, with transom stern; mentioned at Aqr, northern Batinah coast. Now, small fibreglass fishing boats. Shasha – small fishing boats made from date tree leaves by users; mentioned at Shaam, Bukha, bu Baqra, Bulaida, and Aqr, and seen in use on Omani Batinah coast at Aqr, where shasha are now modified with polystyrene blocks for buoyancy and outboard engines; Ministry of Information etc, (1979; 155) notes these modifications had taken place by the mid1970s. Al-Hijji (2001; 8 – 9,155) refers to warjiyya or hu-

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wairiyyah, “double-ended boats constructed entirely of date-palm fronds or stalks” formerly used in Kuwait; a photograph from 1937 of a doubleended date-stalk built boat may have been like the huri mentioned at Rams. The two warjiyya at a beach in the southern Gulf in a 1929 photograph are not double-ended and resemble shasha mentioned at Shaam and Bukha, and seen at Aqr. Like Agios, we found only boatbuilders and nakhudha were interested in boat forms. The traditional boat builder at Maarid described the construction of a Gulf batil by making the hull out of planks attached to the keel, and only after the hull was finished were the stem and stern posts sewn in, and the planks of the hull were then sewn to the ribs. This sounds like Chesneys 1850 description of the construction of a tranki, quoted by Agios (2002; 73), and the same method of construction as a Musandam batiil. One of the Kumazarah boatbuilders in Khasab described the Musandam batiil to have the same basic design as the shahuf, except that shahuf have been nailed for a long time. The differences are that in the batiil, the stem and stern posts are sewn in, and have a steering oar or an extended rudder, making them very seaworthy in rough seas and winds. The people of the sea, men who had owned, crewed and built boats were interested in what they had done with boats, in what boats enabled them to do. Older men spoke warmly about boats they had owned or used, and Villiers (1940; 19, 161 – 164, 276) describes the praise songs sung by crews of the big trading ships leaving and entering harbour, especially their home port. Agios (2002; 77, 133) gives a few lines of a lament by a Kalba poet on abandoned pearling vessels on the beach, and a couple of lines from a song sung when sailing at night by a Shihhi from Khasab. These songs and poems celebrated the sea, boats, seamen and their faith in God.

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3 Livelihoods and living on the coastal plains or sayh, and the sands Waters, soils, and livelihood options Sayh are literally spreads, spreads of gravels and silts brought down from the mountain drainage systems or wudiyan over the millenia, and the spread of flood flow waters or sayl over the surfaces of these gravels and silts, and sinking through them to the water table. People spoke of seeing waters flowing from sayh al-Jirri (jirri – to cause to flow) west of Ghayl and Idhn, past Khatt, to sayh as-Sirr, the plain inland of Ras al-Khaimah town, and on to the sea by way of the creeks. A local man explained, That flow of water starts at Shwayb on the border of Abu Dhabi and Sharjah, and more water comes into it from Dhib. It comes past Ghayl and takes in the water coming through Asimah and Mawrid, and then flows across the sayh to Hamraniyya, then Digdaga, Kharran, Umm al-Khayus, and lastly, the creek at Ras al-Khaimah town. Ive seen all this land covered with water flowing over the surface.

This flood flow is presumably the origin of the river shown on old maps, such as dAnvilles 1755 map, reproduced by Tibbetts (1978; plate 22). On the sayh east of Hamraniyya, an Ahl Ras al-Khaimi said, When I was a boy, it used to rain for a week at a time; I am not exaggerating, it is the literal truth. This wadi, Wadi al-Qudam, used to run with water that flowed into the creek at Ras al-Khaimah. The whole sayh was white with water. The rain came as storms, and when it rained, it was really cold, I can remember being really cold. After a storm, the water in the creek at Ras al-Khaimah town was nearly sweet, and in our house, we drank that water.

An elderly man at Rams also recalled that when he was a boy, after there had been storms in the mountains, his family drank the sweet water floating over salt water in Rams creek. Rainfall, matar, and flood flows, sayl, from the mountains also soak through the gravels and sands, building up and recharging underground water tables. These are the waters tapped by wells, tawi, for irrigated agriculture and for drinking water for people and animals. On the sayh, local people describe two general sorts of water; underground water and flowing

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surface water. Underground water is not considered to flow but to be maintained there by rock and soil structures, and to be permanent. At the same time, people know from experience that underground water levels are recharged by flood flows following heavy rains in the mountains, as demonstrated by rises in water levels in wells. These rises in well water levels occur in garden wells, normally around 3 m deep, and the deep wells, measured as so many mens heights, by the mountain foothills. People use their experience of storm flows and assumptions of long past storm flows, of the movements of water through soil types, and of rock formations that create water holding lenses when they talk of layers of stored waters held under the sayh. The permanent springs at Khatt and Habhab are a special hydrological feature and not a part of general expectations of water movement. Waters have qualities from the rocks and soils through which they flow: sweet or living, hayy; bitter, murr; salty, malih; sulphurous, kabriti; or gypsumy, jibs. Near the coasts, people talk of salt waters coming in underground from the sea and replacing fresh water in long periods of drought or, more recently, from over-pumping of well waters. Soils that have become salt can be washed free by repeated rains and flood flows. Soils, rocks, and water resources of the different sections of a sayh correspond to what has been brought down and deposited by flood flows over time. The coastal plains therefore display rough crescents of boulders and rocks, then smaller stones, gravels, and finally silts, until these merge into salt flats at the coast. Stony silts underlie these grades of deposited materials brought down by storms and floods from the mountains. A date garden owner in Shimal explained Sayl, flood, waters bring down boulders, hajar; gravels, hassa; and silts, tiin. The flood waters deposit the heaviest first, so boulders are dropped out first, then the heavier gravels, then the lightest, then the silts. This explains the conditions on the sayh. At the bases of the mountains are boulders, and under these are silts mixed with boulders. Further from the mountains the stones are smaller, then smaller still, they are gravels. Then only silts, and this explains the locations of the old date gardens at the lower ends of the flood channels in a crescent around Ras al-Khaimah. The upper parts of the flood channels used to have rainfed grain fields, where people had cleared boulders and stones from the silts brought down long, long ago. Trees like sidr, zizyphus spina-christi, grew along the flow channels, and samra, acacia tortilis, grew elsewhere, and that was the goats grazed. Ghaf, prosopis cineraria, and yuz, tamarix, grew on the silts.

Dews, nida, are common on the sayh and humidities, rutuba, are high for most of the year. These benefit trees, wild and cultivated, but cause mil-

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dews and rusts on grain crops. Wheat grown on the coastal plains does not store well. The more massive and higher the mountains, and the more extensive the drainage system, the larger the coastal plain or sayh. The sayh of Shaam, Ghalilah, and Rams are more limited than sayh al-Sirr inland of Ras al-Khaimah town and sayh al-Jirri to the south. Some places along the west coast of the Ruus al-Jibal, such as Bukha, Jadi, and Khasab have inland sayhs; on the east coast, so do Lima and Dibba. On the Shamailiyya coast, there are small coastal sayh at each little settlement, and larger plains inland of Khor Fakkan, Kalba and Khor Kalba, and the Omani enclave of Madha. The Batinah of eastern Oman could be seen as a series of huge sayh, reflecting the greater height and extent of the eastern Hajar and Jabal Akdhar mountain ranges. Sayh are grazing, or rather browsing, lands in this region and so regarded as dead land in Islamic law, because there is considered to have been no development to make the natural more productive. In customary and tribal law, they were recognised as developed for livelihood based on animals and on rainfed grain production. Tribal families and groups had, in the recent and far past developed, or acquired, deep wells; cleared and walled grain fields, and made water channels to take flood water to these fields; built houses and granaries; managed trees by coppiceing and/or lopping; and by seasonal movements, enabled trees to regenerate and seed. These developments were owned in customary law and managed by established social practice. Away from the mountains, on areas of deep silts along flood channels, people established walled date gardens watered by yazara wells. Areas of date gardens are associated with tribal land and tribal owners for livelihood and profits, and with non-resident merchants as investments and worked by employed families, bayadir. On sayh as-Sirr around Ras al-Khaimah town, where there were concentrations of merchant owned date gardens, bayadir families were the communities associated with those gardens. This was also the situation in some Shamailiyya coastal areas, such as Dibba Husn and Qidfa, and Khor Fakkan and Kalba. In other sayh, like those at Shaam and Dibba Baiah, date gardens owned by non-residents and worked by bayadir were intermixed with date gardens owned by local families and worked by them. Employed date garden cultivators, bayadir, had the right to work nearby small rainfed grain or vegetable fields for a share of the crop, or outright if they had developed such small patches themselves. Grain and vegetable fields were parts of date gardens, or outside but near the gardens.

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Distinctions between areas of the sayh were made by a man in Ras AlKhaimah town. He contrasted the grazing areas (jirfal, which he explained as the same as jumlan, to roam with animals) inland from Maarid and north to Mataf, to nakhil, date gardens. A Bani Shimaili, describing the area of Shimal, said that before the area was known as Shimal, it had been called Jirfal, and before that, Sirr. Sirr has the meaning of the best part of, and so possibly the area of date gardens and/or trading town. Shimal means association and the use of this name was linked to an association of parts of Khanabila from the Shihuh with Bani Hasasna who already lived in that place.

Livelihoods and profits, maash wa faida, and living Information from users of sayh al-Sirr, inland of Ras al-Khaimah town; Dhaya, inland of Rams; Lima: Dibba Baiah; and places on the Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts. Sayh al-Sirr extends in an arc from Khatt and Habhab in the south to Shimal in the north. Khatt and Habhab are unlike other date gardens on this sayh, since their date gardens are watered by built channels, falay, from permanent springs. A resident explained The old date gardens are watered from three springs, channelled through the gardens and joined into one at the end. Water rights are measured in minutes, and known and recorded by the man responsible for the garden water, the saqqai. If an owner had spare water, he could sell it to another user. It is the same system at Habhab, only there some channels are covered. Only dates were grown at Khatt, there wasnt any room for grain.

Serjeant (1993; 495 – 6) noted in 1964 that gardens at al-Khatt had customary rights to a number of measures (qiyasat) of water. Each 24hour period had 48 qiyasat of unequal duration, measured by a sundial or the rising of certain stars. The saqqai was paid in dates, depending on the area watered. Tabur (1998; 366) was told by people at Khatt that they had grown grain on areas of the sayh east of al-Busta and in the area from Nadd Zabaa in the south to Umm Sadira in the north. It is probable that these areas had been developed as date gardens in the 1950s and 60s when wells could be dug with drilling rigs, and there was money for buying cheap imported flour. The earlier owners of the old Khatt date gardens were Naqbiyiin who had gardens and a tower in east Khatt and also owned places in the hills, and Awanat who had gardens and a tower at the west end; Zaab visited

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for the summer, buying dates for trade to India and East Africa; and Habus. Awanat were also traders, and had more gardens at Dibba Husn, where they were pearl traders, tawwash. The Awanat moved to Dibba Husn and Zaab bought the Khatt gardens for their household needs and for trade, and built a tower and a mosque. An elderly Awaini said, “A long time ago, Awanat owned west Khatt. We brought in Habus from places on the sayh as bayadir for the date gardens, and gradually they bought gardens.” An Imam described Khatt as a qurya, village, because it had a qadi, and four or five shops, all belonging to Iranian traders. The biggest Iranian trader was Abd al-Karim who had a stone built house with two windtowers. All the Iranian traders sold grain, rice and flour, and bought dates for trade. During the 1950s and 60s, new date gardens were developed using wells, and Habus bought or developed date gardens there. Well before Unification, the workers in the date gardens here were Pakistanis and Bangla Deshis brought in by Zaab traders. They werent bayadir but khawadim, servants; they were paid in dates, and it varied from a fifth to a tenth of the crop – every fifth or tenth sack was for the khadim. It was wages, not shares.

A Habus from Wadi Nahala commented: We had a date garden in the old gardens at Khatt; we certainly had it in my grandfathers time and I think for longer. All the work was done by members of the family. Khatt has always been confusing. People have always been buying and selling date gardens, and moving in and out.

Another Habus in Wadi Naqab said that in his youth, he had been an agent for a date garden in Khatt, and at that time many Habus had rented date trees or forward bought the crop of so many date trees at Khatt. Deep wells along the mountain edge were a feature of sayh al-Sirr. From south to north, these are Tawi al-Birr, Tawi Rabiya, Tawi Muhaylah, Tawi Harf against an isolated rock outcrop, and Tawi Burairat just inside Wadi Bih. People consider these wells belong to the mountains. Tawi Uraibi is on the sayh nearer Ras al-Khaimah town. The water of all these wells was for people and their animals to drink. These wells are significantly deeper than the wells in date gardens, and tap deeper underground water. The depth of these wells is reckoned in men. A Bani Ibrahimi at Burairat Dakhili said Tawi Burairat was thirty-five men deep, and had therefore required the use of plaited leather ropes to haul up the water; Tawi Rabiya was said by an owner to be twenty-six men deep. Both implied that the number of men used to signify the depth of each well was the number needed to clean out and repair the well, so it does not necessarily allow a calculation of number of men by height to give

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a depth of well. Who originally built these wells is unknown, and therefore they are said to be very old. It is possible the wells, because of their depth, may date from the early Iron Age. Information from the French archaeological team at Mlaiha suggests that when the wells were dug, they were probably two to three metres deep. The general soil level through which the wells were dug has increased in depth over time from deposited silts and gravels brought down by floodwaters and wind erosion from the mountains. The wells would therefore have been deepened by repeated excavation to the water table. From his own experience, an elderly Shamaili in Wadi Ghabbas corroborated this view, when he said, In my opinion, these now very deep wells started by men digging in the wadi gravels to a shallow water table. Very gradually, over time, these wells became deeper; partly from the repeated cleanings out of stuff brought down by flood waters and winds, partly because earth and gravels brought down by floods built up layers on the general surface of the soil – but that is very slow, as I mentioned when we were discussing fields. And partly, from changes in the weather; rainfalls and storms change; sometimes there are periods of heavy storms, sometimes rain falls as rain rather than in storms, sometimes there are long years without rain, and so the depth of water in these wells would rise or fall, and if they fell, people would dig down to the new water level. And so in all these ways, wells become deeper, and their depths now show how very old they must be – thousands of years.

Each of these wells is owned by families or sections of Shihuh or Habus. These wells dried up during the late 1960s, as the water table at the highest end of the sayh dropped from increased pumping lower down around Ras al-Khaimah town. Tawi al-Birr was deepened by a borehole and continues. It was said that water on the sayh was not a problem in the past; if a man dug down a metre or two, he would expect to reach water. There were no known falaj daudi, built underground channels bringing water from an underground source to gardens and common in wadi fans in Oman. A garden owner at Salhiyya said he thought he had an opening of a long disused and unknown falay daudi in his garden and that earlier, it had been possible to see more cleaning holes belonging to the falay daudi extending in a straight line towards the mountains, but because of the growth of scrub and housebuilding this was no longer possible. Two elderly Shihuh at Hail had heard of a long abandoned falaj daudi at Salhiyya or Fulayya, and assumed the mother spring had dried up. Falaj daudi in Oman were often built as part of land development by merchants or rulers, and it is known that not all were successful – the mother springs dried up, or there was never sufficient flow of water. Wil-

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kinson (1977; 83) suggested that the large cemented channel, the remains of which are visible and run from the mountains near Shimal across the Sirr plain before becoming lost in new buildings, was originally a built falay. Velde (2003) considers it to be the ditch for a wall of the Hormuzian period built to protect the date gardens and citadel of Qasr Zhaba, above Shimal. Local people are sceptical, as they consider a wall to keep out water from date gardens as implausible, and have always been told that it was a canal for ships. This sounds as unlikely, but there are references to an actual ship canal in coastal Iran (Lorimer) and Basra (Buckingham 1829; 362), and a ship canal was projected by Sultan b Sayf II, ruler of Oman from 1711 – 1719 (Wilkinson 1987; 221); ships were routinely hauled up narrow, shallow channels (personal communication at Khor Jerama, Oman); big trading ships routinely unloaded and the goods loaded onto small local boats of shallow draught; and the highest tides come in August, around the time trading ships arrived from India and Basra. Along the edges of the mountains and around the mouths of the wadis were grain fields, houses, granaries, animal shelters, and graveyards – the afraj of Habus and Shihuh sections. These places were used in winter, as the plains were warmer than the high mountain afraj. At Nahala, a Habsi recalled: We had fields, mazraat, on the sayh, where we grew red wheat; it grew well but suffered from the rusts, moulds, and mildews that come from the higher humidities on the sayh. And wheat wont tolerate a soil that is even faintly saline; barley will, nor does it mind dampness in the air. The fields were in groups across shallow flood flows at the mouths of the wadis, or in series along slightly deeper channels further out on the sayh. If the silt levels dont build up, and they tend not to in fields built across wide, shallow flows, there is no need to build a retaining wall. The purpose of walls is to retain water and silt. People build and rebuild their fields over time, as the situation in each field demands. We were here in the winters; in saif and after the gaith we were up on our mountain fields. In the gaith we were at the dates, in Khatt. I had a flock of two hundred goats, we were well off. Other families round here had flocks of a similar size. We didnt herd the goats, they were let out in the morning, they looked after themselves during the day, and came back at night. The summer humidities, rutuba, and dews, nida, are vital for the perennial plants and trees as they put forth a lot of new growth after the gaith, and encourage autumn grasses, so they benefit the animals. We made our profits by selling live goats and firewood in Ras alKhaimah town. A long time ago we had cows, but they were sold in the hard times before I was born. We lived well from our goats, and the cows when we had them, the grain, and the dates at Khatt. If we needed money, we sold an animal. The dates were stored at Khatt, and members

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of the family collected them as they needed; if there were any over, they were sold to anyone who wanted them. I had a house here, a house on the north side of the wadi, one on the south side, others at places high in the mountains, and one in Khatt. In my house here at the mouth of the Nahala, we had a khars, large storage jar, for grain, one for siyh which is what we call dried dates, and one outside for water, which came from our well at Tawi al-Birr. For cooking, we had a one munn, 4 kg, copper pot and a much bigger copper pot that held two goats. We had pottery cooking pots, qidr, too. One of these was kept for milk and we made ru¯b, yogurt; halib, which was salted milk and kept for up to a month; and dihhin, clarified butter. And we had some aluminium trays called Tas the animals drank out of. We bought some rice in Ras alKhaimah town. After the Maria Theresa thaler went, there were French riyals or rupees, but the ordinary coin was the wirsha. When I was a boy, we had more than one brass coffee pot, and one of them was big. On the floors we had affaf made from date palm leaves, and a big floor mat of date leaves called a mudda. We slept on these mats, and for bedding we had a long woollen rug, zuh, and covered ourselves with goathair blankets, sahr. If it was cold in the daytime, we wore the blankets. We slept on matari, long quilts filled with cotton that were laid out on the floor against the wall. These werent dawshak; matari had new cotton from the bolls that grew on perennial cotton bushes around the gardens in Khatt. We didnt have many clothes, I had a kandura which we called kiyura; we wore an ordinary white cloth on our heads; and we had a futa, a wizra, round our lower bodies. We made sandals, dakhkhas, from cured cowskin, and we also made belts, buckets for wells, and other items. We didnt have a farij graveyard here in the wadi, we buried people where they died, so our graves were scattered all over the place. We tanned leather ourselves. When we slaughtered a cow or goat, we removed the skin. To do this for a cow, the front and back hocks were cut off. The forelegs were slit up on the inner sides, and the same for the back legs, up to where the legs join the body. Then the belly was slit, and the skin peeled back and off. For a goat, the skin on the legs was split only halfway up, we loosened the skin with a fist, and then pulled it off over the animals head. A mixture of garrat (acacia arabica) pods and salt beaten together was rubbed into the hair on the skin and left. Then it was scraped with a piece of wood called ashkar, the hair came off, and left the skin beautifully white. Cowskins were used for buckets for yazara wells, belts, and sandals. Goatskins were used for waterbags, jirba, and bags for travelling. A jirba lasted for three years, provided it was coated with damm al-jarjir (literally, sharks blood, in reality shark oil). We made rope from goathair, both men and women made rope.

A Habus at Rabiya said, We had a date garden at Salhiyya owned between the family, from before the time of my grandfather. We grew dates there, a bit of millet for the animals, and a few vegetables. We sold cheese, clarified butter, dates, and fire-

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wood at Ras al-Khaimah town. Firewood was always dead wood. In dry years, the samra, acacia tortilis, stops what moisture there is going to all its branches, so parts of the tree die, and in floods and high winds trees are uprooted – samra have shallow roots. There were always dead trees or dead parts of trees. We grew wheat on the fields on the sayh and in the mountains, but we never sold any of it. Growing wheat on the sayh provided bread to eat but no profits. We got our profits from the animals, the date garden and the mountains. When I was a boy, we lived in our house inside the wadi here, although our fields were up at Slai. We moved up there for a couple of months in the winter, and for a couple of days at a time for the harvests, but our base was here. As well as the house we had a storehouse, makhzan, and a kitchen, mutbakh. In the house we had two or three large storage jars for dry dates, two or three for grain, and one for water inside and one for water outside. We had a cooking pot for aish, which was nearly always rice, one for fish, and one for milk. Up at Slai we had the same number of storage jars, but we took the cooking pots with us. On the floors we had date leaf mats, hazir. For sleeping, we had blankets we wove ourselves from goathair.

His wife added, Women made all the clothes with a needle and thread, sewing machines didnt come until later. There were the large jars, kharus, and small ones, about two feet high, for water, called khab. Pots with lugs, burma, were for water, milk, and clarified butter. Ones without rims or lugs were cooking pots, yidr. We made cheese in them, as well. Early every morning and every evening, we women milked the goats into a clean pot we kept for milk. For laban, the milk was left to thicken. For butter, we put the thickened milk into a skin bag or jirba, and shook it or rolled it back and forth until the butter came. To clarify it, the butter is boiled up with turmeric; the impurities are skimmed off, and thats it. Its delicious, we spread it on the hot bread as it comes out of the tannur. For cheese, we put the aud, swim bladder, of a fish in the milk and heat it for thirty minutes. Take it off the fire and leave until the curds, farina, come. Mix in some salt and squeeze the curds really, really dry, and there is the cheese. I dont ever remember eating fresh fruit, spices or sugar when I was a child.

That people living on the sayh by the mountains should make their profits from animals and firewood is obvious; but Naqbiyiin at Fahlain who owned date gardens said they too made their profits from animals and firewood. Here, an elderly Naqbi remarked: A family needs twenty to thirty yila of dates, one tree should give ten yila, so a family needs two to three trees. This is, of course, trees at their most productive, well cared for, and in an ideal growing season. In reality, a family had fifteen, thirty trees, or more. We did sell some dates here at Fahlain, which was the reason the three Zaab brothers, who were date traders, had their ghurfa here, so they were on the spot in the summer to buy and

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store surplus dates. They didnt own a garden here, we never sold date gardens to outsiders, we sell and buy gardens only between ourselves. We made our money from selling clarified butter and firewood in Ras al-Khaimah town. We had the date gardens, grain fields, and lots of goats; we had everything. We grew the date varieties Bil Hagug, Musalli, Khatmi, and Mushaishba for the animals; for people we grew Lulu, Ikhlas, and Barhi. Growing dates for animals was important here, for the quality of the milk for the butter, and it was the same at Khatt, where they sold fodder dates to bedu from the sands, and at other places, too. When we harvested wheat, we pulled up the plants and left them to dry for four or five days. Then the women separated the ears from the stalks, and the stalks were fed to the animals. Men threshed, we held a long stick in each hand, and we sang songs with a good rhythm, and we brought down first one stick, then the other. When we got to the end of the song, we used both sticks together and made growling noises in our throats. Grain was winnowed by hand. We used both hands as a scoop to lift the grain up high, then we let the kernels fall through our fingers and the chaff blew away. We didnt use sieves and we didnt throw the grain into the air, we lifted it and allowed it to fall. Flood waters, sayl, are very good for the date gardens. Flood flows are carried through the gardens in channels, musayla, and each garden along a channel has an entrance, mudkhal, for this water. The rights over sayl water were divided between the gardens along a sayl channel. Anyone who wanted to take water off for a new garden had to make an agreement and buy a right to a portion of flood water, measured in draa, with each existing owner. Occasionally, someone would take flood water by force, but there was no right to do this; the right went with negotiation and agreement. We lived well. In those days, a mun, 4 kgs, of coffee was a rupee. A Chinese coffee cup was more, I cant remember if it cost six or sixteen rupees, and most people had one. We took drinking water out of a wide-mouthed pot, a burma, with a brass cup. Qanad was the pearl of fish; and I also liked khabab and saifi. They were delicious cooked with dates, onions and limes. We bought our pottery at the market in Ras al-Khaimah and it came from Shimal; burma for water and for serving food; khars for storing dates and grain; qidr for cooking in; and finajil (sing. finjal) for drinking coffee from. We used a kuz, an earthernware pot that poured, for heating small amounts of water for washing; it was hung above the paraffin lamp, fannuus. Ghaf leaves are good for the stomach, and we ate them, chopped fine, mixed with rice, or made into cakes with rice and mashed fish. We ate sorrel, hammath, and sansur (purslane) as flavourings. When I was a young man, I went barefoot and wore a wizra and a kamis; my one kandura would last for five years. We had matchlocks, buffletira, swords and lances; later on, we had different sorts of rifles.

A garden owner at Salhiyya commented, We bought this garden about forty years ago, when it was run down and salty. There were years of heavy storms and good sayls, and the salts were

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washed out of the soil and the water. The soil here is clay, we brought in loads of sand to lighten it, a traditional practice, and the sand helps the water to move through the soil. There is a deep hole in the garden that we can never fill, and I am convinced it was an opening for a falay daudi, a built underground channel bringing water from an unknown spring in the mountain foothills. We used to be able to see similar holes in a line back to the foothills, but there has been so much development it is impossible to see them now. A quarter of the garden grows dates, five varieties that do well here and ripen over a long period. The family and neighbours eat the good dates, and the animals have those the birds and insects have got at. On the rest, we grow alfalfa and barley for the animals, and if there have been good rains we grow a commercial vegetable crop. Some years, with no rains, we have only the dates. It is dates that keep a garden; fodder crops and vegetables for sale are extras and unreliable. There is a huge vocabulary about dates, mostly about ages and the productive capacities of trees, so that gardens, trees and their crops can be described when people want to sell and buy or rent.

This comment raises two points common to date gardens in this area and in general. Firstly, while people expected to reach water anywhere on the sayh at three metres, they recognised that this fresh water often floated on salt, and could be infiltrated by salt if too much fresh water was taken from a well, or if there was not enough rain or flood water to recharge the fresh waters. In this area, the problem of gardens becoming salt was not new, it was long established, and over time, could be reversed. Secondly, although date gardens were said to be commercial, the productivity and quality of dates in the area was highly variable; the purchase of date gardens by traders and other outsiders provided secure subsistence in a basic food resource for the owners and workers, since a complete failure of the date crop was unknown and dates could be eaten even if not particularly nice. This seemed to have been one reason for ownership by many traders, they did not have to buy this large part of human and animal subsistence and the garden itself was a useful capital purchase. For others, owning a date garden was a means to have a house and store complex, ghurfa, faciliating buying up local surpluses of dates for trade in Ras al-Khaimah town or further afield. In tribally owned date garden areas, as at Fahlain, traders could only buy building land for a ghurfa, and then buy up local dates for trade. A garden owner commented, Lots of people were involved in the date trade. Rutub, nearly ripe dates, were a really big trade item, and still are. The first rutub come here from Oman from the end of April and through May. In June and July the varieties here, which ripen later, are ready as rutub, and some were shipped down to

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Masqat. Good quality dry dates were always in short supply here. Dates need high summer humidities to ripen well, plump and juicy, and make more syrup; the east coast has winds off the sea in summer which dry out the dates: here on the west coast, where the gardens arent right on the coast but inland a bit, sometimes we might be lucky with the weather but often, we arent. Khatt dates were the best local dates. People kept their nice dates and sold the nasty ones to whoever would buy them. Or they would sell all their dates and buy Basra dates; if you couldnt afford to buy Basra dates, then you ate your own.

Several people in Ras al-Khaimah town pointed out that the date gardens around the town, at Nakhil, Ghubb, Uraibi, Hudaybah, and Qusaydat, were owned by anyone who could afford to buy one – locals, shaikhs, Iranian traders, people from Abu Dhabi or Dubai, anyone. In Qusaidat, a man from a trading family identified an old two storey house or ghurfa and its tower as the summer house of Said al-Shamsi, a member of the merchant family, at his date garden; his winter house was in Ras al-Khaimah town. His own grandfather, like most traders, had the same pattern of living; a summer house in his date garden, a winter house in the town. An elderly trader in Maarid remarked that in the past, We had everything we needed; there were fish in the sea for the catching, we all had cows and goats for milk, and everyone here had a date garden at Nakhil or elsewhere. Anyone who could owned date trees – traders, fishermen, rulers, bedu, anyone; date trees were a sensible thing to have.

These comments indicate that as many owners of date gardens in the above localities lived at their gardens only in high summer, the date gardens were cultivated by employed workers, bayadir, who lived at the gardens, as mentioned by Lorimer (1908; 2, 1825). A local historian of Hudaiba said some gardens there were owned by local families, because “some families rise in the world and can buy, and others go down and have to sell”, while other bayadir families had lost the gardens they had formerly owned through debt and then were employed as workers. He described a system of exchange of dates, grain and vegetables from garden workers in Hudaiba to fishermen of Ras al-Khaimah, in return for fish; a mutualistic network between local communities existing alongside market forces. The Maarid trader distinguished garden and tree; people could buy a garden, and they could also buy or inherit a tree or trees in a garden. Indeed, through inheritance by equal shares for men and half shares for women, any garden was likely to become shared over time; conversely, some gardens were bought in shares between coowners.

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A Zaabi recalled, We had gardens everywhere in the sayh between Jazirat al-Hamra and Ras al-Khaimah town. In the 1960s and 70s, the men went to the market in Ras al-Khaimah town to check on the bayadir women selling the vegetables, and they visited the ruler, and did what business they had and so on, and went home with rice and fish. The women made the breakfast, took the goats out for four or five kilometres into the sayh and left them there, collected some firewood on their way back, made the lunch, cleaned the place up a bit, dealt with the milk and made the butter, and about sunset the goats straggled back and were milked again. Our gardens were cultivated by bayadir. When we needed a bayadir family, the garden owner went to a respected baidar, perhaps the Imam, and asked him to recommend a strong, worthy and pious baidar family. There were plenty of baidar but a garden owner wanted a good family.

In Hudaiba, a young local historian commented, My father came from Ghubb. Being a baidar, a garden worker, was an asil, an authentic, respectable occupation. Men of asil families certainly made their livings as bayadir. There is nothing shameful in being a baidar although obviously someone who works as a baidar and cheats the owner behaves shamefully. A baidar was a man who didnt have any land or not enough land, and so worked on someone elses land for a share and a small wage, and had responsibilities. Often, the owner was away or lived elsewhere, so the baidar was like his agent. A khadim was paid a wage only and he had no responsibility. And there were abid who were usually black, although not all blacks were abid. The baidar got a wage, a set of clothes at the Id, and food; he did the vegetable garden, which supplied the owners household and the baidar did what he liked with the rest – supply his own family, sell it – and he looked after the dates and got a share which was negotiated once the size of the harvest could be seen. Baidar described a mans work, it was like saying someone was a seaman; a seaman might own a boat or be a crew member who owned nothing. Bayadir could own land, gardens, fields in other places and might employ a baidar to work them. Anyone could work as a baidar, fishermen, seamen, their sons, metalworkers and their sons ….. anybody. A baidar could work extra bits of unused land, parts of a date garden, or a bit of land outside, and in the end make enough money to buy land. That was common. Some people manage to buy gardens, other people have to sell gardens. Hudaiba in the past was rich, able to live from its resources. It had the best gardens, and its people were Ahl al-Mazairia, cultivators. It was made up of five harat. Harat al-Janubiya was the biggest, where the Qattan lived. They built the original mosque, which has been rebuilt several times since, but still called Masjid Qattani. Harat al-Hawi had its houses and gardens surrounded by a wall, said to have been built by the man who was the Amir of Hudaiba before the Qattan took over. Its mosque is called Masjid ibn Yunis, but no-one knows who he was. Harat bin Jaysum had the Ghurfa

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bin Bilal, but it has now gone. Harat Sharqiyya has the huge and very old cemetery in the area called al-Rashaidiyya.

In Shimal, a Murri remarked: In the past, the winter vegetables used to be grown almost entirely from rainwater, even though people had pumps. And we didnt need to water the date trees much in the winter, perhaps twice a month if there wasnt any rain. That was because in those days the soils held water, there was a water table not too far underground. You could tell this by looking at the grasses on the sayh. When I was a boy, the grasses on the sayh were a metre high, and people used to collect the grasses and made them into ropes twisted into balls which they sold on the coasts for animals. The coasts didnt have grasses, but the sayh did. When my father was a little boy, he didnt have to worry about raiders or kidnappers when he was out playing because they couldnt see him in the grass, it was over his head. The grasses grew so high because the soils held water. Now they dont; theres some rain and all the grass that comes up is just a thin fuzz.

A Shamaili said, There are no problems about digging a well on land one owns, and some gardens have two or even three wells. There is no way in which this would deprive ones neighbours of water. Wells are lined with stone if they are dug in soft soils or gravels. In the past, wells were dug by the hashid, a group of family, neighbours and people from the local community. There was no special skill needed, just hard work. In the gardens on the sayh, all wells were yazara wells (fig. 9; 595), and sited on a slight rise or mound. The well head was a strong framework of date tree trunks standing on squares of flat mortared stones, and the framework supported a pulley wheel and a wooden roller for the rope. A rope went from the handle of the skin bucket over a wooden pulley wheel to the bulls yoke, and a second rope went from the bottom of the skin bucket, round the roller, and to the bulls yoke. The bull walked down the excavated bullwalk and so raised the bucket out of the water in the well. When the bull reached the end of the bullwalk, the water bucket was at the top of the well and tipped out the water into a basin, from which a channel carried each bucketful of water to the holding tank. The bull was turned round and walked up the slope, thus lowering the bucket down the well to the water, the depth of water in the well corresponding to the length of the bullwalk. From the holding basin, hawtah, water could flow to the main channels, and then to secondary channels, saqiyya, that take the water to individual trees, by removing stones or other blockages of rags at distribution points along the channels (fig. 10; 596).

Other men pointed out that the number of trees a bull could water depended on the season of the year and the temperature, the ages and varieties of the trees, the soil, the numbers of bulls available, their age and

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strength. According to the amount of watering to be done, people had one, two or three bulls who worked different hours. In the summer, trees needed to be watered roughly every four days; in the winter, up to every eight days. Like people in other date garden localities, those in Shimal made their profits from dates, but also grew grains and vegetables, like onions, black carrots, white radishes, sweet potatoes, and chard, sallum, in fields on rainwatered land. A Shamaili explained, Before, everyone used to cultivate grain. The men went to the fields, or the gardens. The women did the work around the house and then they came to the fields. Everyone worked together, but the men tilled the soil with a hais pulled by two bulls. Men sowed the seed, and the women and children came along behind and covered the seed. They brought the animal manure and spread it, and they weeded. At harvest time, men cut the grain, and the women and children tied it into sheaves.

Families kept two to eight cows and goats for milk and dairy products and for manure for the garden. These animals browsed on the sayh during the day, and came back in the evening to be milked, watered and fed by the women, and were housed in hawsh or zariba, shelters of stone, mudbrick, or arish, in yards. Surplus clarified butter, cheeses, and vegetables were sold in the market. Some families owned more than one garden or had shares in other gardens; informants had different opinions on how many date trees a family needed, possibly because some were talking of food requirements while others were including date sales for profits. Figures ranged from eight trees to fifteen for subsistence, twenty trees were considered to give a surplus, while some owners were said to have a hundred or more trees. Most also owned rainfed grain fields, where they grew red wheat for the family, and barley for the bulls. The grain and vegetable fields were ploughed by two bulls pulling a hais, but some remembered that earlier people had used an ardh pulled by one bull. The ardh was a light plough which cut only a shallow furrow suitable for grain. The hais had two arms and could be adjusted by attaching a rope to the upper handle for deeper tilling or to the lower handle for shallow tilling. Wheat and barley were harvested in March, with the stalks cut just below the ears. Later on, the stalks along with the dry grasses and annuals that had grown up were cut and fed to the animals. Several people commented that there were two harvests, one of grain for people and the other of fodder for the animals. Summer crops on these fields were watermelons, long

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watermelons or yeh, and brush millet, dhurra. The other millet, dukhn, was grown for grain if there had been only late rains. Date trees were important, supplying many needs. A Shamaili garden owner explained, The parts of the date tree are these. The heart, gulb, is the point of new growth. The stem from which the dates hang are the asga, the same word as wrist and a milking breast, anything from which useful things come forth. The stem with leaves is yarid, the leaf is khus. Upright young stems are khafawi, drooping stems are haws. The wide bases of the stems when they have been taken off the trunk are qarb. The trunk is jida, yida, and the trunk fibre is liif. Offshoots are gatia, fasila, or digla. The scrubby rootlets are irq, uruq, and also the words for veins in the body and for toes. The uses of the various parts – liif and asga make ropes. Yarid are used for making arish, and have many other uses in the gardens. Qarb are used for fuel. Khus or khaws are used in arish, mats, baskets, foodcovers, sacks, fans, and so on. Women made the mats, sacks, baskets and so on. They took the leaves off the stems, split them and soaked them, and dyed those they wanted coloured. Then they made the big food mats, sarut, and the conical food covers. They made lots of different baskets, and mats which were hung on the walls of arish as well covering the floors. And they made the date sacks, jibba. Uruq were burnt when making mortar and added into the mudbricks used in the lowest courses of a wall. Yida were sawn lengthways into quarters and used as roof beams. Date trees gave us almost everything we needed for houses and furnishings. After the date harvest, the next work is to clean up the garden. The old branches, yarid, are cut off using a shikna, a chisel, and a miyya, mallet. The yarid are trimmed of leaves and got ready for sale. The liif is taken off, and in the past it was put on one side ready for ropemaking. All the fallen stuff is picked up and burnt. We till the ground lightly between the trees using a mattock, maqsafa, or a light plough, hais. It is important not to dig or plough too deeply in date gardens, the roots of the date trees must not be damaged and they are near the surface. Most ploughs were pulled by one or two bulls. Next, we put fertiliser, animal dung or dried small fish, round each tree. If we are making new beds, we use a kraz, a light grader worked by two men. From February onwards, depending on the variety and where the garden is situated, the female flowers start to come and they have to be pollinated, nabat, by hand with a male flower, fahl. When the seeds are visible in the female flower, the owner checks the male flowers for pollen. Male date trees are always grown on the outside of the garden. If someone doesnt have a male date tree or his male flowers have no pollen, he buys male flowers, there are always people selling male flowers at that time of year. We put suitably sized pieces of the male flower into the female flowers and tie them in. The next job is taking off the offshoots from the trees, and these are sold or planted. If they are planted, they take a month to settle and start rooting, and during that period we tie up their leaves so that they arent shaken and disturbed by the wind. And there is always the watering; we use maqsafa

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and tawriyya, which are also called bil, for clearing the water channels to the trees and for banking up earth. Maqsafa have pointed ends, tawriyya have blunt ends. If a garden is on soft soil, date trees need earth and stone supports, kursi, to anchor them against the winds. And of course, after storms and floods, there might well be walls to repair. There are several stages of ripening. When the dates are ripe, some are picked as rutub, but most are left to ripen properly for drying. When the dates are fully ripe, the bunches are cut from the branches by the men, using a curved saw or das. A date cutter climbs up the tree trunks using a padded belt that goes round the tree and his own waist. The cut bunches are laid out on clean mats or sacks on the date drying floor or musta to dry in the sun for a few days. Then the women pick the dates off the stems and put them into sacks. The sacks are left to settle for a day or two. Then they are stored in the stone or mudbuilt date store, called bakhkhar, makhzan, or hijra. For syrup, dibs, the sacks are stacked on plaster plinths, jabiya, built on a plastered platform with runnels leading to a hole, where you put a jar or pot. We call the pile of stacked sacks sadjit. The syrup flows into the pot and it is collected every day for about six weeks while the weather is still hot at the end of the summer, the time of rabiya. Then the dibs is stored in jars or tin tanks for the family, given away, sold, whatever, and the paste, sirri, that is left is also for eating. We treat dry dates in other ways, too. For mudabbas you need dates that have dried hard, dibs, ginger, and sesame; we heat the syrup and flavourings and pour this over the dry dates in their storage jar. The dry dates absorb the flavoured syrup, and then they are ready. Tamr madjus are dates pounded to a paste, packed in a storage jar that is sealed with mud and left. Bassal can be made only from Khunaizi, Qash Ruhaibi, and Qash Jaafar; the dates are picked unripe, washed thoroughly, dried in the sun for four to five days, and boiled. People here just do a little for the children, but in parts of Oman it is a huge commercial business. We always used bayadir for date garden work. They worked a yearly contract and always for cash. Mountain men, Shihuh and Habus, were never bayadir in Shimal or the gardens of Nakhil, although they may have worked as bayadir elsewhere. Bayadir were free agricultural workers with no land of their own. Some of them here in Shimal were Baluch. Here – Shimal, Hudaiba, Ghubb, Uraibi, and Qusaidat – they were permanently without land because the land was date gardens, commercial, bought and sold. Anyone could buy a date garden here. Bayadir had yearly contracts which included their whole family. Contracts varied and might include a couple of date trees and a small amount of land for their own use. Being a baidar was the only work available then, although a young man might do a trading voyage as crew. For grain and vegetable farming, we made share contracts with bayadir; we provided everything, they provided the labour, and the division of the harvest was fifty-fifty.

A local man pointed out that most of the women selling vegetables and things at Ras al-Khaimah market were wives of bayadir. Although the

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bayadir were paid and provided with all the basic foods, they always wanted money for salt fish, or extra sugar and tea, and that money came from the vegetables and stuff the women sold. Another date garden owner said, We used to have big vegetable gardens, worked by family members and people from the jamaa, the local community, who were either paid cash at ten riyals a month, or we made share partnerships with them. People here with a lot of land had it worked by local young men whose families didnt need their labour. We made a share agreement with one young man for this piece of land, and with a second for that piece, and so on. This was for grain and vegetable crops, work on date trees was always paid, it was never in shares. The young men were fellahin, tillers of the soil, we were all fellahin, bayadir dont exist.

Gardens were abandoned because the water became salty or from quarrels over inheritance. As people also develop new gardens, the gardens of a locality shift over time. The Amir of Shimal Fowk pointed out that eighty to ninety years ago, gardens and summer houses were around the tower northwest of the present gardens. A Shamaili commented, Trees were never cut down, they were coppiced or pollarded depending on whether we wanted long thin poles or thick poles. On the sayh, they cut samra, but around the date gardens we cut mostly ghaf, prosopis cinareria; sidr, zizyphus spina-christi; or juz, tamarix aphylla. If we wanted long thin poles, we cut right back to the main trunk. For thick poles, we cut out the main trunk. Depending on the size of the trunk when it is cut, there will be from five to twenty shoots coming up; it takes three to four years for a stem to grow to 10 cm diameter. The long thin poles are used for plant supports or for frames, and the thick ones for poles, rollers for wells, tool handles, ladders, window bars, arish and zariba, whatever we needed. And we, like other people on the sayh and the sands who owned camels, lopped ghaf trees to feed camels when there had been poor rains. We took off the tops and the ends of big branches. By the end of the summer, there were new shoots and flowers where the branches had been. All that regrowth came from the moisture in the summer humidities. And we ate those new shoots, the leaves and flowers were stripped off and chopped very, very finely. Pounding is no good. Then the leaves were scattered over rice, they were very good. Building arish was easy. First, we put four poles at the corners; the length was up to the builder, but the width was always four metres – which is the length of chandal. Then we dug a trench a draa, which is from elbow to finger tip, down around all four sides. Next, we tidied up the date branch stems, yarid, by cutting off any knobbly bits, buried their ends in the trench and shovelled the earth back in, so the yarid more or less stood up. Then we put yarid horizontally along each wall at a third

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and two-thirds of the height, and the top, and tied them in to the upright yarid so the walls were firm and upright. Then the roof beams went on, which were often chandal but could be local woods like juz, ghaf, or sidr, or quartered date tree trunks. The roof beams were covered with date leaf mats, and that was the roof. Womens arish were built from khaws, date branches with the leaves on, and they always had a bit cut off for a washroom. A well built arish lasted four to five years. Arish here never had built in floors or were built up on legs. People also built arish for their son and his wife when they got married, until they got the hashad to build the couple a mudbrick house.

Some Baluch now resident in Shimal Tahat lived from metal working. One said, I was a travelling smith, haddad. We travelled in family groups with our tools and the donkeys. We did all sorts of metal working and some silver smithing. We used to go to Shaam for a couple of months, then to Rams, then Shimal, then Khatt. We were always on the move, we didnt have a base. There were other groups like us with their own circuits. Groups who are now in Fujairah had metal working circuits on the Shamailiyyah coast.

Some elderly men remembered obtaining nails, iron door work, tools and weapons from metalworkers, described as zuttut or gipsies, or haddadiyiin, smiths, at the markets in Ras al-Khaimah town or Rams. Others remembered haddadiyiin from Shimal travelling around farij on the coastal plain and the foothills. A Qiyaishi Shihhi at Kubda behind Rams recalled, All the metalwork was made and repaired by Baluch smiths from Shimal, who went around all these places. They also brought sulphur, kabrit, and caps; we used the sulphur to mix with our own charcoal and sugar to make gunpowder, and we filled the caps with the gunpowder. If a man had a rifle, he needed caps; if he had a matchlock, bufflatira, he didnt, and that was why they went on for so long.

A few Shamaili were carpenters making pulley wheels for wells, tool handles, doors, and wooden stocks for guns, assembling the barrels from metal parts imported from India. One elderly mans father had been a gunsmith and a potter, and owned a date garden. Some Khanabila Bani Shamaili at Shimal Fowk lived from their date gardens and pottery made for profits, and had mountain fields for grain; other Khanabila Shamaili lived from the mountains. The Amir of Shimal Fowk explained, A potter, fukhkhar, and a rafiqa (literally, companion) formed a sharika, a partnership. The potter made pots and the rafiqa dug out the clays and collected up the ishbaq, euphorbia larica, for fuel and delivered the clays and

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fuel to the potter. There were at least four kinds of clay in different places in the mountains, and these were mixed in varying proportions for different kinds of pots. Maybe the rafiqa would have to bring a hundred mun of that sort, fifty of another and forty of a third sort. The clays for containers and for cooking pots were different. Cooking pots used soft clays, water jars and containers used hard clays which broke if they were heated. The pots were made on a wooden turntable, dawra, which stood on a pedestal, kursi, which the potter turned by hand to get to the next place he wanted to work at.

An elderly Shamaili recalled, When I was a boy, I helped get clay and ishbaq for the kilns, muharrig. There were always two potters; the ustadh or mahar who was the experienced specialist, and the kuuli who was learning, and usually a young relation. None of the potters worked at it fulltime, everyone of them had mountain fields, and animals, and sometimes a date garden. It was winter work mostly, it needed rainfall in the pottery cisterns for washing the clays. These cisterns were oblong and shallow, not like proper cisterns for storing drinking water. The whole business of getting the clays and fuel down, beating the clays with long sticks, washing it, pounding up the grits and adding them to the mixes, then making the pots, and then the drying, decorating and firing took a month or more. Our family had three or four places to get different clays. When I was doing this, the potters were using the kilns in Wadi Hajil, but before that, there had been series of kiln sites at different places further west in Wadi Hajil, and also to the south. Our kilns had a side door for inspecting the pots to see if they were ready, and the front walls of the kilns had to be rebuilt quite frequently. Before the kiln was fired, it was covered with what we called breads, flat handfuls of rough clay.

The Shamaili potters of Wadi Hajil made a large repertoire of items; storage jars, cooking pots, water jars with spouts, burma for milk and water, two-handled serving dishes, flattish plates for pounding plant medecines, and rainwater pipes for roofs (Lancasters; 2111a). The Amir of Shimal Fowk explained, “In the past, people lived in or right by their gardens. They had winter houses and summer houses, and both were built from stone or mudbrick. Winter houses had a few small windows high up with wooden shutters, summer houses had big windows, daarisha, set low in the walls.” An elderly man described building houses, Stones for building are hassa. The builder takes the stones, puts one on top of the other, and uses mortar, yuss, between the stones. Mudbricks, tabbakh, were made from mud, tiin, mixed with chopped straw, tibben, shaped by hand, and dried in the sun. The builder, who was usually the owner, drew the outline of the building in the earth. Along the lines he and his helpers made a little platform of sundried mud and built up the walls with the bricks, putting mud mortar between them. We added the aruq, the scrubby

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little bits at the bottom of date trunks, to the mudmix for the lower courses of bricks, it made them stronger. The best earth for bricks came from Umm al-Khayyus in Kharran, the big hole made there by people taking earth away can be seen to this day. Most people didnt get their earth for bricks from there but they did try to use that mud for the roofs. The roof was made from wooden beams and here we used quartered date tree trunks. Then there was a layer of date branch stems with their leaves; the next layer was this Umm al-Khayyus mud, packed down; and the final layer was fine gravel from the wadi bed. To make yuss, we dug a pit, and into the pit went old dry cow dung from the byre, zariba; then a good layer of fresh damp cowdung, daras; the last layer was a really thick layer of date branches. We set this on fire and it had to burn for two to four days, and it collapsed in on itself. Then it was yuss. It was mixed with water and used for mortar or plaster. My mudbrick house was built by my grandfather; it has two rooms, a living room, and a mens room or majlis, which was also a store. The kitchen was separate, and there was always a wall around the buildings to keep the animals out. When someone built a mudbrick house, they used the mud that was already there from an earlier building. If they were adding a new room they brought in more mud. Not all the mud got used and that was why all mudbrick houses are on bigger or smaller tell.

A young man in Shimal Taht pointed out a complex of mud buildings known to be more than a hundred years old, called as-Siba, the watch tower (fig. 7; 592 – 593). The outer face of the walls was coated with a heavy mud plaster, hassa, made from gravel and sand from wadi beds. The interior faces of the walls were plastered with fine white plaster, jiss. As-Siba had been the centre of Shimal Taht, but centres move over time. Another Shamaili recalled, When I was a boy, the whole area between where the Baluch live and Tell Kush and the main road used to be date gardens, and people lived in their mudbrick houses in their gardens. The old houses were so nice, plastered with yiss on the inside and sometimes on the outsides as well. Our neighbours were close to us through women, women made our neighbours. This was so wherever we were living, because we moved between gardens to do the work. Sharing food and dropping in happened all the time then.

On the small sayh inland of Rams, the date gardens at Dhaya were owned by Ramsawis as a strand of their largely sea-based multi-resource economy, supplying a basic food. Ramsawis appear to have regarded their Dhaya gardens as providing subsistence, not profits. However, the bin Salih family, former rulers of Rams up to the mid 1940s, were said to have been traders who lived from dates, and they had owned gardens at Dhaya. A few Ramsawis, Shihuh, owned date gardens in Dibba Baiah. Not every family owned a date garden or even trees in a garden,

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but buying a date garden was an aim for some retiring pearlers or traders. Older family members or neighbours often cultivated the date gardens, but if there was no-one, the owners employed bayadir every year or for one particular year, depending on available family labour. Earlier, some cultivated grain and vegetables in the date garden, most had rainfed grain and vegetable fields outside the date garden. Sayl water from the mountains behind the gardens is important. The sayh in Dhaya is shorter and rises more steeply than Sayh as-Sirr. Its sayl flow faster but for less time so the musaylah, the channels to the gardens, are more structured and incorporate weirs to slow the flows. Many gardens have a holding tank for water at the side of the sayl entrance; the first flow of flood waters, carrying all the summer rubbish, is sent past this holding tank straight to the gardens themselves, but the second flow is let into the holding tank, jabbiya, as it is more or less clean. Leaves and soil particles sink to the bottom, and the water is used for drinking. Most drinking water was collected by the women from deep wells behind the old gardens. Some Tunaij women explained, “The water in garden wells is slightly salty. Its fine for the date trees, washing and cooking, and animals, but not for drinking. The water in the deep wells in the wadis is sweet. It was part of womens work to get drinking water.” There were two groups of wells, one called Tawi Audh ar-Rams, the refuge of Rams, and the other, Tawi al-Wird, the watering place; both are now dry. A Ramsawi said, Garden work at Dhaya was done by bayadir who were mostly local men who didnt have enough land, young men who wanted money or whose family couldnt feed them, or mountain men who had had a bad harvest. They did all the tree work, except for the harvesting, and they were paid in dates and got their keep. All workers were contract workers, whether the contract was written or not. Partnerships, sharaka, were unknown except between close relations who split different sorts of work between them and shared the proceeds. There were fields owned by Tunaij which were rented by people who wanted land, like bayadir. They rented for a year, provided everything, grew what they wanted, harvested everything, paid the rent in money or an equivalent, and the contract ended.

Another garden owner remarked, “There was nothing to stop bayadir or their sons becoming traders or fishermen, anything they wanted, getting land or animals of their own. People who stayed bayadir didnt have much initiative. When men went to work in Kuwait from the end of the 1940s, the women looked after the gardens. If a man could afford it, he em-

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ployed a baidar to do the date work, but his wife supervised the worker.” A Tunaij said that Tunaij had bayadir and khawadim working for them in the gardens. The only other mention of khawadim at Rams was in relation to the bin Salih family of Tunaij, the former rulers of Rams who had extensive gardens at Dhaya. And an elderly Ramsawi commented, “When I bought my date garden in the 1960s, I employed Bangla Deshis to do the work, because they were a quarter of the price of employing bayadir – and most of them had gone to work in Kuwait anyway.” A Tunaiji explained, We lived in Rams in the winters, and in the summers everyone – or nearly everyone – was at the date gardens in Dhaya. In their date gardens, people had a sabla, a makhzan, a siyam, and a hawsh or zariba. The sabla was for the men and built on the very edge of the garden above the wadi, so usually there was a breeze blowing through. It was built of mudbrick with a roof of samra beams and yarid, and very large openings low down in the walls. These openings were called daarisha, and they had screens of yarid. The makhzan, the store, came next, and was built of mudbrick or stone and mudbrick. Then there might be a mutbakh, a kitchen; then the womens arish, and then the animal shelters, the hawsh or zariba. So all the buildings were placed to fit with what men and women did, and to give the women privacy. People washed in gitaa, cut-off sections, in the sabla and arish. The trouble with summers wasnt so much the heat but mosquitoes. We slept on siyam, sleeping platforms, because the houses were too hot. We covered ourselves with thin cloth dipped in water and wrung out. If you had been working hard during the day, you got to sleep before you noticed the mosquitoes. We didnt get ill from mosquito bites. In general, people were far less ill then than they are now, because they didnt have time to be ill.

Some Tunaij women said, We worked hard, we were busy all the time. In the mornings, we fetched the water from the deep wells in the wadi. In the afternoons, we collected firewood from the sayh, chopping out dead branches and cutting them up. I fell out of a tree when I was seven months pregnant, and I lost that baby. Hauling up water caused miscarriages too. We looked after the cows and goats and milked them morning and evening. We supervised the bayadir in the garden – we didnt do the work, but we had to know what to do, and when, and ensure it was all done properly. We baked bread, and often we had to thresh the wheat, winnow it and grind it; threshing and winnowing were horrible, so dusty and prickly. Usually we made tannur bread, but sometimes we made jamriyya, baked in the ashes of the fire. And we also made khamira, leavened bread baked on a round metal sheet over the fire. We cooked bread and fish, and chami and butter. Chami is cows milk, heated very slowly so it thickens; its really good and creamy. We made all the clothes for everyone and embroidered them. For washing clothes, we used dried and pounded yas leaves that come from the mountains (yas is often used for myr-

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tle and was imported from Iran for washing and bathing in the early 19th century, but may well be used locally for lavender species growing in the Ruus al-Jibal) or loz (Indian almond) leaves. For washing our hair, we used dried and pounded sidr leaves, tied up in a cloth and rubbed onto our wet hair. It makes your hair clean and it shines and smells nice. Dai, a resin from a mountain tree, we used for washing our bodies; when you rub it onto wet skin, it lathers. And there was soap from Syria, it came down from Kuwait. And we used hinna, which does grow in the gardens, but usually we bought it. And we knew about cures and sprains and broken limbs, we did all that. We used plant materials from the mountains and a few things we bought. And we looked after the children, of course.

There are series of abandoned gardens on the sayh south of Dhaya. An elderly Ramsawi said of one group, “Those gardens were abandoned a long time ago. My father had no memory of there ever having been even dead stumps of trees there, or any knowledge of who had owned them.” A very elderly Mahbib from a farij in the foothills commented: They were mostly date gardens, you can tell by the walls and the shape of the water inlets, and the depressions where wells were. I remember my father saying his father had said the water had first gone akk, bad, salty, and then dried up, and that happened about the same time the spring at the back dried. That was about two hundred years ago.

Other groups of mixed date, grain and vegetable gardens were said to have been abandoned after the hungry years in the early 1940s, when men left to work in Kuwait, and yet others after being inundated by salt water in the storms of the late 1940s and 50s. On the coastal plain at Ghalilah, a Shihhi said there had been an enclosed area, with walls from mountain outcrops to the north and south, inside which people brought their possessions when there were raiders around. Another explained, People lived in their stone houses up against the feet of the mountains in the winters when they were cultivating their fields, there were three farij of ten to fifteen houses. Everybody had grain fields, waab, in the foothills along the sayh and higher up. I could name you hundreds. Some of the waab had falay, by which I mean channelled flows from seasonal seeps. In the early summer they moved down to the coast, the houses on the ridge by the sea, if they were fishing. In the gaith, people moved to their date gardens or to the beach ridge. We grew wheat and barley outside the date gardens, and two wheat varieties were daulaki (d-l-k – to knead) and subaiti (s-b-t – ears, clusters). The old date varieties grown here were: Mithnai, Lughal, Qash Shafa, Qash Habbash, Khuthari, Musalli, Qash an-Nur, Qash Ista, and Khalas. Lulu came later. All these were for people and their animals. People got the nice ones, the animals had the nasty ones. The dates were

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dried or made into paste, siyh. We also made bisal, which are certain date varieties cooked for long keeping and for trade; the varieties for this were: Khunaizi, Muzaban, Qash Arbiya, Abu Aduk, and Jass Alaya. We mostly traded goats, cows, dates, clarified butter, cheese, and honey; in some years, we sold some wheat. Ghalailah had two good wells on the beach; boats from Dubai, Umm alQawain, all sorts of places, used to collect the water and take it to Abu Dhabi town. Water levels in wells on the coast, in the gardens and on the sayh have always risen and fallen according to the amounts of rain in previous years. But from the mid-1970s there has been a general fall in the water table of the whole region because over-pumping caught up with recharge. Now, recharge can never catch up with extraction.

In Shaam, garden owners pointed out the three groups of gardens along the three channels from the wadi to the sea. Unlike gardens on the sayh al-Sirr, wells in Shaam date gardens were said never to have become aqq, recalcitrant, until the late 1960s, following the introduction of diesel pumps. The gardens nearest the sea were abandoned but after more than thirty years, sweet water had accumulated to the point where two or three gardens were being replanted with young date trees. Shaam date gardens also grew fruit trees, like limes and oranges, and had vegetable plots. Some grain was grown in gardens and there were also grain fields outside. Miles (1994 [1919]; 445) who visited Shaam while HM Consul in Masqat from 1872 to 1886, reported seeing holes and cleaning heaps in a line that he was told had been a falay daudi a very long time ago; but noone knew anything of this now. Lima on the east coast of the Ruus al-Jibal has a sayh, a coastal plain built up by deposits brought down by floodflows from the mountains. Small afraj nestle between almost every rocky spur of the foothills, and a few built grain fields are still visible at these afraj. A Shihhi remarked, I have been told that long ago the whole of the sayh was cultivated for grain, wheat. There arent any signs of the fields, because they would have had only very shallow walls as the slope of the ground is so gradual. Now it is all samra, acacia tortilis, and dhafara, tephrosia, and grazed by the goats. In the past, we had camels and cows. The stones and gravels of the major flow channel used to be thick with dense growths of sadaf, pteropyrum scopiarum, that is very good grazing; but most of it got washed in a summer storm a few years ago. We had date gardens to the south, nearer the houses and the sand ridge, and the date gardens were watered from yazara wells. The date gardens were down there because the water from the mountains flowing over and under the sayh ends up being held against the sand ridge so wells can be dug down to the water. The wells for drinking water were below Maksuriyya, near the foothills to the south. Maksuriyya is a farij abandoned eighty years ago after an epidemic. When I was a boy, we

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grew grain near the date gardens; there was an area by the dried up creek that had fields, you can see the dividing walls. Ive been told that we grew wheat and barley here, but I remember later on we grew only barley here, for the bulls.

In Dibba Baiah, a Khanbuli Shihhi explained, We have always, always had a date garden here. The flood channels, ghailan, from the mountains that cut through Dibba on their way to the sea were very important. Not only did every garden have entrances for these waters to cleanse them and replenish the goodness of the soil, the waters recharged the levels in the wells, and watered the grain and vegetable fields behind the gardens. If there had been good winter rains in the mountains, the ghailan continued to flow at places in the wadi beds until the next rains. I remember this, it wasnt unusual.

A Bani Lasmi remarked, “I know there was an old built falay there in gardens that belonged to Bani Lassam but my family didnt have shares in it. It was called falay an-Nataba and it was bulldozed in 1970.” Wilkinson (1977; 75) says The line of the abandoned qanat (underground water channel) system which once supplied it may still be traced in the plain behind the village, but no longer. An elderly Shihhi said, Before 1960, Dibba Baiah was full of people in the summer, but the rest of the year there werent many people here. We all did everything, we fished, did our dates, and grew wheat on the sayh. We grew wheat, barley and the two millets on fields at the back of the gardens and in fields along the edges of the mountains. Where the schools are now, there were twenty fields. We used ploughs pulled by bulls, we didnt use hais. The grain grew well but it often spoiled, kharab, from moulds and rusts and then we fed it to the animals. The yields could be 1:100. We always bought seed from people in the mountains. After the grain harvests, we grew watermelons, batikh, and long melons, yeh, on those fields. All the grain and the melons was from winter rains and dews, there was no irrigation. Irrigation was only for the date trees. There were always Shihhuh from the mountains taking up gardens here and combining a date garden with mountain grain.

Some mountain Shihuh described how they or their fathers had combined date garden work at Dibba Baiah with the work of high mountain grain fields. One family had employed three khwadim, black servants, to cultivate their garden at Dibba, which was very unusual for a Shihuh family; the owners came down at regular intervals to check on the work and to supervise the fertilising of the date flowers. The usual practice was for the owner and other family members to come down when necessary.

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Some Maqadihah Shihhuh, whose families had always had date gardens at Dibba Baiah, explained, If there were good winter rains, the gardens didnt need watering and we could concentrate on the mountain fields. If there was some rain, we still only needed to come down two or three times in the winter. If there was no rain, someone stayed over in Dibba Baiah and did the watering for us all, and then someone else would take a turn and so on. Of course, we went to do the fertilising in late January and early February. Date gardens at Dibba Baiah were freely sold among Shihhuh, and Shihhuh for this includes Naqbi and Sharqi up to a point – anyway, at least those who lived locally, at Haiyir and Wamm.

A Khanbuli Shihhuh from al-Aini commented that his family had always done the work on their gardens at Dibba Baiah themselves, they had never employed bayadir although that was possible. Family members had gone to the gardens once a week to water the trees and do any other necessary work, and had stayed for longer periods to fertilise the trees. At Karsha, north of Dibba Baiah, a Shihhi commented, This is the well, Tawi al-Khatib, of sweet water that people used when they were here in the summers. It is just behind the beach. We built the wall around it to try to stop it getting choked with sand and stuff blowing. We were always having to clean it out, and then wait for the water to seep in through the rock sides.

Along the Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts, families lived from the sea, but also cultivated date gardens watered from yazara wells, and grew grain crops and some tobacco on fields on the sayh. At Qidfa, a Qiyudi explained, Many of the date gardens here were owned by Dhahuriyiin of the Ruus alJibal, who had been given the land by the Sharqi shaikh about two hundred years ago, because it was empty and he wanted it developed. At the same time, Shihhuh from Dibba developed date gardens at Madhah and Girath. In Qidfa, the Dhahuri gardens were worked by the people who lived here, they did all the work; they did the fertilising, they did the pruning, took off the offshoots, did all the watering, the Dhahuri owners and their families only came for the summers. And they used some of the land to grow vegetables and grain for themselves, there were no problems with the owners about that. I dont know what the share or the wage was, but I do know that the workers certainly got enough to support themselves and their families. Before 1954/1373AH, when my grandfather decided to buy a date garden, he worked on his uncles garden and the gardens of other relatives and for other people, and he also fished. People who worked on other peoples gardens almost certainly had bits of land of their own or something of their

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own; so they were bayadir, but they were also owners. Where we now see the shaabiyya, the housing, there is where we used to have the rainfed grain fields, where we grew wheat, barley, and the two millets. There were ghailan through the date gardens, but we also had built water channels, falay, against the sides of the last outcrops of the mountains to carry rainwater to the date gardens. On the sayh inland and up to the foothills of the mountains, there were Shihuh who came in 1903, after the battle of Bithnah, because the Sharqi needed allies. They were herders, and lived from their animals, goats, donkeys and camels. They did some carrying, and they exchanged clarified butter and honey with us for dates.

His grandmother recalled, In the past, womens work was everything. We worked in the gardens, we worked on the beaches, we worked in the fields with the grain crops and the vegetables. We ground the grain and made the bread, we collected the firewood, we got the water, we looked after the house, we made and mended all the clothes, we looked after the children. And it was our work to look after the animals, the cows and goats; milking them and making the cheese, butter, and yogurt, and gathering up the manure from the shelters, where the animals spent the nights and the heat of the day, and taking it to the gardens and fields. When men from here went to work in Kuwait, it wasnt really difficult. The men who went were those who could be spared. A family chose someone to go, they could manage without him so he went away to work. If it turned out they needed extra labour, they would get a relation from Madha to help out. The people of Qidfa and the people of Madha helped each other out over labour, they came here and we went there, because we were related.

At Khor Fakkan, a Naqbi remarked, We had the old gardens on the sayh both to the south and the north. Behind the old gardens, there were several big fields, some where the football field is now, and the others have been built over. We grew wheat and tobacco on them. The wheat grew well, but the dampness from the sea breezes meant it got rusts and moulds and spoilt.

In Kalba, several elderly Naqbiyiin recalled, We grew a lot of dates in the gardens on the sayh, and some wheat and barley. But the grain was uncertain, it spoilt easily. Some of us, who are in our seventies and eighties, remember that when we were young the wadis would flow, sayl, every four to five days from October to March. And the wadis flowed in places until the middle of sayf at the end of April, beginning of May. That was why in the old days Kalba was called Ghalla! It had ghaal, seasonal flows that produced profitable crops! Only after the ghaal had ceased did we need to water the dates. The dates here dont dry well. It is the winds. In the gaith, the winds on this coast in general blow from the

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sea to the land and bring a lot of salt with them. The dates, which were nice and juicy, dry out and become thin, nahaf, and sour, hamith; they dont mature into juicy moist dates, which is what we want. The winds from the sea go up over the mountains and by the time they reach the west coast, they have lost most of the salt. So Gulf coast dates dry well, especially in the inland gardens; Khatt and Dhaid have good dates. Inland dates are always better than coastal dates. But the quality and quantity vary from year to year, as well as region to region. Zuttut came once a year selling and repairing weapons, tools and other metal work. There wasnt that much work for them because so many things that are now made from metal were then made from yarid and rope. It was mostly knives we bought from them. They also sold and bought donkeys. This trade, the metal goods and the donkeys, was all barter.

At Khor Kalba a Zaabi explained, In the winters we were here on the beach fishing and of course going back to the gardens against the mountains for the date tree work. The date gardens were ghayli, they had seasonal flows. We grew brush millet, dhurra, around the date gardens because wheat and barley didnt do well. And we grew figs, oranges, limes and other fruit as well. The ghayl from the mountain reached the beach in winters. So much water came down we could get fresh water out of the creek by the beach, the fresh water was floating over the salt. There were wells along the beach, too.

At Bu Baqra, a Jabri remarked, The water here is always brackish, and the earth is really sabkha and gravel, hasaba. So the date varieties we grew here were limited. Grain didnt do well, either, the earth is too saline and there is too much moisture in the air from the sea. We grew the two millets, dhurra and dukhn, pearl millet. Nearly all of this area was date gardens and vegetable fields. We grew limes, too, but they are dying like the dates, because there havent been any good rains for some years and the water is too salt.

A Zaabi said, We used to grow tobacco all along the coast, just behind the date gardens. Tobacco doesnt like wind, but the date gardens protected the tobacco from the winds off the sea. Tobacco doesnt like dews or humidities either, but we dont have dews on this coast and the humidities here are low. So tobacco grew quite well. And we had the fishing, pearling, and trade, so we actually lived well.

A Bidawi at Bulaida commented: The dates here werent as good as dates from the interior or the mountains. You can grow exactly the same varieties as the people over there do, but you wouldnt recognise them. The sea winds dry the dates and harden them, and without good winter rains, the water in the wells becomes salty

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and makes everything worse. After some years without rains, the trees die. We did grow grains. None of them kept well, but that didnt matter because first there was the wheat harvest, then the barley, and that was followed by the two millets; so we had harvests from March to September. When the water here was sweet, we grew mangoes – though they were small – bananas and limes, and the fresh dates, the rutub, were really juicy. That was really how we ate our dates. The dry dates werent good, it was better to buy imported dates. We did all our own work, we fished, worked in the date garden, grew grains and tobacco. We were always working, there was one harvest after another. We dried and salted some of the fish, and some of these we used ourselves, and the rest we traded ourselves. We didnt sell the surplus to traders, we loaded up the donkeys and sold salt fish to people in Wadi Shinas, Wadi Hatta and so on. We did take dry gaisha on donkeys up the wadis as well, and sold them as fertiliser, but most of the gaisha we used ourselves, it was mostly the sweepings that we sold. We had money from the tobacco we grew, and a bit more from the fish we traded inland, we were fine.

The ahl an-nakhla, the people of the date trees, the people who lived from dates, were not only the owners of date gardens, but also those who owned and/or cultivated dates for profits from surpluses above subsistence. As those who owned date gardens for profit as part of a trading enterprise were really traders, tujjar, the people of the date trees were properly the bayadir and those owners who cultivated their own gardens for their main source of profits. On the coastal plains, the sayh, the Ahl an-Nakhla lived in the arc of date gardens from Khatt to Shimal, around Ras al-Khaimah town on the Gulf coast. Date garden owners and cultivators of the coastal plains north of Rams and on round to the other coastal plains of the Shamailiyya and Batinah coast do not describe themselves as people of the date gardens because their main sources of profits did not come from the date gardens although their gardens provided important subsistence. Even on the sayh as-Sirr behind Ras al-Khaimah town, where conditions for producing dates suitable for drying were better, not all date garden owners made their profits from dates. Naqbiyiin in Fahlain, who all owned date gardens or shares in gardens, said their profits came from the sales of clarified butter and firewood and grew varieties of fodder dates for their milk producing animals, while garden owners in Shimal Fowk made much of their profits from commercial pottery production. Elsewhere on the Gulf coastal plains, date production was for subsistence for people and household animals, and surplus fresh dates and dry dates were given away, exchanged, or sold as a small or relatively unimportant part of a multi resource family economy. Quality and quantity did vary both year to year and from region to region, although a total

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dearth of dates was never mentioned. On the Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts, fresh dates were more important and eaten by residents and summer visitors. The arc of date gardens around Ras al-Khaimah town existed primarily because soils, water and summer climatic conditions allowed successful date cultivation and harvesting, and secondarily because regional coastal town populations consumed dates as a staple of their diet, and local traders could export surplus by boat. Informants distinguished between the sayl of the Gulf coast and the ghayl of the east coast. Sayl carry meanings of spreads of water and informants recalled the entire coastal plain from the town to south of Ghayl being “white with water”, with flood flows from the northern end of the western Hajar mountains as well as western side of the Ruus al-Jibal. On the Shamailiyya coast of the study region, nowhere has this amount of deposited soils and gravels or floodwaters. The coastal plains inland of Dibba and Khor Fakkan are the largest. The ghayl or ghall flows from the geologically different mountains of the western Hajar were seasonal flood flows from mountain rains that in some places also augmented and recharged seasonal surface flows from springs in the foothills and important for profitable date and fruit trees. The Gulf coastal plains have more dews, higher humidities, and higher summer temperatures than the Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts. Yazara wells were the standard method of raising water for date trees on both coasts. In the summers, the Shamaliyya coast is noticeably cooler than the Gulf coast, which is nice for people but not for the ripening dates, which shrivel in the salt laden breezes off the sea. The Gulf coast is hotter and has higher humidities which enable dates to ripen properly for drying. The Shamailiyya coast date gardens produce good fresh dates, but the local summer conditions do not allow the production of good dry dates, which were the commodity of profitable trade. As date varieties ripen over three or four months, rutub or fresh dates provided the basic food for that period and so fulfilled a useful role. The few reports of ruined or abandoned underground water channels, falay daudi, bringing water from the mountains to areas on both coasts might imply a significant decrease in the past to the water table and rain recharge to springs. Falay might have been built to reach deeper water, and to maintain existing irrigated agriculture. It is as possible that the builders of these falay were commercial investors with local partners who built the falay to develop commercially valuable crops of dates or some other commercial crop, and that the enterprises may or may not have been successful for whatever length of time. Built underground fa-

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lays in the study region were known only at Munaiy and Wadi al-Qawr in the western Hajar valleys (and at al Ain and Buraimi; Heard Bey 1996 [1982]; 177 – 180: Lorimer 1908 – 15; 2, 433 – 4 described a falay at Dhaid, in Sharjah, but we met no-one who knew of it). Grains, wheats, barley and millets, were cultivated on coastal plains for local consumption only, as grains grown on the plains did not store well. People on both coasts said high humidities caused rusts and mildews, and on the Batinah coast locals said the soils were unsuitable. Vegetables were grown for local consumption and small amounts sold in local markets. Tobacco cultivation was important inland of Kalba and bu Baqra; while tobacco does not like wind, the date gardens protected the crop from onshore winds, and the lower humidities and lack of dews suited it. Trees like samra and sidr provided browse for numerous goats and some cows on all coastal plains, while their blossom fed wild bees. The honey made by wild bees was an important source of livelihood for some families on the sayh of both coasts. There were people on the sayh of both coasts who lived from animals. While all families had a few goats or a cow for milk and butter, some sold dairy products or live animals for meat for significant parts of their livelihoods. Owners of camels and donkeys along the Shamailiyya coast made profits by carrying goods to markets on the gulf coast for traders and on their own account. The coastal plains, the sayh, physically link coasts and the mountain spines. It has been demonstrated that the productive activities of people of the coastal plains connected each plain to its coast and to its mountain hinterland. For the inhabitants of most of these coastal plains, the connections came about through family choices and decisions concerning the management of multi resource livelihood strategies along networks of relations and connections through women. This was so whether people lived primarily from date gardens, from animals and the sayh resources themselves, from the sea as traders or pearlers or fishermen, or any combination thereof. On Sayh al-Sirr inland of Ras al-Khaimah town, the situation was more complex. The sayh was larger, with good wells and soils in an arc behind the town and beyond. Ras al-Khaimah town had trading and ruling families who bought and inherited date gardens as investments and for their own food supplies, and these gardens needed cultivating families, bayadir, who lived at the gardens. On the Shamailiyya coast, the only place mentioned by Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol.2, 1006) to have a large proportion of bayadir families was Dibba Husn, employed mostly by Awainat trading families. Dates, some fresh but mostly dried, were a major local item of

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trade, both as exports and imports. Wadi Hajil pottery, dairy products, live animals, firewood, grain and honey were also exported by traders from Ras Al-Khaimah town and Rams, while salt and dried fish were carried everywhere by sea and land traders. Trading boats from outside bringing in goods and looking for cargoes also needed supplies of food, water and firewood, which were supplied from the various sayh. Early and later accounts of voyages mention supplies and shelter available at Julfar (the predecessor of Ras al-Khaimah town), Shaam, Khasab, Lima, Dibba, and Khor Fakkan, and these supplies of dairy products, live meat, dates, water, and firewood came from the various sayh. Local owners of donkeys and camels carried goods between the Gulf coast and the Indian ocean coast, providing a service that functioned through contracts and accepted social practice in a similar way although on a smaller scale to the nakhuda of trading ships that carried traders and their goods. Date garden localities on the coastal plains were marked by a different architecture to those without date gardens and who lived from their animals and fields. This architecture was typically a two-storey mudbrick or stone and mudbrick ghurfa or murabba, family quarters, a watch tower, and a masjid, and similar to the buildings of richer traders and ruling families in the coastal towns. Local people say these buildings were centres, marakiz, built by rich traders from the coastal towns of Ras al-Khaimah or Jazirat al-Hamra, members of the Qasimi ruling family, or by resident local tribal leading families. Examples of the first were the complexes at Khatt built by Zaab and Awanat; at Fulayya and Uraibi by Qawasim; at Fahlain by Zaab; at Qusaidat by the Shamsi family; by Maktum at Kharran, Shimal, and Khasab. Examples of the second were built by Naqbiyiin, Awanat and Zaab at Khatt, the ad-Dunna family at Shimal Taht, at Dhaya, probably by the bin Salih, and Shihuh at Dibba Barah. The ghurfa were basically stores with an upper room; traders, who included members of ruling families, needed stores for dates for trade. The watch-towers indicated the position of the ghurfa as the towers were higher than the surrounding date gardens, and enabled the inhabitants to see above the gardens to the surrounding plains. The masjid and its well was a khair, a public good, for prayer and rest. These centres were for trading and also provided places for men to exchange and gather political and economic news and information. On the Shamailiyya and Batinah coastal plains, where the local dates are eaten fresh, these complexes were mostly at coastal settlements where traders imported dates from Basra and Iran and exported local tobacco, fruits and other goods.

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These buildings are sometimes interpreted as necessary for the defence of date gardens from marauders from the mountains or the sands. Local information demonstrates that tribespeople from the mountains and the sands without date trees or not enough trees obtained their supplies of dried dates by a variety of contractual arrangements with owners of date trees who had a surplus, or went to coastal towns and bought imported dates from Basra or Iran. Destruction of date gardens was seen as a political act when normal processes of mediation had been unsuccessful in disputes between rulers and tribes. The sands, rammal, stretch south of Ras al-Khaimah town along the coast to the border with the Emirate of Umm al-Qawain and eastwards inland to the Jirri plain and the border with the Emirate of Sharjah. West and south of Digdaga to Hamraniya, and along the edge of the Jirri plain the sands are red; further west, they are more yellow. Inland from the coast, the sands rise as a series of dunes running northeast to southwest. Between some dune ridges are long stretches of ghaf (prosopis cineraria) trees and other perennial shrubs, herbs and grasses. Samra (acacia tortilis) trees are common on the spreads of gravels nearer the foothills. After rains, the slopes of the dunes and the firmer silts between the dunes are covered with annuals. The staples of winter grazing, apart from the trees, are khubbayza (malva parviflora), thraiba, and laibat; summer grazing depends on the perennial grasses thumam and sobot, augmented by loppings from ghaf trees and dates. Rain falls as sudden storms in the winter; dews are frequent in winter and summer; summer humidities are less than in the coastal plains. There are permanent wells, tawi, that tap fresh water lenses at various locations in the sands, and owned as constituent parts of tribal dira. The tribes using the sands in Ras al-Khaimah Emirate are Al-Khawatir, and also in Sharjah; Al-Ghafalah, mostly in Umm al-Qawain; and a few Musaffarin, mostly in Sharjah. In the winters, Mazairi from Ghayl and Idhn and some Sharqiyiin used the sands nearby for grazing. A Khatri near Hamraniyya, looking at extensive commercial gardens, remarked, Before oil money, there was no commercial agriculture in the sands, all that land was in the Khawatir dira. We lived in the sands from our animals, and got our water from wells. One well was where my garden is now, and another was by those big ghaf trees against the dunes. In those days, we did everything for ourselves. We made our livings by selling animals – goats, sheep, cows, camels and donkeys – in Ras al-Khaimah town. We didnt go to Ajman, Dubai or

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Sharjah, they were too far. And we sold firewood. We bought imported dates in Ras al-Khaimah town, occasionally in Nakhil. And we bought clothes, coffee, flour, and fresh and salt fish. We ate a lot of fish, especially salt fish, and a lot of dates, people would eat five or six kilograms of dates a day. The animals were fed spare dates, and Khatt was the place for Musalli dates, they are fodder dates. We spent the summers in the sands. My father was a guard at the fort, he got half a rupee a day, which wasnt much. And I remember being paid half a rupee a camel load to take earth from Umm Khayyus to the fort for repairs.

Another explained, In my fathers and my grandfathers time, more than forty to seventy years ago, we lived from our herds, bawsh (literally, the rabble, from to be boisterous), of camels, goats, sheep, and some cows, and from the trees. Sheep do well in the sands; they dont like the high humidities of the coastal plains. Not everyone had cows, a few families did. In the winters we lived in tents, buyut shair, woven from goat hair and sheeps wool spun together, and we were in the permanent pastures, the shaiban, unless there had been rain so the annuals had sprung up. We also had special areas in the dira; one of these was Muzairia, where there was a mud brick tower, a building and a well with enough water for a few date trees. It tended to be people with small children and the old who were there. But when there was no aishb, grazing on fresh annuals, because of poor rains, more people went there with the animals because Muzairia had so many trees, ghaf mostly and some samra, for the animals to browse on. The trees manage even if there isnt winter rain, because there are dews winter and summer in the sands. We dont have heavy dews, there isnt the moisture in the air, but frequent light dews, as there are real falls between daytime and nighttime temperatures. Zaab traders used Muzairia to protect their animals when there were robbers around. Or, we went to the mountain wadis where we spent the summers. In the summers, many families here went to date gardens at Idhn, Dhaid, Siji, or Falaj al-Mualla and there they lived in khaws, shelters made from date branches. My family went to Idhn for the summers, as we rented a date garden there, and so in some bad winters we took ourselves and the animals to the wadis behind Idhn. When there were good rains, some Mazari from Ghayl and Idhn and Sharqiyiin from Maydaq and Siji took their animals out to the fresh grazing in the sands, and they went to the Khawatir families who came to their gardens in the summers. Those Khawatir were their rafiq, their escorts while they were here. My father remembered a group of Yemenis coming here with their animals because there was a drought in their own country. They stayed for five or six years and then they returned. If this was the past, and if we needed to, we could go to them in their place (Thesiger 1949 refers to this migration). In the 1930s and 40s we were very poor; there were no clothes and no rice, there was no money. When there were suitable rains, we sowed grain in places in the sands where the silts were heavier. We got the seed from peo-

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ple in the mountains, and we bought grain from them, as well. We did buy a little rice, but in those days it was only the rulers and the bigger traders who ate rice regularly. In my grandfathers time, a man needed half a riyal for a sack of dates; a riyal for coffee; and half a riyal for a sack of rice. We lived on camels milk, dates, and wheat bread, and we made cheese and clarified butter from the milk. Our dates came mostly from Basra and Iran. In those days we did everything for ourselves, we made our tents, our summer houses, saddles and saddle bags, water buckets, ropes, everything. For rope making, we used goathair and date tree trunk fibre, lif. For the goathair rope, the goats were shorn using mughaz (locally, shears and scissors; peoples hand movements, as they were talking, were always of using scissors). The women spun the goathair, and plyed it into ropes about four cms thick and 5.5 to 7 m long. We plyed the ropes from a tree branch, or a stick banged into the ground, or used a stone that supported a ground loom. These ropes were for wells and for general use. The lif was beaten and dampened, and then rolled between the hands. All the men and boys got forced into helping, and it went on for ever. Those were the tent ropes, and each one was twenty-one ba, about forty metres. One of our main enterprises was the carrying trade, and we sold a few bulls to garden owners and firewood to the Zaab. We took people to where they spent the summers and got their dates, places like Dibba, Ras al-Khaimah and the Batinah. We escorted the Zaab women and children and old men to the Batinah for the summers, when their men were at the pearling. Khawatir and other bedu from here didnt go to the pearling, it was Bani Yas of Abu Dhabi and Dubai who went. And we hired out our camels and donkeys to Zaab for carrying goods up to Dubai for example, Zaab largely relied on Khawatir animals for their carrying. The women worked around the tents. They did the milking and made butter and cheese; they milled the grain and made bread. They spun wool and hair and wove the tentcloth and the saddle bags.

A Baluch at Awafi remarked, “Ive been here all my life. I worked for the bedu, it was Baluch who cut down the firewood, lopped the trees to feed the animals and drew the water from the wells. We raised the water by hand, we used ropes over a pulley.” An Awaini said, In the past, some Awainat were traders with date gardens at Khatt, and some lived from animals, using the sands. Awainat with date gardens at Khatt moved in the winters to Muwailah in the sands, where they had a tower, a well, and buildings in a walled enclosure. People passing through the sands used Muwailah as a place of safety for themselves and their animals. My father always refused to live in a house, he always slept in a tent or under a tree; he did so because he preferred it, not at all from necessity.

An elderly Mazrui said his family had always used the area around Digdaga, living from cows and goats.

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We didnt herd them, they looked after themselves and came back at night. We made our money by selling bulls to garden owners for well work, and we sold a great amount of clarified butter and some cheeses. There were many wells, some worked by bulls and some by people, but all the water was for people and animals. Sometimes, if there had been good rains, people would go out and sow some grain, but only for themselves. We lived in an arish khaima, made from date tree branches, but before that we lived in a black tent, bait shair.

A Ghafili, who lived near Digdaga but had earlier lived further south in the sands, remarked, We lived from animals, we had goats, sheep, cows and camels. We lived in a black goathair tent. The normal size was a salab, with three poles supporting the roof along the length of the tent, but people had larger ones too. Mazari never had black tents, they always lived in bait mal ishbaq and arish.

An elderly man at Khatt recalled the Iranian traders in Khatt had employed Ghafalah and their camels to carry dates to and from the coast. A Masafari from Wadi Dait recalled his family were bedu, who lived from their animals and had date gardens and grain fields near Ghayl. The trees, shrubs, and perennial grasses of the sands provided good browse for camels, cows, goats, sheep and donkeys, with extensive flushes of annual plants and grasses after winter rains and dews in autumn. The animals provided livelihood from dairy products and meat, wool and hair for tentcloth, saddle bags, and rope, and skins for water bags of different sorts. They also provided profits: from the sale of dairy products, especially clarified butter; selling bulls for well work in gardens; selling live animals for meat; hiring out camels and donkeys to carry traders goods from collection points near date gardens to Ras al-Khaimah town, Dubai, or Dibba; and providing escort services to groups of families whose men were at the great pearling in the high summer from Jazirat al-Hamra to summer places on the Batinah coast. Collecting and selling firewood and, after a wet winter, desert truffles or fagu, were additional activities for many. Although no bedu mentioned selling manure to garden owners, garden owners said they had bought manure from bedu. It is possible that some in the sands looked after sheep belonging to owners in Ras al-Khaimah town. The main profit making enterprise of carrying and escorting was possible from the geographical position of the sands, between the coastal ports to the west and east, and the date gardens of Sayh al-Sirri and the foothills of the western Hajar. Khawatir summer escorting depended on the fact that the active men of Jazirat al-Hamra, the Zaab, went to the great summer pearling off Abu Dhabi, while the women, the old men and the children

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needed places with shade, water and fresh dates in which to pass the high summers. Some went to Khatt, where Zaab owned date gardens, but many went to the cooler Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts where there were Zaab living at Khor Kalba, bu Baqra and other places near Shinas. Escorting was presumably more profitable than working as a diver or hauler on the pearling boats. It offered opportunities for profits not only from the hire of camels and escort protection, but for obtaining fresh and dry dates, and in maintaining or extending social links between themselves, their clients, and their clients hosts. Acting as escorts for Mazari and Sharqiyiin from garden places in the western Hajar foothills to the sands for winter grazing also maintained links to date garden areas in these places, since where Khawatir families rented date trees or worked for dates in the summer were often the same places as the Mazari or Sharqiyiin families with animals came from. A Sharqi who, as a young man had accompanied Khawatir escorting Zaab women and their families to bu Baqra for the summer, gave the impression that escorting and carrying had significance above its economic return, seeming to symbolise a moral and political role in the escorting of the women and children of others in addition to actively integrating the two coasts. The less visible enterprises of selling animal products, live animals, and firewood, and the carrying for traders also integrated people of the sands with people of the coasts; and acting as rafiq for Mazari and Sharqi from the western edges of the Hajar made links between the two areas. Links between individuals and families of different tribes through work created in some instances marriage networks and political support. This is an elegant example of the integration between bedu and hadhr which was widespread across the Arabian peninsula (e. g. Fattah 1986 in southern Iraq; al-Torki and Cole in 1989 for Unayza in Saudi Arabia; al-Juhany 1983 in Najd; Serjeant in Hadramaut, 1991 [1970]: 1996 [1988]); Lancaster 1981 and Lancasters 1999 for the north).

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4 Ruus al-Jibal mountains; livelihoods and living Waters, soils, environments The mountains, jibal, are recognised to be the foundation of the entire region and its resources. The Ruus al-Jibal, heads of the mountains (fig. 2a; 586), are the northernmost part of the great mountain spine of Oman, but differ in geology and hydrology to the western Hajar. The two mountain systems meet at the series of valleys and plateaux between Khatt on the west coast and Dibba on the east; at places, the different rocks seem to have been boiled together. The sedimentary deposits of the Ruus al-Jibal rise steeply to peaks nearly 2,000 m high from the seas, dividing the Arab Gulf from the Gulf of Oman. The mountain sides facing the coasts are virtually bare but their inland faces have shelving plateaux, sall, with a wide variety of trees, shrubs and perennial plants which change with the altitude. Samr, acacia tortilis, is typical of the mountain slopes with mizz, prunus arabica, at higher altitudes or where water is completely free of salts. In the mountain wadis and in the steep mountain gullies, shaqq, the usual trees are sidr, zizyphus spinachristi; shu, moringa peregrina; and litib, ficus salicifolia. When useful rain falls, it is usually as widespread or localised thunderstorms between October and March; and of his signs: He shows you the lightning, for fear and hope, and that He sends down from the sky water and revives by it the earth after it was dead, Sura 30:24. It is the rain that makes the season of winter, shitta. The last useful rain falls in April or May, and is called summer rain, matar saifi. Summer storms are not unknown, and regarded as destructive rather than useful, as the downpours falling on hard dried soils and dry vegetation flow too fast and wash away shrubs, trees and even structures. Water in the Ruus al-Jibal ultimately comes from rainfall, past or present. To be considered useful, rain must produce flood flows or sayl, spreads of water. A Habus explained, Its sayl, surges and floods of water from storms, that we need for our fields. We dont think numerous light showers are so good, even though the total amount of water measured over the winter might be as much or even more than the amount of water from two downpours. For a good crop of grain, there must be two sayl, and with three, we are certain of a good harvest.

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Rainfall by itself would never, or hardly ever, provide enough water. We have to bring enough rainwater to the field, and that is why we build channels to divert water across rocky slopes to the fields we have built to hold silts.

A Bani Shutairi commented: “We measure rain, matar, by the flood flows, sayl, the rain produces, and for long and how strongly these flow.” This is how the inhabitants of the southern mountains in Jordan measure rain, whereas bedouin in the rolling uplands of eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia are concerned with the area covered by rain, the intensity, saturation, and the duration (Lancasters 1999; 117 – 8, 104 – 5). He added, “There was one exception, light rain that never produced a sayl, but was useful for trees, grasses, and crops that were already growing; we call that kind of rain madima.” To illustrate how localised storms can be, a Shihhi said, Two years ago, in 2002, I left Lima to walk to a wedding on the Gulf coast. At Lima it was raining waterfalls, the wadi was in flood, and people in badly sited houses had been up to their waists in water. But above Qabil, I was on the edge of the storm, and for the rest of the way, there was no sign of rain. From that rain, the falay above Lima is still flowing; there are no fields by that falay because there is no earth there.

The Ruus al-Jibal have mists and dews which significantly increase the amount of water for natural vegetation and crops. These mists and dews, together with the expected greater amounts of rain at higher altitudes, permit the cultivation of mountain varieties of date trees at some locations. A Bani Idaid Hadiya at Sabtan explained, “My date trees up here are never watered. They get their water from rainfall, and from the flood water that is channelled to each tree. Mists and dews are important to them, as well. All water comes from the Lord.” A Khanbuli at alAini and a Shamaili at Ghabbas emphasised the importance of dews and mists for the trees like mizz, sidr, and shu that are important for the goats. Rainfall varies from rainyear to rainyear (October to September) and between localities. A Shutairi in Wadi Ghalilah pointed out: “It doesnt always rain everywhere. Sometimes there would be rain high in the mountains, but not low down, or it might rain heavily on one face of a mountain but not on the others. This is why we have fields scattered around in different mountains and at different heights.” Shihuh at Siima, off Wadi Sall Asfal, commented, “If there is rain this side of the wadi, there is none the other, and vice versa. The rains here arent good, they tend to be light, because the mountains here arent as high

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as they are further south.” A group of elderly Shamaili explained: “The whole way of using the mountains was so easy. He had three or four fields at different places in the mountains, I had three or four, everyone had three or four fields at different places on different mountains. It wasnt difficult. We looked at the weather and did what was needed.” Each wadi, the drainage system from mountain ridge to mountain ridge, is regarded to have its own character. A Shihhi said, “The people who developed and used a part of a wadi right up to the mountain tops knew that place in detail, and that is why their fields and cisterns and channels are the way they are.” Sayl waters are shared. A Khanbuli at al-Aini explained: Water, sayl water from rainwater and flood flows, whether it is for fields, date gardens, or cisterns, is shared and distributed between those who use it, and these people are the ones who own the fields, gardens, or cisterns, and whose ancestors built the channel, and who maintain it. Even though the water comes from God, when this water enters a built channel, it has claims on it. In mountain farij, cisterns were always filled from their own channels. Each field had its own channels or shares of channels. When a cistern was full, its channel could take a later flow of water to share among fields near the cistern channel. Everyone knew this, there was no need for specialists. Everyone, too, knew about flood channels that went to a group of several fields. The flow of water in such channels was shared according to the division of water, qismat al-ma, and people enforced the division of water as it affected them. You saw my mothers brothers son had blocked my channel to get water for his masfal, his small walled garden for a single date tree, and I removed the blocking stones and spoke to his father. Almost every field has its own slopes and masila, walls or channels to divert runoff water. If a field takes water off from a falay, by which I mean a flow from a spring or seep, the masila must start high enough up not to interfere with the main flow. These masila and points of division for water have always been there and cannot be changed without major difficulties. Obviously, there could be problems over water flows in groups of fields, but they were and are sorted out by owners and neighbours, a general consensus is reached.

Sayl channels brought water to built fields (fig. 13; 600) to raise soil moisture levels high enough for wheat or barley to grow to maturity and harvest. When, on the sayh, date garden owners talked of the importance of sayl waters in refreshing the garden and its soil, they spoke of sayl waters being diverted in shares to the gardens built on the sides of the wadi that carried the flood waters. Stone diversion walls divide the flow to the flood water entrance of each garden. But no-one spoke of an overseer to check

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that the system was working or of a book that recorded shares of water, whereas there was such a person and a book for the gardens at Khatt, watered by permanent falay flows. But in the Ruus al-Jibal, according to the Shihhi at al-Aini, the shares of flood waters were considered as a system, known and enforced by all – as indeed shares of flood waters were to date gardens on the sayh. Sayl waters are temporary and impermanent, watering grain fields and mountain dates, owned by tribespeople, and may be sold only to tribal members. The informal hands-on approach of the system of shares in sayl waters in the Ruus al-Jibal reflects the general pragmatic attitude of cultivators in the Ruus al-Jibal, where all did their own work, with no employed workers, no share workers, and no investment by non-resident merchants. In Wadi Ghabbas there are many field complexes, some of which have been rebuilt again and again. A resident Shamaili explained how fields were sited and built; People looked for either a very shallow flow channel or a fairly wide and not too steep cleft in the mountainside with a lot of silts already in it. If they were using the flow channel, they built a double wall across the lower end to hold water and silts. Then from each end of the double wall, they built a wall back towards the slope, so they had a sort of three-sided box. They needed to divert water for this shallow flow channel a long, long way upstream, so they made a channel for the water along the slope to one of the long side walls and make an entrance to the field for the water. Then they made a similar diversion channel for the other side wall of the field. If there was time, they made shorter channels to entrances halfway down each long side wall. A field needs one and a half draa (60 cms) of soil; if there wasnt that depth, they brought in earth. A field needs water standing on it to the depth of a mans index finger, so the retaining wall at the front of the field had to be a thumbs height above that. If they were going to build at a wideish cleft, they would do exactly the same, building a double wall across the side of the cleft and so on. Here, over time they could build a group of fields around the sides of the cleft and in front of the original wall if enough runoff water could be channelled to them. Long, narrow fields are called miy, a group of roundish fields is called yalba. When we are cultivating, zaraa, fields are called mazari; but when they are not in use, they are waab, abwab (fig. 14; 601).

In Wadi Ghalilah, a Shutairi explained fields could be built below silty slopes on a mountainside. Each field got its water from its own runoff slope above; the double retaining wall at the front of the field was continued to the sides, and then extended as a single wall to enclose the runoff area. Additional water channels were built across the slopes to entrances in the field wall at the back of each side wall. Runoff areas were around

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17 times as large as the field, as Zimmerman (1981; 70) noted in Musandam. Cisterns, birkat, in the afraj of the Ruus al-Jibal were made in a variety of ways. Many were dug at the ends of small side flows or by the side of a flow. Cisterns for the farij or parts of the farij were dug by co-operative work groups, hashad. If the cistern was dug out of loose or soft soil, the earth and stones were dug out to the required size, usually 6 – 8 m long, 3 – 4 m wide, and 4 – 6 m deep. The depth depended on the level at which the diggers reached compacted gravels or stone. The excavated hole was lined with stones and waterproof mortar, yuss (fig. 11; 597). Channels for filling the cistern were taken off the flow at suitable points. People also built cisterns by digging down through fractured rock to solid rock; building a wall of stones and mortar against the base of a long rock cleft in the mountainside; or enhanced, by excavating, natural clefts in really huge rocks, yub, or among large slabs of bedrock. Methods of constructing cisterns depended on what was suitable in each place where water could be collected and stored. Some afraj had several communal or group cisterns, while others had few because there were nearby natural seeps, water collected naturally in places in wadi beds, or users had small individual cisterns. Large afraj with many field complexes usually had several group or communal cisterns, and these places might be winter places lower down in the wadis, or early summer and early winter places high up in the mountains. At the large farij of Sili, at the top of Wadi Shaam, a Dhahuri explained: We were here in the winters. We have several cisterns here because we have a lot of animals. This is a cistern in which my family has rights, and we share it with three other families. When it is full, it has enough water for the families for six months. You see the pillar in the centre? That carried poles against which we laid long branches to cover the cistern, all cisterns were covered when they held water. When we went to the east coast for the gaith, many of the goats stayed here at Sili with a few people to look after them, and they needed the water.

But at Aboiyim, another winter Dhahuriyiin farij further down Wadi Shaam, there were few cisterns because there were three watering places, mawarid, where water seeped out of the rocks and collected. If the water in the seeps and cisterns was finished, men and boys took donkeys to the two wells at the lower end of the wadi and collected water. In Wadi Ghalilah, a Shutairi from Wadi Halhal pointed that where he had lived for some of the winter had no cisterns and people fetched their water from Tawi Kharrana which belonged to all the people of Wadi Ghalilah; but

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the farij his mother had come from on the other side of the wadi had a communal cistern. A Qiyaishi in Wadi Saali said, In the winters we lived down here and at Wadi Shaha and Yahal, where we had only cisterns. In the summers, we were up at Nidda and al-Mayya where we had most of our fields and there is flowing water, falay. In the winters, if we finished the water and there was no rain, we went back up to Mayya or we sent the goats up there and carried water down for people in skins on our backs.

A different pattern was described by Qiyaishi from Ghubbaina, off Sall Asfal; they came down from their high fields only for the gaith, or if the winter was unusually cold. Otherwise they stayed up, moving between the high afraj where they had their fields and group cisterns; “the water in the cisterns at these afraj lasted for eighteen months to two years if people were careful, and everyone had shares in a number of cisterns in the different afraj they used, we were moving from one cistern to another.” At ar-Rawdhah, a group of men stated that each section or butn of Ahl Rawdhah had five or six cisterns for storing water, and there was a seep at al-Hifr which, depending on rain, trickled for six months to two years before drying up. Most people at al-Rawdhah were there for most of the year, with the exception of the gaith, although some had other higher fields. People make communal cisterns if there are few or no other sources of water – no seeps or mawarid, no flowing water or falay, or if at the mouth of a wadi where it debouches onto the sayh, a deep well or tawi. The other factor for cistern construction was the length of time a family needed to spend at the locality, so places with large numbers of fields have numbers of large cisterns. At Sabtan, high in the mountains, and many fields and some date trees, a Bani Idaid remarked: There were no cisterns here. People relied on a seep, pools in the wadi bed, and water that collected in natural basins in outcrops of bedrock. If this water was finished, and people needed to continue working there, men fetched water from Wadi Bih, a two hour journey each way. We were here mostly in the early summer and again after the summer; we werent really living here in the winter, we came up from our winter places to work on the fields for two or three days at a time.

A Shamaili at Wadi Ghabbas explained: The cisterns of my farij are on the western side of Ghabbas. Those on the eastern side belonged to Bani Shamaili who also used Ghaylan, inland of Rams. The water in each cistern was for the section of the farij nearest to it; these people were responsible for cleaning out the cistern and its chan-

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nels, and repairing them. The exception was the largest cistern at the top of the wadi; this water was left for when people returned with their dates after the gaith, until the first rains fell. If there was no rain and the cisterns were empty, the people of Ghabbas went in a body, with the donkeys and camels, to the spring, ain, at al-Aini. Shamaili from Wadi Shusha went the other way, up the Nigad, over the Mukk and down to a well in Wadi Hajil. If there were good winter rains around the Ghabbas, after the family fields had been sown, my family sometimes took the goats higher up Jabal Ghabbas where we used water held in pools among the rocks – and there was water an hours walk away. These pools are now full of debris and impossible to see. Removing debris and material brought down by flood flows from storms was crucial to the maintenance of cisterns, channels, and enhanced natural water catchments in wadi beds and in rock formations.

A Bani Murri in Wadi Bana said, “Im cleaning out our cistern, getting out the stones and stuff the storms brought down. There are seven falay in the wadi, and more are scattered about in the mountains. These falay dont flow, they drip; we build little basins underneath to catch the water for the goats.” His mother added, “We had one of the three cisterns in use and the other two were covered. If we finished all the cistern water, we went to al-Mawrid, a falay in a side wadi, which has never in my memory run dry.” In al-Aal in Wadi Faria, a Habus remarked, Water wasnt a problem. We built small birkat, basins, against the faces of bare rock slopes to catch flowing rainwater. A man built them on his own, a hashad wasnt needed. Each family had lots of these basins on the different mountain slopes above the wadi bed. We were here some of the winter and again before we went to Ghubb to get our dates in the gaith. Mostly, we were up on our mountain fields at Ahqab, where there were communal cisterns. There was always flowing water at Gaudima and Yalab, and a huge natural cistern at Zibaut, and others, all in the dira of the Habus.

Water in cisterns, birka, pl. barak, was never used for crops or trees, only for people and animals. Cisterns and the water they contained were owned by their builders, their descendants or buyers, who were individual families, groups of families or tribal sections at a farij, or the totality of owners of a farij. There were cisterns in the Ruus al-Jibal along the routes where groups of people passed through on seasonal movements to coastal date gardens. Birka Khaldiyya in Sall Asfal and Birka anNuss at the junction of Sall Asfal with Wadi Khasab were said by many to be public cisterns, although Dhahuriyiin said only they had the right to use them. The apparent contradiction arises out of two conventions. One, that any passerby – who would have been in some sense of the

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local community by the fact of being there – had the right to drink and to water animals for necessity but not for profit. That is, passersby could water themselves and their animals if they needed, but couldnt stay for days and continually use the water. Second, that the cistern belongs to those whose ancestors built it and maintained it, they have the right of disposal over the cistern and contents. So these cisterns were owned by Dhahuriyiin, but others exercised their customary right to water. Falay, the local pronunciation of falaj, has a literal meaning of running water (Lane 1984 [1863]; 2347) derived from the root f-l-j to split, divide. Local people used falay to mean permanently (or almost permanently) running water from underground as opposed to the temporary nature of rainfall. All falay waters in the Ruus al-Jibal were said to be dependent on recharge by rainwaters to underground sources, although the more permanent falay were considered to be accumulations of rainfall over millenia. Some, like Nidda, Lahsa, al-Qalam, Musaibat, Khamid, al-Mayya, Yalab and others, bubble up between sections of bedrock in wadi beds in the mountains; others, such as those in Wadi Banna, Aboiyim in Wadi Shaam, in Wadi Hajil, Halhilla in Wadi Quda and others, seeped from rock faces on mountain sides. The degree of permanence varied. The seeps at Aboyim, in Wadi Hajil, and at Sall Istam flowed for a few months. The falay at Lahsa dried after two or three years without rain, whereas Mahbiib said, Khamid itself is a valley with three permanent falay, the water bubbles up from between the rocks. We have date trees growing by the waters. There are about fifty fields above on the slopes, and another twenty outlying fields. In the past, we lived up there virtually all the time, we came down only to go to Dibba on business.

Dhahuriyiin at Jidda, east of Ghamda, commented, “The falays at Sall Istam flowed for two to four months of the year, and we had cisterns as well. We stayed up there most of the year.” A Qiyaishi said, “Mayya is a falay, but its been drying up gradually for years and years. We used to grow fruit trees up there, we had figs, limes and mangoes, but nearly all the trees are dead.” People mentioned other falay, such as Sohriin at Yabana in Wadi Ghabbas, and one in Wadi Khalu, a side wadi of Wadi Naqab, which had dried permanently, either from blocking by outside enemies, such as the Portuguese or the British, or from natural causes, such as earth tremors. Deliberate blocking of falay was known; a Khanbuli said his father had blocked four small seeps

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around al-Aini, because people who came in for water from them had stolen goats owned by people of al-Aini. Ain, ayyun, springs, are upwellings of water from underground, and linked to the welling up of tears in the eyes, also ayyun. A falay might originate from an ain, like al-Mayya. An ain can be discovered; long, long ago, a Qiyashi saw wild bees going into a hole and wondered why; so he dug into the hole and released the spring of al-Mayya, which was also called al-Anab, because Qiyaishi were able to grow grapes there. Waters coming up from underground are usually referred to as ain if these waters are not divided, falaja, for fields or date or fruit trees. Terms for types of water vary between local groups. Shihhuh seem to distinguish between ain and falay, whereas Dhahuriyiin elide the terms, since at least some of their ayyun are used as falay. Some Dhahuriyiin listed tribal water resources in the Ruus al-Jibal: The waters we own are Mawrid Mahas, Haudh Mawwa – haudh is another word for watering place, like mawrid – Qash, Ruhaiba, Ain as-Sij, al-Khiya, Sidwi, Nawa, and Ain Lau. Our barak, cisterns, are: in Mahas, Birkat al-Mudawir and Birkat al-Sharaisha, which are circular and very old, and their builders are unknown; Birka Khaldiyya and Birka al-Nuss, they are old too and only Dhahuriyiin can use them; all the other cisterns, and there are four to six at each farij, are privately owned by the descendants of the builders, who are known. There are two wells, Tawi Ras and Tawi Rbai, both in the big wadi going from Khasab towards Bukha. If the springs dried up and the cisterns were empty, which was rare, we went down to the wells, and they never dried.

These Dhahuriyyin described the agricultural seasons; Exactly when the gaith was depended on the weather, but roughly gaith lasted from mid-June to mid-September. Most people from the mountains went down to the sea where they owned or rented date gardens, or to buy dates. Others stayed up, mostly to look after the goats that werent being sold. After the gaith came tarbu or rabia, which began at the end of September to the middle of October. Everyone went back to the mountains and repaired the fields and cisterns, ready for the rains, shitta. When it began to get cold, end of November, beginning of December, people came down to the butun al-wadi or butun al-jibal, the lower farij in the side wadis and at the foothills by the sayh. As soon as it rained, everyone went up and down to their fields sowing and weeding. Winter meant work. December, January and February are winter, mshitay. Musaiyif, saif, started at the beginning of March, and this is the main milking season up on the mountain fields, and shearing and weaving. Saif was the great time for collecting honey, weddings, and we collected up the fairih goats, the spirited, agile young males we were going to sell. This went on until the beginning of

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the gaith. People didnt come down from the mountains unless they had to for buying and selling, or to get dates, or for water.

People consider rainfall comes in cycles of five to seven years. A Habus in Wadi Nahala commented, Unless there were several years without rain, we werent much affected because we lived from our goats and the trees. In the mountain wadis, there are places where water is held by the rocks; these are ghudran, and hold water for at least three years without rain. You cant see water on the surface, but dig and you will find it. You decide where to dig by looking for a shimmering in the air above the wadi bed. The goats live on what grows from the dews, and from the trees, but we might lose half the flock.

If there was no rain, people prayed. How people prayed differed somewhat across the study region. A Shutairi Shihhuh remembered: Everybody had to pray – men, women, and children. Everybody had to pray together, and everybody had to wear loose head coverings, the men couldnt wear gitra, turbans, or agal, woven bands that hold on head coverings. The prayers were the ordinary prayers for rain, and when they had ended, everyone had to turn their head coverings inside out. Then it rained.

Droughts were a recognised fact of life, and as seen above, people accommodated themselves to drought. People expected that, while there might be a drought in one area, neighbouring areas would have had rain as most rain comes from local storms. A drought over all the Ruus al-Jibal was thought to be unusual. Moving to owned resources in an area that had received rain was the usual response and the reason for owning land and being a farij member in different drainage areas. People in the Ruus al-Jibal considered they had managed adequately in severe droughts since the animals fed on dry grazing and the trees, water still remained in cisterns or seeps, and people had grain in their granaries. Goat numbers were reduced and firewood or charcoal became the resource for sale. Moving down to the sayh and the deep wells or to date gardens and working as baidar were also known responses. Storm damage was also considered to be inevitable. Storehouses made from wadi pebbles and built against huge rocks on wadi terraces or in the banks of deep cut wadi channels rarely suffered damage from rock slides or falling boulders from mountain slopes, or from wadi banks collapsing. The most common storm damage was falling trees and collapsing field retaining walls. In the past, when people lived from their fields, field walls were maintained and repaired if damaged. Fields that were washed out had not been maintained, because they had already

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been abandoned or were in the process of abandonment. In Wadi Ghabbas there are two long abandoned field groups, one against a mountain slope to the northwest, and the other on an island of gravels near the northern end of the wadi basin. An elderly Shamaili inhabitant thought the first group had been abandoned at least two hundred years ago, since his grandfather had had no knowledge of anyone using them, and pointed out walls of an earlier field visible inside the broken retaining wall of the existing field group. Concerning those on the island, he considered, These must be very old indeed, because it is impossible for flood flows to reach those fields and no-one has any memory of even hearing stories of storms that so changed the wadi bed. The worst storm I have experienced in more than seventy years was the one in the summer of 1995, (Fisher and Membery, 1998; 17 – 18, a rare monsoon depression), when the floods washed a large part of the heavy gravels, batha, in the Wadi Bih and the Ghabbas, taking trees and sadaf (pteropyrum scopiarum) bushes with them. Sadaf was plentiful before and it hasnt yet grown back; it is good feed for goats.

Livelihoods and living in the Ruus al-Jibal The following description is compiled from what Dhahuriyiin, Shihhuh, and Habus told us in the mountains, or described to us in their present locations. The material starts at Sall Asfal in the northern end of the Ruus al-Jibal and moves south. Although all discussions were based around what life was like before oil, people talked about a wide range of topics. Sometimes conversations were initiated by questions about particular aspects of cultivation, structures, or techniques; sometimes people wanted to describe particular aspects of their former lives. A few became distressed when talking about what they recalled as a productive and happy life in the mountains. Since some people were seen only once or twice, but others more frequently and who were concerned that their lives in the Ruus al-Jibal should be recorded in detail, information for some places is fuller than for others. We considered dividing information by categories, but rejected this as it seems more sensible to provide as full a description as possible of the sources of livelihood of a locality and how its people lived. So for some places there is a lot of information, but for others, far less. The Ruus al-Jibal, in spite of their barren appearance, were regarded as productive by their inhabitants and outsiders. An elderly man from Ahl Ras al-Khaimah, who worked with Habus and Shihhuh,

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said, “The mountains were wonderful. They were just like a supermarket, they had everything you needed.” People lived from their fields, their goats and the trees. Which provided a familys profits depended on the qualities and numbers of owned fields and/or goats, how much labour a family had and with what care family members worked, whether with wheat or goats, collecting firewood and charcoal making, finding wild honey, or making pottery. Rainfalls, dews, mists, winds, and heat also affected production. An individual family often worked closely at some times with one or more related families, but also worked on its own at others, as it moved between the afraj in which husband and wife owned land. The higher fields produced red wheat, birr hamra, which depending on soils, amounts of goat manure, rain, and care in preparation and during growth, produced yields of up to 1:100. Comparable figures of 1:80, 1:90, 1:100 were noted in the interior of Qishm island in 1819 (IOR:BSP; vol 45, 5) and in the grain and goat based economy of the Black Kafir of the Hindu Kush (Parkes, 1992; 39). These yields compare to traditional yields of 1:25 for wheat in Scotland and with modern techniques, 1:40 (figures supplied by Scottish Agricultural College, Kirkwall, Orkney). The very high yields in the small terraced fields were achieved by techniques nearer to horticulture than those of largescale arable farming. People who had fields that, with good rains, good seed, plenty of goat manure, and careful cultivation, yielded 1:50 and higher, spoke of regularly selling wheat. Those with fields that yielded less talked of filling their granaries and then sometimes or occasionally sold small amounts of wheat. Wheat was distributed outside the community only after the communitys needs had been supplied, and granaries filled with unthreshed wheat. Wheat was given to people in the coastal date garden areas as unthreshed grain, but bartered or sold as threshed grain or flour to known or unknown individual buyers and small traders in the coastal towns of the Gulf, Khasab or Dibba Baiah. Some white wheat, birr abyath, was grown on lower mountain fields, as at Sall Asfal and Rawdhah. Ruus al-Jibal families who reckoned on profits from goats managed their flocks in two parts. The she goats and unweaned kids were the domestic flock and returned to the house each night for milking; the second, with a high proportion of males, was referred to as the fairih (lively, nimble) or barri (outside, not domestic) flock, who roamed a more extensive area, did not return at night, and were sold live as meat animals. The domestic flock produced clarified butter, dihn, and cheeses, jibnah, which kept in good condition for a considerable period and so tradeable.

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Some families sold or exchanged dairy products in the nearer coastal date garden areas at fairly regular intervals between October and May, in small amounts to obtain small amounts of fish, dates, coffee, or other small items, but sold live goats for meat in more distant coastal areas for money to buy their supplies of imported dry dates during the gaith. A few people mentioned selling goathair. Firewood was an important item that some Shihhuh and many Habus families from the southern areas of the Ruus al-Jibal collected and sold on a regular basis throughout the year at places on the coastal plains, often at small Friday markets or the bigger markets at Ras al-Khaimah town or Rams. A few made charcoal for sale, but charcoal making was more practised by Sharqiyiin of the northern end of the western Hajar. Firewood was used in coastal towns for baking bread, cooking, and coffee making, whereas charcoal was used for cooking rice and other boiled items in the kitchens of richer traders. Both men and women collected and sold firewood. Honey was collected from the nests of wild bees in the Ruus al-Jibal by some and sold in the coastal towns. Pottery was made for sale by a few Dhahuriyiin at Sili in Wadi Shaam, some Haslamani families in Wadi Banna, and Bani Murri and other Shihuh at Alamah above Lima (Lancasters 2111a). What families made their livelihood and profits from was the consequence of what they owned by inheritance, purchase, or development; aptitude; and interest. Many people emphasised that any occupation was open to anyone, nothing was restricted to particular people or group, a man could learn to be a potter if he could find a teacher, a Shihhi could become a sailor or a trader if he so wanted although few did. In the Ruus al-Jibal mountains, everyone did their own work. Economic activities were not regarded as vertically stratified into prestigious and despised, nor were the better off considered to be more important or significant than the less well off. Reputation as a good man or as a good family, who were competent, generous, and behaved properly, was more relevant than money or goods. As anyone could do anything, all occupations had value, and opportunity was open to all, the economic arena was decentralised. This was true for all groups of the region, but people of the Ruus alJibal often mentioned such ideas. People needed to have surpluses from the Ruus al-Jibal to obtain things they needed. For many this included their supplies of dry dates, a basic staple alongside locally produced grain (and milk and milk products; but these were womens work, and as it was easier to meet men, were mentioned less often). Some Ruus al-Jibal families owned date

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trees or gardens in Dibba Baiah, Lima, Khasab, Jadi, Shaam, Ghalilah, Shimal and other places on Sayh al-Sirr as far as Khatt. Some Ruus alJibal afraj did have mountain date trees, but usually these trees were few in number and the fruit was for the few people who remained behind in the mountains to care for the animals when most families went down to the date garden areas in the summers. Other items that had to be bought were cloth and clothes; coffee; salt fish; metal items like knives, hais blades, axe heads, nails; and small items such as sewing needles and threads, spices, salt, scent, incense, cosmetics. Sometimes services, such as mediation or healing, had to be paid for. Weapons and jewellery were occasional expensive purchases. Marriage needed brideprice of goods and often money, as well as the means for a man to support his wife and family. Families owned their own assets, and each had a different balance between fields at different afraj, goats, date trees owned in mountain afraj or on the coast, or rented on the coast, craft skills, and so on. Each decided how to manage their assets for themselves, and how and where to obtain dry dates and other necessities. Peoples accounts show the intricate nature of the ways they made their livelihoods and profits in the Ruus alJibal, and how they lived there, their winter and saifi houses, what they had in them, what they wore and ate, how they enjoyed themselves, how they coped with misfortune, and how they buried their dead. Members of the different tribal groups of the Ruus al-Jibal use different terms for the same things, or accent the same words differently. Winter and saifi houses do vary between mountain localities. Variations sometimes are more apparent than real, and come from the use of stone immediately to hand; as stone varies within and between localities, buildings appear to be different. Most variation in house types (fig. 12; 598 – 599) comes from the nature of the locality, the season of use, the length of time used, and the number of people accomodated. People use their houses essentially for shelter and storage. The choices people made in carrying out the behaviours, often repetitive, sometimes rare, of domestic life, and the conscious or unconscious references in their behavioural choices had ritual and religious aspects. People buried their dead, but the manner of burial, the type of grave, and the way it was finished was the decision of the deceaseds family. Decentralised ritual and religious arenas alongside formal Islam were apparent. An obvious demonstration is the carving, where those sitting in the majlis would see it, on a house at ar-Rawdha, which reads “In contentment is honour and in greed is shame”, dated 1132AH/1719AD. Ahl

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ar-Rawdha say that that is how they lived in the past, and that the words come from the Quran or are a well-known hadith; others say the words are a proverb well known throughout the Arab world. Whatever the source of these words, their use in the carved inscription both linked Ahl ar-Rawdha to a regional wider Arab Islamic community and epitomised its individuality. A Khanazira Hadiya Shihhi at Sall Asfal said, In the past, before oil money, we grew wheat on the fields around the edges of the Sall, against the mountainsides. I remember the women doing the work because the men were away working in Kuwait, and the yields were low. Ive been told that earlier, when there were men to do the work and there were good rains, all these fields were cultivated and people took in more fields from the silts, and fenced them around with stones and brushwood to keep out the animals. We really sold goats in Khasab and Dibba, and bought dates.

An older Khanzuri recalled: I remember selling wheat in Dibba and Khasab, but not from these fields because the rains here were never good, from fields we had elsewhere. Goats were our main product from here, we sold them in Khasab, Dibba and as far down the coast as Khor Kalba and we bought dates. In the old days, if a man had sons he had lots of labour for cultivation.

A Shihhi at Siima in Sall Asfal commented, We grew birr basri, a sort of birr hamra, red wheat, with small grains, and birr abyath, white wheat. Before anyone sold wheat, they made sure everyone in the community had what they needed. At that time, the houses with their fields were spread in ones and twos in every notch at the base of the mountains, and the community stretched from Birkat an Nuss at the bottom to Birkat al Khaldiyya at the top. So by the time everyone had what they needed, there wasnt much left for sale. But with wheat from the fields here and some from our fields high up at Sahasa and some more from fields we had at al-Bilad, we had plenty, and we often sold wheat as threshed wheat, ad-daraisi. In a reasonable year, yields here were 1:20, 1:30, but Ive been told that before I was born – and I was born in 1950 – the rains were better and yields were higher. Sij and ar-Rawdhah were better places for trees and crops than Sall Asfal and Sall Ala, these places have more rains and they had more people for the work. Good yields arent only from amounts of rain and the type of soil, but also from the amount of care and labour people put in. We summered in Khasab or Jadi, where we worked for our dry dates. Other people from Siima owned date gardens at both these places, but we didnt. We had lots of goats, Sahasa was a good place for goats, and we sold goats in Khasab or Jadi.

Qiyaishi at Ghubbaina in Sall Asfal said,

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Before, we didnt live here, we came down here only in the winter if it was really cold. When we first came down here, we lived in a huge cave at the back of the wadi. The only other time we came down was in the gaith to get dates in Khasab or Dibba. We had at least six groups of fields and houses on the tops of the mountains. Our family had fields at Sih, through marriage, but our main fields were at al-Mintara and so on. After it had rained, we went from field to field, haising and planting, we were rarely anywhere for longer than a couple of weeks. The wheat grew a metre high, and we had plenty of goats. We rahaled, we moved from field to field, cistern to cistern. The water in the cisterns lasted for a year and a half, two years, if people were careful. If we needed drinking water, because what was left in the cisterns was really horrible or used up, the women went down with donkeys to the deep wells. Our main export was charcoal, and we also sold live goats, dairy products, wheat, and honey.

At Sih, a Bani Hadiya Khanzuri explained: The date trees are special to the mountains, date varieties from low down wont grow here. Our date trees dont have a name because they have always been here. In the past, we grew wheat, dates and figs here. We certainly sold wheat, we sent down wheat regularly to the coast. The whole valley was wheat! Then, we collected the fruit of wild fig trees, but now we have planted cultivated fig varieties. We sent down wild miiz (prunus arabicus) fruits too, they have to be boiled first.

Dhahuriyyin at Jidda, east of Ghamda, described themselves as almost self-sufficient: We had a few fields down here, but they werent important. Our real fields were up at Sall Istam, a lovely place, plateaux of earth as far as you can see. We stayed up there most of the time, we grew wheat and kept goats, and there were quite a lot of date trees up there. The khuwail, relations and connections through women, were one group of people we gave surplus wheat and other things to. We also gave surpluses of wheat and butter and so on to the poor and needy as sadaqa, religious alms, over and above zakat. We also gave grain and things to friends, asdiqa, and some of these friends were down on the coast. The falay ran for two to four months, and we had cisterns. We came down to sell goats in Ghamda, and we bought rice and coffee in the shops kept by Persians, or we would exchange a goat for fresh and salt fish with people in Ghamda. We werent close to them, they are Bani Ali Shihuh. Other Dhahuriyiin went down to the Batinah coast selling goats, but we didnt need to.

A Dhahuri at al-Jir explained, Most Dhahuriyiin were buried at places like Bukha, Khasab, Ghamda and so on because that was were they died. Mostly, people died in the summer when they were down at the coastal oases. Or they died in the winter, especially the very old, from the cold and again, they tended to be down in their

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lower places for the winter. It wasnt very common for people to die up in the mountain farij, although of course they did. There is a graveyard at Mahas and my father is buried up there, but my mother and my grandparents are all buried in Khasab where they went for summers. At the graveyard in Mahas, there is a big stone tomb, a sanam, like the ones at Kush, in Shimal. There are tombs like that all over the mountains. Some are the tombs of shaikhs, some of ancestors, and some are of people unknown. The graveyard at Hablain has a sanam, like at Lima. Jiss is the same as saruj, and the clay had to be washed for three days. The jiss was used in cisterns, houses, and anything else anyone fancied. We had bait raha, one to every three or four houses; grinding grain gave the women time to meet together and chat. The grinding stones often came from Iran, but some came down from Basra and people said these might have come from Syria. We used the long handle, zaiyyid, like everyone else in the Ruus al-Jibal. The top end of the long stick fitted into a cross piece, artha, and across the hole in the centre of the top stone was a lttle piece of wood, the kabba, which controlled the amount of grain going in. We kept money and valuables in locked Indian metal trunks, mundus. If there was danger about, we buried the trunk in the house floor.

In Wadi Shaam, a Shutairi Shihhi said, In the past, we lived from our mountain fields. There are hundreds of fields at Sall Istam. We lived on what we produced, and we sold firewood, honey, wheat, live goats, clarified butter and cheese, and sometimes we worked in the date gardens or at the fishing – that was if the rains were lacking. We always had wheat for sale, which we sold to people in Shaam who didnt have mountain fields and to traders who took it out of Shaam to trade; we bought dates in Shaam.

A Dhahuri commented, We had fields at Ain as-Sih, Hablain and places in between, and we used Dibba and Khasab as our markets. We sold grain if we had any spare, but our main products for the market were live goats and dairy products. We walked to the markets or we went on boats as passengers, we didnt have camels.

A Dhahuri said his grandfather had been a potter at Sili, but he himself did not remember the kilns ever in use, while a man in Shaam recalled his family had bought their pottery from potters at Sili. Pottery making at Sili stopped in the early 1960s when the clay deposits were washed away in a big storm (Dostal 1983; 141). Another Dhahuri at Sili remarked: We grew wheat and barley on our fields here and higher up at Sall Istam. The fields at Sall Istam were more productive than those down here. Which we grew depended on the amounts and timings of rain; barley

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grows with later and less rain than wheat. In a good year and with good manure, one mun (4 kgs) of seed gave from 12 to 20 sacks of ears of grain. I cant tell you if the grain from that field would have been sufficient for the family who cultivated it. Fields might be shared between people. In any case, the harvest of all fields was shared between all the people who had claims on it. I grow a crop on one of my fields and harvest it; I have a share, my father has a share, my brother probably has a share, some of my cousins might have a share. In the same way, I have a share in the harvests of other fields. A person depended on his own efforts, but he received contributions from the efforts of others in the same way as he contributed to theirs. This came from shares received through inheritance, so a mans shares of fields and harvests in all his different places were like his networks of social relations. We always made sure everyone in the community had what they needed before anything was sold. My family walked to Bithnah in Wadi Ham for the gaith; we worked for our dates, and we bought more dates. We took donkeys, goats, kids, perhaps a camel, and bundles of goathair to sell or exchange at places we stopped at on the way, like Masafi where there were metalworkers and we might buy knives or hais blades from them for goats. Sili is almost in three sections. There are maybe fifty cisterns and a hundred and fifty fields altogether. In this part of Sili, there are eight old cisterns lined with juss, which is the same as saruj, its waterproof mortar; you get clay, the same as we used for pottery, and burn it. When I was a boy, there were between twenty to twentyfive families in all of Sili, but these families werent here all the time. A house held four or five people. There were always empty houses, some temporarily because people had gone to another farij to work on their fields there, others because the owners never lived in them, they had other houses they preferred. I dont know how many families own property here. There were five old masajid; two here, one up there and two below. All of them were built of local stone and roofed with beams and ishbaq, and each of them had a roofed courtyard. Each was built by the families of the locality and maintained by them; that was where they prayed. All the existing masajid replaced earlier ones at exactly the same sites. People redid their houses in the 1950s and 60s, but they mostly used the old stones and the old ways of living in a house. This was my grandparents house. The bait gufl, the house that locked, was where we lived in the winters, and it stayed the same. The floor was dug out of the earth, you step down into the house. This was the dikka, the platform where we slept, to the left of the door. Underneath the dikka are kainuz, niches where we stored things, and there were more niches in the long back wall. Then people built an adjoining house with the floor at the same level as outside with a gita, a space for washing, and that was new. This aluminum shallow dish is a tasa, that was what we drank from. There is a piece of the old sifra, the date leaf mat food was served on. Next to this house is the saffa, where we moved in the saif, with big spaces between each stone and large openings to catch every breath of wind. Outside were henhouses and a

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kid-house, sakhal, and each group of houses had a bait raha, where the millstones with the extended handle was. I remember running back and forth in this passage between my grandmothers kitchen and her store; that blackened wall was where she had her hearth. All the cooking things by that time were metal, aluminium or enamel. The wooden peg, wad, in the wall is where we hung our clothes and the men hung their guns. We ate bread, dates, milk and milk products, salt fish, eggs. I never saw cultivated fruit, we ate the fruits of sidr trees, wild figs and others. When we lit our fires at sunset, the goats saw the flames and they came back to their yards, where we were waiting for them. This is one of our graveyards; the graves differ from one another. Two have oval kerbs, those few have stone boxes, and these have only head and foot stones. All the people buried here were from these houses, from my family. My grandfather is buried in the big graveyard below. This small stone building is a yidra, its where we put kids with their mothers at night; five would fit in here. The round stone building against the rock was a donkey house, really to keep them out of the growing crops at night. Those houses built into the wadi side, and the others in that side wadi, were where people lived when they took their animals away from the growing crops to the grazing on the mountain slopes. Before the harvest here, the animals were away from the fields. After the grain was harvested, the animals entered the fields, they ate the stubbles and later they ate the weeds that came up.

Another Dhahuri said, When we were here and in Kilwa in Fujairah for the summer, we slept on khaws the women made from date leaves; they were like hasiir mats but bigger. Mattresses came later. In our cooking, we used salt, clarified butter, spices or bizar, and turmeric. We didnt have chili and peppers, they came later. In our houses, we had four or five things for cooking with, burma and yidr, but no plates. We had a khars, big storage jar, for dates, one for grain, and one for water. We had exactly the same in our house at Sall Istam, we didnt take things up and down – apart from a few small things.

In Wadi Kub, off Wadi Ghalilah, an elderly Shutairi said, To get the money for our dates and whatever else we needed, we sold live goats, cheeses and clarified butter, and we sold some flour. We had hardly any money but we had food and houses. There is money in goats. In good years with rains there are profits; in years with no rains, there arent.

A small group of al-Assad Shutair Shihhuh explained: Our grandfather had three hundred goats, which was a great many. A flock of thirty will keep a family, and this is what most people aim for. We made a lot of cheese and clarified butter for sale, most of which we sold in Ghalilah. Our fields are here, some at Ras al-Wuh, and our main fields are at Sih – or Sij – in Oman. Yields here are low, 1:15, 1:20, because the soil is poor. The

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Sih fields gave 1:50, 1:60, 1:70. Other people had land that gave 1:100. We sold grain regularly, and we sold it as flour because we got more for our grain that way. The harvest of a field was always shared between people who had claims on it. For instance, that family got two mun, and that one got five, and he got one. The shares might be those due to the co-owners of the field, but they might have been the shares to support needy people of the community, the family, or the farij. We could grind grain for sale and make cheese and butter for sale because we had a lot of women in the family, grinding grain and processing milk are womens work. We got our dates from Khabura on the Batinah coast in Oman. Three families got together and walked there with their goats, it took three weeks. They sold the goats, used the money to buy dates and whatever else they needed, put the dates on a boat to come round to Ghalilah, and walked home. Fresh dates we got in Ghalilah. There was never, ever, hunger in the mountains. Hunger was what traders and people without land in coastal towns suffered.

An al-Assad in Ghalilah, whose father had been a trader in Ghalilah, stated: My father bought surplus wheat the bida, the Ruus al-Jibal people, brought down after the granaries had been filled. This was regular, the high fields were really productive. He also bought from them honey, cheeses, and firewood, that was a big item, and it all went up the Gulf by boat. They took back salt fish, cloth, salt, small things. I remember them coming down on Fridays to the mosque, wearing their gitra with their tweezers tucked in, and carrying goatskin jirba, water bags, in which they brought wheat down and took salt fish up. People from the mountains and from here used to go to work in Buraimi, in Fars (southern Persia) or Bombay when there was no money here.

At Wadi Ghalilah, a Shutari said, This house is really old, built by my I dont know how many great grandfathers ago. It is well dug in, the floor is a long way down from the small doorway. There are four khars for storing dates and wheat. The raised plastered floor the jars are sitting on is a dikka; a dikka is anything flat, like the dikka where we slept at the other end by the door. The spaces under the dikka and in the long wall are kainuz, where we put things we didnt want knocked over. The overhang of flat stones between the walls and the roof is the satif. Our kitchen was built on to the house, and we had our tannur, hearth, in the kitchen. The summer house, the saffa, was opposite. People had their stone saifa (or saffa) on the gravel banks in the wadi, about halfway to the well. Some had large ones, some small, some round, some rectangular, some were extensions of the winter house. It all depended on what they needed, what was available, how much stone there was, whether they were rebuilding or starting from scratch, how many people would be using it, for how long ….

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In Wadi Halhal, a Shutairi commented, This is my wifes house built by her grandfather or great grandfather. The roof beams are wild fig, litib, there are lots up the wadi. Roof beams last for generations, and usually they can be re-used when a house is renovated. When we lived here, we had twelve kharus mostly for wheat and dates. Water was always stored outside. There wasnt a separate kitchen, the women cooked outside on the tannur and the men had a coffee hearth outside. We had a bait raha and we stored grain there as well. There wasnt a majlis, men sat outside, on the dikka, the footings of the house, or under the trees. When we had guests, the women of a neighbouring house came to sleep here and we men and the male guests went up to their house to sleep.

At Wadi Ruhaba, a Ruhaibi in his nineties said, We had date gardens between the foot of the mountain and the sandy ridge, and we were down here only in the summer for the dates. The rest of the year we were in the mountains, going between our many fields. We scarcely came down. If we needed to buy anything like fish, we sold wheat and firewood or a goat to sea men at Khor Khuwair. We lived on our dates, bread, milk, and clarified butter, and on the very rare occasions when there werent enough dates, we ate something else. In my memory, we never bought dates.

Another Ruhaibi added: Some people didnt have enough grain fields, others had three or four, others had more. But after everyone in the community was supplied with what they needed, those who had a surplus of grain sold it. I remember going down to Khor Khwair with other men and helping fishermen haul in their catch; in return for our work, we were given fresh fish.

Mahbib from Khamid explained: We grew a lot of wheat at Khamid, our main fields were up there, about seventy fields altogether. We nearly always had wheat to sell in Dhaya and Rams to people we knew, we didnt sell to traders. And we sold a lot of cheese, clarified butter, honey and firewood. Grain was carried down in sacks on donkeys. Clarified butter and honey came down in bottles and before we had bottles we had jarra, aluminium with screw tops and handles. We bought salt, salt fish, clothes and things. We were ghani, rich because we were self-sufficient (Schimmel 1994; 225); in the past, we had land so we had profits. The date trees at Khamid grew by the falay but there werent always enough for everyone every year. I had a date garden at Dibba Baiah, like some other other Mahbiib, and these gardens had been bought about a hundred and fifty years ago. Other Mahbiib sometimes bought dates from Nakhil, Ras al-Khaimah town, Dhaya or Dibba Baiah. On the whole, Shihhuh didnt go to sea or go pearling, except for those who

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lived right on the coast. There was nothing to stop anyone going if he wanted to, all he had to do was to learn. But most didnt.

Another said, I renovated my house up at Khamid, it had last been rebuilt by my great grandfather. I put in a metal door, cemented the walls, and made two openings, daarisha, for air and light. And I built on a new saffa, summer house, in cement blocks; for coolness, our summer houses never had walls on the northeast side. When I was a boy and living there most of the time, we didnt have a separate kitchen. We cooked outside or in the saffa. The raha was also in the saffa, on a plinth built up at the back. Where the wadis join below Khamid, there are shelters and a wall, mizrab, to keep the animals down in Wadi Haram.

At Lahasa in Wadi Jib, an al-Aqba said, There is a large sanam at Musaibat from before Islam, bigger than the one here. We call this one Hadabat Saad, and it is just a little house. Before, Bani Bakhit used to leave firewood they had collected at Hadabat Saad, and it was perfectly safe. No-one would touch anything left there.

Another remarked: The old grave, the sanam, is the grave of an ancestor, although no-one knows who. Practically the only things we ever bought were clothes. We really only wore kuura, lengths of cloth to wrap round our loins and our heads. We wove wool into blankets and rugs, but as far as I know, we never had to weave it into cloth. We never had such hard times that we needed to.

At Saali, a Qiyaishi remarked: In our house here, and I remember this distinctly, we had two burma; a sahan, plate; and a big cooking pot, 60 cms across, in which we cooked our rice and salt fish. The numbers of cooking pots, plates, and stuff people had in their houses varied considerably. Some had one burma and a dish, others had up to ten of everything. Each of the two to four houses everyone had was fully equipped, we didnt carry things back and forth. This scrap of embroidered material was from a little girls aasa, they wore them over their heads and tied under their chins; thats a bit of the shaping at the back of the head, and then they hung down their backs. Elder sisters and mothers made them.

An elderly Qiyaishi commented, The lowest group of graves in the graveyard is the most recent. My grandfather was buried there, but I didnt know anyone else who is buried there. As for the other groups of graves, all I can say is that they are older and all

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Qiyaishi. All the Qiyaishi from the Shaha, the Saali and the Yahal were buried here until recently. These were our winter places.

A younger man said, My uncle told me he couldnt remember that graveyard being used. We make no distinction between men, women, and children. All graves are the same, the bodies are buried with the head to the north and the face to Mecca, and a head and foot stone. I dont think the different ways of finishing the graves have any meaning, they dont indicate different periods of time or different groups. From my experience, people used whatever materials came to their hands. Rounded stones are nearer that end of the graveyard; the orange rock that breaks into slabs is just where it is used; and large flat stones for headstones are scattered about. I think people made graves over earlier ones, when they had virtually disappeared. People used old headstones in field walls – like there. Some graves might be Bani Shamaili, they used this area too.

In Wadi Shaha, a Qiyaishi explained: This place is Mswaat, Umm Swaat, one of the original farij. It is very old indeed, and has three sanam, pre-Islamic grave mounds; the Islamic graveyard; old buildings and long disused fields. There are no differences between graves, they look different because people use what stone is to hand. There is a fourth sanam at Ubbraihi, Buraha…. Waab Farah, another at the end of the wadi by Saali, and there was another there, but it was cleared and the stones incorporated into the wall of the field made on the cleared site. Umm Swaat expanded into Luaiba and Umm Mayya, the other two farij at the head of the wadi. There was Ub-Braha and then Khamm Matar further down. Waab Rbay, with the two date trees, developed later. I have winter fields here at Ub-Braha and at Luaiba, and my high fields are at Ghabaib, north of Sall Dhaya, and at Aiba near Qalam, where there is a falay like at Mayya. When I was a child, we ate sih, ground grain mixed with milk or water into a thin gruel; and bread, dates, salt fish, and of course, lots of milk, cheese and clarified butter.

A neighbour commented, Our old bait gufl and majlis, with muzhalla – shade shelters – were built tight up against the mountain sides. Then we built our first modern houses, the bait arabi, on more open land. We had granaries, yanz, by all our fields, but mostly they were tucked away out of sight, up against the mountain side or behind a huge rock. We grew three sorts of wheat; daras, with long ears; makhshairi, which was six-rowed; and the ordinary sort. Makhshairi had to be pounded to get off the husks before it could be ground, so some of the pounding holes you see by the old houses were for that. I remember eating bread made with that wheat, it was quite prickly, there were still bits of husk

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in it, and the loaves were small and thick rather than large and thin. I was born in 1950, and by the time I was old enough to really remember the old system of wheat cultivation was crumbling away, and we were starting to buy rice and flour. In my time, we never had enough wheat from our fields. We sold live animals mostly, and firewood and honey. We bought salt fish, spices, clothes, and metal goods. All the metal goods came from Baluch from Shimal who came round to places in the foothills and the lower wadis. We bought sulphur, sifara, from them to make gunpowder, and lead to cast bullets. Matchlocks, bufflatira, went on being popular in the mountains because we could make our own gunpowder. If a man had a rifle, he could make the caps himself, but it was easier to buy them from the Baluch.

Shamaili at Ghaylan said all their fields were at Barama or east Ghabbas, they did not have really high fields. From their fields, they expected yields of 1:50, 1:80 in a really good year. The buildings at Barama had never been lived in, but used overnight or for a few days when working on the fields in the saif or after the gaith; they lived at Ghaylan, where they had bait gufl, lockable houses, and bait saifi, summer houses. They had made pottery for the market, but production had ceased some time before the potteries in Wadi Hajil stopped. A Shamaili in Wadi Hajil commented, The fields in this group belonged to my father, my uncle and a cousin, each field is owned separately. My fathers field took 2 mun of seed and in an ordinary year it gave 80 mun. After the gaith, we cleaned off the weeds with a mabgala ( b-g-l, to weed), put on a lot of goat manure, and tilled it with the hais, a sort of hoe. When the soil was almost dry after the first flood flow we sowed the seed and covered it, one man pulled the hais with another one guiding it. Then we went away to the higher fields and worked these, looked after the goats, collected ishbaq and clay for the kilns, and firewood. We came down here in late February, early March, and harvested, cutting the stalk with a sickle, qos, halfway down the stalk. The stubbles, awfa, were left for the animals. We bound the cut grain into sheaves, shawm, and loaded it onto donkeys to go to the threshing floor, yannur. Down here we stored threshed grain in jars in the house. Up on our high fields at Sall, the harvested ears were stored unthreshed in stone granaries, yanz, which were carefully chinked and mudded to keep out mice. The door was high and small, and after the grain was inside, the door was mudded round. Unthreshed grain kept in a granary for years, three, six, seven years definitely.

A Shamaili from a family who had lived from goats, firewood and honey collecting explained: We lived here at the top of the wadi in the winter. We had a bait shitwi, the same as a bait gufl, a secure house; a majlis where the men met, and a kitchen. They were all stone built; the shitwi was the best built, then the majlis,

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and the kitchen wasnt well built at all. The bait ar-raha, which was for the farij, was built into an overhang in the wadi side. Just by the house we had the masjid, where we prayed; it was one course of stones high. The summer house, saifi, was down the slope where it caught the summer breezes coming up the wadi. The walls werent solid, the stones arent mortared together and there are gaps, so the air circulates. There were a few henhouses outside, made from stones. In the majlis, there was a peg, a wad, for hanging guns and clothes on, and a smokehole. The shitwi had a really big step down from the door; on the left was the sleeping platform with storage space underneath, and at the right hand end were the storage jars. The roof had only a foot of earth and gravel over the beams. My grandfathers house, round the corner, was much better built. His beams were at least a foot in diameter, with a metre of earth and gravel over them. All the goat shelters were by my grandfathers house. On the top of the huge white rock by my grandfathers house is a natural basin which had been enlarged. In a good winter, we got all our water from it. Otherwise, we fetched water from a well further down. But we werent here much, we were up on our mountain fields or by the date gardens. Each farij, the fields, buildings, cisterns and the people who owned them, was a community, a jamaa, through that co-ownership. Each community had its own yanz, granary, where the unthreshed grain harvested by everyone was stored for everyone. The grain that each family was using, after it had been threshed by the hashad, the communal work group, was kept in khars in the winter houses or makhzan.

A Shamaili remarked: The khars, big storage jars, lasted for ever, until they got broken. When a man was renovating a old house because he was getting married, he got a khars and carried it up on his head. Khars had to go in before the roof went on, and usually people made kursi, little plaster supports, for the jars. Khars were carried on peoples heads; jirba, waterskins, on peoples backs. Some women were really proud of their kitchens, and whitened the insides of their tannur, ovens, with a paste they made from a mountain stone pounded and mixed with water.

In Wadi Ghabbas, a Shamaili said, I rebuilt this house about fifty years ago. There was a house here already, but I took it down to the lowest course of stones. The roof beams are sidr, which I cut from a living tree. The door came from the old house. I did all the work myself, except for setting the lintel over the door, the two big stones over the lintel, and the flat stones, tasnaf (selected), that the roof beams rest on. I could have done it by myself if necessary, but it would have taken me ages. A hashid, a work party from the community, helped me with that and I killed a goat for them. We lifted the stones by manoeuvring them with poles up piles of earth. The whole house took less than a months work. Building the saffa adjoining it took me five days. I have five storage jars, I bought them all from bil Houn and another

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man in Wadi Hajil; each one holds between 25 – 30 mun (100 – 120 kgs). By that time, no-one was making the really big globular jars. My wife made the foodmat, and I bought the rug, it was made in Jabal Akhdar. Men and women wove here, the women put their looms out on the fields after the harvest, under the trees, and the looms rested on pairs of stones. In my lifetime, and I think I am 75 or 76 (1999), we have always been able to buy soap. But often we made it. We got sidr leaves, crushed them, and boiled them so an oily scum came on the water. We skimmed the scum off with our hands into a bowl, and it cooled into a slippery yellow paste. They said people used gum off samra in the same way, but I think it wasnt samra, but a tree like it. There were other trees and plants we used in the same way. Fleas and lice were around but people werent often affected. If there was an infestation, the clothes and bedding were hung up in the anni, the animal shelter, where we built a really smoky fire, and the clothes were fumigated in the smoke. Goats were cleaned of ticks and lice in the same way; we made dung fires and made them stand in the smoke. We burn incense for the nice smell, not for any other reason.

His wife added, We didnt have different plants for different sorts of washing. We used sidr leaves for washing our hair, our bodies, our clothes. There was yas from a high mountain tree….

He continued, Come to think of it, we did use shu, moringa peregrina, seeds; we made them into a solution, hal, it was oily and we rubbed it on our skin to stop dryness and to make the skin soft. All plants have medicinal uses, although we dont know all of them. Habb al-hamra was used as a contraceptive; it grows round here after rain. Sharisha was used as an abortifacient. Women had no problems giving birth, they had medicines and there were knowledgeable women. They got on and gave birth. They would walk back from the market, give birth, and be up again, working. Up in the mountains we had celebrations all summer long. with weddings and circumcisions. Summer was lovely, we enjoyed ourselves so much. And we celebrated the Islamic Ids. The graveyard here at Ghabbas is very old. All the graves are of people who lived here and used this place. If they hadnt, they wouldnt be buried here. I have no reasons to account for the observable differences between graves. What you see is the result of the family burying their deceased, and they do what is customary with what is to hand. People have said they would like to be buried in a particular place, but it is unusual. Being buried under an overhanging rock was usual if someone had died away from the farij, especially in the winter and the weather was wet. Being buried up the wadi happened if that was where the person had died because they were living up there at the time, or were travelling and died and werent found for some time.

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His wife said, We embroidered everything, all our clothes, everything we made. Mens clothes were embroidered across the shoulders at the back and round the neck; womens on the cuffs, round the neck and down the front, and the ankle bits on sirwal (leggings). Patterns were always lines, triangles and squares. Two or three women worked together. Rugs and blankets were decorated as well.

At al-Yima in Wadi Bih, a Khanbuli said, Most of the houses in this farij are really caves in the wadi sides with front walls built up using wadi stones. People didnt live in them, they were stores and where people slept in bad weather. We lived outside, under the trees. We were here in the winters, it was warmer. These three fields here would, in a good year, provide enough wheat for five families of two adults and three children. The fields lower down the wadi would do the same, and these were the less important fields. The important fields were up at al-Aini and al-Abyath where we were in saif and after the gaith, until it got too cold for the goats and kids. My family lived from goats, and in most years, they kidded twice a year.

A group of Khanabila at al-Aini explained: In the saif, we were here at al-Aini, cultivating our high fields. Before the harvest was ready, we moved to houses on outlying ridges and uncultivated wadis to keep the goats out of the crops. We stayed there for two to four weeks until the harvest was ready and we decided to harvest. Here, we all harvested together, in March. My family stayed in al-Aini in the gaith because we had round cisterns and we had the ain, and it was almost unheard of for it to dry up. We came down to buy dates in Ras al-Khaimah town; then we went on to Dibba Baiah where we owned a date garden and collected those, and came back again. We rode camels or walked, the dates came around by boat to Rams. At Rams, the dates were put into storehouses we rented, and during the winter every time we came down on business we collected some. We had a lot of goats and they stayed around al-Aini all summer. In the winters, we were at our lower fields and houses in Wadi Bih and Wadi Banna. There were at least four tracks to al-Aini. There is one for camels and donkeys with a branch off to Musaylif, with built platforms for resting loads and for leaving goods for collection later. That sort of track has a muzayrib, a wall for keeping out donkeys and goats; theres another in Wadi Bih, and one at Halq ar-Rawdhah. Then there is the track we came up, one up Wadi Mitan, and another over to Salhad. If we were moving as a big group with camels, we went down the Bih to Khatt, over the Qaliddi and on to Dibba. In small groups or with donkeys, we went to Dibba by way of Sabtan. On the main way up to al-Aini, there is a big stone with carvings, azl – tribal marks, and men and donkeys. Each Shihhi tribe has its own azl, and some sections have their own as well. They show that what is marked is

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owned. The Khanabila azl is a cross. Some were probably made by boys out with the goats, but in my opinion they also had a purpose in marking the use and ownership of an area, as on routes. People preferred the red wheat called maisani, which had a good flavour, the ears came out easily at threshing, and it stored well. Wheat yields vary from nothing, because of locusts or early rains that arent followed by any more, to a hundred-fold. A hundred fold return is unusual but possible. It needs good rains in late October or early November and adequate rains for the rest of the growing season up to the end of January, beginning of February, and good seed, keeping the crop free from weeds, and lots of goat manure. As long as the soil is half a metre deep, the soil itself isnt important, its how the soil is treated that is important. I know this field gave a hundred fold returns in the past; it has a big slope for water runoff and it takes water from a wadi higher up, and it is an old field. Ive been told that if there were good saifi rains, people sowed a dukhn, millet, crop as well, and there were two grain harvests in a year. People also sowed millet if there were only saifi rains. A man couldnt grow enough to feed his family and have enough to sell without his wifes labour as well as his own. His wifes work was essential, they were a partnership. Women did almost as much heavy work as men. A boy started work at ten. As a son didnt marry until he was in his mid to late twenties, a father had his sons labour for fifteen to twenty years. The date tree varieties we grow are Braihimi, Utaimi, Musalli, Sabkhiri, and Naghal. The first three need less water so they are grown quite a bit in the mountains. Some are grown in mafsal, small stone encloures with an entrance for water from small seeps that flow for some weeks after rain. Others are grown in the fields that get the most water. Each tree was owned individually, but the fruits were eaten by the people who were here looking after the goats in the gaith. There are small seeps all round here, and people grow more date and fig trees below them.

Another said, I live from my goats, and I know them all individually. I recognise them by colour first of all, and then by shades of colour, patterns of markings, position of colour patches, shapes of horns, and so on. There is a huge vocabulary for describing goats, and I know it but he doesnt, he doesnt have goats the way I do. The goats dont need water at this time of year (February), but if we wanted to milk them, they would. Some of them have kidded, and I expect most of them to kid, even though there wasnt much rain this winter. Goats live from the trees and the perennial plants; grazing on annuals is a lovely extra. Most years, they kid twice. I sell live animals for meat in Ras al-Khaimah town and at Rams.

An older man remarked, My house at Musaylif is made from really huge stones and looks very old. But I know it was built by my actual grandfather. There was nothing here before, he built it from the foundations. We move large stones using piles

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of earth and wooden poles cut from trees as levers. If we wanted to split a large rock, we lit fires along the natural cracks in it, and used poles to pull the rock apart. This is the original door, and it is black because it was painted with whale liver oil as a preservative. It has the original locking mechanism, alaq. You put this long, curved metal hook, like a sickle blade, through the hole in the door, and reach down so it catches on the slots cut into the bolt. By twisting it back and forth, you gradually work the bolt back until it is free, and you open the door. The bolt goes into this piece of wood which goes through the door frame. Sometimes there is another lock for the bottom bolt, which you open with a jirz. We locked our houses because inside we had stores of food, household goods, often money and sometimes silver. Inside my house, I have fourteen storage jars, kharus and habbiya, of different sizes but all for storing food. I have three, my brother and mother have three each, and various cousins own the rest. And we have milk pots, cooking pots, and dishes, and we made coffee in this ibrik (teapot shaped). And in these three smaller, high necked jars we stored the clarified butter we had made. We made butter in a jirba, a skin, and boiled it with winnowings to clarify it for storage. There are three caves in the rocks above Mdaiyu, where the Hurrais and the Hurus had their before-harvest houses. Two have buildings in. A long time ago, a man known as Buma lived there, he had to as he had so many enemies, he was very possessive and violent. It was so steep he needed a rope to climb up. Everyone knows the headstone with the carving of the man with the spear and the round shield. Spears and shields were used almost in living memory. I know someone who has a round shield in his house and I think he has a spear. I remember men having long hair; they wore it tied at the nape of the neck, or piled up inside their gitra, turbans.

Another said, We had private granaries, yanz, in the fields and next to the houses. That square building against the wall of my house is a yanz. Bait raha were communal, there were maybe one to every three to five households, but it varied. I remember raha working ten or twelve hours a day. The women could raise and lower the pivot for the upper stone to adjust the spacing between the stones, so they could grind coarse, medium and fine flour. In the early summer we made jarish, roasted green wheat. Everybody dried and salted meat, it was called qasif or mashru. And we made lakiz, pounded bread and meat. Making a pounding hole is simple. You choose a suitable rock. You buy khil, a hard vegetable paste from Iran, in the suq in Ras al-Khaimah. You crush the khil, mix it with water, and spread the soft paste on your rock, and it softens the rock so you can dig a hole. You repeat this until you have the size hole you want…. it takes a couple of days. To make lakiz, the women made very thick bread and lightly baked it in the tannur, and they cooked meat in salted water. When the meat was ready, it was taken out, put in a dish and covered. The women took the bread and the gravy to the pounding hole, broke up the bread and pounded it with gravy until it was completely smooth. Then they added clarified butter and pounded

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again until everything was smooth. Finally, they added a little black pepper for seasoning and checked the salt. The flavour came from the bread, the meat gravy and the butter. We serve lakiz in a dish on the food mat, with a well in the centre filled with fresh gravy, and the meat is put on top or served on a separate dish. It gets its name because l k z is to strike with the fist, you strike the bread and gravy with the pestle held in your fist. In the mountains, people were buried by their families, who dug the grave, washed the body, and said the Islamic prayers. It wasnt unknown for a dead man to be buried by one person – as in the gaith when only a couple of people might be here with the goats. We didnt have a masjid here at al-Aini. We prayed, usually as a community, sometimes privately. Perhaps no-one was willing to give up land. Sanam were small and informal, built in private places where people made offerings and prayed Islamic prayers about things that were private to them. Shaikh Masud on the headland before Khasab is a well known place of prayers and offerings by men and women. There was another on Jabal Raan al-Harim but as far as I know, it hasnt been used for a long time. My fathers grave and my two sisters graves are by our house at al-Hiya. Mens graves have taller headstones, womens have taller footstones. There are two sorts of graves, some families make one, some the other. The graves finished with oval kerbs are dug so the body is placed in the centre and stones laid over it from each side of the grave. The grave is then filled with the excavated earth, and eventually the head and foot stones are erected and the oval kerb laid round. In the boxed sort, the grave is dug with a cavity to the side for the body; stone slabs are placed along the body to wall it off from the main excavation, and the head and foot stones are placed over the body, and that is why these graves look so narrow. You can get more bodies in a restricted space. People often pray at the graves of their recent dead just before sunset on Thursdays and at Ids; sprinkling water over graves is permitted. (Mershen 2004, presenting a paper on graveyards at Ibra in Oman, said in fiqh, ornamentation of graves was maqru, rebuked, rather than haram, forbidden; Omanis in the audience said the practice was haram but people do what they want.) Drumming, dancing and singing were vital features of all celebrations in the Ruus al Jibal, and important in everyday life. We celebrated the Muslim Ids, Nauruz, weddings and circumcisions – boys were circumcised at ten. When a big wedding took place, people came from all the neighbouring places, they all collected in their proper places. Ahl Salhad collected on the last ridge before al-Aini, and Habus from Hibs waited on the ridge between alAini and al-Abyath. All the others had their collecting places but you cant see them from here. They waited until they heard the first volley of shots fired by Khanabila at al-Aini. Then all the neighbours fired answering vollies in order. When the last group had answered, everybody poured down into al-Aini. Weddings then were brilliant! Up here, women never wore abaya, long black cloaks, or burqa, face masks. They wore burqa when they came down to the markets. But in the mountains, if there was a man not closely related to them, they just put

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their shaila, the black veil covering the head, across their faces. Relations between men and women were much freer and easier. We had love poems, and epic poems, but I cant remember any right now. The women told children traditional stories, my mother knew lots. I remember one about Antar. And they sang lullabies. Inheritance, wirth, is more or less the same for all tribes of Ras al-Khaimah because we all follow Islamic practice where sons take a share and daughters a half share of all property – land, goats, houses, whatever. The widow is entitled to a half share so she has something to live on. Occasionally the father divides his property before he dies, but usually the division is agreed among the heirs. They arrange the division so that each of them gets what fits with or complements their existing assets. So for land, sometimes people want a share of land within a working distance of their existing fields, but sometimes they want a field high in the mountains or down on the plain, or in a different drainage system, a place where they dont already have land and so they can achieve the desirable spread of assets. Who gets what is sorted out by commonsense and sometimes the current distribution of land gets realigned. A daughters inheritance is often worked by her brother and they divide the harvest according to normal share farming arrangements. But if the share is small and the girl has moved away through marriage, her share eventually gets absorbed into that of her brothers. The same principles are involved with the mothers share. So in theory and in practice, holdings in property get very fragmented. At a certain point, the holdings get readjusted so the heirs end up with useable fields or buildings through exchanges and/ or buying out owners of very small shares. There is an ud tree that is jointly owned by five or six people. Each year they cut branches for wood to the value of five or six hundred dirhams and take their shares. We have now agreed that our women will not inherit land, they will get money instead, as too much land was going outside to people who arent Khanabila.

His mother recalled: We sold anything we had a surplus of; honey, grain, live animals, clarified butter, cheese, firewood, charcoal, figs and mizz fruit – the trees grow just a hundred feet above al-Aini. We sold wheat, clarified butter, cheese, firewood and charcoal regularly. All women made charcoal, and we all worked in the fields, weeding, manuring, tilling, and harvesting. If the field was large, the man pulled the hais and the woman guided it through the earth. We looked after the animals, milked them, processed the milk, and collected up the dung and took it to the fields and spread it on the earth. We collected firewood, got the water, ground the grain, and made the bread. We did most of the selling too. Men did the date garden work, the heavier field work, and repairing field and garden walls, cisterns and water channels, houses and granaries. They made charcoal and gunpowder, and made bullets with lead they bought. And they made the locks and doors of houses, that was

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very time-consuming. Men spent time in Dibba Baiah, Khasab, or Bukha, in court, making depositions to the court to settle disputes. Now, these photographs of pots in a house at al-Aini. The brown jars that pour, musabih, were used for water that you were using immediately, or for clarified butter. They didnt come from Shimal, Lima or Oman, I dont know where they were made. Khars, kharus, are the big jars with long necks, they were for dates or water. Hawba are globular, and for storing wheat or flour. This a kneading dish, muajin, from bin Qaysi at Shimal – or we sometimes served food on them. Straight sided pots are yidr for cooking and serving food, rounded ones are burma for milk. Brass or copper pots for cooking meat and rice we bought in the markets, they werent expensive. These little pots are qbul, we drank from them. This little one is a qaddah, for honey, and it should have a cover. We used pots for anything we needed – storing small amounts, heating up food or water, cooking, drinking from; we didnt use a sort of pot for just one purpose. The coffee pot, dallah, definitely comes from Lima, Shimal didnt make them. Shimal made ordinary pottery, Lima made more difficult things like good pourers, coffee pots, and the big pots for cooking haris. It took six men to lead and guide the camel bringing up a big haris pot, or a big hawba or khars to al-Aini, quite an undertaking. Tannur at al-Aini were nearly always earthernware, we didnt make our own ovens from stones and mud.…. When I was a girl, we had spices, bizar, and saffron, and scent and incense. We got silver jewellery when we married, it was part of the mahar. We had everything we needed. In those days, the mountains were green, and the wheat at al-Aini grew above my knees. People worked at work that needed doing, not like jobs now.

At ar-Rawdhah, the meadow, (Lancasters 2004a) men from al-Humaiyyid butn said, Before oil, our fathers grew red and white wheat at ar-Rawdhah and red wheat on the fields at the high afraj. They grew red wheat if the rains were early and we thought there would be more; if the rains were late, we grew white wheat. Later on, from maybe the late 1940s, we grew barley instead of white wheat. If there were saifi rains in March or April, we grew black wheat, dukn or millet, as a second crop. In a reasonable year our yields were 1:40, 1:50, but more in good years. In really good years, people cultivated the shallow fields away from the slopes, the whole of Rawdhah was covered with wheat! The animals were taken away to the mountain sides. We had a communal storehouse up on the ridge above our houses.

Two elderly Bani Rashidi recalled: We had lots of animals, mostly goats, and camels and donkeys. When the crops were growing, we moved the animals to the wadi to the west and they browsed in the mountains. We grew red wheat, barley, and millet. We harvested the grain, threshed it with sticks, winnowed it by lifting it into the air with our hands and the chaff blew away; we milled it in the

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raha, baked it in the tannur and ate it. We lived on grain and milk products, dirr. We didnt have granaries, we stored our grain in the houses, which were really storehouses. This is our house, a roof beam has fallen, and we need to repair it. We last did some small repairs before our mother left more than twenty years ago. We dont know when it was originally built, but we do know that this roof was put on by our great grandfather, so that would be nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. The house is dug deep into the ground, you drop a metre and a half from the door to the floor. The door had locks top and bottom. You opened the top one with a metal pick until this big wooden block at the side of the door was freed; then you put your hand in with the pick and engaged the bottom bolt until it opened in the same way. There is a carving of a camel on this stone in the wall, and another here, but we dont know who made them. Bani Rashid had six cisterns, and this farij is called al-Fajj, the road between the mountains. Our winter houses were in the next wadi, where there was less wind. Our saifi houses were behind the fields by the storehouses, or up on the ridge.

A Bani Ali of Ahl ar-Rawdhah explained: We have granaries only at our top fields at al-Bilad and other places. Here, the fields are smaller and the yields lower, so we stored the grain in our houses and ate it before it had time to spoil. I dont remember grain being sold, only firewood, charcoal, live animals and clarified butter. But in my fathers time, wheat was regularly sold and that wheat was red wheat because it kept so well. We grew grapes up at al-Bilad, they were small and deliciously sweet, and they were never sold. We got all our pottery from Lima. Cooking pots were large and families small, so each family cooked for the others in turn.

A Humaiydi said, That big building dug into the ground, near the second graveyard, was a communal storehouse, but not ours. The building behind was their bait raha, where the women milled their grain. There are seven or eight in arRawdhah. And each group has five or six cisterns. The small oblong buildings in the old graveyards were for a guard to sit at night to guard the graves of the newly dead. On the saffa, summer house, belonging to my family are inscriptions and a date. The dated inscription shows the house is at least as old as it, and it reads Mal khass Muhammad bin Hamiid ar-Rawdhi; kataba Rashid bin Khuzam ash-Shahumi. 1132AH (private property of Muhammad bin Humaid; written by Rashid bin Khuzam ash-Shahumi. 1132AH/1719 – 20AD). This one says an Allah kull shi qadr (that God ordains everything) and the rest is too faint to see. The next is an Allah maa al-sabiriin (that God is with the steadfast); and this says al Az fi al-qinaa wa adh-dhill fi alTamaa (honour is in contentment and shame is in greed), which describes exactly how we lived here.

Khanabila, Bani Murra, Haslaman, and Khanazira using Wadi Banna reiterated they sold what they had surpluses of, and that families concen-

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trated on various alternatives although all families owned fields and kept animals. A Khanzuri said they had sold surpluses of grain, animals, dairy products, charcoal and firewood in Ras al-Khaimah town and Dibba Baiah. A Khanbuliyya spoke of selling charcoal, firewood, clarified butter and grain in Dibba Baiah, where they had a date garden, and in Rams. An elderly Haslamani commented, My family sold a few kids, some goathair, clarified butter and cheese, but what we really sold were wheat and honey. When I was a boy, we sold lots of grain and lots of honey, we carried them in skin bags down to Ras al-Khaimah town or Lima. We bought salt fish, a very little rice, coffee, salt … clothes sometimes. In the mountains, we had everything we needed; everything, because we didnt need salt fish or rice, or even coffee. Mostly, we ate bread, dates, a lot of milk products, and nebk and mizz (fruits of zizyphus spina christi and prunus arabica) in season. The gardens in Dibba Baiah were owned by Shihuh, some from the mountains, some from Dibba. Some gardens owned by mountain Shihuh were worked by Shihuh bayadir. The owners came down for the fertilising of the trees, or the nabat, and for the harvest. Working as a bayadir wasnt shameful, it meant only that at that particular time a man had no way of making his living except by his labour, and it happened at some time in their lives for many men.

A Murriya said, We had our best fields up at Sall Amit and others scattered above and around here. We spent as much time as possible in the mountains, we came down only to get dates in the late summer. For our profits, we sold pottery and goats; which we sold more of depended on what we had. We never sold grain or clarified butter.

Her eldest son said, Theres a sanam at Sall Amit, like the one at Kumzar, about four to five metres long with a small entrance at one end. People used to pray there, and sacrifice goats and burn incense, but nobody does any longer. Lots of places had asnam, almost everywhere. Some were like those at Sall Imit and Kumzar, some like the one at Lima, others like Shaikh Masud. Theres one beyond Khasab, on a hill, its like a big cairn. When I was in Dhofar in Oman, we went to visit the sanam or mazar of Ayyub.

His father, a Haslamani, explained: My father was a professional potter in Wadi Banna, although of course he also had mountain fields and goats. There have been potters working here for as long as anyone knows, and they were commercial potters, they made goods for sale (Lancasters; 2111a). All the potters in the mountains were taught originally by potters from al-Alama above Lima or from

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Wadi Hajil near Shimal. We made cooking pots, milk pots, storage jars, incense burners, everything. Cooking pots, yidr or jidr, had little lugs so the women could lift them out of the fire. Cooking pots could be really big; we had one in which we could cook twentyfive kilograms of food at a time, mostly for weddings. Earthernware cooking pots the size of large aluminium saucepans were ordinary. We had a hawba, a storage jar, in which two adult men could sit! It was globular and held 60 mun, 240kgs, it was a fine pot. These havent been made for at least a hundred years. Hawba were storage jars, khars were for drinking water and we scooped out water with a glass or kaas, or a kuub, which might be brass, aluminium or earthernware. Fifty years ago there werent aluminium trays, trays were brass, and we have a small one. A kuuz was like a bowl a handspan across, of red earthernware. We heated water in them when we wanted hot water for a proper all over wash. People did hang them over paraffin lamps – and we say fannus, not fanuus. We used two sorts of clay: risikh, which is firm and yellow, and ahrash, which is coarser and red. We used them mixed together more or less equally, otherwise the fabric splits and flakes. The paint comes from a stone called mishkh, pounded up and mixed with water. The paint is put on before firing and touched up afterwards if necessary. I have my fathers tools. He worked with a turntable, duwar, like a shallow dish that sat on a pedestal, kursi, held in place with this wooden pin. The clay he was shaping sat on the turntable and he turned it for ease of working. These are shaping tools – this one has the curve of the lower section of an incense burner. These tools have patterns carved on the bases for impressing into the clay to decorate incense burners – a little circle, cross, square, a sideways V, and these have triangles for making the holes.

His wife recalled: When I was a girl, I collected clays at al-Alama. It was so steep a donkey couldnt get there, I carried the clay down in a basket on my head or a sack on my back. All my tools are made from sidr woods. To make an incense burner, madhakhan or mabkhara, I put together the base and the turntable, put a bit of clay on the turntable and started building up the clay, shaping it with this tool, and turning the turntable so as to bring the clay to my hand. When I was satisfied, I took the base off and put it in the sun for a while and made more bases. Then I built up tops and handles, put them to dry and made more. Then I put each one together, left them to dry, and then decorated each one, round the base with this tool, and here with this one, working up to the top, while I pressed this tool on round here and at the top here to make the triangular holes for the smoke to come out. They dried again, and then I put on the paint. Decorative patterns didnt belong to families, people decorated them how they wanted. When I had enough, I fired them. It isnt necessary to have a kiln for small things. I made a fire, laid them in the fire, and covered them with more firing; the fire burnt for a few hours and there they were. I sold the incense burners and other things I made, as did the other women, at Dibba. My husbands father made coffee

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pots and cups; potters in Wadi Hajil couldnt do these or the really big cooking pots, their clay is wrong, it breaks too easily.

Her eldest son said, Up at al-Alama there were three clay sources.To me, the clays look identical but the old potters knew they had slightly different qualities and used different combinations and with different materials for temper according to what they were making. On the whole, Alama made the more expensive items that needed stronger clays and more workmanship. Shimal potters made items that Alama potters didnt, like mirzaab, rainwater pipes for roofs; yaalah, water pouring jars with bridged spouts; serving dishes for cooked food; and their cooking pots were usually straight sided with a rim that curved out, and a flattish base. Alama cooking pots had rounded bases, the sides sloped to a narrower mouth, and often had lids. The large cooking pots with a four-cornered base, coffee pots and cups, were always Alama ware. Things made to be hung up – because in the Ruus al-Jibal we hang things from roof beams and trees – were nearly always from Alama; so were the small burnished little pots and jars for honey and clarified butter and so on. Globular storage jars, hawba, were particularly for storing wheat or other grain; narrower jars, khars, were for water, dates, whatever. Alama potters never had kilns. If there were only a few items, they used a tannur, oven. If they had more, they dug a shallow hole of the size they needed. Sometimes two or three potters had a lot of work to fire so they made a big hole. The items for firing were stacked up and covered with the firing material, then the fire was lit. Men and women made pottery, both could do all the work. People helped with the heavy work. A man might start a piece and then have to go and do something else, and the woman would take over. All the bigger and more elaborate items were always made on commission. But before, when we were living up at al-Alama, the everyday things like cooking pots, milk pots, plates, coffee pots and cups, incense burners, were made and taken down on donkey back for sale in Ras al-Khaimah, Umm al-Qawain, Sharjah and Fujairah.

Looking at the photographs of the al-Aini pots, they considered: All the items are Shamaili work except for three imported pourers, musabh, and the small pourer and the coffee pot from al-Alama. People using the high mountains, like al-Aini, Sall Imit, and so on, only bought coffee pots and big cooking pots for hariis from al-Alama or Lima, because it was difficult to get large pottery items up to the high afraj. Most of these people did their shopping in Ras al-Khaimah town or Rams, so they bought cheap Shamaili pottery, even if it did break easily. People went up and down all the time, so broken things were easy to replace. At the high farij, people had useful pottery for milk and storing food, and metal pots for cooking. When metal pots got too broken to mend, people took the pots down and sold them to traders in the coastal towns, and the metal went to India or Iran.

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The Haslamani explained about yuz, waterproof mortar: Our cisterns at Sall Amit are lined with yuz. To make it, we get from the mountain really good clay, which is quite different to clay for pottery, and a lot of goat dung. We beat the clay until it is completely smooth; then we mix in the goat dung and mix and mix until they are completely mixed. Then the water, until it is all completely as one. We take handfuls of the mix, shape them into little breads, and leave them in the sun to dry for two or three days. During these days we collect firewood. When the breads are truly dry, we put them in a big pile, put firewood all round and over, so the breads are completely and evenly covered. We stuff in some kindling and set fire to it. The fire must burn evenly and slowly for a long time. When the breads are cold, we take them out of the ash, break them up and beat them with sticks until they are reduced to fine powder. This powder is mixed with water and thats yuz, which is not the same as saruj. I dont know about pottery being deposited at graves. Watering a new grave is an Islamic practice, so probably most of the pottery was for carrying this water and then left there, as what goes to a grave cannot come back (Mersen 2004). Carving on headstones is not Islamic, so the headstones with carvings must have been made a long time ago; but the graves are Islamic, so the carvings were made before people were brought back to Islam by the Wahhabis. Ive seen the carved headstones at Sabtan and neighbouring places and at ar-Rawdhah. The ones with carvings of jewellery were womens graves and represented the jewellery women had in their lifetimes, because as Muslims we dont bury things with the dead. Boxed graves are definitely associated with the bida, people of the Ruus al-Jibal. We buried our dead in the normal Islamic way, digging the grave waist deep for a man and chest deep for a woman. The body is of course laid on its side facing Mecca. We all used what stone was to hand for finishing the grave; apart from that, I dont think there is any difference between boxed graves or oval kerbed graves. There is no difference in meaning, an Islamic grave is an Islamic grave. It is possible different ibn amm used one in preference to another, but in my experience people used what stone came to hand, and slabs of stone make a box, lumps of stone make an oval kerb.

A Bani Murriya from Wadi Banna explained, We made and make haris from white wheat, now Australian wheat, cleaned and washed in several changes of water. The wheat must be really clean so it tastes of itself. The wheat, and we in this house use three or four kilograms at a time, is put in a big saucepan, covered with warm water to a hands breadth above the top of the wheat, and put on the iron grid over the tannur to boil. The meat is washed thoroughly, put in a big pot, covered with water, and set to boil. By this time, the fire has died down, and the tannur sides are red. Then we put the lids on tight and move the pots down to the embers – the pots just fit in the tannur. We cover the tannur with this big metal tray and three or four heavy hessian sacks damped with water, and its left all

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night. In the morning – as now we usually cook this for Friday lunch – the wheat and meat are taken out and mixed together, pounding and kneading, kneading and pounding, until all is silky smooth. Salt is the only flavouring, no pepper. The only firewood is some kindling and five or six lengths of samra. In the past, people ate less. Breakfast was coffee and dates, midday we ate bread and maybe a few dates, at sunset it was dates. Before, we bought cloth for clothes at Dibba and Lima. Women made the clothes for everyone. When we were making clothes, we looked at the person we were sewing for, and folded the material, and folded again, and looked at the person, and made nicks at the folds with scissors or a knife, or our teeth. When we were sure we were right, we tore the cloth from the nicks. Then we sewed it up with a needle and thread, and later on, with a sewing machine. There were no left over bits of cloth. The spare bits from the sleeves became the facings round the neck and so on. Before zips, ankle cuffs on sirwal closed with poppers, braisim. If there werent any poppers, we made zari, buttons out of screws of cloth, wound round with thread, or we used mushaiyir, tassels. These were the ways of fastening clothes at the neck and cuffs, too. Embroidery was lovely, the colours were red, green and silver. We made our own braid or we could buy it, because there were women who made it for sale. Silver jewellery was part of the mahar, but a girl didnt always get it when she married, she might wait years. Women with us inherit money, jewellery and goats, they dont inherit fields and cisterns. If a man has only daughters, and not enough money, goats or jewellery for them, his actual first cousins or nearest male relations in the male line get together and give the girls the equivalent of the land in money as a gift, because they, the men, got the land as a gift. Land with us cannot be sold. People who dont use this system of retaining their land end up having problems, which usually end up in quarrels and killings.

The eldest son said, Come and see some things I brought down from Sall Amat. This is a cradle, shahtuha, the mother hung it from a branch or a roof beam; the women made them from samra or yarid, and the struts across the bottom were spaced so the pee and stuff dropped through into a pot below. This little pot with a spout was used for feeding babies, invalids or the very old. Here is a raha, handmill. It has a pair of stones, takka aliya and takka sufala, and the long stick is the increaser, muzaida; the little piece of wood regulating the amount of grain going down between the stones is the qabba, the collar, it had to fit tightly and be absolutely flat and level with the lower face of the upper stone. Here are the three sorts of skin bags. The smallest is a saan, the women made butter in these; the next size is a wabya, open all along the top and for carrying things; both of these have no hair on, but the largest, the jirba, was for carrying water, and that had hair on, it helped to keep the water cool. Jirba were carried on headstrings, your hands were up by your ears. Some weapons … this scimitar, qitar, was in the family. This is

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part of a very old gun, we used it at weddings and other celebrations up at Sall Amit. The barrel was packed with gunpowder and plugged with clay. You held it very firmly in your hand above your head, and put a plait of cotton soaked in nitre, fatila, to the touch hole to light it. And there was an enormous bang which echoed back and forth among the mountains, wonderful! But it could be dangerous. My mothers brother must have put in too much because the whole thing blew back and set his clothes on fire and he was badly burnt. He wasnt using this one, he had his own, several people had them. This one has fluting along the upper surface and the hole where you light it has a small projection to one side; maybe it is Omani or Portuguese. This sort of shell, duq, was what people used for smoking tobacco; they bored a hole in this end of the shell, and put the tobacco in the bowl of the shell. The faila, refreshments, are here; dates; fruit; qaimat, little pancakes soaked in date dibs rather than honey; and this special dish my wife makes for Friday visitors. Its fresh milk and eggs with saffron and rosewater and cooked in the oven until firm. My mother made a dish like it in the mountains, but she flavoured it with mountain honey and leaves from the litib tree (wild fig).

In Lima al-Bih, into the mountains, a Shihhiya said, My family lived from animals and in those days we spent most of our time in the mountains. One of our winter places was at a farij here. When I was a girl, my first job in the morning was to milk the goats. Their udders were tied at night so the kids couldnt suckle – they suckled all day. The milk was used at breakfast or made into ruub, butter or cheese. For ruub, the milk is heated and rocked in a skin bag, jirba. For butter, the milk was heated and rocked in a different jirba until the butter came. For cheese, it was heated, curdled with fish innards, and the curds were squeezed into cakes and left to dry in the sun. We ate lots of cheese, either with bread or mashed up with dates. The goats kidded twice a year, in May and October. For a year round supply of milk and dairy products for the house and for sale, fifty goats is plenty. Everybody did their own tanning. We made saan, the smallest size of jirba, skin bag or sack, and women made butter in saan. Wabya were the next size, they were for carrying things in. These two had the hair taken off. The biggest, the jirba, had the hair on, and for carrying water; the hair helped to keep the water cool. We carried jirba on our backs, on a headstring, so our hands were up by our ears. I also span and wove wool, sheeps wool. When I said goats I meant sheep and goats. Everyone in my family, like most bedu families, wore woollen clothes – lightweight for summer and heavyweight for winter. Women wore a woollen thaub, dress, and a wrap, men a woollen wizra and a wrap or gitra. Boys up to the age of ten or so wore woollen loincloths called mastara. Women wove date palm braid for food mats or sifra, food covers, sacks for dates, and floor covering mats or simsiim. The date leaves were stripped and soaked for two to three days to soften them. We got the

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date leaves from friends and relations who had date trees and we gave them woollen cloth or other things in a rough exchange. The cotton from the cotton trees behind the sand ridge was picked, cleaned, and used for stuffing cushions and quilts, and it had been spun and woven into cloth earlier. Really, when I was a girl, coffee was the only thing we bought at all regularly. We got knives and other metal goods from Hurrais relations in return for bedu products, and we made our own cooking pots and stuff or we got them by making rough exchanges.

Another Shihhi remarked: That piece of broken pottery made from yellow clay with large black bits in it came from a khars made in Lima. Most Lima pottery is red but I know that this sort was also made here, they were for holding water. My mothers tannur was made by a potter in Lima as an oven, a tannur. Pottery tannur were common here and roundabout. In other places women made their ovens from earth and stones. There is a rock by my house with carvings – people, a man on a donkey, an animal with a long tail that could be a leopard, and outlines of hands and feet.

An elderly Hurrais said, We were here on the edge of the mountains in the winter, and up on our high fields in the saif. My family is one of two who do metal-working in Lima, and there are other families in Kumzar. Now, I make jirz, small axes carried by Shihuh, knives and pipes. But in the past I made these, and I also made metal goods people needed, like hais blades, axes, adzes, nails, hinges, everything except swords. By and large, silverwork is done by gipsies, zuttut, in Fujairah. Everything I make is commissioned, as it was in the past. It is profitable part-time work, I worked on our fields and with the goats as well. I made this knife, but the silver decoration on the handle and the sheath were put on in Fujairah. Zuttut never came into the Ruus al-Jibal. In the distant past, we used local iron. There are small outcrops of ore at several places in the mountains. See that red triangle of rock over there? Thats iron ore. Weve forgotten how to smelt because for as long as anyone can remember, we have used scrap metal for work. The brass inlay on this jirz is bought brass, it comes in sheets. The inlay is made by cutting the steel blade with a saw and then hammering the brass strip in. If the owner wants more intricate decoration involving welding, I tell him to go to a specialist welder. I do all my own woodwork, shaping, carving and decorating of knife sheaths and all the handles. I made the road for the car up to my new house myself with my own hands. I moved every stone myself. The big rocks I couldnt move, I made fires around. When the rock was really hot from the fire, I threw water onto it, and usually it would crack so I could break it. If it didnt, or if the pieces were still too big, I put more stuff on the fire and threw on more water until it did. We have always broken unmoveable rocks like this if we couldnt lever them out of the way with long poles.

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For gunpowder, barud, we got charcoal and ground it finely in the handmill. Then we added powdered sulphur, kabrit, and we bought that. We might buy saltpetre, milh al-barud, or we made it (King 2003; 74 – 5) by collecting up the urine soaked dung from penned animals. It is better, stronger, from big animals, like cattle, camels or donkeys, but goats is alright. The dung is soaked in water; when it is thoroughly soaked, we strain it off and leave it in the sun so the water evaporates. What is left is saltpetre, and we mixed it with the sulphur and powdered charcoal, and we had gunpowder. We made the matchlock by soaking a wick of thick cotton in the unevaporated liquid from soaked dung. When it dried, it burnt very slowly, and so we had a fuse. This kind of gun was a matchlock, not a flintlock. It didnt have a striking platform for a flint, but a little dip with a hole going into the barrel. We put a little gunpowder into the little dip, touched it with the fuse, and this ignited the gunpowder and made the gun fire the bullet. We made bullets out of lead.

At a farij in Lima al-Bih, a Bani Hassuuni Shihuh pointed out a cave with two rooms in it, in which my fathers brother lived until about forty years ago. Below, they had their bait ar-raha, they took the millstones with them when they moved to their new house. That building outside with no roof was the kitchen. On the steep slope was their goatpen; all the urine and dung settled at the lower end, so it was easier to collect it up for the fields. These other buildings were where married sons lived when they were here. But no-one lived here all the time, they were going from field to field, and from field to garden. Over there is where the horse track starts up the mountainside, and near where it starts is a rock with carvings of people on horses or donkeys and men with swords or knives in their belts. There are tracks everywhere in the mountains. Some are quick but difficult, others are easier but slower. We walk miles here all the time. From Lima to Rawdhah takes two or three hours on foot although it is only two kilometres on the map, because the track is almost straight up and then straight down. When we were boys we had slings, midla. Our parents were always forbidding us to have them so we used to hide them in our pockets. We used to play with them far away from the houses where we couldnt be seen. We divided ourselves into two teams and had fights using the slings (a widespread game, mentioned by Musil (1928; 256) for Rwala boys and seen in the 1970s with Rwala boys). Al-Alama, above Lima, used to belong to Haslamani, but it was bought forty years ago by Bani Hasuun because they needed land and the Haslamani were decreasing in numbers. The stones at al-Alama are put up for every child who is taken there for the first time, particularly boys. The child is formally introduced to al-Alama and al-Alama to the child. A loaf of bread is placed on the childs head and a new stone set up. The bread is moved to the stone, and the bread is shared and eaten by everyone present. The ceremony is called ash-shuiyya (to be known) and as far as we know, age-old, and

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goes on regardless of changes of ownership. When my son is old enough, I will bring him up here. I dont know of any other similar ceremony. My family has lost some important papers. I dream about finding them, but I never have. I went to a kahin, a seer, to ask him if I ever would, but his answer could be interpreted either way, it wasnt any use. There is a sanam in Lima, a masjid on a preIslamic grave mound in an old Islamic graveyard. People used it as they used Shaikh Masud. You sacrificed a goat and prayed, it was private and occasional. There were other places like this in the mountains, said to be the tombs of the Shuyukh adDin. There is another larger graveyard in Lima, and that too has a ruined mosque on a mound. The mosque has the remains of the mihrab, the bases of four columns that supported the roof, and the windows in the walls, outlined in saruj. The oblong stone that they say is in the shape of a boat, is outside among the graves. It is connected with appeals for rain. Someone from the Mahdub family mixes water from Tawi Kalbu, saffron, sidr honey, and incense. The stone is propped up in the direction you expect rain to come from and various words are said by this man. He does this on behalf of the community. If there is no rain after some days, the ceremony is repeated and the direction of the stone is changed.

South of the Wadi Bih, at Faria, a Habsi recalled: When I was a boy, we used to bring firewood and wild honey down from the mountains, sold them in Ras al-Khaimah town, and used some of the money to buy dates. Where we now have date gardens there were winter grain fields. Our high fields are scattered around Jabal Haqab. Other people who had fields and houses here had their high fields at other places. Really, everyone, except the very young and the very old, went up and down between their various fields, two or three weeks here, two or three weeks there. We had some date trees on the high fields, and we grew red wheat on the high fields and the fields here; sometimes a little barley, and very occasionally millet. We didnt need money for marriage then because the mahar was goats, cloth for clothes, and household goods, and everyone in the family contributed. When we governed ourselves, we always looked after our own, and that was why we didnt pay zakat to the ruler. Habus, Shutair and Hadiya are all Shihuh because they withdrew from paying zakat, and they managed their own affairs. My uncle told you about our fight with Sultan bin Salim al-Qasimi when he tried to tax us.

Near al-Aal, an elderly Habus recalled: This stone house, bait hassa, or storehouse, bait makhzan, near the old kilns was mine. The kilns were from the time some Shamaili owned this part of the wadi, my great uncle bought it from them. My fathers and grandfathers houses were the other side of the wadi, I demolished them because I am making a new field. At my house, I had the bait gufl and the masaifi, the summer house, which was also where the men sat outside so it was the majlis, and the kitchen and goat pens. I made this door and decorated it with carvings of circles and crosses. People didnt live in their houses, they

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lived around them, houses were really stores. When it was hot, we slept on the gravels in the wadi bed, it was cooler, breezes blow up the wadis. We used these dug out holes in the wadi sides as stores and animal shelters, but earlier people must have lived in them as there are niches to keep things on, and built platforms. There used to be lots of gazelle here. When I was a boy, when we killed a goat or a gazelle, we didnt eat all the meat at once, we cut some into strips, salted and dried it. It was very good.

A Habsi in Wadi Quda said, In this field, Im growing wheat, birr, a local variety but not an old one. It is 6-rowed and puts up six or seven stems. I sowed a munn, 4 kgs, and looking at it now (February 1998) I would expect to harvest 40 mun, as weve had two good flood flows and light rains and dews. The lower field is sown with long watermelons, yeh, but they arent up yet; they will get all their water from the earth. I change seed with a neighbour every three to four years. The only year I can remember with no harvest at all was 1967. Each set of fields has its own granary, but Ive been told a long, long time ago granaries were in groups and hidden away. If there was a poor harvest, we used what we had in the granary, and in good years we filled the granaries up. I built my old house myself forty years or more ago, and all the outbuildings, the goat pens and the bait ar-raha. And I renovated this cistern myself. Its circular, and the base and to about a third of the way up are lined with stones and yuss mortar. We made the yuss in the building from burnt dung and earth, we didnt dig a pit. And we used the yuss to make tannur for baking bread and cooking. A long time ago, we lived the other side of the wadi, the remains of the buildings are still there. I dont know why my family moved.

Another Habsi in Wadi Quda remarked, “In the past, wheat and goats were our main products. My father had six fields altogether. One good field produced enough for most families for a year, because our fields yielded 1:80 in a good season, and families were small with only two or three children.” At Danam in Wadi Quda an elderly Habsi remembered: We grew wheat and we sold a lot as grain. We sold clarified butter, cheeses and yogurt, and live goats, and firewood. In my time and my fathers time we took these things down to Ras al-Khaimah town by donkey, but in my grandfathers time, we used camels. My high fields were up at Slai alQuda, where the yield was, in a good year, 1:80. We were here mostly in the winters. The place further up the wadi, just before the seep, is Halhilla. People with goats used it, it isnt a farij, its buyut, houses. Well, shelters for you and the animals. Each little farij like Danam had an area where people tended to bury their dead, but the graves werent packed closely together. We preferred to finish the grave by boxing it round if there were suitable stones to hand, and a few people actually went a little way to get stones

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for this. But most people buried their dead under a mound of earth or an earth mound with a kerb of stones that were immediately to hand. Everyone put a head and footstone, the shahad. The box of stone slabs or the oval kerb of ordinary stones stopped the earth from washing away, and the box did this better, but both kept the grave looking neat. Whichever way the grave is finished has no meaning. Ive travelled widely in the Emirates, and Ive noticed a relationship between a big mound, or sanam, or big cairns, and Islamic graveyards; Ive noticed this in the mountains here and in the south.

Up at Slai al-Quda, a Habsi said, These fields are part of Slai. That side wadi, the Tala, doesnt come out in the Nagab, it twists back on itself and comes down into the Quda. That field group is Waab Salwa; then Tabara al-Kabir and Tabara as-Saghir, with Yinas down below. All those buildings to the south belong to Tafif, with Azhabat along the ridge. Looking down from the ridge, you see Samara Samarat. The little place there is Baiba with Dhairi beyond. The little place up there with the date trees is Slaiya. These fields before you reach Slai, with the very long water channel, are an-Nahr and part of Slai. All of them belong to Habus. There are many little groups of buildings around the fields at Slai, and thirteen graveyards. Each group of buildings has its own graveyard. I assume each graveyard holds the dead of those who lived in the nearby houses. I dont know this for a fact, but it fits with the graves of people I knew. I reckon people are buried where they die, and they die where they lived. There are two big graves inside this building – I dont know know who they were, but they must be old; they arent my father, grandfather or my fathers grandfather, and I dont know the names of my forefathers after that. The small buildings at some of the graveyards must be very old graves. This bait raha is mine and built by my grand father or his father. The grindstones came from Iran. The upper stone can be raised on the miz stick to have coarser or finer flour. The upper stick is unusually long because we wanted to have room for two peoples hands, it makes the work quicker. All the cisterns here are privately owned, there are twenty-six altogether. I share a double cistern with someone; its on the slope, and the top cistern is ten dra deep (15 ft), then it is rock, and the diggers found another pocket of earth on the lower side that went down five dra, so they dug it out. There are the marks of the ropes where we hauled up the water. There are lots of granaries here. They were chinked with little stones between the big stones and mudded all over to keep out the mice. Children were put in to get out the grain, so the entrances could be really small. There were five date trees by the sidra tree; Musalli, Khunaizi and Fahal. My cousin owned one of the Khunaizi and I built a support, kursi, for it. I packed the lower trunk around with earth and stones, which encourages it to put out more roots. Then there was a bad storm and the other four trees blew over and died.

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This carving was made over 50 years ago by a man who is now dead. He carved round his hand and foot, and the hand and foot of his new wife – she was sixteen. He thought it was a nice thing to do, and she is still alive and very fond of it. These carvings, though, are really old because the men are carrying swords and shields and knives through their belts; they were carved where they are in the house wall because the pictures continue across the stones. But these werent, they were made somewhere else and then the stones were used in this wall. That carving of an animal is definitely a fox, look at the tail. This bread is hubs as-sfa, (bread of purity, or sincerity, or happiness) and peculiar to the bida. The dough is flour and water, left to rest, and made into little balls and rested again. Then the women pat a ball flat and throw it from arm to arm until it is really thin and wide; then they throw it on a cushion and slap it into the tannur.

A Habsiyya recalled: “When I got married, I received two kandara, dresses; two sirwal, drawers; and two asat, wraps. They were all new. I wore a new dress for my marriage and then I wore it all the time. It wasnt a special dress for the day, like girls have now.” A Habus with land at Slai al-Quda and Tafif remarked: “Some of the carvings at Slai and Sabah are like maps or land registers. They were used like izl, tribal marks, to delineate the beginnings and ends of peoples land…. like braks, the stones that marked the divisions of fields, which everyone knew.” At Burairat Dakhili, a Bani Ibrahimi said, We have a lot of fields here and our mountain fields are just up above, at Sudr. We have some large cisterns as well as Tawi Burairat outside. We have date trees down here – Lulu, Qash Habbash, the usual; and more up at Sudr, but different to those here; I dont know what they are called as they have always been there. We had goats who browsed on the mountain slopes. We sold wheat, live animals, cheese, and clarified butter, and we bought salt fish and occasionally rice because we liked it. Houses were often unoccupied but fields were always used.

A Khanbuli at Slai al-Ghalib explained: We grew wheat, and we ate wheat only as bread. If the rains didnt come until January, we sowed barley, and we ate that as bread. If there were no rains until saif, we sowed millet, and we ate that as aish, boiled grain. We never sold barley or millet, there were no profits in them, they just fed us and the animals. I dont remember selling wheat, Im too young, but I know it was sold regularly earlier. There are 109 fields here, and many fields would yield 1:90 in a good year, with good rains, good soils, lots of manure, and good seed. We didnt change the seed until it got thin and small, then we exchanged with a neighbour who had fields in other places. Most people reckoned a good field that yielded 1:80 or more was sufficient for a family of

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parents and two children with a good supply of dates and milk products. Most people had between three to six fields, although not all their fields would yield like that, and not all their fields would produce in a season. Up at Slai, we had goats, sheep, camels and seven or eight cows. Date trees never grew here, we dont have the rainfall, the mists or the dews. We had a date garden at Dibba Baiah and that was where we went for the gaith, and my mother has grain fields there. We farmed the mountain fields ourselves. The fields we had below on the sayh, we let a Habus family use them for half of the harvest. We had three khawadim who worked in our date garden at Dibba, which was really unusual for Shihuh, and we had sharecroppers on my mothers grain fields. Up here, the women went off in groups of three to six to collect firewood and bundles of grass and plants for the cows and camels. They carried the grass and stuff on their backs, and they used a headband for the firewood; their hands were up by their ears. The following day they took the firewood and anything else they had to sell down to Ras al-Khaimah town, and they came back the same day. The next day, they rested. Boys worked. At the age of ten, they were given a small field and some animals, and they were responsible for them. They worked, they didnt have time to go off playing or fighting. Mountain red wheat keeps very well stored in the ear in a well built and well sealed granary, yanz. My father and I opened that granary there, and emptied it of grain twenty-two years after it had been shut and properly sealed with mud, and the grain was as good as the day it was put in. This farij had three parts or yuzza; there were six or seven families over there, another six or seven that way, and three there. Each family of man, wife and one to three children had a bait gufl, a stone house that locked for the winter; a saffa or summer house; and another building used as a kitchen, extra store, whatever. We were a real community, we all drank coffee in each others houses, and visited and ate together, and so there were no difficulties for the women. We all behaved like close relations, even if we werent. The graveyard below at Rabiya is very old. Most people who used this farij were buried in graveyards on the sayh or in the wadis, because that was where they died, usually in the summer heat or the cold of winter. If someone died up here, he or she was buried here. The different ways of finishing a grave are made by the people doing the burial. Some like a grave to be neat and tidy, so they make a box of thin slabs of stone and they may go so far as to choose a particular stone as the headstone, shahhad. But others arent fussy and after putting up a headstone and a footstone, they leave it. Those who liked a neat grave often took all or some of the stones they needed from an old grave nearby. How a grave is finished is up to those doing the burying, it isnt a custom of the family or ibn amm.

A Hubsi with high fields at Yinas and Dhari remarked: There are hundreds of fields up there north of Wadi Naqab and south of Wadi Bih. Most families had forty to fifty goats. We came down to sell

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tiin, cultivated figs; sukkob, fruits of ficus salicifolia; wheat; and kids. We didnt buy much; a little rice, salt fish occasionally, a few clothes.

Another Habsi said, Our high fields were to the right and above Wadi Naqab. My family sold firewood, clarified butter, and honey in Ras al-Khaimah town, and we sold wheat regularly to people living on the sayh, because they couldnt grow good wheat, and in Khatt, where we got our dates.

A Habus family at Wadi al-Birr said, We have mountain fields at Yinas. They were the important fields, and provided between 60 – 75 % of our needs, and that was the general rule. We sold wheat, honey, live goats, dairy products and firewood to get the money to buy things we wanted like metal tool parts – we made the handles ourselves – dates, coffee, salt and so on. Many of the tools I use I know belonged to my grandfather. Sidr is the best tree; its flowers feed the bees for honey, its leaves and fruit feed the goats and we eat the fruit; we coppice the stems for wood for tool handles and roof beams; and it makes good firewood.

Maqadihah Shutair Shihhuh at Dibba Baiah said, Our family has always had a date garden here. Other Shutair who have gardens here are Khanabila and Bani Lassam. In the winter, we were up in the mountains sowing and working our fields at Musaylif and Khartum ar-Ras in Wadi Bih. In autumn, sferi, and early summer or saif we lived up on the tops at Ras, Maqam, Mansab, al-Imit, Biyh, Mirbat. Some families, like ours, summered in Dibba; some in Ras al-Khaimah, and some stayed up. If a family had enough goats and made clarified butter, dihn, and chami, soft cheese, they could buy all they wanted from the sale of those two alone.

Another Maqadihi at Saqattah near Dibba recalled, Our familys winter fields were here, where there is a small falay, and our high fields were at Ras and Waab near Sabtan. We sold a lot of wild honey, that was our main product, and also goats, clarified butter, cheese and wheat at Dibba.

Another Maqadihi remarked, The walls and building on top of that nearby hill is a qalaat, no-one knows who built it or why. Behind the old farij across the wadi are three asnam, grave mounds from before Islam. There were lots everywhere, but many have been bulldozed in road building and other development.

In Isban, a Bani Lasmi explained: We had ten groups of fields down here, on which we grew red and white wheat. Each group of fields had its own granary, yanz, and threshing floor, yannur. We had our mountain fields at Masarain, Dana, Sall Yim,

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and Daifan. We went up there particularly in the saif. We took our supplies, a sack of dates, a sack of flour, a sack of coffee, we put the sacks across the donkeys backs, and off they went, up the track. We called to the goats and they scampered up the track ahead of us. We were all so pleased to be going up! In the gaith we went to the date gardens, and the goats stayed here and a few people remained here to look after them. In the winters we lived here cultivating these fields while going up to the high fields for their work. There was nearly always someone here who could no longer manage to go up to the summits. Someone from their family stayed down to get water for them, and a few of their goats stayed down so they had milk. We sold wild honey and goats to traders in Dibba, who took them to Dubai and Ajman. Honey was really profitable, it was quite possible for a man to collect forty kilograms or so in a season, and honey was a product people were very willing to spend money on. And we didnt need to buy much – cloth, coffee, and so on; we worked for our dates, so they cost us nothing. This is where we used to live, in Isban Dakhili. That was the masjid, here is my old house with the graveyard behind. Every family had three to four buildings – house, kitchen, store, animal house. For roof beams we often used samra. The pile of mud and stones was our tannur, oven. In the mountain afraj we had bait raha, but here we had handmills, raha, in the kitchens. We had drinking water in storage jars, we brought water in jirba from the well at Bidy every day. The six cisterns we had here were for the animals; the cisterns arent as deep as some because we had the well at Bidy. The mortar is yuz. We got earth from the mountains, burnt it with animal dung, mixed it with water, and it is ready for use. I dont think there is any difference between yuz and saruj. When I was a boy, there were maybe twenty to thirty houses, and perhaps fifty people in Isban at any one time. But who was here changed continually, as people and families came and went. Every person had at least three or four other places in the mountains and wadis, and in each place they had fields to cultivate and honey and firewood to collect. We bought khars, storage jars, from people here in Isban who knew how to make them; there were quite a few people who could make pots. The animal pens and yards, zurub, were where the new houses are. Near them were asnam, pre-Islamic graves, that we left. There are lots round here, there are several above the wadi at Bidy and more in the foothills behind Dibba. The places that belong to Bani Lassam are: Bidy, Kharf, Dana, Daifan, Ras, Sall Malik, Saluul, Siili, Sharmila, Sabaan, Sadqa, Aqaba al-Maskuur and Aqaba al-Sakhaam, Qasida, Maserain, Muqdiyar, and Yima. Mayya we share with the Sharqiyiin, this is Mayya in Wadi Baqiil. Qasida is near Ras on Jabal Hibs; Siili, Sadqa and Sahsaha are all on Jabal Harghba, and our Yima is not the Yima in Wadi Bih.

The considerable amount of detail presented allows an understanding of living in the Ruus al-Jibal before the advent of the oil economy in the wider region in the early 20th century. An underlying theme is we were

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rich, we had everything we needed, and the mountains were wonderful, they had everything. Their claims run counter to statements made by European travellers (Taylor 1856 [1818]; 14: Lorimer 1908 – 15; 1805 – 9; Thomas 1929; 462 – 7), able only to visit coastal areas; Dostal (1972) was limited to Ras al-Khaimah Emirate and Zimmerman (1981) to Musandam. We were able to visit both, and to stay with Shihuh in high mountain afraj. The key words are ghani and lazima. People of the Ruus al-Jibal use ghani in its earlier sense of self-sufficient, free from want, content … in a state of competency or sufficiency, or rich, or wealthy (Lane 1984 [1877]; 2, 2301 – 2). There is the conscious linking of competency in obtaining livelihood from grain cultivation, goat keeping, milk processing, and the collection of firewood, honey and wild fruits in the mountains with being self-sufficient and free from want, and of being content with what had been achieved. Mountain people associated hunger and want with those coastal people who relied on money rather than producing their own food and shelter. They pointed out that for some people, the livelihood the mountains provided might be limited in some years, but they could subsist without salt fish or even coffee. The fruits of fig, sidr and miz trees were important in their diets, see Wellsted (1978 [1838]; vol 1, 139 – 40). Everybody could spin and weave goathair, although only a few who had sheep said they had made their own clothes; everyone could build and repair using stone and wood, and make basic pots if necessary. Although everyone could do everything, in practice most people did buy clothes, rugs, pots, knives and hais blades, coffee and spices; men had guns or swords and jirz, the little axe of the Ruus al-Jibal; and women did have silver jewellery. If there were especially bad seasons, or a need for money, men worked in date gardens or, more rarely, on boats or travelled to where conditions were better in Fars or India. Lazima is used in its sense of to be necessary, the necessities, the needed, contrasting these with what a person might want or like as an extra, and which had to be gained from outside. People could manage even without dry dates, a staple; the very old Ruhaibi said he and his family had date trees in an old garden by the mouth of Wadi Rahaba, and in the very occasional years when there had been very few dates, they had not bought dates from elsewhere, but eaten something else. What they had eaten he didnt say, but it is perfectly possible to live for months on milk and milk products (e. g. Lancaster 1997 [1981]; 99), and everyone in the Ruus al-Jibal had goats. The virtues of lazima and ghani seem epitomised by people of the Ruus al-Jibal with their foods and their build-

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ings. The hubs aS-Sfa, pure bread is pure or sincere because it has nothing from outside in it, it is of the place and its family. Lakiz and haris are similar – the meat, grain, and clarified butter are all the produce of the family. The bait gufl or shitwi, the saifi or saffa, and the birkat and yanz are specific to the Ruus al-Jibal, built from its stones and wood, and necessary because of its physical features. We had everything we needed in the mountains echoes the concept of content, of gratefully accepting what the Creator, in His wisdom, has provided. Having everything we needed extended to labour. In the Ruus alJibal, everyone did their own work. There were no bayadir and no khawadim as in the date gardens, and no sharecroppers for grain and vegetable crops as on the coastal plains. This situation of self employment might be taken to indicate under-development and a lack of financial investment. The inhabitants consider the practice of doing their own work was realistic, given the nature of resources in the Ruus al-Jibal. There is no water table for wells for date gardens and the semi-permanent falays do not have enough flow for date production except in a very few places. What the mountains provide are localities with trees, semi-permanent flows from springs, flood flows, and basins of silts made into fields. Goats browse among the trees and produce milk that is processed into storable clarified butter and cheese; built fields, tilled and incorporating goat manure, grow high quality wheat that stores well. Successful Ruus al-Jibal mountain production depended on a production unit, a family, owning or having access to enough places at different altitudes in a number of drainage systems, or different slopes in a big drainage system. It did not permit commercial development by merchants in physical terms, economic returns, or jurally. “Living in the mountains was so simple,” people said; “We knew what we had to do and we went and did it.” Simple because they knew their different mountain areas in great detail, noticed the weather in its seasons, and were competent in using stone, water, earth and trees; and because they knew and practised customary law about ownership of and access to land and water, and about inheritance. Ownership of fields and cisterns, and changes in ownership from inheritance or purchase, were constant topics of conversation. Work confirmed ownership; by working on the various fields in low and high farij, using and repairing the cisterns, houses and granaries, individuals as members of families and tribes demonstrated and maintained ownership. Although everyone did their own work, because fields, cisterns, and trees were owned in shares, the produce or the harvests of these resources were distributed in shares

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and not owned outright by the owner/producer. Only after all shares of ownership from inheritance or claims from need from the local community had been fulfilled could the owner assert his rights of disposal over his harvest. Some families distributed some or all of their surpluses as gifts along networks of kinship or relations through women, as a Dhahuri mentioned at Sall Istam. Gifts of produce between different regions of production expected return gifts at some time of roughly equal value. As examples, a Qiyashi family gave gifts of unthreshed wheat to a Tunaij family in Rams and received dates for drying in return; Ruus al-Jibal families gave gifts of wheat and/or saddle bags and rugs woven from the wool and hair of their animals to families, often related through women, in Dibba Baiah and were given dates, salt fish or other items. Others talked of exchanging or selling mountain wheat, honey, or dairy products to known or unknown families, and /or to traders in places like Khatt, Ras al-Khaimah town, Rams, Khasab and so on. Surpluses moved from the mountains to the coasts as gifts, exchanges, or sales, and money or goods produced outside the Ruus al-Jibal came in. Money was often saved for the occasional large purchases of weapons, jewellery, or land, all regarded as items that could be sold if necessary, or for paying for services, or for compensation. Production was through the efforts of the owner but also by his wife and any children over the age of ten. People emphasised that a man needed the labour of his wife, while working sons increased the possibilities of surpluses. The amount of hard work that women did was said to be partly responsible for the traditionally stable population in the Ruus al-Jibal, as many miscarriages occurred before women knew they were pregnant. A Dhahuri claimed that both men and women were too tired from physical labour to enjoy each other. In addition, women used plant materials for contraception or to obtain a miscarriage, if they felt they did not want another child. This recalls an earlier Islamic view that children should not be conceived (or born) unless their parents were able to support them (Musallam 1983). The acceptance of a womans decisions over the bearing and upbringing of more children by her husband recognised her as an individual in her own right. Families, wider families and neighbours co-operated with the work of cultivation and harvest, as well as with building and repair of cisterns and structures such as storehouses. Wheat was stored, unthreshed, in granaries, yanz. Yanz is the local form of janz, which Lane (1984 [1863; 1,470) gives as concealed, hid, covered, gathered up (from which came a dead person as the man was

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gathered up, and so funeral bier and funeral in general, now its normal use). Wheat is gathered up, covered, and concealed in yanz, typically square buildings on bedrock or with a base of stone blocks, about two metres high, a small opening in one wall about halfway up, and a slightly sloping roof of stones and gravel over beams and large flat stones along the tops of the walls. Any gaps between the stones in the walls are chinked and mudded; when filled with unthreshed wheat, the wooden door is closed and mudded around to make a tight seal. The mudding is explained as necessary to keep out mice, not so much to stop losses from mice eating the wheat, but because mice getting into the wheat allowed air to get in, which stopped the preservation of the grain. The sites for yanz vary. Most were built at the edge of each field or group of fields. Others, such as some in Wadi Shaha, were built against rocks and out of sight from the wadi; Habus in Wadi Qudaa said they had been told that yanz had been built in more hidden places. At al-Aini, yanz were built by fields or against peoples houses as they were all private. At other places, yanz were communal as in Wadi Hajil, or used by owners of a group of fields. At Harat al-Awaili, in Wadi Shaam, there is an impressive line of more than forty yanz in a line between the houses and the mountain face. Yanz were particularly associated with the high fields. At the lower fields, some people had yanz; others stored their grain, threshed and unthreshed, in jars, khars or hauba, in their lower houses. Grain, birr, is grown in fields, mazraat, built by men; when harvested by men and women it is transformed to habb and concealed in the granary, yanz, built, repaired and sealed by men, and opened by a child; after threshing by men and milling by women in the bait ar-raha, habb becomes flour, tahiin. Tahiin is kneaded with water by women and becomes ajiin, dough; when baked in the tannur it becomes hubz, bread for eating; tahiin mixed with milk or water by women becomes sih, for eating. Men, women, and children, owners and guests eat bread and sih. Unthreshed grain, threshed grain, flour and bread are shared between owners, the needy of the community, the family and neighbours before gifts, exchanges or sales to outside. Families who said they had lived from goats distinguished house goats milked by women from the fariih goats raised for meat and sold by men as live animals outside the Ruus al-Jibal; womens work with goats was around the house and processed milk into foods, which kept for shorter or longer periods, and was eaten by the family and neighbours, or sold outside by men or women. Meat goats were eaten within the family, neighbours or community, and collected up and taken down to the coasts for sale by by men. The simple statement of

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Living from our fields, trees and goats in fact makes multi-layered references to the natural features of the Ruus al-Jibal and its development by its tribal populations through techniques, social practices, and moral premises. In discussions about the observable sorts of graves, the boxed and those with oval kerbs of stones, inhabitants said those burying the body decided on the manner of the grave and its finishing. Whether the grave was boxed or kerbed depended on the soil, whether it was earth or rock; some considered that boxed graves used less space and that was why they were more common in the rocky outcrops high in the mountains. How graves were finished, any distinction between those of men and women in the heights of head and footstones, the planting of aloes, the deposition of pottery or personal items were explained as group custom, addat, or preferences by the immediate family. Differences in stones between graves in a graveyard were always attributed to the practice of using stones immediately to hand. Some farij had communal graveyards, at others each family group had its own graveyard. Sometimes people, especially children, were buried by their family house. Others were buried where they died, especially if they were not found for some time; burying under a rock overhang was common in rainy weather. A few of the larger old graveyards had small oblong structures, said by a Shihhi to have been used by guards protecting the bodies of the newly dead. Many graveyards have mounds, asnam, considered to be graves from before Islam; as people buried in a graveyard lived at the place and so owned it, they were assumed to be predecessors and so metaphorical ancestors. Asnam (the local plural of sanam and not of Sanam – idol) were not only pre-Islamic gravemounds, but built tombs as at Kumzar, or domed tombs like Shaikh Masud, and locally equated with mazar, places visited for a religious purpose. People were said to have made individual places themselves, for situations not included in formal Islamic practice. Like the discussion over the practice in some places of leaving pottery or personal goods on graves, these practices were said to be forbidden or rebuked by Islam, but people did what they wanted. The Hanbali school, followed by many in Ras al-Khaimah but only by some Dhahuriyyin in the Ruus al-Jibal, is the most restrictive on such practices. Seasonality was important. People described how they moved between higher and lower locations, up after the gaith, down if it became cold, up and down for work, up in the saif, and how houses differed in

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construction depending on the seasons in which they would be used, and their functions of storage and shelter. Houses were really stores that provided shelter in bad weather. Winter houses were described as shitwi, literally winter houses; bait gufl, lockable with locks made by the owner; or makhzan, a store house. Makhzan was also used for the half underground structure at ar-Rawdhah, and used as a communal store by a tribal group. Secure houses were needed because people might leave a house for two or three months or more, and these houses held stores and sometimes valuables. People had these sorts of houses at each of the farij they used. In addition, they had early summer houses, called saifi, musaiyif, saffa – an appertainance of a house, a roof for shade and shelter (Lane 1984 [1877]; 2,1693), or muzhalla (shade). The first two were buildings away from the solid storehouse, built far more lightly in unmortared stone with openings in the walls for breezes, and a lighter roof of branches. The other two were structures that extended in front of the main building or adjoined it, again built far more lightly and to catch every breeze and to give shade. Some house groups with saffa at ar-Rawdhah have siyam, summer sleeping platforms. These were common at places on the coastal plains but not seen anywhere else in the Ruus al-Jibal; but ar-Rawdhah is situated in a wide basin in the mountains, and becomes very hot and airless. Ownership and residence in the Ruus al Jibal shifted and changed in response to inheritance through men and women, and to shifts in the numbers of one group as compared to another. Division of property into shares could be realigned by exchange or sale within identified tribal groups. Systems of livelihood were long sustainable. But, while social practices continue, livelihood in the mountains from grain, goats, and trees is no longer possible.

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5 The western Hajar mountains; livelihoods and living Waters, soils, and environments The western Hajar of the study region (figs. 2b – 3; 587 – 588) is more easily described if divided into areas based on similarities of environment, inhabitants and past livelihoods. Roughly from north to south, these will be: (1) between Khatt and Dibba, including Tawiain, Wadi Khabb and Wadi Fay, where the Ruus al-Jibal and the western Hajar meet. This area is inhabited by Sharqiyiin, and is partly in the Emirate of Fujairah. (2) Idhn, Ghayl, Wadi Ku¯b, and Haqala. Haqala is an isolated garden with a small falay system. Idhn and Ghayl are Mazairi, and with the Mazairi part of Wadi Ku¯b, in the Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah. (3) Asima, Masafi, and Maydaq; Asimah is Mazairi and Shaairah, and in Ras al-Khaimah. The Maharzah part of Masafi is in Ras al-Khaimah; the other part of Masafi and all of Maydaq are Sharqiyiin and in Fujairah. (4) Daftah, alGhuna and Madhah. Daftah is Naqbiyiin and with a few very small mostly deserted settlements, is the only Ras al-Khaimah part of Wadi Ham. Al-Ghuna and Madhah are Bani Saad, and Omani. (5) Wadi Shawqa, Wadi Sfuni, Wadi Baqqara, Mamduh, Wadi Sfai. Wadi Shawqa and the west end of Wadi Sfuni is Quwayyid. The east end, Wadi Baqqara, Mamduh and most of Wadi Sfai are Mazairi, Jalajil have Sfai and Waaili. All are part of Ras al-Khaimah. (6) Wadi Ayaili, Wadi Munaiy, Wadi alQawr and Wadi Mlah are mostly Dahaminah and Bani Kaab with some Maharzah, and in Ras al-Khaimah. People of the places in the western Hajar mountains of the study region regarded its water resources as distinct from those of the Ruus alJibal and its coastal plains. Falay, flowing waters from underground, were the most important water resources, and divided into falay ghayli and falay daudi. Falay ghayli flowed on the surface whereas falay daudi flowed underground to a group of gardens and houses in built channels from a mother spring. In the study area, falay daudi were on a much smaller scale than those of Oman described by JC Wilkinson (1977) and P Costa and TJ Wilkinson (1987), and confined to Wadi Munaiy and Wadi al-Qawr. In addition, falay daudi fed from mother springs sited in the western Hajar included Habhab (built by a “certain bin Hamud from Sharjah”, Walker 1994; vol3, 441); the very small system

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at Haqala west of Wadi Sfuni; the “exceptionally good” falaj at Dhaid mentioned by Lorimer, Walker (1994; vol. 1, 595), and Heard-Bey (1996; 178 – 9); Fili; those at Buraimi and al-Ain (Lorimer 1908 – 15; 11, 263; Stevens 1970); and a reported falay daudi at Safad inland from Quriyah on the Indian Ocean coast. The small and shallow falay daudi at Haqala still carries water by an underground channel to the garden; where the channel enters the garden, there is a basin outside the garden wall for people to collect drinking water and to water animals. Daudi refers to Sulaiman ibn Daud, or King Solomon, a figurative reference to the antiquity of these systems which go back to at least the Iron Age. The Amir of Ghayl explained: Falay Abu Siliya near Idhn is not a true falay daudi, because it is dependent on rainwater and therefore not permanent, it has no permanent source of water. It is a covered channel to carry rainwater, to divert a flow from the sayl, and it was never successful although it went only to a grain field, and not a garden. It looks like the covered falay you see in Oman, with cleaning holes and so on, but it isnt one because it cannot function as a proper falay. The falay at Haqala on the other hand is a true falay daudi because water flows in it permanently all the year round from its mother well. No-one knows how old it is, it has always been there and working for as long as anyone can remember or remembers hearing their grandfathers talking about it.

Dahaminah at Munaiy said, Munaiy was successful because it had a falay, a falay daudi, a proper underground channel with openings for cleaning that went down the side of the wadi and carried water all the year round. But it stopped working and has now been bulldozed. The former Amir, Nasr Sultan al-Hanjari Dahmani, was in charge of the division of water, but he is dead.

A guide from the present Amir said, Im too young to remember the falay working, Im forty. But I know it was to be repaired and they brought in special diggers that dug deep down, but it wasnt any good. The falay here was built straight down the side of the wadi, but the falay daudi at Huwaylat weaves its way around and you can see parts of it – it looks like a storm drain. Sukhaibar in Wadi Munaiy and Rafaq, Fashgah and Nuslah in Wadi al-Qawr have falay that start above ground as ghayli in the wadi gravels but end as daudi.

An old Dahmani in his garden explained: That deep hole in the trench was the mother well of the daudi falay. None of these gardens were here then, everything was further down. The other

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blocked holes just further up are earlier wells that have dried, they werent part of the falay. The falay hadnt worked properly for a long time because the water level was dropping.

An elderly school-caretaker said, I know about the falay because I went all through it when I was a boy, helping my father clean it. I used to clean about twenty holes between the mother well and where it came above ground at the beginning of the gardens. The falay channels were lined with saruj on the roofs and walls only, the floors were stone. The holes let in seeds from the gardens and other places, and by the end of the summer the holes and channel were choked with dry and dead grasses and plants. While the built underground channel was being cleaned, the water was directed along special channels in the wadi. Then it would be clean for the winter watering. Nobody local really knew about saruj. The saruj maker and repairer was a bayadir from Oman who came up to do it, and the special earth came from a hill near the Amirs old house. My father knew about water in general and cleaned and repaired falay. The man responsible for the distribution was an Omani bayadir who was brought here by Shaikh Sultan bin Salim al-Qasimi, and he, the Omani, is dead. He used to pay me and my father for the cleaning with money he collected from all the users of the falay, roughly in proportion to how much water each was entitled to, except that those who could afford to paid more, and those who couldnt paid less. He died before the falay went out of use, but there were no problems for the users because everyone knew how much each of them was entitled to and when, and so on. The Amir doesnt know about the falay because they didnt have land here, theirs was further over. Measuring the amounts of water to each garden during the day was by the shadow of a stick into masyaf, and at night they used the stars, or to be accurate, the houses of the zodiac – from Virgo to Libra, and from Libra to Scorpio [similar to the system at Khatt (Serjeant 1993; 495 – 6)]. We did use a star calendar, and there was a book of the stars, but in my memory no-one used the star calendar much, and I dont know of anyone who would remember it now. I think the Amir gave the book to the Ruler or to Shaikh Sultan, one of his sons. I dont know much about it, because there was never just one person in charge of all the falay. Each person using each falay knew the quantities and timings of the water belonging to their land, and they knew about the water that went to other peoples land. It wasnt specialised knowledge for a specialist, but communal knowledge. The falay stopped running about 1978 or 1980, because the water table had dropped too much. Salim bin Sultan bin Salim al-Qasimi tried to redo it in 1985, but it was impossible. Too many wells had been made; there used to be forty, then there were a thousand. The wadis used to have running water for most of the year in most years.

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A senior Qasimi recalled: “When I was a boy, we used to swim in the falay at Munaiy. There were little fish that came and nibbled our toes.” An elderly inhabitant of Munaiy, who knew the falay, made no distinction between falay daudi and falay ghayli, as most are both underground and on the surface. Initially, he identified all falay by place, but then named them as follows: the main falay in Munaiy was Shaikh Sultan b Salim; then, al-Khazimat; al-Musalima; ar-Ruwaishid; al-Ghamur; and al-Ghashat. Ar-Rafaqs falay was called after Ayyal Rashid bin Rashid, and Nuslahs after Awlad Muhammad wa Ahmad; below Nuslah was the falay called Muhammad bin Sultan. Al-Taburs list (1998; 378) of aflaj daudi is slightly different. The elderly man recalled there had been a falay in Khadhra, two at Isaimir, one or more at al-Ladid, and at Ayaili and Suhaila in Wadi Ayaili; channels for falay ghayli were seen at the first three places. He explicitly linked the construction or repair of a falay and its users with a parallel construction of a community. In Sukhaibar, a local man remarked, The falay was here in the wadi gravels, underground for the first part, and above ground when it reached the gardens. This small circle of gravel around a shallow depression and these few stones are all that remain of a cleaning hole. Theres another up there – but that is only a small depression in the gravels.

Falay ghayli, surface flowing waters from upwellings in wadi beds or, in a few places, from springs in mountain sides were regarded as the natural water sources for irrigated agriculture, and the system that existed in the past in most wadis inhabited by people who cultivated dates. Ghayl, ghall is to cause to enter, as in water among trees (Lane 1984 [1877]; 2277). Time and again people said, “In the past, the wadis flowed most of the year, in most years.” Falay daudi, the underground channels, were thought of as a method of achieving permanent flows for irrigation by digging back into the gravels or rock to follow a falling water table, or to increase the duration and strength of a flow for an increasing growth of irrigated agriculture. These falay daudi are not deep or particularly long as they can be in Oman proper, and well within a communitys ability to develop; indeed, it is assumed that this is how they were built although none were known to have been developed as extensions to falay ghayli. Falay waters, daudi and ghayli, are shared, and the dividing “into shares, of property or running water” is an integral meaning of the word (Lane 1984 [1877]; 2436). A very small three

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hole apparent falay daudi from a small spring to a garden was instead a covered spring, as there was only sufficient water for part of the garden. There is much discussion among scholars as to what constitutes a true falay/falaj or qanat, an underground channel for water (Lancasters 1999; 155 – 66 for northern Arabia, Jordan and Syria; Wilkinson 1977 and Costa and TJ Wilkinson 1987 for Oman). It is agreed that suitable conditions for their construction exist in piedmont regions with shallow aquifers in alluvial fans, synclinal beds, or along the margins of large wadis coming out of mountains, and with highly transmissive groundwater flow. In the study region, these features existed at places but the construction of underground channels to water were rarely necessary, since even those whose livelihoods and profits came mainly from irrigated agriculture had other resources, and surface ghayli flows of water with wells for summer use were sufficient. By the time water tables were becoming lower, and people were becoming more incorporated in a global economy, wells powered by pumps temporarily solved the problem more satisfactorily than the construction of falay daudi – if indeed, these would have worked. The northern end of the western Hajar meets the Ruus al-Jibal along Wadi Khabb and Wadi Fay. At Muhtarraqah, a Sharqiyya remarked, “There is a little spring up there, and a channel takes the water to the date garden in that cleft. That is how many of the little date gardens in this area work – like those at Wadi Hunya and the other wadis coming into Wadi Fay.” The Amir of Idhn explained: “The old date gardens here were at the sides of the wadis and on silts in the wadi beds, just as they were at Ghayl and al-Mawrid. Here, at Ghayl and al-Mawrid there are falay, permanently flowing waters in the wadi beds, so our gardens were irrigated naturally.” A Sharqi and a Mazrui in Wadi Ku¯b, further in the mountains between Idhn and Ghayl, pointed out, In good years the water in the wadis flowed all the time, for the whole year, and we built little channels, masila, of earth and gravel to bring the water into the gardens. There are places in the wadi where the rocky slopes of the mountains are so close there is no room for gardens. Water that comes up from underground in these places is carried by a built channel at the side of wadi to a garden or a small series of gardens. And since not all the trees in a garden are the exclusive property of the owner, the waters are shared.

Another Mazrui in Wadi Ku¯b said,

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That side wadi is Wadi Lil; the well, the pools or ghudran, and the falay are all called al-Biday. All that water goes to those few small gardens up that wadi. The floods, sayl, that come down from the big area of gravel plateau at the back are really important for al-Biday. Obviously they fill the well and create pools and increase the flow immediately, but the rains sink deep into the pebbles and gradually move underground towards the main wadi by way of that side wadi and increase the waters for several months.

At Asimah, upstream from al-Mawrid, the Amir said, Most gardens here were watered by sayl in the winter and ghayl in the summer. This is obviously not how the water was every summer and winter, but thinking about water in those terms helps in understanding. Most of the time, we use ghayl for water that bubbles up, like springs, but fed by rains. Ghayl arent rains themselves, but water that comes up in the wadis and flows, and in the end dependent on rainwater somewhere in the wadi system at some time. Originally, all the ghayl waters bubbling up in the wadi flowed from various places all or nearly all the year. To get this water to the gardens on either side of the wadi, we built habsa, earth and stone barriers, at different places across the wadi which diverted the wadi flows up to the gardens. Each owner built a habsa for his garden higher up the flow at a place where the water was the same height as his garden, and a channel carried the water to his garden. Then the ghayl flows diminished significantly, and we made an earth dam across the wadi above all the gardens, and took the water round the back of the gardens, using the winter sayl channel which we improved. We had saudaq of stones and mud to carry ghayli water in channels to the gardens on the other side of the water. When we channelled the ghayl flow, each garden had the right to so many hours water, which went to a habisa, a holding tank, at the highest point in the garden. If a gardens share came round during the night, that was when the owner watered his trees. We didnt have a book, we all knew how much our share was, and so we had no problems. These gardens have one falay, one water.

An elderly Maharza at Masafi recalled, The old spring was up above the old gardens, and the waters flowed down through the gardens to the wadi. We never had to water the trees. Masafi used to be full of fruit trees, mangos, limes and oranges. When the spring began to dry, we built a big pool for the spring to flow into, and channels from the pool to each garden, so each garden has its share, falay, of the water.

At Maydaq, a Sharqi remarked, “Before I was born, and I am over ninety, there was a proper falay, a ghayli falay, the water flowed permanently at or just below the surface.” A Sharqi said, “All these little wadis around Manama were full of small gardens each side of the wadi chan-

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nel, and people grew date, mango and lime trees in them with the water from ghayli falay.” At Daftah, north of Wadi Ham, a Naqbi explained: “The gardens were watered from two falay, one on each side of the wadi, which carried water from the springs. The main spring was upstream of the highest gardens and the other about halfway down. Springs were fairly common in the high mountains here.” Most places in Wadi Ham had falay ghayli difficult to see now; Wilkinson (1977; 74 – 75) has a diagram of those at Bithnah, where the flow of a ghayl falaj is diverted by a low bund (sibya; maqad), or through a short collector gallery; the terms sibya and maqad were replaced locally by habsa. At Madha, a Madhani said, “Madha had twenty one or twenty two falay which watered our gardens and fields.” In Wadi Mamduh, a Mazrui said, The old gardens were smaller and lower down, close to the wadi bottom. The water used to flow in the wadi nearly all year, for at least eight to nine months. This flow was used for the date trees and other crops until it stopped, and then in the summers people used the water in their wells.

The ghayl in Wadi Munaiy and Wadi Ayaili were mentioned above. In Wadi al-Qawr, a Kaabi said, In the wadi, there were places where the water bubbled up and flowed, falay ghayli. If there hadnt been any rain for a year or two, the falay flow was less, so we built habsa, barriers, so the water collected behind them, and these were called habuuT (Wehr 1980; 1016 – depressions, sinkings).

At Nuslah, the very elderly Dahamni Amir recalled, The gardens were watered by ghayli falay which flowed for most of the year. Originally, the falay flowed in the wadi bed but then we built channels for the falay which was more convenient because we could use more of the water if it was channelled. It wasnt a true falay, there wasnt a spring. It was fed by rains draining into the wadi bed here from the whole catchment area, which is really big. These runoff waters were held in places underground in the wadi beds and came up at several places.

At the same time that people spoke of the falay ghayli flowing for most of the year, they said in the summers they had watered their gardens from wells, tawi or habisa. Everyone emphasised the importance of winter sayl, floods from rainfall, which cleansed and refreshed date gardens, and crucial for grain crops and perennial and annual growth of trees, shrubs, herbs and grasses for animals and people. The three sorts of water used in a garden were explained by a Kaabi in Wadi Mlah;

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In our garden at al-Yif, in a side wadi of the mountain, we have a falay, a spring in a cave. A channel carried this falay water up one side of the wadi, across the head of the wadi and down the other side to the date trees. Below the spring was a well, worked by a minsafa, a pivoted bucket. We took drinking and household water from that well and carried the water to the houses by donkey. At the top of the garden was a second well, also worked by a minsafa; that was the water we used for the date trees in the summers, because at that season the spring flowed more feebly. Both the wells are as old as the garden, the area the garden took in needed the two wells and the spring falay water. The wells had holding basins, hawtah, made watertight with saruj, and the saruj was made from red earth mixed with animal dung and burnt. When it is cool, the powder from the burning is mixed with water and smoothed onto the basin or channel that is being waterproofed. The lower part of the garden was watered mostly from sayl, floodwaters coming down the wadi. We had two entrances for rainwater flows, sayl, through the garden to the lower terraces, and on these terraces we grew grain and vegetables. The upper terraces at the top part of the garden grew date trees, mangos, limes and tobacco.

Wells are tawi or habisa. Tawi (Lane 1984 [1863]; I, 1809) has a primary meaning of fold, but also means a casing of stones and baked bricks, particularly of a well. Locally, tawi is used for a well that is filled by water flowing underground, as it is by people of the gardens of the Gulf and Shamailiyya coastal regions. Habisa, from the same root as habsa, a barrier to slow the flow of water or to hold back a flow, has a primary meaning of confine; Lane (1984 [1863]; I,500 – 1) has a container for rainwater, water collected and having no supply to increase it, which is how the term was used locally at Habn at the head of Wadi Sfuni and at the nearby Wadi Baqqara and Wadi Ghubaib, Maydaq, and Munaiy. Water was lifted from wells by yazara, large cowhide bags raised by bulls, or by minsafa, a pivoted bucket, operated by one or two men. For most areas and most gardens in the western Hajar in the past, wells were important for summer watering only; but in the lower, western foothills around Wadi Sfuni and Wadi Shawqa, Mazairi and Quwayyid spoke of regularly watering their gardens from wells. The Amir of Idhn said, Here, as at Ghayl and al-Mawrid, in the summers we had water from tawi dug into the sides of the wadis and filled underground by the flowing water under the wadi beds. The water in the wells had to be lifted up to the gardens, and people did this by yazara worked by bulls, or by minsafa worked by people.

At Ghayl, a Mazrui recalled,

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Before we had pumps, all the gardens here were along the bottoms of the wadis, with really high massive walls built around them to stop them being washed away in floods. The main spring, a kilometre or so up the wadi, flowed all or most of the year, and we had wells at the sides of the wadis for when there wasnt enough summer water. The bulls working the yazara walked along the wadi bed. At that time, the gardens at Faria and al-Mawrid were further up the wadis.

In Wadi Ku¯b, a Sharqi said, “If there wasnt a good enough flow in the wadi, we used the wells which were either in the wadi bed or just inside the gardens.” At Asimah, the Amir explained: Only the top four gardens had yazara wells because there were no ghayl upwellings in the wadi above those gardens that they could use. The other gardens didnt have wells until the amounts of water in the ghayl flows we used in the summers got less, then people dug wells at the sides of the wadi and put in pumps. But all gardens here had minsafa to raise water from one level to another as all the gardens are terraced, or from the habisa in the wadi to the garden. I used to raise the water from my well by minsafa. It worked by a pivot, there was a pole, silik, between the two supports with a stone on one end and a skin bucket on the other. One man could work it, or it might need two men if the stone wasnt heavy enough, or the bucket was large, how high the water had to be lifted, or how deep the water was. At that time, the water in my well was from ten to twenty feet down; now it is ten times deeper.

At Maydaq, the over ninety year old Sharqi explained: When I was a young man, the falay fluctuated depending on rainfall, so the water was held in a habisa well, to stop the water flowing away. The water level in the habisa was about a metre below the surface of the ghayli falay channel so we used a minsafa to lift the water from the habisa into the channel so it could reach the trees. About fifteen years ago, the water level dropped again; three years ago, all the owners paid to have the channel deepened again, and it is now three metres below the original level.

A Mazrui at Habn, at the head of Wadi Sfuni, explained: We have three sorts of water for gardens, not counting rainwater channelled to fields, awab, that I cant remember being used. First, there is sayl, flood rainwater, which gets diverted into channels to be shared among the gardens. Then we have water in habisa, and this is rainwater trapped underground; we dig down and channel this to our gardens; habisa are always outside gardens. Thirdly, we have tawi, which are in gardens and tap deeper water. This well water is slightly salty, with some gypsum, and sulphurous, but its reliable and alright for date trees. If the well water wasnt very deep, we raised it to the gardens by minsafa; but if it

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was deeper or the level fell, we had a yazara worked by a bull. At the top of Wadi Baqqarah was an ain or spring, but it was a habisa as it was fed by rain. It had a falay, a channel that went to a group of fields, but they havent been used for a long time.

A Mazrui in Wadi Ghubaib, a side wadi to Wadi Mamduh, said, “The date trees grew down in the wadi and on the fields here below the houses we grew wheat and tobacco. The fields were watered from sayl flows off the slopes and from a falay from the habisa which was well above the houses.” Some Dahmani said, We have ghudran here, water under the surface in a wadi bed. When a person digs down through the gravels or batha and reaches the water, the ghadir becomes a tawi. A habisa is where water comes to the surface by itself and flows for just a little way before disappearing back into the gravels (ie having no supply to increase it.). These flows were channelled to fields, where not so much water was wanted, say for vegetables or grain, and raised to the field by minsafa. Yazara raised water from wells to gardens for date trees and other things that needed a lot of water.

In Wadi Mlah, Bani Kaab said, Tawi Falaj is the well between the old gardens and the old fields above the gardens, in the centre of the wadi. There used to be a ghayli falay from the well to the gardens and on to the fields below, but there isnt much left of it. Tawi Aqli is the well below the gardens and is now a borehole. Wells are shared, usually between members of families, because of shares from its construction and from inheritance. That is the reason for a well to have two or three pumps in it and four or five hoses coming from it, and why a garden with two wells by it has hoses coming from other wells. Gardens are often shared between owners, and so are wells.

In the grazing areas, shuaibat, higher in the wadis and on the lower mountain slopes there were more wells, tawi, from which people raised the water in a skin bag and emptied into a stone or earth basin for animals and into waterbags or jars for people. Between Khadhra and Shawqa, a Mazrui commented: Before 1960, really everyone here was bedu and there werent any date gardens. There were three or four wells scattered about the district for people and their animals. One is an old, old well up there, about eight metres deep, and cut through the rock. I would introduce you to the owner but he is away.

Tawi Dara in Wadi Shawqa was another such well. At Thoban a Sharqi explained:

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I was given this land, including the old well, by the Shaikh of Fujairah. I didnt include the well in the garden I developed. The bedu used to use that well, it was the only well between Haqala and Manama; the next wells for people going to Ras al-Khaimah were at Haniya, then Abu Siliya at Idhn, then Khatt.

An elderly Dahamni at Munaiy recalled, Wadi Tuwa had wells. There was Tawi al-Jinn by the fields and the graveyard, and Tawi ad-Dulluain and Tawi Musha are further down. Tawi Dulluain had two buckets, dulu. Theres a story about Tawi al-Jinn. There never used to be a well up there, but one day a woman was there, right at the top, and she had carried a bowl of water all that way for her goats. A jinn appeared and saw what she was doing. The jinn made a terrible shuddering noise – ouugh! oouugghh! And the well appeared, so that no-one would have to carry water up there any more.

In a side wadi east of Wadi Ayaili, an old man explained his well; My well is a ghayl. It was cut maybe two metres through rock a long, long time ago down to a flow of water, that comes up from underground. Noone knows who cut through the rock it was so long ago. This wells water was for my family and our goats, there are steps down to the water. Now, it is for the goats. It always flows, and it is always sweet.

Water qualities varied. In Wadi al-Qawr, underground water in deeper modern wells was said to be salty and slightly sulphurous; at Athbat, at the east end of Wadi Sfuni, all well water was said to be slightly salty, to contain high levels of gypsum, and sulphurous. Gypsum was present in well waters around Ghayl, in wadi flows at Maydaq and Shawqa after years without much rain, and almost certainly at other places. Rainfall was crucial not only for recharging the water tables and water flows, but also for creating flood flows that cleaned salt from garden soils and generally refreshed the earth. In all areas, people emphasised the importance of flood flows, sayl, from rainfall, for recharging wells and falay flows, for cleaning and refreshing date and fruit gardens, for producing growth of perennial and annual grazing, and for grain cultivation. Sayl flows were winter water, ghayl falay waters were sayf or early summer waters, and in high summer, water came from wells. As a general way of thinking, wheats and barley were winter crops and watered from rainwaters; millets and tobacco were early summer grain crops, and rain watered; date and mango trees were summer crops, and watered from falay and wells. Date gardens and grain fields were constructed in basically similar ways, allowing for variations in the natural features of each locality. Cultiva-

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tion required almost level silts, which use water most efficiently but allow for some natural drainage to inhibit waterlogging. To make silts level at wadi sides and at mountain slopes, people constructed terraces according to the possibilities of their sites. Water from a variety of seasonal and yearly sources had to be brought to these areas of level silts, which required entrances for the waters and channels from its entrances to the areas where crops or trees grew. Terraces which could be watered only by rainfall and flood flows, sayl, from wadis or mountain slopes were used for grains, usually wheats or barley, sometimes millets and tobacco, and were fields, mazraat if in use and awab if not. Terraces with sayl entrances and channels, falay daudi or falay ghayli waters and channels, wells for summer watering, and used for date and mango tree cultivation, were gardens, also mazraat because they were cultivated (zara – cultivate) or zariba, enclosures. In general, groups of fields and gardens shared water flows from floods or more permanent upwellings by channels diverting a share of the flow to each field or garden; if flows were fast, barriers were built to slow the flow and enable a more effective use of the water. Some wadis, as drainage systems for a whole catchment area, could flow with considerable amounts of water. For example, Wadi Ishwani has, along its length, series of field groups; upstream, impressive barriers and diversion channels take water to groups of large fields; downstream, where the wadi bed is far wider, simpler channels led water to less numerous groups of smaller fields on shallow wadi terraces of deposited silts. Each wadi or catchment area has its own individual characteristics of waters and silt deposition. Each site with silts and waters is managed according to its capacities by shares among its developers and their heirs, whether these waters are underground or surface permanent or semi-permanent flows, wells, or flood flows from rains. Within a group of tree gardens, holding tanks might provide a body of water (from wells or falay) to be shared and channelled between the gardens. The amount of water delivered by a water source was generally considered to be consistent with the area developed for irrigated cultivation. In a good rain year, a garden will be cultivated in its entirety as sayl waters flowed through for grain crops, and replenished falay and well sources. In a poor rain year, much less of a gardens total area will be cultivated, until during a series of bad years, only the date trees will be cultivated. Fields and gardens were usually walled, partly as a means of creating level silts and from stone clearance, but also to protect the sites from animals and from flood damage.

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In Wadi Ku¯b, a Sharqi said, “We grew grain on the flat land above the gardens, and those fields were watered by rain. We built masila, channels from earth and gravel for the fields as and when it rained.” Two Mazairi remarked, The abandoned gardens by the wadi sides that have only back walls left didnt have their earth washed away by floodwaters; weve never heard of that happening to working gardens. People stop using a garden for lots of different reasons. So the garden isnt looked after and it falls into disrepair. That is when the trouble starts and a flood does damage that isnt repaired, and then it gets worse. Gardens had to be repaired from floods, but floods were worth it.

At Ghayl, a Mazrui said, Sayl water was important for the date gardens. The grain fields were up above the wadis, and they got their water from the rain and from flood flows from the mountain slopes and the gullies in the slopes. Grain, vegetables and tobacco only had rain and sayl water.

At al-Mawrid, two elderly Mazairi explained: The gardens here, except for the lowest two and two higher up, were all watered by sayl water, and by sayl water we mean water channelled to the gardens from the flow in the wadi, or rainwater coming down off the plateau behind, or flood waters. The flood waters here are deep, the wadi takes water from a big area, and the water is often two metres deep or more. Look at these huge rocks in the wadi bed by the gardens. They are low at their upstream ends. The floodwaters pour down, rush up over the rocks, and pour into the gardens abutting the rocks. One of the rocks has a channel cut into it to help the water flow into the garden. And people built stone barriers and channels across the gullies from the plateau to direct floodwater into gardens. The ghayli flow in the wadi increased with good rains; when there werent good rains and the flow decreased, we built a barrier from earth and stones, a habsa, to keep the water in a pool, from where it was channelled to the gardens. We had grain fields on the plateaus above the wadis, and the threshing floors, yannur, were there too, where the wind came up the wadi. The fields only had little walls of earth and stone, just enough to keep the water from flowing on into the wadis, and we channelled the sayl flows from the slopes at the feet of the mountain. Each field had its own slope or area of slope (fig. 15; 602 – 603).

At Asimah, the Amir explained: Most of the time, we use sayl to mean flows from some sort of rain. When stored or trapped rainwater is used and flows, these flows are also sayl. The winter floods from rains here in the mountains were really important. Before, the sayl flowed for weeks and intermittently for months. The sayl

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here was very strong, because of our deep, narrow valley, and being high in the mountains. In a good rain, the water from here goes down past Ghayl and Idhn and on to Hamraniyya and Ras al-Khaimah. The sayl used to be so deep it flowed into my garden, three metres above the wadi bed! We had a built channel for the sayl waters behind all the gardens on the north side, and each garden had an entrance for sayl water, which enlivens the earth. We built this channel for the sayl behind the gardens to weaken the force of the floodwaters coming down the main wadi and because this way we used the flood waters better, the gardens drank their fill. Sayl waters did wash out the habsa and garden walls, but we rebuilt them; the inconvenience was outweighed by the benefits. We grew grain at the back of our gardens, and some people had fields for grain below the date gardens. There are two groups of fields here that belong to the people of Asimah, the ones further down again belong to Sharqiyiin. People only ever grew grain here, and the fields were watered from rainwaters from the slopes and from the main sayl flows after it had been through the gardens. The channels each side of the wadi brought the flow to holding tanks, habisa, and the water was raised to the levels of the fields by minsafa. We stopped cultivating these fields when the sayl and ghayl flows no longer reached this far.

An elderly Maharza at Masafi recalled, “In the old days, when it really rained, the floods from here reached as far as Dhaid.” A Sharqi at Manama said, All the little wadis around here were full of small gardens at each side of the wadi channel. The water came from the ghayl, and each garden had a minsafa well for when the ghayl didnt supply enough. The gardens had dug trenches for rain runoff, sayl waters, flowing from the mountain slopes behind the gardens; each garden took its sayl water from a separate slope. We see this as how gardens and fields get their waters in the small wadis of the western Hajar, although obviously some small wadis have better waters and soils than others At Siji, there were grain fields up on the gravelly plateau above the wadi. The date gardens were higher up the wadi, where the wadi opened out. Some of the water for the grainfields was brought by channels from a rocky ridge, but most of it came from the flood flow in Wadi Siji itself. The fields are sited to take advantage of the natural gentle slope of the plateau away from the mountains. To get the water up onto the plateau from the wadi, people built barriers, habuus, part way across the wadi, and these forced the flood flow up channels built across the deep wadi banks and up on to the fields. The fields had really thick walls round them, and each field had an entrance built in the wall for the water. Now, its difficult to see how the waters reached the fields, with the building of the new road and because the wadi has been deepened. But that is how it was in the past. It was the same system as lots of fields above deepcut wadis with deep sayl – there were similar fields near Masafi.

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Some Zahhum at Siji clarified this account, adding, The grain fields further away from the wadi were watered only from rainfall and flows of rain from the mountains down the long gentle slopes – the slopes are really gentle. The fields nearer the wadi had runoff and masila from the sayl coming down the wadi; these channels were taken off higher up the wadi, above the date gardens.

South of Shawqa, in Wadi Muzairi, a Quwaiyyid said, Ive been told that in the past we used this wadi and others like it for grazing the animals in the winters. Some people had a few grain fields here, like they had in many of the other small wadis around. Grain fields were made between the mountainsides and the wadi side, where the most rainwater flows could be channelled. Each field is a bit different. Those two small ones are built on silts in the wadi bed, those three all have channels from separate gullies in the mountain side, that long narrow one has several entrances from water from the mountainside. Ive been told that fields did get washed out in storms, but in the past they would have been rebuilt.

At Habn, a Mazrui explained: We used to grow grain in the fields, awab, at Athbat, but this hasnt happened really for about thirty or forty years. These fields were watered from rainwaters only, by masila from the mountainsides and from sayl flows in the wadi taken off quite a long way up. These were our main fields, but there were lots of other groups of fields for other families fed by rainwaters up in the shuaibat and the wadis. There were no problems about fields sharing water because if there was enough rains for a sayl flow, there was enough water for all the fields in that group.We also grew grains in the gardens, along with vegetables, tobacco and dates. Grain was grown at the back of the gardens, and we hoped to use only rainwater channelled from the mountainsides; if there wasnt enough rainwater, we irrigated the grain from the wells. Sometimes, we didnt grow grain if there had been a series of poor rains. Rainwater was important to us for washing out the salts, gypsum and stuff; dates will grow in the water here, but tobacco, grain and vegetables wont if the soil isnt refreshed by rains. This is quite common around here and in other parts of the mountains. There were indeed big storms. My grandfather remembered a farij at al-Ghaba being washed away in one sayl; the farij was beside the wadi, and the flood was so strong it took away all the earth the farij was built on and changed the course of the wadi bed. That must have been about 1920, eighty years ago.

Mazrui in Wadi Mamduh said, “The whole valley used to be fields and gardens. The gardens by the wadi sides grew dates watered by the ghayli falay and the long thin fields above the gardens were where we grew everything else, and they were watered by sayl waters only.”

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A very elderly Mazrui in Wadi Sfai said, Wadi Sfuni and Wadi Khadhra are different channels of the same catchment area. If there were really good rains, the sayl from Haqala used to reach as far as Mlaiha. The unfinished fields in Shuaiba as-Samah in a side wadi to Wadi Sfai started in the sixties. But they were never developed because there wasnt ever enough floodwaters, even when the developers built a holding tank to collect the waters. In my opinion, if there arent old fields at a place, then there wouldnt be enough waters for cultivation. In general there is less water now, but in the past Ive been told that there were sudden drops in water and people had to abandon their fields. Like at Silwa, at the top of Wadi Baqqarah; there were four or five farij up that whole wadi. The buildings at the end of the car track were last used about thirty years ago, but all the other fields and buildings had been left long before, and I was told that was because of a sudden drop in the spring and its falay. The fields on the plateaux used rainwater and flows from the mountain slopes for grain, and dates grew at the sides of the wadi, in the ghayl. The bigger side wadis here and in the main wadi all had grain and tobacco fields with channels from the mountain slopes for sayl, and the date trees had the ghayl waters and from wells if that finished.

Sayl waters were important for the farij in Wadi al-Ayaili, Isaimir, alBarid, and Ladiid, belonging to Maharza, Dahaminah and Mazairi. Falay ghayli flows were relatively weak, and the cultivation of grains and tobacco depended on rainwater and sayl flows. Isaimir and alBarid lie in wide basins between the wadi and the enfolding mountains; Ladiid has a more restricted site along the side of the wadi downstream. The main body of Isaimir lies west of the main wadi, cut into three blocks running north to south by deep side wadis from the mountain foothills. Each blocks fields were enclosed by a wall, with housing and animal shelters outside the walls in side wadis. Sayl flows from the mountains were channelled from the gullies to each group of large terraced fields, entering through entrances at the base of the rear wall of each group and down channels to lower and successive fields. The highest upstream block had the only tobacco drying shed, and most of its fields had channels for ghayl waters from the wadi and sayl waters from the wadi and the foothills. At the two downstream blocks, only the two lowest terraces had ghayli channels; the higher terraces received sayl runoff from the slopes. Isaimir had produced grain, some tobacco, and date trees at the wadi sides; the necessary manure for this amount of cultivation came from the number of animals kept, attested by the large number of animal shelters.

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Winter sayls were important for the farij in Wadi Mlah. Wadi Mlah runs roughly north to south, entering Wadi al-Qawr. Its catchment area is large, brought by numerous side wadis from the enclosing mountains. Date gardens are concentrated at the south end of the end, below the two wells. Along the sides of the main wadi, in side wadis, and above the wells, there were groups of fields watered by sayl flows; these fields grew grains and, on the lower better watered fields, tobacco. Fields sited at the sides of the main wadi, in side wadis like Wadi Khubaib, Wadi Awadiyya, and farij Mahmud, and across wide, shallow flood flows in the main wadi were built as wider or narrower high walled terraces, in order to hold waters to raise soil moisture levels high enough for grain cultivation. Fields above Tawi Falaj and a second group at farij Mahmud were sited across very gentle slopes, with shallow walls often only consisting of a right-angle or a sharp curve, which were sufficient to hold back winter rainwater flows to the partially enclosed silts. From what people said in the Ruus al-Jibal, these fields were efficient if rainfall was gentle and persistent. Bani Kaab in Wadi Mlah recognised these as fields, but had no knowledge of their use, which implies shifts in rainfall patterns in the past. People spoke of a general drop in waters, both in the levels of waters underground and as rainfall. The progression was from unchannelled ghayli flows in wadis from underground springs, or more rarely, from springs in mountainsides, to channelled flows to holding tanks and then channelled to gardens; a greater reliance on wells and a shift from water lifting by minsafa to either yazara or to pumps, and so to an increased rate of the need to deepen wells and the exclusive use of pumps. Falay daudi had also been deepened or dried up. Most people linked the use of pumps and the consequent digging of wells with the lower water levels, although some older men insisted that for example, at Munaiy, the falay was already drying before the first pump arrived. Droughts were remembered in the lifetimes of older men, times when there were no rains for four or six years, but then rains came and everything recovered. Many considered that overall, since the early 1960s, the region had suffered drought, jifaf. Drought may mean a lack of rain – so that soils are dry or a lack of water in soils from falls in underground water levels, from any cause. Looking at the root of jifaf brings no clarification; Lane 1984 [1863]; 1, 434 – to become dry. Wilkinson (1977; 86 – 91), discussing the reliability of underground aflaj, considers that while those of the Sharqiyya province of Oman were susceptible to shifts in the inter-tropical convergence zones, and so to drought cycles,

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There is no evidence from the histories that the unstable climatic conditions which typify the Sharqiyya have ever affected settlement further north (which from other sections of the text includes the study region), and that declines in cultivated areas were rather the results of human activities. The study region appears to be unmentioned in the histories, except for a little on the coastal towns. However, rainwaters are said by all to be of crucial importance for surface waters and for the recharge of underground sources in the area; given the extreme variability in rainfall, in its timings, intensities, and duration between locations and over years, local cycles of lack of rain may affect underground water levels and certainly prevent grain cultivation. A Sharqi at Baqil in Wadi Khabb said, In 1981, there was no rain here, it was the last of seven bad years. Before that, there was another very bad period from the late 1950s through most of the 1960s, but of course there are periods of good years too. I was told that about a hundred and seventy years ago, so say 1830s, there was snow here on the highest mountain tops. Perhaps that made for more water here as it melted in the summers.

Wellsted (1978 [1837]; 1,141) mentions “not unfrequent ice and snow” around Shirazi at c. 6,000 ft. in Jabal Akhdar, so comparable in altitude to Jabal Yibir north of Wadi Khabb. While a few very old men saw a gradual lessening of water levels from before their lifetimes, everybody recognised a potentially catastrophic drop since the introduction and universal use of pumps and drilling rigs since most think recharge to former levels is now unobtainable however much rain there is. Other natural factors affecting agriculture were differences in humidities between different areas, winds, and altitude. Men at Ghayl and Idhn said their areas had too much wind, and so not high enough humidities, for successful commercial tobacco production, whereas the mountain wadis like Wadi Sfuni and Wadi Sfai were more suitable. Naqbiyiin at Daftah said they had not grown tobacco because they were at too high an altitude. Wind patterns are known to have changed. Lorimer mentioned summer winds at Dhaid had changed direction and become stronger, affecting its attraction as a summer place.

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Livelihoods and living in the western Hajar The northern end of the western Hajar meets the Ruus al-Jibal along Wadi Khabb and Wadi Fay. Its inhabitants are Sharqiyiin. A Sharqi in Wadi Khabb said, We had our date garden here and grain fields up at Mayya in the mountains, and we had the animals – goats, donkeys and camels. We didnt move much, we really went between here and Mayya. This garden didnt produce enough dates so we went to Dibba Baiah and bought more, and a little rice. We sold our goods in Ras al-Khaimah town, surplus grain, honey, firewood, and clarified butter. It was a bigger market than Dibba. We didnt need much, a few clothes…. We had everything here in the mountains.

At Baqil in Wadi Khabb, a Sharqi explained: We lived from animals, we sold animals and dairy products, and charcoal. Our date trees were watered from wells, and we have always had ordinary varieties, like Lulu, Naghul, Qash Safar, Khunaizi. We dont need to have mountain varieties because here it is warm in the wadis and we had water in the wells, although in the past the date trees grew only in the flows of the wadi beds. Then we grew some grain and vegetables in fields on the flat areas between the mountain slopes and the wadi, but we grew most of our grain in our high mountain fields. In a few years, there wasnt enough rain for grain, but we had dates, watered from the wells. We were here in the winter because it was cold up in the mountains, and in the ghaith because there was water in the wells; otherwise, we were high up. There were always enough dates for the people here. After making sure every family here had what they needed, because not every family had date trees, there were sometimes dates over to sell. In the past, we sold honey, live goats, dairy products, and dates; we used to go down on Fridays to Dibba Baiah, Khatt, or Habhab. Ive been told that in hard times, people wore clothes made from lif and wore goatskins or sacks. And sacks were used for bedding. That was when money was very scarce. The women did pick, clean and spin cotton from our trees for clothes, but I dont remember it; in my time, the cotton was used to stuff mattresses and quilts, and for rugs that we used when we were really entertaining, like at weddings. The cotton seeds were fed to the animals. Our bait ishbaq was the general family house and storeroom and kitchen. It was round, the walls were stone, and the roof was ishbaq, euphorbia larica. We also had rectangular bait gufl, with stone walls and roofed using tasnaf, beams, and earth; these were stores we could lock, and people made their own wooden doors and locks. The lock had wooden teeth; to open it, you had a sort of wooden key with short spikes and a bit with a metal spike on the end. You put that bit in to engage the teeth on the lock, the wooden spikes released the locking device, and the metal bit

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slid the long bolt back. Our bait gufl werent usually dug in as they were in Ras al-Khaimah. And we had khaimah built of stone and ishbaq that the men sat in. Ishbaq was a good roofing material; we started at the bottom and worked up layer by layer, and finished it off with a nice big bush that went down both sides at the top. Ishbaq kept the rain out and let the smoke through. Guests were quite common, they stayed for three or four days, perhaps a week or longer. They slept on their own at night but ate with the men; sometimes people had a small khaimah for guests. These pots came from my grandfather: a khars I use for dates, a water jar, a burma for clarified butter, a jidr or cooking pot, and a plate, sahhan, for making cheese. We fill the plate with milk, put salt in, cover it with this plaited date leaf cover, and leave it in the sun. It becomes cheese.

In Wadi Haiyyir, off Wadi Khabb, two young Sharqiyiin said, Before, in the past, we lived from our own resources. The date trees grew in the wadi bed, and we had grain fields at the sides, but the best grain fields were at various places high up in the mountains. People had fields and houses everywhere, they were never in the same place for more than two weeks at a time. Weve been told that a very long time ago, our forefathers lived in caves, there is a cave just below that they used. We had cotton trees here, and we remember our mothers and grandmothers talking about picking and cleaning the cotton, spinning it, and weaving it into cloth for clothes. And weve heard about making lif, the fibre from date tree trunks, into cloth. Weve heard that people mostly made their own pots, because there are clays and grits in the mountains, and they fired them in a fire, a kiln isnt necessary. It didnt matter if these pots broke easily, you made another. In the past, we sold mainly honey, because there was a lot of wild honey in the mountains, and people on the coast wanted it. We dont know if people before here sold wheat, but we think probably not, otherwise we would have heard. We didnt have to buy dates, we had date trees here, and we ate them ripe as rutub and dried them for tamr. We call that plant (caralluma sp) khanasir, not bwi, its very good for the stomach.

In Wadi Fay, a Yamahi Sharqiyiin family recalled, There were three families here, winter and summer, and we lived from our goats. Families that lived from goats had ninety to a hundred, other families had fifteen, thirty at the most. We sold live goats and dairy products in Ras al-Khaimah town and in Dibba Baiah. And we sold a lot of wild honey, that was really profitable. I dont have any mountain fields, but my wife does, at Waabain and Dhari. We bought our dates. We had buyut ishbaq and the rectangular stone house, the karin, with its roof that uses a ridgepole and layers of khaws, date branches. I rebuilt the karin, and its gable walls are slightly curved, the curve makes the walls slightly stronger; the stone here isnt very good. Rebuilding the karin took me five or six months, but I wasnt doing it all the time. If I had been, maybe a month. But we never did one thing for long. We went to Dibba

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on business, or we looked for honey, or did a day or two building, a day or so with the goats. The ishbaq on the roofs lasted four to five years, then we took it all off and started again.

His wife added, “Asida is flour mixed with water, milk, buttermilk… and some halba or sannut for flavour, and perhaps a little clarified butter, and you eat it like that. It didnt need cooking, that was the good thing about it.” At Idhn, on the foothills of the western Hajar, a Mazrui explained: Here and at Ghayl, it is really too windy to grow tobacco commercially. Tobacco grows better in valleys in the mountains, like Wadi Sfuni and Wadi Sfai, where the humidities are higher and the air is still. But we did grow it here, and here it needs watering every four or five days, which is less than the date trees. So you can grow tobacco and have fewer dates, or the other way round. Tobacco is a greedy crop, it takes a lot of manure. There was never enough animal manure so we bought gaisha, dried small fish. I think this lack of manure was the reason the south had lower grain yields than the Ruus al-Jibal in the north.

In Wadi Ku¯b, an elderly Sharqi explained: We had our date trees and we grew grain – red wheat, white wheat, barley, and brush millet – depending when rain came and how much fell. Usually we had a surplus of grain that we sold in Dubai, and we took clarified butter and cheeses to sell. But before that, we made sure everybody in the community had what they needed. Some people didnt have land and they lived from animals. People like us had thirty to forty goats, which was plenty for all the familys needs and for sale. We bought things we wanted in Dubai, but we didnt need much, we had everything we needed in the mountains. I lived right through the hard times in the war, but we didnt know about them, we didnt have any shortages. We lived in bait mal ishbaq at the back of our gardens – you can just see the remains of mine. We had raha, handmills, with the long handles, but we had them in our houses.

A Mazrui remarked, I lived from my date trees and my animals, and I sold honey, charcoal, and firewood. I never grew grain because I dont have a field above the wadi. I could share crop a field or rent a field, often I could use a field and give the owner or owners a present. The same applied to the fields up at Sall Lukham, that is the only sall in the western Hajar. If I employed a man to help with the watering of my date trees for a few days, I fed him for those days and gave him a few dates. We didnt have bayadir or regular workers, we had casual workers, local people who happened not to be busy just then.

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The graveyard where the wadi curves and the track goes off to alAyim has a sanam, a grave mound, and there was a masjid built on the mound using some of the stones from the tomb inside. And theres another one in the big side wadi on the north, with a graveyard and a farij. There were more above the wadi at various places, but some of them have been bulldozed when people were making new gardens. And theres one in a side wadi on the south side. The big carved stone in the main wadi is where we rested before setting off up wadi Lianha for the foot track to Dibba. The stone has carvings and tribal markings (Lancasters; fc a), azil. Azil were how we marked our camels. I think people carved them there because someone else had carved his tribal mark so you carved yours, someone carved himself and his donkey so you carved yourself and your donkey. Theres another stone like that at Ramz near Wadi Muattarid, and I know of another.

Another Mazrui said, We didnt have bayadir or khawadim, we did our work ourselves. For work that needed more than one man, people came and helped, people from the wider family, neighbours and from the whole community. That was how work was done here, the whole of Wadi Ku¯b worked by the hashad.

In Ghayl, the Amir explained: In the past, we lived from our date gardens, our grain fields and our animals. Provided a man had the five necessities – sight, hearing, hands to work with, feet to walk on, and a heart to understand with – he was never in want. If we needed money, we sold firewood, honey, dates, grain, camels and goats, clarified butter and cheeses, or we carried goods for people from Ras al-Khaimah to Kalba, or Dubai to Dibba. We were handily placed for carrying as we are in the middle of the region. Or we traded, or did a bit of carrying and a bit of trading; or we got jobs – share cropping, even maybe working on a boat. Later on, most people went to Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar or Saudi Arabia for work. No-one, obviously, did all these things, it depended on what resources a man had and what he wanted to do. There were always enough dates for everyone. Four khars, storage jars, of dates for a family were sufficient. Grain was divided between the sharecropper and the co-owners of the field. It was important that everyone who was entitled to a share, either by ownership, work, or charity, got twenty mun (80 kgs) after the seed corn had been taken out. An average return for grain was 1:20, which wasnt good or bad, and in any case, it varied. The zakat was what was left after the known poor and needy had got their twenty mun – some for him, and shes a widow, and hes old….. After the poor and the needy had their shares, the sharecroppers and the co-owners divided the rest. If any of them wanted to sell some, that was their decision. There was never any shortage of grain. And a person had his dates, his goats and camels, and his grain. Sharecroppers were anyone who wanted the work for whatever reason, they could be Mazari, Irani-

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ans, anyone. There are Mazari who dont have date gardens and there always have been. Most of these lived from animals, and lived further in the hills and wadis around Ayim. But nearly everybody owned some land as well as animals. And in those days there were far, far fewer people. Families were much smaller. We built with whatever we had available. People who lived in the wadis or the mountain away from the date gardens or who didnt have gardens, built bait ishbaq or bait rimth if there wasnt any ishbaq where they were. Bait ishbaq have double stone walls filled with earth and dug into the slope of the earth so the floor is level, and they have level platforms outside. The roof was made from branches; the thick ends were put into the outer wall and the thin ends were tied up at the centre. This meant there was plenty of room inside. The roof was covered with ishbaq or rimth, depending on what grew there. They were nice houses or stores really, because we didnt live in them, we lived around them. Some people had karin, which were bigger, rectangular with gabled short walls and the door in one of the long walls, and a ridgepole for the roof with date branches. Khaimah are round or oval; round ones have roofs like bait ishbaq roofs, and oval ones have ridgepoles. Over the years, khaimah became more oval. These were the houses people had in or by their date gardens, and they had arish for the summers. Or people built stone houses with roofs of beams and earth, they were warmer and more waterproof. Best of all for warmth in winter were the black tents, but we didnt have any. Before we had matches, we struck iron and a flint together to get a light for the fire. Getting a flint was easy, you could find them around, but sometimes finding a bit of iron was difficult. Before we had paraffin lamps, we had firelight or the light from the moon and the stars.

A Zaabi at Fara in Wadi Ghayl said, The old buildings in the wadi across from the old graveyard are two stone storehouses or makhzan and a house. And there are two old houses above this wadi, by my garden; one was built on a threshing floor, a yannur; the other is a khaimah by another threshing floor. Threshing floors were always square or rectangular. The fields below the old graveyard were left fifty years ago, they were good fields because the dead overlooked them. There were five storehouses, makhzan, here, one for each of the five wider families, awail, that lived here. There were two sorts of houses: rectangular khaima with roofs of daan, mats of leafy date tree ribs; and smaller, round or oval buyut roofed with ishbaq built by people who didnt have date gardens. There were more old gardens and little fields at the sides of the wadi below my garden. All these little wadis had houses and fields that came and went. The tower across the wadi was a husn, a fort, and the two towers up on outcrops were watch towers, siba. This area has always been the edge between different districts; recently, it was Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah, and before it was Mazari and Sharqiyyin.

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At Wadi Nasim, a Sharqi said, We lived here except when we went to Masafi for the high summer, or when we went to our garden to the west. It wasnt a good garden so we never had enough grain or dates. We bought dates in Masafi and flour in any market we were selling animals and clarified butter. Usually that was Dubai, sometimes Ras al-Khaimah or Fujairah. Dubai and back was six days and nights by donkey. We lived from animals – goats, cows and donkeys. We bought clothes, salt, a little rice, and anything else we needed.

In Asima, a Mazrui remarked, In this garden, I own this Khunaizi date tree, this mango tree and this orange tree. I have more trees in my garden further down the wadi. We grew red wheat under the trees in the gardens and it ripened well, and it didnt suffer from rust or fungus. In the past we lived from our gardens and we always had more than we needed, everybody had surpluses for sale or exchange. We sold mangos ripe and half ripe, some people preferred eating them unripe or used them in cooking.

The Amir explained: We lived from our gardens. We grew our grain and dates and fruit, and we had dairy products and meat from our animals. The animals went out for the day and browsed on the mountain slopes and in the wadis. They werent herded, they came home at night by themselves because they were fed when they came back. We grew dhurra, brush millet, and wheats. We grew these in the gardens and on the fields down the wadi, beyond the gardens. In the gardens, we cleaned the beds with a mabgalla, a flat trowel, and tilled the earth with a hais, a long spade. A few people used bulls to pull a hais, a light plough, or a faisala. We used animal dung as manure. People in the Ruus al-Jibal have to get high yields from their fields because they have only one harvest a year, as they have only rain and rain flows. But we who have falay ghayli can grow grain the year round. We threshed the grain with sticks on the masta, flat platforms at the backs of the gardens where we dried the dates, and we ground it in handmills. My family have two small fields on the north side below the gardens and one on the upper group on the south side, and these fields only grew grain. People stayed there for a few days when doing their fieldwork, especially in the summer, and they lived in bait mal ishbaq or bait mal rimth, circular stone walled houses with roofs of ishbaq or rimth. In the past, everyone did their own work. Women did everything men did, including climbing up the trees to cut the ripe dates. We dug our own wells, made our water channels, and built our garden walls. We did have partnerships for dates and for grain, which covered grain grown in the gardens, basatin, or the fields, mazraat. These contracts were made privately between the owner of the land and the man offering his labour, they worked out the terms between them. For grain, these depended on factors

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like – oh, the kind of year it was, who supplied what, the needs of both sides, so the harvest might be shared equally or as a quarter for the worker and the rest for the owner. Dates were shared by sacks and these too were private contracts, and differed between years and partners. People who entered into these contracts were those in the community with not enough land of their own. Occasionally, a land owner might rent a date garden to an outsider; someone here rented a date garden to a Zaabi, who paid 5,000 riyals a year. People without enough date trees or grain land could also get them by exchange or sale by carrying goods for people, or collecting firewood and selling it in Ras al-Khaimah. Traders came here for the fruit, mostly from Dubai but a few from Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah. We also took fruit ourselves to these places if the fruit was ripe but there were no traders. We sold mangos especially, limes, tranj or sweet lemons, and oranges. We went by camel and donkey; four days to Ras al-Khaimah and back, six days to Dubai and back. But I really remember going by Land-Rover down the wadi to Mawrid, then to Ghayl and Ras al-Khaimah. When I was a boy, we ate bread made in the tannur or on the tawa, a flat, metal sheet; dates; aish or cooked grain, which was usually but not always rice; salt fish… meat. People brought salt fish back from Ras alKhaimah when they had been to the market or on business. When we killed a goat, we didnt eat it all at once; some of it was cut off, cut up into tiny pieces, salted, and covered; it kept for a year and was delicious. Here above the wadi, fifty families lived, and families were small then, with two or three children. Like me, I had one brother and one sister. The old houses were at the backs of the gardens and built of stones. We had karin and makhzan, storehouses. We built our houses ourselves, and a group of five men from the wider family and the community came to help. The men sat sociably at the storehouses, and the families lived in and around their karin (fig. 16; 604). This was our karin, our storehouse, the kitchen, and the animal shelter. We slept in the karin and made coffee in here, theres the hearth. Other cooking, bread making and milk processing, was done in the kitchen outside. My father was the Amir before me. There were mutawwa here but no qadi. One of the mutawwa had a Quranic school, teaching the Faith, reading and writing. In those days, only one person in a thousand could write easily. One mutawwa was a katiib and wrote documents or letters that people needed. Weddings here are exactly the same as they are with Shihuh and Habus – the drumming, dancing and singing, sword throwing and the firing of guns. People arrive here in their groups and gather, and then come in in order, and are greeted and fed in their groups, just the same. We marry Shaairah, Khanajira, Abdali, Bani Kaab and people come to the weddings from all over. Jewellery used to be silver. When I was a boy, there was a little gold, but the gold pieces were small and light – a ring, or small ear-rings. The big heavy chokers and the short necklaces or samt, long necklaces or mur-

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aiyyir, and headpieces or taj were all silver. Women and girls wore jewellery how they wanted – if one had a samt but her neck was thin, she wore it as a long necklace or across her forehead. How pieces were worn depended on their size, length and weight, and how the wearer fancied. So the name of a piece of jewellery changed according to how the woman wore it.

At Maydaq a Sharqi recalled I was brought up here. We had grain fields, some small fields in the side wadis or shuqq and bigger fields beyond the gardens, further down the wadi. We grew red wheat, white wheat, black wheat which is millet, and yellow wheat which is brush millet, and white barley. Which we grew depended on when the rains came and how much fell. On the main grain fields, we also grew a little cotton, and this wasnt tree cotton. But then we stopped because we bought our cotton in bolls in Ras al-Khaimah town when we needed to make quilts and mattresses. We didnt grow tobacco here; it was tried a long time ago, but it didnt do, and that was taken as a sign that we shouldnt grow it. And these fields also grew vegetables, onions especially. The gardens are divided among families, either as gardens or as trees. A family has between three to five date trees, which is sufficient for their needs. The date varieties we grew were Anghal, Khunaizi, Anwah, Jish al-Swai, Qaraif, Bagal. People ate all of these, and the animals had the stones, taam. Some Khawatir have trees here through inheritance. And each family has a mango tree. The mountain grew very good mangos. The gardens are in two parts, and my family had their gardens this side, most of the gardens the other side belonged to the shaikh (of Fujairah). The gardens on that side had a spring which had fed a falay which filled a pool, from which channels went to the gardens. Now it has been deepened, and all the owners paid their shares for the work, but the water is shared as it always was. All the owners know whose turn for water it is, and how long each of them has, so the person whose turn it is opens up his channel from the pool and takes his water; he is the brayam for that day. This pool is surrounded by mango trees, and that tree was given by its owner as a sabil, a khair or benefit, for every passer by. This plant (veratrum sp.) growing in the water channel is against hashra, insect pests; it was pulled up and put in the openings of the water channels where the water ran over it, and it kept away insects that affected the mango and date trees. I can remember my mother walking down this very path, carrying mangoes on her head. We didnt have many animals here; most families had a cow, which was enough, and there were a few sheep. The houses were khaima and karin scattered behind the gardens, with roofs of khaws, and sitting places where we slept. We got drinking water from the well, and washing water from the wadi which then ran all the time. We carried the dry dates on our heads down into the wadi, using these two little steps sticking out of the wall, across the wadi and up to the date store, which was by one of the two graveyards. We had a masjid

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between the gardens; it was stone built by the bayadir, and the courtyard had a yarid roof. The tower above the first gardens was a watchtower for raiders and robbers. Most places in the area had towers for this. When I was a child, there were robbers living behind that mountain, and they robbed because they had nothing. There were two men at a time on the tower, one of whom had a gun to alert everyone rather than to shoot the robbers. My father took his turn as a guard. When the men were defending the gardens from robbers or raiders, or fighting over killings and thefts, the women took the children into the wadis or up into the mountains. Raiders were a real threat. When I was a small boy, and my mother hurried me along to hide, if I fell over, I didnt dare cry; if I did, my mother raised her hand to me. In the past, we made our profits from selling charcoal, mangos, limes, and some dates. We never sold grain. We went to Sharjah, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, and Ras al-Khaimah town to sell things. The fruit was carried down in nets or dirzalain, sacks or boxes, anything, and we sold fruit by what the buyer wanted. A camel carried four sacks of charcoal on each side, it had a balanced load; we took charcoal to Sharjah, a two day trip, Dubai which took five days, and Ras al-Khaimah. We took our firewood, coffee and bread with us, and slept outside the town, we never stayed in the towns. To make charcoal, sakhkham, we went up into the mountains with axes, hazin, and cut down dead samra trees or branches, always dead wood. We brought down the small branches and made them into charcoal or sold them as firewood, hattab. The bigger branches and trees were left up there and made into charcoal when convenient. The wood was cut into convenient lengths for stacking and we built them up into a big pile and set it alight. When the fire had really got going, and the wood was glowing hot, yamr, we covered it with sand or earth and left it to burn for a day or two. When it was all finished we brought the charcoal down in sacks. We did the work in the gardens and fields ourselves or with bayadir or akhdam, servants. Bayadir were other Sharqiyiin who didnt have any or enough land at the time. The bayadir were paid in dates, and these dates were pay, not shares, because at that time there was no money. They got the dates of one tree out of five. Later on, when there was money again, we paid them two or three rupees a month, and fed and clothed them and their entire families – wives, children, aged parents, divorced sisters, all of them. This was during and after we were working in Kuwait. In those days, if you were ill, you were burnt in special places according to your symptoms. I was burnt here, on the top of my head, when I had a bad fever, I was shaking with it. Another time, I was burnt on my stomach, touched with the hot metal in a line up the middle. That was when I had another fever and I was unconscious a lot of the time, but I remember being burnt. It hurt each time they touched me with the hot metal and I yelled out loud. But it worked each time. Jaada (teucrium sp.) is a very

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good medicine; we go and get it from the mountains and dry it ready for use as a tea. Childbirth could and did go wrong. There werent operations, but if a baby was in a bad position to be born, an experienced older woman could sometimes manipulate it. She pressed with her hands on the baby in the mothers womb from outside, like this and this. Sometimes the baby couldnt be moved and it couldnt get born, and it and the mother died. When a baby was born, it was rubbed with salt to clean it, and the new mother put salt up herself to get the afterbirth out. In the old days, families were small, two or three children at the most. This was because men and women worked so hard they were too tired to enjoy each other often. And when a woman got pregnant, the hard work of raising water from the wells, grinding grain, getting firewood, carrying and spreading manure, and so on, made it difficult for her to hold the developing foetus. This is raqaq bread. The women bake it on a hot metal sheet on three stones, over the fire, they spread the dough across the hot sheet with the sides of their hands. As it finishes baking, they spread clarified butter over it. In the past, women cooked over three stones, they cooked aish like that as well. This is griis, bread dough flattened and baked, crushed into crumbs and mixed with clarified butter – try some, it has pine nuts in it, but that is new. And here is hot milk with ginger.

At Wadi Shayba, between Thoban and Siji, he said, This is my mothers garden that I inherited. Up above the old garden, on the terrace, is a small family graveyard; the people buried there include my uncle, my brother, and some children. We lived on the other side of the wadi, up on the plateau. Now it is only animal pens and shelters, zirb. But before it was full of khaimah, karin, arish and zirb. They were built in stone and khaws or ishbaq, but later on people used zinc sheeting and plywood as well. Doors made from khaws were called sfara. When we were living here, we used the water in the wadi for everything – drinking, watering the animals, washing clothes, washing ourselves. Girls and women took a jar of water into their arish to wash all over, boys and men took a jar behind the arish or went off to one side of the wadi. That plant is nunaila, nudaila (solanum nigrum), we used the green seed heads to make poultices. We used to get an Imam up from Fujairah or Masafi for the Ids. We didnt have a built prayer floor for Ids then, we had a known clean piece of level land. We paid the Imam a rupee or half a rupee, and everyone around contributed. All the places around here did this, at Maydaq, Siji, all these places. All these little plateaux between the garden areas the length of the wadi had people living on them. People moved between the gardens they owned in the area, and went out to the sands for a couple of months in the winter. Everybody who lived here was related to me through my father or my mother, there used to be twenty families in the wadi.

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In Masafi, an elderly Maharza said, Masafi was full of fruit trees, mangos, limes and oranges. We sold lots of fruit, particularly mangos and limes. In the old days, they sold their mangos in Dubai and Sharjah and brought back salt fish; when they sold fruit in Fujairah, which was closer, they came back with fresh fish. People did make pottery here a long time ago. The potters took one sort of clay from above those gardens – where the earth is red. This clay was ahrash. The other clay came from behind that mountain to the east, and the two were mixed together with red stone grits. But this pottery was brittle, it broke easily. They made storage jars, khars, for water and dates; jahla for pouring water; jidri for cooking in; and cups for drinking. It was sold locally, youve probably seen bits in the old afraj in the mountains.

Another recalled, We used to grow grain, in my grandfathers time. He told my father who told me that they used to thresh the grain on the flat land between the tower and the graveyard, and the grain had to be guarded all the time against birds. In my fathers time and my own, we bought grain or flour. That is our family garden, it takes in part of the old graveyard. We used to export huge quantities of mangos and oranges, and gardens were really profitable. We did all our work ourselves, no-one came in as bayadir or khawadim. The mound with the samra tree growing on it is in Ras al-Khaimah, to the south is Fujairah. In my opinion, the mound is what remains of a tower; what else would leave a mound of that size and colour? The big mudbrick ghurfa was the house of the Shaikh of Fujairah, with his date garden behind and a huge mango tree. The zuttut used to camp under that tree every year, and did any metalwork we needed. Later on, Shaikh Muhammad bin Ahmad moved to another house down the wadi, and his wali lived here. I cant remember when the shurta, police, had the former womens quarters – if they overlapped with the wali or if they were after him.

In Daftah, the elderly Amir explained: Everybody thinks that in the past, people lived by selling firewood, but that was in the bad times before Unification. In the past, Naqbi at Daftah and Shis lived from agriculture. We grew grain, wheat, millet and brush millet. We grew dates and fruit, especially mangos, limes and melons. We sold some dates, and mangos, melons and limes; we sold live animals and dairy products; and honey, we sold a lot of honey. We lived very comfortably. We did grow cotton here, tree cotton. The women picked it off the trees and cleaned out the seeds. Some of it was used for stuffing pillows, mattresses and quilts. Some was spun, mixed with wool, and woven into saddle bags for donkeys, and these were sold. The women didnt make cloth with the cotton, because cloth and clothes came from over the seas, and were brought up from the coast.

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A Naqbi commented: Before 1968, very occasionally we exported grain, although we almost always had enough for ourselves. We had plenty of dates, and we took dates for sale to Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Dubai on our own camels and donkeys. We also took down for sale sweet potatoes, onions, and mangos. Ras al-Khaimah was our main market.

An elderly Naqbi said, When I was a child, we lived at Shis. Daftah, Shis and Hayr Bani Humaid all lived from growing and selling dates, mangos and limes, wheat and millet, and vegetables. We didnt grow tobacco, we were too high in the mountains, but our dates and fruits were really good quality. We had goats and sheep, too, for milk products and manure. We sold dates, mangos and vegetables at Sharjah and Dubai, four days each way by donkey, and from there we brought coffee, clothes, rice and salt. When we went to Fujairah or Khor Fakkan to sell goods, we bought salt, gaisha – the little dried fish for fertiliser, fresh and salt fish, and paraffin for lamps. The old farij was back in the wadi, on the slope above the gardens. We used to live in khaimah and karin. Khaimah are smaller and have the door in one of the two short walls, karin are larger and have the door in a long wall. Which a man had depended on how strong he felt and how much space he needed in his house. And we had storehouses, makhzan, which were rectangular, with stone and mud mortar walls, roof beams of half or quarter date trunks covered with brushwood or hattab, then yarid, and finished with a layer of earth levelled flat, and they had strong wooden doors that locked. We stored wheat, both millets, and dates in these, and we made date syrup, dibs, in them. In the early summer, we lived by the fields which are lower down the wadi, below the gardens. In the gaith, we lived in arish in the date gardens; arish had sabla, level places swept clean and floored with fine sand or gravel and shaded with a roof of yarid. Sabla were where the men sat. The women ground the grain for bread in small hand mills in the kitchens. We didnt have tannur for bread. We made bread, which we call girs and its thin and flat, on a flat metal sheet called a tabba over a fire. Neither I nor my companion have ever heard of making cloth from lif, not even in hard times. But a long time ago, maybe two hundred years ago, we have heard that people here wore short wuzra, halfway down the thigh, made by the women from sheeps wool, and skins round their shoulders. We have always had some sheep in with the goats. Ive heard of cotton being grown in Oman, and that clothes, white clothes, were made from it, but not here. For metal goods, Baluch metalworkers or haddadiyiin, came about once a year and sold us tools like hais, das for pruning the date trees, mabgallat for clearing weeds, knives and anything else we needed in metal. We had lots of pottery from Shaam, Shimal and southern Persia.

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I know the carvings in the wadi. As far as I know, they have no meaning, and in my opinion they were made by young men and boys looking after the sheep, as the carvings are above where the sheep would have been watered. They were a way of passing the time. In the past, there were wolves, and the young men and older boys were sent out with the sheep. I think those carvings were from the days of the Persians before the Qawasim came into the mountains.

In Madha, a Bani Saad said, This area was wealthy in the past because it grew such good quality tobacco, alyun, and so much of it. We had a large number of fields and good soils, and plenty of water with good falay ghayli. We had date gardens and mangos and limes. There are a lot of ruined qalaat, small towers or forts, almost on every hill. Long ago, there was a lot of raiding and fighting, and burning down of date trees. The tobacco from Madha was sold at Khor Fakkan. It went down in loads of a hundred, two hundred jalba, or more. The growers got grain, flour, what they needed, on credit. When the tobacco harvest came down, each growers tobacco was weighed and the accounts sorted out and paid. The merchants in Khor Fakkan were Iranians, but before there had been Arab merchants. The tobacco was then sold to Bahraini merchants and went to Bahrain.

Another Bani Saad said, Madha always had a mixed population, and we were al-Madhani. One of the reasons for people coming in from elsewhere was that Madha, and to a lesser extent al-Ghuna and Harat Bani Humaid, was that it had over twenty falay and was extraordinarily fertile. It is assumed that this fertility was the reason why the Portuguese built a fort here at the junction of Wadi Madha and Wadi Ghuna. Later on, tobacco growing was really valuable, like gold. It was the best tobacco in the area and it all went to Iran. Madha had a high reputation for the variety of its crops; not only dates, but mangos, sweet lemons, pomegranates, wheats, millets and barley, lots of different sorts of beans and other vegetables, jasmine and rihan. People here made pottery, household items, nothing out of the ordinary. They didnt sell their pottery, they made it for themselves and maybe a few extra as presents. I thought that at most places people had made their own pottery. Madha was unusual in making cotton cloth. The cotton was grown in Qidfa, but spun and woven here. This was almost until living memory, and it went on because it was very good quality. Before, earlier, a lot of places made cotton cloth but not of good quality.

At al-Ghuna, two Bani Saad commented: Bani Saad are from Shutair Shihuh and have always been in al-Ghuna. Madha is half Hadiya and half Shutair, and it was Hadiya who took up gardens in Mirbat about a hundred and fifty years ago.

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We lived, in the past, from agriculture. We grew red wheat, millet or dukn, and barley; dates; and tobacco. People here sold the tobacco to Iranian merchants in Khor Fakkan. They sold it once a year, and the traders took it to Iran and came back with dry dates. We sold firewood and charcoal, and anything else we had a surplus of, but really firewood and charcoal, all the time. We carried it down to Khor Fakkan by donkey or camel, and we got a dirham for a 40 kg sack of charcoal. That was good money; with that dirham we could buy coffee, flour and fish. We never went to Fujairah, Khor Fakkan was nearer. When we sold live animals, we took the goats, sheep and cows to Dubai. Going to Dubai took five days there and five days back, that was with camels. The route was Daftah, Thoban, Falaj al-Mualla, Dhaid and on. The market for live animals in Dubai was much bigger than in Khor Fakkan and the money we got for them bought more in Dubai. What cost you seven dirhams in Khor Fakkan cost you four or five in Dubai. Going to Dubai, we travelled in parties of fifty men. Either we joined up with merchants from Khor Fakkan or we hired ourselves and our camels out, to make up the numbers. Each day, we started at daybreak; stopped at ten for coffee and lunch; went on till getting on for sundown; ate and slept.

At Shawqa, a Qaidi in his eighties recalled, We lived on our dates and our grain – red wheat, white wheat, and barley. And we had camels, a family had maybe up to five, and we had goats. And we grew tobacco, to sell for things we needed. There were four households here in this farij behind these gardens; twenty people in all, as a husband and wife had only one to three children then, and they probably had a divorced sister or an aged father. Each household had two buildings, one for them and one for the animals. The rectangular building with the solid roof was our yanz, where the farij stored its wheat and dates. If the weather was really bad, everyone sheltered in the storehouse. We stored the threshed grain and dry dates in jars, habbiya, in the storehouse. We bought the jars in Dubai or Sharjah when we went there to sell tobacco, alyun, or surplus grain. Most years, we had a surplus of grain. We didnt need much money, just for clothes and stuff. We had a second farij to the south up in one of the mountain slopes; it cant be seen from the track. We went there when there were raiders. Raids were a real problem. Not only were Maharzah from Masafi trying to move in, but people from Abu Dhabi came raiding for food, animals, women and children. I remember a raid when five Quwayyid were killed.

A Qaidi explained: We had two qusur, strongholds built of stone, one each side of the wadi. The round, two-storey building in the fields was a husn, a fort. We needed these strong places to defend ourselves and our crops, gardens, and animals from raiders who came and tried to cut our throats. The old buildings by the grain fields are our khaimah. We lived around them and kept our things in them. To make a khaimah, we dug

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the earth out a bit so the floor was level, and lined the walls with the stones we got digging out the earth. Then we built up the walls with stones to the height we wanted. Then we put wooden poles at each end to take the ridgepole and then made the roof with arish, leafy date branches. They were cool in summer and kept out the rain in winter.

A group of Mazari at Habn recalled, We grew red wheat, white wheat, both sorts of millet, and barley. We grew tobacco and some vegetables. And we had our date gardens and our animals. We drank milk from the goats and cows, and we ate dates and bread and honey and butter. Everyone lived to be a hundred and forty! To get money, we sold tobacco, especially, and also charcoal, firewood, and honey. The firewood and charcoal were mostly sidr, zizyphus spina christi. And we sold grain, clarified butter, some dried yogurt or iqt, and a few vegetables like onions and white radishes. We bought clothes, fish, a little rice, coffee and dates. To sell and buy things, we went to Sharjah, three days each way, or to Ras al-Khaimah which was five days each way, or Dubai or Kalba. If it was known there were robbers about, we made a sharika or partnership, and we were all kafila, protectors, of each other, and we went in bigger groups, fifteen or twenty men. We have grown tobacco for at least two hundred years, maybe longer. There was always a steady demand for our tobacco, so we grew it. We did very nicely in the past, selling tobacco and charcoal. A honey hunter remarked, I had very good eyesight. I used to stand and scan the landscape until I saw the wild bees returning to their nests, and then I knew where to look to get the honey. I used to get honey combs as big as small trays.

The others continued We ate bread made from red and white wheat and millet. We had three sorts of bread: shiban, tawbi, and gajir. Shiban is made on a metal sheet, a saj, and before we had saj, the women used thin flat stones to bake it on. For gajir, dough was mixed up and baked in the ashes. Then it was torn up into little pieces and mixed with clarified butter and honey, and we ate it in our hands like rice. We stored grain in sacks, and we put these sacks, and the dry dates in their sacks, in a stone built yanz, with four walls mudded inside and out, with a solid roof and a proper door. The building at the top of the water channel at Athbat is a yanz. We have jirz, little axes, because we are mountain men, jabbali. We carried firewood behind our heads like this, and we carried waterskins, jirba, like this, and we carried storage jars, kharus, on our heads. We had khars for water at the places where we lived in the wadis, and we bought them in Sharjah or Kalba. Khaimah are almost the same as bait mal ishbaq in their use and construction, except for the roofing material which comes from its location. Khaimah are roofed with yarid because we built them at or by our date gardens. We made the yarid into two sheets by tying together the stems

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with twine and put each one against the ridgepole. We made bait ihbaq in the wadis, and we roofed them by building up layers of ishbaq starting at the bottom. Those roofs were a bit more waterproof. We had a fort, Husn al-Mna, right on the top of that hill, and it is at least a thousand years old. It has always belonged to the Mazari. Guards sat up there and watched for raiders, they guarded the people who lived here and the date gardens. They drove off the raiders with matchlocks, rumani. Before they had guns, they had bows and arrows. We had a second husn at Mamduh, but there they could withstand a siege, because there is a spring immediately below the fort. We lived scattered about all over the place, one household here, two there, another over that way, all in different wadis. We didnt get raided like the Quwayyid because we were strong, there were a lot of us and we had guns.

A Mazrui said, We didnt have sharaka, share partnerships, for farming. We let people who didnt have any land of their own work one of our gardens, and they took a third of the produce. We had a duty to provide for those who, for whatever reason, happened at that time not to have land or enough land. People made new arrangements every year, the landowner didnt have the same man using his land year after year. Of the owners two-thirds share of the harvest, he divided it into three parts; one went to the garden for its upkeep, one for zakat, and one for himself. Women worked hard too, I remember them sometimes weeping from tiredness, especially after grinding grain. That was one of the reasons families were small, women worked so hard they either didnt get pregnant or they miscarried without knowing they were pregnant. A woman probably only had five pregnancies that she knew about in her child bearing years. Sometimes a woman got pregnant soon after she had had a child, and then she would induce a miscarriage. This was her decision, it wasnt anything to do with her husband, a woman is a person in her own right. She did this by making a plug of salt and pushing it up herself and drinking lots and lots of warm water; then she lay down on her back with a really hot stone wrapped in a cloth on her stomach. It never failed. And children died, too, from illnesses as well as accidents. They didnt have a varied diet; lots and lots of milk, not that much bread, and meat occasionally. We grew tobacco on the same land for three years, then that land was rested from tobacco for three years. In those three years, it grew wheat in its first year, followed by onions, and the third year was vegetables. People were buried according to Islamic custom where they died, so there are old graves all over the area. At the farij people used regularly, there are old graveyards and masajid. Some were built in stone with proper roofs, others were outlines in stones. In my opinion, virtually every old graveyard has at least one old big gravemound from before Islam. So these graveyards and their farij must be very, very old. Some of these mounds, asnam, have a little stone lined space inside. Some of the graves, those which look really old, have white stones on the tops; some people say

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these stones came up out of the graves, others say they dropped from heaven. These really old graves can be seen in graveyards at Ghaba, and in Wadi Shawqa, Wadi Sfuni, and Wadi Mamduh that I know of.

In Wadi Mamduh, a Mazrui said, We have grown tobacco for a long, long time and it sold very well until about thirty years ago. In the past, most people had between ten and fifteen date trees in any one garden, but they had three or four gardens in different farij here, Wadi Sfuni, Ghaba, Sfai, all those places.

Another remarked, That was a shed where the tobacco leaves were hung up to dry, it was a maarisha. The burj, the tower, is maybe six or seven hundred years old. It was difficult for the attackers, because the entrance was high up and the defenders were shielded by that wall. And they could retire up to the second floor. This cement block masjid was paid for by Shaikh Saqr, and it replaced the earlier stone and mortar masjid.

At Wadi Ghubaib, off Wadi Mamduh, a Mazrui said, We used to live at Mamduh, here in Wadi Ghubaib and at Musaqqab. We were all one aila, and most men had two wives so there were a lot of children – I am talking of the late 1960s. There were quarrels when we were still farming our land at these places, animal yards were burnt down and people were killed, so our family went to live in Fujairah. Altogether, this place had about twenty people in four or five units as people came and went. At that time, the date trees grew in the wadi, and where the date trees are now were grain fields.

At Wadi Sfai, a Mazrui in his nineties recalled, I can just remember people using tents, bait shaar. Those lines of stones below Athbat were tent sites. It was a few people who used tents when moving, Mazari who didnt have date gardens and made their living by carrying goods for people on their camels. My family had date gardens, fields and some animals, and when we moved between our fields and gardens in different farij, we used yarid screens as shelter for an overnight stop. No-one ever went hungry. Sometimes there was no rain for two years, four years, and we couldnt grow grain. We ate the grain we had in the storehouses, and then we shared with those whose stores of grain had finished. When all the stored grain was gone, there was no problem. We still had dates from the trees, milk from the animals, and meat – either male kids or gazelle, and there were quite a lot of gazelle. The trees that the animals browsed got moisture from humidities and dews, and we watered the date trees from the wells. Everything comes from trees. We milked cows and goats, camels carried. We made laban, yogurt, by rocking milk in a skin, and we used some fresh and dried the rest for iqt. Old people and

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young children ate crushed grain or flour mixed into a paste with reconstituted yogurt. And we made lots of clarified butter. Hunger couldnt happen, it wasnt possible, and God is generous. If we needed money to buy rice, clothes, or for getting married, we sold a goat or goats. Goats at that time sold for half a dirham, but you could get married for four or five dirhams. When I was a young man, I was just married when the British first began to land planes at Sharjah (1932) and at that time if a man had one goat he could manage, with two he was doing well, and with three, he was rich! Im joking, but we needed so little money then. Apart from marriage, we needed money really only for cloth, maybe two or three lengths a year. We did buy coffee, but often we dried and roasted wheat or barley and drank that. On my land, and given reasonable rains, if we sowed one mikyal (4 kgs) we harvested ten. The only variety of birr abyath I know is salut. I grew two sorts of birr hamra – misani and suwaid al-hilb. Ive heard other people got much higher yields, but they must have stronger land. We had animal manure, and we bought dried fish, gaisha, for extra manure for the tobacco. Most people grew grain on part of their land and tobacco on another, and changed over the years. There was nobody without land, although some didnt have much land, and some didnt have irrigated land. Ive made over all my land to my three daughters, I have no sons. If the women who inherit marry outside the wider family, the community, people tend to try and buy it back over time, and this usually happens over the next two to three generations. I dont remember the fort at Mna being used seriously, but it was used when people had only bows and arrows because there was a stone that marked a bowshot from the fort, and that stone was where the school is now. The bows werent all wood, but I dont know what the other material was – horn, perhaps. Those bows had a greater range than a musket. We didnt use slings, midzlaa, as weapons; boys had them, and used them for hunting birds which they ate. And we made nets which we set in the pools for partridges when they came to drink. People moved from farij to farij over the year, which is why there are all those places in the wadis that have obviously been used but dont have buildings. These were temporary overnight stops, or when people went up into the wadis when raiders were around. We also moved into the wadis with the animals in the winters after rains, but we didnt herd our animals. They took themselves off and came back at sunset. We made circular pens of stones for them, and we made small ones for kids in which they stayed all day if the weather was cold or wet. The short, slightly curved walls you saw were what we pushed the dung against when we were putting it into sacks to take back to the gardens. Some of these walls had hearths for cooking – baking or heating milk, we didnt do any other cooking in the wadis. Where we took the animals in the winters depended on the rains and plant growth, and on what work we had that needed doing. Some places we went to occasionally, other places we went to often. My family used to take our camels, cows and goats to the fields above the water at Silwa.

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Sometimes we had fields at good grazing places, sometimes we didnt. So then we left the women and children with the animals, and rode to the date gardens or irrigated grain or tobacco fields, did the work and rode back again at night or after a day or two. People had a field here, a field there, a garden in this place, a garden in that place. We were always hurrying from one place to another to get the work done. People had a building, a khaima or a karin, and which they had depended on what they wanted. It was a house in the sense it was a store and a shelter in bad weather, and a nearby building that was a kitchen, which might be roofed or not. Over the years, families got bigger or smaller. As people needed more room for growing children, widowed sisters, divorced aunts, elderly parents, they built another building next door, which might have its own kitchen or not. There might be up to six buildings for one family. A karin often had a yard or hawsh for animals, and guests used this if there were several of them. Part of the hawsh might be roofed for shade. Everyone had three or four houses where they had gardens and fields. We lived around our houses, not in them. Even in the summers when we lived in our house by a date garden, we cooked and slept in the garden or in the arish above the wadi in the breeze. Before, we had our own medicines. We only needed four, and they were all plants: sakhbah, a tufted grass (probably tetrapogon villosus); jaada (teucrium sp); harmala (rhayza stricta); and machiddi (pulicaria glutinosa).

At Sfai, a Jiljili recalled, In all of Sfai, there were about thirty families: one group, where I lived, behind the new housing; a big group above the corner as you come into Sfai from the north; a small group south; and some below the lookouts. Al-Waili was Jiljili, too. I was born about the beginning of the second world war, and my father died when I was very small so I didnt hear much about life before the changes. When I was a young man, I went to work in Saudi Arabia, I was a kuuli in a cement factory. I saved all my money, and I bought a few camels with some of it so we could carry our goods to market and not have to pay someone, and the rest I used for getting married. Later on, I bought more goats with my profits, and then more land which was already planted with date trees. It was quite easy, land was cheap and we made money selling our produce. In those days, we grew wheat and dates for ourselves and tobacco for the market. My brother and I grew all these in the garden. We sowed wheat early in the winter, because we expected a sayl from the rains. If there wasnt, we irrigated the wheat. I planted three mun and harvested sixty, so 1:20. After we had harvested the wheat, and the weather was getting warmer, we planted out tobacco on the same land – it was all the land we had. The land had been fertilised again with animal manure, and we put a handful of gaisha around each plant as we put it in the earth. Tobacco is sown in a nursery bed and planted out when the plants have two

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proper leaves. When tobacco plants are young, they need water every four to five days; as they grow and the weather becomes hotter, they need more until they are watered every day. After the stalks were harvested, the leaves were hung up to dry in a maarish, a stone built shed with a yarid roof. My family never had enough wheat, and we always had to buy more, as grain or flour, or rice. Sometimes we grew millet which makes black bread and we didnt like it much. As soon as we had cut the ripe millet, we laid it on the hard plaster threshing floor to dry and as soon as it was dry, we threshed it. But wheat was stored in the ear and threshed as needed. One side of the storehouse was for grain, and the other for dates, and that side had a part for pressing for dibs. We bought the gaisha in Fujairah, and we sold tobacco, firewood, charcoal, honey, clarified butter and cheese in Fujairah, Kalba, Dibba and Sharjah, and later on we went to Ras al-Khaimah. We didnt sell wheat, although other people, with more land, did. Gardens did get washed out by floods and rains. The garden opposite mine had its wall washed out fifty years ago in a flood and because the wall was never repaired, nearly all the soil has gone. But if the wall had been repaired, no harm would have been done.

A Maharzi in Wadi al-Ayaili said, At Fay and in our other fields we grew the two sorts of wheat, barley, millet and maarid, which is very strong tasting and not very nice, but we ate it when we had to. Eating barley bread was normal, I like it. We sold tobacco, charcoal, and live goats in Dubai. We went by camel, and with the goats, it took three days there. We spent the night there and took three days to come back. The tobacco was exported to Iraq, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and then the market vanished. I rebuilt the maarisha ten years ago, and I used bought wood for the roof instead of coppicing branches from sidr or samra trees. We used to have a yazara well here, and the bull we bought from Iran. There are at least a hundred date varieties grown in this area, but some, like Harshab, Lulu and Sharami are new and from outside the area. We grow these because they are what the market wants, our old varieties fetch little and we feed our Anghul, Bu Anwan, Khunaizi, Gishar, Ayn Baqar, Narmini, and Qash Fulqa to the goats. All date trees must have water, but if there is no rain or only very light rain, the well water gets salty from the soil and the trees die. We used to have a garden and fields at Riyam (fig. 18; 606), but then we inherited this garden and the water is better, so we stopped cultivating at Riyam. Before, if there wasnt enough rain, we sowed white wheat or barley, and watered it from the well. After it was harvested, we sowed brush millet or millet, and sometimes we cut it green for the animals, and sometimes we left it to seed for ourselves.

A very old Maharzi at Shuaiba as-Siran said,

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When I was about ten, there were five families living in this farij. That was about twenty people and they had a hundred goats. We lived from selling the tobacco we grew in the date gardens up the wadi, our dates and our goats. In those days there were a few more gardens in the wadi than there are now, and date trees grew in the wadi al-Ayaili. We grew our wheat in Wadi Miyali to the east, where we had another house. We sold tobacco and live goats in Dubai or Ras al-Khaimah.

In al-Munaiy, the Amir said, We grew tobacco, lots of tobacco, and it was our big crop for earning money. Merchants came to buy it, and they sold us what we needed. And we had date gardens, grain fields, and animals. As far as I remember, bought flour and rice came here here in the 1960s. Rice was treat food, and called Peshawar rice; it was long grained and smelt wonderful. Flour and rice came here late because we had everything. We grew white wheat, because red wheat doesnt do well here, and from white wheat we made bread, haris and habis. We grew brush millet, millet, and barley, and of course tobacco and dates, and vegetables like onions and white radishes. And as well as camels, donkeys, cows, goats and sheep, we had hens, ducks and geese. We didnt experience times of want here, but we knew they did in the coastal towns. Growing tobacco on land that had just grown wheat was only done by those who didnt have enough land. If they could, people grew tobacco on rested land. We ploughed using bulls to pull a hais, which for us is a light plough. Our threshing floors werent finished with saruj. Before the floors were used for threshing, the earth was watered, beaten down hard, and swept so they were clean. For threshing birr abyath, which was the only wheat we grew, and brush millet, we used a long stick and we stood. But for threshing millet, dukn, we used a short stick and we knelt. The best wood for tool handles was shahas, tecomella undulata, because if you cut the trunks when the sap is rising in the tree, the wood never rots. The fields at Waab were grain fields that belonged to Munaiy. The fields and gardens were worked by bayadir, local people who didnt have enough land. We paid them a very small amount of money, fed and housed them, and they got a quarter of all the crops they had produced. The quarter that the baidar got wasnt a share, it was a payment in kind. It couldnt be a share because the baidar contributed nothing but his labour. We never used share partnerships, it isnt jurally possible with falaj watered agriculture. Before there were cars, and cars came here early because Wadi alQawr was so easy for them, there were far more routes and we used more places. We used to go to Buraimi to trade, we sold grain and bought salt fish. In fact, up to 1953, 1955, we exchanged grain for salt fish because up to then there was very little money. The tobacco, which was our source of profits, went to bu Baqra to the Zaab traders although when it was really profitable the merchants came here.

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An elderly man recalled, We used to grow red wheat and white wheat, but mostly we grew white wheat and barley. The variety of white wheat was shalbut. White wheat became very difficult to get a long time ago and so we grew barley. We concentrated on growing tobacco. Selling one camel load of tobacco got a man enough money for a year. We were wealthy!

An elderly Dahamni from Sukhaibar recalled, It was my grandfather who built the stone houses with the jiss work. I can remember Omani workmen making jiss for a renovation when I was ten. Before my grandfather built that house, the old, old houses were behind the first garden. Weve had those gardens for at least two hundred years. My father and his brother built the two stone and cement houses near the jiss house. We do dance and sing and recite poetry but only at weddings. I had no idea any pottery was made in the Munaiy area. I know my family bought their pots and stuff, and most of it was this cream stuff with big black bits in it which we called kham. This came from Wadi Hatta, where there were commercial potters. And there were potters at Masafi, as well, and that pottery was red with small pink bits in it.

An elderly Omani explained: I came here from Ibra, I was about twelve. Then I joined Shaikh Sultan bin Salims retinue. I was in the guard, the jaish, and I got all my food, all my clothes, and seven rupees for two years. Men from Munaiy used to go to the pearling, they went on boats out of Dubai. The men who went pearling worked very hard and came home with two rupees each year. So I, with three and a half rupees a year, was better off. All the men who went from here who went to the diving are dead now, so that just proves my point. Later on, I was a baidar, a garden worker because I didnt have any land. I only provided labour; the landowner provided the bull, the bulls feed, all the equipment, the seed, and the manure. We grew white wheat but we havent done so for years and years. There were two varieties, salut and muraima. White wheat was always eaten as bread. As well as tobacco and grain, we grew sweet potatoes, white radishes, onions and garlic. Tobacco was very profitable and the chief article for trade. We never sold wheat, millets or clarified butter. I and people like me collected firewood and sold it, we made charcoal and sold that, and we collected grass that we sold to people in Munaiy for their animals. Other men, like my neighbour, worked as baidar and also specialised in making rope; rope was always wanted in the gardens, for building, for everything. We didnt sell pottery although people like us made our own. Men and women made pots though most potters were women. We made it for our own use and perhaps some extra for presents. We thought everybody made their own pots; we knew people in Hatta

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made their pots, and people at Masafi and Manama. Later on we bought pots in Fujairah and those pots came from the Batinah. Both men and women spun goathair and sheeps wool, but men wove rugs and tentcloth. The rugs were like those from Jabal Akhdar. All Dahaminah had animals but some of them hired people to look after them, especially in the winters when the animals were taken up into the shuaiba in the wadis. This was the sheep, or yaad, and goats, the cows didnt go so much. The people looking after them, like me and my family, pitched their tent in a suitable wadi and the animals were taken by young men, boys, or girls to a different area or side wadi everyday. Some people out in the shuaiba had stone khaima but most people used tents, goathair tents, like they have in the sands. We made little circular pens of stones for kids too young to go out with the flock; now all that remains of them are just heaps of stones. People had to herd, rai, the animals because of wolves. We built hawsh for all the animals at a camp, manzil or mahal. We built, or rather rebuilt, the stone walls into a large rectangle. We cut poles from sidr or samra trees and put these in at a certain distance inside the wall. Then we put in more poles with one end against the inside of the outer stone at the top of the wall, and the other into a notch in, or tied to, the uprights. Then we covered the sloping poles with brushwood or leafy branches. So we had a yard with a covered area – or as much as we needed – and open space in the middle. The covered areas kept the animals dry and out of the winds. They were penned in yards not only to protect them from wolves but also for their dung, which was collected up in sacks for the gardens of the owners of the animals (fig. 19; 607). I and other bayadir also worked making jiss for houses and for saruj for falay and hawta. We collected up reddish earth and made it into blocks; then we stacked the blocks and firewood in layers, and set fire to it. It had to burn for four or five days or we might leave it for a week. Then the fired blocks were pounded to powder, mixed with water, and it was ready to use. It was completely waterproof and stronger than cement. Most people lived in their date gardens. Those who had a little hillock or tell put their khaimah on that, so they didnt get flooded when the sayl flooded. And in the summers, everyone had arish. Here, in Rubda, because in the past Munaiy wasnt one place, it was lots of small places. There were about twenty families and that was about eighty people; definitely not more than a hundred, even counting in widows and divorced sisters and so on. Because in those days, families were small; two children was usual, three was a lot. People didnt have more because the women worked hard in the gardens and fields, getting firewood…. Children were well spaced, at least two to four years between them. If a woman got pregnant and she didnt want it, she used sharisha to get rid of it. There were other mountain herbs the women used to miscarry, but I dont know what they were.

His wife recalled,

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Food cooked in the tannur was really good. I could put my covered jidr, my cooking pot, in the tannur, cover the tannur, go and work in the garden, and come back to beautifully cooked food. Everybody made their own tannur; you dig a hole in the earth, line it all with little stones, and smear the walls youve just made with mud; and you have your tannur. Some things we cooked over flames, like bread made on a saj. We made everything we needed ourselves – except there was a large yellow (brass or copper) cooking pot we used when we were cooking for large numbers of people, like a wedding. Everybody used it, but no-one knew who owned it. In the past we salted a lot of food to preserve it. Salted gara, the long green squash, are really good, and we salted most vegetables; salted meat kept for four years and that was good, too. We used sea salt from Kalba. And we ate young ghaf leaves stripped from the branches, cooked in water, and sprinkled over aish. Aish is any boiled grain, usually millets. We used to eat mthiba, small black seeds we collected from plants that grew in gravels on low slopes, which we pounded up with dates. All pounding was done in a wooden mortar like mine and made from ghaf or sidr, or a stone mortar. To make a stone mortar, we used khil to soften the stone so it could be hollowed out, or we went to the mountains and cut out soft stone which we shaped and then it hardened on contact with the air. It was easy. Pestles are a different stone, really hard and heavy; mine came to me from my grandmother.

At Nuslah in Wadi al-Qawr, the Amir explained: Before Unification and money from oil, we looked after ourselves. We grew wheat and the two millets; we had our dates; and for profits we grew tobacco. Merchants from Dubai and the Batinah coast came to buy the tobacco and they carried it away on camels. The camels that carried the tobacco were our camels, hired like taxis are now, and the men who led the camels were paid in grain. The merchants paid us who had grown the tobacco in money or in goods like coffee. There were droughts of course. I can remember droughts when there was very little water, not enough to grow the crops. So in those years we cut firewood and made charcoal and sold it in Oman and Dubai, and with the money we got, we bought food. Normally we didnt need money because we didnt need much. We bought a little rice, coffee, and clothes in Dubai or Sharjah; on the Batinah coast we bought gaisha for fertiliser and salt fish. A very few people from here went pearling in the Gulf, but by the time I can remember, they were really very few, there was so little money in it.

A Kaabi in Wadi al-Qawr commented: Bani Kaab families, if they didnt have date gardens because some didnt as they concentrated on animals, bought their dates – and later their grain – by selling charcoal, firewood and goats. Which was what my family did. We bought dates from Basra, Iran, Oman, anywhere. Charcoal was what we got our money from because, before there was gas, everyone on the coast needed it for cooking. We did sell firewood, but you could carry

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more charcoal and ask a higher price. Selling live goats for meat was profitable too. We sold these in Dubai mostly, and we used to go in big groups because of raiders. When I was a boy, we had a khaimah, and everything we did – cooking, sleeping, eating – was in and around that building. Most khaimah had a yard, but some didnt, some didnt even have a levelled area outside for sitting on; if the people wanted to sit down, they moved the stones on the ground. If you wanted a kitchen or a store, you built it. We had a qia, a flat bit at the top of the wall at the back under the roof, and that was where we stored things. We stored the grain in sacks and the dates too; earlier, we stored our dates in skins, but mice ate their way through into the dates. We build a khaimah by digging out the space we want in a rough oval. The walls made by the digging were lined with stones. We built up the walls above ground and filled in between the double walls with gravel. Then we set a forked post at the back. Having a single pole at the centre in the front is inconvenient so at the front we put two forked posts, one each side of the door. The two front poles cross so the forks hold up the ridgepole at the front, and the ridgepole rests on the single fork at the rear. Then we put in the beams which rest against the ridgepole and drive these into the gravel between the double walls. We made a framework for the roof by laying double lengths of yarid across the beams and tying these to the beams. We might put in more single yarid between the beams to make the framework really firm. Then we put on leafy khaws in several layers, each one going a different way – horizontal, vertical, diagonal. The first layer is tied together at the top; once thats done, we put on as many layers as we wanted (fig. 17; 605). The Bani Kaab azil is a cross burnt onto the right hip of the camels, so we could identify them if they strayed or were raided. Ive seen marks on stones that I suppose are azil from long ago or that belong to tribes I dont know. Perhaps they put those marks there to tell others this area was theirs. Most Dahaminah had enough irrigable land to keep their own families fully occupied, so they needed other people to look after their animals, and their herders were mostly khawadim. But Bani Kaab didnt have so much irrigable land, nor did we have many khawadim, so for us, herding was the other part of our work and our life. I have heard that a long time ago, people did wear lif cloth; making cloth from lif is very old. The lif was laid out on the ground, patted flat, dampened, and then spun. The road to Dubai from the Batinah coast was Bu Baqra or Murair, Munaiy, Ghurush, Fili, Dhaid and then on to Sharjah or Dubai. A caravan of traders would take three days from here to Sharjah but with women and families it could take seven. They would see somewhere nice along the way with trees and shade and maybe some water. So they would stop and rest, cook, eat, have a sleep….. have a nice time and enjoy themselves.

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And there was the Wadi Hatta road, from Shinas to Dubai. And from Ghurush we went to Buraimi and al-Ain. A long time ago, Wadi al-Qawr, only in those days it was called alQu, belonged to Oman. There is a big graveyard here, called the graveyard of dogs. There was a man who lived nearby, and he had a daughter who was guarded by the dogs as they patrolled round the house. Some one came, killed the dogs, and took the girl. Her father went to the west, her brother to the east. They each collected up men from the communities. There was a long war, and lots and lots of people were killed. Eventually they decided to stop fighting as so many people had been killed. All the dead were buried in that cemetery. No-one knows when this was, but probably when al-Qawr was called al-Qu.

Some Kaabi and Dahaminah said, We used to grow a little cotton here, it was white and we stuffed cushions with it. We grew several sorts of fruit for the household, although we didnt sell it – mangos, pomegranates, limes, tranj, figs and grapes, sweet melons and water melons. Some people had mulberries and guavas. We have never grown sugar cane here although we know it was grown at Buraimi and parts of Oman. A long, long time ago, clothes – wizra and kamiz – came from Yemen. But when we were young, for tidy wear, we had kandura, but they were cut a bit differently. And then we wore gitra that we wrapped round our heads, we never folded them like gathatha, and agal were unknown. We didnt have the large metal trays for putting food on; we used date palm mats, sifra, or large clean flat stones, and a few people had brass trays. We knew about Chinese coffee cups, but we didnt always have them. They were lost or broken, or no-one had been to a market or the trader didnt have any; so we used large shells or half coconut shells instead. If we didnt have any coffee and wanted some, we roasted and ground date stones and made imitation coffee. Or barley. Or wheat. And we call date stones nawar, not taam like most people. There was a mutawwa here, brought from Yemen by Shaikh Sultan bin Salim, who started a school here, the only one in the entire district. The school taught the Quran, reading and writing.

An elderly Kaabi at Munaiy remarked, There are several ruined asnam, pre-Islamic gravemounds, in the wadis around here, usually in or near old Islamic graveyards. There used to be more, but some have been bulldozed by people extending gardens. Mazar were associated with a person or a tomb. People prayed at them for help or good luck, or to become pregnant.

A Kaabi at al-Yif in Wadi Mlah recalled, We grew grain here, and dates, mangos, limes and tobacco. We sold all of them except grain, and as well as selling dates, we bought dates as siyh

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(paste if Gulf coast, dry dates if Omani usage, Wilkinson 1977, 31 – 32). Ive been told that a hundred and twentyfive years ago, we took dates to Dibba to sell. In my fathers time, we took our surpluses to Munaiy, on camels and donkeys, and we left the goods at my fathers mothers house. Traders from Kalba and Murair came to Munaiy and took the goods down. We had goats too, but we didnt sell them or the butter, either. The garden was worked by members of the family and a baidar. Baidar were anyone who needed work, they might be Kaabi, Dahamni, Khanjiri, anyone, and they came from outside the area as well. They received a quarter of the produce for their work, because we didnt pay them with money. My father bought this garden for four hundred rupees before I was born, so that is more than fifty years ago. He bought it from two Awaimir brothers and they went to Saudi Arabia. They had bought it from Quwayyid, and they had bought it from a Dahamni a long, long, time ago, maybe hundreds of years ago. These are the old houses right on the edge of the garden, theyre khaimah and they would have had khaws roofs. This first house was where the first Awaimir lived and the next one was where his brother lived, and I dont know whose that was. There are more houses up the wadi and I heard from my father they were where women and children went when there were raiders around.

The information from people in the western Hajar about the ways of livelihood and sources of profits in the past contrasted to those of the people of the Ruus al Jibal, the sands, and of the plains and date gardens of the Gulf coast. The main difference was the existence of permanent or almost permanent water flows in the mountain wadis used for irrigated agriculture of dates and mangos, and tobacco, the main source of agricultural profits. There were wadis, water catchment areas, where tobacco could not be grown, because the land was too high, there was too much wind, or its waters were inadequate in quality or quantity. Inhabitants of high wadis, such as Asima, Maydaq, Masafi and Daftah, made their agricultural profits from fruits, especially mangos. Those of areas with poorer water or winds had sufficient dates and grains for their needs, and some surpluses, but their profits came from animals, or honey or charcoal, all of which depended on natural vegetation, especially the trees. People contrasted the waters and soils of the western Hajar with those of other areas, focussing on its falay as its particular characteristic; we have falay, the Ruus al Jabal has cisterns, and the coastal plains have wells summed up the differences. Although people of the western Hajar did have wells, these only augmented summer water except in years of little rain; and the falay of the Ruus al-Jibal were rarely permanent and had significantly weaker flows, inadequate for any commercial

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agriculture. The sall, the mountain basins of soils, of the Ruus al-Jibal were peculiar to those mountains, except for the band where the two mountain systems meet and intermingle between Khatt and Dibba, and Sall Lukham just to the south of this band. The inhabitants of the western Hajar regard themselves as mountain people, Ahl al-Hajar. Routes through the mountains linked both coasts and the interior, providing access to markets for their products. People used different markets for specific products, depending on whether what they were selling was the once or twice yearly source of profits, or local sales of small surpluses. People recalled raiders from outside the area as a constant problem in the past, as on the coastal plains; in both areas, camels could be ridden, whereas this was not so in much of the Ruus al-Jibal. Towers and forts were features of the architecture of the western Hajar, as on the coastal plains, for defending gardens from raiders. The relative ease of movement, combined with profitable and commercial agriculture, meant that the region had more interactions with political entities of the coasts. While for many places in the region commercial tobacco growing was important, families provided their food and shelter from their own resources. While each family owned or had access to cultivable land and animals, no family owned all the kinds of resources available in a local environment, or at least not with the ability to use all for profits. In the western Hajar, profits were from irrigated cultivation or from natural resources through animals, charcoal or honey. It may be tempting to connect tribal groups or locations with specific sources of profits and resources, but from the information above such a position is untenable except as a very rough shorthand description because economic activities for subsistence and profits were managed by individual families with dispersed assets. Families moved between their resources of gardens, fields, grazing areas and places for coppiceing for charcoal and honey collecting. Some of the movement was seasonal – winters out in the grazing areas, summers by water and the gardens. But, compared to people of the Ruus al-Jibal, families did not move as far or as often. The difference was reflected in the buildings of each region. In the Ruus alJibal, the basic structure was the bait al-gufl or secure, lockable store and shelter. In the western Hajar, people spoke of khaimah, karin and bait ishbaq or bait rimth as the building every family had, around which they lived and used as a store and shelter. Most western Hajar farij where grain was grown had storehouses, yanz or makhzan, stone

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and mud walled, solid roofs, and doors that locked; similar buildings were built near date gardens, and used to store dates and grain in the ear; threshed grain was stored in jars in houses, khaima or karin; and at some farij, such as Isaimir, al-Barid, and Daftah, storage pits were seen, that had been used to store dates and grain by the anaerobic principle. Dostal asks (1983; 31), from his observations in northern Ras alKhaimah, Why the flat roofed construction is preferred in some areas while in others the gabled or round-house construction predominates. People built what they needed, for long and short term storage, for shelter, and privacy. In the two mountain areas, a family might have structures that used two or even three construction methods at one place. What they built depended on its purposes, the materials available, and the time and labour available. It is clear that the people of the Ruus al-Jibal moved more frequently between fields at different altitudes and mountains in cultivating a yearly harvest of red wheat, that stored well, and that most moved outside the Ruus al-Jibal for supplies of dates; people of the western Hajar and the coastal towns depended on local harvests of dates; a succession of smaller, local grain harvests; and/or had access to traders. People of the Ruus al-Jibal moved further and more often, and were away for longer periods; the terrain meant that camels could be used only on a few routes, and some places were accessible only on foot. In addition, the weather was wetter and cooler. Each building therefore was fully equipped, better built, and basically a secure store. People of the western Hajar and the coastal towns did move between gardens, and between the gardens and grain fields and pasture but moved for shorter distances, less frequently, and over easier terrain. Families in the western Hajar who lived from camels, like those in the sands, had used tents made from the hair of their goats and carried their goods with them or stored them at secure places [producers or traders stores, or at a tribal ghurfa]. Those who lived in farij at their various gardens or the dry wadis built oval or round khaimah, shelters, from local stone, and roofed them with poles covered with brushwood or date leaves. Most houses in coastal towns were built from local coral blocks, stone or mudbrick, and roofed with quartered date palms or other wooden beams. Stores at both types of location were rectangular, stone built, and roofed with substantial beams of quartered date palms or sidr or samra wood, and finished with earth and brushwood or date leaf mats. Roofing khaima was quicker and used simpler

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materials than roofing a storehouse. Bait gufl of the Ruus al-Jibal were built of local stone, usually of good quality, and roofed with beams of sidr, litib or other mountain trees, finished with gravel and brushwood; these houses were built to last for several generations. Similarly, the western Hajar farij usually have one makhzan, because of their successive but smaller harvests, while those of the Ruus al-Jibal, with its yearly harvest of grain with exceptional storage qualities, have many yanz. In the Ruus al-Jibal and the sands, there was little cultivation of dates. Where date trees were cultivated, the fruit was eaten by people during the summer while looking after the goats. In the western Hajar, date trees were cultivated wherever there was enough water, from falay or wells, for people and for animals. To obtain supplies of dry dates, people of the Ruus al-Jibal and the sands, along with people from further afield, went to date growing areas on the coastal sayh and in the western Hajar in the high summer or gaith, although overall, the region did not produce enough dates for the needs of its population. Commercial pearling on the Gulf banks took place in the summer, when the water was warm, and a few people recalled men from the western Hajar going to the pearling. The gaith was a time of movement, to date gardens and water, and to pearling. This, along with distribution, investment, debt and credit, are the subjects of the next chapter.

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6 Distribution, trade, investment, credit and debt The previous chapters described the traditional sources of livelihood and profits, maash wa faida, of people of the different environments in the study area. People owned or had rights of access to two to four sources of livelihood while their profits came from either one main source or from a range of small surpluses or sources. Although each family considered they had subsistence and profits, not all produced from their own resources the range of necessary foods. Within the wider region there was a deficit of dry dates, tamr, and on the coasts, of grain; people inland obviously did not produce their own fresh or salt fish. Although many emphasised that while these were desirable, they were not essential. So how did people who needed grain, dates or fish get these commodities? As usual, the answer is it depended, it depended on the nature of the moral relations between the persons concerned. From the discussions in earlier chapters, people emphasised that before the harvest of any crop was sold, the needs of the community were filled and that members of the community gained their shares by differently constituted rights – from charitable need, ownership, labour, or through women. People also regarded the communities of the various environmental regions to be economically interdependent, while distributions of surpluses from producers in one area to consumers in an area of deficit were articulated by a variety of means and not wholly dependent on the market. Profits were seen as different to livelihood, and distributed outside communities by barter or sale to traders or their agents. The first section of this chapter concentrates on how families who did not own date gardens or enough date trees obtained their supplies of dry dates as this demonstrates the range of distributive processes. Families who did not themselves grow sufficient dates for drying for their needs acquired this basic item of diet through kinship or affinal ties; by renting a garden, date trees or bunches of dates; by working on the date harvest and being paid in dry dates; in some farij, through longlasting mutualistic exchanges between families with different resource strategies that regarded themselves as part of a wider interdependent community; by barter or purchase with producers or traders; or by charity. Within the study area, dates that dried well grew only in some places

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inland of the Gulf coast and in the western Hajar. The extensive date growing areas on the Shamailiyya coast did not provide good dates for drying, because of the cooler temperatures and lower humidities in the summers; these dates were mostly eaten ripe and fresh as rutub. The major date harvests take place between June and September, in high summer, gaith, which was also the pearling season for the merchant financed boats on the banks in the lower Gulf. While the men were away, the families of pearling crews moved to areas of date gardens for shade, water, and fresh dates. High summer was a time of movement not only for coastal people but for many in the sands, the Ruus alJibal, and those who lived from animals in the shuaibat of the western Hajar. This movement was conventionally described as driven by the need for water as well as for supplies of dry dates, but some bedu in the sands and others in the Ruus al-Jibal said that in some years they had remained around home water resources and gone out to date garden areas only for supplies of dry dates. In general, both people who moved and people in date gardens remembered the gaith as a time of coming together, of sociability, enjoyment, of marriages and the opportunity to find possible marriage partners. A few recalled that in the past, their families and community had been virtually selfsufficient in both grain and dates, and in the gaith had neither moved themselves nor received guests. A Sharqi at Tawyain said, When I was a boy of ten, about 1950, Tawyain was the wells and a few arish, and everyone lived up in the wadis. Some people based themselves here for the gaith, and some came in to get water and took it back to where they were living. Most people stayed up in their mountain wadis, where they had a few date trees.

Sharqiyyin families in Wadi Haiyir off Wadi Khabb and in Baqiil in Wadi Khabb said they had produced all their grain and dates from their own resources; some other Sharqiyyin families at Muhtarraqah, Waabain, and al-Mayya in Wadi Fay made similar claims, while others said they had bought or worked for dates at Dibba and other places. Date gardens and water sources in this area were limited. At Daftah, off Wadi Ham, Naqbiyiin said no-one came there for the summer, a few people passed through on their way to other places, although a Qiyaishi near Rams recalled that individual Qiyaishi had got their dry dates at Daftah. Daftah is an example of a place that produces dates for its owners livelihood but made its profits from the sales of goats, dairy products, and small amounts

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of other goods at markets in Dubai and Sharjah. Inhabitants of other western Hajar mountain places who also obtained their main profits from sales of animals and dairy products, like some in Wadi Sfuni and Wadi Sfai, made no references to people from outside spending summers with them. Like Naqbiyiin at Daftah and Sharqiyyin in Wadi Fay and its environs, these people were basically self sufficient in grain and dates. Owners of date gardens distributed dates along various networks of degrees of inclusion, and only after the needs of all in the local community and all claims on the harvest met could surpluses be exchanged, bartered or sold. A Khatri in the sands explained: Some Khawatir had, by renting and later on by purchase, date gardens at Idhn and Siji. A few had gardens at Maydaq by inheritance from marriages. Khawatir who didnt have date trees and other people without trees were employed by my family and other garden owners in Siji and Idhn. They employed these people to cut down the date bunches from the trees, they picked the dates off the stems and set them out on the drying ground, masta, they cut off the leaves, and did any other necessary summer garden work. They were paid in dry dates, tamr, they got ten per cent of the total crop. We gave another ten per cent to the poor, people who didnt have trees and for whom there wasnt any work or who couldnt work. A Shihhi from Khor Khwair said, Fifty, sixty years ago, there werent enough people to water the date trees properly so that date harvests were very poor. The poor, widows, old women, cripples and so on, would sit under the trees and mark out a circle in the earth. Any date that fell into the circle they ate. It was the same in Ghalilah. It was their right.

A Dhahuri from Wadi Shaam whose family owned a garden at Kilwa, now part of Fujairah town, recalled, The garden work was done by members of the family and in-laws. Two or three people would walk or ride over, do the work, come back, and be replaced by other people. In the summer, we left the goats at Sili and left a few people behind to look after them. We walked to Kilwa with the donkeys, it took six days. We brought all the dates back to Sili, the donkeys carried them. We stored what we needed, handed over their shares to the people who had looked after the goats, and shares to all others who had claims of any sort on the dates. What was left over we could sell.

Gifts and exchanges extended sharing within a community and ensured people had what they needed. A community was not only a group of people delineated by shared ownership of resources and residence, but also those connected by ties through women, the khuwayil by descent and the nasiib or in-laws. A proportion of the marriages of a descent group

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were made to families with different assets to ones own. The late Amir of Ghayl explained: People certainly lived from their camels but they also made exchanges. They would exchange a meat camel for dates or grain, or they would carry goods for someone who didnt have camels, and he would give them dates or grain, whatever. The grain or dates were always gifts in return for the meat camel or the carrying, they werent payment. Everyone throughout the community exchanged what they had surplus of for what they needed, they achieved this by exchange, by gifts, hadiya (Lane 1984 [1877]; vol. 2, 3042 – a thing sent to another in token of courtesy or honour; to do with being rightly directed, conduct, mode of life). That was how people got what they lived on. People got profits from selling goods like tobacco or goats at Dubai or Sharjah and that was different.

A Mazrui at Asimah remarked: In the past, gardens were first for subsistence; then, what wasnt needed was exchanged, given as gifts, or sold. We always had more than we needed, and we exchanged, gave as gifts, or sold dates and fruits. Gifts expected a return at some time.

An elderly Shamaili echoed this concept of giving as presents, when he said, Before, people from Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ajman used to come here to Shimal for the summers, the place was thick with their arish. If people wanted just one sack of tamr, we used to give it to them. If they wanted three or four, they had to pay. My own family had families from Umm al-Qawain who came to us regularly for the summers. In the recent past, they paid money for their years supply of dry dates. But before that, when money was in very short supply, we gave them gifts of dates and they gave us presents of things they had brought from the coast, like primuses, clothes, and salt fish. The gifts were things we had and they had, but each of us would have had to spend money to get. These were gifts, hadiya; they werent exchange, mabadala, or barter, maqayitha. They were gifts between families that expected a return at some time. The summering families built their arish round and about; we sold yarid to families we knew could afford it and gave them to ones we knew couldnt. Summers then were lovely, and we all enjoyed ourselves together.

An elderly man from Dibba who had gone pearling in the Gulf recalled: Pearling crews bought presents from the tawwash, the traders who came to the boats to buy the pearls, as they were usually traders to India as well. The divers and haulers bought cloth and other small things as presents for their families and for the families who had given them presents.

A Tunaij at Dhaya said,

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Our family had a relationship with a Qiyaishi family in the Ruus al-Jibal who summered at Kubda, a bit to the north. We gave them presents of dried dates and they gave us presents of unthreshed grain. This wasnt barter or exchange, but presents, hadiya, that expected a return of more or less equal value. We had a similar relationship with a Tunaiji family who didnt have a date garden but went fishing. So we gave them dried dates and through the winter they gave us fresh fish. It wasnt just our family that had these sorts of relationships. Families here who had a surplus of one resource but none of another made them with families who had what they lacked. There were regular presents between the two families, not exchange or barter, and I dont doubt that each side kept a rough account in their heads.

A Naimi in Rams recalled: When I was a boy, in the early 1940s, salt and fresh fish were given to Shihhi or anyone who came down to the beaches, and at some time these people gave us presents of dates or firewood or wheat.

In Dibba Baiah, a Shihhi commented, In the past, my family ate the dates of my trees, the grain I got from a Shihhi in the mountains, and the fish I caught with my own hands. Families on the coast and in the mountains needed each other; we had dates and fish, they had grain and animals, and we gave each other presents.

Another remarked: People from Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi came here for the summers, they came by land escorted by bedu from Dhaid. These people were the families of men who had gone pearling. These families didnt work in the gardens, they spent the summers enjoying themselves, and they got their dates. The summering women used to eat, turn and turn about, with the owner of the date garden, and they picked the dates off the stems, and sorted out the bad from the good. Some got dates as presents, some by barter, and some bought them. Which they did depended on the relationship they had with the owner of the garden. Presents expected an equivalent return at some point. Like the presents of rugs or saddlebags given to us by our relations through women and our in-laws in the mountains; they spun and wove wool because they had animals and they gave some of these to us here who were related through women or connected because we didnt have animals like that. In return, we gave them presents of things they didnt have.

A beduiyya at Lima said, My family lived from animals, we didnt have date trees. But friends and relations who did gave us date branches so we could make the leaves into braid for food mats, food covers, sacks for dates, and floor mats, simsiim. In return, we gave them some of the things wed made, wool wraps or saddle bags. When I was a girl, coffee was the only thing we bought regularly. Kni-

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ves and other metal goods we got from our Hurrais relations in return for animal products, and cooking pots and stuff we either made ourselves or got by exchanging clarified butter for them.

Similar relations of mutuality between families were described in the western Hajar by a Kaabi who said, In the gaith, people came together around the waters and the date gardens. Included among them were some Bani Qitab families who summered here in Wadi al-Qawr and at Munaiy. A Bani Qitab family would have a longstanding relationship over generations with a Dahamni family. The Dahamni family gave dates as presents to the Bani Qitab family, and in return the Bani Qitab family did carrying for the Dahamni family.

Another aspect of mutuality was the shared meals between date garden owners and their summer visitors, mentioned at Dibba Baiah. This was common practice. A former fisherman, from Ahl Ras al-Khaimah recalled, Before, between June and September, my mother and I lived in our arish in the date gardens at Qusaidat. I cant remember the names of any of the garden owners, but I know we dealt with the Amir of Qusaidat, Rashid Tamhi. We were given fresh dates, rutub, free from any garden. We went to a garden with a basket and the owner or the workers filled it with rutub. We did pay for these dates in a way, we brought salt fish, salt khubaib, which were eaten communally with the date garden owners and workers and our neighbours at the date gardens. This was known as the haqq as-saif. Everybody summering at the gardens did this. Habus spending the summer there would kill a goat or two; sometimes the meat was shared round – two kilos for this family, a kilo for that – and sometimes people cooked and ate the meat in bigger groups. And we took barriya, dried small fish, and sihnah, which is pounded up barriya made into a paste, to the gardens. There were all sorts of informal gifts of food and entertaining people to snacks and titbits! As we didnt have date trees, we didnt stay for the harvest. Immediately it was cooler we went back to Ras al-Khaimah town and I started fishing again. We had had a holiday for two or three months, enjoying ourselves.

At Qidfa, on the Shamailiyya coast, a young man said, My grandfather used to tell me about Dhahuriyyin from Musandam coming down to their gardens here in the summers. They came by boat and lived in arish between their gardens and the beach. They brought salt fish with them and everyone in Qidfa used to visit them and they would all have meals of salt fish together. Salt fish is delicious cooked with onions and dates.

A Shutairi in Ghalilah explained the rationale of acquiring dry dates for people of the Ruus al-Jibal;

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Where people went for the gaith and to get their supplies of dry dates was largely a question of economics. There were never enough dates in the Ruus al-Jibal, and the date harvest in the mountain farij was really for the people who stayed in the mountains all summer to look after the goats. Many mountain people, bida, didnt have enough money to buy dates or they didnt wish to sell their animals or produce for this purpose. So the simplest way to get dry dates was to work for them. However, some gardens had lots of dates but of poor quality, or a mean owner. What a man wanted was a garden with plenty of good quality dates and a generous owner. So a man hunted around until he found the best he could and then he made an arrangement with the owner or his agent. One man made an arrangement here, his brother would make an arrangement there. When a man found a good garden, he and his family tended to stay with it and so did his descendants. But sometimes conditions changed, and his descendants would move and make other arrangements, perhaps in the same place, perhaps elsewhere. Sometimes families went to the same place for generations. If a family had two or even three sons, maybe there would be room for only one to continue the tradition, and the others would look for new arrangements elsewhere. Getting date supplies was up to each individual. Some worked for dates in some years and bought them in others. It all depended.

Zimmerman (1981; eg 161 – 5) confirms these practices for Musandam. The individual nature of getting dry dates was illustrated by an elderly Qiyashi who recalled, “I personally bought my dates in Ras al-Khaimah town, but other members of my close family, my brother and cousins, went to Dibba Baiah, Khasab, or the Batinah for theirs.” It all depended subsumes yearly conditions for the quality and quantity of the date harvest in different areas; the varieties of dates in gardens; temperatures, humidities and wind patterns on the Gulf and east coasts; and the needs and capacities of date seekers and date garden owners. Capacities for date seekers covers whether to work or to sell, what to sell, and whether they were buying for a year or a few months; for garden owners, how many trees were to be picked, how many bunches were available for distribution to pickers, since many were already reserved by the owner and co-owners shares, workers shares, and zakat, or had been forward sold, or trees rented, together with the possibilities of selling to traders. Conversations about acquiring dry dates often elided with descriptions of spending the gaith, or of what they had sold and what they had bought. In addition, people used exchange, mabadala, loosely, and it was not always possible to ascertain whether transactions had been exchanges or sales. Although people spoke in general as if they had obtained their dry date supplies at the time of the date harvest, it was

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clear that some had bought small quantities of dry dates throughout the year. Descriptions of obtaining dry dates are presented as a whole, starting from the southern end of the sayh inland of Ras al-Khaimah; moving north along the Ruus al-Jibal to Khasab, then south to Dibba and the Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts; then inland to the western Hajar and finally by way of Wadi Fay to Khatt. A Zaabi from Jazirat al-Hamra said, In the past, the younger men pearled in the summer. When pearling collapsed, people changed to summer fishing. Everyone who wasnt fishing spent their gaith in date gardens. A lot of us went to Dibba, Qusaidat, Nakhil, Uraibi, Hudaiba, Khatt, Ghayl, Fahlain, and the Batinah coast from Kalba down to Shinaas. Some summered in Lingah, on the Iranian coast, especially those who were trading and had ended up there at the beginning of the summer. We carried people and goods to the Shamailiyya coast because we had our own camels, and we took Khawatir as daliil, conductors, who took us part of the way, and then handed us over to some one else.

In Wadi Quda, a Habus recalled, “We had a few date trees on our higher fields. Before, we used to buy our dates or work for them in places on the sayh like Uraibi, Nakhil, or Ghubb.” Another Habus from Slai al-Quda explained, Most people had two or three trees in gardens owned by other people at places like Ghubb, Nakhil, or Uraibi… . Khatt for Habus further south. A family could usually manage with the dates from two or three trees. Anybody with more than five trees was a trader! Nobody rented trees, we either owned trees or we bought dates, or we worked for our dates. This was in my time and perhaps my fathers time, but Ive been told that in my grandfathers time more people worked for their dates. The owner of the date garden paid the people who had worked on them in dates, gave some dates to the needy, and sold some. When I was a young man, I worked for my dates in gardens at Ghubb, and I went down daily to work from the Bih. Habus did have date trees at Dibba Baiah and they went by way of Wadi Bih and Sabtan or by Wadi Khabb, Shariya, Sharmila, and Bidy.

A Habus from al-Aal recalled, “When I was a boy we didnt have date gardens. We brought firewood and wild honey down from the mountains to sell in Ras al-Khaimah and used some of the money to buy dates in Ghubb.” Another from Wadi Nagab said, “We didnt like coming down in the summers but we had to get our dates and to sell things. We didnt stay down, we went back up and came down again. We had date trees in the mountains, but they didnt provide enough. I was an agent for a date garden in Khatt.” A Suwaid Habus remarked, “My family

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sold firewood, clarified butter, and honey in Ras al-Khaimah and we exchanged wheat with people we knew in Khatt or on the sayh for dates; we also bought dates in Ras al-Khaimah.” An elderly Ahl Ras al-Khaimah recalled, We bought our dates, and we would buy the dates of a tree, because in those days it was the number of dates rather than their size that mattered. Nowadays, they prune off some of the bunches of dates so the remainder grow bigger and juicier, but left to itself, a tree will have five to ten bunches of dates. We might buy ten bunches or we might buy five, it depended.

At Shimal, the Amir said, In the past, the bida section of the Shamaili didnt own date gardens. Some of them got their dates by ijra, forward buying or renting, dates by the tree or by the bunch, the crop of two to three trees, fifteen trees, whatever they wanted and could pay for, when the size of the future crop could be seen. There wasnt an auction, there was a specialist who was knowledgeable and set the price, and buyer and seller accepted this. The bida got the money to forward buy from selling firewood, honey, pottery, animals … The bida also bought dates at any time they needed them. People came from as far as Abu Dhabi early in the summer to buy dates when it could be seen how the crop was shaping up, and the same specialist set the price. This wasnt really forward buying, because they waited for a few weeks, collected their dates, and went home again. We sold spare dates at any time of year in the markets at Ras al-Khaimah town and Shaam, the women sold dates and vegetables at Ras al-Khaimah.

A group of elderly men commented, Here, anybody picked dates – the owners, the employed bayadir, khawadim, or the owners might employ people just to pick the dates. We didnt have a kharrif relationship with people who picked dates in return for rutub. Kharif for us is the time of year, as we dont use gaith.

At Dhaya, the date garden area of Rams, a Tunaiji explained, The bayadir did the garden work, and they were mostly local people. They did all the tree work except for the harvesting of the dates. That was reserved for the kharrif, which comes from kharafa, yikhraf meaning to collect dates (Wehr; autumn: Lane 1, 725, to gather fruit, pick up dates.) The kharrif were bida from the mountains; for us and the people at this end of Dhaya they were Qiyaishi, and the other end of Dhaya had a kharrif relationship with Mahbib. The purpose of this was at that time of year, the bida needed the work for which they were paid in rutub, which is what they and their families ate. The kharrif picked the dates, cleaned them, laid them out to dry, and packed them into sacks. It was to a Qiyaishi family that we gave presents of dried dates and they gave us presents of unthreshed wheat.

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A Qiyaishi at Kubda remarked, My father went to a wadi near Siji for our tamr. He worked picking the dates, and in exchange for his work, he got five or six sacks of dates. Other people from here went to Masafi, Dibba, Daftah, Bithnah, Fujairah town and places on the Batinah coast.” Another said, “I bought my dates in Ras al-Khaimah town, but other people of my family went to Dibba, Khasab or the Batina for theirs.

Another said, We got our dates at Rabi, behind Karsha at Dibba Baiah, but I dont know if we worked for them or bought them. I was born in 1950 and by the time I was old enough to remember, the old system was breaking down. I think before there was money we worked for them, and when there was money again, we bought them.

A Naimi recalled, There was a festival called tilu that took place in the second week of August, during the date harvest. All the bulls who worked the yazara wells were taken down to the sea and washed, and when that had been done, they competed against each other. That hasnt happened for years and years. There were several boats bringing back to Rams dates that local people in the Ruus al-Jibal had harvested from their gardens at Dibba Baiah or had bought from traders on the Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts. These boats came from Rams, Dibba Baiah, Bukha, places on the Batinah coast …

Mahbib at Muharrig said, We came down really to sell or exchange things like wheat, cheese, butter, firewood or honey. The date trees we had at Khamid in most years gave us enough dates, we had good springs up there. If for some reason there werent enough, we bought dates from Dibba Baiah. Some Mahbib, like my family, had a date garden in Dibba Baiah, and I was told that we had this garden from the time of my great-grandfather, which I would think is about a hundred and fifty years ago. Most Shihhi went to Dibba Baiah for their dates and the gaith, that was Mahbib, Bani Ali, Qiyaishi, Khanabila, Salhadi and Bani Lassam. Bani Bakhit didnt, they went further down the Batinah coast for their dates. When we went to Dibba Baiah, we went by way of Khatt, Wadi Qaliddi, and Wadi Fay. And in some years some Mahbib did get their dates or more dates in Nakhil or Dhaya by working or exchange, or bought in Ras al-Khaimah town.

A Ruhaibi in his nineties remarked: We had our date gardens between the foot of the mountain and the sand ridge. We were here only in summer to collect the dates. We lived on our dates, bread, milk and clarified butter, and on the very rare occasions

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when there werent enough dates, we ate something else. In my memory, we never bought dates, and we never went to Dibba Baiah, we scarcely came down from the mountains.

At Ghalilah, Shihuh said: We came down to the coast for the summer, saif and gaith. What with our summer fishing, our date gardens here, our grain fields, and the goats we lived well.

A Shihhi from Wadi Halhal off Wadi Ghalilah recalled, My family, in my grandfathers time, got dates from somewhere on the Batinah coast, somewhere north of Suhar but Im not sure where. They loaded their camels with wheat from the mountain fields and they took goats, and the wheat and goats were sold for money to buy dates. The journey took a month, and people from Shaam, Khor Khuwair, Ghalilah, all that coast, went down together although they went as separate families. When they got their sacks of dates, everybody marked their sacks with different coloured wools so they knew which were theirs. The sacks of dates were shipped back in a big boat, markab, and when it arrived at Ghalilah or Khor Khuwair, everyone went down to collect their dates – they had walked back with the camels.

Another Shihhi in Wadi Halhal said, In the summers, my family went to Shaam, and we got our dates there. Some people from Halhal went down to the gardens at Ghalilah and worked for or bought their dates; others went to Tawi Kharana for the water, others moved down to the sayh to be nearer the well, one man went up into the mountains with his goats for as long as the water lasted and came down if he had to. Where and what people did in the summers was entirely up to each person.

In Wadi Kub, off Wadi Ghalilah, a group of al-Assad Shutair said, To get money to buy dry dates and what ever else we needed, we sold live goats, cheeses and clarified butter, and flour. We sold the dairy products and flour in Ghalilah for fresh and salt fish and fresh dates. We got our dry dates from Khabura on the Batinah coast in Oman. Three families got together and walked there with their goats, it took three weeks. They bought dry dates with the money from selling live goats, and put the dates on a boat to come round to Ghalilah. We bought Basra dates in Ghalilah if we needed to.

In Shaam, a group of elderly men remembered: People came to the gardens here for the gaith from Dubai, Ajman, and Sharjah. The Makhtum of Dubai had a house here, down there to the south. Everyone, who wasnt otherwise engaged, went anywhere there

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was sweet water, shade, dates and preferably sea. So they went to places like Rams, Ghalilah, Shaam, Tbait, Bukha, Khasab, Dibba….. Some people got their dry dates at these places from garden owners, and everyone got fresh dates. But most people, who didnt have gardens themselves, or who didnt work for them, bought imported dates from Basra and Iran, and traders brought these dates to places along the coasts, they bought salt fish and sold dates. We ourselves had date gardens, and we exchanged dates with mountain people for grain.

In Wadi Shaam, a Dhahuri said, We used Dibba and Khasab as our markets for things we needed like dry dates and clothes; we sold grain if we had a surplus, but we sold mostly live goats and dairy products. We walked to Khasab or Dibba, sometimes we went by boat as passengers between Dibba and Khasab. At Sili, at the head of Wadi Shaam, another Dhahuri said, My family always went to the date gardens at Bithnah in Wadi Ham for our dates. We went for the three months of the gaith. We walked there with the donkeys, goats, kids, perhaps a camel, and bundles of goathair that we took to sell. It took six days – Khor Khuwair, Qusaidat, Khatt, Idhn, and down the wadis to Asimah, Masafi and Bithnah, and we sang as we went. We sold our goods at the stopping places, and then we worked for some of our dates at Bithnah and bought more.

Dhahuriyyin from Sall Istam commented: There were quite a lot of date trees up at Sall Istam. Other Dhahuriyyin went down to the Batinah coast selling goats to get their dates, but we didnt need to. People who had dates shared them between owners and relations and in-laws, stored them, sold them, gave some away as sadaqa, charity, or fed them to the animals. We had smaller dateleaf sacks than a jirab for dates, called naut. We had as little to do with the people on the coast as possible. In the gaith, most Dhahuriyyin went to places by the sea round the Ruus al-Jibal coast, Dibba, and the Batinah coast from Fujairah to Suhar. In all these places, Dhahuriyyin owned date gardens, rented date gardens, bought dates, and some worked for dates. To buy dates and other things, they sold goats, clarified butter, firewood, cheeses, and grain.

At Jadi, some Bani Hadiya said, “In the gaith, people from Dubai and Abu Dhabi came and they lived in arish on the beach, and a few of them had gardens here worked by baidar.” A Shihhi at Siima in Sall Asfal commented: We summered in Khasab or Jadi. People from Siima owned gardens in both places, but we didnt, we worked for our dates. The men cut down the date bunches and the women picked the dates off the stalks, sorted them into good and bad, and set them out to dry. Renting the crop of a date tree was well known, people did it all the time; you only rented the dates, you didnt get the khaws, leaves, and stalks, yarid, of the tree youd rented.

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Later on, we bought Basra dates. In the summers, we lived in arish up on legs, they were called arish mualliq, and they were lovely, so cool. A few people stayed up here to look after the goats who had to be watered from the cisterns.

A Khanzuri Shihhi at Sall Asfal said, “We sold goats in Khasab, Dibba Baiah, and as far down the coast as Khor Kalba, and we bought dates.” Qiyaisha at Ghubbina said, “In the past, we came down from our high fields only in the gaith, mid-July to mid-September, to collect our dates. Some of us went to Khasab for this, others went to Dibba Baiah. Some of us bought dates, some worked for them, it depended.” In Khasab a Kumzari recalled, There were never enough dates grown here for all the people who came in the gaith. There were people from the mountains, the residents, people from Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The people from Abu Dhabi and Dubai were mostly the women and children of the men who were pearl diving, and they came mostly for the summer and for the fresh dates, rutub. They also went to Bukha, Qana, Nadhifi and so on. They came by boat, with the women and children under the decks. With a good wind, it took a day to sail from Dubai to here. Dates were brought in by boats from Basra, Iran and Oman, so altogether there were enough dates for everyone who wanted them. The people from the mountains brought down firewood, charcoal, dried yogurt, cheese and butter; sometimes we paid for these in rupees, sometimes we exchanged dates for these goods. Wheat from the mountains was always paid for in money. The bulls who worked the yazara wells had a holiday in the gaith, this was Nawruz. The bulls were washed in the sea, but our bulls were washed regularly anyway, and then they competed against each other, as they do now at Fujairah.

At Kumzar, an elderly Kumzari said, In the past, we got our dates from Basra, Minau in Iran, and from Hasa, because there werent enough in Khasab. We didnt spend the summer here, we went to Khasab and other coastal places. Men from Kumzar did go to the pearling, but by my time that had stopped.

At Hablayn, a Dhahuri said, In the past, almost everyone went down to the Batinah for the summer. A few people stayed around to look after the goats. Water was a problem here. There is a well in the wadi, but it is full only after rain and only for a few months. And there were three cisterns. If they were all finished, we brought in water from the wells at Niiba by boat. And we had to get our dates. Bedu Dhahuriyyin from the mountains went too, because they needed dates as well. We all went in our batiil, eight or ten boats went down from here altogether. The boats didnt go as a group, but left over a few days, a week maybe. Men and women rowed, there was a man and a woman each with

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an oar; and the next row was a woman and a man, and so on, so the pairs of rowers were even overall. We rowed down to Shinaas and nearby, it took two days and we spent the night at Dibba Husn where other Dhahuriyyin had stopped and some lived there. We who were fishermen sold salt fish, and the bedu who lived from animals sold clarified butter, cheeses and mostly goats, and we all went down to collect our dates. We didnt have gardens at Qidfa, that was Dhahuriyyin from Shaisa. Some of us did manage to acquire date trees or date gardens at places near Shinaas, most of us bought our dates. We had a really good time.

At Lima, a Shutairi recalled, It was mostly in the summer that people here exchanged dates for grain that the bida brought down, so that we who grew dates got grain and they who had extra grain got dates. Some bida owned date gardens here in Lima or Dibba Baiah or elsewhere, some depended on exchanging grain for dates, some depended on selling goats and buying dates here and elsewhere. Some people who sold goats sold as many as they could here and then went on down the coast, selling goats and buying dates. Most people didnt go further than Suhar, apart from Khanazira who went as far as Khabbura. People didnt have regular customers in regular places for selling goats or buying dates, it all depended.

A Hurrais from Lima remarked, We used to row down to Khor Fakkan and Fujairah to sell pottery and knives on our way down to the Batinah to buy dates in the summer. Most of the pottery we took was incense burners and big storage jars, but also cooking pots, plates, small jars, anything we thought would sell.

Khanabilah at al-Aini said, In the gaith, we came down and bought fresh dates in Ras al-Khaimah town. Then we went to Dibba Baiah where we owned date trees and collected the harvest. We sent the dates round to Rams by boat and walked or rode back. At Rams, the dates were put in storehouses that we rented, and we collected what we wanted every time we came down. If we had more dates than we needed after all the shares had been distributed, we sold them in Dibba Baiah or Ras al-Khaimah. Really we stayed up at al-Aini in the summers, we just came down to get our dates. This was true for all mountain Shihuh, we didnt come down except for selling and buying, working for dates, or because there was no water.

At ar-Rawdhah, a Bani Ali remarked, “Our family bought our tamr, at least from my grandfathers time. As far as I know, we had always bought them. We sold firewood, charcoal, goats, and clarified butter in Ras alKhaimah or Dibba Baiah and bought dates.” A Humaidi recalled, “We sold firewood, goats, dairy products, and grain in Dibba Baiah and in

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Ras al-Khaimah. We spent the summers in Dibba Baiah, and that was where we did most of our selling so we could buy dates.” Two Bani Rashid brothers said, “Some Bani Rashid had date gardens near Khor Fakkan, but our family didnt. We went there in the summers to get our dates.” At Wadi Jalaba, a Murri remarked, “We got fresh dates, rutub, in Ras al-Khaimah and then we went to Dibba Baiah for dry dates for storing. That was a long time ago. In my grandfathers time, we moved to buying Basra dates in Ras al-Khaimah town.” In Wadi Banna, an elderly Haslamani recalled, “I got my tamr by working for them or I bought them in Lima or Dibba Baiah. Haslamani, Murri, and Khanazira never owned date gardens, Khanabila and Salhadi did.” A Murriya said, Our family used to have a date garden at Dibba Baiah, but it was sold in 1972. We spent as much time as possible high in the mountains, we came down only to get our dates in the gaith at Lima and Shinaas, and we sold goats and pottery to buy the dates. Which we sold more of depended on what we had and what we needed. I remember being given rutub at gardens near Shinaas and giving the owner an incense burner.

At Isban, a Lasmi explained, In the gaith, we came down from the mountains. The goats stayed here, there was water in the cisterns and in the well at Bidy, and a few people stayed here to look after them. The rest of us walked to the date gardens at Tawiyya, Hayir and Dibba Baiah. Some Lasmi owned date gardens at those places, although we and others didnt and we worked for our dates. Each person chose to work for an owner who needed a worker, and we got paid in dates.

In Dibba Baiah, a Shihhi said, The whole place was full of people at the end of the summer when the big market took place, they had been getting their dates here or spending the summer. They came from Dubai, Sharjah, the mountains, anywhere. Shihhi from the mountains brought down wheat and especially goats which they exchanged for dates; some bartered and some exchanged, it depended on the relationship between the two people.

An Ahl Hail elaborated People from Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi came overland to here for the gaith, escorted by Bani Qitab from Dhaid. These were the women and children of the men who had gone to the pearling, and men too old to pearl. Each made their own arrangements with the bedu and hiring a camel cost five rupees. They lived here in arish which were collapsed when they went away. They didnt work, they summered and got their dates. The women did pick the dates off the cut down branches and sorted them into

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good and bad, and set them to dry. Good dates were for people, the bad went to the animals. Some of these people got their dates as presents, some as barter, and some were sold. The Shihuh who came down either got their dates by bartering goats or wheat, or they worked for a fixed and negotiated proportion of the dates they picked. And they didnt stay for the whole season; they went back up or further down the coast when they had done what they wanted here. The Shihuh on or near the east coast, from Lima, Shariya, Shabus and so on, came by boat, batiil that they rowed because at that season the winds were too variable for sailing. Their goats were in the boats too, unless they had a lot when they walked down the tracks. Dhahuriyyin summered – or stayed when they were passing through – at Duub or Sumbrayir. Dates came here by boat from Basra, Hasa, Iran, and from inland Oman; these were better dates and they were cheap.

In Qidfa, a young man said, My grandfather told me that during the gaith a big boat came from Dibba to collect the dates belonging to the Dhahuriyyin who had gardens here. The boat was called the Qawani, and it came several times in the season, because each garden produced about a hundred forty-kilogram sacks of dates.

At Kalba, Naqbiyiin explained, The port of Ghallah, which is what Kalba used to be called, was the real Naqbi port. However, the people who lived here, Naqbiyiin who lived from dates and fishing, didnt, on the whole, buy the goods that came in here, like rice, coffee, dates and so on. Dates we had here, enough for ourselves and the people who came for the gaith. Most men from here went pearling on Gulf boats, and they bought what they wanted in Dubai at the end of the pearling season. On the other hand, we sold our tobacco and salt fish to the traders who came in on the boats. The dates these traders brought in went over to the Gulf coast with the Zaab. We grew wheat and barley, but we also bought wheat from the bedu, and by bedu we mean people in the mountains who grew wheat and brought down their surpluses for sale. Shihhuh and Dhahuriyyin came at the end of saif, May or June, for the early dates. Early dates were varieties that ripen early, and then right through the gaith groups would be coming down from the Ruus al-Jibal mountains to take part in the date harvest which stretched from May to October, so there wasnt a great rush. Some went on down the coast to get more, others went back to the mountains when they had enough. For helping with the harvest, the bedu, the Shihhuh and Dhahuriyyin, got about ten per cent of what theyd picked. They came down and built zariba, shelters, sold their animals and worked on the date harvest.

In bu Baqra, a Zaabi recalled,

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Dhahuriyyin used to come through here in the gaith on their way to Khabbura and Barka, selling goats and pottery for money so they could buy dates and whatever else they wanted.

A Jabri said, The people who came here for the gaith were the families of men who went pearling, they came from Ajman, Dubai, and Sharjah. The women worked in the date gardens, they picked the dates off the stem and laid them out to dry. It took a man two or three minutes to cut down a bunch of dates, and it took a woman ten to fifteen minutes to pick off the dates and lay them out on yarid or on the swept drying floor, the masta. A woman would go back with ten or twelve sacks of dates. When Khanazira came down to spend the gaith in Khabura, they brought down animals and pottery, which they sold along the way and bought dates and things they wanted which they took back to the mountains.

At Bulaida, a Bidawi said, There were lots of families here in the gaith. There were Zaab women and children who came while their men were at the pearling, so they were here for June, July and August; we gave them fresh dates, mangos, limes and bananas. And there were Shihuh, who came down from Khasab and Dibba. They came down sometimes as families with or without goats, sometimes men on their own with goats. They arrived from late May and on through the summer. Most of the Shihhuh arrived, sold their goats, got what they wanted, and either went back or went on down the coast. A few stayed longer. Everybody had gone by early October, but we had had lots of company for a good four months. During the mawsim, because we didnt have gaith, boats bringing dates arrived from Basra, Hasa, and Iran, and camels came down carrying dates from Buraimi and al Ain. Everybody, people who were summering here and people who lived here, bought these dates that came in from outside because they were better than our dates. The summer visitors and us residents lived in arish, and here they werent up on legs, but the walls could be raised up a little to let the air through. And we had sleeping platforms, sayim.

Zimmerman (1981; 91 – 2) and Lorimer (1908 – 15, vol 11b) confirm these summer movements. People from the Ruus al-Jibal, the sands, and coastal towns also went to date growing areas in the western Hajar mountains. At Asimah, the Amir remarked, “Bedu – Bani Qitab, Khawatir, and Bani Kaab – came here for the gaith. So did Shihhuh from the Ruus al-Jibal, and Dhahuriyyin from Wadi Shaam. Dhahuriyyin also went to Hairat Bani Humaid, in the hills behind Bithnah.” In Masafi, a Maharzi recalled,

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People from Ajman, Sharjah, Umm al-Qawain and a few from Dubai came to Masafi for the gaith. They were mostly the women and children and old men, because the men were pearling. They were brought by bedu, mostly Bani Qitab from around Dhaid. A family hired three or four camels, just as you hire a taxi now, and they stayed here for six to eight weeks, and then they went home again. They didnt come here to buy their dates, noone came here for that purpose. They came for the summer, we gave them fresh dates, and they lived in arish. They sat around and enjoyed themselves in the shade by the waters, and they had the occasional goat to eat, and we gave them mangos, there were so many we gave them away. It was the later mangos we took to the markets. Zaab came through here on their way to the Batinah, but they didnt trade. I remember Dhahuriyyin and Shihuh, Mahbib and Qiyashi, going through on their way to the Batinah to get their dates. They stayed the night and we bought goats and clarified butter from them, and they went on down to Fujairah.

At Daftah, a Naqbi said, No one came here for the summer, or to get their dates. Dhahuriyyin came through on their way from Shaam to Hiyar Bani Humaid and Fujairah and so on. They brought animals, goats and sheep, pottery, and clarified butter which they sold along the road and at Daftah, and that was how they got the money for their dates. Some Dhahuriyyin spent the gaith at Hiyar Bani Humaid; I know, because we had a garden there, and we could hardly understand a word they said.

In al-Ghuna, near Madha, a Saadi said, In the summers, people, mostly women and children from Dubai and Abu Dhabi came here. We gave them fresh dates, and some of these they dried into tamr, and so many of them went away with a sack of dry dates. Really they bought their tamr, dates from Basra and Iran. Mazyud Shihuh from ar-Rawdhah came to Ghuna for the summer, and a lot of Shihuh went to Oman, around Saham. And Dhahuriyyin went as far as Barka and Suwaiq, and somewhere that was nearly in Masqat. Some of them owned date gardens or date trees in these places, and the date work was done by baidar. Others sold goats and donkeys or camels along the way and bought dates with the money.

At Madha, a Shihhi recalled, Bani Ali Shihuh from Ras al-Khaimah Emirate and Khasab and Ahl Rawdhah used to summer here in the past. Shihuh also summered at Qirath and Tawi Khalid, just outside Madha. Some of these Shihuh started to buy gardens at and around Madha, probably in the last hundred years.

In Nuslah, in Wadi al-Qawr, the Amir recalled,

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People, mostly women and children, did come here for the gaith. They did a bit of work in the gardens and were given rutub. If they dried some of these, it was extra for them as they didnt come here for dates, they came for the summer. A very few men from here still went to the pearling but by that time there was really no profit in it at all.

Around Wadi al-Qawr and Munaiy in general, people talked of everyone living in the date gardens in arish in the summers, and people without date gardens moved in to be near water. These people were described as bedu, local Bani Kaab and others, like Bani Qitab. A Kaabi remarked, This area, like other places, never had enough dates for everyone. Most people who didnt have date gardens bought dates from Basra, Iran or Oman brought here by traders, often Zaab, who came to buy our tobacco. But there were also Dahamni and Bani Qitab families who exchanged presents of dates and carrying goods.

In Wadi Sfai, Wadi Sfuni, and Wadi Mamduh, the only summer movement mentioned was to the date gardens and water by the tribespeople of those areas. A Jiljili in Wadi Sfai said he had had to hire camels to carry his tobacco and other products to Dubai; so there were bedu families who came into these areas in the summer when the tobacco crop was sold. A Mazrui mentioned remembering bedu tents at Athbat in Wadi Sfuni in the summer, who could have been Mazari or Quwayyid bedu or bedu of other tribes such as Bani Qitab. Walker (1994; vol 3, 524 – 5) mentions Bani Qitab visiting the date gardens of Shawqa for the harvest. About the people of the sands, an elderly Khatri recalled, “We stayed here in the summers, we had a well nearby. We bought tamr in Ras alKhaimah town when we went to sell things, and we got Musalli dates for the animals at Khatt.” Another elderly Khatri said, Our main enterprise for money was the carrying trade. We went to Dibba, Ras al-Khaimah, Jazirat al-Hamra, Dubai, places on the Batinah coast. Much of this was taking people from the Gulf coast to the east coast, to the places where they spent the gaith and back. They rented the camels they needed to carry them and their belongings from us. We bought dates, mostly from Basra and Iran, on the Batinah coast and in Ras al-Khaimah town.

A Sharqi at Maydaq remembered, Bedu crossing the mountains on their camels and singing as they went. They escorted Zaab families and other families going to the Batinah coast while their men were away at the pearling in the gaith. They went there because it was cooler. They rented arish to live in, and they were given rutub and man-

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gos to eat, although they took their basic food supplies with them, and they got their tamr there. There were Khawatir who owned date gardens at Maydaq, their forefathers had married Sharqiyyin women and so their children inherited trees, parts of gardens, or gardens. Khawatir had obtained gardens at Rmais in the same way. This was certainly so by the time I was a small boy, and I would think this marrying in had been going for a long time before that, it wasnt new. In the gaith, the small wadis behind Thoban like Wadi Shayba where my mother had a garden, they were full of bedu, Bani Qitab and Khawatir, in tents and khaimah spending the summer and getting their dates.

At Idhn, an elderly Mazrui said, Khawatir have gradually acquired date trees and gardens here. A hundred years ago and more, Khawatir came to Idhn to spend the summers and to get dates. They camped outside the gardens, around the samra trees, and built themselves animal shelters and khaimah. Some bought their dates, but most worked for them, cutting down the bunches and so on. Some worked in the grain fields for a share of the crop. When they had their dates, they carried them off on their camels. They were here in the waqt al-kharif or time of date picking, and were paid by haqq al-karama (right of generosity) and haqq al-shughl (right of work).

The late Amir of Ghayl corroborated this and added, All the gardens in the old block of gardens belong to Mazari but some have been used by Khawatir for a long time because they rented and used them for quite a long time, because Mazari went into the army early. They were the garden owners who rented out their gardens or earlier made share partnerships with Khawatir.

Distribution of dry dates between owners of date gardens and those without date trees or enough trees depended on a series of moral relationships articulated by rights of shares from ownership, charity, or work, or from gifts that expected a return at some point, barter and sale. Many people pointed out that the regional populations were too large to be supplied from local production of dry dates, and while garden owners said they had lived from their gardens, few gave dates as their main source of profits although many had made presents of dry dates in expectation of reciprocal presents of grain, salt and fresh fish, imported goods, or services, or had exchanged dates for such items. Although many garden owners in the date growing area inland from Ras al-Khaimah town were merchants or traders, they had these gardens to supply their own households and as places in which to spend the summers. Other date garden owners in this area, like a Naqbi at Fahlain, recalled that while they had small surpluses of

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dates, their main profits had come from sales of clarified butter and firewood, or for some Shamaili families, from pottery. There were artisans, mostly metal workers but also a few specialist carpenters, who went into local communities to exchange their goods or to perform services for goods they could use or sell on the coasts. These exchanges were described as trade, tujar, or barter, maqayitha. Metal workers or haddadiyiin were described as Baluch or gipsies, zuttut, apart from a few Shihuh families at Lima, who combined metal working with woodworking and/or pottery, and had a permanent base. Most metal working families had a circuit of farij that they visited, repairing and making hais blades, knives, guns, ammunition, axes, and saws, and sometimes silver jewellery. On the whole, silverwork such as jewellery and on decorative swordcovers was made in the bigger coastal towns, as were swords and guns. A Khanbuli Shihuh said, “The owners of houses made the doors and locks from local wood. The nails and any other iron work for the doors and for anything else, were bought in Ras al-Khaimah town from zuttut, who are metal workers, haddadiyiin, and come from Iran.” A Baluch metal-worker at Shimal remarked, I was a travelling smith, a haddad. We travelled in family groups with our tools and the donkeys. We did all sorts of metal work and some silver smithing. We used to go to Shaam for a couple of months, then to Rams for another two months, then to Shimal, and on to Khatt. We were always on the move, we didnt have a base. There were other groups like us with their own circuits. A group now in Fujairah had an east coast circuit.

A Qiyaishi at Kubda recalled, “All the metal work was made and repaired by Baluch haddadiyiin from Shimal who went around the lower afraj.” Ruhaiba at Wadi Rahaba said, “We bought hais blades and knives from metal workers in Rams or Ras al-Khaimah.” A Dhahuri at Sili in Wadi Shaam said, “There were smiths in Shaam. For swords and knives you went to a Baluch. For hais blades and axes you went to a metal worker who might be anybody.” At Jadi, some Bani Hadiya remarked, “All the metalwork then was done by Baluch zuttut who came from Bukha.” In Khasab, an elderly Kumazari said, Metalworkers came from Iranian Baluchistan, and there were three or four Baluch nawar, gipsy, families who lived here. They all did all the iron work that anyone needed – nails, bolts, tools, hinges, knives … There was a different nawar who was a silversmith and he made the decorated sheaths for swords and khanjar, which come from Oman, and jewellery – earrings,

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noserings, bracelets, necklaces, everything. They have all gone now, to Dubai.

At Dibba Baiah, a Shihhi said, We got all the necessary iron work for the boats we built here from Baluch gipsies, zuttut, who lived at Harat al-Zuttut in Sumbrayir. The people who made silver and gold jewellery were also Baluch and gipsy, but from a different branch, called Musafari. As far as we know, they too came from Harat al-Zuttut.

At Sumbrayir, two elderly locals said, The metal workers were all Safarin Baluch. They didnt live in Harat az-Zutuut, because they were always on the move between one place and another, doing metalwork for people. Harat al-Zuttut was where they were when they werent anywhere else. At Unification they became nationals, and most of them had garages and workshops, but they have all moved away now.

In Ghayl, the Amir recalled, Metalworkers did come round, and we bought things like hais blades and knives, but we repaired them ourselves until they were so battered as to be of no use. After all, repairing is really only heating up the metal and hitting it. We sold the broken metal bits to the metalworkers and they sent them back as scrap to Iran or India. Guns, swords and jewellery we bought when we went to Dubai or Sharjah.

In Wadi Kuub, an elderly Mazrui remarked, “The only traders who ever came here were Baluch, selling weapons, ammunition, flints for matchlocks, metal cooking pots and tools, and a few clothes…. And they repaired guns and tools. They were smiths.” At Asimah, the Amir remembered, There was a Baluch metal worker who lived here. He made and repaired all the agricultural tools, like saws, shovels, hais, and knives. He bought scrap metal in Dubai for iron, and he used charcoal he had made himself to get the heat he needed. To work the skin bellows, he pulled the bag back with the flaps open, then he held them together and pushed. It sounds clumsy, but it was really efficient.

At Masafi, an elderly Maharza remarked, For a month every year, zuttut used to come and camp under that huge mango tree in the garden belonging to the Shaikh of Fujairah. They did all the metalwork and repairs people needed. They made shovels, knives and saws, and khanajir and silver rings and earrings and so on. They were traders as well as metalworkers, we paid them in things like dates, fruit,

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goats, and money. If they didnt want to eat the dates or goats, they sold them on the coast.

In Munaiy, a Kaabi said, “Zuttut came to do what metal working we needed – mostly repairs to farming tools and new knives and axe blades. Swords and guns we bought on the coast at Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah or in Oman. I suppose those smiths too were zuttut.” In Nuslah, the Amir said, “Baluch came for about a month and repaired tools and made new things we needed. They came with their families.” At Khor Kalba, a Zaabi remembered, Zuttut came once a year, selling and repairing weapons, tools, and other metal work. This wasnt really very much because so many things were made from rope and date stems. The zuttut also bought and sold donkeys. This trade in metal goods and donkeys, and indeed all local trade, was barter.

The second section describes the activities of traders We start with those who traded in dates, and go on to trading in pearls, tobacco, and salt and dry fish, the commodities produced locally for export and which enabled producers to obtain needed goods they did not produce themselves and which were often imported, like rice, dates, salt, cloth, building wood, and coffee. Much of this activity took place in the summer months of Gulf pearling and the date and tobacco harvests, and several people recalled the excitement of the once a year traders visits for the sale and /or collection of the tobacco crop or the salt fish. In peoples memories, big traders were outsiders; Hindu banyan based in Bombay and who visited Bahrain for pearls; Bahraini or Iranian traders for tobacco; and Iranian, Iraqi or Kuwaiti traders who bought salt fish and sold dates. The bigger traders in Dubai and Sharjah were Iranians from the southern coasts; the smaller traders of Ras al-Khaimah town, Khatt, Rams, Khasab, Dibba Baiah, Khor Fakkan, and Kalba were mostly Iranian and often relations of and agents for bigger traders. Some local people who described themselves as traders were owners of sea going boats who carried goods, either on their own account or as agents, like Zaab of Jazirat al-Hamra and Bu Baqra, Ahl Ras al-Khaimah, and Ramsawis; other Zaab and Ahl Ras al-Khaimah were traders on their own account who owned boats. People recalled there had been Naqbiyiin traders at Kalba, and Shihuh traders at Dibba Baiah. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol.11, 516, 576, 970, 1006, 1605 – 14, 1684) stated there had been boats

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owned and trading in the Gulf, to Iran, the Makran coast, and the Omani coast and Masqat, at Bukha, Jadi, Kumzar, Filim, Maqaqa, Shaisa, Lima, Dibba Baiah, Khor Fakkan, Kalba, Khor Kalba, and Murair. People met at these places had no, or only very vague knowledge of this trading around a hundred years ago. Traders lived from buying goods from producers and selling these to consumers or other traders; while identified by family or tribe, these groups do not have tribally owned lands, although as individuals they may well have owned date gardens, town houses, shops and stores. Small traders bought goods for cash or exchanged goods for those of equal monetary value as barter, maqayitha. They also collected up small amounts of goods bought from local producers into larger amounts worth shipping to markets further up the Gulf – firewood, salt fish, dry fish, wheat, clarified butter, fresh dates, fruit – or to Iran or India, such as metal for recycling, dates, salt and dry fish, or cattle. Transactions between small traders and producers took place relatively frequently, usually in coastal towns but also in summers by traders going to producing areas. Traders who bought surplus dates were either small traders, usually Iranians, who were also shopkeepers in the larger coastal towns, or bigger traders as part of the yearly trade cycle. An elderly Shamaili recalled, Before, the traders from Ras al-Khaimah town, like the al-Assad, and Abdullah Rashid, and someone Marzug, all Iranian, came out in the summer to their separate places and made arish and barracks for themselves and their shops. Fifty years ago, there would be six or seven of them. They sold rice and cloth mostly, and they bought surplus dates from garden owners and from the bida who came down they bought wheat, butter, and honey.

A young Shamaili remarked Im too young to remember but Ive heard from the old men that before, we grew everything we needed and the only things we needed to buy were clothes and metal goods. We sold dates mostly to traders who came in the summers, and so we got the Indian cotton and other things we needed.

An elderly Iranian shopkeeper said, In the summers, Ras al-Khaimah town was deserted. We, my family, went to Nakhil, where we bought dates from local garden owners. We were surrounded by people from Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, and Sharjah and so on, and they spread all the way from Fulayah to Shaam. We sold them cloth from India and rice from Pakistan, and the cloth and the rice at that date came on Iranian boats. Usually, both the garden owners and the shop keepers insisted on cash payments, silver, but people made a few ex-

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ceptions. We used to buy clarified butter and wheat from people down from the Ruus al-Jibal, and sell them to the summer people. Nakhil and Hail and places never grew enough wheat for trade.

An elderly Arab trader recalled, I traded mostly in dates to East Africa and chandal back to the Gulf. I bought Basra dates in Kuwait, and then more dates wherever I could – in Qatif, Hasa, and Khabura in Oman. I never bought dates here, and I never bought Minaw dates, because while Bandar Abbas was the port for Minaw dates, they come from the area between Jashk and Gwador. I made one trip a year, because this was in the days of sail. I sold the chandal in Dubai and went up to Kuwait empty. I bought from whoever wanted to sell, and sold to anyone who wanted to buy, I didnt have an agent who found me sellers and buyers, and I wasnt buying and selling for other traders.

Concerning the date trade in general, a Zaabi explained: Zaab were traders, we traded everywhere and in anything which is why there are Zaab at so many coastal places. Zaab were involved in the Indian trade, pearling, we traded to East Africa, and one of the main items of trade was dates. Obviously, most of these dates came from outside the region, from Basra and Iran, but we also traded in local dates by summering at date growing areas like Khatt. That was why we acquired date gardens in various places, like Khatt, Fulayah, Kilwa which is now part of Fujairah town, Kalba, Shinaas, and so on. This was partly because there were no gardens at Jazirat al-Hamra so we needed gardens for our own supplies, but also we were then in good places to buy dates and to check supply and demand. That was why some Zaab had summer houses with big stores, ghurfa, at places like Fahlain, to buy dates and store them. Before, trade by sea depended on the two monsoons, and lasted for nine months. We went up the Gulf taking salt fish and fresh dates, rutub, to Dubai and Kuwait. In Kuwait we picked up dry dates, tamr, from Basra or we went to Basra to get them. We took these dates to India, where we picked up tiles in Mangalore for East Africa, where we sold the tiles and brought back building wood, roof timbers. That was a simplified outline, but of course many Zaab, like other sea traders, had smaller boats like shuai and those people took salt fish and fresh dates up and sold tamr along the Gulf coast, the Shamailiya and Batinah coasts where people were summering. Other Zaab were involved in trading between the Gulf and India and with the pearling, taking out provisions – which were mostly rice, dates, and coffee – to the pearling boats in the Gulf and buying pearls, they were tawwash.

A Bani Jabri at bu Baqra commented, My mothers grandfather was Zaabi, and he was a big trader in pearls and dates.

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At Khatt, a group of the Shahin family of the Awanat said their family had owned date gardens worked by khawadim at Dhaid, Khatt, and Dibba Husn, and had been big traders. A garden owner at Shimal remarked: Dates were a huge trade. My father was involved in it as a young man, he was a mechanic on the boats that went up to Basra, and his father had been a small trader bringing down dates in his jalbut from Abu Dhabi to Ras al-Khaimah and taking back firewood. There was a big trade in rutub and still is. The first rutub are ready at the end of April and through May and come from Oman. Later on, in June and July, our local varieties are ready as rutub, and some of these were shipped to Masqat and others went up the Gulf to Dubai and Kuwait. People did sell their own dates to whoever would buy them and bought Basra dates for themselves, as Iraqi dates are bigger and juicier than ours. If people couldnt afford to buy Basra dates, they ate their own. Good quality dates were always in short supply here, and of course the quality of the dates at each place depended on the local weather. People kept their good dates and sold the nasty ones in exactly the same way as people in Dubai sold their not very nice water to Abu Dhabi and bought good water from Ghalilah and Shaam.

Not all Basra dates were good; a Shihhi in Lima recalled, “We exchanged salt fish and matuut for fertiliser to traders from Basra and Bahrain and took dates, among other things; but we didnt eat these dates, we fed them to the animals.” Conversations in Khasab, Dibba Baiah, Khor Fakkan, and Kalba showed the connections between date harvests, pearling, and the Indian trade. In Khasab, a Kumzari said, There were enough dates here for all the people who came for the summers, from the Ruus al-Jibal, from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and for the residents, because we grew a lot of dates and because traders brought in dates from Iran, Basra, and Masqat. These traders also brought rice, coffee, sugar and other things, and they bought salt fish and dried matuut in exchange or for money.

At Dibba Baiah, Shihuh explained: Dibba Baiah was really busy, it was jammed with people for three months of the year from the second half of July, through August and September, and on into October. There were traders from Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman and Ras al-Khaimah buying goods, people getting their dates, people summering here, people buying what they needed. The traders came here because there were no customs duties here, and because it was very often the first stop for boats from India and Pakistan. The boats either beached themselves or their goods were unloaded into our fishing boats and so brought ashore. These boats brought rice, salt, hemp – bai – for fishing nets,

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cloth, some building wood for boat building and repairs, small things…. Boats from Masqat brought up chandal from East Africa for roof beams. Rice and chandal were probably the biggest imports. The traders from Dubai and so on came here because here there were no customs duties, but there were at Khor Fakkan and Kalba. Also, Dubai and Sharjah needed foodstuffs, and Dibba had far more dates than most places. Dates came in here from Iran, Oman and Basra, and the traders bought surplus local dates; they also bought wheat and clarified butter from the Ruus alJibal, and other local goods. The really big market was at the end of the gaith, when the boats came in before the start of the north-east monsoon, although boats were coming in, on and off, all the time. When the merchants had bought their goods, these goods were loaded onto our camels and donkeys and we took the laden animals across to the towns of the Gulf coast; it took three days and nights from here to Dubai. This was quicker and easier for the merchants than the sailing boats making their way round Cape Musandam. We sold a lot of matuut, dried very small fish, to India, and to other traders, and we sold dry salted ghubaib and qanad to traders who came here by boat and by land to buy it. We pearled off the Musandam coast in the summers, and a tawwash came across from the Gulf coast to buy the pearls and the mother of pearl. The dates from gardens owned by mountain Shihuh went round to Rams in local boats, owned by people in Dibba, Rams, Bukha or even the Batinah. In our time, there were no Shihuh traders, although we know there had been local traders. In our time, traders were Iranians.

At Qastaniyya, a farij of Dibba Baiah, some Shihuh said, “None of us here were traders. Traders were Fawaris, from the southern Persian coast, or from Masqat; we sold them animals and clarified butter.” Walker (1994; vol 4, 519) quotes Captain Stockdales 1963 Dibba (Husn and Ghurfah) report, compiled between January and April to settle a border dispute; “an average of five or six ocean-going boats of the boom or sambuq type call in at Dibba each week, either to carry away jaisha or firewood, or to bring dried peas, figs, sultanas, pomegranates, and potatoes, the produce of Shiraz from Bandar Abbas for local sale. These boats also go to Muscat, Bombay and as far afield as Dar as-Salaam. Boats also call in for water and supplies; others bring goods from the shops of Dubai and Ras al-Khaimah to stock the shops of Dibba.” People we talked with at Dibba Husn were Dhahuriyyin, who at that time had lived in Musandam, visiting Dibba Husn on their way to date gardens at Qidfa in the summer, and did not mention of these particular imported commodities. Tobacco was the main source of profits for many places in the western Hajar from Shawqa and Wadi Sfuni to Madhah and Ghuna to Munaiy and Wadi al-Qawr, bought by merchants from Iran and Bahrain and ship-

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ped out through Khor Fakkan, Kalba, and Bu Baqra. At al-Ghuna, two Bani Saad recalled, “In the past we grew red wheat, millet, and barley; dates; and tobacco. We sold the tobacco to Iranian merchants in Khor Fakkan, one was called Mahmur and there were Ahmad b Hassan Kilati and Ibrahim al-Kiwawi. There were Naqbi traders, too; Abd al-Karim and Abd al-Qadr from the Askar family in Khor Fakkan. Their sons didnt become traders. Before the Iranians came, there were Shihuh traders. The Iranians came because of troubles in Iran, and were able to push out the Shihuh traders because the Iranian traders were relations of traders in Dubai and so they could get goods more cheaply in Dubai. Tobacco was sold once a year and it all went to Iran. The traders took the tobacco to Iran and came back with dried dates, tamr. We didnt buy these dates, we had dates; those dates were bought by people from the Ruus al-Jibal and the Gulf coast who spent the summers here or came to get their dates.” Another Bani Saad from Madha met at Daftah said, Madha tobacco was sold at Khor Fakkan, and like tobacco sold at Kalba, went to Bahrain. The tobacco was taken down in loads of a hundred or two hundred jalba. Growers could get grain, flour, or other things they wanted on credit. When the harvest came down, their tobacco was weighed, and their accounts were sorted out and paid. There were Arab merchants before, I dont know why Iranian merchants came instead.

In Kalba, a Kinud from the area around Hail and Farfar said, My family came to live in Kalba in 1936 but we kept the garden in the mountains where we had three or four bayadir growing tobacco. That was the big crop up there and everyone brought it down themselves to Kalba at the end of saif, beginning of the gaith. Some of the tobacco was stripped into rabat, and the rabat were made up into bundil. The traders who bought the tobacco came from Bahrain, and they were already here, they had summer houses here. One was called Abu Hashim… and they were here until about ten years ago. By the time I remember, these banadil were taken to Sharjah by Bedford lorry, a lorry left every three or four days. Before, the tobacco had gone round by boat, and the boats from Bahrain brought down Basra dates, salt and rice. People did prefer to buy Basra dates for eating; they sold their dates to people who didnt know any better, or who fed them to their animals.

At bu Baqra, a Jabri commented: The tobacco harvest came down to bu Baqra in the saif, the early summer, and it took three months to process it. Bu Baqrah took all the tobacco from Wadi Hilu, Munaiy, Wadi al-Qawr, Nuslah, all that area. Madha tobacco went to Khor Fakkan. One of the buildings in this complex on the beach

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was a tobacco processing plant, where the stems were stripped out of the leaves, and the leaves left to dry. Then the leaves were rolled up and packed into bundles. There must have been maybe a hundred people working here, they were Omanis. That hanging rope was for the balance scale, to weigh the leaves. The major owner was a big merchant, bil Oun, an Iranian from Saham, south of Suhar. The family had come from Iran a long, long time ago, and his sister married the then Shaikh of Fujairah. He came here for the summers, this was his complex with the family house, the majlis, stores, servants quarters, and so on. He organised the selling of the crop and took the processed crop and dried limes from here to Bahrain. He was the leader of the merchants here, he had stores and a shop here, and he bought and sold. When the tobacco was being processed, he fed between a quarter and a third of the population here every day, they ate in the courtyard.

The Zaabi Amir added: The donkeys and camels that brought down the tobacco in the saif took back the dried gaisha, little fish, used as fertiliser for the tobacco. My family had a farm where we grew tobacco at Munaiy and bil Oun had a tobacco farm in that bit of Hatta that belongs to Ajman. Other merchants had tobacco farms in the area too, like the al-Shamsi. Zaab boats brought goods from India and east Africa here in the winters, when the seas were rough. We hired camels from the bedu of Munaiy, Wadi al-Qawr, al-Aswad, Mlaiha to carry these goods up. I remember caravans of three to four hundred camels. And we carried up dried limes from here and the region, and fish sounds, sul, from Socotra. All the bedu were carriers of goods from this coast to the Gulf coast. And we took slaves, raqiiq, up to Hamasa in Buraimi, but that stopped after the 1940s. We had taken up pearls from local pearling to Bahrain, but that stopped earlier.

In Wadi Mlah, a Dahamni said, “My family grew tobacco in our garden at Tawi Aqli here in Mlah, and so did another family. I remember the tobacco being sold to a junior member of the al-Assad who took it to Ras al-Khaimah for shipping to Bahrain.” A Kaabi said, In my fathers time, we took our surpluses on camels and donkeys to Munaiy and left them at my fathers mothers house. Traders came for tobacco, and took it down to Kalba and Murair from where it was shipped to Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iraq; these traders brought down dates from Iraq as siy (paste in Gulf usage, dry dates in Omani). My father hired people to take the mangos and limes down to the Batinah, and these carriers brought back dried fish for fertiliser, salt, rice and coffee. All the traders and carriers used peoples houses for their business, there were no suq or shops. Anyone with camels could be a carrier; they sold your goods, bought what you wanted, and came back with the goods and any spare money, and took a commission as well as the hire of the camel and their time. Ive been told that a hundred and twenty five years ago, we took dates to Dibba and sold them there.

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A Kaabi in Wadi al-Qawr recalled, The tobacco from wadi Munaiy, wadi Hilu, and wadi Ayaili all went down to the coast. I cant remember the names of any merchants…. oh yes, Ali Muhammad fromAqr and Shinaas, and Muhammad Rifai in Munaiy. A tobacco grower went down to talk to the merchant and they discussed his crop and possible prices, and he got what he wanted in the way of foodstuffs, gaisha, clothing and so on, on credit. When the tobacco was harvested and made into bundles, the grower delivered it to the merchant, and if he wanted anything else he got it. The tobacco was then in the hands of the merchant, who arranged for it to go round to Bahrain. After it had arrived in Bahrain and been sold, and the merchant had the money for it, there was a settlement of accounts. The grower got his money less the costs of the goods he had had, and these costs were ten per cent higher than those in the suq for cash, because the merchant had had to wait for payment for four to six months. No-one from here went down to work on tobacco processing. They did the whole work here; they cut the stems, took off the leaves and hung them up to dry in the drying sheds or maarisha, bundled them up and delivered them.

At Nuslah, the Amir remarked: “Merchants from Dubai and the Batinah coast came and bought our tobacco and took it away on camels they hired here. The men who led the camels were paid in grain.” The Amir of Munaiy commented: We really made money out of tobacco. Tobacco was our source of profits for as long as anyone knows. It went down to bu Baqra to the Zaab traders. The Zaab traders came up earlier to look at the growing crop and they brought goods with them, and people bought what they needed, probably rice and coffee. When the tobacco was taken down, the cost of these goods plus a charge for credit of fifteen percent was deducted from the sale of the tobacco. If a man waited to buy goods until his crop was sold, he saved that fifteen per cent. The Zaab had a lot of traders – Abd ar-Rahman, Abdullah, Muhammad bin Saif, Muhammad bin Nasr, Nasr Muhammad…. Daud bin Hamza was a big merchant from Saham who came to do business at bu Baqra, and he traded mostly in dried limes to Bahrain and in pumps here. Merchants from Dubai used to come to buy the crop and brought a complete market with them – shoes, clothes, sandals, dresses, cloth, yellow metal cooking pots from India…. Tobacco was the main thing we sold, either for money or bartered for goods we needed, as we knew their values in money. A long time before, we used to go to Buraimi to trade, we sold grain and bought salt fish. Up to 1953 or 55, we exchanged grain for fish because up to then there was very little money.

An elderly garden worker and his wife recalled, Traders used to come here to take the tobacco down to the coast and we used to sell them small surpluses of grain or clarified butter or charcoal.

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But tobacco was what we really sold, it was so profitable. A camel load of four arbat (128 kgs) on both sides sold for twenty rupees, and a rupee was worth something then. One camel load of tobacco got a man enough money for a year. Later on, traders no longer came here, and we took the tobacco to Dubai to sell. The seller offered the tobacco at five hundred rupees or dirhams or riyals, they are all the same, and the buyer offered three hundred. They negotiated and in the end a load sold for about three hundred and fifty. Most people had to hire camels to carry their tobacco, and the charge for a camel was five rupees. It took three days to Dubai, and we spent a day in the market selling the tobacco and buying what we needed. There were arish by the market, owned and managed by women, and we could rent a nights lodging for three rupees.

In Bulaida, a Bidawi said, The tobacco harvest came before the date harvest, so we were always working. We sold tobacco to merchants mostly from Bahrain, some from Saudi Arabia. They came here on their lanjat and we sold the tobacco to them, there were no agents on either side. Daud bin Hamza at Saham came here to buy dried limes for Dubai, and they were re-exported from there. Dried limes and things for Dubai went by land on camels or by sea. This was in the 1950s and 60s.

Pearl trading took place in the summers at the big pearling on the Gulf banks from boats financed by merchants, and at local towns by tawwash. Individuals pearled on their own account in the creeks and off Rams and Dibba Baiah. The profits from the big pearling declined heavily after the mid 1920s and through the 1930s, and we met no-one who had taken part in it. Pearl diving by individuals went on for longer, and concentrated on seed pearls and mother-of-pearl. The tawwash were traders who supplied the Gulf pearling boats and bought pearls on the boats from the nakhuda and the pearl divers, or bought pearls on shore for cash. Some Zaab from Jazirat al-Hamra said their fathers had been tawwash, and also involved in the India trade or date traders. Men who had pearled as individuals also spoke of tawwash present in Ras al-Khaimah town in the summers who visited Dibba Baiah to buy pearls. Tawwash sold these pearls and mother of pearl to a pearl merchant, sometimes through a broker. Pearl merchants were invariably spoken of as banyan, Indian Hindus, who visited Bahrain and sometimes Dubai to buy pearls but who came from Bombay. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol 11, appendix C, 2220 – 2287) describes the pearl and mother of pearl fisheries of the Gulf when the purchasing power of the inhabitants of the eastern coast of Arabia depend[ed] very largely on the pearl fisheries.

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Elderly men in virtually all coastal places of the study area remembered men had gone to the Gulf pearling, although by the time they were young men, the industry was in decline. A few men went from inland places, such as Munaiy. The influx of women and children from Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, and Umm al-Qawain to spend the summer while their men were at the pearling has been noted above. Men at Kalba recalled, Most men from here went pearling on the Gulf banks in the summer, usually on boats from Dubai. After they had their money, they went shopping in Dubai and bought what they needed – rice, coffee, cloth and so on. These goods were cheaper in Dubai, even though traders brought the same goods as well as dates into Kalba when they bought our tobacco and salt fish. Kalba had enough dates for its people and the Zaab took the traders dates over to the Gulf coast.

Long distance sea trading voyages under sail were remembered by a few in the Gulf coastal towns, but all said that in their lifetimes making profits had been difficult, as Villiers (1940) also concluded after his voyage with a Kuwaiti trading buum to East Africa and the Gulf. Lienhardt (2001; 146) was told in the early 1950s that throughout the shaikhdoms of the Gulf … the profits of trading voyages never compared with those of pearl fishing, although it would seem that when Arab merchants were fully engaged in the transit trade of transporting and trading luxuries from the east to the Gulf for transhipment to the Mediterranean and Europe before the arrival of the Portuguese, trading voyages of this type were highly profitable, as was the trade in horses by sea from Arabia and Persia to India in the 13th to the 16th centuries.

The salt fish trade from Omani and Emirati coasts is very long-established. Fishermen sold surplus catches of tuna species to processors who split, cleaned and salted the fish in tanks on the beaches. A salt and dry fish trader at Shaam said, On the whole, fish processors didnt take their salt fish to markets to sell; traders came to them and bought the salt fish to take to markets. In my time, traders from Kuwait, Iraq and Iran came in their boats to buy salt fish in particular, and anything else that was going. The Kuwaitis and Iraqis brought down dates and other things. While the usual means of payment was money, if he wanted salt fish and you wanted dates, then you exchanged, while reckoning the amounts in money terms. The Iranians brought down diesel, paraffin, and petrol, as this was in the 1960s, when gardens had pumps. At that time, Iraq was our biggest customer. In my fathers time, I remember going with him to sell the salt fish in Abu Dhabi town, and we went by camel; we had camels, we would have had to rent space on a

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boat. My father had always done this and continued to do so until 1965 when he died. Camel caravans came from Abu Dhabi, from the interior [al-Ain], for salt fish.

Men at Khor Khuwair remembered traders from Iraq, Kuwait and Iran coming for salt fish and bringing dates or diesel and paraffin. At Rams, an elderly Naimi recalled, “There was a lot of fish salting here. I can remember caravans of two hundred camels bringing down dates from Buraimi and taking back salt fish, but the salt fish went everywhere – Dubai, Iraq, Oman …” An elderly Bani Hadiya from Bukha said, “We sent our dried and salt fish to Dubai or Masqat. A few men would take a jalbuut around all the little places where men were producing dried or salt fish, buy up what they wanted, and take it to Dubai or Masqat for sale. This must have been in the mid to late 1940s.” Thomas (1987 [1929]; 467) mentions tuna caught and salted at Khasab were sent to Lingah and then to India. In Lima, a Shutairi remarked, The salt fish were bartered, maqayitha, for goods like rice, coffee, and dates with traders who came from Basra and Bahrain, mostly. It was maqayitha, and no money was involved. These traders came just once a year. It was a really special occasion and exciting. I can remember them coming, but I was too young to remember what time of year it was. Traders came for the dried matuut quite often, and that wasnt so exciting.

A Dhahuri at Dibba Husn said, “Most of our trading was salt fish and matuut for Basra dates.” At Khor Kalba a Zaabi said, We sold tobacco and salt fish to Iranian traders who came by boat and brought salt, rice, and a few other odds and ends. Our main import was salt. Trading boats came in at almost any time of year, and at times, you could walk on boat to boat from where the marine repair shop is up to the roundabout. The Zaab traders from bu Baqra and Kalba traded in the goods that came off the Iranian boats and they took these up into the interior and on to the Gulf coast. Virtually all this trading was by barter.

Former fishermen and salters at all places said salt fish were given as presents as well as bartered or sold. Dried matuut or gaisha, jaisha, used as fertiliser were never given as presents, but always bartered for goods or sold. These small fish were caught and dried at all fishing places, and a valuable part of profits from the coasts of the Ruus al-Jibal to the Batinah. At Dibba Baiah, like Lima, matuut were sold to traders or their agents, who exported them to Ceylon and India. The Zaabi at Khor Kalba recalled, “Our main export to the interior was jaisha, the little dried fish used as fertiliser for the tobacco. Zaab traders took them up.” Many cultivators in the western Hajar, in Ghayl, Wadi Sfuni, Wadi

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Sfai, Wadi Ayaili, Wadi Munaiy, Wadi Mlah and Wadi al-Qawr spoke of having come down to places on the Shamailiyya coast to buy or barter firewood or charcoal for jaisha. Only in Ras al-Khaimah town was there any mention of fishermen selling fresh fish to men who sold fish to the public. A former fisherman said, Fish were sold by five or six men who sold only fish, and they were called sellers, biya. They werent fishermen although they were related to them, and all they did was sell fish. In those days, there were no auctioneers, dallal, like there are now. As soon as I got back from fishing, by eleven in the morning at the latest, I took my fish for sale to the sellers. Like all the other fishermen, I gave some to one, some to another, and so on, and they sold the fish to whoever wanted them and took the money. About four in the afternoon, I went back to them and collected my money, less ten per cent which was their commission.

At Rams, Shaam, and Dibba Baiah, people remembered fishermen sold surplus fresh fish, after the community had what they needed, to specialist salt fish traders. Fish, salt or dried, is not often regarded as a valuable trade item, which in the literature are goods like pearls or horses. In the region, the salt fish trade was considered valuable enough for Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr to complain to the British Resident in the Gulf in 1828 when Kuwaitis seized salt fish from Ras al-Khaimi boats going to sell it at Basra (Lienhardt 2001; 125). The abundance and exports of salt fish were regularly commented on by travellers including Ibn Battuta (c. 1330, 1962; ii, 398) to Albuquerque (1507, 1875; 61), Barbosa (1519 – 20, 1918 – 21; 70) and Miles (1872 – 86, 1994 [1917]; 403 – 5). Dried fish exports were not so widely commented on but were noticed and recognised. In the European context, Fagan discusses (2006; 239) the importance of trade in salt and dried fish for a basic food for the poor, armies, and every Christian, and points out that the trade in salt cod from the Newfoundland fisheries “was worth as much as all the gold transported laboriously from the Indies”. The profits of trade in salt and dried fish in the region have never been compared to those of the pearl trade. Salt fish was a basic item of diet for the populations of the study region, and for the Gulf in general, not only on the coasts in summer but also in the interior, and exported widely. The trade in salt and dried fish benefitted fishermen, fish processors, traders and carriers by land and sea, producers of nets and lines, boat builders and repairers, makers of sail cloth, producers of salt, tobacco and date cultivators, and owners of animals who were fed on dried fish. Salt

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and dried fish trade might not have created so much wealth as pearling, but perhaps a higher proportion of the wealth created stayed with its producers, processors, carriers and traders, as it probably did not require nearly so much investment by merchants. Trade took place essentially at coastal towns. Indeed, several people commented that traders did not go into the interior, with the exception of Buraimi, Khatt, and possibly Munaiy. Traders from Dubai stopped travelling to Munaiy at some date, possibly in the 1960s, and tobacco growers then went to Dubai to sell their crop. People said that earlier there had been Arab traders, and then Iranian traders had moved in. A Naqbi at Khor Fakkan explained: There were Iranian, Kilat, and Baluch merchants. Kilat are Iranians from Fars, they are Fawaris. Iranians are from the north of Iran. The Kilat came to Said bin Hamad al-Qasimi at Kalba, and he settled them on the coast. They were traders with abwam which they sailed to to Makran, Baluchistan and India. From India and Bandar Abbas they brought rice, dates, and building wood for building and repairing boats and for general carpentery, like doors and shutters.

Villiers (1940; 253 – 5) was told by a Kilaati that his family, like the rest of the local population, had sailed from Kilaat after imprisoning soldiers sent by the Shah to enforce modernisation, and had gone to Khor Fakkan. A Yamahi Sharqiyyin at Qidfa commented: Before 1932, there were Arab traders, Naqbiyiin, at Khor Fakkan – like Muhammad Abdullah and Aqab; and there were Fawaris, like Muhammad Askar. After 1932, other Iranian trading families came in; some of these have become large and respected. More small Persian traders came in the 1940s, when everything was so difficult on the coasts. Before, there werent shops. Traders and carriers used peoples houses, and some of these people were agents for traders in Khor Fakkan. These traders dealt mostly in foodstuffs and clothes.

Fawaris was explained as “Arabs who live in Fars, speak Arabic, wear Arab clothes, think of themselves as Arabs, and move between the Arab and Persian coasts of the Gulf, including the Shamailiyya coast – they are a variation on khaliji.” An elderly Haslamani Shihhi recalled, “When I was young, there were Arab, Shihuh, traders in Dibba Baiah. Then, I dont know what happened, Iranians came in and they were the traders.” A younger Shihhi remembered, In my time, all the traders at Dibba Baiah were Iranians. By then there were a few shops and the shop keepers were all Iranian. In my view, Shihuh

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produce and dont trade; Iranians trade and dont produce because they dont have land.

A Kumazari at Khasab said, My father told me there had been a big trader from Iran here, who had two abwam and a jalbut that went to India with salt and dried fish and brought back building wood for boats, cloth, and stuff. He traded to India. The family had been here for some generations. There is a plaque on their summer house giving the dates of their arrival in Khasab in 1870 and their departure for Dubai in 1965.

A Naimi from Ras al-Khaimah town explained: There were separate sorts of trading by boat in the Gulf when I was involved in it as a boy in the early 1960s. First, there were two steam boats called the Daamara and the Dawakhir, and I think they were British owned, that went from Bombay to Dubai, to Bahrain, to Kuwait and back again, round and round. These boats carried bulk stuff from India and European and foreign goods imported through Bombay, like rice, tea, sugar, Australian wheat and flour, cement, building wood, cloth – that sort of thing, and local people didnt really use them. The next important thing is that Dubai was the hub for this area. The steam boats unloaded Indian goods and bulk western or Japanese stuff at Dubai, and locally owned and crewed abwaam and jalbut brought these bulk goods here; they took to Dubai vegetables, firewood, charcoal, fruit, dates … A different trade again was the trade in dried and salt fish, these went everywhere, in smaller boats owned by smaller traders, locals and of the region, so there would be Iraqis, Iranians based at places on these coasts, boats from Masqat and Barka and so on. Iraqi boats exchanged dates for fish, Iranian boats paraffin and diesel and dates, Omani boats building wood and stuff. And different again were the boats that were providing services to local people working in Kuwait particularly but also Saudi Arabia and Qatar. These were local boats, owned and crewed by Zaab from Jazirat al-Hamra and people from Ras al-Khaimah, Maarid, and Rams. These boats took up people as passengers, and they also took up fruit, vegetables, honey, clarified butter…. These goods were either presents to family members or producers sending them up for sale. There were no traders involved in this. A man took his three sacks of water melons down to the boat and paid for their transport. At Kuwait, the busta sold them and paid the man his money minus a commission when they returned. These boats brought back mostly building materials and some pumps for gardens, sent down by people working in Kuwait to their families who came to collect them.

Depending on their sources of profits and their degree of self-suffiency, many people made a distinction between the once a year or major sales of their products and more frequent sales of lesser value. In the western Hajar, tobacco was a major source of profits for many, and some com-

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bined profits from tobacco with sales of live goats. Even with manure from goat flocks, tobacco needed additional manure from jaisha, produced on the Shamailiyya coast. Although traders brought imported goods to places on this coast by boat, many people preferred to go to Dubai to sell and buy, using the Shamailiyya coastal places mainly to export tobacco and to buy jaisha and salt fish. Some always took their tobacco to Dubai, like a Quwayyid from Shawqa. The Amir of Ghayl remarked, We bought jaisha at Fujairah. But when money became scarce in the early 1930s, our agriculture suffered. The people selling the jaisha would take some products for the dry fish, but they insisted on part of the price being paid in money – they needed money too. We sold tobacco and goats at Dubai or Sharjah, I remember taking twenty or thirty goats at a time. It took three days to get there with the goats, but only a day to come back, and we brought back fresh fish and shellfish in the winter and salt fish in the summer.

In Khor Kalba, a Zaab recalled, Iranian boats came here bringing salt, paraffin, diesel, rice, dates and so on, and we sold them dates and salt fish. We bought salt mostly, and some paraffin for lamps, but we didnt need much else, we had everything. Bedu, the people of the mountains in the interior, brought down their tobacco or carried other peoples tobacco on their camels, and sold firewood and honey, and they bought fresh and salt fish from us, and salt from the traders. They came down selling firewood and honey fairly frequently, not just once a year like the tobacco.

At Habn, Mazrui remarked: We sold tobacco and charcoal for most of our profits, and we also sold some grain, honey, dried yogurt, and some vegetables at Dubai, Sharjah or Ras alKhaimah. Tobacco was sold in the summer, the other products most of the year. To get to these markets, we made a sharika, a partnership, and we were all kaafila, protectors, to each other. If everything was peaceful, we went up in groups of five or six. But if times were dangerous, we went in groups of fifteen or twenty. Half the men were with the laden camels, and the others ranged around in twos or threes, as scouts. When we had sold our goods, and bought what we wanted – cloth, dates, rice, coffee – we came back, always by a different route to the one we had said.

A Jiljili in Wadi Sfai remarked: We sold tobacco, charcoal, firewood, honey, cheeses and clarified butter. Some people here sold wheat, but we didnt because we never had enough for ourselves. Later on, we sold goats when we had more. The first thing I bought after working in a cement factory in Saudi Arabia was a camel, so I

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wouldnt have to hire one to take our goods to market. Sometimes we went to Fujairah, Kalba or Dibba, or Sharjah and later on, Ras al-Khaimah.

At Manama, a Sharqi said, What we bought and sold was in small amounts, it could be even in handfuls. The main thing we sold was charcoal, and small amounts of mangos, limes and onions. We bought coffee, flour, grain and clothes. We went to whichever market was safest – sometimes Fujairah, sometimes Dubai or Sharjah. Safest meant free from raiders.

A Naqbi at Daftah said, In the past, we sold dates, mangos, sometimes wheat or millet, sweet potatoes and onions in Dubai or Sharjah. We carried our goods on donkeys and camels and the trip took four days. We sold the goods to traders there and bought coffee, cloth or clothes and rice. When we went to Fujairah or Khor Fakkan, we bought gaisha, salt, fresh or salt fish, and paraffin for lamps.

At al-Ghuna a Saadi explained: We sold tobacco to Iranian merchants at Khor Fakkan, but we sold goats, sheep and cows in Dubai. It took five days there and five back, but Dubai was a much bigger market for live animals than Khor Fakkan and the money we got for them bought more in Dubai, goods in Dubai were cheaper. What cost us seven dirhams in Khor Fakkan cost four or five in Dubai. We travelled to Dubai in parties of fifty men. Sometimes we joined up with merchants from Khor Fakkan, sometimes we hired ourselves and our camels out to make up the numbers.

A Bidawi at Bulaida said, We sold our tobacco, our main source of profits, to merchants who came here in the mawsim – we dont have gaith. And we sold mangos and limes to these merchants, who were mostly from Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Boats came bringing dates from Basra, Hasa, and Iran, and everyone here, summer people and residents, bought these dates because they were better than ours. We didnt sell our salt fish to these traders, we sold it ourselves. We loaded the donkeys, and sold the salt fish to people in Wadi Shinaas, Wadi Hatta and other wadis. We sold them any spare jaisha too.

The Bani Hadiya Amir of Jadi, on the Gulf Coast of the Ruus al-Jibal, remarked: We made most of our profits from selling salt and dried fish. Traders from Kuwait, Iraq and Iran came by boat to buy them. We also took them ourselves by boat to Ras al-Khaimah or Dubai when we went to get things we needed. We also sold lots of onions, water melons, and sweet melons, and some dates and mangos, we took these to Khasab by boat. We went

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when we had surplus produce which was quite often, although in small amounts.

At Qidfa a Yamahi said, My father owned camels and he was a local trader. He and other people here who owned camels agreed a price, say five rupees for a goat, with the owner or the producer of the goods offered for sale. They carried salt fish and dates, honey, clarified butter, wheat, live animals, rutub, mangos, limes, and sweet potatoes by camel to markets in Dubai or Sharjah. For all these goods, the system was the same. The owner and the trader agreed a price, but the trader didnt give the owner the money then because he didnt have enough. Carrying these goods to Dubai or Sharjah went on all year round; sometimes a caravan went every month. They made up groups of thirty to sixty, even eighty, people from Qidfa, Mirbat, Girath, and Fujairah, and there were Maharze from Masafi and so on. Travelling was open to everyone, and we didnt use rafiq or daliil, and the government didnt eat anything. The caravan depended on itself. Awaimir and Manasiir attacked caravans, killing people and selling travellers as slaves. As they came from outside, I dont know how they knew the routes or times a caravan would be travelling. The route from the east coast was to Wadi Ham, to Dhaid, north to Falaj al-Mualla, and onto Sharjah or Dubai. When they got to the market they paid the dues, because these were proper markets with muhassib, and sold the goods entrusted to them for whatever price they could. If the owners had asked them to buy rice or clothes or whatever, they did so.When they returned, they paid each owner the price that had been agreed for his goods; the prices of the goods brought back for him were taken off the money. If they had been able to sell the goods for more than the agreed price, that was profit; but if they hadnt, then they made a loss. Thats trading. Sometimes they needed to hire more camels; if a trader hired a camel for say two rupees for a whole trip, and the camel died or was stolen, he had to pay the hiring fee, but he didnt have to pay the value of the camel. This happened to my father once. These caravans were business, selling goods produced here to get things not available – or a lot more expensive – on this coast. They did take things down to Khor Fakkan and collected stuff, but their real business was carrying to Dubai and Sharjah.

A Shihhi recalled, Goats were a good source of profits in general, and there were people who made a lot of money from goat trading. There was a Habus, who is dead now, from round Wadi Nahala who became rich buying goats in the mountains and selling them in Ras al-Khaimah town and Ajman. This man bought goats for a price agreed between him and the seller, he bought the goats for cash which he didnt have. The seller had to wait for his money until the man came back from selling them. The goat trader might have made losses, but he rarely did, he did very well. I dont know the story of the man who made good profits by buying goats on the Batinah

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coast, grazing them through the western Hajar and selling them in Buraimi; but it sounds perfectly possible.

Others talked of selling in local markets. A man said, In the past, most women who went to sell vegetables and small things in the market were the wives of bayadir of the coastal plain or just inside the mountains. Although bayadir were paid and more or less provided with basic food, shelter and clothing, they always wanted money for salt fish, extra sugar and tea and so on, and this money came from the vegetables and stuff sold by the women. Mountain people, Shihhuh and Habus, selling firewood, charcoal, clarified butter, live animals, honey and figs, came down as groups of men or of women. They made a camp on the outskirts of the town or stayed as a group in the courtyard of one of the big merchants, like al-Assad. Sometimes, Shihhu or Habus would kill an animal and sell the meat by weight in the market. In this way, poor people could buy a bit of fresh meat.

An Iranian trader recalled, The women – I dont remember the men coming down much – from the mountains usually sold their goods to a trader; they didnt usually sell them themselves in the market. For example, they would sell charcoal to my father because he traded in charcoal, and they would sell vegetables, eggs, and cheese to Muhammad Nawb, the chief trader in those goods. If they needed somewhere to stay in Ras al-Khaimah town, they stayed at the traders house – there were always spare storerooms for people needing to stay overnight.

An elderly Shihhiya remembered: When I lived at Slai al-Quda and Danam with my husband who was Habus, we went to Dibba Baiah, Dibba Husn, Rams and Ras al-Khaimah for buying and selling. We went by donkey, and going to Ras al-Khaimah, we started very early in the morning and got there by the afternoon prayers. We sold clarified butter, goats, cheeses, firewood, and charcoal, and we sold to women traders and men traders. If people had a relative in Ras al-Khaimah, they spent the night there, but I stayed with a friend who was a trader. I sold my goods to her, and she sold them on to her customers. Obviously I got a lower price than I would have had I stayed on and sold the goods myself, but I preferred her to sell them so that I could get back to the mountains. I bought cloth, dates, rice, flour, coffee, things like that. I wasnt a trader because I lived in the Ruus al-Jibal, she was because she lived in Ras al-Khaimah town.

There were also markets at Rams, where a Tunaiji remembered there was nearly always wheat as flour from the Ruus al-Jibal, Shaam, and Khasab, where elderly Dhahuriyyin recalled attending the mosque on Fridays and selling goats, cheeses, honey, and clarified and fresh butter at the market.

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A Shamaili said, “The women used to take small amounts of vegetables and eggs to the markets at Ras al-Khaimah and Rams, and with the money they bought fresh or salt fish, a bit of rice, things like embroidery thread; the men went to Shaam and sold spare dates and bought rice.” It was not clear whether the markets at Rams, Shaam, and Khasab were held only on Fridays or on other days as well, but there were small Friday markets at some places. A Habsi said, “We came down from the mountains every Friday to go to the mosque at Ghubb. There was a Friday market there, where we sold clarified butter and firewood, and bought fish. After prayers, we used to rush home with the fish.” The Amir of Habhab remarked, There werent proper markets here or Khatt, but there were informal markets on Fridays when people came down from the mountains and in from the plain for prayers, and some of them brought small amounts of things to sell, and buyers went to look. If the goods didnt sell, people either took them back or went on the next day to Ras al-Khaimah market.

In Dibba Baiah, a Shihhi remarked, There was a Friday market here, when Shihuh from the mountains came down for prayers. They brought down small amounts of things for sale or exchange – charcoal, figs, clarified butter, honey, or goats for fish or dates – those sorts of things. Sharqiyyin went to the mosque and market at Dibba Husn.

A Hufayat Sharqiyin at Baqiil in Wadi Khabb said, In the past, we sold honey, goats, dairy products, and any spare dates. We used to walk along the track which goes down to Dibba by way of Saqattah. Most Fridays we went down to the mosque and the market; other Fridays and at Ids we went to Khatt or Habhab for the prayers and to sell our produce at their markets.

A Sharqiyyin at Tawyain recalled, Earlier, people used to go down to Habhab for Friday prayers and there was a little market, and we sold what we had brought down. Sometimes we went to Dibba for Friday prayers and there we bought fish.

At Ghalilah, a Shihuh said, My father was a trader here and he bought or exchanged for the goods the bida brought down from the mountains when they came down for Friday prayers. They brought down firewood, wheat, honey, maybe cheeses, which they sold or exchanged for salt fish, salt, cloth… little things. He sold the firewood, honey, and wheat from the mountains and dates from

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our gardens and salt fish to Iranian traders who sold him salt, paraffin, Basra dates, rice, and a few small things.

An Iranian trader in Ras al-Khaimah explained methods of selling, apart from exchange; Subu is selling on commission. The producer of the goods employs a man to sell his goods for him, and pays him an agreed commission to do this. Jizaaf is where a trader buys a whole lot of goods from a producer and then sells them to customers. That is riskier, but he might make more profit. For example, in the old days fresh fish were sold in Ras al-Khaimah by subu, on commission, where the fish sellers, who were called bia, were really agents for the fishermen to customers, but salt fish were bought and sold by traders, jizaafiin.

Jizaafiin were mentioned by Dostal (1983; 153 – 5) along with Safaarin as the traders who sold and distributed Wadi Hajil pottery, alongside barter and sale at markets in Ras al-Khaimah town and Rams. Dostal collected his information in 1977 from the sons of potters when pottery had been profitable, and noted there was no clear knowledge of how pottery had been exported. He reported that jizaafiin were commission agents who traded in a variety of goods, while Safaarin were long distance agents specialising in particular products. Long distance traders ordered pottery in hundreds of pieces, while the commission agents took only a few dozen pieces. Both sorts of orders were backed by part payments in advance, the rest after the delivery of orders, and the amounts to be paid were agreed by bargaining before the potters accepted the orders. Part of the payment was in an agreed quantity and type of goods, usually dates or salt. Of the Safaarin remembered in 1977, seven were Ramsawis, six from Ras al-Khaimah town, and four from Maarid; wadi Hajil pottery was exported by boat to different places in the lower Gulf, Musandam and the Shamailiyya coast, and Hormuz. During our inquiries between 1997 and 2004, no descendants of Bani Shamaili potters at Wadi Hajil knew how pottery had been traded in its heyday except that the pottery “had gone out by the buum load and been very profitable.” Former potters and users of Wadi Hajil pottery remembered only selling or buying it at markets in Ras al-Khaimah or Rams, or making pieces on commission for the buyer. Potters from al-Alama at Lima and from Wadi Banna said large pieces were only made on commission with an agreed price before the potter started work, while small pieces were made speculatively by potters and sold at the date gardens in the summers, although elderly Shihuh in Khasab remembered Lima pottery coming by boat to Khasab and

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going onto Shaam. Lima cooking pots were seen at a Qiyaishi farij in Wadi Saali. When asking about jizaafiin and Safaarin, people said jizaafiin were traders who bought a lot of one item from a producer, agreed a price and paid, and then sold the goods to customers; Safaarin were either long distance travellers who may well have bought some goods to trade with on their journeys to provide themselves with funds, or – and more relevant to this discussion – a long distance trader by sea to the Makran and India (Agios 2002; 32, 185). Fish sellers were not described as traders, tijaar, but as sellers, bia, whose income was the commission on their sales, they took no risk. Traders, whether jizaafiin or Safaarin, took a risk in ordering and paying for goods from a producer, and then selling to customers. (The dictionary meaning of jizaafiin is purchase of a certain amount of goods, with a root meaning of taking a chance.) For traders in pottery, commissioning came in the need to order and part pay for the pots, and Shamili in Wadi Hajil remembered traders who had commissioned large amounts of pots for export by boatload overseas, and traders who ordered smaller amounts as part of their trading stock. Both seemed to have been jizaafiin by their methods of obtaining pots for trade, but the Safaarin was distinguished by the amount he ordered and by exporting them overseas. Apart from the need to commission items, the methods of trading seem similar to those of other traders. Local ideas about trading and traders encompass a range of often apparently contradictory concepts. Several commented that trading was what a man did when he had nothing else left, as an alternative to or associated with going to work overseas. On the other hand, traders were rich, they had money, and they made investments in date gardens, ghurfa, and boats. Some considered traders, big traders, traded to make money from which they lived and made their profits, and their dependence on money was shown as insecure in the hungry years of the early 1940s. Traders were seen to provide a service in importing necessary goods from overseas and trading them for locally produced goods, as were carriers by land and sea. A Shihhi said, Shihuh can be merchants, there are some successful traders, big traders, in Dubai. I tried to be a trader, but I wasnt successful. As far as I know, there werent Shihhi big traders in the past. I dont know why. Perhaps it is easier to be a merchant when you are not living in a place where you know everyone and are related to them, and you all live and work together. And in the mountains, there wasnt a commodity to trade. We had surpluses

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of what we produced, and we sold some of these to get other things we needed and didnt produce, but we didnt sell to make money and get rich. That would have been shameful, it would have meant taking advantage of those who were close to you. There is a feeling that being a trader is somehow a bit dishonourable, if it involves selling things like food and clothing to people you know for more money than you need to covere your costs and give you a bit over for your own needs. Or to sell people things you know they dont need so you can get rich and they might get into debt. I think Arab merchants of the past were more like carriers. Carrying goods by land or sea is an honourable way of living, it provides a service from an asset a man already owns. And buying goods somewhere across the sea, bringing them here and selling them to another trader who took them up the Gulf is fine; theres a lot of risk involved and it was a necessary service.

Using owned assets, like boats or camels; performing a necessary service; and the taking of risk were approved aspects of trading. A man at Shimal remarked: We Arabs could work at anything except running a shop. Thats why shopkeepers were Persians. Shop-keeping wasnt possible for an Arab because it was impossible to sell and not give things to your neighbours. A man couldnt live off his neighbours, people he knew well and expected to co-operate with him. A man could be a trader because traders sell things from outside that local people need or want, and these traders buy goods that local people have in surplus to take where there is a lack of them. Traders perform a service of distribution between people and areas that produce different things, and that involves risks, so rewards are fitting. Of course, from their point of view, the Persian shop keepers were providing a service.

It is clear that there were local carriers who acted as traders and as agents for producers or traders in many local communities, both on the coasts and inland, and also traders who collected up small surpluses of local products and took them to markets by land and sea. Many of these carriers and small traders had additional resources, such as fishing, arable land, gardens or animals. Others, such as Mazari of the western Hajar preferred to do their own selling, especially if they owned camels or donkeys for carrying goods, or were selling live animals. Others, such as the people of the Ruus al-Jibal, sold or exchanged surpluses mostly during the summers at the date garden areas on the coast. Sea traders brought in date cargoes to Khasab, Dibba, Khor Fakkan, Kalba and other places as the local supply of dried dates was insufficient and exchanged these for salt fish, tobacco, limes, fruit and other goods. The third and last section is concened with investment, credit, and debt, and their role in the economy.

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Everyone invests in their local communities by their participation as functioning members owning assets, working, distributing, adding value, and sharing. Investment in the literature has been concerned with merchants. At the beginning of the 19th century, Ras al-Khaimah town was the centre of trade in that part of the Gulf. The Qasimi ruler moved to Sharjah c. 1815, the more important pearling centre and so attracted merchants, although Ras al-Khaimah town had a higher number of large trading vessels (Kemball 1856; 100). The growth of Sharjah in relation to Ras al-Khaimah continued throughout the 19th century, until Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol 11, 1007 – 8; 1762) in 1906 describes Sharjah as a busy trading centre of two hundred shops, and two hundred stores for wheat, rice and dates; sixteen banyan traders and more in the pearling season, 35 khoja traders, five baghaah and thirteen sambuq trading to Basra, Bombay, the Persian coast and occasionally Yemen, 183 pearling boats and 183 fishing boats. Ras al-Khaimah had no banyan traders, 33 khoja traders, seven baghalah and eight sambuq that traded by sea, 23 large pearling boats and ten small, and 120 fishing boats. By this time, Dubai was beginning to take over from Sharjah as the trading centre, as it was the port used by steam boats between Basra and Bombay. People spoke of merchants in Ras alKhaimah – the al-Assad, the al-Shamsi, the Sirkal in Maarid, and others, but by the time of research, the merchants were dead and their descendants businessmen in Dubai. Serjeant (1991 [1970]; 195 – 7) commenting on the highly complicated and sophisticated customary law that govern[ed] the working lives of both mariners and fishermen considered that the various categories of workers were … bound to those persons who have enough to finance ventures, by an elaborate system of loans and debts. These are similar in their way to the elaborate share-cropping finance [including renting and employment] in the agricultural districts. I suspect, though I have not investigated this aspect of local commerce, that the merchant and capitalist classes financing fishing and navigation are bound to each other by an intricate mesh of credit and debt. Serjeants researches into maritime law were mainly in southern Yemen and Bahrain, with a little in the Trucial Coast, between c. 1945 and 1963; no details of Trucial Coast maritime law appear to have been published. Agios researches on the financing, management, crewing, and work practices of traditional boats of the Gulf and Oman were unavailable at the time of writing. Local memories of these matters were somewhat sparse, mostly because money had been in short supply, informants had been young men at the time, and big merchants had moved to Dubai.

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The difference in the objectives of nakhuda, boat-owners, and merchants is reported by Villiers (1940; 263), quoting the nakhuda with whom he sailed who remarked Merchants are tough; to them, everything is money. Nakhuda have the sea; to them, money is only for their ships. While waiting in the Rufiji to load mangrove poles, chandal, Villiers (1940; 202 – 3) learnt of the differences for nakhuda between carrying goods for merchants as freight, and carrying goods owned by the boat owners. Difficult trade conditions – on that voyage a combination of difficulties in Italian Somaliland, poor prices in Zanzibar, low rates on passengers, the extra time some passengers had spent on board since they were not allowed to land at Mogadishu, the high cost of Rufiji mangrove, and the probable difficulty of selling them in the Gulf (although that cargo was sold profitably in Bahrain to ibn Sauds rebuilding programme) – made it difficult to earn profits. It would be easier to carry merchants freights, except that merchants preferred nakhuda to take the risks, and in effect, act as insurance for merchants. If a merchant sent his own goods, he had to pay the ship in support of his cargo. If the ship carried her own goods, the merchants got these goods anyway and often at the prices they offered, since no nakhuda could afford to wait long for a sale or give indefinite storage. In addition, nakhuda were responsible, if the boat was lost, not only for the loss of the boat – which was rarely fully owned by the nakhuda – but also the freight owned by the merchants. In the summer of 1939, nakhuda of deep sea ships at Kuwait demanded changes in working practices: every deep sea ship should carry a muallim, mate, as well as a nakhuda; merchants should pay demurrage when they fixed freights from the Shatt alArab and then kept boats waiting for weeks; and nakhuda should no longer be responsible for his ships debts and all advances of freight and so on, in the event of the loss of the ship. The merchants argued that the ships belonged to the nakhuda, the debts to the merchants, and that debts must be paid, and agreed only to the carrying of a muallim. It did not pay merchants to own and run ships themselves; it was better for them to finance nakhuda to run the ships and use them only for such freights as they needed. Villiers considered (1940; 324, 341) that in Kuwait, finance for long distance sea trade was always provided by a merchant since no nakhuda ever had enough money to finance the building of a ship himself. Nakhuda usually advanced money to crew members to provide for their families in their absence (Villiers 1940; 280), and these loans were deducted from their shares of the voyages profits. Serjeant (1991 [1970]; 203) noted the same practice in southern Yemen. It was possible for crew members to be in debt with the nakhuda, if his share of the profits was too low

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for him to repay the loan. Similarly, the nakhuda might well be indebted to the merchant who financed the boat or the voyage. Villiers (1940; 400) considered the date trade to be the chief reason for the survival of ocean going dhows in Kuwait. Kuwaiti merchants invested in date plantations in Basra and were important in the financing of deep sea dhows. Merchants preferred to have ten thousand sacks of new seasons dates divided among five dhows and unloaded by their crews over some time, rather than in the hold of one steamship from which the dates would be unloaded at a charge in one day and flood the market. A hundred ton buum carried two thousand sacks of dates, with a crew member for every hundred sacks; overheads were small, as the crew were paid by shares and handled the cargo as part of their normal work, and port dues were negligible. These conditions were confirmed by former deepsea crew members from Rams. Merchants were involved in commercial fishing. Wellsted (1978 [1838]; vol 1,186 – 7) describes long nets, many hundred fathom in length, used on the Batinah and owned either by a village, a private individual or a company. Serjeant (1995 [1980]; 193 – 7) discusses jarif, fifty yard long seine nets for sardine, in Shihr, south Yemen and the financing of hadrah fish traps by jazzaf, fish merchants, in Bahrain (1995 [1968]; 508). Janzen (1986; 157 – 9) mentions the ownership of Dhofari sardine fishing boats by tribesmen and sadah, who took 50 % of the catch, while the nets were owned by teams of fishermen. Captain Stockdales 1963 report on Dibba Husn and Dibba Ghurfah (Walker 1994; vol 4, 518, 523, 526) mentions Sultan bin Salaami as the owner of the biggest net-making concern in Dibba, the owner of one of the five shahahif fishing for barriya with long nets, one of the two owners of Land-Rovers in the area, and the leader of a Sharqiyyin grouping in Sumbrayir and close to the then Sharqi ruler; barriya fishing was highly profitable, a good catch bringing in Rs 1,000. Producers of dried fish – matuut in Musandam, jaisha or gaisha elsewhere – spoke of traders coming to buy the dried fish, as well as individuals, but not of traders financing the making of long nets. For Rams in 1953/4, Lienhardt (2001; 127) noted the very long nets were often made to order at piecework rates or bought ready made and the nets lasted only two years. The sheer amounts of barriya caught at Lima, Dibba Baiah, Khor Fakkan, Fujairah, and Kalba required an enormous quantity of nets. Stockdale also discusses the khabbat fishing at Dibba Baiah and Dibba al-Ghurfa. The best khabbat fishing places were owned and bought and sold within the tribes. Most were “run as a small syndicate consisting of the owner and four or five associates” and a net owner could make Rs

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5,000 profit in a good season (Walker 1994; vol 4, 525). Salt fish, whether of khabbat, qanad or ghubaib, were profitable. Dhahuriyyin on the north east coast were described by European visitors as poor but had the money to buy date gardens at Dibba Husn and Qidfa on the Shamailiya coast; much of their earnings from salt and dry fish could have been profit, as each family owned arable fields and goats. In the account of the shaikhs of Dibba Baiah, the Kumazari shaikh who was also the shaikh of Lima was asked to be shaikh of Dibba Baiah in part because he had close links to Larak, which exported salt to the Ruus al-Jibal (Lorimer 1908 – 15, vol 2, 1086); the two places had extensive economic links. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol. 2, 1138) noted that profits for salt and dried fish were between 5 – 40 %. Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr of Ras al-Khaimah considered the trade in salt fish from Ras al-Khaimah to Basra important enough to complain to the British Resident in the Gulf in 1828 when Kuwaitis took salt fish from each Ras al-Khaimi boat. Pearl boats working on the Gulf banks were owned and financed in two ways (Lorimer 1908 – 15, vol 11, 2286; Heard Bey 1996; 208 – 11). In the ikhluwi system, said to be the original, the nakhuda, the man responsible for the enterprise, owned the boat and found the divers and haulers from his relations, neighbours, and community; the crew and nakhuda shared the net profit at the end of the season according to the type of work each did as described in Shaam, Rams, and Ras al Khaimah. In the amil system, the boat was owned and fitted out by an entrepreneur who, at the end of the season, took a large part of the profits and the remainder was shared among the nakhuda and crew. Under the ikhluwi system, getting into debt by crew members was less likely. Amila was also used for a fishing system on the Gulf and Batinah coasts. We understood this to describe the fishing boats as work boats, but the term may have described the ownership of such boats by entrepreneurs rather than by the fishermen who used them. This is certainly the case for small, modern fishing boats at Rams. A former fisherman at Ras al-Khaimah sometimes referred to his boat as a samah, a type of small fishing boat, but on occasion as an amila. As he had inherited it from his father, who had bought it from a trader and paid for it gradually in catches of fish, carrying, and other services, it is possible that sometimes he was referring to his boat by type of craft and at others, by type of contract. Some nakhuda rented boats and collected crews to whom loans had to be offered, others were employed by boat owners who were often merchants. The types of contract between merchant financiers, boat owners, brokers, nakhuda, and tawwash and pearl merchants changed frequently and varied from contract to contract. Hajji

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Yusuf Kanoo in Bahrain (Kanoo 1997; 23) sometimes financed an entire pearling voyage or a trading voyage of a nakhuda by underwriting the entire voyage and partaking in the profits or losses of the venture; this was known as mudharaba. Kanoo also describes how Bahraini pearl merchants went to India to sell pearls; they could deposit their proceeds in an account at Kanoos Bombay office, and in spring, go to the Kanoo office in Bahrain and draw on their Bombay accounts to advance money to the nakhuda. The mesh of credit and debt between merchants and boat owners (and the crews) was common by the early 14th century (ibn Battuta 1958; vol 2, 409). Davies (1997; 227), using an anonymous Arab source written for the British Resident at Bushire in 1817 notes that there were three substantial merchants (ibn Kulban, ibn Ausiya az-Zaabi, and Abd ar-Rahman alRiqi) at Jazirat al-Hamra and two at Ras al-Khaimah town (ibn Qurs and Abu Rashid bu Ala) who financed pearling at these two coastal towns. Captain Taylor, in 1818, reported on debt in pearl fishing at Ras al-Khaimah town before Wahhabi rule. He wrote (1985 [1856]: 40): The crews of these boats used generally to borrow sums of money, sufficient to support themselves and their families, from bankers resident on the spot in the following proportions: of the larger 100 toman, of the intermediate 50 toman, and the smallest 50 toman, either in grain or money, or both. On the advances of grain only, the lender never gained less than fifty per cent, often one hundred per cent, as the markets indicated; but on cash loans, their faith permits of no interest being given or received. In unfavourable seasons of the fishery, these bankers occasionally deferred the pressure of their claims until the third year, when, if the boat belonged to the debtor, they sold it, and recovered the amount of their claim; if not, the debt was paid by degrees, from the profits of the debtor, who in these cases undertook voyages to sea in the service of merchants, or themselves made ventures to some of the neighbouring ports, with fish and other cargo of their own. By long custom, the fishermen were obliged to offer their pearls first to their creditor, who enjoyed the advantage of a discount of 10 % if he approved of the article; if not, they were sold to the highest bidder and the debt paid off.

Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol 2, 2233) and Heard Bey (1996; 208 – 220) note that debt was embedded in pearling. No one from Jazirat al-Hamra, whose population had been deeply involved in pearling, mentioned debt. In Ras al-Khaimah town, a former fisherman recalled, When I was a boy in the 1950s, men from here and from Jazirat al-Hamra did go to the pearling, but then they went for two months only, not the four that had been customary. I think that was because pearling wasnt really profitable any longer and it was only too easy to get into debt. Taking a loan from a taw-

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wash to keep your family was a lot of debt. If a man was unlucky or the price was low, a man could find himself in debt for years. The merchant you were in debt to could sell your debt and you onto someone else, it could go on for ever. Being away for two months – you might not need to borrow, and if you did, it wouldnt be so much.

A woman of Ahl Ral-Khaimah commented: My father was a pearl diver. When he and the other men were away at the pearl banks, their women and children lived on their stores. They didnt borrow from the merchant. If they needed more, they relied on their families and neighbours. When he went to Kuwait for work, he didnt borrow from a trader, he used people he knew, and then he did the same for them.

Men at Rams said, If a man had no resources except his labour, he didnt have a boat or nets, or a date garden or fields, then it was possible to get into debt by bad luck. But most pearl divers who got into debt did so by their own profligacy. They had a good season, so they bought stupid things, like fine clothes or a new sword rather than prudent, sensible things that brought in an income. We have people like that here now and in the past, and you have people like that in your own country. Everywhere has them.

A very old man at Shaam commented, I pearled on boats from Ras al-Khaimah. When a man was away at the pearling, the nakhuda or the boat owner provided the mans family with food or money for that period. If he worked hard, at the end of the season he had enough to pay off his debt and have money over. I myself reckoned on getting a kilogram to a kilo and a half of pearls in a season, worth between Rs1,000 to Rs3,000. So I paid my debt and had money to take home.

In Qidfa, from where men went pearling on Gulf boats, an elderly Yamahi Sharqi said, People did get into debt pearling, and if they didnt pay the money back they were pursued by the nakhuda of the boat for the money he had advanced. Sometimes the people who got into debt were unlucky, sometimes they were feckless. But by no means did everyone who went pearling get into debt.

Men from Rams, Ras al-Khaimah and Jazirat al-Hamra who sailed on long distance trading voyages before the second world war said they as crew members, traders, and boat owners had kept going, boats were lost, and no-one got rich except big merchants elsewhere, in Basra or Bombay. Zaab in Abu Baqra remarked, In the past, we were rich, we had money from pearling and trading dates and tobacco. Trading and pearling were profitable, because our grandfathers have

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told us that the beach was covered with boats being built, and they brought in boat builders from India and east Africa to build them. This was in the early 1920s. Profits from pearling and trading were invested in date gardens wherever we could buy them. Where we couldnt, we invested in building ghurfa and buying dates for trading.

Two elderly Ramsawis said, Our fathers were pearl divers and fishermen. My father bought my familys date garden out of his profits, and his father bought a shahuf for fishing from his. Pearl diving brought you profits if you worked hard and had a bit of good fortune. We went to work in Kuwait which was more profitable than pearling by then and we bought date gardens with our savings.

A very old man in Shaam recalled, Pearling could be very profitable. A diver might find a pearl valued at 100,000 rupees, and the value of the pearls was shared among the crew and the owner according to each mans work. My father had gone pearling (c. 1880 – 1910?). He died aged sixty when I was ten (c. 1920) and my share of his wealth was a thousand rupees. That was a lot. I could have set myself up as a trader twice over, since at that time, it took Rs 500 to set up as a trader.

A Naqbi said, “Ive been told that when pearling was profitable, shaikhs on the Batinah coast used to import twenty or thirty slaves and send them off to the pearling. The shaikhs did quite nicely from them.” From the literature, it sounds as if debt was on the coast, a corollary of marine occupations which were the only profitable enterprises. But local people pointed out it was possible for people living and making their profits from agriculture to get into debt, usually through ill fortune or bad management. A Kaabi, whose family hadnt grown tobacco but had transported tobacco to merchants at Aqr, said, It was possible for a man growing tobacco to get into debt with the merchant. The merchant sold the tobacco growers goods on credit before the harvest. When the growers paid the trader after the harvest, they were actually paying above the normal price because the trader had had to wait six months for his money. So if the crop turned out badly or the price was low, a man could find he owed the merchant more than his crop had brought him.

The Amir of Munaiy commented: If a man had a tobacco garden, he had to be really extravagent or dogged by misfortune to get into debt. Obviously, the crop varied between years and the price varied, but on the whole, tobacco was sure profit. People did borrow from the then Amir, my father. My father charged 10 % for lending goods or money over the year, because he didnt have those goods or that money.

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If a man died owing a debt, his heirs took over the debt. If a man was heavily into debt and there was little sign he would ever be able to pay, or if the heirs wanted to be free of the debt, the creditor could take up to half the land. He couldnt take all of it, only up to half, irrespective of the size of the debt. It was unlawful to leave a man destitute, without the means to support himself and his family.

In Qidfa, an elderly Yamahi Sharqi remarked: People working agricultural land did get into debt in the past. If a baidar was given goods in advance for his family, and he couldnt pay back the money at the end of the contract year, he had to work for the same man the following year, and so on until he had paid off the debt. It was the same with traders and later with shop-keepers. If a man bought on credit, which many did, and he couldnt pay at the end of the year, he had to buy from that shop until the end of the year. If the shop-keeper knew the mans credit was good, he wanted to keep him as a customer, so he would urge him not to pay the whole amount. But someone he thought couldnt pay didnt get his foot in the door – unless he was in real want, that was different. Generosity and friendship were the important matters, not the totals in the account book.

A Bani Lasmi in Dibba Baiah said, In my memory, and I am in my mid-sixties, debt wasnt a problem. People might need to borrow money to go to Kuwait for work, and they got work, and so could repay their creditor. But I can see there might well have been problems earlier, and people might have lost their garden or their boat. But I cant recall hearing of that having happened to anyone in Dibba Baiah. We were a jamaa, a community, who shared, so I think people would have been understanding and generous, and been prepared to get paid back in bits of garden work or net-mending, things like that.

Two instances of the use of debt by bigger merchants and members of ruling families, both from outside local communities, were mentioned. A Qiduwi remarked, A cousin of the then Sharqi shaikh lived here and died in 1977 or 1978. During Abdullah b Hamdans time here, he would lend people money or dates. If a man borrowed ten rupees, in a years time he had to pay back twenty. That is a lot of difference. In the winters, a poor man might go to him and say I need some dates. Abdullah b Hamdan would tell him: Go to the store and take three or four sacks. The man would do this and Abdullah b Hamdan would say to his secretary: Write down that this man has had three or four sacks and value each one at ten rupees. This at a time when a sack of dates was one rupee. So the poor man couldnt possibly pay him back, and he would lose his garden to Abdullah bin Hamdan. The debtor was allowed to stay and work his garden and take enough to keep himself and his family, but everything else went to Abdullah b Hamdan who ended up owning two thirds of the gardens of Qidfa. After his death, people got their gardens back

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but they had to buy them. My cousins got theirs back in 1989, and they had to pay double what it was worth because someone else wanted it.

At Hudaiba, a young man commented: I understand from my grandfather and other old men, who heard from their grandfathers and so on, that a long time ago, before the Qawasim, the people of Hudaiba owned their own gardens. They worked for each other, they got into debt with each other, and families went up and families came down. Hudaiba didnt produce everything they needed, like fish, salt, or cloth so they exchanged with the people of Ras al-Khaimah town or Julfar what they produced for what they needed. This involved buying in advance, against the future harvest of dates or grain. So if this was then ruined by locusts or disease, they were in debt. People also needed to borrow money on occasion, perhaps for compensation, or to borrow food if a harvest had been lost, so they borrowed from merchants and rulers. Again, their security was their future crops, and if they couldnt pay, then the lender took over the garden and the former owner became its baidar. Ive been told of actual examples of this happening. The best people to borrow from were the Maktum of Dubai; they always gave time to pay or even cancelled the debt. Other ruling families were quite the opposite. My grandfather was told by his father that about a hundred years before, merchants started buying date gardens and lending money in the area between Shimal and Fahlain. When a man was in debt to these merchants, if his crop that year didnt cover all the debt, but only the amount borrowed, they took the lot, leaving the man little or nothing to live on. If a man owed a hundred bunches of dates, and his normal harvest was three hundred bunches, but the actual harvest was only a hundred, the whole hundred bunches went to the creditor. I see debt coming in with big merchants who lived outside. There was debt before, there has always been debt, but it was between members of the jamaa who were more understanding and charitable. Also there was then more land to take up, so a debtor could work hard and pay back over time and stand on his own feet again. Later, so much land had been taken over by the big merchants and the rulers, this option had gone.

Authorities such as Lienhardt (1993; 96 – 7), Serjeant (1995 [1968]; 508) and Villiers (1940; 323 – 40) considered that merchant investors in marine enterprises drew in the necessary boat owners and crews by advancing credit which provided the labour and basic equipment and enmeshed the boat owners and crews with debt. Lienhardt (1993; 97 – 8) wrote: These accounts [of Gulf pearl fishing and merchant voyaging, when both both flourished in the past] made it apparent that debt and profit sharing were closely connected and that, together, they lay at the centre of the traditional economic system. I had, however, thought of profit-sharing and debt only in the context of economic relations. In Kuwait and Falaika, speaking to men who well remembered the circumstances in which they had once worked at sea, I had it made very clear to me that they also belonged within moral re-

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lations…. The moral situation lay in the relation between the owner of the boat and the sailors who worked in the boat. This was a relation of patron and client, and the client had a moral expectation of being helped and looked after by his patron, who was also, usually, his creditor. Because of profit sharing, the sailors were not, strictly speaking, the employees of the boat owner. They were his company of followers, jamaa.

From what local people said about debt and credit, it was clear that debtor and creditor were tied by moral relations as well as economic – or should have been. The sharing of profits had a converse of sharing of risks, and this sharing engendered the moral relations that bound working communities or jamaa. These jamaa encompassed the community of an enterprise, its investors and working participants, as much as a community that lived, married and worked together for livelihood and profits. Within the study area, participants in enterprises for profits, sharing risk, had no implications of patron or client. Lienhardts use of these terms seems to us to ignore the reality of economic relations depending on contracts based on payment in shares by free individuals, jurally and politically competent in their own right (Lancasters 1999; 299 – 302) with no implications of patron or client. Moral values held across the study region assume the competent to be generous and to look after those less competent; that is a vital part of social identity, whether a person identifies him or herself as bida, bedu, jabbali, or hadhri. Each is generous and protective of others over time and in different contexts, each behaves honourably; generosity and the protection of others are conceived of as diffuse relations, not one to one. Sharing and risktaking are part of this ethos, as is the need to treat others as equals before God. The elderly Yamahi at Qidfa remarked, You say you have read that in some places the nakhuda of a pearling boat or a commercial fishing boat gave credit or loans to good crew members and so set up a debt relation so that these good workers would have to work for him. I can see that this could happen, but in my experience – not just in Qidfa but in Dibba and Khor Fakkan – I dont know of any examples of this happening.

In the coastal places of the study region, crew members were men of the jamaa or known to the community and needed the work. Instead of seeing debt as a sort of economic disease, which gave the rich an opportunity to exploit the poor Lienhardt (1993; 99) came to see a moral situation where pearl merchants and boat owners had thought it dishonourable to seize the assets of debtors poorer than themselves. Kanoo (1997; 44,46) wrote that his grandfather, Hajji Yusuf Kanoo, had lost an immense amount of money in the late 1920s and early 1930s in Bahrain, but gave to families who were finding it hard to survive. In Ras al-

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Khaimah, the generosity of the al-Assad family in the hard times of the early 1940s in not pressing for the payment of debts and in giving food to the needy is remembered by many. The other face of debt is credit; a person offering credit to another puts the taker of credit in debt to the other. The purpose of taking credit and placing oneself in debt is to engage in an enterprise for livelihood and profits. Enterprises entail risk, which is the reason for those engaged in an enterprise to share the rewards or losses in accordance to their work, that is, in relation to what they have contributed to the enterprise – labour, skills, responsibilites, investment. Rewards equal profits above costs, and the ability to extend credit to other enterprises; losses mean the inability to fund costs or to supply ones family with the means of livelihood and so debt. Overall, most enterprises most of the time at least covered their costs and provided sufficient profits for people to keep their families and to invest in small ways. Investment often needed actual cash, and those most likely to have money as actual coins were traders, including shop-keepers, and those in the communities who were successful in their own enterprises. Many peoples enterprises were made possible by investment in time, goods or money by family members and close relations. It was also possible to get money for small investments using goods but accounting for these goods in money terms. A former fisherman in Ras al-Khaimah town explained: If I needed to buy materials for making a new net, or to buy ropes, or if someone had inherited a boat and needed money to do it up, we borrowed from traders. I mean the traders who were the shop-keepers in the suq, the market, not big merchants. It was small sums of money – three dirhams from that shopkeeper, five from this, ten from another, and each trader wrote down the amount. They were the shop-keepers we normally dealt with in the market. We paid them back in fish, either before or after the loan. We sold the trader fish, but he paid you more than it was worth, and you gave him more fish later to pay him back. Or he might pay you in nails or rope, if that was what you needed but didnt have the money. Basically, you paid by exchanging fish for nails or rope, or net material. It was very small scale between people who already knew each other. I inherited my fishing boat from my father. He died when I was very small, so the boat was used by my uncle and cousins, and my mother always got her shares of the profits as the owner. My father, like most people, bought the boat on credit. In those days, if someone wanted to build a boat he used what money he had or could get by selling half a date garden or some camels, or whatever. The rest he borrowed from a merchant or a trader. He used the borrowed money to buy the wood and hire the carpenters, and the boat was built on the beach by his house. When the boat was finished, he bought the nets, rope, traps, whatever else was needed, with his own or with borrowed money, or he worked together with a cousin or nephew or neighbour who

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had a net or traps. While using the boat, he would take only a crewmans share until the debt or debts had been paid off, even though he was the owner. The creditor got the owners share of 50 % until the debt was paid. After that, the fisherman would start to invest his profits in goats, camels, date gardens….. My father owned part of a date garden which I inherited, and my mother owned goats, which I inherited. This was how everyone started. Some didnt have to borrow, they had enough money by selling something. Most fishermen owned their own boats or had a share in a boat, just as most people had an interest in a date garden somewhere, or had some animals.

An Iranian trader and shop-keeper in Ras al-Khaimah town commented: The usual way of raising money here was by salaf, free loan or advance. It wasnt only small people taking small loans from shop-keepers in this way, but people like me, medium traders, borrowed in this way from bigger traders. The al-Assad did a lot of it. The borrower then sold his goods to him until he had paid back the debt, or if he was a trader, he bought his goods from him until the debt was cleared. If a man borrowed for something like a trading boat, which was nearly always a family enterprise but the family might need to borrow a bit, then that boat carried the merchants goods free or at a very reduced rate until the debt was paid. Nearly all debts and borrowings were, as far as possible, in goods or services. This wasnt because there was no money around, because usually there was, but because it was more convenient. A small man might not have spare money, but he had goods or could do a service. The rich merchants always had money. People stored money in locked metal boxes in their houses, often buried under the floor.

Former fishermen in Rams said, Raising money to go to Kuwait for work wasnt a problem. A few people needed to borrow from shop-keepers, as you tell us Lienhardt (2001; 144 –5) describes in 1953 –4. But although nobody was rich in money, most people going to Kuwait could raise the money within the family, if they didnt have it themselves. You needed a hundred rupees for your passport, and three rupees for the fare, and practically every family had that sort of money.

An earlier account of investment from the Ruus al-Jibal was given by a Dhahuri who said, The Shihuh who wintered at Siima, Sall Asfal and Ghubbina wanted to buy land in those places for building winter houses. Small pieces of building land were sold to individual Shihuh by individual Qdur Dhahuriyyin, although the whole process of selling and buying was arranged by the then madrub of Bani Qdur and Bani Abdullah Muhammad. This was about a hundred and fifty years ago. The plots of building land were paid for mostly with money, silver Maria Theresa dollars, and some articles of value, like goats, a camel, a sword. The Shihuh gradually got some fields in those places by marriage and by purchase, and they paid for them mostly in silver MT dollars. In 1970,

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when old money had to be changed for new, the then madrub had thousands of MT dollars to exchange for Qdur Dhahuriyyin.

A Naimi who had worked in the bank in Ras al-Khaimah town at that time recalled, “Bida from the mountains came down with more money in silver coins than anyone would ever have thought possible. There was always more money around than was ever admitted, and that went for the mountains as well.” Investments were largely in enterprises at coastal ports and at large oases near the coasts or inland because most commercial enterprises were by merchants who lived from money. People who lived from ownership of tribal lands and other owned resources and assets, people with mountain or coastal plain gardens, mountain grain fields, boats and fishing equipment, camel herds and goat flocks, also saw themselves as making small investments. Some of these were buying date trees or a date garden in a coastal area, planting lime trees, collecting up salt fish for trade, buying a few camels, some more goats. People also added value to their sources of profit. A Sharqi remarked: “Making and selling charcoal was more profitable than selling firewood. We could carry more charcoal, and it fetched a higher price. It was worth the effort in making it.” A Shihuh family explained: We sold grain, but we sold it as flour. The women ground the wheat in the stone handmills in the mountain farij. The stone mills grind the grain slowly, so it doesnt get too hot. This means it stores well and doesnt go rancid. The long arm, the muzaidda (lit. the increaser) of the handmill means they are easier for the women to use and grind grain more quickly than ordinary handmills. You can use very long arms so two women can work together. [Costa (1987; 233) considers these long-armed handmills grind grain almost as fast as a water mill.] We could carry more flour than grain and ask a much higher price, as everyone liked mountain wheat but no-one liked threshing or grinding grain.

Many mountain people in the Ruus al-Jibal and the western Hajar said selling mountain honey was very profitable, and some encouraged the wild bees. A Sharqi remarked, I put out this shallow dish filled with little stones and water for the wild bees. There has been no rain, so they need water, and the stones enable them to sit and drink. Because they come here for water, they will be more likely to build a nest nearby, so it will be easier for me to watch where they go and then find the honey.

Another Sharqi said, “We have these large stone water jars in the garden under the tree partly so we have cool drinking water but partly so the wild bees come and lick the evaporating water on the outside. Then we

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watch where they go, where their nests are, and find the honey.” A Shihhi recalled, “People used to put out broken storage jars that had held honey to encourage wild bees to nest in them.” The same sort of small investments in time and work can be seen in local fishing practice, where fishermen build mounds of stones on which sea grasses grow to encourage fish to gather for feeding. Habus say they bought their present mountain fields and houses over the years with money they had saved from working in date gardens, selling goats and goat products and firewood. The literature emphasises the role of debt and credit in investment and labour, probably because the writers were more concerned with the coastal towns and the importance of pearling and long distance sea trading to the merchants who represented the economies of the Gulf coastal towns. Archive information demonstrates the importance of the small local communities who provided their livelihoods from their own resources and surpluses for profits through which they participated in the regional economies. The people of these jamaa considered that in the past they had been ghani, not so much in the modern sense of rich and by implication with money, but in the older sense of self-sufficient. While communities in different places produced different goods, exchanges in various modes between individuals and families of communities in different environments enmeshed these families in networks of economic and moral relations. Local economies were constitued through moral relations of sharing in profits and loss, with the need to provide for the unfortunate and their families, before any surplus could be exchanged or sold outside the producing community. The distributive processes created symbioses between individual families in the varied environments and so built other jamaa through further moral relations of giving and exchange, debt and credit. As many pointed out, people did keep a rough account of credit and debt in gifts in their heads. As a Shihhi in Dibba Baiah said, local communities worked by sharing through contributing; debt and credit were mechanisms of account which were only tools of more important moral values. Livelihoods and small enterprises were what families did to maintain themselves and to generate a future. Credit and debt, investment and repayment by money, goods or services, sharing in risks and profits existed in all sources of livelihood and profits throughout the study area. Although for much of the time and for many people, disputes could be resolved by mediation and honourable moral relations, there were occasions when disputes had to be resolved by arbitrators working through customary and Islamic law. Wilkinson (1987; 194 – 9) and Ser-

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jeant (1991 [1970]; 195 – 207) discuss harmonisations of Islamic and customary law for Ibadi Oman, and for Hadramaut and Bahrain.

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7 Ruling and Rulers Ruling is hukma, from the root h-k-m, basically arbitration. So ruling, governing, was essentially about the arbitration of disputes, the keeping of the peace, so that people might go about their business of getting a livelihood in socially acceptable ways within the moral framework of the society; it also involved the defence of the means of livelihood by, for, or on behalf of, their owners and users. The authority of ruling derived from the acceptance of arbitrations by the parties and their supporters, and from the acceptance of – or acquiescence in – other decisions affecting participating members of communities. Community, jamaa is shorthand, the local description of the people who live, work, and marry together and so associated with an area, but its totality of individuals was not bounded by descent or locality. Community described egocentred fluid and flexible social groups associated with a series of places. Power was rather about power to, the enablement of each member to participate fully, according to custom, in the life of the community within his/her abilities and means. Within a society so constituted, rule was the concern of all participants. Since ruling was the keeping or rebuilding of the peace so that all might go about their business, with disputes resolved through mediation, arbitration, and compensation, the principles of ruling were articulated around jural and moral concepts, and its dynamic processes were exercised by free individuals as members of a number of defined and undefined groupings, acting with regard to the best material and moral interests for the present and future. Individuals needed to take account of ambiguous and paradoxical demands on their judgement, as situations arose that required action; many actions could be justifiable and acceptable, yet also criticised as inappropriate and unjustifiable. Free individuals made their own decisions, and were responsible for their actions. Jural concepts about ruling included: types of ownership of resources; a variety of contractual processes enabling access to and distribution of production, and the defence of livelihood; and types of protection for the weak or disadvantaged. Ruling had to be just, adil, and unjust or tyrannical rule could arouse armed opposition as a defence of honour. Just behaviour and the defence of honour were concerns within

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a community, within a tribe, between communities and between tribes, and between communities, tribes, and rulers. The chapter examines briefly what was expected of rulers; it then sets out local terms for individuals who fulfilled some of the functions of ruling, followed by local descriptions of ruling in the past. Accounts of regional rationales of ruling are followed by those of local communities in the past, with comments by local people on the functioning of their local rationales, and the revenues and buildings associated with ruling. The chapter ends with changes in the role and function of rulers and local communities. Local information from the archive illustrates each section. Relations between rulers and individuals or families who accepted, on any occasion, his judgement or decision, were flexible. Rulers in this region in the past did not have subjects; tribespeople said, “we looked towards”, “our faces were turned to”, “we followed”, or “we were with”, various ruling families of the region. Most people, seen by outside observers as subjects of a ruler (e. g. Whitelock 1836 – 8; 33), saw themselves for much of their lives as independent of any interaction with a ruler; they managed their own lives. People evaluated demands by rulers for tax or military service against the efficacy of the protection being offered in return, and often found it wanting. Within these societies, rulers were rather shaikhs who gave good advice and protection, or hakkam, arbitrators of last resort to keep the peace. It was external polities that needed rulers as symbolic representations of local populations; they needed leaders who could be held responsible for their followers and control them. Both internal and external demands wanted the keeping of peace. External states, such as the British administration in India (if not always their representatives on the Trucial Coast), assumed this would be obtained by a rulers control; local groups considered ruling to be achieved by contracts, negotiations, and direct participation, and the ability to move away or to use another hakkam if the first was ineffective. Following was frequently used by British commentators on nineteenth century Trucial Coast political organisation, and by some in the archive about the recent past, to describe relations between rulers and people in a time when rulers spoke for the community to the outside, they were mediators between local communities or tribes, and arbitrators for those who needed. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Qawasim shuyukh of the lower Gulf coast worked as amir with Wahhabi religious shuyukh; amir were leaders, organisers, of civil and military concerns, working with religious authorities. Rulers were hakkam, arbitrators if needed; as shaikhs,

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they spoke for their followers and for those who asked to be represented by them to similarly constituted groups, or to the agents of outside and foreign polities; and organisers for the defence of livelihood and reputation. Rulers needed revenue to maintain themselves, their families, officials, retainers and supporters. Zakat and other taxation of local produce, fees for use of markets provided by the ruler, for arbitrations [not for the arbitration as such but for the costs of recording the decision] and other services, and duties on transit and carrying trade were one base; the other was personal and family wealth from pearling, sea and land trade, and agricultural estates. In Ras al-Khaimah and its region, pearling, the sea and land carrying trade, local sea and land trade, fishing, local agricultural produce and crafts were taxed for revenue. The payment of taxes, fees and customs duties acknowledged the role of the ruler in providing defence, services for the better functioning of trade, and charity for the needy; payments for services provided were regarded as a form of legitimizing rule, a recognition of a just society. There could be inherent tensions between the ability of a ruler or of local community and tribal leaders to provide these benefits. Like other rulers in the wider region, the Qawasim family had landed estates producing agricultural produce and, more importantly for wealth, were involved in pearling and sea trade. In many ways, revenue production was regarded as a family estate for family livelihood (Lorimer 1908; vol i. 1547: Heard-Bey 1996; 438, n13: and scattered remarks in the archive material). Within the tribal arena and among their followers, rulers and ruling families were respected as competent arbitrators, defenders of interests, and as honourable and generous men. In certain agreed and particular situations, they had a certain authority and some coercive power. In general, rulers had reputations among families and followers, and to a lesser extent, among a wider community of tribal shaikhs, tribespeople, merchants and townspeople. Several members of a ruling family and of tribal leading families had these combinations of attributes, recognised by the title shaikh, pl. shuyukh. At its most basic, shaikh is a courtesy title, given to any older and respected man. Shuyukh should be more than ordinary men, exemplifying above the common mean virtues and attributes held in respect by the community; knowledge of customary learning, skills in arbitration and mediation, high competence and success in defence of communal interests, and generosity. Men who repeatedly demonstrated these qualities were in demand as settlers of disputes; their advice was taken seriously and often followed. They were shuyukh when needed, when cus-

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tomary processes and practices were, for whatever reason, inadequate. Some men were shuyukh largely inside their tribe or locality, or known for an ability in a particular area of expertise. Others had reputations that spread across tribe and locality, with more emphasis on acumen in maintaining and defending group interests, ability as successful spokesmen for their groups or for any individual or group under their protection, and as competent and successful settlers of disputes by mediation. These men were mediating shaikhs. Individuals and small groups from different tribal or local groups met at public watering places, at winter grazing areas, while moving to their various owned resource areas, at and on the way to and from markets, at mosques, at fishing grounds and pearling grounds, and at summer date gardens. It was at such places that disputes arose between members of other groupings and needed to be settled for the general good. Disputes were as much about justice and honour defended as about resources as such; Nadjmabadi (1992; 336 – 7) notes the same concern on Larak, and this can be demonstrated across the Arabian peninsula. Respected men of a disputants group were needed to verify identities and rights to access to localities, while those of uninvolved groups were approached or put themselves forward as possible mediators [invited to broker possible solutions to a dispute, but whose solutions were not binding on the disputing parties] or as arbitrators [whose decisions are accepted in advance by the disputing parties]. Many tribesmen [and women, in certain situations] could act in ways that shuyukh were expected to; from information in the archive, they did. Tribesmen and women were hospitable, generous to the needy, gave protection to those who asked and tried to resolve their disputes, knew customary law and practice for most occasions, defended their interests, and attempted to settle disputes in accordance with customary law so that all could go about their business. In the literature and the archive material, ruling shaikhs were represented as in some way other than ordinary tribespeople. They were constituted as members of a specific family, usually but not always with tribal roots and a place in Arab tribal genealogy, and their interests were largely family interests. Their position was in one aspect as a family among families, and in another, simultaneously, as a family, often from outside, with functions of greater reputation and abilities demonstrated by interaction with both similarly constituted families and outside polities. The crucial functions for ruling families were their roles as arbitrators of last resort, their association with a qadi who provided Islamic legal guidance for dispute settlement, the ability to collect zakat (the religious tax on produce),

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the provision of a market, the ability to provide a degree of coercive force by guards paid for from zakat, and their recognition by outside polities. Tribal shaikhs and shaikhly families were mediators and arbitrators when asked, spokesmen between tribespeople and others, defenders and promoters of tribal interests, and some collected zakat for a ruler. Rulers, ruling families, shaikhs and shaikhly families operated within the local and regional tribal system, and with the representatives of other political systems and of wider entities. Tribespeople did this too but on their own behalf and with individual members of outside polities or entities; rulers and shaikhs did so as spokesmen of tribally or locally identified groups with the representatives of outside polities, each with the capacity to make contractual agreements. A ruler or shaikh could get any such contractual agreement accepted and practised by those for whom he was speaking only if the agreement were acceptable to them. He had few real powers of coercion, since his authority derived from acceptance of his advice and recommendations. If these were unacceptable, people turned to other members of his family, or to other similar families of other tribes, for situations in which they needed that sort of advice or recommendation. For tribespeople, a shaikh had functions to fulfil; if he didnt, there was little coercive power and no patron-client relationship that would keep tribespeople loyal to him. There were no pyramidal hierarchies of authority to be invoked; each situation assumed to summon support from tribespeople for a shaikh or ruler was judged by each man on its merits and his interests, both personal and wider. Shaikhly families often disputed between themselves over possible sources of income and livelihood; the published sources often regard this as a lack of control by the presumed head of the family, but it was as much about internal family dynamics and the exercise of shaikhly functions by its various members. Heard Bey (1996) presents the change in regional power during the 19th century from the Qawasim of the lower Gulf coast to the Nahyan of Abu Dhabi largely in terms of the manner in which the two ruling families were constituted, and how each managed relations between themselves and the tribal groupings that looked towards them. Shaikhs of different tribes or groupings within tribes might build alliances that enabled tribespeople to transport goods to markets or to escort people to summer sites from the Gulf coast to the Indian Ocean coast. It was commonly held throughout the wider region that shaikhs had the responsibility to represent their groups to the agents of external polities, and to deal with demands made by these external agents. These patterns of action sound as if there may have been a hierarchy of

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administrative function between shaikhs and tribespeople; but while a shaikh or ruler advised a course of action, individual tribesmen chose to accept it or not. Only in an overtly contractual situation such as a defensive raid or a formally declared war could tribesmen be commanded; even then, the ruler or shaikh might summon the tribes, but their answers could not be guaranteed, as shown in archive material. From documents, the Ruler of Kalba successfully called on Dahaminah and Bani Kaab of Wadi al-Qawr against an incursion by Bani Jabir from Masqat territory in 1939 (Walker 1996; vol 5, 547); Badger/Ruzaiq (1871; 233) commented that when Abd al-Aziz, the Wahhabi Amir, sent orders to the Qawasim and the Utub to abandon pearling and send all ships to attack Masqat, some did, but others did not; and Floor (1985; 17) from Wimsons 1674 report, concerning Masqats unsuccessful attack on Bassein, stated Several times the war drum had been beaten and not enough men had presented themselves. A shaikhs reputation and following was rarely the only one in an identified and named tribal grouping; usually there were more, partly from geographical spread and numbers of people, and also from different ideas on what course of action was likely to be successful and/or more honourable in a situation. Each politically identified grouping built ideas of shaikh from circumstances and its interpretations of common jural and moral concepts in relation to these circumstances. Archive material indicates that local people recognised changes over time in the leading families of the tribal sections and tribes that are the politically identified groupings. As these groupings changed over time, together with changes in circumstances, ideas and practice of ruling and interpretations of common jural concepts, rule itself varied in detail, though not in general principles. There are somewhat different accounts of what a shaikh should be, or how he acted, although the common themes of maintaining peace, defence of tribal livelihoods and acting as a spokesman to other tribes and to agents of other polities are constants (eg Dresch 1989: Lancasters 1999; 71 – 74: Lienhardt 1975). A tribe had, usually, more than one man in a family and more than one family capable of fulfilling the role. Some tribes say they have no shuyukh, or alternatively, each is a shaikh, in an absolute extension of the logic in being a shaikh.

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Local terms for persons fulfilling roles in aspects of ruling Local terminologies show slightly different constituent ideas in and between tribal groupings; terminologies were not exact synonyms, and were influenced by regional political practices. Kabir, the big man, was widely used and recognised, it was self-explanatory. A Murri from Maarid commented, There is customary law in the sense that families, if they can, sort out disputes within and between families. In the past, if they couldnt, they went to the kabir. There used to be a kabir at Burairat, and in Shimal it was bin Qaysi, and before him, it was his father. If they couldnt settle the matter, it went to the ruler or the qadi, depending on the cause of the dispute, in Ras al-Khaimah town. Now of course it goes to the courts with lawyers.

A Shihhi remarked: A kabir was the man of widest experience and competence in that particular group. He could be a rashid, who had a good knowledge of customary law; he could be a hakim, who was a man of unusually wide experience, learning and skills, who understood peoples minds and the reasons for their actions. Or the kabir could be a head of a household.

Rashid [following the right way, intelligent, mature] was widely used and recognised; a Zaab at Bu Bagra explained: “A rashid is a tribesman who knows customary law; an amir is a tribesman appointed by the ruler to communicate between ruler and tribe; a shaikh represents his tribe, he is of his tribe.” A Shihhi at Dibba Baiah remarked: “The shaikh of Lima was really a rashid, but a very good one so that people from quite a distance went to him for advice.” Another Shihhi, talking about Dibba Baiah, explained: “Haiyir, which was owned by the Naqbi, was a village, qurya, and not a farij because it was where the Naqbi hakim lived. He collected up their zakat for Muhammad bin Salih, the shaikh of Dibba Baiah, and I dont know when that started.” In al-Jir, some Dhahuriyyin said, All the groups of Dhahuriyyin, particularly those groups who take their name from a place rather than a descent group, have a madrub, someone who is experienced, practised. He is like a kabir or a rashid, a knowledgeable and senior man that people go to for advice and mediation.

A Khanbuli Shihuh stated, Muhammad bin Ali bin Salim al-Khanbuli, who died maybe a couple of years ago, wasnt really the shaikh of the Khanabila of Bani Shutair Shihuh because we dont have shaikhs. He was the ras al-Taifa, the head of the trib-

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al section, the fakhdh. He was a respected, older and knowledgeable man, a skilled negotiator with the non-Khanabila world, he was a wasit, a mediator, between the Khanabila and those who werent Khanabila. The shaikh of the Mahbib you were told about is also dead. He was the Mahbib equivalent of our ras al-Taifa, although I dont know if he was called that or what word Mahbib use. The ras al-Taifa was like the rashid and madrub that other tribal groups in the Ruus al-Jibal have.

A Haslamani said, We call the seriously knowledgeable man who sorts out disputes that families cant the maarraf. He mediates between the disputants. Usually disputes between families are sorted out by the senior men of both families. If they cant resolve it, then they agree to call in the local amir who is more knowledgeable and experienced – the maarraf.

Amir, Amir [Wehr 1980,27; commander: Lane 1984, i, 97; one having, holding, or possessing command; a person whom one consults] is used widely to mean the man having command and the man whom people consult. The meaning given in Lane fits with local usage, the meaning in Wehr is consistent with the Wahhabi amir. A Zaabi definition of amir as a tribesman appointed by the ruler to communicate between ruler and tribespeople and of shaikh as the man representing his tribe was made by many others. Usually the same man fills both roles, as with the Dahaminah and Mazari in the Western Hajar, where the same shaikhly families have continued for several generations. The Dahaminah Amir of Munaiy said, My family, the al-Nasr, have been the Amir for a long time; my father before me, his father before me, [followed by a sequence of eight names]; before him, I cant remember the order without checking because it is all Ali, Nasr, and Said. These werent all father to son, sometimes the title went along a line of brothers and then down to the next generation. The first to rule Munaiy who is known was Muhammad b Abdullah al-Hanjari; the al-Nasr come from the al-Hanjari, and he was long before the Qawasim ruled from Sharjah [1815]. The Bani Kaab in this area have always shared an Amir with us.

In other areas and for other tribal groupings, a change from one family to another took place when a ruler wanted to integrate tribes more closely, as in Shimal in the early 1920s. But as “politics is what the ruler and the people could agree on”, stated by a Shihuh and widely confirmed by others, rulers in practice needed to appoint experienced local men of good standing in their community as amir, already acknowledged as kabir, rashid or hakim. Amir may be a term deep in local political history, as a

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young man described the Hudaiba of three to four hundred years ago in terms of harat and their amir, and continued: “All these places, Hudaiba, Ghubb, Shimal, Luqsaidat, all these date garden areas, had amir.” Amir was the term people used for their local political leader at the date and fruit growing areas at the coastal sayh and the mountain oases of the western Hajar, and at the coastal towns of Rams and Shaam; that is, in those areas that traditionally followed the Qawasim. In Rams, an elderly Ramsawi commented, The Tunaij at Dhaid never had anything to do with Rams. The confusion arises because the first Shaikh Saqr married a daughter of Muhammad bin Abd ar-Rahman bin Salih, who was from the bin Suwailim of Diriyya in Najd and sent here as the Wahhabi missionary a bit more than two hundred years ago. Around the same time, the first Shaikh Saqr also married a daughter of the Tunaij shaikh in Dhaid who was also bin Salih. Shaikh Saqr appointed the Tunaij bin Salih, his father-in-law, as Amir of Rams, and some of this mans relations and retainers came with him. They were the Tunaij in Rams, and then other people who came in here took to using the name.

Shihuh, Habus, and Dhahuriyyin of the Ruus al-Jibal, and Kumazara, Khawatir in the sands, and Sharqiyyin talked of shuyukh and rarely mentioned amir. The people of the Ruus al-Jibal and the Kumazara followed or had their faces towards the shaikhs of Bani Hadiya Shihuh at Bukha and Khasab, or the Bani Shutair shaikhs at Dibba Baiah and Kumzar. A senior Bani Hassan Habus said, “We used the bin Malik shuyukh at Bukha when we were unable to settle disputes ourselves, or when we needed someone to represent us as a tribe to the Qawasim, as in the fighting between Habus and Shaikh Sultan bin Salim about being taxed.” An elderly Habsiyya recalled, You remember that two-storey building up at Slai al-Quda? The lower floor was a granary, and the upper floor was where the notable men, the ayyan, discussed the settlement of disputes and the affairs of the district, the shaun al-bilad. That building was a ghurfa, and on the coast it would have been called a buri, a tower. We didnt have a shaikh, but it was where the men discussed the settlement of disputes and made their decisions, like a government. All the men who went there are dead now.

Dhahuriyyin too followed bin Malik shaikhs, but of Khasab; a Dhahuri at al-Jir stated, Dhahuriyyin used to follow Bani Kamal, the shuyukh before bin Malik. When the line of Bani Kamal died out, and we dont know when that was, we followed bin Malik. We stayed with bin Malik until the Qawasim took over. Even after a bin Malik wakil, agent, was appointed by the Qawa-

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sim (1780s?), we, our group, tended to go to Ras al-Khaimah rather than use the wakil. We stayed with the Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah to this day.

A Kumzari said, The Kumazarah have a shaikh in Khasab, he is Shaikh Hamad Muhammad Zarafi. Thirty or forty years ago there was a Kumazari shaikh in Dibba Baiah and he was Shaikh Hassan bin Rahma; there are maybe fifty Kumazarah in Dibba Baiah and Dibba Baiah is all Shutair. The shaikh was the hukm, the government. I have no idea why there was a Kumzari shaikh at Dibba Baiah, there just was. The shaikhly family of the Shutair in Khasab was al-Mahadi and the shaikhly family of the Hadiya was bin Malik.

In Lima, the Shaikh commented, The Kumzari shaikh of Bani Shutair – Muhammad Hassan al-Kumzari – wasnt really Kumzari but Zarafi, but either his wife or his mother was Kumzari. Muhammad bin Hassan al-Zarafi died in 2002. There are two sections of Kumazarah: Ghushban, where Muhammad bin Salih of Dibba Baiah came from, and al-Aql, where Muhammad bin Hassan came from, and he was khall to Muhammad bin Salih.

At Dibba Baiah, a group of elderly Shihuh explained, Lima and Dibba Baiah are all Shihuh and always have been. The hukm, government, of Dibba was in Lima earlier, and the forefathers of the man you met in Khasab were the shuyukh two hundred years ago or more. Then the Abu al-Khair were the shuyukh. Then Dibba was taken over by Ras al-Khaimah and Dibba went through a period of depression. At last, we threw off the government of Ras al-Khaimah. After this, we brought in this Shutairi shaikh from the Kumazarah. It was we Shihuh who did this, we brought in this Shutairi from Kumzar. He was the shaikh for Dibba Baiah and all the places that belonged to Dibba Baiah. This was a long time ago because there were fifteen Kumazari shuyukh without a break. The last shaikh was Muhammad bin Salih and after him, Qabus took over by popular demand in 1972. The Naqbiyin at Haiyir had their own government and governed themselves, but under Dibba Baiah. And all the Sharqiyyin in the surroundings of Dibba Baiah, like for example Wamm, paid zakat to the shaikh of Dibba Baiah.

A younger Shihuh, interested in the history of Dibba Baiah, elaborated, When the original shaikh of the family of Al Muqabil died, around the time of Hassan bin Rahma [al-Qasimi], the people of Dibba Baiah went to Bukha if they needed a shaikh because the Bani Muqabil shaikh left no successor. However, the wife of the dead shaikh was pregnant when he died. The Kumazari shaikh, who was also the shaikh of Lima, and very closely linked to Larak, was asked to be the shaikh of Dibba Baiah as well. They asked him because he would be a useful person, he would be a good go-between, as Kumzar, Larak, Lima and Dibba Baiah were all close-

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ly linked by trade at that time. So the Kumzari shaikh married the widow of the Muqabil shaikh and the zakat was split, half went to Lima and half stayed here. The widow, now married to the Kumzari shaikh, gave birth to a son and he was Zaid bin Yasir or perhaps Yasir bin Zaid. The Kumzari shaikh later married elsewhere and by this wife he had a daughter. In due course, Yasir bin Zaid married the daughter of the Kumzari shaikh and this was the line that produced Muhammad bin Salih. So the people of Dibba Baiah had a shaikh of the original line and a link to Kumzar.

A Khanbuli Shihuh commented, Belonging to Dibba meant that the people owning these places went, in the first instance, to the Shaikh of the Shutair at Dibba Baiah. Belonging to meant following the shaikh a man went to. The shaikh was also the person a man went to if he needed a piece of paper to go to Oman, or for an introduction to someone; a mans shaikh vouched for him.

In Lima, the Shaikh commented, Our genealogy is known for certain for seven generations back, and those descendants are Bani Salim Ali; then there is a gap to another chain of four names, then another gap to bin Mansur bin Ali. We are sure these people are in a descent line; the four groups of Bani Mansur, Bani Shawkhat, Bani Braiyyil and Bani Salim Ali are not separate, unrelated groups coming in. About the Shaikh of Kumzar who became the Shaikh of Lima and Dibba Baiah. This shaikh was chosen by two men of each tribe of Dibba Baiah and organised by the then Shaikh of Lima who was from Bani Shawkhat. The two representatives of each tribe went to Kumzar to interview possible candidates. When the new shaikh was chosen, he had to take an oath/iqsam in front of the Shaikh of Lima, and was on a three month probationary period.

In Dibba Baiah, the widely respected and most knowledgeable source for local history, Khamis Said, explained, The Muqabil were Shihuh and Shutair and came from Hail in as-Sirr, and before that, from Bukha. This was a long time ago, when Hamad Said was the ruler of Zanzibar (Wilkinson 1987; 14, 55: Hamad Said established a coastal commercial state based on Masqat and including Zanzibar, and took Khor Fakkan and Jazirat al-Hamra to link Indian Ocean and Gulf trade; he ruled from 1783 – 1792 and his policies were extended by his successors). Before that, the people of Dibba didnt have a shaikh; if they needed one they used the Naqbi shaikh at Haiyir or the Sharqi shaikh. Both of these were shuyukh who mediated, they were not ruling shuyukh. Before the Muqabil shaikh, there was a shaikh of the Harth, who were the important people around in the wider region at the time, and this was possibly in the Yaariba period. The first and only Muqabil shaikh was Sulaiman bin Muhammad Abu al-Khair; he was the one who came from Salhiyya or Hail by way of Masafi with four hundred and sixty men, sixty of whom

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went on to Oman. When he died, he was followed by Yasir bin Zaid who was a Kumzari and married Sulaimans widow. He was followed by Salih bin Ali Hassan, who was followed by Mahdi bin Ali. He was followed by Rahma bin Hassan who was followed by Abdullah Sinan who was followed by Salih bin Muhammad, who was followed by Zaid Sinan, brother of Abdullah Sinan. Zaid Sinan was followed by Muhammad Mahadi who was followed by Hassan bin Rahma, the son of Rahma bin Hassan. Hassan bin Rahma was followed by Ahmad bin Hamdan bin Malik who was thrown out and followed by Ali Zaidu who was followed by Muhammad Salih, the son of Salih bin Muhammad. He was thrown out, and Ahmad bin Malik returned and thrown out again, and he was followed by Muhammad bin Salih. It was Sulaiman b Muhammad Abu al-Khair who rebuilt Dibba qalaah on the foundations of the Portuguese fort, following it exactly.

A Shihhi from Hail in Dibba Baiah explained how the Shaikhs of Dibba Baiah ended, Shaikhs became unsatisfactory. The people of Dibba Baiah decided they wanted to join Oman, and a qayid, someone who registered our wish, was sent up from Oman. When he said all was quiet, a Wali, a governor, came. Muhammad bin Salih made difficulties because he wasnt being appointed, and he retired to Sharjah, he was ill. He recovered and came back again for a bit, and he was then induced to go to Masqat where he became ill again, and eventually died. He had no children and there was noone to take over in the Kumzari line.

In Qidfa, a Sharqi remarked. There was a wali here, as there was at Dibba Ghurfa which is Sharqiyyin like Qidfa. Two of the walis at Dibba Ghurfa were Abdullah bin Ali and Hamad bin Sulaiman. Here in Qidfa, three generations ago, there was a slave wali here, called Mubarak bin Nasr; he was strong, competent and efficient, but not much liked. He worked with the Shaikh of Fujairah in the time when Abdullah bin Saif, a cousin of the Shaikh, was the shaikh of Qidfa. Abdullah was also capable, but he wasnt chosen as wali.

Wali, with associations of guardianship, responsible manager, was the Omani term for the official to whom the Imam, the ruler, delegated the administration of an area, usually a town, to keep the peace and to collect zakat and other taxes. The ruler usually selected the wali from his own family, or a trusted family slave, and the walis were given gardens in the locality and/or a share of revenues raised for their maintenance. The ruler of Masqat had a wali at Khasab from the late 19th century, and at Shinas and Suhar on the Batinah coast. At various times, the Qawasim of Sharjah had wali at Dibba Husn, Kalba, and Khor Fakkan on the Shamailiyya coast, and at Jazirat al-Hamra (1854), Ras al-Khaimah town, Rams and Shaam on the Gulf coast when Ras al-Khaimah was

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ruled by Sharjah. When Ras al-Khaimah ruled itself, the rulers appointed local leaders as amir who collected zakat for the Ruler. In British documents from Oman, these people are referred to as wali. British officials on the Gulf coast, following local usage, refer to these local leaders as headmen or amir. The two administrative systems come from the different Islamic schools and historical events of Oman and of Ras al-Khaimah. The range of local terms for persons fulfilling some or all of the functions of ruling show variations in how local political practices were constituted around dispute settlement, defence, and representation to the outside. Separating dispute settlement by mediation as one sort of shaikh, and ruling shuyukh who settle disputes by arbitration clarifies the term shaikh. Local views illustrate how amir and ruling shuyukh became acknowledged. At Hudaiba, a local man said, “Hudaiba was divided into five harah; each of them had an amir, and one amir was chosen as the amir of the whole of Hudaiba. The one chosen was the most sensible and influential amir.” In Ghalilah, a Shihuh remarked: We dont have an amir now. We never really had an amir here, each man governed himself, but for outside the amir was the most respected man among the ayyan, the mature men of good standing in the community. Later on, we came under the amir of Shaam, but I cant remember who that was.

Among Dahaminah, the amir commented, “The Amir was chosen by family members and a few close men, they chose the most suitable person. Everyone knew who the Amir would be, it was obvious. It was not an election, it was a ratification of a long drawn out and invisible process.” At bu Bagra, a Jabri explained how part of a family could lose its shaikhly role; “My mothers grandfather was Zaab, a big trader called Ali Abdullah atTawil, and he was the shaikh. When he died, his sons were only young, and that was how Muhammad bin Nasr was able to take over. The present Amir is his descendant.” In Dibba Baiah, a Shihuh stated: Dibba Baiah was like a jumhuriya, like a republic. The Shihuh assembled, jumharu, and made the decisions, and the shaikh implemented them, that was his work. If he didnt do it they got rid of him, and invited someone else to come in. It did happen, the Shihuh brought in Salih bin Muhammad and they got rid of him, and brought in Ahmad bin Hamdan bin Malik and sent him away, and they got rid of Muhammad bin Salih in his time.

A Khanbuli said: About the shaikh at Dibba Baiah. The Khanabila removed Muhammad bin Salih as Shaikh of Dibba; we threw him out and shut the door in his face. And we brought in Hamdan b Ahmad b Malik from

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Bukha and installed Ahmad bin ash-Shaikh as qadi. This was done by my grandfather among others. Later, we removed Hamdan and reinstated Muhammad bin Salih.

Omani and British documents mention events which may be these in 1941 at Dibba Baiah (Walker 1996; vol 5, 726). At al-Ghuna near Madha in the Omani enclave, a Bani Saad recalled, Bani Saad are Shihuh from Shutair. Ghuna is all Shutair, Madha is half Shutair and half Hadiya. When I was a small boy, sixty-five years ago, there was the meeting in Madha to decide which ruler we should follow. Both the Qawasim rulers came, the Sharqi of Fujairah, and the Wali of the Sultan of Oman from Suhar, and Muhammad bin Salih from Dibba Baiah. We had used Muhammad bin Salih as our hukm, government, our final arbitrator, hakkam, but then we felt there was no profit in remaining with him, we needed a stronger government. Muhammad bin Salih al-Kumazari wasnt popular here, he was too busy in the Qawasim-Sharqi quarrels. We chose Oman, because with Oman we had freedom, and because the Wali, Hamad bin Saif Al bu Saidi, was a good man, a very good man.

Versions of these events are recorded in Walker (1994; vol, 5, 662, 728 during of 1941 – 2. No one locally mentioned merchants as such [members of the Sirkal / Sirkar family were local agents of the British Political Resident] or traders exercising mediation, although people did say they had asked traders for opinions on proposed investments, business disputes and other matters. Lienhardt (2001; 146 – 7) describes the role played in Falaika Island, part of Kuwait, by the head of a family of trading boat owners for the members of the 270 strong community of families, most of whose menfolk had worked as sailors for the trading boat owning brothers. The eldest brother was not only elderly and experienced but also a religious scholar who offered advice and peace making to complainants from his community, and the three brothers were communicators and mediators between the Kuwaiti authorities and their local community.

Local descriptions of ruling in the past Statements such as before, we ruled ourselves, we managed our own affairs described the general situation of the past. British and Arabic documents record the same for northern Oman and Musandam (Walker 1994; vol 5, 526 – 7), where in 1938 Sultan Said explained to the British Consul

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in Masqat that he was unable to comply with an order to stop the Walis of Shinas and Suhar co-operating with Ras al-Khaimah over security in Wadi al-Qawr, since to do so he would be in effect breaking up a time honoured custom … For centuries, the Sultan went on to say, these peoples [in the wider area] had maintained constant intercourse with each other and such problems as grazing and water rights, arrest of fugitive robbers and trade matters had invariably been settled direct by the Shaikhs and Headmen concerned on each side without reference to the Muscat government. Madha (Walker 1994; vol. 4, 806), Masafi (vol.4, 489), Rams (vol.3, 435), the Khawatir (vol.5, 807) and the Habus (vol.3, 438) were said to have been independent or virtually so in the 1930s and 40s, and for the Habus, up to 1955. Archive information describes similar situations for other areas.

In the coastal towns At Ras al-Khaimah town, an elderly Iranian trader remarked, When I was young, long before Unification in 1970, a person or family was identified according to the shaikh they went to when they couldnt sort out problems. We came from Qishm, so our shaikh was the Qasimi; he was the ruler here, he was the hukm.

At Maarid, a man recalled: In the old days, if a man needed to see the shaikh, he knew where the shaikh was, so he picked up his camel stick and went off, and found the shaikh sitting in the shade of a samra tree. He sat down and made his problem known to the shaikh, who gave his advice. Thats hukm, government. Most of the time, people didnt need a hukm, they sorted their affairs out with people they knew.

Also at Maarid, a Tunaiji said, Governments arent necessary. Everywhere used to have their own shaikh; so Shimal had Hassan bin Qaysi and Rams had bin Salih. The shuyukh sorted out disputes and they dealt with other shuyukh of other communities. Apart from that, shuyukh werent important; the important bodies in society were the families, they organised everything. Even now, families are still important. Any family, if they want a family member out of jail – and sometimes they dont – will say to Shaikh Saqr We want that family member released from jail to us and Shaikh Saqr will do this because he realises the importance of families in maintaining society.

An elderly former trader recalled:

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Keeping the peace in a market was done by the local shaikh, who might or might not appoint a local official to deal with it. In Ras al-Khaimah town, he was appointed by the ruler, in Rams by bin Salih. Dhaid had a market and so did Khatt, and their shuyukh kept the peace in their markets.

A Ramsawi commented, The Kharus who had been the government at the castle in Dhaya were part of the Yaariba from Nizwa who ruled this area before the bin Salih from Diriiyya and the bin Salih put in by the Qawasim. But the Kharus didnt really rule because the Shihuh were a jumhuriyya, they ruled by public assemblies.

Another said, There has always been government of a sort that provided security. In the past, arbitration gave security. But it was at many different levels, and the individual chose to ask for arbitration.

At Khor Khwair, a Shihi remarked, Minor difficulties and disputes were sorted out by the families. If the families couldnt resolve the matter, they went to the Amir of Shaam, bin Saif. If there was big trouble, we went to the Qawasim in Ras al-Khaimah town. It wasnt the people who were involved who went, it was the kubar, the senior and respected men, who went. So there was hukuma, keeping the peace by arbitration, but no state, dawlat.

In Shaam, a group of elderly men recalled: “There have been two families who were Amir here, and they were both Baluch. One family was the Hassan, but we cant remember the other.” An elderly trader commented, “In the past, mediation was the job of the qadi, who was the most respected and most learned of the mutawwa. He also drew up any necessary legal documents. But he didnt arbitrate, that was the job of the Amir, the hukuma, the government.” At Khasab, an elderly man said, “When I was a young man, nearly sixty years ago, there was Shaikh Hamdan bin Malik and the walis from Masqat.” A Kumazari recalled, The shaikhly family of Bani Shutair here was al-Mahadi, the Bani Hadiya shaikhly family was bin Malik, and the Kumazarah shaikh was bin Ziraf. There were endless squabbles between Shutair and Hadiya here, and they were about absolutely anything – or nothing. If people couldnt sort out disputes between themselves they would go to any shaikh – the ones here, or from Sharjah, Umm al-Qawain, Dubai or Ajman when they came here – for arbitration. All those shuyukh used to come to Khasab.

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In Dibba Baiah, an Ahl Hail remarked: “When the bida were down here, they were guests and behaved properly. They were here and used the place and some of them had property here, but they werent the salta, the authority, we had the salta.” A Bani Hadiya commented, Right in Dibba Baiah there were two forts. There was the tower of Muhammad bin Salih, the Shaikh of Dibba Baiah, and there was the qalaat, stronghold, of the Shihuh. The qalaat belonged to the Shihuh who built it together, and they did this because they were the government, the hukuma. Traders used to store their goods in it and people put their women and children in it if there was trouble from outside, and it was where people met. In those days, people had better hearts, and on the whole it was peaceable around here. The main contradiction to this were the Awaimir, who raided people on their way to and from Dubai, and they were terrible. My grandfather was killed by someone; compensation and a reconciliation were arranged, and the Shaikh came to the feast which ratified the agreement between the two families. When families sorted out matters themselves, with the help of mediatory go-betweens, the Shaikhs only role was to ratify the agreement.

At Bu Bagra, Zaab said, “Before 1970, there was a wali from Masqat at Murair, the place just north of here, and he had the square tower by the date gardens. And the shaikh had the tower on the beach, and he was the more important for the people here.”

On the sayh At Habhab the Amir explained: There were three ashair who are one qabila, tribe, here. They all went to the Sharqi shaikh when they needed arbitrations. Before Fujairah took over, our government was in our hands. For anything serious that we couldnt manage, people went to the Shaikh of Fujairah or to the Shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah. The sharia at Khatt you read about in a British document would have been the qadi sent by the Ruler to settle some long standing dispute.

In Khatt, an elderly Imam said, The tower by the old Zaab mosque was built by Zaab. The other tower in Khatt belonged to the Naqbiyin. The tower on the hill, overlooking Khatt, belonged to the Qawasim, and it was built by Shaikh Sultan. Each tower had three or four guards, and said I am the government.

A Habus said,

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Before the Qawasim took over outside Ras al-Khaimah town, the Habus used to tax goods going through their area and no-one was allowed in. If a man came to visit someone who wasnt there, the women would refuse to receive him, they would turn him away with not even a drink of water being offered. If he was found sitting outside a Habsi house by the men when they returned, he had his throat cut.

In Shimal Taht, a Shamaili recalled: That garden belongs to the Maktum of Dubai, who bought it about seventy years ago, and they built the mosque. Siba used to be the seat of the hukm, government, of the area and it belonged to Muhammad ad-Dunna. The adDunna were a local family but they died out. The centre of Shimal Taht used to be Siba, but centres move.

Another commented, “Before 1940, all these places were independent, and Shimal followed Rams.”

About the sands An elderly Khatri explained, Before, there was hukm, government, by the tribes. The shuyukh sorted out tribal disputes. There were raids, ghazzu, which took place after a killing between tribespeople not bound by hilf, alliance. Tribes bound by hilf didnt raid each other. For example, a Qitbi was killed at Khatt by a Sharqi, and then there was fighting between Qitbiyin and Sharqiyyin in the area. My mothers father, Hamad bin Rumi Bani Qitab, he killed a Sharqi. But before the killing got out of control, the shuyukh became involved and sorted it out. Fighting after killings showed we were men. Raids from outside, from the Awaimir, Manasir and Duru, were different; they raided to supply themselves with anything they could take. But these too got sorted out through tribal shuyukh – bin Hamad of the Mazari, bin Kwatin of Bani Qitab, bin Ham of the Awaimir, bin Quby of the Manasir, and bin Hilal of the Afar Duru. Before, taking dates or animals or goods or money from people wasnt stealing. Robbers robbed because they were poor. It was stealing, but it was also like raiding. Because if they could take dates or animals from someone, it showed the owners couldnt defend them and that implied they had too much. If they had been generous and shared their surplus with those who had little or nothing, they wouldnt have been raided. It is laid down that those who have much, especially if it is from good fortune rather than hard work, should give to those who are unfortunate, so that they shouldnt be forced to steal. Robbers had hidda, rage, passion; why should they have no dates and others have far above what they needed? It was an imarat ash-shiyya, authority of will.

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Another Khatri said, “Mazairi with its tower and well was a Khawatir base in the sands. But an older Khatri stated: “Mazairi belongs to Zaab; it was used to protect animals, especially the carrying animals, when there were robbers around.” An elderly Shahin Awainat commented, The qadi in Khatt was from the Rijban or Riyban family, and they were often at Husn Muwailah with us. Husn Muwailah was built by Hussain bin Muhammad al-Awaini and he was khall to Shaikh Saqr the First. The place where Husn is now used to be called Inaiz and more than two hundred years ago was all date gardens with yazara wells. The Husn was the Awaini centre, because before the Qawasim of Sharjah, the Awainat were the hukm, government for the district, controlling a corridor from Dibba Husn to Dhaid and to where the Saqr hospital is now, near al-Qusaidat. The Shahin had over two hundred slaves. The main purpose of the Husn was as a family headquarters; even if members of the family werent there, slaves were, and it was used as a place of safety by people passing through with their animals and goods. Shahin were date garden owners in Khatt, traders, and we had slaves and animals.

In the Ruus al-Jibal At Wadi Hajil, Khanabila Bani Shamaili remarked, Before seventy years ago when the Qawasim were recognised as the shuyukh, Shimal had its own shuyukh. Shimal Fowk and the Khanabila had Rashid al-Alu. Each farij was a jamaa, while the farij was associated with an aila, family. The jamaa owned the fields in common and the fields were inalienable from the farij, they couldnt be separated. Any problems about the fields were arbitrated by our shuyukh. If some families became small and others increased, our shuyukh reallocated the fields to make it fairer. And our granaries belonged to the jamaa.

An elderly Shamaili recalled, In the past, when we had a complaint or a query or wanted to get something done, we went to the shaikh and saw him or a relation or his agent, wakil, and they listened to you, and there were lots of other people there, and everyone chatted and drank coffee. Either they were able to sort out what we wanted, or we were told to go and see so-and-so, or to come back next day. Which we did, and we got what we needed.

A Habus said, “The Habus went to the same bin Malik shaikh in Bukha as Bani Hadiya who used Bukha did, while Bani Shutair Shihuh went to their shaikh in Dibba Baiah.” Another remarked: “The Habus used to

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govern themselves. When Shaikh Sultan bin Salim al-Qasimi tried to get money from us, we resisted.” A Khanbuli explained, The Qawasim were not arbitrators for the Shihuh. Shihuh and Habus had their own arbitrators. Shihuh north of al-Aini and northern Habus went to Bukha, and Shihuh south of al-Aini and southern Habus went to Dibba Baiah. In each place, there was a Shihi shaikh and a qadi. The shaikh, usually, could read and write a bit, and the qadi was fully trained in the Faith and Islamic law. The system for appointing the shaikh was democratic. Those who were concerned, or interested, or present, would go to a respected older man of standing and say We want you to be our shaikh, the present shaikh is no use. And the man would accept or refuse. If the dispute that brought a man to him was complicated or he felt he needed a religious judgement, the shaikh would send the plaintiff to the qadi. If a person took a dispute to the shaikh or the qadi, he accepted the need to accept the ruling. This was necessary because there was nowhere else to take a dispute.

In the western Hajar mountains At Ghayl the Amir stated, When we came here a long, long time ago, no-one knows when, the land was empty. Weve been here ever since, ruling ourselves, minding our own business, and getting on with life. Weve never depended on outside arbitrators like the Qawasim or ibn Saud or the Omanis. We managed everything by our own efforts and we depended on nobody, we were bedu. Each group of Mazari acknowledged an outside shaikh who might be the shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah, Dubai, Sharjah, or Oman, and this outside shaikh was the final arbitrator. This was their only function. They were hukuum, arbitrators, nothing else, and they arbitrated only when we went to them. We owed them nothing. They were a convenience not a necessity, because there were always other arbitrators. We used Ras al-Khaimah because we were here, we could use Sharjah if we wanted to. These were the ones we normally went to, especially in cases of blood. We used them maybe once or twice a year.

A Mazrui in Wadi Sfuni said, “The Mazari who used the area, the community, they were the hukm.” An elderly Maharza at Masafi commented, “The Qawasim were always around, but they didnt matter much; we ruled and organised ourselves. And the Sharqi family were here in the summers at their garden and ghurfa, and the Hufaitat had their gardens to the south. The remains of the tower were the boundary.”

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In Wadi al-Qawr, a Kaabi remarked: “Bani Kaab used to be independent, we didnt recognise a ruler and we were our own government. But then the British divided us between Oman and Abu Dhabi.” In the past local and tribal communities governed themselves until matters went so wrong that local experienced and knowledgeable men could not resolve them. Then, outside mediators were consulted, and if this was unsuccessful, matters were taken to an outside arbitrator who was the final resort. If the arbitration was unacceptable, the dissatisfied individual or family left, so removing himself from that community and allowing peace to be constructed. What were the sources of disputes? Did the context of disputes affect the process of settlement? Given mediation, compensation and reconciliation processes existed within families and communities, and between families and communities, why did fighting break out? And why did fighting manifest itself in different intensities? If the job or function of rulers was to maintain the peace, why were there wars? Rulers had retainers who were armed, but in the paradigm of the ruler as arbitrator of last resort, the armed retainers were his only source of coercive force. Archive information elaborates these points. The preferred processes were explained by a Shihuh, Ideally, and in fact usually, disputes within families are resolved inside families; disputes between families are sorted out by the senior men of both families. If they cant resolve the affair, then they agree to call in the local Amir, who has more experience. Only if that fails do the parties go to the Shaikh or ruler for arbitration. Disputes should be settled between the people involved in them, it is more honourable, but of course people dont always behave as they should; and sometimes there are real questions of amounts of compensation, or transfers of land and its exact ownership, or entitlement to a share of compensation, where people have differing interpretations of events in the past. We use oaths, iqsam, in front of witnesses, especially in matters of land ownership or inheritance. Disputes involving women, like questions of divorce and repayment of brideprice, inheritance, guardianship of minors, and their interests and property are dealt with on their behalf by their fathers and brothers. And again, inside the family; between the families; then and only occasionally the Amir; and only then, if that fails, which is very unusual if it is anything that involves women, would anyone go to the ruler or shaikh. The shaikhat, women of the Shaikhly family, dont do anything here, the women wouldnt go to them. Most disputes can be settled inside the family or the community if the disputants and their supporters behave properly and generously; but of course, they have the right to insist on their rights. Before, if a dispute couldnt be settled because one side or the other wouldnt agree – and this was usually a killing –

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to compensation, then the man and/or his family would leave and go elsewhere. And that has always happened, although it is much more difficult now.

A Shamaili said, Women can be witnesses on oath, but at only half the value of a mans. I think that was because women were so likely to die in childbirth that one of them might well be dead by the time a man needed her as a witness. The sorts of questions women are and were mostly concerned with were matters of land ownership, because of inheritance through women. There, witnesses on oath are essential. Or say, if I let someone build on my land or use it for a bit, I have witnesses to say those people dont own the land they are using. Some years ago, I had some bedu living on land I owned up the back. The men had gone away to work, and I let the women build a house, and I gave my permission to them in front of witnesses. They built a stone house; one of the conditions, which was normal, was that when they left, they had to remove the roof and take away the door, and they did this.

People also referred to making depositions in the settlement of disputes, particularly about property and inheritance, and for the transfer of property. A document dated 1211AH /1796AD (Hanthal 1987; document 1-J) records the sale of land by three men of Bukha to a man of Ghamda; the document states that the sellers had the authorisation of their families, brothers and relatives and whoever has any right in their property. Such documents were written by a katib under the instructions of a qadi, or by a mutawwa in smaller places. There were qadi in Ras al-Khaimah town who also visited Khatt, Bukha, Khasab, and Dibba Baiah, and mutawwa who wrote such documents in Shaam and Asima. Jazirat alHamra, Rams, Khor Fakkan, Kalba, Murair or Bu Baqra, and Idhn and Munaiy probably also had mutawwa. Constant conversations about changes in ownership had something of the same function for local communities in the mountains and sands. A Khanbuli Shihuh said about al-Aini, Problems are sorted out by the owners and neighbours, a general agreement of what should be done is reached and acted on. We talk endlessly about ownership, mulk, of land, slopes, cisterns, water channels and so on, and especially about changes through inheritance, gifts, sales and purchases, for this very reason, so that everyone knows. Men used to spend some of their time on the coast, at Dibba, Bukha, or Khasab, in court; they went there to make depositions for settling disputes, especially about property.

The Amir of Asima in the western Hajar recalled: “My father was the Amir before me, and he was also the mutawwa. He wrote all the docu-

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ments anyone here needed, for property, settlements of disputes, and papers to say who people were.” Despite an emphasis everywhere that there were no quarrels over water distribution or other ownership of resources, because everyone knew what they had and what everyone else had, people didnt always behave as they should and there were constant disagreements about anything or nothing, most of which were sorted out by the families and neighbours. At Shimal Taht, a Hasasna Shamaili said, “If I interfered with the stone bank that divides the flood water to our garden and the neighbouring gardens, everyone would come and beat me up, and they would be quite right to do so.” Zaab, talking about bayadir working in gardens, implied there had been disagreements between garden owners and garden workers, “There were some pretty awful bayadir, just as there are in every other lot of people.” In the Ruus al-Jibal, a Rahaibi recalled: “There was some sort of fighting between Bani Ruhaiba and Qiyaishi about a garden and the water going to it from a sayl. But it was sorted out between us. If it had gone on, we would have gone to the Amir of Shaam.” At Lahsa, there are said to be constant disagreements between the groups that share it, arising from the division of land through inheritance from women. At al-Aini, a Khanbuli commented, “The stones in the water channel to my date tree enclosure were moved by my nephew so that his tree got the water. I moved the stones back, and I spoke to his father, so that he would reprimand the youth.” Goat stealing occurred in the mountains; a Khanbuli recalled: My own father blocked up four small springs around al-Aini, because people stole the wild goats, the ones kept for meat that werent taken in at night, when the goats went there to drink. Ive been told that earlier there had been a falay at Yabana in Wadi Ghabbas, which Bani Saad, part of Bani Shamaili, destroyed because of a dispute about watering goats there.

At Lima, a Shihuh remembered, A story from a long time ago. Some people from Qabil way came to the shaikh at Lima and complained that some of their goats had been stolen during the night, and they knew the man responsible. The shaikh said Nonsense, that man was in my prison in chains; go and see for yourselves. They did so, and agreed the man was indeed in chains in the prison. When they had gone, the man revealed that he had broken out of the prison, in his chains, taken the goats and put them in a safe place, got back before dawn and put himself back in the prison.

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About Masafi, Naqbi at Daftah remarked: “The Maharza there did fight about water.” At Qidfa, on the Shamailiyya coast, a Qiyudi said, There was fighting between Dhahuriyyin and the other people of Qidfa. It started because a goat belonging to one side got into the garden of one of the other side and did some damage. Im not sure anyone remembers whether the garden was Dhahuri or the goat was. This was when everything was yarid and brushwood, there wasnt any wire netting. People were fighting with sticks and shovels, so no-one was killed. People with saws began cutting down a date tree or two in the garden and then they were cutting off the offshoots and taking them to their own gardens. This was in the time of Saif bin Muhammad al-Sharqi, who sent a mediator from Fujairah to sort it out. He ruled between 1932 – 38.

A Kaabi in Wadi al-Qawr pointed out “Our azil is a cross burnt into the right hip of the camels. It was so we could identify camels when they wandered or were raided.” Some of these disputes, sometimes leading to fighting, were in defence of owned assets/amlak, insisting on rights/ haqq, huquq; others were about defending honour – which also encompasses the defence of assets – or seeking justice, adil. The Amir of Habhab remarked: The fighting between Sharqiyyin and Khawatir around seventy years ago (IO R14/80 – 11) was khilaf, old-fashioned. It was what people did. It wasnt about anything very specific, it would be a squabble, a trading of insults or slurs between two or three men, and lasted for a month or two. Occasionally, it got out of hand, blows were exchanged, blood drawn, and it became more serious; that was why it was important to get the squabble sorted out in the beginning.

A Khanbuli Shihuh recalled, There was a recent skirmish between Bani Ibrahim Habus and Bani Khanabila Shutair. Some Bani Ibrahim tried to take over some agricultural land belonging to a Khanabila family. The Khanabila family summoned other Khanabila and four car-loads came. They destroyed the buildings, mostly arish, that the Bani Ibrahim had put up, and waited for them to return. When they did, there was a lot of shouting but no-one liked to shoot because a Bani Ibrahim had an automatic rifle. Finally, the police arrived, separated and disarmed the combatants, and took them off to prison. Ten days later, I went to Saqr and said I want the release of my people. He refused. I pointed out the failure to resolve the dispute among themselves, and the subsequent calling in of the police, was partly his responsibility, as the Bani Ibrahimis automatic rifle had been a present from him. He still refused to let them go, but they were released the next day.

In Dibba Baiah, old men remarked, “There was fighting in Dibba Baiah up to fifteen years ago, but it was really young men being manly and

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showing asabiyya, tribal loyalty.” A Haslamani said, “The first graveyard at ar-Rawdhah has about a hundred and fifty graves. It is said the dead came from two tribes at feud with each other, and it all started because one man killed the dog of a man of the other tribe, and the trouble went on and on, and spread and spread.” Some fighting was described in tribal terms, this tribe against that tribe; some as raiding by raiders or by robbers; some as a tribe against a ruler, or ruler against ruler. Some episodes were described initially in group terms, but then resolved into disputes between a few. Some described at first as fights were down graded to squabbles. There was one account of the sort of raiding described by Burckhardt (1831; vol i, 157 – 176) in the early 19th century as ghazzu on foot by haramiyin, robbers; a Khanbuli recalled, A bedu from Dhaid stole a camel from the Khanabila. This was a special camel called al-Warri [the hidden], and renowned throughout the region. The bedu had taken it by sneaking up stealthily, but on his way back he was seen by a Naqbi, who told the Khanabila out searching. The Khanabila caught up with the thief and their camel. They tied up the man and put him on the ground, and caused the camel to trample him to death. Al-Warri was the best, he was the fastest, of the best bloodline of our camels. Al-Warri was also the name of that bloodline, and the best were much used for breeding. Every tribe had a special bloodline of camels, and the idea was always to take another tribes best camel and breed from it.

There were different sorts of raids here as there were in the north of the peninsula (Lancaster 1997 [1981]; 140 – 144), although the reasons for raiding in the two were somewhat different. Some were described as habitual; an elderly Ramsawi remarked, People lived in their gardens at Dhaya because of raiding by land and sea. Everyone raided everyone else – this was more than a hundred years ago. Bani Shamaili came raiding, everyone raided. The towers in Dhaya were really watch towers, they werent defensive. I dont know what they were raiding for as Dhaya and Rams had only dates and salt fish. I think the raiding was mostly about retaliation for slights, real or imagined, and by my time it had stopped.

A Mazrui at Idhn said, “All sorts of people raided. The last raiders I know about were Sharqi from Fujairah and that was just before or just after Walker determined the boundaries.” A Sharqi at Manama remembered, There was a time in Siji. There were four of us, three in the tower and one man the other side of the wadi among the rocks. We saw two hundred Bani

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Chittab [Qitab] from Dhaid coming up the wadi. We fired our guns and they fired theirs. We had bandaq samah, single cartridge breech-loading rifles. The shots echoed around the mountain, bang! bang! Many of them fell to the ground – argh! The wadi flowed with blood, it was full of bodies. They had come to take dates and livestock, anything they could get their hands on. I dont know why they couldnt work for their dates or buy them, but they came to take them. It was a ghazzu, a raid. These raids finished in the early fifties, and so did the taking of women and children by raiders. These captured women and children were taken to Buraimi and sold to Dammam and other places in Saudi Arabia. It wasnt so awful for them, I know people whod been captured. [A Qiyudi interested in local history asked “Why do old men always exaggerate the numbers of men on a raid? They always say two hundred, three hundred, and when you check exactly who was there and who was killed, the numbers go down by a factor of ten. So you have twenty or thirty, not two or three hundred. I suppose the bigger numbers make a better story, more poetic.”]

On another occasion, at Maydaq, the elderly Sharqi commented, This is where I was brought up. Behind that fold in the mountain was where the robbers lived. They robbed because they had nothing, they were hungry. Robbers could be bayadir, qabail, tribespeople – anybody. The tower and the watch tower were to watch for robbers from. There were two men up there, one with a gun. The gun wasnt so much to shoot the robbers but to alert people that robbers were about. I remember my father being a guard on the tower, I was about five years old. And there was fighting between tribesmen about killings and thefts, but these werent declared, formal hurub, wars.

The Amir at Nuslah distinguished between raiders and robbers, The qalaat wasnt against raiders, it was to protect ourselves from robbers, haramiyin. Robbers came from outside and we didnt know who they were, they were outside our system. They came to take things, anything, grain, dates, animals, children, women … but we had men with rifles up in the watchtowers if we knew robbers were around, and people went to the qalaat. There wasnt fighting or raiding between the people here and the people from al-Aswad downstream, and the people at Munaiy, Rafaq, Fashgah, and the Bani Kaab places upstream. There were disputes between individuals and families, but these were sorted out by respected older men because we were all related through women and connected by marriage; we knew who we were.

The Amir at Ghayl said, “The towers were more against haramiyin, robbbers, than raiders. Robbers could be absolutely anybody, we didnt know who they were.” Documents from 1935 – 1939 (Walker 1994; vol 3, 465 and vol 5, 522 – 554) record the negotiations between the Walis of Shinas

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and Suhar for the Ruler of Oman and the Rulers of Ras al-Khaimah and Kalba over the building of towers to prevent robberies by the tribes of the interior on the Batinah coast. Later documents from 1953 – 1955 mention disputes between these rulers and local tribespeople about new or re-established customs posts on the border at al-Aswad and Umm al-Ghaf levying duties on goods moving by lorries between the Gulf and Batinah coasts (Walker 1994; vol 5, 564 – 604). A Kaabi remembered fighting between Washahat from al-Aswad and Dahaminah over the latter taking cattle into Oman without paying customs duties. These comments, with the remarks above by a Khatri in the sands, distinguish between: local raiding after blood, thefts or slights, to show manliness by tribally identified known raiders; and raiding to get goods by tribally identified raiders from outside the region, for necessity. Both sorts of raiding were within local systems of ruling, there were processes to regain raided goods and to get compensation for death and injuries through mediation by tribal shaikhs. For small tribes of the mountains and coasts, robbers were unknown people, who might be tribesmen, but were outside their system and no processes of tribal government existed for recompense or restitution except active defence. Tribes using the sands were parts of or allied with raiding tribes and so could use the system. Several people spoke of raids by Awaimir and Manasir for women and children. Their raids penetrated the Ruus al-Jibal edges, the sayh, the western Hajar mountains, and coastal towns. A Khanbuli recalled: This happened in the time of the sons or grandsons of Ghalib. Awaimir arrived at the Ghalib lands at Rabiya or Slayh when there were no men present and captured all the women and children to sell at Buraimi. Someone ran to al-Aini, where the men were. The men rode to get between the Awaimir and Buraimi, and succeeded in recovering their women and children.

In the western Hajar, a Mazrui in Wadi Sfuni said, “We didnt raid because we had no need, we had everything. The Awaimir raided for children over five years old, and took them to al-Ain where they sold them to Manasir, who took them into Saudi Arabia. That stopped in the mid- to late 1940s.” At Mamduh, a Mazrui commented, “There were raids in the past. Not in my lifetime, nor in my fathers lifetime, but in my grandfathers time. The raiders were from Saudi Arabia, and especially Manasir. They came for dates and grain, they didnt have any.” A Zaab at Khor Kalba remarked: “We lost women and children to Awaimir raiders. The last time this happened must have been in the early 1960s; two

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women who had gone to get water at the well were taken. But quite a lot of people turned up again.” A Quwayyid at Shawqa said, Raids were a real problem. Not only were Maharza from Masafi trying to move in, but people from Abu Dhabi [Manasir and Awaimir] used to come raiding here. I remember a raid when five Quwayyid were killed. We had a second farij up in the mountain that couldnt be seen from the track, and the women and children went up there when raiders came.

Another commented, “We had two towers and the qasr, a round two-storey stone building among our fields to defend ourselves from raiders who came to take our dates, grain, women and children.” Walker (1994; vol 5, 326) has a note from 1950 that the Awaimir responsible for raids on settlements on the Trucial Coast were a small nomadic section under Salim bin Musallim bin Hamm who were between Dhank in Oman and the Dhafarah, Liwa and al-Hamra in Abu Dhabi (the bin Hamm shaikh of the Awaimir was mentioned by a Khatri): This year, the rulers of Sharjah and Ajman received letters from Salim bin Musallim bin Hamm and Salim bin Hamad bin Rakkad (the leader of a much bigger section of Awaimir from Tarim in Hadramaut and Ramlat al-Hamra south of Abu Dhabi town), stating that they no longer had any connection with one another. Raiding or other forms of encroachment by tribesmen from one group trying to move in on the land of another by was mentioned by Habus and Shihuh, and by a Sharqi at Shariya in Wadi Khabb who said, For a variety of reasons, the number of Sharqiyyin using this place had dropped. Bani Lasam Shihuh have their fields just over the mountain to the south, in Oman. They used to come down and water their goats at the spring here, and we felt they were trying to move in and take over. So we went to the ruler of Fujairah and he closed the border.

Some tribes had long standing antagonisms to neighbouring tribes. A Naqbi at Daftah commented, The British Agents report in 1928 about the Sharqiyyin killing Abdullah Khamis, the then Amir of Daftah, at Masafi is correct. Abdullah Khamis was in Masafi delivering the dates for zakat. Then there was the return killing, when Naqbiyin killed the Amir of Safad, who was Sharqi. There was always bad feeling between us and Sharqiyyin (see IOR /15/1/ 14/39, p82 for Sharqiyyin and Naqbiyin raiding in 1927). The rulers didnt really have to stir up trouble between us and them, although from the official records it might look like that. In the past, we never married with Sharqiyyin.

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Similarly, there were always difficulties between Dibba Husn and Dibba Baiah; a Shihhi said, The two peoples never got on, there were even fights involving cannon. The difficulties were between the two sets of people, they werent often encouraged by the rulers. The rulers or their agents were usually trying to make agreements to settle differences, but these never worked for very long [eg Hanthal 1987; document 11 dated 1339/1920 is an agreement settled by Shaikh Rashid bin Ahmad bin Sultan al-Qasimi between the people of Dibba Husn and the neighbouring Sharqiyyin who were disputing over the dafawi, underwater sea banks where fish gathered, and land boundaries; Shaikh Salih bin Muhammad, hakim of Dibba Baiah, clarified the tribal areas of each group, and this clarification was accepted by Shaikh Hamid bin Abdullah al-Sharqi, and the Dhahuuri of Dibba Husn.]. In 1925, there were more complaints from the people of Dibba Husn about the people of Dibba Baiah (IOR/15/1/14/39). There were no relationships between the two places at all.

Other arenas of disputes that could escalate to fighting and settlement by arbitration or agreement, or departure after a failure to settle a dispute, concerned disputes with the ruler both by individuals and families, and larger groups. A Habus commented, In the 1960s, there was trouble between Habus and Qawasim over water at Uraibi, east of Nakhil. It was really wrangling between senior Habus and Shaikh Saqr, and … demonstrating, posturing, by tribesmen. There was no actual fighting and the dispute was peacefully resolved.

A Ramsawi elaborated, The disputes in Uraibi were between groups of Habus over ownership and rights to water, and rights to sell water, and so on. They went on and on. Finally, Shaikh Saqr stepped in and bought the wells, explaining that if Habus wanted modern houses and water in the new houses, he had to have water to send down the pipes.

An elderly Habus at Limfaya recalled, The Habus used to govern themselves. When Shaikh Sultan bin Salim alQasimi tried to get money from us, we resisted. And with us were all the Habus and all the Shihuh, all the people from Bukha to Khatt. Everybody came down from the mountains and met at the tower at Wadi Abqal, and they went on down towards the date groves around Ras al-Khaimah town. They lost, because Sultan bin Salim had more and bigger guns. But the people of Dibba and Kumzar and Khasab brought their influence to bear on Shaikh Sultan bin Salim on the matter of the agreement between Shaikh Hamdan bin Malik of the Habus and Shaikh Sultan bin Salim al-Qasimi. The Sirkal in Maarid with the ghurfa, he brought his influence to bear too. The arrangement between Shaikh Hamdan and Shaikh Sultan was writ-

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ten down line by line; the Qawasim had a copy and Shaikh Hamdan had a copy. And when Shaikh Hamdan died, he lodged his copy with Sultan Qabus; that was before Qabus had any real power, and that is an important point, because if Qabus had had real power, Shaikh Hamdan would not have lodged his copy with him. In the agreement, the Habus were confirmed in all their lands, in Tawi Burairat, and in the sayh as far as the date gardens. Rulers, shaikhs, are always in need of money, and that was the reason for Shaikh Sultan bin Salim trying to get money from the Habus in the first place. It is a fact of life that governments need money because they have to pay for their armies and administrations and policies.

A Shamaili explained: There werent wars between tribes unless governments, rulers, got involved. Wars came about because governments interfered. There were killings, but these were sorted out by mediators and compensation. The last possible war was when I was a young man. The reason was that the predecessor of Qabus wanted to tax us, and we didnt want to be. But we wouldnt actually have gone to war because the amount demanded from us was so small that we would have paid in the end. The British feared there would be fighting and persuaded the Omanis to withdraw. Paying would have meant we were with Oman and that was alright because Oman was further away than Ras al-Khaimah.

A Haslamani recalled: A bit more than a hundred years ago, there was fighting between Bani Shutair and Bani Hadiya in Khasab. It wasnt a formal war, but the fighting went on and on, certainly over some years, and any agreement that was mediated broke down. I think Ive been told the cause was land, but I dont know. In the end, the Sultan of Oman sent two of his sons up and they installed a wali in Khasab and took the leaders of both sides to the Jalali fort at Masqat.

At Lima, the Shaikh stated, I can tell you that about a hundred and ten years ago, the Shihuh fought Ras al-Khaimah where the Saqr hospital is now. This fighting was led by Lima, but all the Shihuh joined. Everybody went to Dibba Baiah and went that way, they didnt come down through the mountains directly into Ras alKhaimah. The fighting was about land, and I dont really know what the outcome was. In 1902, Ali bin Braiyyim and Zaid Sinan Kumazari were the Shihhi leaders who helped the Sharqi drive the Qawasim out of Bithnah, and many Shihuh joined them in this. Much earlier, Shihuh had fought with Oman; contingents of Shihuh were active all the way down the Batinah coast as far as Masqat.

In the western Hajar, Naqbi at Daftah explained:

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The three forts here were last used in the fighting between the Qawasim and the Sharqi, and before that in the quarrels between the Qawasim (Walker 1999; 110, Jan.1954). All the forts were built a long time ago, long before that fighting. There were raids here and usually they resulted from quarrels between the Qawasim and the Sharqi, or between Qawasim. Both ruling families used to incite trouble between tribesmen. Like the Maharza in Masafi fighting each other, that was nearly always started by Qawasim or Sharqi, although there were also rows about water. When the quarrel between the Qawasim and the Sharqi settled down, the Naqbi took over all the qalaah and then we were safe. Nearly all the fighting in the past came from rulers.

The Amir of Daftah commented, The husun and its watch towers are very old; they were built by Naqbi and we own them. We built them because of robbers, raiders and general troubles. There were times of fighting between Naqbiyin and Sharqiyyin over the years. The last time the fort was used was in the 1950s when there was fighting between the Sharqi and the Qawasim. Naqbi have always sided with the Qawasim.

A Maharzi in Masafi remarked: “The Qawasim were always around but they didnt matter much. We ruled and organised ourselves. And the Sharqi family were just here in the summers at their ghurfa and garden.” Mazari in Wadi Sfuni said, Tribes got called together for fighting when trouble, especially double-dealing, between two men of different tribes spread to their families, their sections and their tribes. That could happen if the trouble couldnt be sorted out by mediators, or they wouldnt go to arbitrators. That was between tribes. When the Qawasim called the tribes, everyone tended to get involved sooner or later, whether they wanted to be or not. This was if you lived in or used the area where the Qawasim were at dispute. This happened to us when Qawasim were quarrelling with the Sharqi. The Sharqiyyin more or less supported the Sharqi and would refuse to let people they assumed supported the Qawasim through into what they said was their area. And the same thing happened the other way round. Then the tracks would have barriers of tree trunks and logs across them, with armed guards. It was very difficult to go about ones business. You were almost forced into getting involved, opposing one side and so supporting the other.

A Jiljili in Wadi Sfai remarked: The lookouts/siba were manned only when there were robbers about or wars going on. The only instance I can think of was about fifty years ago when Shaikh Saqr was taking over from his uncle Sultan. Sultan held Munaiy and Saqr held Sfuni, and Sfai was in between. It was very tiresome. It was nothing to do with us, it was two shaikhs squabbling about who got the taxes.

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A Kaabi in Wadi al-Qawr commented, A long time ago, the Shaikh of Sharjah, Sultan bin Saqr, got Mazari and Jalajil to harass Fujairah. Sharjah has always opposed Fujairah. The shuyukh encouraged tribes to get at tribes who used the market of another shaikh, that sort of thing. That is how shuyukh fight a lot of the time, they get tribespeople to do it for them. The only occasion of a ruler calling the tribes that I have heard about was in the war between the Qawasim and the Sharqi about thirty years before Unification, so I suppose about 1940. I have no idea how many people went, and none of us remember stories from our fathers or grandfathers about going. We know that men from Dahaminah and Bani Kaab did go, but we dont know their names. The word went round that everyone should meet at such and such a place on a certain day, but whether a man went or not was his decision. Maybe a man quite liked the ruler personally, or didnt like the Sharqi, or felt like some excitement, or thought it was an opportunity. Answering the call was up to each man, it was their decision.

A Bani Saad at Mahda said, Sultan bin Saqr al-Qasimi took over the whole Shamailiyya coast and that was when the Qawasim soldiers were so awful. Not, of course, that I remember it myself, it was a long time ago, but Ive been told about it. They were in all the forts, and always demanding food, and services, and money.

A Khatri recalled, I dont know about raiding, it was before my time. But Ive been told that we Khawatir were raided by and raided in return distant tribes, like Awaimir, Manasir, and Duru. We didnt raid and we werent raided by our neighbours, Ghafala and Bani Qitab. Seventy years ago, in the early 1930s, there was a war between the Khawatir and the Al bu Falasah, between the Ghafiri and the Hinawi. Why there was a war I dont know. But it was settled by the father of Shaikh Zaid of Abu Dhabi who adjudicated at a meeting at Tawi Suhaila, and Sultan al-Khatri – he was Ali Sultans father – was one of the Khawatir negotiators. And Shaikh Zaid, aged thirteen or fourteen, was present at the meeting.

These comments and views illustrate situations where disputes escalated into fighting, including one kind of raiding; and raiding for necessities, both of which were regarded as inside the tribal system of government and resolvable by mediation, restitution and compensation. Robbers were outside this system, because their identities were unknown [and apparently unknowable]; any mediatory process had no person or representative with whom to mediate. Robbers were assumed to rob from necessity, rather than from evil intentions, and strong security was the only defence.

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Tribespeople regarded wars and other fighting between tribes as often at the instigation of disputing rulers, and gave examples. One such was a war between the shaikhs of Ras al-Khaimah and Umm al-Qawain in 1882, over the division of property after the divorce by the Ruler of Umm alQawain of a sister of the Ruler of Ras al-Khaimah (Lorimer 1908 – 15; 733). The Ruler of Umm al-Qawain allowed seven fishing boats to go Rams and provoke a quarrel, which they did by insulting the crew of a Ras al-Khaimi fishing boat; part of the Naim also got drawn in. Walker (1994; vol 4, 410 – 416, 489), during his work on the settlement of borders, noted the dispute over Masafi in the 1950s between the rulers of Fujairah and Ras al-Khaimah, not settled until 1959. Walker, the Acting Political Advisor, visited Masafi and was told by the Maharza and Hufaitat Amirs that they had working arrangements for the settlement of minor disputes, but that unless the Rulers mended their ways, serious disturbances would spring up if the Trucial Oman Scouts left. In the fighting between Sharjah, Ras al-Khaimah, and Fujairah in the western Hajar, a Trucial Oman Scouts report in 1957 said, The great majority of the inhabitants of the disputed area are not at all concerned with the results of the settlement, and those of each side of the new frontier line are on very friendly terms with each other. Wars between tribes or between rulers ended with adjudication, hakama bi, by another ruler; as with arbitration, adjudication must be accepted from the judge to whom the parties have agreed. Disputes were also resolved by one party leaving the area; an individual who had killed someone might stay with his protectors, or part of a family would move because of internal quarrels, or a dispute might be unresolvable and so one or more parties would move away. A Mazrui at Wadi Ghubaib said, Now we live in Fujairah, but we used to live here, at Mamduh and Musaqqib. We were all one big aila, extended family, and there were quarrels at each of these places. Hawsh, enclosures, were burnt down and people killed. So our bit of the family went to live in Fujairah but we have our land here. We went not only because of the family difficulties but because there was fighting between the Qawasim and the Sharqi about the border between them, which is just up there.

It is said one of the al-Assad merchant family had a dispute with Shaikh Sultan bin Salim and left Ras al-Khaimah for Dubai, where he prospered. The bin Salih family, former rulers of Rams, were at war with the Qawasim and left Rams forty to forty-five years ago. An elderly Ramsawi elaborated,

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Saqr took over Rams in March 1951, and there wasnt any fighting, it was arranged by the British. They did this because the bin Salih, and there were a great many of them, were quarrelling among themselves endlessly, they were fighting between themselves, and they were killing each other, or at least trying to, so there was no government here. There were no soldiers, no jaish. Saqr had a few tribesmen but he was backed by the threat of the Trucial Levies, which at that time were mostly Jordanians. Bin Salih didnt have any because most of the men in Rams were away and he didnt have any money to pay them in any case.

A different perspective on moving was given by a Khatri who remarked, Before Unification, if a man had a garden and had a dispute with the ruler, he went to Dubai or Abu Dhabi with his land. He changed his loyalty and so did the land he owned. Actually, it was rare for it to be literally one man who changed his loyalty, it was usually a family or a group of closely related families. But the man or families who had a dispute with a ruler didnt move away from where he had been living, he or they stayed where they were, and only their loyalty changed.

A Zaab commented, There were always some Zaab in Shinas, bu Bagra and Khor Kalba; but most of the families now in those places moved after the second war with Ras al-Khaimah, about a hundred and five years ago. The dispute in the 1960s was about Zaab of Jazirat al-Hamra not being able to stay independent, because before we managed our own affairs. After that, some people from Jazirat al-Hamra went to Abu Dhabi, and elsewhere up there; some went to Khor Kalba and Shinas, because they already had property there; some stayed in Ras al-Khaimah, like Khatt.

A Zaab at bu Bagra described another dispute between Zaab and Qawasim, At the beginning there were no troubles between Zaab and Qawasim. It started in the time of Muhammad bin Nasr, my great-grandfather who was the Shaikh of the Zaab here and well known in the region. He died in 1972. Sultan bin Salim al-Qasimi killed, or had killed, a khall of Muhammad bin Nasr, who was deeply saddened. The shuyukh of the area went to the British consul in Sharjah and to Sultan Taimur, the father of Qabus, in Masqat. The dispute went on for ten years, and it was still in progress when the British intervened and removed Sultan bin Salim and put Saqr bin Muhammad in his place. The problem was that the compensation from Sultan bin Salim had been paid, and Muhammad bin Nasr negotiated with Taimur to have Sultan bin Salim reinstated. Saqr never forgave him or Zaab in general. It wasnt a quarrel between the Zaab and the Qawasim; first, it was between Muhammad bin Nasr and Sultan bin Salim, and then between Saqr bin Muhammad and Muhammad bin Nasr. The trouble a hundred and five years ago just inland of Jazirat al-Hamra was fighting between Zaab and

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bedu encouraged by Sultan bin Saqr of Sharjah [inconsistency of date or name; Sultan bin Saqr 1 died 1866; Sultan bin Saqr 11 a minor in 1914; the ruler in Sharjah c. 1895, 1900, was Saqr bin Khalid]. The bedu were Khawatir and other Bani Ghafir … Mazrui of Idhn. There is a poem about this fighting.

Lienhardt (2001; 146 – 7) describes the movements of a family of trading boat owners and their followers, the families of the seamen who crewed their four trading boats. This community had started on the Persian coast, and moved to Khasab; from Khasab they had gone to Qatar; they left Qatar in the late 1940s for Falaikha island with permission from the Kuwait shaikhs. Lienhardt considers they were settled on Falaikha island because by that time, their community of boat owners and followers numbered 270 people. These people were not regarded as subjects of either Qatar or Kuwait, and were in Kuwait on condition they supported themselves and were of good behaviour. These processes of movement – a dispute or loss of profits, followed by the decision to move elsewhere and the gaining of approval / protection from leaders in the new place, followed by settlement, pursuit of livelihood and good behaviour – seem typical of other accounts of people as individuals or as families with followers moving in, as with the bin Salih of Beni Qitab moving into Rams in the late 18th century. It seems probable, from archive material, that the community of leader and followers was not as stable as Lienhardt implies. The comment made by a Shihhi that Politics is what rulers and people could agree on fitted the regional situation, because disagreement could be expressed by leaving and going elsewhere physically or symbolically. Some disputes between rulers and people were concerned with ideas of ruling, others were about the practice of ruling, or non-practice, the absence, of rule. The Shihhi continued, These Arabic letters from the India Office Records of the mid to late 1920s dealing with problems at Kalba and Fujairah are indeed about politics. Building a small store on the outside of a fort and people complaining to rulers agents about it and saying there was no right to have that building is exactly what politics was about. It was about doing something, someone else saying you didnt have the right to do what you had done, and you defending your right by popular approval or documents or custom. Its like the description of farij in Falah Hanthal al-Dhahuris Tarikh ashShihuh as belonging to, or lived in by or protected by. These are all valid descriptions of how sets of people understand a situation, and the group or groups they are talking about might describe the situation differently or they might agree.

An elderly Ramsawi of Darawisha Naim descent remarked,

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It was my fifth grandfather who took protection from Saqr the First; he came from Sanaina, about sixty miles west or southwest of Buraimi. First he lived in Hudaiba, then Shimal, then he moved to Muharriq south of Dhaya and married a local girl. Rams is full of people who have moved in, no-one here is original. People from Bukha came to Rams and Maarid in the 1960s. The Shaikh of Bukha was Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Sulaiman and he was a good man and popular, and under him Bukha was fairly prosperous. He was deposed by his ibn amm Hamdan bin Ahmad, the same man who had been at Dibba Baiah and been rejected by them. Hamdan was able to take over because he was backed by Shaikh Saqr who intrigued to get rid of Shaikh Muhammad. Hamdan was not a good man, he got rid of the Iranian merchants so there was no trade and no work. As soon as people in Bukha saw the UAE was going to be formed and that Bukha was not going to be part of it, people left for here and Maarid and other places.

Practices of ruling were used by several people to explain the arrival of traders from Iran at different times, and their movement between different Amirates. One said, Fawaris are Arabs who lived in Fars – which is from Hormuz north, speak Arabic, wear Arab clothes, and think of themselves as Arabs. They moved between the coasts for livelihood, depending on local conditions. All the little coastal villages and islands were, to all intents and purposes, self-governing. A lot of Fawaris came back to this side when the late Shahs father and the late Shah started policies of Iranisation. Making everyone wear western dress and speaking Persian, and all the jobs going to Persians, were what annoyed people the most. A lot went to Dubai, who always welcomed traders, especially so under Rashid Said Maktum. More Fawaris came across after Khomeini came to power. At about the same time, traders left Ras al-Khaimah and went to Dubai for the same reason – they were made welcome.

A Tunaiji added: It is correct that Iranian traders left Iran and came to this side of the Gulf. But around 1970, Shaikh Saqr expelled almost all the Iranian traders from Ras al-Khaimah because of the Iranian seizure of the Tunb islands, and they went to Dubai. Dubai was always on the look-out for more traders. And they have done well, and Ras al-Khaimah has even fewer traders than before.

Rationales of ruling Rationales from the wider region Mottahedeh (1980; ix) used the self description of this [Buyid] society to describe its social structure and to give an account of the social bonds that

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created this structure. In his analysis of Buyid society of western Iran and southern Iraq in the 10th and 11th centuries AD, he writes (1980; 174 – 5): Men of the Buyid period believed that a general sense of mutual obligation would be maintained if loyalties to the multiple categories to which they belonged were maintained. If, however, loyalty to one category overwhelmed their other feelings of obligation, then the interest which created that loyalty would feed itself at the expense of the rest of society, which would be oppressed. Only a loyalty not obligated to any of these categories would be free from identification with these categories, and would, therefore, be likely to maintain impartiality in dealing with these categories. This role of arbiter, distant from the society for which it arbitrated, known to live largely for its own interest and not for any particular interest in society, was the role of the king. The king who fulfilled this role and saw that each interest got its due, but no more than its due, was just.

Archive material shows the role of arbitrator was fundamental to being a ruler; many in the society considered rulers to be distant from them, and to have lived largely for their own interests; this was acceptable, since local communities largely managed their own affairs. Inviting in a ruler from outside (with a probationary period and the right to tell them to leave if unsatisfactory) was a recognised procedure for Shihuh jumhuriyya in Dibba Baiah. Mottahedeh (1980; 181) points out Buyid government, from military and financial considerations, adopted a decentralised system of rule which influenced the manner in which the community of moral obligation and the government defined their relations, relevant to most if not all of Omani and lower Gulf political history. To consider Mottahedehs analytical description of the role of the king or ruler as arbitrator does not assume that the situations of mediaeval Buyid society and the lower Arab Gulf in the remembered past are comparable; but these long held ideas in the wider region with contacts to peoples of the study area of decentralised rule, of a ruler as arbitrator as a logical development in particular conditions, and of a community inviting in a ruler, are interesting. A Mazrui at Asimah commented, “In the past, Shaikh Saqr held the balance between the tribes here”, reflecting a similar role in a just rule. Continuity in the role of muluk (pl. of malik – owner, king) in the region from Buyid times to the Nabhani of Uman is tentatively demonstrated by Wilkinson (1987; 213); the Nabahina, as Atik, leaders of the Imran Azd confederation, had always been present in Omani politics, and their position as tribal leaders in the hinterland of the great port of Suhar may have led them to be appointed vassal rulers there in the period of Buyid occupation. The Nabahina muluk were described in

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Ibadi writings as jabbariyya, tyrannical, but Wilkinson (1987; 12) considers The indications are that for much of the time the Nabahina muluk ruled exactly like most Imams had in reality ruled, that is through manipulating tribal and secular power, but in their case apparently without pretension to religious legitimacy. Their acceptability depended on the degree to which they conformed to the norms of justice, adl, above all in not exceeding the legal taxation code. Omani government was constituted from Ibadi ideology, laws and organisation, although the main northern tribes [the modern UAE] rejected Ibadism and adopted Shafi Sunnism during the 4th/10th century in response to the Rustaq dogma decree, which officially declared that the role played by the main northern Omani tribes in the events of the late 3rd/9th century had been the cause of that civil war (Wilkinson 1987; 11) The government of the Kings of Hormuz, who exercised control over parts of the Omani coasts, was tied to the Iranian world politically and economically but the rulers were of Arab descent. Aubin (1953; 146 – 9) wrote that the King of Hormuz was the guarantee of unity of the ancient principality, since he was the symbol of the double nature, Arab and Persian, of the kingdom. Hormuz society, apart from local matters, worked in a complex social and economic system, where the principles of honesty and solidarity were valued. Over and above the government of the kings and emirs, Hormuz was governed by the code of practice that governed the mercantile societies of the Indian Ocean, and legitimately held the title of Dar al-Aman, the house of safety or of trust. In Oman, after the expulsion of the Portuguese from the coasts, the Yaariba successors to the Nabahina in the early 17th century appointed muluk, leading shuyukh of important local tribes as regional administrators (Badger/Ruzaiq 1871; 53 – 4), not neutral outsiders invited in by locals to hold the balance. The archive has two comments on muluk. At Hudaiba, a young man considered the moving force of that community to be relations between owners, muluk, and workers, bayadir. The other came from a noted local historian in Dibba Baiah who explained, The split between the Shihuh into Shutair and Hadiya took place in the time of Sulaiman bin Malik who was the forefather of Muhammad bin Ahmad. The split came about because the bin Malik of Bukha said they were the direct descendants of Malik bin Fahm al-Azdi, and that Malik was the title of kingship and of owning the land. The bin Malik shaikh in Khasab agreed with those who later became Shutair; these people said there was no direct line of descent from Malik bin Fahm al-Azdi, Malik was simply a name and not a title bearing any implications of kingship, owning or anything. The

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split was essentially over political ideas about the nature and practice of rule, governing. This took place about the time of the Hinawi-Ghafiri split in Oman, which was also really about ideas of ruling.

Ruling based on a ruler being invited in was described by Lienhardt (1993; 99) in his discussion of the role of the Ruler in traditional Kuwait. In the early 1950s, a Kuwaiti merchant said the shaikhs [of Kuwait] had been there to maintain law and order and look after the countrys defence, and that was what they had been paid for: the people of Kuwait had allowed them to tax pearl fishing and levy Customs duties so as to provide them with an income. Why should [Lienhardt] suppose that the shaikhs were necessarily more just than anyone else? And had they been all-powerful, how would they have contented themselves with Customs duties of only four per cent? The great men who made the wealth of Kuwait had been the merchants and the boat owners – especially the pearl merchants, some of whom had been richer than the shaikhs. Shaikhs, incomers from Najd, held the functions of keeping the peace and defending the sources of wealth in return for an income, derived from a proportion of the merchant created wealth coming into Kuwait from pearl-fishing and trade. Again, not unlike the Buyid situation. How similar was the situation of the coastal towns of Ras al-Khaimah Amirate and the Shihuh and Dhahuriyiin coasts to the north? In the literature of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (ibn Ruzaiq, Niebuhr, Whitelock etc), it is clear that the Qawasim shaikhs of Ras al-Khaimah and the Al bu Saidi rulers of Masqat and Suhar were profitably involved in pearling and long distance sea trade. Slot (1993; 160, n109) quotes Pissurlencar (Assentos vol 3, 507 – 8. text of armistice agreement of 15:12:1648), who names a Saif bin Ali bin Salih alCasmi, one of the two Omani negotiators in the armistice agreement between Arabs and Portuguese, as the first mention of the Qawasim. Al-Busaidi (2000; 158) using Bocarro ([1635] 1992; vol 2, 580) notes at Kalba Guasper Leite took this fortress in March of 1624, as it had belonged to the king of Ormuz, His Majestys vassal, and those based in the area, whom they call Casmi, had rebelled there. Local opinion considers the Qawasim ruled Julfar and Ras al-Khaimah from around the middle of the 18th century, a century later, by which date Shaikh Rahma bin Matar (al-Qasimi) was described by some Dutch sources as one of the wealthiest merchants in the Gulf (Slot 1993; 250). It is possible there were links between opposition to Portuguese rule, being a negotiator in peace agreements, and being a rich merchant. The process of inviting in a shaikh to

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rule is recognised locally, as demonstrated by Shihuh of Dibba Baiah for whom the attraction of the Kumzari shaikh was that he was involved in sea trade. A man interested in local history in Qidfa remarked, “The idea that someone of proven reputation who offers to act as a peacebringer or an arbitrator of final resort will be invited in to rule is found over and over again.” In his study of the towns of pre-Wahhabi Najd, al-Juhany (1983; 175 – 80) found that each town was an independent political entity with two groups: the ruasa or shuyukh, and the jiran or neighbours. The ruasa were always the rulers as they were the rightful owners of the town or settlement as their ancestors had developed or bought the town. Since the prosperity and therefore the defence and continued existence of a town depended on the co-operation and number of its people, the ruasa welcomed other settlers to live with them and take up empty arable land through share cropping contracts of mazaraah or murabaah, or on already cultivated and irrigated land, sometimes by long leases of subrah or share cropping contracts of musaqah or mushajarah, in return for protection. Al-Juhany regards the dynamics of differences in expansion and contraction of family size, family rivalries within and between ruasa and jiran, together with disputes over the interpretation of agreements and inheritances, to be a major cause of migrations and resettlements in Najd. These processes were recognisable in all areas from which archive material has come, although the terms and roles of ruasa and jiran were not used. However, Mottadeheh writes (1980; 150 – 154) that ruasa, the leading men among the notables of a town or settlement, were numerous and often acted as brokers between local landlords and central government officials in the Buyid period. That is, they were fulfilling similar functions in at least one way [as brokers] that kubar, ayyan, madruub, shuyukh, and amir were in various localities in Ras al-Khaimah, Ruus al-Jibal and Musandam, and the Shamailiyya coast. In these rationales from outside the area, aspects of local practice can be recognised but terminologies are different; and while rationales were sometimes acknowledged as logical they were not known to have happened in the area.

Rationales of government put forward by local people A Qiyudi at Qidfa commented,

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I see the functioning of political groups here in the past as driven by alliances, ahlaf. Like the origin of the Madhahni seventy or eighty years ago. Earlier in Madhah there had been the Saadiyin, Bani Saad – there were more of them in Oman; and there were four or five families like ours, incomers. Because we all owned land there, we all joined together in an alliance, hilf, for mutual protection, and were known as Madhahni. Alliances drive tribes. Do you know the Mazari of Wadi Farfar? Before 1880 they were always attacking Fujairah because they were in hilf with the Qawasim. After 1880, they made a hilf with the Sharqi, and so became Sharqiyyin. Hilf, like most terms, has a group of ideas associated with it. One lot are about mutual protection between equal partners, for defence and protection, not for attacking other groups with support. This aspect of mutual defence is the view of tribesmen. Shuyukh tend to regard the larger group that comes together as a result of a hilf as a unit under their leadership and an opportunity for collecting zakat. If, for example, the Sharqi shaikh was building alliances against the Qawasim, he offered – say, the Yamahi or another similar small group – a service of arbitration of last resort to settle disputes they couldnt settle themselves, and in return, he had the right to collect zakat. People who were farmers didnt have time to answer a shaikhs call to arms, but they had the means to pay zakat, and some of the zakat could be used to pay men from the small groups around to fight. In my opinion, making a hilf comes from the shaikh, from the top. A shaikh wants to build up big units, tribesmen usually want to keep small units. As in the Hinawi-Ghafiri wars; Bani Hina always had to borrow their weapons from the shaikh and hand them back when the fighting was over. Eventually, they got fed up with this, and refused to fight again unless they could keep their weapons. At last, their leader agreed. And when Bani Hina had their own weapons, they turned on their leader. Theres another aspect of hilf that can be shown from accounts of the Hinawi-Ghafiri wars: there is a wadi that goes deep into the mountains from the east coast, with lots of little groups living along it. All the groups along that wadi agreed to be Ghafiri and allied themselves together, as they needed to co-operate over the water for their livelihood. Without an alliance, and with conflict all round, using their water for cultivation would have been impossible.

The rationale for ruling for this man is the building of alliances by shaikhs with small tribes for mutual defence, and the payment of zakat for services of arbitration and to pay for fighting men [implicitly, to defend the shaikhs possessions and supporters and to enlarge both]. This exposition implies, perhaps unintentionally, that a shaikh, a ruler, could tie individual or small groups of tribespeople to him, although informants in the archive were clear that tribespeople could go to any ruling shaikh for arbitration. An older, experienced and respected Sharqi had a different view on the use of ahlaf by the Sharqi family and the small tribes that make up the Sharqiyyin. He said,

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The Sharqiyyin are a group of small tribes who at different times and for different reasons recognised leading members of the Sharqi family as their shaikh. This was a long and gradual process. As far as anyone can remember, which would be the last two hundred years, small groups have sought protection, dakhil, from Al Sharqi when they felt they were coming under pressure from outside. The man who said the coming together of small groups was organised by Al Sharqi shuyukh at different times was not right. The coming togethers, the looking to Al Sharqi against interference from outside, was from the small groups. For instance, when the Qawasim tried to enforce borders, this made it difficult for some small groups who therefore allied themselves with Al Sharqi. There was never a formal alliance, either hilf or shaff, each coming together was informal and came from a particular situation of need. And from time to time, each coming together [q – b – l] was reaffirmed by events. This all started much more than two hundred years ago. The relations between each group and its senior men and Al Sharqi could have been that they had gone to one of Al Sharqi as their arbitrator of final resort until some event demanded a closer relationship. The closeness need not have been maintained; groups stopped being Sharqiyyin as well as becoming Sharqiyyin. When a man went to see the Al Sharqi shaikh, he took down a bundle of firewood or a sack of charcoal or something; this made the Sharqi aware that the man needed him, it was indication of a desire for a closer relationship, and the Sharqi accepted [q – b – l] him. This was also some indication the man might be prepared to pay zakat. Nor do I agree that Al Sharqi asked people to come in and take up land. It was Shihuh and Dhahuriyyin and others who asked him for land. These were people who, for a variety of reasons, wanted to move out of the mountains and needed an alternative or additional source of livelihood, and this land at Qidfa and roundabout was empty, mawat. Maybe these people had lost their fields for some reason, a series of locally bad years, continuing and unresolvable disputes, they just didnt want to be there … all sorts of reasons.

A Zaab said, “Zaab are one tribe, they are not an association of small groups in an alliance.” Shihuh were certain that all their named groups were descent groups, there was no taking in of named groups for protection, dakhil, or as allies; the common factor was their rejection of paying sadaqa or zakat to a central Islamic authority. A senior Naqbi considered the Naqbiyin of Haiyir, Khor Fakkan, Kalba, Daftah, Wadi Naqab, Khatt, and Fahlain to have been small tribes [qabail] who came together [q – b –l] at some time in the very distant past. Shaff or shiff was described by Wilkinson (1987; 93) in Oman as an alliance system, an automatic defence system built around mutual support between clans for the protection of rights and property within the settlement pattern. It is also manipulable, the outcome of a positive political act aimed at building the power of the group although viewed from

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a different angle it may be seen that enduring shaff alliances stem not from regional association but from standing enmities (1987; 121). Locally, shiff was mentioned much less than hilf. The Qiyudi said, “shiff is to be with, and it is more between very small groups or individuals” while a Khanbuli Shihuh said, “shiff isnt formal, it is more like being mates, a group of men who would look after each other and do things together because they get on well together.” Lienhardt (2001; 84) wrote In the Trucial States [now the U.A.E.], the loyalty which binds the members of a tribe together is called shaff … Shaff is a principle of action whereby people related to each other in the male line (and others, as I shall mention later) are expected to tolerate each other more than they would tolerate strangers, help each other in misfortune and support each other in war and diplomacy against the rest of society – all usually implied by the fact of being a tribal member. [The others are loyalty, shaff, as existing between tribes so related by proximity and intermarriage (Lienhardt 2001; 93)]. Two archive mentions by two Naqbi at Fahlain and Daftah of shiff implied the relations were between members of associated tribally identified communities; “we dont have alliances, ahlaf. We have shiff, which is like hilf but not, with Qawasim and Mazrui. This shiff was in the days of Humaid bin Abdullah al-Qasimi” (either the Shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah, 1869 – 1900 or the administrator of Kalba for the Regent in the 1940s). Locally shiff seemed less important than hilf, and extending territory and acquiring assets were made through processes other than shiff. A Mazrui, a son of the late Amir of Wadi Sfuni, said, I dont know what you mean by hilf. We had himaya, which Ive heard other people call dakhil. Himaya wasnt tribe to tribe, but tribesman to a man of a different tribe. Someone who had problems of some sort with his own tribe went to another tribe and took protection from them, while people from that tribe sorted out his troubles with his own group. When we went to Dubai to sell things and there were robbers around, we made a partnership, a sharika, and we were all kafila, bondsmen, protectors, to each other, we were bound to look after each other.

A Shihhi remarked, I can well believe that a lot of the small groups in the mountains did join the Sharqi family in a hilf, alliance. The Shihuh were in a hilf with the Sharqi against the Qawasim. A hilf is only defensive. If Qawasim or whoever attacked Sharqi, Shihuh would go and fight with them. But if the Sharqi attacked someone with whom Shihuh were not in hilf, Shihuh would be under no obligation. Problems arise when someone with whom you are at

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hilf attacks someone else with whom you are at hilf; but the details of each hilf agreement set out what has been agreed should happen in such instances. Each hilf is specific to the groups joining into it, although the general intent is the same. The Sharqiyyin are a whole series of little tribes who, at different times and in varying situations, allied themselves with or took protection from Al Sharqi and became Sharqiyyin. Much of this was largely informal, and groups slid in and out of protection and alliances alike. To the outside, they were Sharqiyyin because the outside knew about Al Sharqi; inside, they were themselves, Hufaiyat, Yamahi, Dhanhani, Hamudiyin, and so on.

A man from a small tribe at Dibba Baiah said, Nearly all the people in Dibba Baiah are from very small tribes, and had no shaikh to look to. When there was trouble with outsiders trying to control Dibba Baiah or move into it, the people of Dibba Baiah called on the Shihhi in the mountains for protection, because these Shihhi regarded Dibba Baiah as belonging to Shihuh and they had gardens here. It was in this way that all the people here became Shihuh although they knew genealogically they werent.

At Siji, a man said, “The people here are mostly Zahum and there are some Quwayyid. Sometimes Zahum and the other people were Sharqiyyin and sometimes they werent. It depended if there was a hilf with the Sharqi or not.” Another Shihuh commented, There were alliances, ahlaf, between the governments of the Sharqiyyin and the Shihuh, but their people were not in a bani amm relationship, they did not have to treat each other as if they were close blood relations. The alliances were really made by the shuyukh against the Qawasim for mutual defence. The two tribes werent in any closer relationship. So individual Sharqiyyin raiding individual Shihuh, and vice versa, went on all the time.

If a local rationale of alliance and protection was seen as partial and defensive, how did people explain the functioning of their society? Keeping the peace by families, tribally identified groups and shuyukh so that all may may pursue livelihood was frequently cited as the basis of rule and ruling, along with informal co-operation and formal agreements. A trader explained: “Ras al-Khaimah town was made up of three distinct groups; the ruler and his retainers; the rich merchants and traders; and the fishermen and the people who came to buy and sell. All of them needed the others, and that was why the town worked.” Ownership, mulk,and access to resources were inherent parts of being a tribesperson; apart from date gardens on the coastal plains, land was sold only to tribal members, or with agreement, to people from other tribes. But since marriages were often to women of other tribes, usually already related through women,

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and since women owned and disposed of land, men from other tribes inherited land in the dira of others. The khuwayil, relations through women, and the in-laws, nusaiyib, were mentioned by several people of different tribal groups as an important mechanism for enabling movement of resources and means of dispute settlement, as it was recognised disputes would arise. Since disputes were often settled within a community, or by mediators who urged restitution and compensation, not many required the arbitrator of last resort, the hukm. People tended to go to the arbitrator or hakkam nearest to them, or used through long association, but there was no necessity to do so; a man could use any hakkam. As moving and taking protection was also a frequently exercised option, locally unresolvable disputes could be accomodated without personal honour or tribal identity being compromised. The nature of livelihood, that all methods of making a livehihood and profits demanded persistent hard work and the ability to move between resource areas and markets, worked against long term tribal or community disputes. Men did not have time for prolonged periods of sustained fighting, unless the fighting was organised by a ruler with the means to pay fighters; local fighting was skirmishing and destruction of property. The ability to make agreements, ahad, was also crucial throughout society. People made agreements for marriage, for work, for access to more land or trees, for the divisions of profits and risks, for transfers of property, for the resolution of disputes. Some said society functioned by means of agreements made between free individuals and families, with witnesses on oath or registered before a qadi. Agreements between local communities, local communities and rulers, or between rulers, are mentioned in documents, and these agreements use various ideas about dispute resolution. A dispute between Dibba Husn and Dibba Baiah in September 1940 was settled by the Wali of Khasab and the Shaikhs of Fujairah and Bukha on the basis of dafin, burial: the people of Dibba Husn accused people of Dibba Baiah of kidnapping a boy; the accusation was false, and the people of Dibba Baiah, annoyed at being falsely accused, burnt houses and cut down trees in Dibba Husn; there was no compensation due and all charges were buried (Walker 1994; vol 1, 536). Walker (1994; vol 3, 438) records that Shaikh Saqr bin Muhammad, Ruler of Ras al-Khaimah paid shifaya [ intercession] to Habus in the Ruus al-Jibal so that a team from Petroleum Development, Trucial Coast, could visit the mountains in the early 1950s. In his discussion of the 1950s dispute between the Rulers of Fujairah and Ras al-Khaimah, Walker notes (1994; vol 3, 581) the Ruler of Fujairah claims the area is in the haram of his

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tribe and he has rafaqat, comradeship, companionship over it and its inhabitants. A Sharqi claimed a local meaning of prohibition, the right to forbid certain actions, such as allowing goats to get into someones garden, or taking clay needed for mudbricks for other purposes in the interests of good fellowship. In fighting between Sharqiyyin of Tayyiba and Mazairi of Asima in May 1959, the Ruler of Fujairah had to pay muatasham of Rs 400 to the Ras al-Khaimah ruler as he was in breach of the wayi (protection, safeguard) between them as well as Rs 14,000 for damage caused by his tribesmen (Walker 1994; vol 4, 481). Shiff in Oman and other parts of the Trucial Coast implied pro-active expansionism against the mutual defense of hilf (Lane 1984; i, 1569: one meaning, among others, for shiff – gain, profit, increase obtained in traffic). Local communities talked about their expansion of land and assets as transactions achieved through marriage, inheritance, and purchase, all ratified by registered or witnessed agreements, by families within and between tribe and community – ie comings together. Some people considered that some marriages or purchases had been ratifications of agreements reached after disputes or from moving in because the owners were no longer using their assets. Agreements were not always solid and unassailable, some could be and were questioned, which could lead to fighting and the occupation of land. A Shihuh explained, When people talk about Qiyaishi selling land and Habus buying, in reality it is an individual Qiyaishi and an individual Habsi. Sellers and buyers arent groups, they are individuals. Often the purchases are token purchases that ratify inheritances or gifts through women, part of which could be questioned by men of the womans group. Purchases and sales of little bits of land go on all the time and always have, and nearly always they were between people connected through women, the khuwaiyil. If a Qiyaishi – for example – marries a Habsiyya and she inherits a good piece of land that is worked by her husband and inherited by their son, their son might well move there, especially if he marries a close relation on his mothers side. If his son does the same, by five or six generations their descendants for all practical purposes will be Habus. Many Habus from Wadi Rabiya south to Khatt are really Shihuh who moved down for land, married Habsiyya and so acquired land.

A Habus said, I know there have been transfers of land between individual Shihuh and individual Habus. Ive been told that some were registered in front of a qadi, but most were made in front of witnesses. Problems can arise later, because

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one party will say a witness is lying, or has been bought, or a witness will die or his mind will go.

In Hudaiba, a local man remarked, “Here, it isnt ruasa who invite people in to be jiran, neighbours, and give them land on various agreements. It is owners, muluk, and bayadir, workers, and the bayadir over time become owners and the owners become workers.” A Zaab stated: Zaab have gardens everywhere because we deliberately married out; either the children would inherit the land and her husband worked it, or a Zaabi bought out his father-in-law. We picked out poor but respectable families that had no sons. We married a lot with Habus because their women were a lot stronger than Ras al-Khaimi women.

The Zaab Amir of Bu Bagra said, “It is very possible that some Zaab did deliberately marry into poor Habus families with no sons, but here we were rich and we bought date gardens and built ghurfa.” About Idhn, the Amir of the Mazari explained: In Idhn, there are only three gardens belonging to Khawatir, and all are new. All the old gardens belong to Mazari. But for a long time, many have been used and lived in by Khawatir. Earlier, they were share partners, now they rent. So Khawatir use Idhn, they dont own it.

A Dhahuri in al-Jir commented, Sima, Ghabbina and Asfal in Wadi Sall Ala all belonged to Qdur Dhahuriyyin. The Shihuh who live there now had always wintered there and wanted to buy land there for winter houses. Small pieces of building land were sold to indivdual Shihuh by individual Bani Qdur, although the whole process was worked out by the then madruub of Bani Qdur. This is thought to have taken place in the time of Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr al-Qasimi, before the time of his troubles. Shihuh who had winter houses in those places gradually acquired fields in them by purchase and marriage.

Shaikhs as rulers and arbitrators, hakkam, were not isolated from the communities and tribal groups from whom they collected zakat, used their markets, or went to them for arbitration. They married women from merchant and leading tribal families, and they had gardens in the date gardens of the coasts and more recently in mountain oases of the western Hajar. Men of Qawasim ruling families of Ras al-Khaimah and Kalba, from the archive, married women from merchant families of Dubai with local connections, and women from the Habus and Khawatir. A Habus from Wadi Nahala recalled: My father died while I was still a boy. We were well looked after because my fathers sister was married to Qaid al-Qasimi, a brother to Shaikh Saqr.

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Qaid had four sons and some daughters by my aunt, but all his family are known to us as khall and treated as such. My fathers mother was from the Khawatir and I am still friendly with the family.

A Khatri remarked: “The shaikh of the Khawatir married from the Habus, from Dhaid, and a Khatriyya from Hamraniyya. Shaikh Saqr married a Khatriyya to keep the Khawatir with him. He married girls from other tribes for the same reasons, and his sons do the same.” Earlier marriages noted in documents mention Qawasim marriages with women from Al Ali, Matarish (from B. Khalid), and Zaab. Qawasim family members were said to own (or have owned) date gardens and ghurfa at Kharran, Fulayyah, Hail, Nakhil, and Shimal in the sayh around Ras al-Khaimah, land in the Wadi Bih and around Idhn, at Hamraniyya, and gardens at Masafi, Shawqa, Munaiy and Huwailat in the western Hajar. A Kaabi commented, “The Qawasim were the hukuma of the district of Munaiy, but before fifty years ago they didnt own land here. It was later that different members of the Qawasim had gardens here; Shaikh Saqr has a garden at Huwailat and a big garden at Shawqa that he got maybe ten years ago.” The Maktum ruling family of Dubai were said to own a ghurfa at Kharran and gardens at Shimal, Shaam, and Khasab, as well as others in the territory of Dubai. The Sharqi family had gardens at Fujairah, Masafi, Qidfa, and Dibba Ghurfa, and probably other places as well. Rulers gave land to people moving in to Ras al-Khaimah town and gardens to local people. A trader in Ras al-Khaimah recalled: “People built arish wherever they liked. But to build a permanent house, people had to get permission from the Shaikh, the Qasimi. He gave you the land on which to build, but land of itself cant belong to anyone but comes from God.” In Daftah, a Bani Saad recalled: “The merchants at Khor Fakkan were Iranians from Fars. They came to Said bin Hamad al-Qasimi at Kalba, and he settled them on the coast.” A Khatri said, “Saif bin Ali, the former shaikh of the Khawatir, was given gardens by Shaikh Humaid of Ajman and by Shaikh Saqr. Shaikh Saqr also appointed him muidhdhin (giver of the call to prayer) at five thousand dirhams a month, and he received zakat from Shaikh Humaid and Shaikh Saqr.” A Sharqi was given a new garden at Thoban by Shaikh Humaid. At Qidfa, a local man said, After 1870, 1880, the Shaikh of the Sharqi family made an alliance with the Shihuh against the Qawasim. To promote this alliance, hilf, and because there was empty land, he gave land that could be made into date gardens to Dhahuriyyin from Ras al-Khaimah Amirate and to Shihuh, especially from Dibba. In Qidfa it was Dhahuriyyin who used to own date gardens,

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in Mirbat and Girath it was Shihuh from Dibba, and this lasted until the late 1940s, 50s. The first member of the Sharqi family to move here was the grandfather of Muhammad bin Saif who was here in the 1970s; Muhammad bin Saifs grandfather had a date garden here – just an ordinary garden, it wasnt a big garden. His uncles moved to Bidiya and Fujairah. Another Sharqi cousin, Abdullah bin Hamad, who died in 1977 – 8, became like a landlord here, and ended up owning two-thirds of the gardens here by lending at high rates of interest to their owners and getting them into debt.

Another way that rulers acquired land was by buying out all the claimants as a method of resolving difficult and long running disputes. Shaikh Saqr buying the wells at Urabi from Habus to resolve disputes was mentioned earlier. A Habus recalled: “There were long standing difficulties at alAshkar, where the fields are called Waab al-Harb, the fields of war. These were between the Bani Shamaili and Habus on the sayh. The difficulties were resolved only in 1977 when Shaikh Saqr bought out all the claimants.”

Buildings could be symbols of rule for local communities and rulers Such buildings were built for defence and control, as well as for storage and places to which people came for mediation, advice, news, and arbitration. The husn, forts, of rulers of coastal towns, centres of date gardens in the sayh, centres in the sands, and in the oases of the western Hajar comprised a range of buildings; a ghurfa, majlis, a mosque, a tower or burj; and outlying watch towers, siba. These complexes of buildings belonging to rulers were like those of rich merchants, as rulers had business interests in trade and rich merchants attracted small traders, carriers, and others seeking news, advice, work, and sometimes, mediations. Terms for these buildings were fluid; qalaat were interchangeable with husn, and buildings changed names according to use; a buri, tower, became a husn, fort, when the ruler or shaikh was in residence, and buri became siba and vice versa on occasions. Kennet (1995) surveyed the towers and forts of Ras al-Khaimah Amirate in an historical and archaeological context; Costa (1985) discussed the aswar of the Batinah coast, Khasab, Sur, and Masira Island. Costa (1985; 121 – 2) regards aswar as fortified enclosures used as temporary shelters by people for their goods and animals, built by small and dispersed communities for their use, and points out these were more economical than town walls; The basic idea which guides the local population is to retreat to a high hill in case of danger;

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from this the sur has evolved into a more complex type of site where defensive structures are built to ensure improved protection. Local people considered that aswar on the whole were connected to earlier forms of fighting without much use of guns or artillery. They also linked aswar, qalaat, and husuun with tribal community construction and defence in areas where coastal rulers had no control or were opposed by local communities. Many regarded the construction by rulers of towers and forts in the interior and along the Ruus al-Jibal and Shamailiyya coasts with a rulers extension of his rule. Since tribes are constituted differently, comments by tribespeople on the builders of aswar and forts reflect these concerns; Shihuh talk of Shihuh construction of the qalaat at Dibba Baiah, Shahin Awanat speak of the Shahin owners of Husn Muwailah, and Mazairi of the building of the fort at Idhn by the bin Hamad, the Mazairi shaikhly family; here, family stands for the tribal community. About such buildings in general, a Shihuh said, In my opinion, the lower qalaat at Dhaya was a sur, with two or three rings of walls remaining. And the fort here in Ras al-Khaimah town, was one of a sort, at least for a few people, before the extended womens quarters were built against the walls. But harat had walls, like at Hudaiba, and Ras alKhaimah town had walls, and so did Rams. The Maktum ghurfa at Kharran south of Ras al-Khaimah town on the edge of the sands, that had walls and a gate that was locked at night. People needed these when they lived in places that were flat and had no natural protection. Shihuh didnt have towers and walls; when there was trouble we went up into the mountains, they were our protection.

A Baluch just west of Fulayyah said, “The ghurfa on the sand hills above the gardens belongs to Shaikh Abdullah bin Humaid al-Qasimi, and its old.” In Maarid, a local man remarked: “The large house with the walls, the majalis, and stores and the womens quarters with the pretty roof details is Bait Sirkar. The Sirkar family were the British local representatives here, and among their other duties, they registered the manumission of slaves. The Sirkar were traders.” The Amir of Shimal Fowk explained: A burj or, as we say, buri was a round tower; a maarrab was a four-sided tower; and a ghurfa was a house with an upper room. The sightlines between towers demarcated areas. When the people from the coast moved inland with their animals in the summers, they couldnt come further than the line between the towers at north and west Shimal. If they did, they got shot at by the four or five armed men in the towers. If a man had a reason to come across, that was different; traders came across, and people visiting relatives, or with other reasons. No-one knows much about Siba, the old ghurfa at Shimal Taht. I call it a ghurfa but it was a buri. It was a room where the

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ruler of the area arbitrated, and the family lived there. The family disappeared and the land was sold. My family bought one of the gardens.

At Rams, an elderly man said, The bin Salih who were the rulers of Rams were traders, and really made their money from dates. Their boats used to be drawn up between their majalis on the creek. They had a series of houses along the creek, a mosque and there were three wells. There was a tower at that end of the creek, and all that remains is an oblong lump; it belonged to Abd ar-Rahman bin Salih. This ghurfa belonged to Muhammad bin Salih; his household was about seventy people, including twenty black khawadim.

A Ramsawi recalled, When I was a boy in the early to mid-1940s, I dont remember any towers in Rams, only in Dhaya. Saqr took Rams in about 1951, and then he built a tower. The towers in Dhaya were really watch towers, they werent defensive. The big tower below the qalaat was different, that was the government, the hukm. The big tower of Abdullah bin Khamis was a ghurfa. The qalaat at Dhaya was long ruined and belonged to the people of Rams, as did the towers. As far as I know, these towers had never been owned or used by anyone else, and now they belong to the Qawasim. Rams had walls, they and the towers were protection against raiders.

A Shihuh explained, I know the qalaat at Dhaya was a sur, a walled enclosure with towers, for the defence of the community, because there are the remains of an earlier tower at the bottom of the knoll on which the qalaat stands. From this tower, the remains of two walls go back to the knoll, but it is impossible to tell where they went because of bulldozing. There are the remains of five watch towers among the gardens and the fort. These watch towers were the first line of defence; if necessary, the defenders regrouped around the lower fort where the women and children had collected, and finally around the upper fort.

At Shaam, a local man said, “The murabba was built by the Qawasim, by Saqr. It was a police post and border post before they built the new one. The building to the side was the old courthouse.” A man at Ghalilah stated: “Shaam tower wasnt built until 1964, it was the end of a long line of tower building. Towers were the same as the present army camps and police posts, only now there is more money. In the old days, towers were guard posts, look outs, warnings that you were entering someones area, and strong points sited on the main ways in and out of the place. Their major function was to see who was going in and out. And if a couple of cannon were installed, they could be used as strong points.”

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In Khasab, an elderly couple recalled: “That is Qasr al-Kabs; now it is just a pile of rubble, kabs, but it was a tower, surrounded by walls. It was where people in this area of Khasab went when there was fighting. This was in the time of Hamad bin Hassun.” The woman continued: “My mother told me that when she was a little girl, her mother took her into the sur for safety.” A Shihuh remarked: “This is harat al-Kumazara with its fort; two towers in diagonally opposite corners, and walls all round – stone below and mudbrick above. The spaces in the walls were where the men fired their guns.” A Kumzari said, “The towers and walls in harat al-Kumazara were a qalaah. Before I was born, when my father was young, people took refuge in it if there were troubles and they put their possessions in it for safety. I remember it standing; one of the towers fell down thirty or forty years ago.” At Lima the shaikh stated: “We had a fort at the bottom of Lima al-Qadima, nearly on the beach. A long, long time ago, a lot of people had taken refuge in it, and the defenders were in the towers. The Hollandiyya bombarded it, destroying it, and everybody was killed when the building collapsed on top of them.” At Dibba Baiah, an elderly Shihhi commented, There were two forts. There was the tower of Muhammad bin Salih, the Shaikh of Dibba Baiah, and there was the qalaat, the stronghold of the Shihuh. The qalaah belonged to the Shihuh who built it together, and they did this because they were the hukuma. Traders used to store their goods in it, and people put their women and children and goods in it, if there was trouble from outside; it was a sur. And it was where people met.

A younger man commented, It wasnt really a sur, it was a qalaat, with twenty five soldiers employed by Muhammad bin Salih and paid for out of zakat. Although, before, there were guards as well. The soldiers, askar, were at the qalaat only in the mornings when the shaikh was sitting; the rest of the time they worked in their date gardens or fished. The shaikh had seven to ten khawadim as well, who were guards when the soldiers werent there. The towers along the rocky spur behind the gardens at Twayya were part of the defensive system, used as watch towers in time of war.

A tower was built at Dibba Husn in 1940 as a result of disturbances between Dibba Husn and Dibba Baiah; in the dispute settlement, the tower was allowed to remain, but it had to be demolished down to the stone walls of the lower floor to be used as a store (Walker 1994; vol 1, 536: vol 5, 733). In Khor Kalba, a Zaab remarked:

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When the archaeologists were excavating around the little fort, they found long walls extending north and south from the northwestern tower. No-one knew those walls were there under the earth. It is said the walls might be the walls of a sur.

At Sur al-Balush, a Baluch explained, The sur had a tower, majlis, stores and so on, with walls around all the buildings and a yard. The walls are more broken down than the mudbrick buildings, and parts have been rebuilt. Over there was the sur before this one. That walled enclosure built in concrete was the fadhdha, one of the official landing places for goods. There was another one further up the coast and one the other way. There used to be a tall pole with a light on top to direct sailors here. Every day at four in the afternoon, the Shaikh came down and collected the muluuk, dues.

At Sur al-Mazari, a Mazrui said, “This was a customs post, and it was definitely used up to Qabus accession, and may have gone on for a bit after that.” At Sur al-Abri, a man said, “Those ruins werent a sur, they were a husn, a fort. The sur was earlier, a long time ago.” In the sands, a Mazrui at Digdaga remarked: “Husn Muwailah was a real husn, it protected the Shahin Awanat owners and their people from raids and robbers.” A Shahin commented, The main purpose of the husn at Muwailah was as a family headquarters, particularly in the winters. There were always slaves there, even if the family wasnt. People passing through stayed there for security for themselves, their animals and their goods. There was a tower, a ghurfa, a few other stores and so on, and the wall enclosed a big space. It was all mudbrick. Another Shahin said, Awanat, who are Shuwamis Naim, also had a husn at Dibba Husn, one at Dhaid called Sur al-Humaiyil, and Husn al-Sirri somewhere near Buraimi. Husn Muwailah was the government for Shuwamis Naim before the Qawasim. A young Khatri said, “The mudbrick tower and building with walls at Muzairia further south in the sands was a Khawatir base we used when herding out there; there are lots of trees and a well”; an older Khatri stated: “Muzairia was a base used by Zaab for protecting their animals from raiders, especially their carrying animals.” In the Ruus al-Jibal mountains, Habus and Shihuh said there were no buildings like aswar for protection; men fought, and women and children ran and hid in the wadis and mountains, “they were our defence.” An elderly Bani Lasmiyya who had lived at Slai al-Quda recalled: “The two

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storey building had a lower room which was a granary, and the upper floor was where the men discussed the affairs of the district, shaun albilad. It was a ghurfa; on the coast it would have been called a buri, a tower.” A younger Haramsha at Slai al-Quda said, The two storey building was a double granary. There were small siba around Slai where men watched for people that we didnt know. The cairns before Slai on the track from Sabah are where visitors stopped and fired their guns to announce their arrival; then they waited until someone shouted for them or went to meet them. Another said, As watch-towers, siba, were on the edge of peoples territory, in a way they marked the boundaries. We didnt have aswar with walls and a tower to protect women, children and property; if there were raiders, the women and children took as much as they could carry and ran with the animals, as fast as they could up the wadis.

Concerning small siba in Wadi Bih, a Khanbuli remarked: “Those are where the young men used to watch for raiders.” At Sabtan, belonging to Bani Idaid Shihuh, there are three two-storey buildings, one in each of the three parts of the farij; an elderly Bani Idaid stated: “The building is just a large building; it wasnt for defence, it wasnt where the amir lived; its entrance is very high, which made it a good place to store things; theres another one like it over there.” Another two-storey building was seen at a side wadi in Wadi Haiyir, near Tawyain; two Sharqiyyin said, “As far as we know, that building is simply a house; the owner decided he wanted a second room on top.” In the western Hajar, at most tribally identified centres towers or forts, husun, qalaat, or ghurfa, overlooked the gardens. At Idhn, a Mazrui said, Whoever said the fort and towers were Khawatir was wrong. The fort and towers were here long before the Khawatir came, and they were built by the forefathers of bin Hamad. None of those towers were aswar. If raiders came, people gathered around the base of the tower and were defended by the people inside.

The Amir at Ghayl said, All the towers and the fort at Idhn are Mazari; Ali Ubaid Khatri didnt have a tower at Idhn, he had a small ghurfa in the garden he rented next to the tower. The towers were more against robbers than against raiders. The hill top enclosure to the north hasnt been used for as long as anyone can remember hearing about, not a very, very long time. There arent even any stories about it being used.

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A Maharza in Masafi said, “The big mud-brick ghurfa over there was the house of the Shaikh of Fujairah, Shaikh Muhammad bin Ahmed, but then he moved to another house and his wali was put in there.” In Shawqa, Quwayyid had a qasr overlooking the wadi and another in the fields. At Asima, a Mazrui remarked: “The qalaat is at the top of the mountain ridge; the lower walls were the sur where people went with their animals when there was trouble. There is a big cistern up there, plastered with saruj.” In Maydaq, a Sharqi commented, When the shaikh, Shaikh Hamad al-Sharqi, was here, the maarabb was his fort, husn, qasr. When he was there, it was more than a tower or a watch tower. We didnt have aswar here, they have them on the Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts. In the interior and on the west coast, they had towers. Here, when the men were defending the place from armed robbers or raiders, the women and children ran into the wadis or up into the mountains and hid.

In Wadi Sfuni, Mazari said, “The very old husn on the Jabal Mna has always belonged to the Mazari. A second tower at Mamduh could withstand a siege because there is a well under it.” In Wadi Sfai, a Jalajil remarked The lookouts, siba, were manned only when there was trouble around. At Munaiy, the Amir said, The fort, qalaat, at Munaiy was originally built by the people here, it was ours. The Qawasim took it over in the late 1940s. The forts at Waab and Sukhaibar were rebuilt in the 1930s by Sultan bin Salim al-Qasimi against robbers, especially Bani Kaab from Oman at that time. This may have been at the request of the Dahaminah, I dont know. From the late 1940s to the mid? late? 1950s, we had a tower at al-Aswad; it became a sort of resthouse and then given up altogether. My father told me, and he had been told by his father, that the husun at Rafaq by the wadi had been rebuilt about 180 to 190 years ago.

At Rafaq, a local man commented, “The husn was built before the Qawasim were the rulers. There was a husn, a ghurfa and a masjid up there. It wasnt a sur because the buildings are wrong. Its called Husn al-Ayyam.” In Nuslah, the Amir explained, The qalaat was built by our forefathers, it was nothing to do with the Qawasim. Our forefathers built and repaired it and rebuilt it, just as they did with the watch towers, one at each end of Nuslah. The qalaat was built by the local community for the local community, and men from the community manned it. There were guards in the watch towers at night. We didnt need walls, aswar, because we are up on this outcrop above the wadi, and anybody going past up or down, for good or ill, had to use the

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wadi. The qalaat was a centre, a markaz, where people going through could stop off if night was coming, or if there was bad weather, or if there was news of robbers. It wasnt a place where we took money off travellers and it wasnt against raiders, it was to protect ourselves against robbers. If if we knew robbers were around, we had men in the towers and people went up to the qalaat.

A Kaabi said, The forts, castles, husuun, qalaa, as at Waab and Sukhaibar, belonged to the Qawasim, but before they belonged to them, they belonged to the tribes and they were where people went when trouble came. At that time, there was no aman, security (in an institutional sense) so we needed them. But I have no idea when, at what date, the change in ownership went from the tribes to the Qawasim.

In Daftah, the Amir said, The husn and its watch towers are very old and they were built by Naqbi and we own them. We built them because of robbers, raiders and general troubles. There were times of fighting between the Sharqiyyin and Naqbiyin over the years. The fort was last used in the 1950s when there was fighting between the Sharqi and Qawasim. But now, thanks be to God, we dont need the fort.

British documents from the Trucial Coast and Oman discuss the building of towers in Wadi al-Qawr in the 1940s and 50s. In the 1930s, Wadi alQawr belonged partly to Ras al-Khaimah and partly to Kalba (Walker 1994; vol 3, 465). Kalba maintained control in the wadi, Shaikh Sultan bin Salim paying Humaid bin Abdullah to act on Ras al-Khaimahs behalf. In 1935 (Walker 1994; vol 5, 536), Shaikh Sultan bin Salim of Ras alKhaimah wrote to the Sultan of Mascat suggesting mutual co-operation in fortifying the common boundary of Wadi al-Qawr to prevent banditry. Negotiations went on for some years; in 1938 – 9 (vol 5, 522) Shaikh Sultan bin Salim and the Walis of Suhar and Shinas agreed verbally that Ras al-Khaimah should build two towers, at Nuslah and Farfar, each to be manned with five guards. The Masqat government would pay Ras alKhaimah Rs2,000 and the costs of construction. Sultan bin Salim pointed out to the walis the need to continue the allowances paid by Masqat to Naim, B Kaab, B Qitab and other tribes to avoid robbery and kidnapping on the Batinah coast. In July 1939 (vol 5, 544), the shaikhs of the Dahaminah in Wadi al-Qawr received a letter from a Shaikh on the Batinah, informing them he had been ordered by the Masqat government to build on the roads leading to Wadi al-Qawr. They wrote to the Ruler of Kalba complaining of Masqati encroachment by the Wali of Suhar and Bani

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Jabir, and the Ruler of Kalba ordered the Dahaminah and Bani Kaab of Wadi al-Qawr to take possession of strategic positions. Masqat agreed (vol 5, 551) that if towers needed to be built, they would be built on that side of the border. Some tower building in Wadi al-Qawr was done, because a undated memo (vol 5, 554) noted the arrival of Shaikh Muhammad bin Nasir of Bu Baqra at Ajman with Rs 6,900 from the Masqat Ruler to pay the Shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah for the building of a fort in Wadi al-Qawr; Muhammad bin Nasir also had to settle with the Shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah the monthly amounts payable for the garrison of the fort. Hanthal (1987) reproduces 21 documents, with dates from 1796AD to 1967, as an appendix to his Tarikh ash-Shihuh. Document 10, dated 1320AH/1902AD, was written by Shaikh Hamad bin Abdullah al-Sharqi (ruled 1879 – 1932) thanking his Shihuh allies for their part in defeating our enemies and their allies who had surrounded Bithnah and taken its fort. The Shihuh day-long attack on the fort ended with the defeat of the enemy and the Shihuh took over al-Bithnah and its fort, having captured seven enemy flags. From this date, We [the ruler] made al-Bithnah and its supplements a private property of the Shihuh. We also sent this good news to the Sultan, Faisal bin Turki, and to Shaikh Zaid bin Khalifah, and we also wish if you can to send them the same information.

Zakat in the ideas and practice of ruling Zakat is the legally prescribed alms tax of foodstuffs payable at the end of Ramadan, and its payment to the ruler was seen as an acknowledgement of his rule. Shihuh derive their name from the fact that they withheld, sh – HH, the payment of zakat to the Caliph Abu Bakr because they preferred to look after their own needy rather than contribute to a centrally organised political state. People in the Ruus al-Jibal say this action showed that the Ruus al-Jibal was already occupied, and owned for production, mulk, by descent groups, some of whom withheld the zakat and became Shihuh, and some who did not and became Dhahuriyyin, Habus and Sharqiyyin. All the peoples of the Ruus al Jibal were and are bida; own, mulk, land made more productive by their efforts; have rights, haqq, because they own as individuals or as members of tribally identified groups; and maintain that in the Ruus al-Jibal, there is no land that is legally dead land, ardh mawt. Bida [with ain or hamza] means to start, begin, and people who identify themselves as bida explain the term

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in two ways that link environment with rule. They are bida because the whole system of cultivation and production linking mountains, sands and coasts depends on the waters, trees, and silts of the Ruus al-Jibal mountains, the mountains start the agricultural system; and they are bida because their distant forefathers were the ones to develop and so own the mountain lands and water flows, and they continue to own these resources. They are the muluk, they have the rights, the haqq, because they are the bida. Bida said they had not paid zakat although some did – for example, Shutair in Wadi Shaam and Wadi Ghalilah according to Walker (1994; vol 3, 435). By this time, zakat was used by a ruler to pay his soldiers, or to provide for the defence of his followers in other ways, sometimes by distributing part of his zakat payments to tribal leaders; for example, the Khatri shaikh, Saif bin Ali, received some zakat from the Rulers of Ras al-Khaimah and Ajman. Wilkinson (1987; 130 – 1) moves this line of argument to the sands; This is essentially the significance of the use of the word bida, used by the Trucial Coast nomads to designate a major new well [as in Dubai and Abu Dhabi]. As the etymology of the word indicates, such a well is innovative, it opens up new land and confers new rights to its owner: hence the fact that it is normally associated with the name of its builder or owner, usually the shaikh, and marked with his possession sign, wasm. In the Ras al-Khaimah region and its environs, no well mentioned was so described, except for al-Biday off Wadi Kuub, and the well al-Bidy in Wadi Khabb Shamsi north of Dibba Baiah. A Shihuh remarked “All the bedu tribes here have and have always had very flexible dirah which were always changing, none of them seemed to have permanent areas. They would move into a locality, dig a well so they could water their animals and sell water to passers by, and claim they had always been there. Then they would move because of grazing or a quarrel, and another tribe or tribal section would come along and do the same.” Ownership by development of resources gave rights to tribespeople living from their animals which enabled them to counter claims by rulers that the sands were basically dead land. Under Islamic law, dead land, ardh mawt, belonged to government. If government were a tribe or tribally identified community, people saw little problem with dead land. If someone or some group developed a well or built water channels so that land was made productive, this was good. Historically, development for greater productivity meant irrigated agriculture for commerce or for feeding the horses used in war. If the government was a ruler with wealth to employ workers to dig wells, build

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water channels, plant trees and so on, loss of formerly communally used land could be considerable (Wilkinson 1987; 116 – 8). In the recent past, drilling rigs and diesel pumps allowed land that had been productive grazing to be developed by the wealthy into commercial vegetable gardens. For a group to concede that any part of their resource areas was dead land was to allow in outsiders, sometimes invited by rulers. In 1963 (Walker 1994; vol 6, 273) Habus sent a delegation to Dibba Baiah and Fujairah for their support against Shaikh Saqr of Ras al-Khaimah who was awarding gardens to outsiders in an area of the coastal plain that Habus claimed as traditional grazing grounds. In 1962 – 3, Sharqiyyin and people of Dibba Husn disputed ownership in the Dibba coastal plain, formerly used for grazing but with pumps, capable of development (Walker 1994; vol 4, 507). This principle was at the root of local objections to the acceptance by rulers of payments for oil concession or British survey points, fuel depots, or telegraphs, where the local communities managed their own affairs. These objections were based not so much on a dislike of modernisation as such, although many were wary of being incorporated in a modern money economy, but the assertion of a moral imperative to maintain control of tribal resources and assets in tribal hands. Archive information indicates people regarded rulers to be in constant need of revenues, and zakat was the most frequently mentioned. People said taxes paid to rulers were for his expenses in managing and defending his people (as Lienhardt 2001; 203), but some rulers exploited their people at times (Lienhardt 2001; 201 – 3). Zakat payments varied place to place and over time. c. 1961, (Walker 1994; vol 4, 495 – 6) zakat collection differed across the Emirates; in Abu Dhabi, zakat was collected on crops only; in Dubai, there was none; in Sharjah, it was collected on crops and livestock; in Ajman, on crops; Umm al-Qawain ceased collecting in c. 1959; in Ras al-Khaimah, it was collected on crops and livestock, and a shaikh collected the animal zakat from wherever his tribe may be; and in Fujairah, there was zakat on crops and livestock, but the latter was irregular. Local experts agreed that the collection of zakat on crops was a strong, but not over-riding, indication of acceptance of a ruler; collection of zakat on livestock did not constitutue a claim. In the dispute between the rulers of Fujairah and Ras al-Khaimah over an area of the western Hajar (Walker 1994; vol 3, 581 – 2: vol 4, 496), the area was given to Fujairah because the people were Sharqiyyin and the Sharqi ruler exercised effective control; the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah continued to have the right to collect a proportion of the zakat and was awarded mineral rights.

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Memories and documents provide some information on zakat from the point of view of the taxed. At Ghalilah, Shutair asserted Zakat was dates, dates were taxes. Zakat was collected by the Amir, who recorded the yields of the date trees and assessed each person. A man paid ten per cent of his crop. The Amir collected the dates and sent the amounts, less a bit for his trouble, on to the shuyukh who used most of it to pay their soldiers.

Another Shutair said, “Fishermen paid their zakat in money, but when there wasnt any money, a whole days catch was taken by the Amir of Shaam and delivered to the Qawasim. Payments for dates and wheat were by sacks, and goats were paid as one or two in forty.” A Shamili in Wadi Ghabbas commented, “In the old days we used to pay zakat to the Qawasim. Now, thanks to God and Shaikh Zaid, we dont have to pay. Before, governments needed our money; now they dont.” Thomas (1931), at Khasab in 1930, reported a nominal zakat in kind on dates, onions, and sheep provides about Rs 600 annually. In Dibba Baiah, an elderly Ahl Hail remarked: “Zakat was really in our own hands, but we paid it to the shaikh of Dibba Baiah, and it went to the Bait al-Mal [treasury].” Some was paid out as local charity, some was used for repairs to the fort and public wells. Another said, “How fishermen paid zakat is forgotten, we know only that they did.” At Dibba Husn in 1963, the zakat was one jirab or galla of every twenty of dates; one mun in every ten of grain, and one goat in every forty; Stockdale (Walker 1994; vol 4, 519 – 20) also reports a tax of RS 2.5 on every 100 mun of gaisha, common to the rulers of Mascat, Qawasim and Sharqiyyin, and one of RS100 on every khabat net payable to the Sharqi ruler (Sharqiyyin owned the best khabat fishing grounds.). There were local taxes paid in kind, hilla, on fish caught in the territory of another tribe. Pearling tax had ceased. In Qidfa, a Yamahi explained, The Shaikh of Qidfa got his income from zakat. He collected it on dates and grain, and a representative of the ruler of Fujairah came and took a record of the accounts. He went back to Fujairah and told the ruler how much had been collected. The ruler told him Leave x amount for Qidfa and bring me the rest. What was left in Qidfa were the allowances in dates and grain for the shaikh and the wali. Zakat wasnt collected on fish or animals. If people were coming from Abu Dhabi, Dubai, or Uman to Fujairah, the ruler sent around to each place for so much fish, so many goats. And if he was coming through the area, local people had to feed him and his entourage.

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These duties could be onerous; in 1944, when an agreement was reached about the demolition of a tower in Dibba Husn, the deputy ruler of Dibba Husn told the Political Agent the agreement would never have been signed except for the necessity of feeding the 800 men Masqat had brought with them. They had spent nearly Rs 2000 on food in three days, stocks were running low, and they signed to avoid disgrace (Walker 1994; vol 5, 733). Walker (1994; vol 5, 664) describes the distribution of zakat collected by the wali of Shinas from Wadi Madha in 1954; the amount was about 600 jirab of which a third went to the Shaikh of Madha, a quarter to the Shaikh of Ghuna, and ten jirab to the Shaikh of Harat Bani Humaid; the wali kept the rest to meet his expenses on the journey. In the western Hajar, a Mazrui in Wadi Kuub recalled: “Zakat was collected in kind by the Amir of the Mazari, the father of the present Amir. Zakat was 10 % of the date crop, 10 % of the wheat crop, and one goat in forty. The Amir kept half of what he collected for local distribution and sent on the other half to Shaikh Saqr.” The Amir of Munaiy said, The Amir was the government and he collected the zakat and from that he got his money. For tobacco, zakat was a quarter of the crop. The Amir kept back a twenty-fifth for himself for his trouble and sent on the rest. His income also included fees for arbitrations and mediations, and fines for minor infringements of the peace; stupid squabbles, things like that.

At Daftah, an elderly Naqbi commented, “Ras al-Khaimah was our main market, and that was where we paid our zakat”. Before 1952, when the people of Daftah decided to pay zakat to Ras al-Khaimah, they had sometimes paid Ras al-Khaimah, but sometimes Khor Fakkan, where they went for dispute settlement (Walker 1994; vol 3, 455). A Jiljili in Wadi Sfai recalled: “Taxes were 10 % of everything when we got to a market. All governments did before was tax people.” A Sharqi in Manama said, When a man went to see the Sharqi Shaikh he took down down firewood or charcoal or something; this made the Shaikh aware that the man needed him, it was a desire for a closer relationship, and some sort of indication he might be prepared to pay zakat, which in the past was the only tax, and the ruler or his agent came round to collect it.

A Sharqiyyin in Wadi Fay remarked: “The fact that there were quarrels over the borders between the two lots of Qawasim, the Sharqi and

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Oman at various times didnt affect our lives much. The main difference was that we might pay our zakat to someone else.” Other sources of income for rulers were customs duties, market fees, licences, and taxes. In the 1950s, Masqat, Qawasim and Sharqi ports charged customs duties, Shihuh ports did not. Customs dues at Ras alKhaimah were 1.5 to 2 % (Heard Bey 1996; 86), although a former Head of Customs at Ras al-Khaimah said that in his time, the late 1950s and 60s, customs were not always charged. Formally constituted markets charged fees, informal markets did not. A Shihuh in Ras al-Khaimah town remarked: In the past, the Qawasim money came from payments. People with date gardens paid in dates, lif or fibre, and kurb, and the lif and kurb were sold on to fishermen who needed them for nets and floats. People with animals paid in animals. Merchants and traders paid for using the markets and there were fines for dirty markets, false weights and so on. Fishermen paid, I think, in money. There werent customs duties as such, but merchants made payments. People got nothing in return, except some measure of protection, and they might be given or sold a gun.

A note from 1942 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 547) commented that Persian merchants in Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah were moving to Dubai, and villages on the edges of Qawasim territory were paying taxes to the Ruler of Fujairah because he gave them some security. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol 1, 2284), at the beginning of the 20th century, considered pearling was the real source of wealth for rulers; pearling taxes for Rams, Ras al-Khaimah town, and Jazirat al-Hamra from 60 large and small pearling boats, yielded cRs 6,700 to the ruler of Ras alKhaimah, together with Rs 800 in customs duties, plus the zakat on dates, grain and animals of the populations stretching from Shaam to Jazirat al-Hamra, and from the Sands to the western Hajar. Captain Taylors 1818 report (1985 [1856]; 39 – 40) contains information from natives of authority on dues taken by the Ras al-Khaimah ruler before Wahhabi rule when Ras al-Khaimah was the predominant town of the Gulf coast ; the tenth of the date harvest was Rs 8,000; he took a seamans share from the produce of each trading voyage from 60 large trading ships and 200 smaller; and a divers amount of two shares from each of the 400 pearling boats and the right to purchase at half price all pearls valued above 110 toman. Payments for passage or goods to tribes or rulers existed at some times. A Habus and a Sharqi said they had been told that at some point in the past, they had taken payments from people going through

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their areas to Ras al-Khaimah town. Documents (Walker 1994; vol 5, 564) indicate that before 1952, when the Trucial Oman Levies established a post at al-Khurus in the western Wadi al-Qawr, Awaimir and other bedouin had levied tolls when they were in that area. Around the same time, the Masqat government set up a customs post at al-Aswad to collect dues on goods and people carried by vehicles between the Gulf coast and the Batinah (Walker 1994; vol 5, 569), and at Umm al-Ghaf to collect customs on dried fish from the Batinah to the tobacco gardens of Munaiy and other places in Wadi al-Qawr (Walker 1994; vol 5, 581), while the ex-ruler of Ras al-Khaimah, Shaikh Sultan bin Salim had erected barriers at Huwailat and Wadi Munaiy to collect tolls, although none were being collected (Walker 1994; vol 5, 561). Shaikh Sultan bin Salim had put up barriers at Huwailat to collect tolls to mend the road in Wadi al-Qawr (Walker 1994; vol 3, 465).

Changes in ruling and the functions of rulers Local comments on rulers start with the establishment of the Qawasim as the ruling family at Ras al-Khaimah and the independence of the lower Gulf coast from Omani claims of suzerainty. A few mentioned rule by Yaariba governors over the coasts, but speakers assumed these governors acted as arbitrators of last resort and collectors of zakat, and local communities and tribal groups essentially ruled themselves. The Qawasim are first mentioned by al-Busaidi (2000; 158) in 1624 as rebelling in Kalba against the Portuguese and by Slot (1993; 160, n109) in 1646 as one of the two Omani negotiators with the Portuguese over the armistice agreement between the Arabs and the Portuguese, which recognised Portuguese rule over Masqat in exchange for the surrender of fortresses between Dibba and Masqat to the Omanis; only Khasab, where Shaikh Malik was a friend of the Portuguese, and Masqat would remain Portuguese. The Qawasim are next mentioned in a 1718 Dutch source (Slot 1993; 239, n83); the commanders of the Omani army on Hormuz were a Hanassi and Shaikh Rahma b Mhatel b Rahma b Muhammad [al-Qasimi] whom Slot (1993; 250) elides with Shaikh Rahma bin Matar, described by some Dutch sources as one of the wealthiest merchants in the Gulf. c.1720, ibn Ruzaiq (Badger 1871; 102 – 6) mentions Shaikh Rahma b Matar of Julfar as a supporter and local leader of the Ghafiri faction in the Omani civil war. Bathurst (1967; 235 – 7) using Sirhan ibn Saids

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Kashf al-Ghummah writes that after Muhammad b Nasir al-Ghafiri took Rustaq in 1723, he was joined by 1500 men of B Qulayb and B Kaab, and 5,000 badu and hadhr led by Rahmah b Matar al-Huwala, Amir of Julfar. The armies set off for Barka. At Masnaah, the Huwala were warned by Banu Hina not to advance further. The Huwala troops went forward, defeated Qarah al-Daramki and his B Hina troops, and went on to meet Khalaf bin Mubarrak al-Hina and his army of 15,000 west of Barka. This major battle ended with the defeat and rout of the Hinawi troops, after which the Huwala and their troops returned to the north. After the Persian ruler Nadir Shah took Bahrain in April 1736, the Shaikhs of Julfar and the southern shore of the Gulf had to submit to Latif Khan, the Persian Admiral of the Gulf (Bathurst 1967; 283), who used Julfar and Khor Fakkan in supporting Sayf bin Sultan, the Hinawi leader in the Omani Civil war. Dutch sources (Slot; 302, note 28) say Rahma bin Matar was appointed for life as the governor of Julfar by Persian forces in 1738. Sayf bin Sultans request for Persian help, and his general behaviour, had so disgusted Omani notables that an electoral college conferred the Imamate on Sultan bin Murshid al-Yaaribi in February 1741 (Bathurst 1967; 299). Imam Sultan consolidated his position, and a year later attacked Mascat. Sayf bin Sultan fled by sea, landing at Khor Fakkan and went to the Persian fort at Julfar, offering to be a Persian vassal if the Persians would help him regain Oman. In September 1740, the Arab (mostly Huwala) seaman of the Persian fleet had mutinied, taking the fleet to Khor Fakkan, raiding in the Gulf and failing to retake Bahrain. The Huwala leaders, Abdullah al-Shaikh and Rahma bin Matar, keen to be independent of Persia and Oman, seized Khasab in 1741. Sayfs appeal to Nadir Shah meant the Huwala leaders supported Imam Sultan. In April 1742, the Persian garrison at Julfar marched against Khasab, defeated the Huwala and Shaikh Rahmah bin Matar was killed (Bathurst 1967; 304 – 5 using EIC Factory Records, Persia and Persian Gulf, V; Gombroon Diary, 19:4:1742; Otter, vol 2, 163, 169). After the death of Nadir Shah in 1747, the breakup of Yaariba rule in Oman, and the rise of Al bu Said rule on the Omani coast, the Qawasim in Julfar extended their influence. In 1756, Niebuhr wrote The Prince of Sirr … retains Sharjah, with some considerable places upon the opposite side of the Gulf, among which are Kunj and Lingah, and was independent of the Imam. He was careful to have good relations with the other independent shaikhs, especially with the Naim Shaikh of Jau, the area around Buraimi. The Zaab of Jazirat al-Hamra paid him no small contribution (Floor, 1979). It is from c. 1750 that local people regard the Qa-

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wasim as the rulers of Ras al-Khaimah. The Qawasim started to expand their control to the Shamailiyya coast, firstly to Khor Fakkan and Kalba. This was contested by the Omani rulers, and Jazirat al-Hamra, Khor Fakkan, Kalba and Dibba were controlled first by one, then by the other. In the mid-18th century, profits from trade in the lower Gulf came from pearls to India, textiles from India to the Gulf and on to the Mediterranean, specie from the Mediterranean to India, rice and wood from India to the Gulf and coffee from Yemen to the Gulf. Transit trade between India and the east through the Gulf to the Mediterranean, along with various transhipments, brought profits by providing services to shippng, customs duties for the use of harbours and markets, and provision of security by port governments. Holding administrative positions at ports was another source of wealth, and senior posts were often filled by local rulers or members of their families. Trade in basic foodstuffs, cheap textiles, firewood, salt fish, dates, building wood, and so on, made smaller profits but were constantly traded within the Gulf and the coasts of Oman and the Makran. Most sea trade was by contracts and in shares to spread risks, which required co-operation rather than competition between traders. Ports declined, sometimes from harbours silting up, sometimes from the imposition of excessive duties, sometimes from shifts in land or sea routes, in final markets, or in producing areas; and ports also developed. Oman, the Qawasim, and later on the East India Company all wanted to control the trade and its freight in the Gulf and northwestern Indian Ocean. The British had recently lost an empire in North America, but had defeated the French in India; to recoup the vast costs of wars with France and Spain and the loss of the American colonies, British government in India became more grasping and interventionist (Bayly 2004; 94). In expanding Company rule, some Indian traders in the Gulf and Oman became British Protected Indians, which enabled them to demand a protection based on English political thought and legal categories current at that date, and backed by EIC naval force. After c.1778, the decline of Persian power in the Gulf increased continual fighting between the Qawasim, Oman and others. Together with general interruptions to sea trade worldwide between 1780 – 1820, and the Wahhabi renewal of Islam, a recourse to piracy or free-booting by otherwise unemployed boat crews was an obvious course, as pointed out by Ditchburn (2000; 5) in his discussion of piracy as a result of competition for a shrinking volume of trade all round the North Sea in the early 15th century.

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The traditional position for populations around the Indian Ocean was that The sea belongs to God, the land belongs to us (Nadjmabadi 1992; 334 – 5, 341 in the Gulf: Reid 1990; 73 for a similar statement by a Muslim ruler of Makassar in Indonesia). The seas were considered to be open to all, but users belonged by residence, association, or protection to the coasts bordering the Indian Ocean and the Gulf and accepted traditonal usages. Sea borne trade was driven by demands of markets, the levels of investments in goods and shipping, and by the actions of rulers and merchants. Indian Ocean and Gulf trade worked by contracts for security of merchantsgoods, passengers, crews, and boats. The fulfilment of these contracts could be complicated as boats carried goods belonging to local or foreign owners from different places, and contracted to foreign merchants and /or captains by owners. Boats from outside might carry goods belonging to local owners, be contracted to locals, have local captains and crews. Portuguese and Dutch and East India Company officials also worked with local agents and owners of boats and businesses. Disputes, claims and counter-claims over goods and boats between owners, carriers, and merchants were inevitable. Trading boats normally had armed crews so warfare or raiding between groups on land spread to their ships, crews, or goods at sea, while a loss of livelihood on land led some to take to raiding by sea. Piracy could thus encompass aggression between those in a state of hostility, competition over highly profitable or scarce trade, redress for unfulfilled contracts, free trade without having passes, or opportunistic raiding at sea from necessity, and was common throughout the Gulf and the Indian Ocean as it was in other seas such as the Caribbean with profitable trade and a variety of competing authorities. From c.1668-c.1722, Oman was extremely active in pursuing its interests by sea in the western Indian Ocean, attacking Portuguese, Indian, Armenian, and Persian shipping. Bathurst (1967; 185) comments that the state of war claimed by Oman to exist between itself and these other countries was more likely to be a form of licensed piracy, and perhaps exacerbated by strained relations or competition. There were also European and American pirate ships in the north western Indian Ocean. The assertion of the Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah of their rights to full participation in the sea trade in the lower Gulf and western India was not acceptable to Omani rulers or newly expansionist officials of the English EIC (Bayly 2004; 94). After c.1778, inter-Arab fighting throughout the Gulf broke out, linked by Heard Bey (1996; 282) to the loss of Persian influence after the death of Nadir Shah; but French-English wars in

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India and new sources for coffee, spices, and sugar from American and West Indian plantations meant less profitable trade and increased competition and disruption in the northwest Indian Ocean between Indian, Omani, Arab and British shipping. Disputes over access to sea freight and sea trade in the region can be seen as the local aspect of the world crisis of 1780 – 1820, which Bayly (2004; 100) sees as originating “in a growing imbalance between the perceived military needs of states and their financial capacity.” By the end of the century, the Qawasim had lost much of their earlier wealth (al-Qasimi 1988; 78 – 9). In the last decade of the 18th century, the new religious, political and military force of the Saudi Wahhabi state arrived on the lower Gulf coast. Wahhabism was a sociomoral reconstruction of society from which emerged a tranquil, peaceful and politically united Najd, ruled by a central government which applied the shariah as its law (al-Juhany, 1983; 287, 288). In 1795, a Wahhabi raid into as-Sirr was resisted by the Qawasim and Bani Yas, but by 1799 (al-Rashid 1981; 46, n305) the tribes of the Omani coast had submitted to the Saudis. The Memorial of the Government of Saudi Arabia, compiled for the arbitration of the territorial dispute with Abu Dhabi in 1374/1955 implies (1955; vol 1, 111) Wahhabi expansion southwards was in response to local requests by the people of Oman, probably by tribes around Buraimi like Naim. The Qawasim, Hanbali Sunnis, having refused to co-operate with a deputation of Naim from Buraimi sent by Salim b Bilal al-Hariq to explain the doctrines of reform, were beseiged twice by al-Hariqs troops, and then submitted peacefully to the reformed doctrines, swore fidelity to their laws and injunctions, and fully acknowledged Saudi supremacy … The Qawasim remained masters in their own land (al-Rashid 1981; 47); Najdi preachers could visit, stay to supervise religious affairs, preach and inform on local matters, zakah was paid to Diriyya, a fifth of all booty went to Diriyya, and they complied with Saudi commands. Saudi Wahhabi reconstruction aimed at monoplising trade routes into the Arabian peninsula (Fattah 1986; 59). By 1811, they controlled all channels of trade into central and eastern Arabia (Fattah, 1986; 214, quoting Lam ash-Shihab 32 – 9, 48 – 57, and referring to Salih Muhammad al-Abid, Dawr al Qawasim fil-Khalij al-Arabi. Baghdad, al-Ani Press, 1976, 127 – 194.) Qawasim allies on the Gulf coast, with claims on parts of the Batinah coast, and a considerable number of boats at their disposal, were useful. From now on, the East India Company and the British government in Bombay complained that the activities of Qawasim pirates in the northwest Indian Ocean and the Gulf interrupted sea trade, threatening British

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interests. British officials at the time attributed the causes of piracy to Wahhabi influence and their drive for revenue, and to inherent violence in Arab society; but these piracies were no different from what had happened at sea before. Allen (1982; 126, n22) quotes a comment of a former ruler of Masqat, Said bin Taimur; The epithet pirate tended, a century and a half ago, to be indiscriminately applied to Christian and Muslim seafarers alike to disparage successful and competitive non-coreligionists. The change came from a major shift in British attitudes to native societies in the Indian Ocean and in their political and economic aims in India and the region (Colley 2002; 45, 244, 311). The Qawasim were unfortunate firstly in pursuing a naval war against Oman over three generations with the consequent disputes over boats, blood and property (alQasimi 1988; 74 – 79); secondly, in acknowledging Saudi Wahhabi authority and following orders to raid aggressively (al-Rashid 1981; 49 – 50), and thirdly in their interpretations of the agreement with the Bombay government to respect life and property for Christians but not for Hindus (alRashid 1981; 54). Davies (1997; 195) considers Abdullah bin Saud, the Wahhabi Amir, regarded the people of Ras al-Khaimah as subjects, whereas Hassan bin Rahma saw himself as a friend or ally of al-Saud. The Qawasim were also trying to maintain a share of Indian carrying trade at the time when Britain had become more aggressive in the Indian Ocean, and allowed Indian traders to become British protected subjects. In 1814 – 5, returning from Diriiyya, Hassan bin Rahma al-Qasimi, the Saudi appointed Shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah, sent an emissary, Hassan bin Muhammad bin Ghayth, to Bruce, the British Resident in Bushire, with letters from himself and Amir Abdullah, the Wahhabi leader. Hassan bin Rahma denied the Qawasim had failed to respect the British flag, and proposed a more formal treaty than that of 1806 with Bombay. Bin Ghayth hoped We would not insist on their leaving off cruising against those states who were at enmity with them as according to the law of the nations amongst the Gulph blood could be repaired only with blood, that if they were not to follow this kind of warfare they would lose their rank amongst the Arab states, and not only that, but those tribes who were at enmity with them would come to their very houses to attack them (al-Qasimi 1988; 178). Bruce and bin Ghayth signed a treaty (text in al-Qasimi 1988; 181 – 2) ratified by the Bombay authorities. As a result, the Qawasim became recognised as a power capable of maintaining ordinary international relations with other states (al-Rashid 1981; 53), although the new British governor in Bombay shelved the agreement. Up to 1819, Hassan bin Rahma al-Qasimi was anxious to establish

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friendly relations with the Bombay government, but all attempts failed. al-Qasimi (1988; 213) wrote the Qawasim were willing to allow British ships belonging to the Company to trade in the Gulf. But they were not ready to allow cheap Indian transportation of goods to compete with them in the trade between India and the Gulf under the protection of British cruisers. Davies (1997; 198) considered Hassan bin Rahma did not comprehend Britains purpose had greatly hardened between 1814 and 1816, and their later demands probably couldnt have been met by the most experienced ruler. Hassan bin Rahma continued to promote solutions based on the right of his people to prosecute maritime hostilities in defined areas and against certain peoples. Heard Bey (1996; 281) considers the Qawasim and the people of their coastal towns took up raiding Omani ships to get provisions because there was no other option following the decline in pearling and sea trade from Arab disputes by land and sea in the lower Gulf, and that their success led them to attack British and Indian ships. Raiding as a form of self-help in settling disputes over access to resources was understandable and logical. The incidence of known piracies from 1780 or 1790 to 1820 is not that many, and relatively few seem to have been seriously profitable (Davies 1997: Lorimer 1908 – 15: Kelly 1968: al-Qasimi 1988). At the same time, annual revenues sent from Ras al-Khaimah to Diriyya rose from $MT 4,000 to $MT 12,000 (al-Rashid 1981; 49). Increased rates of taxes and more efficient collection may have accounted for the rise, or amounts may have been notional and not those received. The increase implies piracy was not the only source of revenue and commercial activities of pearling, carrying by land and sea, salt and dried fish, date production and so on continued to some extent. Abdullah bin Croosh, a Qasimi negotiator with Seton at Masqat in 1806, described Ras al-Khaimah as a people whose country afforded nothing but fish and a few dates and who existed by carrying freight for others and whose Shaikh was not more than the other heads of families who obeyed him or not (al-Qasimi 1988; 78 – 9), perhaps accurate at that specific time, perhaps a negotiating statement. By 1819, local boats were trading using a system of passes (alQasimi 1988; 217 – 8). The 1819 attack on Ras al-Khaimah destroyed the town and many of its trading ships; the rest were shared between the British and the Imam of Masqat. Fortifed houses and towers at Rams, Jazirat al-Hamra, Umm al-Qawain, Ajman, Fasht, Abu Hail and Sharjah were demolished, and 184 ships of those towns destroyed. A Shihuh commented,

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You know that in 1820 the British invaded. They came from Bombay to Masqat, to take on water, arms, ammunition, supplies and such. Sayyid Sultan Al bu Said said Oh good, because all that area of Ras al-Khaimah and the Ruus al-Jibal belongs to me, and they are in revolt. Sayyid Sultan supplied the British with three hundred small boats so they could land their troops at Ras al-Khaimah. He himself went to Ras al-Khaimah and Rams by way of Dhaid with three hundred troops. But when he saw the British signing a treaty with the Qawasim, and not with him, he withdrew his co-operation. And that was that.

The 1820 General Treaty with the Arab Tribes of the Persian Gulf laid down an ending to plunder and piracy by land and sea on the part of the Arabs for ever and other measures, including a final arbitrator of the British Resident for rulers disputes. A few local people regarded this treaty as permitting local rulers to increase their power at the expense of local communities. Be that as it may, treaty terms such as a prohibition on self help in settling rulers disputes with heavy sanctions may have made the redevelopment of sea trading and carrying more difficult, while the ban on slave trading by sea was unenforceable. In 1835, Ras al-Khaimah, Umm al-Qawain, and Ajman joined in a Maritime Truce for the pearl fishing season. In 1837 Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr of Ras al-Khaimah proposed making it permanent but the British authorities refused, feeling their responsibilities would be too great and that it might alter the balance between shaikhdoms stronger at sea and those stronger on land. The truce was renewed annually and finally became permanent in 1853 as the Treaty of Peace in Perpetuity. The chiefs were not to engage in maritime hostilities for any reason, while the British government would not interfere with their wars on land. The Truce was monitored and enforced by the British; in the event of aggression by sea, the injured party was not to retaliate but to refer the matter to the British authorities in the Gulf. There were contraventions, but not many. At this time, the Trucial Coast Arabs acknowledged the supremacy of the Saudi Amir and in 1864 Pelly, at al-Qatif and Buraimi, made a settlement with ibn Saud that he would not attack the Arab tribes in alliance with the British as long as the Arab tribes paid their tribute regularly. In 1864, the British authorities needed to lay the telegraph line linking India with Britain across the Maqlab isthmus in the Ruus al-Jibal, which required permission from the owners, who for the British authorities were the rulers. The Dhahuri Shaikh of Hablain said the Hablain looked to the Shaikh of Sharjah, but the Omani wali at Khasab denied this. Sayyid Thuwaini of Oman claimed Maqlab, Khasab and their neigh-

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bourhood were his country. Local enquiries established that Khasab and Kumzar and the villages in between looked to Oman, while Filim, Shabus and Shaisa were independent at home and subjects of Sharjah in the date season when they went to Dibba Husn. The Qawasim claimed no part of Ruus al-Jibal, requiring only that local people should not disturb the telegraph operations. The settlement of disputes at the pearl banks was first discussed in 1843. A major cause of fighting at the pearl banks was that seasonal workers from the interior took a loan from a nakhuda to work from his pearling boat, but then went to another town, took protection from the ruler and worked in a pearling boat from that town, so breaking the contract and defaulting on the debt to the first nakhuda. Creditors could only get at their debtors on the pearl banks, and fighting that broke out there could spread. In the 1870s some rulers were charging fees to absconders for giving them protection. Debts involved divers and haulers on the pearl boats, and nakhuda who took loans to fit out a boat from musaqqam, brokers between nakhuda and pearl or general merchants, often Indian and protected British subjects. In general during this period, pearling flourished. Fees from pearling boats and taxes on valuable pearls were an important part of rulers revenues, so rulers wanted to increase the numbers of pearl merchants and pearling crews. Importing slaves to work on pearling boats became more difficult because of British laws and naval patrols. In 1897 rulers bound themselves to refuse protection to fraudently absconding debtors and to pay a fine for infringements; disputed cases went to a council of rulers, or their nominees, under the British representative in the Trucial Coast and the councils decisions were to be confirmed by the British Resident in the Gulf. Heard-Bey (1996; 292) regards this treaty as another significant step towards moulding the shaikhdoms of the Arab coast of the lower Gulf into one political frame. Disputes between rulers, and between rulers and tribal communities, continued. Lorimer (1915; 626) noted hostilities between the people of Fujairah and the Shaikh of Sharjah, and referred to the government of India, brought the response that the matters should be settled by negotiations and wise arrangements. In 1882, the Shaikhs of Ras al-Khaimah and Umm al-Qawain were at open war (Lorimer 1915; 733); in January 1883, the Shaikh of Abu Dhabi reconciled the disputants on condition that all injuries were mutually condoned. In 1885, Shaam revolted against the Shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah (Lorimer 1915; 762); the Shaikhs of Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah reduced Shaam to submission and im-

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posed a fine of $MT1,000, of which part was paid at once; the Shaikh of Bukha was reported (Lorimer 1915; 725) to have moved by sea with an armed force, possibly to help Ras al-Khaimah against Shaam. In 1886, Lorimer reported (1915; 729) that during skirmishes between Dubai, Ajman and Hamriyya against Ras al-Khaimah and Umm al-Qawain, the Shaikh of Dubai instigated people of Kumzar, Bukha and Shihuh in general to raid dependencies of Ras al-Khaimah. In 1897, the Qasimi Shaikh of Lingah was taken in chains to Teheran and Lingah incorporated in the reformed Persian administration of its Gulf ports (Hawley 1961; 161); in 1899, on the expulsion of the Shaikh of Lingah from Iran, he and his followers took refuge in Trucial Oman (Lorimer 1915; 743). The British wanted to stop outside influence in the region, and in 1892, the rulers of Trucial Oman signed The Exclusive Agreement of the Trucial Shaikhs with Great Britain, which bound them and their successors not to enter in any agreements or correspondence with any power other than Britain; this treaty was invoked by the British in 1938 – 9, when Masqat and Ras al-Khaimah were discussing ways of preventing robbers passing through wadi al-Qawr to the Batinah (Walker 1994; vol 5, 523). In 1902, all Trucial shaikhs signed The Agreement for the Suppression of the Arms Trade in their territories in an attempt to limit the trade in weapons which developed after the Afghan war of 1879 – 80, bringing in modern rifles and ammunition into the region. In 1911, the Shaikh of Rams was found guilty of conniving at the shipping of arms, in spite of remonstrances by Shaikh Salim and the residency Agent; he was fined Rs 2,000 under the threat of Rams being demolished by HMS Fox (Walker 1994; vol 1, 195). These treaties brought the Trucial coast under British surveillance and dependence on all matters except for the purely local.

Changes from the discovery and development of oil Oil was discovered at Abadan in Iran in 1908 and first exported in 1913 (Hawley 1961; 172); in that year, the Kanoo family in Bahrain became an agency for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (Kanoo 1997; 10). In 1922, the Trucial states rulers signed an undertaking to grant oil concessions only to companies appointed by the British government. Early oil concessions for exploration and agreements for airfields and refuelling for British civil and military aircraft linking Egypt, Iraq and India brought changes to the Gulf states. Before, as long as a ruler signed the treaties

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his predecessors had committed themselves to, obtained British recognition of his accession, and abided by treaty conditions, he had little interaction apart from formalities with British officials. Air traffic and oil changed this, as a rulers opposition could upset British aims. During the late 1920s, the British selected the creek at Ras al-Khaimah for a refuelling facility for RAF Wapiti sea-planes; the Ruler, Shaikh Sultan bin Salim, refused permission for some time, although the refuelling barge was installed in 1929 (Heard Bey 1996; 298). He also refused housing facilities for the air route; it was only after the Ras al-Khaimah pearl fishing fleet had been seized by the British authorities and other threats made, that he finally accepted (U of Durham 1982; 64). An IOR report (IOR 14-227-1, 1934) comments that the two new factors affecting Gulf ruling houses were the continuing collapse of the pearl market and new sources of revenue – Sharjah had a subsidy for the aerodrome, Dubai had customs and harbour dues: before, dhow owners were rich men, [and are] now poor, and being men of influence and standing, they do not like this and consider that they should share, at any rate in these hard times, in the regular income of their rulers, to whom many of them are related, enjoy. The rulers did not see the matter quite in the same way (Heard Bey, 1996; 253; Lienhardt 2001; 119 – 120). In 1931, a British official in the Gulf noted that Britain must change its policy because of oil. Oil companies needed defined borders between emirates and neighbouring states so exploration concessions could be demarcated and rulers compensated; and because oil concessions brought in much needed income, rulers saw a need to extend their control into the interior (Walker 1994; vol 3, 238 – 41). Indian Office Records indicate that some long-lasting disputes between rulers were kept going by deep seated personal animosities. While these existed, ideas of ruling and an adherence to principles or rights in customary law played a part. Shaikh Hamad bin Abdullah alSharqis disputes with the Qasimi ruler of Kalba in the 1930s illustrate this point. Thomas account (1931, 215 – 252) of armed opposition by the bin Malik Shaikh and tribespeople to the British intrusion into Khasab in 1930 and the subsequent bombardment has a quite different emphasis from that of bin Malik shaikhs reported in Hanthal (1987; 165 – 177). Thomas saw an unpopular tribal shaikh using Wahhabite ideology to stir up opposition against a reasonable British request to erect a survey point on a point a little way inland. Hanthal reports a shaikhly led tribal opposition to any intrusion, British or Omani, and quotes a letter from the Shihuh allies to the British Political Agent in Sharjah; We

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will kill anyone who comes here; the government is with us and we speak for ourselves; we know no shaikh or hakim/arbitrator or Sultan. After 1935, Petroleum Concessions Ltd. acquired the options negotiated by representatives of DArcy Exploration Co., a major shareholder in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, and started negotiations with rulers. While some rulers might have wanted to oblige the British, and all were interested in the income from rent for oil concessions, their followers were generally opposed to the change and disturbance that oil explorations would bring, and in some places allegiance to a ruler was disputed (Heard Bey 1996; 296). Shaikhs of the Bani Qitab, Bani Kaab, Al bu Shamis, and Naim disputed the claims to control from Trucial Coast rulers and the ruler of Masqat, and after 1930 these tribes virtually ruled themselves. In 1938 – 9, the Naimi shaikh co-operated with the Ruler of Masqat in allowing the oil company to enter his territory if the oil company paid $400 and $10 a day to do so, while the Wali of Shinas had to pay $400 and the gift of a camel before he could take the company into territory Sultan Said claimed as Oman (Wilkinson 1987; 280). Dubai and Sharjah signed oil concession agreements in 1937, Kalba in 1938 and Abu Dhabi in 1939; Ras al-Khaimah signed in 1945, Umm al-Qawain in 1949, Ajman in 1951, and Fujairah in 1952 when it became an independent state. Ras al-Khaimah did not sign earlier because of its dispute with the British authorities over the succession in Kalba; Petroleum Concessions Ltd explored some wadis in Ras al-Khaimah in 1935 and 1936, opposed by Shihuh and Khawatir who said PCL were in their territories (Heard Bey 1996; n64, 478). Oil exploration started again after the Second World war, complicated by the expansionisn of ibn Saud and the newly formed Aramco. Khawatir tribesmen and members of the Qawasim visited ibn Sauds agent at Hamasa near Buraimi. Opposition to oil exploration continued by Shihuh in 1946 (Walker 1994; vol 3, 185) and 1952 (vol 6, 132 – 3), Khawatir and Ghafalah in 1947 (Walker 1994; vol 3, 187 – 189, 193 – 195, 199), and Habus in 1952 (Walker 1994; vol 3, 438) and 1963 (vol 6, 273), until payments from oil concessions had been agreed with the ruler, the tribal shaikhs, and the oil company. Oil exploration teams did not in fact go into the mountains because their instruments are of little value when used in close proximity to mountains (Walker 1994; vol 3, 217). In 1948, a general demand for peace enabled the British to delineate the border between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the first time the British government involved itself deliberately in affairs on land in the Trucial States (Heard Bey 1996; 302). Oil companies demands drove the need to define boundaries (Walker

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1999; 109); between 1953 – 4, with the rulers acceptance, he worked at settling internal boundaries between Emirates and that between the Emirates and Oman. Several men in Ras al-Khaimah Emirate remembered Walker; more than one remarked that “those boundaries were only for oil companies, they werent definitive borders between political states” while a senior Dahamini remarked “in my opinion, Walker often didnt listen properly to what we were saying.” The sea bed was claimed by rulers as a result of oil companies seeking concessions for drilling off the coasts. Many local people saw this as contrary to the long established customary principle that the sea belongs to God, the land belongs to men. There had been customary accepted areas of influence identified by known geographical features between rulers and between neighbouring tribes. In 1268AH/1855, Sayyid Said of Masqat agreed with Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr al-Qasimi that he would respect the territories and peoples north and west of Khatma Mlaiha as Qawasim. Tribes described their dira by named natural features, as did rulers, although some rulers and their agents were more knowledgable than others (Walker 1999; 112 – 3: Stockdale in Walker 1994; vol 4, 521 – 523, 526 – 7). Boundaries were customarily and informally established in order to avoid disputes, as a Shutair at Lima pointed out, when indicating the headland beyond which Dhahuriyyin fished. When rulers or tribes were on good terms, there was no need for exact definitions of boundaries, since any difficulties could be resolved by agreement and compromise (archive information; Stockdale in Walker 1994, vol 4, 522). The difficulties over boundaries at Dibba between the Rulers of Fujairah and Sharjah arose in part because the new Ruler of Sharjah started to take a personal interest in the area, asserting the right to zakat from garden owners whose gardens were in the area associated with Sharjah, whereas customarily, garden owners, many of whom lived outside the area of Dibba controlled by Sharjah, paid their zakat to the shaikh they followed. He also increased taxes on fish catches and access to fish markets. Shaikh Saqr bin Muhammad of Ras al-Khaimah, who became ruler in 1948, incorporated or re-incorporated those tribal groups on the coast, in the sands, and in the mountains who had during the 1930s and 40s essentially ruled themselves. Rams and Shihuh rose against Shaikh Saqr in 1949 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 554); in 1951, a dispute between Shaikh Saqr and Shaikh Abdullah bin Hassan of Jazirat al-Hamra ended when Shaikh Saqr occupied Jazirat al-Hamra with seventy men and imprisoned Shaikh Abdullah and his son (Walker 1994; vol 1, 565). In 1952, Mazairi and Khawatir complained they had been better off under Shaikh Sultan bin

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Salims rule (Walker 1994; vol 3, 449). By March 1955, Shaikh Saqrs control of the Emirate was acknowledged by the people of the coast from Shaam to Jazairat al-Hamra, the sands, Habus in the Ruus al-Jibal, and Mazari, Quwayyid, Maharza, Jalajil, Dahaminah and some Bani Kab of the western Hajar; the Sharqiyyin of the western Hajar paid him zakat, but their allegiance was to the Shaikh of Fujairah who was awarded those areas in 1957 – 8 (Walker 1994; vol 3, 424 – 539). Demands for independence still occurred, as by the Amir of Shaam in 1963, as a result of complaints against Saqr by Habus (Walker 1994, vol 6, 274) and by Zaab of Jazirat al-Hamra in 1968. From the late 1930s people from Ras al-Khaimah and surrounding regions started to work in the oil developments in Bahrain, and from the early 1940s in the oil fields of Kuwait, Qatar, and al-Hasa. Migrant workers needed documents for travel and work, issued by shaikhs who charged fees, and some Consuls. People emphasised these passports were travel and identity documents but not certificates of nationality. Rulers had income from rents for oil concessions. Lienhardt (2001; 167) in 1953 – 4 thought More than half the income of the Ruler of Ras al-Khaimah comes from his oil concession. Without these oil payments it would be almost impossible for some of the poorer of the Trucial States to be maintained as separate governments. Some income from oil rents was handed on family members (Walker 1999; 124) and to tribal shaikhs; Walker (1999; 122 – 3) mentions Khawatir discontent with Shaikh Saqr bin Muhammad for not honouring an agreement made in 1947 with the former ruler, Shaikh Sultan bin Salim of an annual payment of Rs 11,000 from his oil revenues. In 1950 – 51, the Shaikh of Rams claimed an allowance from Shaikh Sultan bin Salim (Walker 1994; vol 1, 558) but the ruler was unable to oblige (vol 1, 565). The Shaikh of Jazirat alHamra also requested an allowance but again, Shaikh Saqr was unable to oblige (Walker 1996, vol 1, 558) although an allowance had been agreed with the former ruler (Walker 1996; vol 3, 199). By 1955, the Habus and other tribes were receiving payments of Rs 9,000 from Shaikh Saqr bin Muhammad. Oil was discovered in Abu Dhabi in 1950 and first exported in 1962. After the accession of Shaikh Zaid in 1966 there was money for largescale development (Heard Bey 1996; 418). Hawley (1970; 226 – 255) discusses the pattern of development which started in 1949, with the engagement of a British doctor and the building of a hospital in Dubai. During the 1950s, further British funded development followed; in Ras al-Khaimah, a well-boring programme, an Agricultural Trials Station, later an

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Agricultural school, and protection from coastal erosion. In 1952, the Trucial States Council was established, to bring the rulers closer together with the possibility of their forming some political or economic association in the future. A little earlier, the Trucial Oman Levies had been started to give the British political authorities an effective right arm (Hawley 1970; 173). Local tribesmen were recruited and the force had a useful role stopping small tribal wars, often over boundaries, and raids by Awaimir and Manasir for women and children ended. In 1956, the Trucial Oman Levies became the Trucial Oman Scouts, protecting the Trucial states from external aggression and keeping the peace internally. The Trucial States Council which, until 1965 had no funds of its own but advised on the best use for Britains Trucial States Development Fund (Hawley 1970; 177) started in 1955. In 1965, the British Political Agent relinquished the chairmanship of the Council in favour of one of the rulers, and it began to administer in its own fashion (Hawley 1970; 178). Development was helped by Kuwaiti aid for schools and hospitals, by Qatar and Bahrain for education, and by money from Saudi Arabia for roads and education. In Ras al-Khaimah, economic development concentrated on commercial agriculture, irrigated vegetables and some fruit, to supply a growing demand in Dubai and Sharjah. These developments, using imported well drilling techniques on formerly uncultivated land, required an acceptance of the concept of dead land by existing users and developers, and central land registration. Local people from many areas who had worked in Kuwait, al-Hasa or Bahrain had already brought back pumps for gardens, boat engines, imported modern building materials, and trucks. The transformation in economics, effected by western technologies and money, and the Gulfs strategic position required a political transformation of local concepts of ruling. Once traditional sources of profits had been lost to the products and services provided by new technologies, local people recognised changes to political life were inevitable. Earlier clashes between rulers and tribespeople, or rulers and rulers, had been essentially about ways of ruling, of achieving the keeping of the peace and a just society. When oil money became the regional source of wealth, rulers assumed greater control through oil concessions and the need for defined borders, the issuing of passports for migrant workers, and the requirement that oil companies must employ local people. Opposition to rulers became claims of independence against newly imposed controls by rulers backed by British support or acting on British demands, or who were considered not to share their new wealth, they

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were unjust. The support for Nasser expressed in Jazirat al-Hamra and Maarid, for example, was by people who accepted economic change but resented British influence; much of Nassers appeal was that he was seen as just and not corrupt. Following changes to the Trucial States Council in 1965, the rulers of the Emirates travelled more widely, participated in Arab League committees and international conferences, and created Trade Offices. By 1971, rulers were carrying out many functions previously the responsibility of Britain. Between 1968 and 1971, the formation of the federation that became the United Arab Emirates took place, discussed by Heard Bey, who concludes (1996; 378) This provisional constitution … was intended as the modus vivendi which was most acceptable to the seven Rulers and also not unacceptable to the local tribal population and the rest of the inhabitants of the UAE … The constitutions emphasis on unification and centralisation, even at the expense of a neater division between the powers, is not out of tune with the political expectations of the society. People of tribal and local communities who had managed their own affairs, hukm, became citizens of a federated nation state, dawlat.

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8 What happened to turn our world upside down? A Mazrui in Wadi Sfuni asked this rhetorical question. He was talking about a past in which mountain peoples considered they had everything they needed, while the people on the coasts were in want, compared to a present where the mountains offer little, and security and livelihood come from the Gulf coast. His comment was echoed by many others throughout the emirate, on the coasts as well as inland. These local people might be thought to have a peculiarly parochial attitude, as the standard sources for the history of the lower Gulf – eg, Lorimer (1908 – 15), Hawley (1970) and Heard-Bey (1996, 2001) – say that historically wealth came from pearls and overseas trade, as in the traditional Kuwaiti economy described by Lienhardt (2001). All those sources are basically concerned with coastal towns and their rulers. Fattah (1986) in southern Iraq and Kuwait, al-Torki and Cole (1989) in Unayza in Saudi Arabia, al-Juhany (1983) in Najd, Serjeant in Bahrain (1991 [1970]: 1995 [1968] 1968, 1970) and Hadramaut (1991 [1970]: 1996 [1988] 1970, 1988), and Miles (1994 [1919]) and Birks (1977) in Oman comment on linkages between coasts and their various hinterlands which produced agricultural, pastoral and craft products for the coasts and abroad, were markets for imported goods brought from the coastal ports, and provided routes and carriers for transit trade to more distant regions in Africa or Europe. Sheriff (2004) describes the dense social, cultural and economic web that connected the coasts of the Gulf, East Africa and western India for dhow-owners of Sur, similar to those described by local people in coastal towns of the study area. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol 2, 1805 – 1810) reported people of the Ruus al-Jibal depended on fishing and trading on the coasts, goat herding and grain production in the interior; Heard-Bey (1996; 77), using Dostal (1972), noted they had to eke out a meagre existence in an inhospitable environment although her 2001 essay incorporates Zimmermans (1981) unpublished research in Musandam which demonstrated the complex livelihood strategies and past profits from seasonal movement between resources. Ruus al-Jibal contributors in the archive demonstrate the regular production for profit and the trade in surpluses of grain, dairy products, live animals, firewood, charcoal, honey, pottery, wild fruits and medicinal plants, while its coastal fishing places and oases

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were an integral part in the wider Gulf economy. The western Hajar mountains traded tobacco, dairy products, fruits, live animals, and charcoal to the coasts and the interior. People of the sands and others who lived from animals provided camels and donkeys for carrying goods and people, live animals for meat, dairy products, firewood and charcoal in urban markets. The Mazrui speaker of the chapter title is a mountain man, a tribesman and a landowner. For him, irrigated agricultural lands, communally held tribal land, and animals were wealth, since they provided livelihood and profits, enabling tribespeople to manage their own affairs and security. On other occasions, he and others of the region spoke of ports on the Indian Ocean and the Gulf coasts where Western Hajar mountain tobacco, charcoal, firewood, live animals and clarified butter were sold and exported, and of Buraimi in the interior. They described a reality where mountain people they knew had a greater degree of modest prosperity and more security of food supplies than coastal town dwellers. He said, I tell you, the world has turned upside down. Before, we, the mountain peoples, had everything, and the coast people and the bedu had nothing. They relied on us for what they had. Now we have to rely on the coast people for jobs, it is impossible for us to live from our own resources.

A Dahamni at Sukhaibar commented, “We had everything – tobacco, grain, animals, dates, and water – and the people on the coast had nothing. Now the world has been turned upside down. Those on the coast have everything, and we have to go and work there because what we have isnt important any more.” This proposition was supported by people from the Ruus al-Jibal. Some Ruhaibiyiin commented: All of us here are old enough to remember life before oil money, and in our opinion, we had everything we needed, and we could make money for what we needed to buy. And we were independent. Now, no-one can do anything without money. Money means jobs and jobs mean you are not independent.

An elderly Qiyaishi explained, Now, we live down in the shaabiyya (social housing) all the time, and thanks to God and Shaikh Zaid we have electricity, air conditioning and refrigerators. But life was better in the mountains. Up there we were responsible for everything; food, water, animals, shelter. Down here, all we do is pay for things. We grew a lot of wheat up there and we nearly always had some to sell to people we knew in Rams and Dhaya. And we sold a lot of cheese, clarified butter, honey and firewood. We were rich in the past, we had land and we sold produce, we had profits from our land and our an-

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imals, we were selfsufficient. There came a time when we had food and shelter, but no money because there were no profits in the Gulf from pearls and trade. Then there was oil and unification, and now we have money but no profits. Our land cant make profits because there is no market for grain. Our money comes from oil and the state and so we are poor. We used to be rich and the rulers and traders were poor, now the government is rich and we are poor.

Previous chapters demonstrated the existence of profits for people living from the sea and from the mountains, certainly for people who had assets of land and other capital equipment such as boats, fishing nets, or animals, and this meant all tribespeople. Only those who lived from labour alone or from money were considered poor as they were without owned resources, and such people lived in the coastal towns and the date gardens. As well as surpluses that became profits by sale, surpluses were also distributed by charity, gifts, shares, and exchange. People of the region recognised a complementarity between coasts and mountains, just as traders in coastal towns recognised a need for co-operation between merchants, traders and carriers, and those who came to use the markets. At Rams, an elderly Ramsawi remembered: “Fifty to sixty boats bringing dates from Dibba for people in the mountains, and caravans of two hundred camels taking salt fish to Buraimi.” A seventy year old Shihhi in Shaam said, I can remember large caravans of camels coming up from Abu Dhabi to collect salt and dried fish for Buraimi. There were nine abwam here; some only fished or traded, others did both. Abwam took limes and onions grown here, among other things, to Dubai and one of the things they brought back was wood for repairing boats. We had to buy very little food; extra wheat or barley we got from the bida. Our gardens were very productive because we dried the little fish for fertiliser and so we had first call on it.

At Dibba Baiah, an elderly Shihhi commented: Mostly between the mountains and the coast there was self-sufficiency; the coast had dates and fish, the mountains had wheat and animals. Traders came here from Dubai and Sharjah because there were no customs dues, so it was easier to get goods here and have them carried across on local camels and donkeys. The main goods from India were rice, cloth, wood for boat building and repairing, and coffee; salt and dates came from Iran, and from East Africa we got chandal, roof beams, but they came here from Masqat. We exported dates, and wheat from the mountains which traders from Dubai bought, salt fish and especially dried fish, and seed pearls and mother of pearl.

At Bu Baqra, a Zaabi remarked,

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We grew millet only here, real grain came down from the mountains. I remember Zaab boats bringing goods from India and east Africa here, in the winter. The goods were taken across to Jazirat al-Hamra by camel, we rented camels from bedu at Munaiy, Wadi al-Qawr, al-Aswad, Mlaiha, all the bedu were carriers from this coast to the Gulf coast. And we took up tobacco and dried limes from this area and fish sounds, sul, from Socotra, to be shipped from Ras al-Khaimah. And slaves to Hamasa at Buraimi, but that stopped after the 1940s. And the bedu hired camels for people from these villages to go on the Haj – maybe fifty people each year went from around here.

A Bidawi at Bulaida remembered: In the summers, Shihuh came down from Khasab and Dibba, selling goats and buying dates, and Zaab women came, and we gave them fresh dates and mangoes, limes and bananas. Camel caravans from Buraimi and alAin and boats from Basra, Hasa and Iran brought dates that everyone bought as their staple because they were better than the dates grown here. We sold tobacco to traders from Bahrain and some from Saudi Arabia. And we dried and salted fish, and traded these ourselves up Wadi Shinas and Wadi Hatta.

At Munaiy, the Amir recalled: Before 1954, we used to go to Buraimi to trade, we exchanged grain for salt fish; the tobacco was sent down to the coast at Murair and bu Bagra.

These memories establish the populations of mountain hinterlands as producers, consumers, and distributors. The archives economic region reached from Buraimi to the Batinah coast on the east to the Gulf coast at Jazirat al-Hamra and Ras al-Khaimah town on the west. From the Batinah coast it linked to Masqat, the southern Arabian coast, the Red Sea, and East Africa. From the Gulf coast it reached to Basra and Kuwait, and land routes to the Mediterranean, as well as to the southern Iranian coast and hinterland, the Makran coast, and western India. From Buraimi, goods and people passed east to al-Hasa, north to Nejd and on, south and to Ibra and then west to Yemen. Having established the existence of productive hinterlands and constant exchange with coastal populations, had their world that turned upside down been a constant world or had there been earlier significant economic changes? Why was the wealth from pearling towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries ignored? What about the middle of the 18th century, when the Qasimi ruler of Ras al-Khaimah and the then Ruler of Masqat were described as among the richest merchants of the Gulf ? Or before the Portuguese came, when the area was ruled from

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Hormuz, enormously wealthy from land and sea trade? Or before the advent of Islam, when Dibba and Julfar were among the Arabian peninsulas great markets? Written sources, archaeological excavations, and observations suggest that the production and distribution systems of all regions – seas, coasts, mountains, and sands – did not change significantly until recently. At the same time, political and economic events, shifts and changes in the wider regions of the northwest Indian Ocean, Iran, and the Arabian peninsula, and yet further away, affected the production of wealth which took place largely in the coastal towns. The contradiction between people in the interior insisting that traditionally they had been wealthy while the inhabitants of coastal times had periods of want, and the emphasis in the literature on the wealth of coastal towns from maritime trade and pearling, may be resolved by appreciating the different perspectives of local people and the literary sources. Local views used the context of tribespeople with owned resources of types of productive land, water, and animals, who did their own work aided at times by neighbours, family or community; who produced livelihoods and profits in good years; and who functioned as members of families, communities, and wider networks, within and among whom each pursued moral relations in their daily economic activities. Wealth was not money but livelihood, some profits, and an honourable reputation achieved by participation and sharing. Honour is in moderation [or contentment or frugality] sums up their attitude to wealth. They were owners, they were responsible for themselves, they did not depend on others for livelihood, and therefore they had security. People of the mountains and sands regarded a trader as someone with no other resources; without owning productive resources or without having a right of access to resources, a man could only trade or sell his labour. They regarded the populations of coastal towns as lacking productive land, useful water, and trees in a tribal area, a dira, in which a tribesperson had inalienable rights, and in which land could be sold only to fellow tribespeople. Coastal towns had date gardens on the coastal plains, but these were owned largely by merchants and rulers and worked by baiyadir. Merchants and rulers, as seen by people of the mountains and sands, had wealth through investment, credit and debt, and by the labour of others, whether by pearling and/ or long distance trade; this wealth was expressed by money and material possessions rather than as reputation in a tribal community and networks, although individual merchants and rulers had reputations as good and generous men. Security of livelihood, wealth, and reputation for merchants and others living from the sea depended on a willingness to

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move when circumstances required – whether these were silted up harbours, changing markets, oppressive rulers, shifting trade patterns, or unreconciliable disputes. People of the Ruus al-Jibal and the westerrn Hajar living from ownership of lands and waters did move, but on the whole within a tribal area and through social processes of inheritance and marriage, or for protection. The two groups were not actually comparable, since the perspective of each was founded on different though partially overlapping economic and social principles. Merchants did see themselves as members of communities of merchants, with moral principles of mutual support and generosity towards not only fellow merchants but also the wider communities of the coastal towns in which they lived and worked. The other inhabitants of coastal towns were the men and their families who lived from fishing, small trading, or working as crew in pearling, sea trading and carrying, and commercial fishing. Those who lived from fishing locally and/or small trading in the lower Gulf probably owned some assets – nets, traps or a share in a boat or date garden, or animals. Crews on big pearling, trading or fishing boats might or might not own productive assets other than their labour, skills and experience; skills and experience increased their share of the boats profits. Livelihoods and profits from the sea depended on labour and skills, and required capital investment for large boats, and working capital of advances in provisions or money to crew members for their families in their absence, large fishing nets or traps, and goods to trade or carry. Capital and working investment required money or credit for funding and the labour of others for the actual work. Many people living from the sea, whether merchants or crews, were enmeshed in credit and debt which enabled enterprises using the sea that required capital at virtually all levels but was as much about moral and social relations than the bottom line of the account books. Archive information shows that people in coastal towns who might be assumed to have very little often had small investments in a share of a boat, a small date garden, animals, or a bit of building land. The nature of profitable enterprises in each area was largely a function of its culturally perceived environmental possibilities, alongside processes of ownership, labour, distribution and consumption. The visible differences in economic practice conceal a common morality of generosity, an acknowledgement of a right of livelihood, and honourable behaviour. While people talked of working hard continually, it was clear that work was not about making as much profit as possible. That would have been greed, from which comes shame. Work as labour seems to have

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had an almost ritual aspect, showing honour through seasonal repetition to their natural environments and the development of these by those who had preceded them. Traders, too, regarded themselves as honourable people; they themselves were frugal and content with returns much less than those expected by Western merchants. Many traders built or renovated mosques and small prayer rooms as acts of generosity to local communities; local traders pay for the feeding of the poor at Ramadhan. An Iranian trader remarked: “When a merchant died, it was customary for him to leave a proportion of profits to the needy of the community.” It is said that no Kuwaiti or Bahraini pearl merchant family survived the collapse of the pearl market, because they did not force the collection of debts. It is understandable how people of the mountains considered that they had been rich and secure while those on the coast were insecure and at the mercy of factors outside their control. In general, what the region produced itself for export did not change much except for the cultivation of new crops, such as mangos [end of the 9th century AD: (Watson 1983; 73) cultivated in Arabia and Persia and known to be exported to Hormuz c. 1569] and tobacco [possibly cultivated locally by 1625, definitely by 1646 (Bathurst 1967; 155 using EIC letters); Thevenot (1971 [1727]; vol 2, 156 – 7) travelling in 1664 – 5 mentions 2 – 3,000 Arab boats at the pearling off Bahrain, whose divers smoked tobacco while resting]. Locally produced exports, apart from pearls, were basic foods and materials, low in value but in constant demand; salt fish, dried fish for food and fertiliser, dates, firewood, charcoal, cheeses, clarified butter, live animals, wheat, honey, tobacco, earthernware, dried limes. These goods were distributed as shares, gifts, bartered and sold within the mountains and sands, at local and regional markets on both shores of the Gulf, and at coastal places in the north western Indian Ocean and East Africa. Local products were the largely invisible but constant goods of trade, the business of small traders; at the larger ports, these goods had a separate market or part of the market and were rarely recorded. The valuable exports were pearls, of which only a few were really valuable – Villiers (1940; 315) was told by an experienced buyer that the Gulf pearl fisheries yielded no more than two good necklaces a year; horses to India remained highly profitable in the late 17th century, and taking coffee from Yemen to Mascat and Basra was highly profitable in the 17th and 18th centuries. Imports were of two sorts; the necessities of dates, grain, rice, wood for ship building and repair, cotton textiles, metals, coffee, coir and hemp for ropes and nets, salt, porcelain, spices, cosmetics and medicinals on the one hand; on the other, imports in transit,

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traded on to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea by land and by sea. All these, exports, imports, and transit goods needed carrying by sea or land. Trading and carrying were important parts of the regional economy and in times of depression contested by competitors for adequate shares and access.

A brief economic history of the area Indicates times of economic transformation that resulted from the arrival of external political forces; changes from innovations of new routes, markets, crops, and new opportunities; transformations that result from external technologies; and environmental changes. The chapter ends with an examination of how each of the traditional sources of profits in the area has been transformed, and the transformation of modernity itself. In pre-Islamic times, Julfar and Dibba were two of the great markets of Arabia, timed to coincide with the arrival of merchants from Sind, India, China, and southern Arabia selling and buying goods from India and further east on the monsoon (Serjeant 1996 [1988]; 61). Al-Rawas considers (2000; 39) the merchant, Amr ibn al-As, sent by the Prophet with a letter to the Kings of Oman, had already been to Oman to trade. Goods were carried up the Gulf and to the Mediterranean, or to Buraimi and to land routes crossing the peninsula. While Oman was the Persian province of Mazun with ports at Suhar and Dama/Sib, the northern borderlands with Buraimi as its centre and Dibba as its port were more or less independent under the Arab Julanda family. Julfar of this time was not located in the 16th-18th century site of Julfar, and the name probably refers to a succession of ports and coastal markets along that coast, or to the coast as a whole. After the acceptance of Islam, Persians who refused to accept Islam were forced to leave Oman; Suhar and Dama/Sib became Arab ports, while Dibba was somewhat eclipsed in importance. Oman and Basra were linked administratively, reflecting the importance of trade through the Gulf from India and elsewhere, and the importance of Omani tribes in the Islamic conquest. The main imports of pre-Islamic and Islamic trade were east African gold; silver from Persia and India; ivory and ambergris from east Africa; luxury spun yarn and cloth from Persia, India and China; timber from India, east Africa and the far east; musk from India, Tibet and China for perfume, and ud from India; and slaves from east Africa.

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The main exports were pearls and dates (Naboodah 1988; 86 – 93). Basic everyday articles of trade were not mentioned in the sources, but these were surely traded. Little commercial activity was noted during the first Islamic century. Wilkinson (1993; 554) notes the ruling Hijazi clans attacked the merchant relationships of the pre-Islamic Ard al-Hind, with a law that Omani and Bahraini merchants could sell Gulf agricultural produce only after the state had disposed of its own revenue in kind; he considers antipathy between Hijazi tribes and Omani and Bahraini tribes influenced the development of socially revolutionary doctrines in Oman and Bahrain. Julfar was the main Arab port in the lower Gulf in the Islamic period, mentioned in early and mediaeval Islamic sources, and a frequent landing place for Umayyad and Abbasid fleets and armies trying to control Oman and Gulf trade. In the early 9th centuryAD/ 3rd century AH, the Batinah coast was continually attacked by Indian pirates (al-Rawas 2000; 154 quoting al-Salimi and Masudi), particularly Suhar and Dibba, and Julfar on the Gulf coast; Imam Ghassan secured the coasts, and trade returned. Siraf and then Qays/Kish, followed by Hormuz, were the great ports on the Iranian coast, with its huge hinterland and trade routes north and east, while Suhar was the main Arab port on the Indian Ocean coast for the long distance trade to China, India and east Africa. Smaller ports and beaching places existed as well for shorter voyages by smaller boats. East African gold, ivory, ambergris, grain, oil, wax, and slaves came to Arabia and the Gulf where some remained and others exchanged for Indian textiles and Chinese porcelain. Luxury trade in perfumes, incenses, precious stones, pearls, and textiles needed ballast goods like dates, porcelain, salt, sugar, timber, and such like. Chaudhuri (1985; 51) considered the Muslim – Arab, Persian, and Indian – traders to operate as universal carriers of cargo and passengers in all the major sea ports of the Indian Ocean. Bathurst (1972; 92) regards these Arab ports to be both entrepots and local trade centres, supplying hinterlands and long distance land caravans, and as market towns supplied from the mountains and coastal plantations as well as by sea. King (2001; 72 – 3) notes al-Maqdisi in the 10th century AD places Suhar, Dibba and Julfar among the qasaba, citadels, of Oman, and mentions Khasab; Qudama, writing between 932 – 948AD, mentions a land itinerary from Suhar to Basra; al-Idrisi, writing in 1154AD, describes the pearl beds, associating them with Suhar, Damar, Masqat, al-Jabal ie Musandam, and Julfar [King considers these places may have been where pearling fleets came from to fish the beds off eastern Qatar, but other sources and archive ma-

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terial show pearling took place off Julfar, Musandam, and Masqat]; and Yaqut, writing c. 1225AD, refers to Julfar as a town in Oman with many sheep, producing cheese and clarified butter. During the 13th century AD/ 7th century AH, the export trade in horses from Arabia and the Gulf to India developed (Marco Polo, ed. Rugoff 1961; 63, 262: Wilkinson 1987; 63), using ports along the south Arabian coast, Oman, Qatif, and Hormuz. Wilkinson considers the horse trade brought some prosperity to people in the interior of Arabia. By 1300 Richards (1983; 198) sees the trading towns of the Gulf islands and their hinterlands and the south Arabian coastal towns to depend largely on the horse trade. Aubin (1953; 94 – 7) says the Ruler of Qays sent 1,400 horses every year to India, bringing more from Qatif, Hasa, Bahrain, Hormuz and Qatif, and continued his subsidy to Arab chiefs. Serjeant (1963; 167, n3) noted horses were bought with gold and silver coins. Possibly the darb al-khail, the horse track, from the mountains down to Lima dates from this time; there are rock carvings of horses at Saqattah near Dibbah and Sabtan, both in the Ruus al-Jibal, and at al-Khadhra in the western Hajar. Marco Polo (1961; 71, 262) wrote that salt fish was a basic food of the Gulf and Oman, along with dates and grain, imported from other districts in the region. Ibn Battuta, c. 1330 (1962; ii, 396 – 400), mentioned Suhar, Kalba and Khor Fakkan, that most of the country was under Hormuz, and coastal people ate dried dates from the interior, rice from India, and fresh and salt fish; salt fish and bananas were exported from Oman to Hormuz. He also described (1962; ii, 408 – 9) the pearl fisheries between Siraf and Bahrain; the ruler took his fifth, and the rest were bought by merchants, most of whom were the creditors of the divers; many of the divers were Banu Saffaf or Saffaq (which means dealers), Arabs from Oman who lived on the Lar coast. The land route between Oman and Bahrain became impassable from sand. Indian Ocean trade was encouraged during the 15th century AD by the paralysis of the traditional land routes, and Arab traders became integrated into European trade through the Mediterranean. The seven massive Chinese sea trading expeditions in the early decades of the century probably helped a period of sustained growth in the Indian Ocean region (Reid 1990; 74). De Cardi (1973) mentions surface finds of Chinese and Hormuzian pottery sherds at Sall Ala, deserted farij near Qabil, and Maqlab, all in the Ruus al-Jibal, which suggest a generally stable economy where the inhabitants were living above subsistence level in the 13th-15th centuries AD. Vietnamese celadon sherds of this period were

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seen at Slayh al-Ghalib, also in the Ruus al-Jibal, and imported pottery sherds were noticed at the majority of winter sites there. [The scarcity of imported pottery or datable local pottery sherds at the higher farij is explained by Shihhuh and Habus to result from the seasonal nature of their use, and the time and labour of carrying up anything but basic pottery household items; imported items remained in the lower winter storehouses. People used metal and skin containers rather than pottery at these high farij, also noted at high settlements in Jabal Akhdar (Miles 1901; 356), where broken metal containers were recycled in situ, or brought down for sale to travelling metal workers.] 15th century Iranian documents indicate wheat was exported from Julfar to Hormuz (Piacentini, personal communication). Aubin (1953; 117 – 8) noted in 1421 – 2 four fleets of Chinese jewel ships at Hormuz at the same time; the Ruler of Hormuz sold them many sorts of pearls in exchange for much gold, silver, cloth, and porcelains with which he filled his treasury. Chinese fleets no longer came after 1441 (Zhang 1983; 107). Later in the century, the navigator Ahmad bin Majid (Tibbetts 1971; 213), from Ghubb near Ras al-Khaimah town, described Masqat as the port of Oman where ships carried out men, fruit, grain, and horses, and sold cloth, vegetable oils, and new slaves. Aubin (1953; 125) described two sorts of market in the wider region; bangsar/bandar where imported goods brought in by large ships were traded to merchants engaged in the transit trade, and siif, coastal depots and markets for grain and other local products rarely mentioned in travellers accounts. About this time, gold exports from east Africa peaked at 1,000kgs a year (Curtin 1983; 235). In 1487, the future Portuguese king sent two men to find routes to Prester John and the sources of spices; one reached Baghdad and learnt of the splendours of Hormuz (Magalhaes-Godinho 1969; 552). The Portuguese entry into the Indian Ocean in 1502 was an anti-Muslim crusade, intended to break the power and wealth of Muslim Arab and Gujerati merchants, and to take over the supply of east African gold and spices from the Far East (Magalhaes-Godinho 1969; 258, 260), who points out (1969; 619) this was the first time in Indian Ocean history buyers presented themselves not as merchants and private persons, but as officials of a strong naval power working in the name of a foreign state. Authorities disagree on the effect of the Portuguese arrival into Indian Ocean trade. Virtually all published information deals with trade in gold, spices, and other luxuries. It is clear that traditional trade for our region continued to India, and for most of the century to east Africa where Arab and Gujerati traders used Kilwa to trade cloth and beads for gold.

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Varthema visited the monsoon fair at Berbera in 1502 – 3 (1863; 89), where thousands of people gathered to barter local gums, resins, ostrich feathers, coffee, clarified butter, sesame oil, cattle and sheep with merchants from the Red Sea, Masqat, Bahrain, Basra and Indian ports. Later he visited Julfar (1863; 92) which is most excellent and abounding in everything and Hormuz, where pearls were important. Albuquerque, in his 1507 voyage to reduce the Oman coasts ruled by Hormuz, mentions (1875; 61) that he burnt thirty to forty vessels from Hormuz, Qalhat and all that coast fishing off Ras al-Hadd for bonitos and albacore tuna – long distance summer fishing for the salt and dry fish trade. Masqat was the principal entrepot for Hormuz. Aubin (1973; 113 – 119) writes that the Portuguese described the Omani coastal towns in glowing terms; they were well provisioned, with handsome buildings, surrounded by gardens and extensive agriculture. At Quryat, the Portuguese took three days to carry off great quantities of flour, wheat, rice, meat, dry fish, and jars of honey, butter and dates, and burnt the ships. At Masqat, large amounts of wheat, barley and dates came down from the interior for trade and export. The sacking of Masqat lasted eight days; when the houses were set alight, they burned well from the oil and syrup stored in them. Masqat was a great supplier of rope and rigging, and wooden water containers for boats; Albuquerques men burnt boats here. Suhars large territory was covered by fields of wheat, millet and barley, and many cattle and horses; dates and millet were exported. The district of Khor Fakkan was covered with beautiful houses, surrounded by extensive plantations of fruit trees and fields of wheat and millet; the small boats and fishing nets were burnt by the Portuguese. Khor Fakkan was the main port in Northern Oman for the export of horses (Aubin 1973; 118). All the Batinah and Shamailiyyah coasts had little prosperous villages and gardens; there were little date gardens at Kumzar and Khasab. Julfar was the commercial centre for northwestern Oman, the second pearling port in the Gulf and had multistoried stone houses (Aubin 1953; 125). At the start of 16th century, Oman was a rich agricultural country in the eyes of Portuguese observers, exporting grain from the mountains, rearing stock, dry and salt fish, and horses (Aubin 1973; 117). Participation in the wider Indian Ocean trade by merchants from the coasts of Oman to Ras al-Hadd and southern Persia ruled by Hormuz is shown by Tome Pires (1944; 20 – 21) in 1512 – 15 at the Indian ports of Narsinga and Malabar. Hormuz merchants brought Arab and Persian horses, seed pearls, saltpetre, sulphur, tutty and alum, copperas, vitriol, huge quantities of salt, white silk, silver coins, musk, sometimes amber,

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and a great deal of dried fruit, wheat, barley and foodstuffs of that kind. They took away pepper, cloves, cinnamon, ginger and all spices and rugs … Also rice, muslins, white cloth, iron and gold from Turkey and Delhi (1944; 44). People from Hormuz came to Cambay for Malacca goods and products of the country, bringing bales of soft dates, dates in jars, and dried dates of three or four kinds. Hormuz traders also went to Gujerat, Bengal, Malacca, Aden and East Africa. In 1513, big merchants were smuggling East African gold to Aden and Hormuz (Pires 1944; 44), although large ships could only trade officially using the Portuguese pass system. The tax receipts of the Portuguese Estate of India for 1515 (Aubin 1973; 233ff) show that the province of Hormuz provided the largest part of external income and tribute in kind. Its biggest contributor was the guazilado of Qalhat: Qalhat itself paid 11,000; Masqat, 4,000; Suhar, 1,500; Khor Fakkan, 1,500; Dibba, 500; and Lacos? [?al-Khasab], 700; these places had a large trade in horses. Next was the guazilado of Julfar: Julfar paid 7,500 plus 1,500 by certain pearling boats which had to go to Hormuz. Qatar and Bahrain were nominally under Hormuz but in revolt and so paid nothing. Pridham (personal communication) considers Julfar continued to export wheat to Hormuz. Barbosa in 1519 – 20 (1918 – 21; 70) noted Masqat had great trade and an exceeding great fishery, salt and dry, trading in this fish with many countries; at Julfar (1918 – 21; 73) dwelt persons of worth, great navigators and wholesale dealers. Here is a very great fishery as well of seed pearls (al-Jurfal) as of large pearls and the Moors come here to buy them and carry them to India and many other lands. The trade of this place brings it in a great revenue to the King of Hormuz and all other places as well yield him revenue. Barbosa (1918 – 21; 74) noted many villages along the coasts from Khor Fakkan to Ras al-Khaimah, and that inland lived many Moors of the nature of wild Arabs, who are under the rule of shaikhs. From Bahrain and Julfar, ships took to India seed pearls and large pearls, a great number of horses – a thousand yearly and sometimes two thousand – worth on average 300 – 400 cruzados, and abundance of dates, raisins, salt, sulphur, and coarse seed pearls (Barbosa 1918 – 21; 94). In 1523, after a revolt by Hormuz and its Arab dependencies, the Portuguese made a new treaty with Hormuz, raising tribute, granting freedom of navigation in the Indian Ocean, but forbidding local ships to go to the Red sea or East Africa coast (Ozbaran 1994; 123); in 1543, Hormuz Customs were fully integrated into the Portuguese state. Aubin (1973; 219) gives figures for the revenues paid to the Portuguese for a year around 1541 – 3: Julfar paid 45 Lacs; Qalhat, 30; Khasab, 12; Khor Fakkan

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25. Aubin (1973; 171) states that the taxes on exports from Hormuz to Gujerat alone were the equivalent as all import taxes that came from Persia, or three to four times as much as those on import and export traffic at Basra. At the beginning of the 17th century, Hormuz was probably the greatest emporium of the East (Magalhaes-Godinho 1969; 772), while its silver larin was undisputed – a river of silver ran without interruption from Hormuz to India (Magalhaes-Godinho 1969; 512). The taxes paid by Julfar, Khasab and Khor Fakkan indicate the area fully participated in the Hormuz economy. While large ships needed to buy cartezas for trade, smaller ships were free to sail under guidance, and the Portuguese gave free passes to the ships of rulers (das Gupta 1991; 357). Bathurst (1967; 149) considers that while Hindu traders operated in Oman from the beginning of trade contacts, the control of trade by Portuguese primarily based in India encouraged the placing of agencies into the hands of Hindu merchants, which continued up to the recent past. While Portuguese and local rulers ships became larger, Indian and Arab traders ships became smaller, and probably concentrated more on coasting. After 1554 (Magalhaes-Godinho 1969; 274), the Portuguese were coining east African gold in Goa, and by 1594, had increased the amount by five times. In the period 1570 – 1630, Reid (1990; 78) considers that Indian Ocean trade grew very fast from a convergence of high demand from China, Japan, India, and Europe; prices were very high throughout the world because of unprecedented imports of silver from the Americas and Japan. Magalhaes-Godinho (1969; 511) comments that exchange systems were upset from a series of devaluations at this time; trade in silver supplanted trade in goods, while Hormuz larins and all sorts of gold coins had a market value far exceeding their intrinsic value (1969; 503). The Portuguese lost control of Bahrain to the Persians and Arabs in 1602, thus losing the western Gulf pearl banks and some control over the tribes, as they were no longer in the position of issuing diving permits. Texeira, writing in 1604 noted (1902; 176) in July and August fifty tarrada from Julfar, a hundred from Bahrain and fifty from Nakhilu on the Persian coast pearling off Qatar. In September, boats pearled at Bahrain, Julfar and Nakhilu, and also at Masqat, Tiwi, and al-Hadd but these three banks were not very good. The known value of the pearls and seed pearls traded at Bahrain was 500,000 ducats yearly, and another 100,000 ducats were smuggled out. In 1614 – 15, there were troubles between the Portuguese and their Arab supporters at some places on the coast, and between Persians and Arabs. In 1620, (Boxer 1930; 13 – 16) the Portuguese Ruy Freire noted the salt fish industry at Masqat; while at Kumzar, he learnt

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that Julfar and Rams were in revolt. Off Khasab, he attacked two Arab ships, killing their crews except for two elderly shaikhs of Rams, on their way to offer friendship and valuable presents of carpets and horses to the new Safavid Shah. Their ransom was 120,000 patacas; to give some idea of the size of the ransom and therefore the worth of Rams merchants, Boxer notes that 6 patacas was the amount given to each Portuguese soldier for three months supplies of bread, meat and rice. Early in 1622, (Boxer 1930; 53) Ruy Freire sent a ship to the bar of Rams to put down the shaikhs servants to collect the ransom, and then went on to Julfar where his force established themselves in the Great Mosque, plundered the suburbs and bombarded the fort. Later that year, the Portuguese lost Hormuz to the Persians helped by the English East India Company. Masqat now became the key place in the region for the Portuguese. The Persians and their Arab allies withdrew from forts near Masqat to forts in Suhar, Khor Fakkan, Dibba (where the Arabs killed the Persian garrison), Khasab, Rams and Julfar, which all yielded good revenues as trading ports (Boxer 1930; 182). In 1624, (Boxer 1930; 189), Ruy Freire returned to reorganise the Hormuz possessions on the Omani coast, visiting Khor Fakkan and Dibba, then Persian held Lima where his forces stormed the fort, killing everyone; then to Kumzar, whose men had served as sailors in the Portuguese rowed fleet at Hormuz; then to Khasab, Rams and Julfar. Although the Portuguese lost many coastal positions, they maintained a commercial presence in the Gulf until c. 1729 (Slot 1993; 65 – 6), using Tunb island as a meeting place for their fleet and Arab representatives of places that paid tribute to them (Thevenot 1727; 354, about 1686). In 1632, Omani forces took Julfar and appointed a governor; it became one of the most important trading towns in Oman. In 1641, as Imam Nasir bin Mirshid extended Omani control towards Bahrain, he proposed an overland route between the Batina coats and Basra, via Qatif, to the Dutch VOC (Tavernier 1925 [1681]; vol 2, pt ii, Chapter 9). Putting the Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean in some sort of context, Reid (1990; 73) considers the greatest changes introduced by the Portuguese were political and military rather than economic, as their arrival inaugurated the first period of great power conflict in the Indian Ocean; he quotes a Muslim ruler of Makassar in Indonesia protesting to the Dutch a century later; God made the land and the sea; the land he divided among men and the sea he gave in common. Albuquerques brutalities against the people of Omani coastal towns, da Gamas lack of understanding of the nature of Indian Ocean trade (Magalhaes-Godin-

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ho 1969; 567 – 8), and Portuguese willingness to use force to impose their will everywhere illustrates the fit between the crusading ideology on which their state had been founded and economic competition with Islamic trade, especially the established spice route to Egypt and Venice via the Red Sea. Up to the mid-16th century, the Portuguese seriously affected Red Sea traffic, but overland caravans from Basra supplied the Mediterranean (Magalhaes-Godinho 1969; 779). The Portuguese policy of free trade from Hormuz was based firstly on the need for Persian support against the Mamluks and then the Ottomans and secondly, because Hormuz supplied the horses and silver larins that India needed. Portuguese activities caused longlasting commercial depressions in the Islamic towns of the east African coast, Aden, and Calicut. Supplying spices to Europe was only a part of the whole spice trade, as there was a large regional demand in Arabia, the Ottoman Empire and Persia; although Arab and Indian ships did smuggle spices, they also traded legitimately with passes and these and other dues benefitted the Portuguese. The Portuguese Empire in the mid-16th century stretched from East Africa, Hormuz and western India to the Spice islands; by the end of the century, with increased competition from other European nations, increasing opposition from the peoples of this empire, and a realisation of the costs to the crown, Portuguese interest shifted to the Atlantic. Magalhaes-Godinho estimated in the 1590s Europe sent the equivalent of 72 tonnes of silver to Asia annually; in the 1490s, it had been 17 tonnes (Reid 1990; 79). If movement of silver is a measure of economic well-being, Portuguese entry benefitted the trading societies of the Indian Ocean in the 16th century. Barendse (1998; 309 – 312), examining 17th century Portuguese trade between India and the Gulf, considers that after 1636 with the war with Oman, trading profits were taken up by the costs of the war on land and at sea. In the Gulf, there was war at sea between Bahrain and Qatif, in which the Portuguese supported Qatif, and the Safavids supported corsairs to raid the Portuguese. Once the Portuguese had lost Masqat, their shipping to the Gulf declined, and merged with Indian shipping or used English ships. In the first half of the 17th century, English and Dutch trading companies made little impact on Gulf trade, dominated by local and Indian merchants trading under some sort of Portuguese control (Slot 1993; 159). The Dutch were more interested in the Spice Islands, over which they established a trading monopoly which adversely affected trading ports between the Spice Islands and the northern end of the Red sea. During the last three decades of the century, these losses of revenue affected

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the ability – at least of people in southeast Asia – to buy Indian cloth (Reid 1990; 94) formerly paid for from production of cash crops. Barensde (1998; 153) states that by 1640, coffee was the major staple of Yemen, and perhaps of the Arabian seas at large, supplying the Islamic market; Varthema noticed Ethiopian coffee exports from Berbera in 1502 – 3, but by the 17th century, coffee was grown in Yemen. Jourdain for the EIC saw coffee cultivation at Nakil Sumara in 1609 and reported a great merchandise, for it is carried to Grand Cairo and all other places of Turkey, and to the Indias (Wild 2004; 79). Persia and Oman accounted for 200,000 lbs of coffee exported in 1642, and 1,000,000 in 1694. VOC documents of 1641 and 1642 mention syndicates of Omani merchants with camel caravans who bought only a small part of the sales at Bait al-Faqi but manipulated the price by coordinating purchases (Barendse 1998; 153, 155). The demand for camels and camel drivers must have benefitted nomadic tribespeople living from raising camels. In 1645, the Dutch visited Musandam and in 1651 sent an expedition to Masqat, now Omani, and a centre for international trade. Hindu merchants there told the Dutch that the towns trade in rice, pepper, black sugar and textiles was worth 20 – 25,000 guilders; small Arab ships brought rice, black sugar, and some pepper to Masqat, exchanging those goods for dates and sometimes cash (Slot 1993; 48). Wilkinson (1983; 184) notes Yaariba rulers invested heavily in agricultural land and participated with local groups in developing agro-industries like sugar and indigo; Dutch VOC reports note a Julfar ship carrying sugar in 1646 (Slot 1993; 159). In the 1660s, Omani ships attacked several Portuguese places on the Indian west coast, and, because of the greed of port officials at Bandar Abbas, Masqat attracted an extra 125 – 150 ships a year. By 1665, EIC officials, noting the disruption of trade from the English-Dutch war, considered their losses would have been greater but for Arab and other locals taking over most of the coastal trade (Bathurst 1967; 169). Thevenot, in 1665, (1727; ii, 156 – 7) reported that much wealth came to al-Hasa from Indian goods imported to Qatif for distribution throughout Arabia Felix and Mecca (so by land caravans and small local boats); at Bahrain, 2 – 3,000 Arab boats pearled from the end of June to the end of September, and divers smoked tobacco while resting. At Kunj (1727; ii,171 – 2), he saw tobacco being loaded for India, as well as 4 horses, money, carpets, madder, wine and nuts, and 80 Armenian passengers and their goods. Tobacco was almost certainly cultivated locally by then, and replaced the use of betel and opium, noted as common by rich and poor by Texeira

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in 1604 (1902; 197). At Julfar (1727; ii,182), a port of Arabia Felix, Thevenot noted many Indian barkes came to buy dates and pearls for money;  and that there were many ports from Julfar to Musandam, where Lima was a very good port. In 1666, (Floor 1982), the Dutch boat Meerkat visited Musandam and the Omani coast assessing trade prospects; the report mentioned several small fishing stations, and Khasab and Dibba and their date gardens, but saw little chance of trade owing to the poverty of the region apart from Masqat. At Lima, the cultivation of dates and mustard seed was noted; mustard seed seems unlikely and was probably jiit, alfalfa, implying the horse trade continued. Slot (1993; 62) notes that c. 1670, most Gulf shipping was private rather than Company; part of the private shipping was by Indian merchants on their own ships, covered by the English flag and paying English consular dues. In 1673 Floor reported (1985; 29 – 30) trade in Omani sugar and dates to Persia, Bahrain and Hasa, Basra, and Mocha from Masqat; to Masqat went grain from Persia and parts of India and rice from India; Barendse estimates (1998; 173) the amount of rice exported from Cananore and Calicut was 400 – 500,000 lbs a year. The principal ports of Oman were Quriyat, Masqat, Suhar and Julfar, with quite a few small coastal places with redoubts manned by four to five men (Floor 1985; 32). Floor comments (1985; 35) that mens clothes were frugal, but they know how to dress up the womenfolk with all kinds of silk clothes and golden jewellery;  the rich sat on a simple mat of date stems or on small pebbles, and people ate mostly sundried whey with dates or rice, and salt or fresh fish, or a little meat. Masqat was chiefly concerned with trade to the Omani heartland, Bahrain and Hasa. In 1677, Fryer (1909 – 15; ii, 158) commented the Dutch had told him of great famines caused by drought in the Arabian peninsula. This may be the drought of 1085AH/1674 referred to by al-Juhany (1983; 113) which affected lower Najd; droughts in 1076/1665 and 1114/1703 mostly affected the nomadic population. Juhany quotes nine droughts between 1001/1592 and 1150/1737 – 8, more than double the number recorded for the previous 150 years. Barendse notes (1995; 186 – 189) famines from 1630 – 34 in Gujerat, the drought of 1659 – 1663 in Hindustan, while the 1680s were a period of poor harvests on the entire west coast. The second half of the 17th century saw Oman and the Arab side of the lower Gulf under Arab rule. Local sea and land trade appeared fairly successful, even if sea trade was difficult and slow from 1660 to 1690. There may have been increasing demands for revenues to strengthen

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Omani forces on land and sea to adjust to or compete with the growing presence of the European powers in the Indian Ocean on land and sea. From the 1690s to c. 1720, Oman persistently attacked Persian ports, including Bahrain, and Portuguese possessions in East Africa, in its efforts to make Masqat the focal point for trade between the Gulf, the Red Sea and western India. In 1695, Oman attacked Kunj; in 1701 – 2, it attacked Surat and the Indian coast, while Julfar was in dispute with Canara; in 1706 – 7, Oman was fighting the Mahrattas and Mughals, in 1713, Oman was at war with Persia; in 1715, the Omani fleet attacked Portuguese Indian colonies; in 1717, Oman took Larak and Qishm, and Bahrain. By 1719, Wilkinson (1987; 222) considered the development of the Yaariba state through trade and agricultural property had caused almost a social revolution, with rich merchants and landlord classes exploiting a substrate of slaves and peasants whose ranks were being swelled by dispossessed or diminished tribesmen. Ibn Ruzaiq (1871; 47) in 1723 noted the exports of Arabia Petraea were horses, dates, fine brimstone, some coffee, madder and some pearls; some coarse cotton cloth was made and used in the country. After the Omani-Persian peace treaty of 1721 – 2, Persia fell apart, European companies withdrew from the Gulf as profits could not be made, Oman fell into civil war between 1719 and 1728, and Julfar under Shaikh Rahma bin Matar al-Qasimi (shahbandar at Bandar Abbas pre-1727) became the regional power and the focus of the Ghafiri faction in the northwest in the Omani civil war (Slot 1993; 249 – 53). In the following decades, competition in the Gulf took place between Gulf Arab traders and Indian merchants, Persians with Omanis, Persians with Gulf Arabs, Gulf Arabs with Omanis. Around 1756, Zaab, living from pearling and owning many small ships, paid large dues to Shaikh Rahma bin Matar, the Qasimi shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah. Ras al-Khaimah was an important centre of trade with 60 vessels, mostly large, which went to Mocha; and had a rather considerable trade in pearls and some merchandise – a little iron, lead, tin and coarse cloth – and provisions which were carried into the interior. Sirr with Sharjah, Uqair, and Asir (in Qatar) were the places for trade into the interior (Floor 1979); the Qasimi Shaikh of Sirr had good relations with the Naimi shaikhs of al-Jau and Buraimi (Niebuhr 1792; vol. 2, 124). Over the next forty years, some trade moved to the northern end of the Gulf, the result of continual fighting in the lower Gulf between Arabs and Persians, a change in Persian land trade routes, and the development of Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain by Utub tribes. The Qawasim appear to have lost some Gulf carrying trade to Utub, and to have had some

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problems of access to Bahrain pearling grounds; but Captain Taylors 1818 report (1985 [1856]; 39 – 40), using local authorative sources on the pre-Wahhabi economy of Ras al-Khaimah shows an economy based on sea trade, date cultivation, and pearl fishing; their sea trade went to the ports of India, Yemen, Africa, Sind, Kutch, Masqat, and Basra, while smaller boats traded and carried to Basra, Bahrain, Qatif and ports on the southern Iranian coast. In the last two decades, British political and military pressure increased in the Gulf from French attempts to make alliances with regional powers to damage British interests in India and the Indian Ocean. Risso (1986; 63 – 5) provides two examples of the complications of trade at this time. In June 1781, two French privateers arrived at Masqat, and a third waited outside with three Suri vessels in tow laden with coffee, taken in retaliation for alleged insults to the French by Omani merchants at Mocha. The two French privateers demanded a small private British ship in Masqat harbour should be handed over to them, as there was war between France and Britain. The Imam refused, but the French seized it anyway, although the Omani merchants had unloaded their goods from it. Off Suhar, the French privateers seized the Salihi, a ship owned by the Imam en route to Zubara, Qatif and Basra carrying valuable cargoes owned by merchants of those towns. Most of Salihis crew were killed, the French put on a crew and sent the ship to Ile de Reunion, but it put in at a Mahratta port where the Governor, claiming to be at war with Oman, seized the ship and cargo. The second incident happened several months later when Arabs of Khasab seized the cargo of a Bushire dhow, owned by merchants of Bushire, Masqat and Basra, including the British Resident at Basra. He, the wali of Masqat, Shaikh Nasr of Bushire, and the Ottoman mutasalim of Basra wrote to the Shaikh of Khasab demanding restitution. The mutasalim of Basra, on the point of leaving his post, confiscated a shipment of coffee believed to be owned by a Khasab merchant. Soon after the new mutasalim arrived, Shaikh Saqr bin Rashid al-Qasimi came to Basra with armed dhows claiming the impounded coffee was his, and threatening to retaliate by seizing a Basran ship; he claimed his father had agreed with the Pasha of Baghdad to be answerable for the restitution of what had not been sold from the Bushire vessel, and such Basran property as might be taken by any of the peoples at the southern end of the Gulf. The new mutasalim was alarmed by the support Shaikh Saqr had among the merchants and, in the end, gave the coffee to Saqr.

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After the agreement to share power between the Al bu Said, the ruler of Masqat, Sultan bin Ahmed, re-established control over the entrance of the Gulf; his ships monopolised the carrying trade and independent carriers paid dues. Masqat extended its control over the southern Persian coast and encouraged its ports to attack all local and some European shipping not under Omani protection, and attacked the Qawasim directly for not paying the 2.5 % dues on all goods coming into the Gulf on local vessels (Wilkinson 1987; 53). Khor Fakkan on the Shamailiyya coast and Jazirat al-Hamra on the Gulf coast swung between Omani or Qawasim control. The Wahhabis were also interested in controlling the trade of the central Gulf, and revenues from trade and pearling may have been a factor in their alliance with the Qawasim. By 1804, Arabs were buying rice and textiles in Bengal, as prices were lower. Omani ships carried most of the Indian exports to diminished Persian and Basran markets, while many Indian merchants were under Omani or British protection; the Qawasim were pressed by Oman, the Utub, and the British. Given this situation, and a harder British attitude to control of trade, it is not surprising that Qawasim efforts to compete in the north western Indian Ocean were called piracy; Oman was richer and had a better strategic position. From the end of the 18th century, British documents comment on the poverty of the Gulf economy whereas earlier Europeans remarked on its wealth. The Portuguese capture of the East African coast by means of superior weaponry broke the flow of east African gold for Indian textiles and Chinese porcelain mediated by Arab Gulf traders (Curtin 1983; 232). This loss of East African gold (and the eastern trade linked to it) meant less wealth for general investment by merchants and rulers. At the same time, Gulf merchants and sea carriers lost some share of the luxury transit trade to the Portuguese, again because of superior weapons and use of terror, while much of the customs dues and other taxes collected at Hormuzian ports went to the Portuguese in India and Portugal. It seems probable that less profit remained in Arab, Persian and Indian hands, even allowing for smuggling. Yemeni coffee provided high profits for a while, but successful introductions to Indonesia, India and the West Indies meant that prices dropped and eventually only the Arab coffee market was supplied from Yemen. The demand for horses in India declined in the 18th century as the nature of warfare changed, and artillery became more important than cavalry. Gulf merchants were left with cargoes of local exports like dates, salt and dried fish, sulphur, coffee, firewood, fruit, and pearls, and imports of Indian goods like rice, grains, cot-

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ton, textiles, and timber. Omani merchants had the same, plus slaves, ivory, millet, and wax from east Africa, and monopolies on salt and sulphur from the southern Persian coast to India. Many Gulf ships carried goods for merchants. Merchants trading in goods and funding carrying boats needed capital, and changed the dues received by rulers as goods in kind into cash, or at least a proportion of them. By this time, Indian merchants, often under British protection and with greater financial and mercantile networks in India and its region, were important in the larger lower Gulf coastal trading towns (Brucks 1856; 544 for Sharjah, 624 for Khor Fakkan), Oman (Allen 1981: Niebuhr [1792]; ii, 116) and in Yemen (Niebuhr; i, 273); there were also Arab merchants. If there were profits from trade, some went to India rather than staying in the region. A gradual decline in wealth of the populations of the coastal lower Gulf from c. 1500 to c. 1800 seems evident. At the same time regional states, including British India, wanted to dominate trade and later the carrying of sea trade for profit. British India achieved this by having greater force, more money, and better technology. Bayly (2004; 2) states: If the gross domestic product per head in western Europe and the seaboard of North America was, at most, twice that of South Asia … in 1800, the differential had widened to ten times that or more a century later. Technological transformations; increasing western domination of industry, finance, and transport; and the Gulfs strategic position for Britain were the causes in the region. After the bombardment of Ras al-Khaimah, Rams and Jazirat alHamra in 1819 and the Maritime Truce of 1820, 50 large boats – 5 dhows, 29 trankeys, 14 baghalah, and 2 cargo boats – taken by the British authorities were valued at Rs 107,875, (Bombay Secret Proceedings, Vol 45; 120 – 1) without counting those destroyed in the bombardment or subsequent burning, or those lost in the attacks of 1816. A British Report by McLeod in 1823 commented They are very poor … They possess no articles of export since their pearls are generally purchased by merchants on the spot …  (1985 [1856]; 92 – 3). Whitelock, writing in 1824 (1835 – 6; 39 – 40) describes the people as strong and healthy, with a simple but wholesome diet, … It is surprising to find so many articles of consumption; and it argues that the country not far distant inland, is rich and fruitful, as it is said to be. … the Arabs generally have one or two slaves in their families to assist them in their daily labour; their kindness to them speaks much in favour of the Arab character. They dived for pearls in small boats (only large boats were destroyed after the Truce); traded by sea to Basra, Bahrain, Persia, Makran, Masqat, Batinah, Bombay, Yemen, Zanzibar, and

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the African coast, exporting pearls, dried fish, cheese, wool cloaks or wraps; almonds etc.; and cultivated dates and other crops (1835 – 6; 48 – 9). Lienhardt (2001; 125) mentioned that in 1828, Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr complained to the British Resident in the Gulf that Kuwaitis were interfering with boats from Ras al-Khaimah carrying salt fish, an important part of local trade. Brucks, in 1829 (1985 [1856]; 541 – 2) notes that Ras al-Khaimah town was rebuilt and increasing, with a ghurfa and several good houses, a number of trading boats from 40 – 200 tons trading to Bombay and the Malabar coast on the monsoon and to the Red Sea, and a large share in the pearl fishing. Sharjah was now the chief Qawasim town, with more people, more merchants, and more boats of all sorts. In the 1830s, the estimated long distance trade of the Gulf was estimated at c. £3,500,000, virtually all in the hands of local merchants and seamen (Landen 1967; 97); but this conceals local variations in shares of trade. After 1840, an increasing number of European steamships carried European goods to the major Indian ports (Landen 1967; 83), from where local carriers distributed these goods throughout the Indian Ocean. Imported manufactures began to affect local crafts in India, Iran, Hasa, and Oman; the weavers of Khasab noted by Taylor in 1818 (1985 [1856]; 13, 33) who supplied the Gulf with wuzra and gitra were no longer mentioned. Kelly (1968; 369) reported the number of European ships in the Gulf trade declined as Arab freight rates were lower, and the Maritime Truce system gave security, so local ships gradually gained a larger share. Kemball in 1845 (1985 [1856]; 93) noted the dependence of the whole Gulf coast on pearling. From his figures, this was especially true of the coast from Abu Dhabi to Jazirat al-Hamra, while Ras al-Khaimah and Rams did pearl but were involved in long distance sea trading; Ras alKhaimah and Rams had 12 baghalah to Sharjahs 6, while Sharjah had 425 boats that pearled (since small trading boats also pearled) to 76 from Rams, Ras al-Khaimah and Jazirat al-Hamra. For the division of the Qawasim revenues from sea enterprises, Rams paid $80, Jazirat alHamra $900 – 1,000, and Sharjah paid $1,500 to Ras al-Khaimah. Figures from 1854 (1985 [1856]) are presented as total revenues; Dibba and Jazirat al-Hamra provided 1,800 reals; Sharjah and its neighbouring villages 2,000 reals, while Ras al-Khaimah and the Shamailiyya coast provided 5,000 reals. Hamertons 1855 report on Oman (1985 [1856]; 238 – 9) noted Oman cannot be said to have an export trade in manufactures; most things now required are imported although dried and salt fish were exported and local textiles used only by Arabs were produced.

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Although the carrying off of slaves had been forbidden in the 1820 treaty, British agents in Oman and the Gulf were aware it was impracticable to enforce (Kemballs 1844 report (1985 [1856]; 637). Slave trading continued and in 1841, (1985 [1856]; 648) Ras al-Khaimi boats had imported a total of 143 slaves in 15 boats. Slave trading was one part, and not a large part, of normal trading. But in 1861, following new agreements with various Gulf rulers and the Omani ruler from pressure in Britain, traders from Sur in Oman and the Qawasim ports came only for slaves, and far more were shipped to the Gulf. In 1864, the ruler of Zanzibar forbade the transport of slaves by sea from any part of his dominions between January and May, making it more difficult for Gulf and Omani Arabs to get cargoes (Kelly 1968; 618 – 9), but did not end the trade. Slave trading ended only in the 1960s with the development of oil wealth, a monetary economy, waged employment, and power from machines and electricity. In 1862, the Calcutta and Burmah Steam Navigation Company, established in 1856, became the the British India Steam Navigation Company. In 1861, the India Office approved a subsidised mail contract (necessary because the engines were inefficient and unreliable) for a steamer service to the Gulf, to include Basra, Bushire and Bahrain. The American Civil war had stimulated cotton production in Iran, providing bulk cargo, and telegraph and cable lines were being laid between the Gulf and India. Landen (1967; 96 – 7) describes an economic revolution in the Gulf from 1862 – 72; in absolute terms, the volume of trade and the tempo of economic activity increased but most profits went to European companies and their agents in the resident Indian community, which undercut local Arab businesses. By 1866, the estimated value of long distance trade to the Gulf was £5 million; most of the increase on the 1830s £3.5 million estimate came after 1860, from cotton and wool to Bombay, opium to southeast Asia, and sugar from India and Indonesia. Iranian trade increased with Russias annexation of Central Asia. Landen sees steamers as the basic cause of decline in Arab trade, along with Indian merchants access to credit. Much of the increase in trade was at the northern end of the Gulf with the Ottoman recovery of Iraq. When the American Civil war and the boom ended, British steamers cut their rates affecting local shipping. In the same year, Broeze (1987; 255) noted the expansion of regular steamship services in the Indian Ocean by the Ocean Steamship Company, using a superior compound engine. The first handbook of the BI Steamship Co. mentions the carriage of passengers, cargo, and mails, and also pilgrim traffic, which seriously affected

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the income of camel raising tribes in the peninsula. In 1869, the Suez canal opened, and the Gulfs long distance trade was estimated at £6 million. Local trade was noted by Miles, the British Political Agent in Mascat from 1872 to 1886. On the Batinah coast, he recorded (1994 [1919]; 403 – 5) exports of species of salt, dried, and fresh fish to Mauritius, Bourbon, Natal, India, and the interior; sharks fins to China; and fish sounds to Europe. Landen (1967; 104 – 6) considers the years 1872 – 1914 to be a period of economic stagnation in the Gulf with the exception of occasional and uncertain periods of localised prosperity due to causes such as unusual date, grain, or pearl harvests, or an extraordinary demand for commodities such as arms or gold, it was not until the coming of the oil era on the eve of World War 1 that trade really began to revive in the region and affected only a few localities. Miles in 1875, travelling from Suhar to Buraimi, noted (1877; 51) Suhars decline as trade was moving to Sharjah where imported goods were cheaper as they came direct from Bombay by steamer; in the 1840s, Suhar had 40 baghalah but in the 1880s only 3 small coasters. Miles also recorded (1877; 59 – 60) that bedouin of the interior raised great flocks of camels, the sale of which they depended on; some camel caravans from Buraimi carried trade to Hasa and Najd but camel caravans were becoming rare. A caravan from Najd to Mahra took 25 days, while in 1870 Saud bin Jiluwi and his followers took a leisurely 56 days by camel from Najran to Abu Dhabi. The diet at Buraimi (Miles 1877; 54) was dates, coarse bread or rice, salt fish, camel or goat meat, cheese and lots of milk, at the market, money was little used, goods were exchanged by barter. Landen comments on the depreciation of the silver currency (1967; 128), the decline in the Ruler of Omans customs revenues (1967; 350), and the number of boats visiting Masqat (1967; 118) as indications of economic depression. In 1840, the customs dues of Oman were $MT 240,000; in 1876, $MT 110,000, and stayed the same for the rest of Sayyid Turkis reign (d1888) despite the MT dollar steadily declining in value. In 1871 – 2, an ounce of silver was valued at 60.5 pence; in 1898 – 9, at just under 27 pence. In 1876, 716 native ships of all types visited Masqat; in 1893, 374; and in 1895, 238 native ships, while the number of European ships rose to 128. At the same time, local ships got smaller, European ones larger. During the 1880s, British and other steamships saturated the Gulf with imports. [Many of these imports were textiles, and this may have seen the virtual end of local household and craft production of cloth for clothing in the region. After this date, Lorimer mentions

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local cotton cloth at Buraimi (1908 – 15; ii, 261) and Qishm (1908 – 15; ii, 1550), while English piece goods were one of the major imports at Bandar Abbas (1908; ii, 11). Local cotton weaving at Madha may have ended now. A few households in Baqil in Wadi Khabb and at Wadi Hayr continued to make cotton cloth for themselves up to perhaps the 1960s, while it continued as a craft in the interior of Oman up to the 1980s at Ibra and Wadi Bani Khalid (Crocker 1988; 510 – 12)]. Local sailing ships only distributed goods from ports served by steamships (initially Basra, Kuwait, Bahrain, Lingah, and Masqat). Dubai was added to the weekly service in 1904, after Lingah, which had supplied the lower Gulf coast, was crippled by incorporation in the reformed Persian administration in 1902. From this information, Baylys statement that the 1800 differential in the gross domestic product per head between western Europe and the North American seaboard with that of south Asia had widened by ten times in 1900, looks reasonable when applied to the lower Gulf. Large trading boats were not profitable although smaller boats for local trading, fishing and pearling were. Pearling and pottery were said to be highly profitable at this time, but land carrying in the interior had already become less viable. Pearling increased in value from 1833, when the pearls exported from the Gulf were valued at £300,000, to £400,00 in 1866, and £1,434,399 in 1905 – 6, plus £30,049 for mother of pearl exports. Pearl diving was restricted by custom and later by law to the native inhabitants of both sides of the Gulf, and European traders were never able to break into Gulf and Indian pearl trading except as end buyers. Pearl profits retained locally, plus some from date exports, paid for the flood of imported goods from Europe and America, although the success of western imports depended on their prices being lower than those for local goods. In 1901, (Walker 1994; vol 1, 104) Ras al-Khaimah town had 9 Hyderabadi traders and 20 Persian traders, while in 1907 Lorimer (1908 – 15; II, 1007 – 8) reports there were no Hindu traders and 33 Indian Muslim traders; the reasons for the changes are not known. At these dates, Sharjah had more traders, was richer, and had a bigger population heavily involved in pearling. By 1907, Ras al-Khaimahs revenues maintained the town, but contributed nothing to Sharjah. Kanoo describes (1997; 1 – 10) his familys trading strategies after settling in Bahrain in the mid 19th century. Initially, the small family business sold foodstuffs and consumer goods. When Haji Yusuf joined the business, he and his father imported canvas, ropes, timber and tools, all needed by the islands maritime industries of which pearling was the most im-

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portant. When Haji Yusuf took over in 1890, he saw commercial opportunities and chartered boats to import goods from Kerala, Zanzibar, and northwest India. Realising BISN mail steamers had created a new trade up and down the Gulf, he decided to learn English, and developed a relationship with the British Political Agent in Bahrain. Over time he developed a network of international trade links with European and American business men who passed through Bahrain, and made long trading trips to India; he secured an agency in India, buying coffee and tea for distribution in Bahrain to other traders. He began to deal with shipping lines as soon as he had taken over, and agency agreements became a vital part of the business. By 1914, Haji Yusuf had a number of agencies, including the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, the Strick-Ellerman line, and the Bombay and Persia Steam Navigation Company. He regularly acted as an agent for pilgrims sailing from the Gulf to Jiddah; land routes from the Gulf to Mecca became almost unused. Haji Yusuf was seizing these new opportunities at a time when Bahrain pearl trading was profitable. Because of Bahrains position as the pearling and merchant centre and its closeness to al-Hasa and Najd, it had been part of the regular steamship routes for some decades; western and Indian exporters needed agents there. Like Dubai, Bahrain benefitted when Lingah was incorporated into the reformed Persian adminstration. Steamships, the Berlin to Baghdad railway (which really affected the northern end of the Gulf), European and American products and markets, the closer integration of Indian production with Britains, all began to transform economic activities in the Gulf after 1860. The incipient transformation was the local economic convergence already in progress in other parts of the world after about 1850. These processes of convergence accelerated after 1890 from the pressures generated by industrial growth in Europe, North America, and then Russia and Japan, which affected the Gulf region in several ways: the need for oil by industrialised countries and its discovery at several places in the region; the development of artificial pearls by the Japanese and the consequent collapse of the pearl market in the mid-1920s; and its strategic importance for Britain as a link in communications between Britain and India. The general world depression of the 1930s also affected the lower Arab Gulf with a lack of trade and a lack of money for investment but ameliorated by the development of oil in Bahrain, then in Hasa and Kuwait in the 1940s, and then in Abu Dhabi in the 1960s. Oil wealth led to the establishment of the United Arab Emirates as a federal state.

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This brief snapshot of lower Gulf economic history from published sources demonstrates differences between the views of western observers and local participants. Western observers were largely concerned with its potential for profitable (and preferably with profit margins of 60 – 70 %) exports or freight; local participants were concerned with livelihood and some profits, were satisfied with profits of 10 – 15 %, and took into account customary social and moral practices. In some situations, what a western observer saw as a trade depression, local seamen saw a boom. Technological imports, such as the construction method of Portuguese large ships, steamships, internal combustion engines, and electricity, obviously affected local economies at different times. The basic local technologies were in place before Islam, and continued because they worked well for local livelihood practices, labour and investment. Local technological developments appeared when merchants invested in land for market opportunities; local participants noticed market opportunities consistent with social practice; or when local livelihoods were threatened by outside competition and a response was needed. To examine developments of local technologies first. Costa and Wilkinson discuss (1987; 54 – 73) the water supply of early Islamic Suhar; Falaj al-Mutaridh is the finest example, with four water mills as part of its construction. During the 9th and 10th centuries AD Suhar was at the height of its prosperity with its maximum extent of cultivation (1987; 88), and merchant investment probably financed part or all of the construction of this extensive falaj and its mills. As wheat does not grow or store well on the coast (1987; 91 and archive information) Costa assumes the mills used grain, wheat, barley or millet, brought in from the Dhahira. The western Hajar may also have been a source, although imports are also a possibility. Apart from one at Omani al-Hamra, these were the only water mills known in the region. In the Ruus al-Jibal, the use of the extended pole, mazaida, in handmills to increase the rate of grinding flour is standard; Costa considers these mills to be almost as efficient as a water mill. When muzaida were developed is unknown; they were not used in areas where grain was not sometimes sold as flour for profit. The watermills on Falaj al-Mutaridh required amounts of investment that could only come from merchants and/or rulers, whereas muzaida were available to any mountain grain field owner with a bait raha and a knife to coppice a pole. The concessions for the important copper mines were probably owned by rich Suhar merchants (Costa and Wilkinson 1987; 147 – 8); there is no memory of the ownership or working of the

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much smaller copper mines near Wadi al-Qawr. Merchant investment may have been instrumental in the introduction of some new crops, like tobacco in the western Hajar, or tribesmen may have introduced tobacco on their own initiative. A Zaab trading family owned a tobacco farm in Munaiy, and a Shinas merchant and the family of the Amir of Munaiy had owned tobacco farms in Wadi Hatta. The tobacco processing building at the bil Oun complex at bu Baqra seems to have been the only processing place in the study area owned by a merchant; other producers processed their own tobacco before selling it to merchants. The only certain indication of any innovatory technology financed by merchants as investments in the study region, until the introduction of fossil fuels, was in the construction of deep sea trading ships, with the introduction of ironnailed framing in the hulls and the square stern rather than the doubleended hull (Agios 2002; 52, 134 – 5). Tribespeople becoming aware of market opportunities and so changing working practices included the development of the mazaida (above). The existence of partly made mountain fields at some places in the Ruus al-Jibal (e. g. Barama, Slayh al-Ghalib, Wadi Hajil, Wadi Ghabbas, a side wadi in Wadi Nagab, and Rawdhah) might indicate an intended extension of mountain wheat cultivation for an increased urban population at Julfar and/or Ras al-Khaimah or in the Gulf region in general, which then became uneconomic. Wheat does not grow well near the coast, but does well in the mountains, where yields at certain fields in good years can exceed 1:100; stored in the ear in granaries, it keeps for years. Hansman (1985) considers the manufacture of earthernware pottery in the foothills inland from Julfar to have depended originally on the market available in Julfar. Although this pottery (and that from Lima and Wadi Banna) were never mentioned in trade documents as far as is known, descendants of local potters know that Wadi Hajil / Bani Shamaili pottery was exported in large quantities and was profitable (archive material: Dostal 1983; 151). Sharqiyiin and others spoke of making charcoal for sale rather than selling firewood; a man or woman could carry more charcoal than firewood, sell it for more, and it was in more demand than firewood in some markets. Former adjustments to bad years or the loss of resources included going to work as a small trader in Iran, India or east Africa (archive: Villiers 1940; 144 – 6); joining a rulers bodyguard; raiding; robbing; paid agricultural work; or becoming a mercenary soldier abroad [a long tradition noted in 1514 and 1581 by Aubin (1973; 178 – 9) and in 1802 by Davies (1997; 378, n143) when 2 – 3,000 potential Arab mercenaries entered

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Kutch and Gujerat annually]. The coming of oil development to the Trucial Coast in the 1950s and 60s, and the raising of the Trucial Oman Levies, later replaced by the Trucial Oman Scouts, provided employment and training for local young men. After Unification, these opportunities were transferred to national security services. The development of national borders, legal and bureaucratic procedures, customs, exchange rates and currency differentials, and the localised effect of oil development made traditional responses to bad times more difficult and possibly illegal. Raiding of women and children in the 1940s resulted from the lack of profits for nomads dependent on camel-raising and the existence of a new small market for household and garden servants among some Saudis benefitting from a rise in income at the beginning of oil development. Villiers (1940; 256) noted smuggling between the Arab and Persian Gulf coasts in 1939 when Iranians wanted to work in Bahrain, and Gulf Arabs smuggled household goods into Persia to avoid the Iranian governments exorbitant dues; Nadjmabadi (1988; 69 – 71) discusses smuggling by Larakis from Dubai and Oman to Iran in 1977. Some local people took the opportunity to carry gold to India in the late 1940s and 50s because profits were high, as were the risks; some worked on trading boats that also carried gold and had a small share; a few had a small share in a gold cargo; some merchants financed whole loads or had built special dhows which were difficult to pick up by radar. Producers in the study region were aware of market prices and changes. People on the Shamailiyyah coast and in the western Hajar sold some products in a market on the Shamailiyya or Batinah coast, but sold others in the Gulf coast markets of Sharjah or Dubai, as mentioned in chapter 5; they, like others, knew the market prices for their goods. Some Zaab from Jazirat al-Hamra and the Batinah coast increased long distance summer fishing as pearling became unprofitable. Sea carriers and traders used abwam – which were cheaper to build and repair – rather than baggalah as profits in traditional sea trade grew less with competition from steam ships and changing markets. People worked hard, they were industrious and efficient in environments where successful agriculture, animal raising, fishing, and collection of honey, wood, and plants demanded constant observation and knowledge of potential opportunities or disasters. By exchange through gifts, shares, barter or trade between the different producing environments, the people of each increased their access to a wider range of goods and services, and directly or indirectly participated in regional if not world trade. If this is an example of Baylys industrious revolutions (2004; 52ff), some hap-

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pened before Baylys crucial date of the 1700s (2004; 58), since the region had been part of archaic globalisation, with its economy developed as far as it could be, given its natural resources and social and moral convictions. Gunpowder arrived in the Arab lands by way of India from China between 1225 and 1248, and used in c. 1258 when Hulagus army took Baghdad (Zhang 1983; 101). King (2003; 72) states that cannon were being made at Goa when the Portuguese arrived there, and that when the Portuguese arrived off the Fujairah coast, they were fired on by local inhabitants using an early form of mortar. Chaudhuri (1985; 151) considers the relative superiority of the Portuguese over Arab and Indian fleets in the first decade of the 16th century was due to better seamanship and the use of artillery at sea. Many commentators (Agios 2002; 49, 180) have linked changes in ship design and construction by Indian and Arab shipbuilders and owners to the wish to build stronger ships that could carry heavy guns. These ships, typified by elaborate transom sterns, were baghalah in the Gulf, kuttiya on the Indian Ocean coast and ghanja at Sur. Other commentators link this sort of ship to the influence of the ocean going Chinese junks of the early 15th century (Agios 2002; 52), but the fact of Arab and Indian shipbuilders and/or shipowners incorporating features of European or Chinese ships stands. Agios (2002; 50, 67), like Villiers (1940; 337, 341) considers abwam replaced baghalah as abwam were more cost-effective; they held more cargo, were cheaper to build, faster because lighter, and safer with their double-ended hulls. Lorimer in 1906 (1908 – 15; 2320) remarks that “Natives have ceased building for some years the larger class of cargo carrying craft formerly seen in the Gulf. The reliable and quick despatch afforded by the increased steamer communication possibly accounts for this.” Agios (2002; 180 – 182) comments on post 1970 changes in boat building techniques to accommodate market forces, technical developments, and cultural contacts. Locally, the major change was a drop in the number of boat builders and repairers, as the major use of boats now is for coastal fishing, using small fibreglass boats with outboard motors, often made in Ajman. In Ras al-Khaimah, there is one boat builder who repairs and builds traditional wooden trading boats; one who makes small wooden racing boats; and a few small fibreglass boat builders. At Khasab and Kumzar, traditional batil and zaruqa are built and repaired. Boatbuilders at both places now nail most of their batil, only sewing the stem and sternpost to the planks and so joining the hull; this is because these boats are hauled up steep and stony beaches, which can damage the plank ends, and sewn ends are easier to repair. Shasha seen on the Batinah coast at

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Aqr now have polystyrene block for buoyancy and are adapted for outboard engines. Towers and forts, from archive information, had defensive functions as well as acting as territorial markers and symbols of ownership. After the Portuguese had taken over, they built strongholds in their coastal bases, as did the Persians in the early 17th century at Julfar. When Oman regained its independence, Omanis took over these forts and possibly renovated some, as from archive information Shihuh did at Dibba Baiah. Many local centres in the western Hajar and the coasts and coastal plains had forts built by local tribal communities. Kennett (1995) discusses the building after 1820 of an interlinked series of Qawasim forts and towers from Ras al-Khaimah town to Jazirat al-Hamra and Khatt, with features showing that firearms and some artillery was expected to be in use by attackers and defenders; some of these replaced earlier structures. Costa noted (1985; 188 – 189) that most of the aswar of the Batinah coast had features relating to light firearms, and that the towers were built to withstand the recoil of the defenders guns rather than the impact of enemy shot. Aswar on the Batinah coast and inland were considered to have been built by local communities. Towers and forts continued to be built by rulers rather than local communitiies until shortly before Unification. Shaikh Saqr bin Mohammad of Ras al-Khaimah built the last forts during the 1950s and 1960s in the towns and places he finally incorporated into the Emirate. Before and after Unification, modern police stations and security force centres replaced forts. The Jabal Dhanna sulphur mines were in use from the mid 17th century to the 19th century (King 2003; 75 – 77) when there was a sustained local demand for sulphur to make gunpowder for guns on trading ships, for the matchlocks and flintlocks of local men, and for rulers armed retainers. Sulphur mined at Bandar Abbas and Hormuz was frequently subject to state monopolies (Portuguese, Persian, or Omani) although at least one Qawasim ruler of Ras al-Khaimah had been the shahbandar of Bandar Abbas and presumably able to get supplies. Archive information shows widespread knowledge of gunpowder manufacture; the two other ingredients, charcoal and nitre or saltpetre, were made or bought by individuals. Some said they or their fathers and grandfathers had preferred buffletira, flintlocks, or matchlocks, to rifles, because these older guns could be used with homemade gunpowder. King (2003; 77) sees the distribution of modern firearms by the British, Germans and Turks to their allies around the time of the First World war made loose gunpowder, and therefore the mining of sulphur, gradually redundant. Lorimer, (1908 – 15;

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2556ff) regarded the late 19th century wars in Afghanistan and arms smuggling from there into the Gulf as the source of modern rifles. The other local use for sulphur from Jabal Dhanna was qastan, a paste of sulphur and clarified butter used to heal sores and ulcers on camels and donkeys (King 2003; 71). In Dibba Baiah, from where local camels and donkeys carried goods to the Gulf coast, there is an area called Qastaniyya, possibly where pack animals were rested or treated while waiting for work. Steamships and railways introduced fossil fuels as sources of energy. No Arabs of the lower Gulf owned a steamship because of the scale of the investment. Steamships and later diesel engined ships brought in bigger quantities of imports more reliably and cheaply than similar goods imported in local boats or comparable local products. Oil, petrol, and diesel engines were smaller and cheaper, and in reach of individuals; small steam engines were imported into the Upper Gulf, but superseded by petrol and diesel engines which had a far reaching impact on regional local technologies. From 1909, von Sorinj (1915; 207) notes imports from western Europe of 6 – 10 horse power steam, petrol, and crude oil engines to Basra and Bahrain. Hajji Yusuf Kanoo in Bahrain (Kanoo 1997; 10) obtained the Anglo-Persian Oil Company agency, and in 1919 he was appointed the agent for the Strick Line which took dates and grain from Basra to India and brought back generators and other machines (Kanoo 1997; 29). From 1926, Hajji Yusuf Kanoo supplied the RAF with aircraft fuel; by the end of that year there were c. 140 cars and 4 lorries in Bahrain (Kanoo 1997; 35). By the end of 1928, about 55 wells for water had been drilled in Bahrain, and in 1929, (Kanoo 1997; 37 – 8), Omani shaikhs arrived to inspect Kanoos water drilling equipment. Oil was discovered in Bahrain in 1932 and the first shipment of Bahrain crude went to Japan in 1934; in 1935, oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia, with the first shipment of crude oil in 1939. Men from Ras al-Khaimah and the surrounding regions went to work in Bahrain from the late 1930s and in Hasa, Qatar, and Kuwait from the early forties, from archive information; Fenelon (1976; 64), writing about all the Emirates, says from about 1930. Initially, men went only for one contract to get money for marriage; later, men went for two or three contracts, and brought or sent back imported goods; diesel pumps for garden wells, cement for water channels and buildings, corrugated iron or cut wood for roofs, paraffin lamps, primuses, sewing machines, wire netting, wire fish traps and nylon fishing nets and ropes. In Dibba Baiah, an elderly Shihuh said their first engines for boats were garden pumps they

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adapted themselves, corroborated by men in Rams. Diesel engines in trading boats came in after the Second World war. Others spent their saved earnings on buying camels to take their goods to market, a garden, or goats. People said the initial period of migrant work reduced the home labour force only a little; but as the availability of useful imported goods grew after the war, profits from traditional products and methods became less, and money earned from migrant work and invested in imported labour saving pumps and materials reduced the need for workers at home, men could go to work for several contracts or move with his family to Kuwait for some years. Some people said their fathers had moved the family to Kuwait for the childrens education, and/or because they could earn more money there to save for a modern house and garden on their eventual return. Modern housing of the bait arabi type, and a truck or car, together with a small enterprise were the desired achievements of migrant workers; these investments were made as members of the wider family. Once Abu Dhabi oil came on stream, and federation was inevitable, state infrastructure of modern roads, electricity, and piped water began to be put into place. There was a lorry service from Dubai to the Batinah coast using Wadi al-Qawr in 1948 – 9 (Codrai 1950; 188), and by the mid fifties, lorries carrying goods and merchants went between Sharjah and Kalba via Wadi al-Qawr (Walker 1994; vol 5, 572). By the late fifties or early sixties, a Dhamini tribesman in Huwailat had a truck. By 1963, there was a road that could be used by 3-ton lorries to Dibba from Masafi; by 1976 (Fenelon 1976; 89), metalled roads had replaced the tracks that linked Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Dubai; Kalba and Dibba; and Fujairah to Masafi, Dhaid and Sharjah. In Ras al-Khaimah town, there were some private generators for electricity before 1965, when the first generating station was built (Fenelon 1976; 78); by 1976, a new generating station was under construction, to provide greatly increased capacity for Ras al-Khaimah town, Jazirat al-Hamra and Rams, as well as the new cement factory. Private generators were seen in old houses at Jazirat alHamra, Asima, Munaiy, and bu Bagra, before the shaabiya (low cost social housing) and villas were built after unification and the provision of state electricity to most places. The provision of roads made lorry transport for goods fast and efficient so camel and donkey transport became redundant. Distances between distribution and pick up points lengthened, making some earlier collection points for tobacco crops unnecessary. The road network and lorries ended local coasting traffic, except in Musandam, where there

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are few roads, and boats are more cost effective. Diesel engined boats bring in and take away supplies, passengers, and dried fish, and most families have a boat or two with outboard motors for travel to Khasab or Dibba, from where there are roads. The traditional summer movements to date gardens on the coasts finally ended when men became wage-earners with jobs, and lived with their families in shaabiyya connected to the road systems and towns. Gradually, over the 1960s and early 1970s, traders no longer came by boat with dates from Basra or Minab; dates went to Dubai or Sharjah and then by lorry to markets and shops at Ras al-Khaimah and other places; the Khawatir, traditional escorts for the wives and children of pearl divers, were giving up their camels as there were no profits in them, profits were coming from work in the TOS or other security services, and newly drilled wells meant their land could be irrigated for agriculture; and no-one was pearl diving, they had jobs and houses with enough electricity for a fan. Summering finished. Modern technology coming into the region has, either directly in the case of pearling, long distance and coastal sea trading and carrying, animal carriage on land, or indirctly for pottery, wheat and tobacco cultivation, made these traditional livelihoods and sources of profit unprofitable and impossible to live from. This is the transfomation of technology, inextricably linked to an ever closer incorporation in global economics.

Changes in traditional sources of profits People of the coastal towns lived from the sea – pearling, sea trading and carrying, and fishing. At Jazirat al-Hamra, a Zaabi remarked, “My father was a tawwash, he bought pearls form the diving boats and sold them to pearl merchants in India. Nearly everything in our house came from India. I remember my childhood as comfortable, we lacked nothing.” Another said, “Zaab lived at Jazirat al-Hamra and had gardens everywhere – Khatt, Hail, Dibba, Kalba and more places on the Batinah coast. The Zaab all traded as well, they were tawwash who bought from the pearl fishermen and sold to the Hindi merchants.” Another stated: Zaab mostly traded up and own the Gulf in anything that was available for trading, and we carried anything that needed carrying. In 1955, when I was about ten, Jazirat al-Hamra owned three abwam, and the shaikh had two of them; most people had shuai. We did long distance as well as local fishing. We went fishing off the Saudi coast and sold the fish in the coastal towns of al-Hasa and up to Kuwait. The market here was too small for the number of

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fishermen. This didnt develop when pearling disappeared, Zaab had always done it, it was what we did after the pearling season, although when there were ice plants, we did more of it. The most important item we traded was dates; some Zaab owned animals for carrying goods, but most relied on Khawatir animals. We used to go to Ras al-Khaimah town to hire space on bigger boats to carry Iraqi dates to Kilwa and Kalba, and bring salt from Iran. Im not old enough to remember, but Ive been told it was extremely difficult to make a living from trade in the 1930s and pretty difficult in the 1940s. By the mid 1960s, Jazirat al-Hamra had seven or more big boats, and Ras al-Khaimah became more important for trade after storms opened up the creek. That was when my grandfather moved from Jazirat al-Hamra to Ras al-Khaimah, because there was more trade there. Then there were the events of 1968, and most Zaab went to Abu Dhabi or their places on the Batinah coast.

Another Zaab commented, “When pearling collapsed, in the 1920s and 30s, men who had gone pearling took to fishing in the summers, and everyone who wasnt fishing spent the summers in date gardens.” In Ras al-Khaimah town, an elderly trader said, Ive been a small trader here all my life, and I had a date garden in Nakhil. When I was a young man, I went to East Africa, taking dates from Basra and bringing back chandal, roof beams, for Kuwait, Qatar, Hasa and Dubai. That was when we sailed. Later on, and for most of my trading, I took firewood and vegetables from here to Dubai and brought back rice, wheat, flour, cloth, building materials … Later on, I started a building contracting business, and I used to buy and sell building land. I never remember Ras al-Khaimah town being a main trading centre; in the last fifty years, it was always only a local centre. All the big merchants were in Dubai, because Dubai was the main trading centre for pearls. Thats where the money was, thats where the merchants were, thats where the boats were. In the four months of the gaith, when the pearl boats went off to the banks, Ras al-Khaimah town was empty. People were either pearling or in Nakhil for the dates, there was no-one left except the Persian shop-keepers.

Another elderly former trader remarked: I dont know when exactly wheat was imported into Ras al-Khaimah; I think probably before the Second World war, and through India. I was trading during the war, but when I was Head of Customs after the war, Australian wheat came down from Dubai, in fairly small quantities of a hundred sacks at a time. Just before and during the war, a trader could make a lot of money, bringing in things like tea, sugar, cloth and so on, from East Africa and which werent available here. … A hundred to a hundred and fifty years ago, we traded enormously but mostly with Lingah. All the Indian stuff went to Lingah, and Ras al-Khaimah boats went to Lingah to get them. Gradually Lingah declined, and we started or restarted trading direct-

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ly with India. Travel has changed so much. When I was flying to India, the first planes were sea-planes, which took off from the creek at Ras al-Khaimah, landed at Khor Jerama in Oman for re-fuelling, and seven hours later landed at Bombay. Then it was by ordinary planes from Sharjah; they refuelled at Ras al-Hadd and took seven hours to Bombay. I was never involved in gold smuggling; a man needed a lot of capital, and it was better if he came from Dubai.

An Iranian trader remarked: My father started this shop sixty years ago in the waqt al-ji, time of hunger, because there was absolutely nothing in Lingah. There was great poverty here, too, people wore jute sacks and licked their sweat for salt! Im exaggerating, but things were really bad. The shop was mudbrick, and we sold paraffin, diesel, and oil that we brought from Abadan, and dates and salt from Iran. Everything was for cash as there wasnt much, except for salt fish, to buy that we could sell. Shaikh Saqr ousted Shaikh Sultan bin Salim some fifty years ago. Before Shaikh Saqr took over, there was so little money around that even the Shaikh bought only two kilograms of rice a year, and many Iranian traders left. White metal trays and saucepans, and enamelware have certainly been around from before Saqr became ruler. But people here didnt really start buying them before the fifties, because earlier no-one had any spare money. Primuses came in maybe fifty years ago. Grain and, later, flour were imported, but it wasnt milled in Ras alKhaimah until about forty years ago, and that was when handmills, raha, went out of use. Tinned pineapples and peaches were certainly here in the fifties; people liked them as treats and we traders liked them because they had a long shelf life. There were also very big tins of baked beans and smaller ones of tinned tomatoes; little tins of tomato puree were definitely later, late sixties. Vimto was early, too. … Slave trading didnt disappear until about 1960, it was still going strong in the 1940s and 50s, by sea from East Africa. You remember talking to three old men, one of whom said nothing? He was from Sharjah, married here and stayed. He was a long distance fisherman. Every year he went in a lanj and fished off Bahrain and Kuwait, where the market for fish was bigger than it was here. This was in the late 1940s and 50s, maybe a bit longer. In the 1960s, my uncle and I had a shop at Digdaga, and bida sold us mountain products and bought what they needed, like flour. But those years had poor rains, so presumably it was people who had few or poor fields who bought the flour. I dont think it was a shortage of labour that caused the shortage of wheat, it was poor rains. Mountain men only went to work once in Kuwait and so on, they didnt do repeat trips.

Another said, “Forty years ago, Ras al-Khaimah was busy as a port, the creek was good. Then all the merchants and traders began to move to Dubai; that ended twenty years ago when the last Hindu merchant went to Dubai.” Another elderly Iranian trader said,

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Ive lived here most of my life, Im from Awwath, behind Bandar Abbas. When I was young, it was all Iranian shops here. In the summer, the town was deserted and we went to Nakhil and bought dates. We were surrounded by people from Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Sharjah and so on, all the way from Fulayyah to Shaam. We sold them cloth from India and rice from Persia, which came here in Iranian boats. The boat owners and shop keepers insisted on cash, silver, but they made a few exceptions. Iranian boats went to East Africa and brought back chandal; they sold a few here but most went up the Gulf. Ras al-Khaimi boats took firewood up the Gulf, it was the main export. We sold some wheat and clarified butter from the mountains, there was never enough wheat grown around Nakhil and Hail and places on the sayh. Wheat wasnt really traded on the coast until after the war, it came from Australia. If a young man didnt become a trader, his big opportunity for employment was to join the shaikhs armed retainers.

Another trader remarked: My father traded mainly in dates from Minawa in Iran and from Basra. It was a good steady trade in those days because this area didnt produce enough. He also traded in charcoal and firewood. Like other traders, my father exchanged money. A silver tuman was valued at 104 rupees or riyals or dirhams, but the traders gave a hundred rupees for a tuman, the four rupees were their commission. At that time, a sack of dates cost a rupee, a rupee and a half. Tuman were going out of use as coins, although they were still a unit of currency. The coins in use then were rupees, anna and baisa. The MT thaler was just in use and called a barhash. There were also small silver coins, maybe half a rupee, called birsha; these might be the wirsha. This was when land transport was by camel and donkey.

An Arab explained, “Everyone was poor except the pearl merchants. Everything came from the pearl trade, pearls paid for rice, coffee, sugar, clothes, the lot. Oil is the pearls of today, and it is Abu Dhabi that has the oil.” A Zaabi commented, Ras al-Khaimah had bu¯m, jalbut and sambuk, all locally built. Trade depended on the monsoons, one for India and one for East Africa, and a voyage lasted nine months. The trading boats were the big bu¯m, three to five hndred tons carrying capacity, with crews of forty to sixty men. Ras al-Khaimah wasnt self sufficient, it had to trade. It depended on imported grain, mostly rice, and it had to import cloth and clothes from India.

An Ahl Ras al-Khaimi recalled: I remember men going pearling just for two months, not the full four months. By that time, pearling wasnt profitable and it was too easy to get into debt. A man could be in debt for years if he was unlucky or the price of pearls dropped. The merchant he owed could sell him and his debt to someone else. Two months pearling reduced the need to borrow.

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Another said, Were a trading family. I dont know exactly when the hungry year was, but some time in the early forties. 1942? There was no trading and nothing to trade, the Indian trade had gone. People were wearing jute sacks! Then, and after that, right through the fifties and sixties, everybody went to work in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, or Dammam. And when India got its independence in 1948, a year after that I think it was, all our trade with India was banned, even things like dates and salt and dried fish; so we couldnt get rice. Work in Kuwait was really important. My father ran a private postal service for people working in Kuwait and their families here.

A former fisherman recalled: “Ali bin Tuwair was the nakhuda of a bu¯m, and he sailed all over – East Africa, India, Kuwait. Then he went to Kuwait with the bu¯m and stayed there for two years. He sent down money for his wife and the child by a busta, Ibrahim b Uthman.” A member of the ruling family recalled: Before oil came, Ras al-Khaimah was very poor and tired, especially so when pearling had gone and the second world war was on. That was when the sanat al-ji happened. There was very little rice and so little sugar that in our house the date sacks were boiled and squeezed to get the last bits of sweetness. This was before I was born, but Ive heard my father talk of it.

A man from a trading family pointed out, “People used to be much more self-sufficient, but they were poorer. There was a lot of trade between the mountains, the oases and the coasts, and everything cost so little.” A Naimi trader recalled: My father sold chandal and cut wood, and in the 1950s these both came from East Africa. It wasnt until the 1960s we sold wood from Kuwait. All that wood was for building. Wood from India was for boat building and repairing. And he sold, as I do, white pottery from Iran. He never sold Wadi Hajil pottery; that was sold by the women in Ras al-Khaimah market, they brought it in on camels.

Another elderly trader said, In the past, everything came from India, mostly by way of Iran. My family traded from India to Iran, brought goods on here, collected up dates and went back to India. We traded in absolutely anything. We brought in grain from Pakistan and north India, which included grain from Australia. Nothing from Australia came here directly, it always went through India. Wheat was exported from here, it came down from the mountains in small quantities which traders collected up as part of a cargo and sold further up the Gulf or in Iran. It was trader trade, not merchant trade. Things from Europe and America, radios and gramophones for example, came in

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from India. Now nothing comes from Bombay, all the goods from Europe go directly to Dubai in container ships. My father was a nakhuda, he owned his own baggalah and traded and carried up and down the coast, up the Gulf, to the Makran and India. In the season he went pearling in the boat, and he went fishing in it. He inherited the boat from his father, who made most of his money trading slaves from East Africa, and his father, my great-grandfather, was the last real slave trader in our family. My family were professional slave traders, not owners of boats that carried slaves.

An Ahl Ras al-Khaimi recalled: My grandfather brought me up and I traded with him. We didnt own a boat, we hired space on a bu¯m, five or six traders would join together and rent a boat between them; this was from the early 1920s. We traded anything we thought would sell, and we traded up and down the Gulf, to India and East Africa. During the war, it was quite profitable going to east Africa. We took tiles direct from Mangalore to Mombasa, and sold them to the British, bought chandal for Kuwait and Basra, and tea and sugar to smuggle back here. In the late 1950s or early 1960s, I stopped being a sea trader and had a general store here, and I gave that up several years ago.

Another trader said, Before the war, Australian wheat as flour definitely came from India to Dubai, and cement from Australia and Japan (Shimuzu 1986; 154 – 5, Japanese cement to Iraq in 1930s: Kanoo 1997; 63) went to Bahrain and Kuwait. I began trading in textiles in 1949. Earlier, textiles came to Dubai from Lingah, but in my time they came straight to Dubai. When I started, some came from America, but then it all came from Japan using Indian cotton (Shimuzu 1986; 258, by mid-1930s). There wasnt much pure cotton, cloth was synthetics or mixtures of cotton and synthetics from Japan, a bit from China and Korea. Twenty or thirty years ago, Indian cloth was imported again through Dubai. Ive always imported synthetic fishing nets and ropes from Japan, Taiwan and Korea; but earlier, fishermen imported cotton thread from India and made their nets.

An al-Ali remarked, Around 1970, people here invested their money in building land and buildings, houses to rent to foreign professionals working here. Before, they had invested in gardens and agricultural land. And before, if a young man didnt trade, one of his options was to be taken on in the rulers bodyguard.

At Maarid, a Murri explained: My father was brought up in Abu Dhabi town, his father was a trader. My father got a boat and carried firewood and dates between Ras al-Khaimah and Abu Dhabi, married a Bani Shamailiyya and moved here. I was a skilled mechanic on trading ships; dates to India, tiles to East Africa, chandal

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up the Gulf, dates back home. This was after the war, boats had engines, big baggalah, with crews of forty and up; we took part in carrying gold to India from Dubai, as part of the normal run – this was after trade had started again with India. And the British employed me on naval charting patrols along the south Arabian coast. I didnt go into the Gulf trade to Kuwait, Id made my money; I took over the farm I inherited, and bought another farm at Kharran.

A former sea-trader remarked: I last went to get chandal in 1956; I couldnt get any in Zanzibar, I had to go to Tanganyika. Cement was in Kuwait and Bahrain in the 40s and 50s, people would send down the odd sack or two to the family for repairs. It wasnt until the mid 1960s when people had some money that there was a trade in cement and imported building materials. Dubai was the long-established main trading port for everything, small boats from Maarid didnt get a look in. I think cement came into Dubai after the war. People are right when they say that for the last fifty years there has been only local trade here. Most of the trade was taking firewood to Dubai, there were only a few long distance traders like myself. Wheat coming down from the mountains was normal, wheat was what bida, mountain people, sold. Once cheaper wheat from Australia was available, the mountain economy was undermined. Until the late 1920s or early 30s, I can just remember it, everything from India, Europe, or America came from Lingah. Then the present (sic) Shahs father modernised Persia. Many merchant families from Lingah walked onto their boats and sailed to Sharjah and Khor Fakkan, because the Qawasim had ruled Lingah. But the Qawasim didnt fulfil their expectations, and so most of them listened to Shaikh Rashid Maktum of Dubai, who provided land and facilities and enabled them to start trading again, and went to Dubai. Dubai has never looked back, except during the war when Aden was the entrepot for all the trade of the Western Indian Ocean.

On another occasion, he said, I wasnt here in the sanat al-ji but it was a myth. Anyone who had access to a boat went to Iraq where rice was very cheap. Or people had their own land and grew wheat and dates. It was only those who relied on money who were stuck. When people were earning money in Bahrain, Hasa or Kuwait, the first thing they did when they got back was to build a bait arabi. Everybody moved into a bait arabi, khaimah vanished. Twenty, thirty years ago there were twenty men here and in Ras alKhaimah town building boats; now it is just me. The Muhairi made fibreglass lanj, but before they had made them in wood. Several people imported wood for boat building from India and East Africa; some as their main occupation, others for their own building and repairs. Khor Fakkan was a safe harbour; boats went there when they were waiting for more work, it was a good place to clean and oil the boat, whiten the hull, do repairs. In good

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weather, big boats anchored off places like Dibba, Kalba, Khor Fakkan, Bu Baqra, and local fishing boats came out and took off goods and loaded new ones. Boats did change when engines came in, but it was a series of slow changes as engines got heavier and larger. Early engines werent much better than sails, except you didnt need a wind, but they werent powerful enough to make way against the wind. As engines got larger, boats became heavier, and the hull deepened and widened to accommodate the engine; the superstructure changed only a little.

An old man said, Im Bani Hadiya from Bukha, we settled in Maarid forty years ago. In Bukha, we fished from shasha; there was one shuai and no-one had tarrad. We exchanged fresh fish, dried and salt fish for firewood, charcoal and wheat, which all came from the mountains. When we lived here, we bought dates from Basra and Muhammarah in exchange for firewood and charcoal. And we sent salt fish to Dubai or Masqat, a few men would take a jalboot round all the little places where fishermen were selling salt fish and take it on. Sometimes we got our dates at Ghubb or round there, but usually there werent enough. Date trading was very important because there were never enough in the Emirates. I did go pearling a bit but really it had finished. Before, people here made money by taking drinking water out to pearling boats.

In Rams, a man commented, “Now, most men work for the government, have a small private business, own a fishing boat with an Indian crew, and have a date garden.” A group of men said, When we traded, which everybody did, the voyage lasted nine months; from here to Basra, back down the Gulf to India, then to Somalia, East Africa and Zanzibar, then back by the South Arabian coast, Masqat and home. When the men were away pearling for weeks at a time, the women collected a shellfish called hima.

Two Ramsawis remarked: Before petrol, everybody helped each other. People did things with a group of four to seven neighbouring households; they harvested the wheat under the date trees, farmed in the mountains, fished, went pearling, went trading, built houses. … There was very little money, we worked together. Before petrol, the fishing crews shared the fish; the owner of the boat took half for himself and the boat, the nakhuda who was responsible for catching the fish took half the rest for himself and the fishing equipment, and the crew shared the rest. People fished from tarrad only by day, now they use fibreglass boats. And there were lanj or sambuk or bu¯m, and they fished by night, about forty kilometres out with long nets. In the past profits were good, because there were fewer boats; four or five boats used nets, four or five used traps. Now there are sixty fibreglass boats netting and forty using traps; the market is bigger but profits are smaller. Petrol engines

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came in about fifty years ago. Fibreglass boats came in a few years before we all got jobs in government or construction, and started employing Indians from the Malabar coast to work our boats. Before, in the summers we were fishing mostly for ourselves; in the winters we salted the catch after each family in the community had what they needed. The salt fish went to Kuwait and Bahrain mostly. People who wanted to buy fish came from all up and down the coast; they came by camel and traded firewood for fish and other goods.

Another Ramsawi at Maarid fish market pointed out, “In the past, there werent markets like this. We made sure every one in the community had fish, then we salted the rest. People from the mountains and the plains came to buy fish, some fresh but mostly salted.” Two elderly Ramsawis explained: Fishing in the creek was always forbidden, before by customary law and now by state law. The customary regulations about how many nets and traps each boat could put down have gone. Under customary law, the nakhuda settled disputes because they were the experts. Fishing boats were part of family enterprises, nets and traps were owned inside the family, and families co-operated. People have enterprises making metal fish traps because those traps dont last long; Japanese wire lasts ten months, Korean wire lasts eight months, and Taiwanese wire only four months. The old palm fibre ones lasted for two to three years, and they could be repaired; but all the cutting, stripping, splitting, soaking and weaving took time so they cost too much. We dont remember boats being built at Rams; our boats were built in Ajman, and they were mostly tarrad. Tarrad were usually jointly owned between two or four closely related people, as they were quite expensive. Trading from Rams ended with unification when money came from oil and the transfer arrangements, and could be relied upon. Government employment was more secure than an income from trading.

Another former fisherman remarked: Shahahif were the ordinary fishing boats, we rowed them and sailed them. They were replaced by the fibreglass lanjat. Then shahahif were used for rowing and sailing races, and then they were made longer and narrower, and were altered a bit in their details, and became the rowing racing boats that may be seen outside all the Heritage and Folk Lore Societies.

An old man remembered: “The bin Salih family who left more than forty years ago were traders and their boats used to be drawn up between their meeting houses on the creek. They had date gardens at Dhaya. They were traders, but they really made their money from dates.” An elderly Ramsawi said, The effects of the sanat al-ji on people were mixed, depending what other assets they had. If they fished and had a date garden, it made hardly any dif-

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ference to them. People who were traders only were the most affected. The sanat al-ji was at some time during the war, and only lasted about six to eight months. It was like any other period of hardship like a bad harvest, most people had other options. A few more people died than normal, but no more than in any other hard time.

Another elderly Ramsawi recalled: “I never worked our mountain fields at Sall Dhaya because by that time grain was so cheap, there was no point. The lower fields below Muharrig were abandoned earlier because of a drought.” Another recalled: A great many people worked in Kuwait and Dammam before independence, as they had done for thirty years or so. That was when Iranians took over the trading in goods in the Gulf because our boat owners were carrying people and their things to and from Kuwait. It wasnt only the nakhuda, the captain, who acted as a postal service, anybody going up or down did, all the crew, other passengers. And families went up, too. My father had been a seaman on trading boats going to East Africa and India. Then he worked on boats going to and from Kuwait; then the whole family moved to Kuwait and he worked on lighters supplying oil installations; I went to school in Kuwait. Trading from Rams finished with unification because money from oil started to come in properly, and there were reliable arrangements between each Emirate and the federal government, so there were real jobs here. Working on the boats, which were almost like ferries between here and Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, became redundant because of the new roads and cars, and there were airline flights. But it didnt matter, there were easier ways of making money here at home in government jobs.

Two elderly men explained: The first modern houses, the buyut arabi, started in the sixties, and continued to be built until the mid to late seventies. They came in because people had gone to work in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. I first worked in Kuwait where I was a building labourer, making blocks. Wherever people from here had gone to work, these bait arabi were what the people there were living in. When people came back here, they didnt have time to build a traditional house, so they used bought materials and built houses like the ones theyd seen and used – which werent really much different to our own. They looked different because of the materials, but how they were used was much the same. Cement and building materials in general steadily increased in price, so people would work another contract to get the money to finish the building. Then they needed money to build a house for their son, or aged parents and so on, so they kept on working.

Another remarked: “Long distance and local sea trading and pearling died during the sixties because there were more secure ways of getting

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a living. The returns from sea trading and pearling werent worth the risks.” Another said, There were epidemics. In 1943 – 4 there was a really bad smallpox outbreak, and a lot of people, mostly young people, died here. There was another epidemic in 1940 – 1, but I dont know what the illness was. People seemed to swell up, and then they died. Ive been told there was a bad cholera outbreak here in 1920 – 21, and it was worse in Bukha. Families were small in the past; I had two brothers and a sister, and we were a large family. Later, families exploded in numbers. You tell me that Lienhardt said there were 400 people in Rams in 1953 – 54. I worked in the biladiyya (local government) here in 1950, and there were 800 people here then. Maybe Lienhardt counted only people who were here, and the biladiyya counted people who belonged here but had temporarily gone to work in Kuwait.

A Ramsawi said, My mothers family, like others, left Bukha in 1970 because they didnt want to be Omani. They still own their property there. Some people from Bukha had moved here earlier, in 1924 or 25. They used Maarid as a fishing station because they had no market at Bukha. Ras al-Khaimah was the market for the people of Bukha, they didnt go to Khasab. And a lot of people at Bukha had relations down here and had inherited fields. Selling children did go in the hard years, especially by people in the towns and the sayh – bayadir, a few Habus. Kidnapping was far more common and they took anyone they could pick up. The buyers were mostly junior ibn Saud. It was forbidden but it went on. The Shihuh didnt sell children because they were relatively well off, and they didnt come out of the mountains much. In times of real scarcity, the al-Assad family, the Iranian traders, were really generous, giving out free foodstuffs to the needy.

Another Ramsawi remarked: People from Bukha left in the late 1960s. Before, the Shaikh of Bukha was Muhammad bin Ahmad, a good man and popular, and under him Bukha was fairly prosperous. He was deposed by his cousin, who had been at Dibba Baiah and rejected by them. He got rid of the Iranian merchants, so there was no trade and no work. As soon as people in Bukha saw the Emirates was going to be formed, they left for Maarid, Ras al-Khaimah and so on.

In Khor Khuwair, a former fisherman said, Here, long nets and long distance were new, after oil money. Fifty to seventy years ago, there werent many date gardens here. By the Second World War, there was a shortage of labour for watering the dates so the harvests were very poor. The poor people, widows, old women and the like, would sit

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under the tree and mark out a circle in the earth, and any date that dropped into it, they ate. It was the same in Ghalilah.

At Ghalilah, some elderly Shihuh explained: This area was really poor in the 1930s, 1940s, into the 1950s. There was nothing produced except for local trade and there was no transit trade. There was no money here, none in Iran, none anywhere in the wider region. The only accessible place with money and goods to export was India, but we had no exports. Silver wasnt valuable as money; we had kran and thaler, but they werent usable as money. People didnt have any clothes. We remember children stark naked playing on the beach. There was a little cheap cloth from Iran, but it was very heavy. No-one liked it and the women used to paint patterns round the neck and at the wrists, they didnt have any money for embroidery threads. It was during the 1940s and 50s that men started leaving the mountains to work at the north end of the Gulf. People from the mountains sometimes worked as bayadir in date gardens. And they used to go to work in Buraimi, Fars or Bombay, when there was no money here and there was there. Now, its the other way around, we have the money and the Baluch and Hinud come here.

Some slightly younger men said, In the winters we grew grain in the mountains, where we got good yields. If there were good early rains, we sowed a second grain crop; but later on, we sowed yeh, long watermelons, for the market. We know about the sanat alji but we dont remember it, we know of it as a short time when there wasnt any money. But as we didnt have to buy much, and it only lasted a short time, it wasnt important for us. We had everything we needed. Why did we stop growing wheat in the mountains? Because cheap wheat was being imported! Wheat production in the mountains was undermined by the import of cheap wheat.

At Shaam, a man remarked: “We had date gardens and vegetable gardens, we fished and we traded. We had our fishing boats, and forty years ago we still had two big bu¯m, trading boats. We never pearled on our own account.” An elderly salt fish trader said, My father and I bought fresh fish here in Shaam, salted it and exported it. The fresh fish came in, was distributed among the community and sold to people who came for it, and we bought up some of the rest; the salt came by bu¯m from Liziq, near Bandar Abbas. The salt fish were taken by abwam from Kuwait, Iraq and Iran to the north end of the Gulf. These boats brought down dates, diesel, paraffin and petrol. This was in the 1960s when people had pumps in their gardens, and lamps and primuses. Boats here didnt really have engines until 1973; lorries and cars also came about then. When I was a boy, Shaam, Ghalilah, and Rams between them had over a thousand small fishing boats, tarrad, shasha, and shahuf with a normal crew of four men. Shaam had only two or three big boats.

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I turned to wholesale dry fish trading when fresh fish no longer came into Shaam but went to the fish markets at Ras al-Khaimah town and Maarid. I buy the fish there and in Oman, and I sell it to Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

A cousin recalled: “The mountain Shihuh always had wheat for sale. That stopped when imported wheat was available and so much cheaper to buy. The change happened gradually.” A group of old men recalled: In the past, and all of us here in this office can confirm this, there was no shortage of food. We had plenty to eat, what was lacking was money, coins. Men who went pearling went for four months in the summer, and they were employed on boats; Shaam didnt have its own pearling boat. No-one really remembers pearling. There were at least four trading abwam here; they all traded in the lower Gulf, Oman and to Zanzibar, and went to Iran four times a year for salt. Mostly they traded up and down the coast to Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah. To Abu Dhabi they took salt and dried fish, vegetables and water; they sold the fish and vegetables, they gave away the water, and they brought back nothing because there was nothing to bring. A few people had servants or slaves, most did their work themselves. When men went to work in Kuwait, the first thing people bought with the money their relations sent back was blocks and cement, and after that, they bought a pump for the date garden. I went to Kuwait in the fifties, I was thirteen or fourteen. Before the 1960s our shahuf were narrow and double-ended, we built them from wood we bought from the company. We bought sailcloth in Dubai and made the sails. After 1960, the boats were still wooden but wider for outboard engines, patterned on Ajmani boats. Before and after 1960, we hauled boats up the beach on greased rollers. Shaam had about ten boats like these. Up to the mid-1970s, we fished using nets and traps, long nets are new here. Shaam had thirty to forty households, maybe four to five hundred people.

An eighty-year old said, I fished and I went pearling on the boats. It was profitable, it could be really profitable. Then we had everything; we were rich in everything, only we didnt always have money. The difference between the past and the present is that then we produced everything and we were exporters; now everything comes in from outside and we are consumers.

A Dhahuriyyin said, “We know that in the past, we got iron by digging out iron bearing rock and smelting it. In the recent past, Dhahuriyyin made metal goods from scrap metal, and so did Baluch zuttut; now, only they do it.”

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In Jadi, a group of elderly Bani Hadiya said, “The Baluch metal workers were the first mechanics when pumps for gardens and engines for boats came in. And it is quite true, the first boat engines were adapted pumps.” At Khasab, an elderly boat builder said, In my lifetime we built lanjat, wooden boats with engines in, and batiil and zaruqa, all workboats, amila. The wood for the planking came from India, but we got it from Dubai, first by boat, and now by lorry. And we used local woods from here, Qida, Lima, and Dibba. People really didnt like sailing through Bab Musandam, that was the reason for Dibbas success, they could unload there and the goods were carried across. People left Bukha, Ghamda and Tbait in the 1950s and 60s because there was nothing there; trade had gone, there was no work, and no money. So they went to work in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and when that ended, they worked in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. A lot of people moved to Shaam and Rams because they were alive while Bukha was dead.

At Kumzar, some elderly Kumazarah explained: We used to get our dates from Basra, Minau in Iran, and Hasa, but now we buy imported dates in Khasab. Men from here, a long time ago, went pearling, but in our time, we worked in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. And we fished, and dried and salted them, and we traded them mostly to boats that came in here for water. We have connections with Kumazara at Larak and Qishm, but now we have to visit officially with pieces of paper from Khasab.

Dhahuriyyin from Hablain said, We used to go long distance fishing south of here. As far as we know, this had always been done (Lorimer 1908 – 15; 1138: Nadjamabadi 1992). The fish was salted and bought by Iranian and Baluch merchants, and we dont know where it went after that. In the 1950s, 1960s, salting this fish stopped, and we used ice instead and sold it fresh. A boat with ice came out from Bandar Abbas until the 1970s.

In Lima, a Shihhi pointed out, “That is Maksuriyya. The entire population died about eighty years ago in an epidemic, and the houses were left.” At Dibba Baiah, old men recalled: Before the Fawaris came, when they were thrown out of Iran for being Sunni, we Shihhi certainly had all sorts of boats, abwam, sambuk, and so on, and we traded. Then the Fawaris took it over, and now nobody trades. Motors for big boats, marakib, came in after 1945. The first engines for boats were adapted pump engines for gardens – gardens had pumps before boats had engines. Small boats didnt have engines till much later, when outboards came in.

Another elderly man said,

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The first cars came to Dibba Baiah in the early 1960s. Lorries were a bit later, they couldnt manage the track through wadi Fay. It is quite correct, the first boat engines were adapted pump engines; it was easy, we took off the fly wheel and put on a propeller, anyone could do it. Pearling was quite important here in the 1950s and 60s, for mother of pearl, seed pearls and a few large pearls; the trader told us most of them went to Japan. An Indian rupee then was worth a hundred now; then we had Qatari riyal, then UAE dirhams. Maria Theresa dollars werent changed at banks in 1970, they were sold to jewellers for their silver. At some time, I remember hearing that a $MT was worth 150 dirhams; they were bigger and better silver than the French riyals.

Another elderly man commented, From the 1940s, men went to Kuwait to work, and the women, old men and the children kept the gardens, fields and fishing going here. Everybody was working all the time. But in the 1950s and 60s, not many young men went to Kuwait. Most young men got money by gold smuggling, like Dubai and other places down this coast.

In Qidfa, a young man remarked: Dhahuriyyin had gardens here a hundred and fifty years ago, but they sold them in the 1960s, because of pressure from the Sharqi Shaikh here, and went back to Dibba. Three-quarters of the present garden owners bought their gardens from the Dhahuriyyin. The Sharqi werent in Qidfa until about 1880, and Shihuh came here in 1903, after the taking of Bithnah, but they lived from animals and didnt have gardens until the late 1980s. Most of the Qidfa of the 1940s was destroyed in the 1982 – 3 for redevelopment.

An elderly Yamahi commented, When cars came in, we didnt need the camels and donkeys. Cars and lorries came in during the time of Muhammad bin Hamad. Then we sometimes took things to Fujairah and they went to Sharjah and Dubai in lorries with only a few people. The lorries brought back rice, flour, sugar, coffee, cloth, clothing … This was in the drought times, when Qidfa didnt grow enough grain for itself. Going to Kuwait and then Saudi Arabia for work replaced pearling as a way of getting money.

An elderly woman said, “When men went to work in Kuwait, it wasnt so difficult, because a family chose a young man they could spare; if it turned out they needed extra labour, then they would get a relation over from Madha to help out. Madha and Qidfa helped each other out.” At Kalba, several old men said,

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The port of Ghallah, the old name for Kalba, was the real Naqbi port. But we didnt usually buy the goods that came in here, like rice, coffee, and so on; we bought them more cheaply at Dubai at the end of the pearling season, because most people from here went pearling. It was more profitable to pearl from the big boats on the Gulf than to pearl here, although some did. For us, the end of pearling was 1945. In the late 1940s and 50s, a lot of men here went to work in Kuwait. 1945 was the year that meant the start to our lives changing. From the late 1940s and continuing to the present, the rains have got less and less. Some of us are in our late seventies and eighties, and we remember when we were young, it rained between October and March. The wadis flowed every four to five days, and there were places in the wadis that flowed in places /ghayl until the end of April, early May. That was why Kalba was called Ghallah, it had ghaal, seasonal flows that produced profitable crops!

A man whose family had a tobacco garden at Hail recalled: We brought the tobacco down in late May, early June. The Bahraini traders who bought it were already here, they had summer houses in Kalba; they stopped coming about ten years ago. By the time I remember, the bundles of tobacco – which were a metre by half a metre – were taken down by Bedford lorry, and a lorry went to Sharjah every three or four days. But before, the tobacco had gone round to the Gulf in boats.

In Khor Kalba, a Zaabi recalled: We sold salt fish and tobacco to Iranian traders with boats, and salt was our biggest import. All the salting tanks have gone. Trading boats came in at almost any time of year, and I can remember the time a man could walk from boat to boat from here up to the roundabout (c. 200 metres). We bought paraffin from the Iranian traders; hurricane lamps came in in the 1960s, but wed had bottle lamps, we called them Egyptian lamps, before that.

(Lorimer 1908 – 15; 1056) records 11 lamp makers among the craftsmen of Kuwait, but without details of the lamp). At bu Bagra, a Zaabi explained: When our ancestors first came here, there were only bedu, Fuhud, who went with their animals between here, Jabal Akhdar, Buraimi and the Jau. Zaab didnt go to Buraimi unless they were selling slaves, ruqaiq, and that finished after the 1940s. In the 1950s, there were no borders, only Customs Posts at the ports like Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah, and at Murair, just up the coast. Before, people here lived from the sea, from pearling, and from dates. Men from here went pearling, some from Jazirat al-Hamra, most from Khor Fakkan, and some went to Socotra and Ceylon, but no-one knows the details. People also pearled here, and at Barka and Ras alHadd. In the last days of pearling in the 1950s, a tawwash from Khor Fakkan came here to buy, but really pearling had finished quite a time before. And

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we went long distance fishing off Suhar. When pearling finished, we went long distance fishing off the Hasa coast. In the 1950s and 60s, Zaab boats brought goods from India and east Africa here, in the winters, and the goods were taken across to Jazirat al-Hamra by camel, three or four hundred camels, that we hired. Later on, we used lorries for carrying goods between coasts. The tobacco and the dried limes, instead of going out from here by boat, went by lorry to Ras al-Khaimah and then up to Bahrain. Khanazira from Musandam used to come down to summer in al-Khabura, selling goats and pottery that they sold on the way, but that had finished by the 1970s. Now, even tobacco has finished, everything has finished. Most people here work in the Emirates. There are very few jobs here, there is no reason for any work to be here now.

A Jabri remarked, From what Ive heard from older people and I remember, the main goods traders brought in were rice, sugar, and salt; diesel and paraffin; chandal and firewood. Tobacco and salt fish went out. My grandfather remembered boats being built on the beach here when he was a boy, lots of boats for fishing and trading. Pearling was important to local people but it stopped. People from here, when times were hard, went to India and worked as small traders. Small trading is what you do if you have no other resources. I dont know about agriculture in the past, because in my working lifetime there have never been good rains here. In the days of Shakbut, people from here worked on boats taking water from Ghalilah and Shaam to Abu Dhabi.

At Bulaida, a Bidawi commented, When I was a boy, you could dig an arms depth anywhere along here, and you got sweet water. Now you drill with a rig, and every well has salt water. In the old days, tobacco was the main source of our profits, we sold mangos and limes, and we ourselves traded salt and dried fish up the wadis. This was in the 1950s and 60s. We had company for nearly half the year, from late May to October; Zaab women and children came for the summer, and Shihuh came through selling goats and buying dates. Everyone bought dates that came down by boats, lanjat, from Basra, Iran and Hasa, or by camel from Buraimi, because they were better than ours. There wasnt any money then, but everything was sweet, the water was good and the trees flourished. I dont think everything was better in the past. Hospitals are good, especially for women and children. In the past, there were plant remedies, and women gave birth at home with a knowledgeable older woman. Sometimes these practices were fine, and sometimes things went wrong and people died.

In Aqr, a Mazrui said,

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This is my modernised shasha that I made myself. It is a yarid and polystyrene sandwich tied together with rope, we no longer use the qurb, growing points, from digla or offshoots of date palms. We now put in an outboard motor, so the stern is flat. If the man who makes one is going to row, then it is double-ended, as it always was. They are lovely boats, so safe. I go out a long way, fifty or more kilometres. They can be small or big; these two are six and seven metres long, and need two men. I often sell my fish at the market in Shinas if I catch a lot, or if there arent many, I give them to my family and neighbours.

Comments on the loss (or continuation) of profits of the coastal areas Pearling was of two sorts: merchant financed pearling on the banks in the Gulf by boats of up to forty divers: and pearling by individual divers along the Ruus al-Jibal coasts and off Dibba Baiah. Most local pearl divers on both coasts saw the former as more profitable, as they produced more of the desirable large round pearls that sold well, although the risks of getting into debt were greater. Diving around the Ruus al-Jibal produced more seed pearls and mother of pearl which fetched lower prices but sold easily. The market for the few really valuable pearls produced each year, when profits were at their highest, was in India, western Europe and North America. This market collapsed in the mid 1920s with the introduction of cultured pearls, and exacerbated by the Wall Street crash of 1929, followed by the world depression of the 1930s. Pearling continued to decline until it finished in the 1950s. Many former workers on pearl boats worked in the developing oil industries or related construction industries of Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, while others took to pearling locally, fishing, and/or seatrading, or concentrated on their other owned resources. Many participated in all options at various times. Local pearling by individuals continued until the 1960s, with Japan the last market for their products; these men also fished and/or worked as crew members on sea trading boats. Debts incurred by divers were abolished at various dates by the various Gulf rulers. Published material suggest few changes in the organisation of pearl diving. The locations of pearl beds start at Ras al-Hadd and end near Qatar; some scholars have suggested that the more southern locations were places from which divers came rather than places where pearl beds existed; but archive information verifies that the Ruus al-Jibal, Shamailiya, Batinah and eastern Hajar coasts to Ras al-Hadd were local pearling locations. Ibn Battuta in the 14th century and other commenta-

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tors at later dates described merchant financing, credit and debt for Gulf pearling, and profits shared among the owner, nakhuda and crew. Reported changes in the length and timings of the major and minor pearling seasons may have been related to current profitability of pearling and alternative sea based occupations; weather conditions; or movement of, or disease among, pearl beds. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol I, 2229) states that Trucial Coast pearling crews going to Ceylon for a winter season, mentioned in the archive by Zaab, was not recorded in government records before 1889, and it replaced ordinary deep-sea fishing at home. Big boats going to Socotra for pearling (also mentioned in the archive) according to Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol I, 2229) was an old custom, although since the Italian government began to tax boats in Eritrean waters, it had become less popular. Many former pearldivers and haulers, especially from the Shamailiyya coast, were among the earliest to take up migrant work in Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Zaab moved into coastal date trading, or long distance fishing; others on the Gulf coast and Dibba Baiah fished commercially and pearled locally, or had fishing boats and date gardens. Long distance sea trading from archive information was essentially carrying bulky and low value cargoes for merchants; carrying small merchants who hired space for themselves and their goods; or trading in bulky, low value cargoes like dates, tiles, and roof beams between the Gulf, western India and east Africa or Zanzibar. Carrying tiles from Mangalore to east Africa started in the 1920s or 30s for roofing government buildings in the east African British colonies. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, most long distance sea trade went either to India for rice, wood and textiles; or to east Africa, for slaves, ivory, and wood. The practice of large trading ships unloading their goods onto local fishing boats on the Batinah (and Shamailiyya) coasts was noted by Wellsted (1978 [1838]; 184 – 185). With the roof tile trade, the pattern became Gulf – India – East Africa – Gulf, as it had at other times, but the 1920s –50s trade was essentially of regional basic goods, there was little linkage with international trade. European and American, and later, Japanese steamships brought goods from the modern industrialised world that superseded local products by their lower prices or introduced new technologies. Shimizu (1986; 154 – 5, n3) records the import of Japanese cement and paints for the local market in Iraq (and so shipped down the Gulf) during the 1930s, and of Japanese textiles to the Gulf from the late 1920s (1986; 256 – 258); these goods were successful because they were cheap at a time when the people of the Gulf had little money.

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The long distance sea trade of the archive was not highly profitable, except for occasional and short lived profits from smuggling. Dubai and Bahrain developed from their use by steamships; and their merchants, in addition to their regional functions, became agents for western companies. Once the East African colonies were independent, and oil money enabled the largescale import of modern building materials, long distance sea trade virtually disappeared from the lower Gulf of Ras al-Khaimah, the Ruus al-Jibal, Shamailiya and Batinah coasts. Many long distance traders moved first into Gulf carrying and trading, then worked with the boats in Kuwait, and then became suppliers of imported building materials and /or building contractors in the major coastal towns; some became business men trading in building land and developers; one took up boat building and repairing, and continues to trade to east Africa; some had stores or shops; some turned to commercial agriculture, first with dates and then with commercial vegetables. Zaab sea traders to India brought back, by the late 1950s or early 60s, workers for date gardens in Khatt. Local coastal trade became limited first to the lower Gulf and then to Musandam. Lorimer (1908 – 15; IIA, 285, 298, 516, 596, 970; IIB,1007 – 1612) notes that c. 1906, Ras al-Khaimah town had, apart from 7 baghlah, 8 sambuq in sea trading; Jazirat al-Hamra had 10 small boats that took firewood to Sharjah and Dubai; Rams had one coasting vessel; Shaam, 6 – 7; Bukha, 7; Jadi, 4; Khasab, 6; Kumzar, 5; Maqaqah, 5; Shaisa, 3; Lima, 8; Dibba Baiah, 14; Bidiya, 10; Khor Fakkan, 4 – 5; Kalba, 10; Khor Kalba, 5 – 6; Murair (presumably including bu Bagra) 33. Baghalah were ocean-going, while the “small” vessels were listed variously as going to India, Oman, Iran, Makran, Basra, and other Gulf ports. These boats collected up local products – dates, firewood and charcoal, dried and salt fish, pottery, vegetables, fruit and water for export and brought back dates, salt, cloth and similar goods, but largely basic necessities whether produced regionally or imported to Dubai and collected for local distribution. The owners were fulltime or seasonal traders. From archive material, the traders were local Arabs, but over the period, Iranian merchants who left Iran at different dates for a variety of reasons took over this sea going trade by the late 1940s, with the exception of some Musandam ports. Local ownership of small trading boats at places on the Shamailiyya coast, as at Kalba and Khor Kalba, seems to have stopped earlier than at others; men at Dibba Baiah knew there had been locally owned small trading boats, while men at Kalba and Khor Kalba did not, and spoke only of boats owned by people from outside coming to

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trade. Many small coasting boatowners moved into boat work, or other work, in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, then in Abu Dhabi, and in the late 1960s, if not retired, into employment in the army and other security services. Others concentrated on renovating date gardens and goat flocks, or establishing small enterprises. Fishing has continued as a profitable livelihood, although people considered that while fishermen could always live, it was difficult to save money by fishing alone; profits were never big enough. In the past, surplus fish were salted or dried, depending on the species, and either bought by traders with camel caravans to carry the fish inland or taken to bigger coastal markets by traders with boats or by the salt fish producers camels. Once lorries, pickups, ice making plants, and ice boxes came, fresh fish was taken to inland markets. Now, inshore fresh fish are taken to large urban markets in refrigerated lorries, while long distance fishing boats took ice with them for storing the catch. Long distance fishing increased as pearling declined, and increased again during and after the late 1940s, when engines for these boats became available and there were bigger markets for fresh fish in Kuwait and al-Hasa. The use of very long nets was introduced at Ghalilah and Shaam. Catching and drying of barriya continues to be profitable along the Shamailiyya coast and at Dibba Baiah; much is now exported to Sri Lanka. A major change in the Emirates is that virtually no nationals are working crews on fishing boats; nationals, with secure employment or pensions, own the fishing boats, employed Indians and Bangla Deshis do the fishing. In Oman, the regulations are different, and the use of imported labour is more restricted. Shasha have been adapted for outboard motors on the Batinah coast, where Donaldson (1980) describes the first adaptation of a shasha by local fishermen in the winter of 1974, and the changes in marketing to fresh fish by pickup and icebox. Fish were and are sold by auction, as throughout the region, so fishermen and particularly fish traders take risks. Initially there were significant losses by fish traders, and in the next two years, several traders failed. Donaldson also discusses two American consultancy attempts at top-down innovation in fishing, both of which failed because they were totally inappropriate. Traditional wooden rowing or sailing boats have been largely replaced by fibreglass boats with outboard engines, except for a few places in Musandam, such as Mukhi. Nets, ropes, floats, and fishtraps are made from imported synthetic materials or metal by imported labour. Men who were fishermen or whose fathers were fishermen have been employed in secure government jobs of one kind or another since unification.

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Date growing areas inland from the coast In Dhaya, an old man said, “These wells, Tawi Aud ar-Rams and Tawi alWird, dried up when pumps for gardens were introduced.” An old man remarked: Often people took up date gardening as they got older. If no-one in the family or among the neighbours wanted to do the work, the owners employed bayadir in the past and now Hinud. The abandoned gardens around here were mixed date, grain and vegetable gardens left after the sanat al-ji; so many men had gone to work in Kuwait, Qatar, Iraq and Hasa there was no-one to do the work.

A garden owner stated: My father was born in Shaam and married a Rams girl. He bought this garden in 1910 and it grew grain and vegetables. He planted the first date trees in 1920 and the well was dug by the family, neighbours and men from the community. In 1966, we installed a diesel pump in that well; I earned the money for the pump working in Kuwait, I was in passport control. My new well was dug by bulldozer; Pakistani and Indian workmen finished it off, and the power comes from the upgraded electricity system. We used to grow onions, sweet potatoes, squash, sweet melons, water melons and limes; we didnt grow fruit.

Tunaij women commented, We got drinking water from the deep wells in the wadi, and firewood from the mountain slopes. There were no bakeries and no flour in the market in Rams. We got grain from Bani Shamaili and Shihuh who had mountain fields. We threshed, winnowed, sieved and ground it before we could make bread. We made all the clothes, first by hand and then with sewing machines, and we washed the clothes. We knew about cures, we bought some from outside and some came from the mountains. We gave birth to fewer children and some of those died. From the late 1950s, we bought a little flour occasionally, and regularly from the late 1960s. We took the dates off the stems, and we made sacks, food mats and covers, and floor mats; we milked the animals and made cheese, yogurt and butter. We did virtually everything ourselves from our own materials then, that was life before machines. After oil money, we had life with machines.

A Tunaiji said, My grandfather was a carpenter who worked from Rams to Bukha and he owned this date garden. My father worked in Kuwait for twenty years, he was on a fishing boat and he worked as a school janitor. Most young men of Rams were away in the 1960s, mostly in Kuwait. Bida in the mountains mostly went to Dammam. Most people sent some money home fairly regularly and brought presents when they came home in the summers for the

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date harvest in the gardens. Before there was money here, clothes were always from cheap cloth. The Kuwaitis built schools and hospitals here in the 1960s, I went to the Kuwaiti school in Rams. Boatbuilding in Rams had finished by then. In Rams market, salt and paraffin for primuses were brought by Iranian boats, vegetables came from Shimal, and usually there was wheat flour from the Ruus al-Jibal.

At Shimal, old men remembered: In the past there were more gardens because the water wasnt so salty. Every garden had its well, and the water was raised by bulls. Every household had at least two cows for milk, and from the milk the women made yogurt/laban, drinking yogurt/rub, fresh butter and samman/clarified butter. We grew dates, grain and vegetables.

The Amir commented, We always used bayadir for work in the date gardens, they worked a yearly contract and always for cash. For grain and vegetable farming, we had share contracts with bayadir. Then, because bayadir became nationals at Unification, when jobs came they got jobs, so we employed Hinud, Pakistanis and Bangla Deshis. We dont work in our gardens any more, we walk in them and enjoy them.

An elderly Bani Shamaili recalled: Fifty years ago (c. 1950), there would be six or seven traders here in the summers. The little shops started only about fifteen years ago. My grandfather made this date garden (c. late 1890s, early 1900s?), which we are clearing; the trees he planted died from the salt. In the vegetable gardens of the 1960s we grew onions, tomatoes, lettuces, carrots, cabbages, green beans, spinach, squashes of various sorts, pumpkins and aubergines for the market; the work was done by family members and local people who were paid ten reals a month or had share partnerships. About 25 to 30 years ago, people stopped growing grain; they could buy cheaper imported flour, so why should they work so hard? After the sanat al-ji, young men working in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia caused labour problems for families living from date gardens, but the young men had to get money. The older men, women and boys did the date garden work. Sometimes the money that was sent back meant someone could be employed. Grain growing shrank everywhere, and gradually slowed to a standstill, but dates continued. Dates were for living and for profit; grain could be bought.

Another Shamaili said, I grow jit/alfalfa for the market. My workmen are Bangla Deshi, and they sowed our own seed on the new beds three days ago. I get manure from the bedu, they have loads of it, but unfortunately it all has weed seeds in it – see? The beds used to last up to six years but now they last for only two to three years because there is salt in the water. The water is always li-

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able to go salty here, it is a fact of life. At the moment I am mixing the salt water with water from a well that I dug which collects the desalinated waste water, grey water, from the shaabiyya; it is clean for cultivation because it goes through gravels before it enters the well. Jit came in as a crop when Shakbut was the ruler of Abu Dhabi, along with pumps from the Majlis al-Tatwir [Development Council] at Digdaga, which started in the early 1950s. Before that, we had jat which was taller and better and it was grown differently. The first new commercial vegetables, like aubergines, tomatoes, and cabbages came in as seeds and seedlings from the police post by Sharjah airport in the late 1940s, before Digdaga started. Vegetables before were onions, black carrots and a sort of squash. Before, everyone cultivated grain and vegetables, very hard work without machines. I first worked this garden in 1971, when the date gardens were further west, and their trees were dying from salt coming in on the water. That is absolutely standard here and always has been.

An elderly man commented, My family have been farming here for years. We used to grow grain and vegetables, but for a long time weve grown only vegetables for the market. Muzhalla, shade shelters made from yarid, have been used for a long time; they are essential if we want to start plants growing before the end of October – beginning of November, which is their natural time for starting. Ive got aubergines and hot peppers in mine, and Ive one lot of each already planted out. We move them out when they are proper plants with at least four or five pairs of leaves. Plastic is different and that was a new technique. Plastic we use for growing plants later on, when it is cold and they need warmth. Along with the use of plastic, chemical fertilisers, and new varieties of seeds, there came virus diseases. Now we use plastic early as well because it protects the special seeds and seedlings from viral infections. This garden doesnt really pay after Ive taken out the costs; it supplies all the family, and I sell some in the local market if the price is right, otherwise the government buys it. Theres no point in growing grain, it is totally uneconomic. These fields used to be watered only by rain and flood flows, but then diesel pumps came, and Ive only ever worked using them.

Another commented, Farming in the mountains gradually stopped because money was coming in through secure jobs. Ive heard that some fields up at Sall went out of use about a hundred years ago, and people didnt live up there so much. Shimal was rich from dates and pottery. The mountains were rich in food, they were more than self-sufficient, and the hard times of the early forties didnt affect them, at least not as far as food. Coastal people were affected because they relied on imported food, people died in the streets, and people did boil up date bags for sugar, even though there were ration cards. Habus werent as welloff as Bani Shamaili, they didnt have their own dates, they relied more on selling firewood and wild honey. A man could collect fifty or sixty kilo-

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grams of wild honey a year. It was always expensive but desirable; its what people bought first when they had some money.

A Shamaili said, It isnt possible to grow tomatoes further down in Shimal because the water there has too much salt. This year, Im growing tomatoes, hot peppers, and three sorts of aubergines for the local market. Tomatoes are grown under fleece to protect them from whitefly. We never used to have this pest, but it came in some years ago when people imported goat and sheep manure from Pakistan. That was when vegetable growing was expanding fast in the mid to late sixties, the stuff came in by boatloads. The whitefly is the reason people compost their animal manure in pits for a year before using it, it breaks the cycle.

In Nakhil, a man commented, The gardens around here and Ghubb started to decline during and after the second world war; before that, the gardens were fine. Growing wheat and barley went first, all the young men were working in Kuwait, al-Hasa, Bahrain and so on. The people who were here grew vegetables, and built their bait arabi with the money people sent back. By this time, the late 1950s and 60s, diesel pumps for water had come in, and of course people put them in the gardens. It was so much easier than leading the bull up and down or working the minsafa, and they started to use irrigation for growing vegetables. The market for vegetables had got much bigger. Then the water began to go salt, and people couldnt grow vegetables, only dates and alfalfa. Then they couldnt grow even these, the water was so salt. Then, when independence came, people could get secure jobs in the army, police and administration. And when the government built the social housing,, everyone walked out of their bait arabi (fig. 8; 594) into the shaabiyya. There was no point in living on your land, you couldnt grow anything on it; the shaabiyya were free and had everything.

At Qusaidat, a man said, This is my familys date garden; my grandfather built the summer house over there, the one in blocks with an unfinished wind tower. My grandfather and father were traders to India, they had a bu¯m, and this date garden. I worked in a ministry for twenty years. I remember mountain men bringing down charcoal and tiin and sukkub (fruits of ficus carica and ficus salicifolia) for sale. That must have been in the mid-sixties, and by then they were growing grain only for themselves.

At Khatt, the Imam considered: A long time ago, garden owners worked their date gardens. Later, but well before unification, they had Pakistanis and Bangla Deshis, khawadim, paid in dates as wages. Before, the only education was given by an old mutawwa who taught boys the Quran, reading and writing. If someone wanted more,

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he had to go to Dubai. I did that and I went in the company of Shaikh Saqr. We paid the teacher on Thursday evenings, putting tea, rice or sugar into his lap.

Comments on changes in date garden areas on the coastal plains Archive material shows that some date gardens, at least along the coast from Dhaya to Ghalilah, were abandoned during the 1940s and later, from a lack of labour as people had gone to work in Bahrain and elsewhere, and then in Kuwait, partly because there was no money and also because of a drought. Walker (1994; vol.1, 104 – 110; vol. 3, 518 – 537) lists information on the possessions of the Ruler of Ras al-Khaimah – populations, mode of livelihood, and sometimes numbers of date trees – for 1901 and 1957. Lorimers survey of the Gulf (1908 – 15, vol. 2) lists the numbers of date trees at each place of settlement, along with population, and numbers and types of boats, collected in Sharjah from reliable native informants, in 1906 – 7. Kimballs 1901 population figures quoted by Walker were given as souls but are usually so consistent with the houses of 1907 population that it is reasonable to assume that each was the number paying zakat. The numbers of houses and of date trees were presumably extrapolated from local zakat assessments of payment, as archive material from Ghalilah states that the local Amir assessed each person for zakat. In general, there is little difference in population numbers while date tree numbers decline or remain the same. Apparently significant changes may be real change, inconsistencies or differences in recording, or errors. Local authorities in some places such as Munaiy considered population numbers were a gross under estimate, probably from ignorance of people living in the shuaibat and wudiyan. Attempts at drawing conclusions from these figures are not possible, there are too many unknowns. For places known for their date gardens, accepting Lorimers estimated number of date trees and dividing by the estimated number of houses gives 1 house to 17.5 date trees at Dhaya, 1:20 at Shaam, Shimal, and Hail, 1:44 at Idhn, 1:55 at Dibba, 1:70 at Qidfa, 1:83 at Kalba, 1:90 at Asimah, 1:92 at Daftah, 1:100 at Habhab, Masafi, Siji, and Shawqa, and 1:200 at Khatt. It is unclear whether these ratios are accurate and reflect differences in waters, soils and situation of the gardens, chosen varieties of trees, and alternative resources, or if the counting of population and trees were inaccurate. However, Khatt, Habhab, Masafi, Siji, Daftah,

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and Asimah had flowing falay waters for cultivation for their old gardens, and dates were their sources of profits, along with fruits for Asimah and Masafi. The exceptionally high ratio for Khatt was explained locally because dates were Khatts only profitable resource, and that much of its date harvest supplied peoples in the sands for their own needs and for their animals. Ramsawis said drought, probably in the early 1940s followed by storm damage in the late 1940s, caused the abandonment of an area of date gardens south of Dhaya. The depression of the 1930s and 1940s was said by the Amir of Ghayl to have caused a decline in the use of dried fish manures from the Shamailiyya coasts in gardens at Idhn, Ghayl and surrounding areas, as the producers of fish manures insisted on being paid a part of the price in coin which they were unable to do owing to the lack of money in the region. Drought and the movement by young men to migrant work in Kuwait in the 1940s was said by some at Dhaya, Khor Khuwair and Ghalilah on the Gulf coast to have brought about a decline in the productivity of date gardens. Wilkinson (1977; 293) comments on the horrifying decrease in the yields of date trees in Oman and the Gulf, from a shortage of labour in the villages, as men went away to work in the Gulf regions of oil development, the collapse in traditional date markets in India, East Africa, southern Arabia, and America, and even locally, as eating habits changed. The result was a lamentable decline in standards of date farming, including disease, so that yields declined from an average yield of trees in the Batinah of 34 kgs in 1925 after nine years of drought, to 10 kgs in 1971. Iddison (nd but 1990s), examining date production at al-Ain from falay dues and date taxes in 1907 and the early 1950s, also notes a considerable drop in production, which could be accounted for by the prolonged drought of the 1940s and the opportunity of migrant work in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Significant declines in date production at that period were not mentioned at places who lived from date gardens in the interior or on the Shamailiyya coast, although comments from some Ruus alJibal families that in their grandfathers time they had changed to buying Basra dates in Ras al-Khaimah from buying or getting their dates at Dibba Baiah implied a possible decline in date production at Dibba Baiah. The move from labour by owners or local bayadir to employed workers from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka was a common pattern with local variations mentioned at Shimal, Dhaya, Shaam, Maydaq, and Munaiy, among others. The wages of migrant labourers were used by some participants to pay for, or to provide a part of the wage, of an employed bayadir

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or Indian worker. In the coastal places, like Shaam, Rams, Dibba, Qidfa, and Kalba some families lived from gardens, others from fishing, pearling, or trading, or animals. At some inland places, like Shimal, Hail, and Idhn, families also had animals, selling dairy products and live animals, and mountain access for firewood, honey and grain. At many areas of gardens in the western Hajar, like Shawqa and Munaiy, tobacco was the profitable crop, while later at Shimal, Hail, and other places on the Sirr and Jiri sayh, like Idhn, vegetables for the growing urban markets alongside alfalfa for milking animals became important.

Sands In Digdaga, an Iranian shop-keeper said, “I was one of the first shopkeepers here. There wasnt any agriculture here before the British started encouraging people to put in wells and start growing vegetables.” A Mazrui remarked: We had always used the area for the animals. The agricultural land around Digdaga was first bought and developed by rich Emiratis, members of the ruling families or those close to them. Later on, anyone could buy land here and they did – Mazrui like us, bedu, some Shihuh, some Habus … that was when agriculture was for the market, the land was developed.

A Ras al-Khaimi commented, There were always a very few small date gardens between Digdaga and Kharran and Hail, with only two or three trees, watered by minsafa. The new big gardens grew vegetables for the market, I remember yeh, long water melons, and two sorts of squash, gira and bawba. These gardens stopped, because the wells for them were fairly shallow and relied on recharge from rainwater, but the water couldnt replace itself fast enough. Thats why there are so many villas around Digdaga. Once the profits had gone, the owners couldnt sell the land, they couldnt use it, so they built houses for their children – and now there are profits in houses, you can sell them.

East of Hamraniyya, a Khatri said, There used to be no gardens here at all, we lived from selling animals – goats, sheep, cows, camels and donkeys – and we sold firewood in Ras alKhaimah. My father and I were guards at the fort, we got half a rupee a day; and we took sand from Umm Khayyus for repairs to the fort, and we got half a rupee a camel load. Gardens started here in the sixties; at first I grew dates, now I grow dates and grass for the animals.

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Another Khatri explained, “The new gardens at Hamraniyya started before unification with Mansur, the Englishman at Digdaga. He started the digging of wells with a drilling rig, and the water was raised by diesel pumps. The gardens grew vegetables for the market.” At al-Saidi, a Khatri remembered: My grandfather developed the well of Umm al-Araj in 1932 and started a date garden. At that time, we really lived from animals, this was before I was alive. When they started the garden, they had no idea about gardening and learnt from their Sharqi and Mazari bayadir. These gardens are each two thousand feet by two thousand feet, and they are twenty years old. Then the water was between fifty and sixty feet deep, now it is six hundred feet. We grow vegetables for the market, at the moment we have a sort of squash, cousa, cucumbers and green beans. We have date trees round the edge of each garden and grasses for fodder under the trees; the dates are dried on this new concrete floor, and the dates are packed into plastic baskets, not traditional proper sacks made from khaws, date leaves. We grow musaibila which is cut and sold for animal feed; it takes less water and less work than jit, and it lasts for five to six years. If you want to grow alfalfa, jit, you need to concentrate on it, it doesnt fit with vegetable crops although it does with dates. My newest farm I brought into production only this year, last year prices were so low I would have made a loss. All profitable gardens work on applying for every subsidy, soft loan and grant available. There is a fifty per cent subsidy on fertilisers, insecticides, and pesticides; fencing, wells and irrigation equipment have grants; tractors and machinery hired from government depots are free. Government prices for garden produce are so low that without subsidies and grants you would never make a profit. I employ over a hundred people, all Baluch, who work where they are needed on the five gardens.

His son said, “I dont know why my great grandfather decided to develop a date garden in 1932 but I think it was probably a hedge against bad years. And perhaps it was getting more difficult to make a good living from the carrying trade and from animals.” Another Khatri explained, In the past we lived from bawsh, camels and a few cows, goats, and from trees. In the 1930s and 40s, we were very poor, there were no clothes and no rice. We sowed grain in suitable places in the sands, we got the seed from people in the mountains and we bought grain from them. We bought a little rice but only the big merchants and the rulers ate rice regularly. In 1945, the British army gave out rations and brought the first potatoes. One of our main enterprises was the carrying trade, we never went to the pearling, that was Bani Yas. There wasnt any money in my grandfathers time; you needed half a riyal for a sack of dates, the same for a sack of rice and a riyal for coffee. Brideprice was ten riyal and everybody around

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contributed with a sheep or a goat. Before, there was the riyal fransi, and after there were riyal and Indian rupees. We did everything for ourselves, we lived on camels milk, dates and bread. This began to change in my fathers time, in the 1930s and 40s, when the British started taking more interest in the region. From the mid 1940s, people started going to work in Kuwait and then Saudi Arabia. From the late 1940s, the British set up the Trucial Oman Levies and the Development Council. Mansur at Digdaga really pushed commercial agriculture; machines for farming, new vegetables for markets in Sharjah and Dubai, and companies or partnerships for production and marketing. And it was the British who encouraged Zaid to accept the whole idea of oil wealth, development, and the federal state. Bedu bought lorries for carrying first in 1958; a second-hand lorry then cost 4,000 rupees. We, the bedu here, didnt go into owning transport companies, we went into commercial farming because there was good land and water here, and it was being pushed as the clever thing to do. Which it was at first. The last Khawatir to live from camels stopped in the early 1970s, living from camels was no longer possible.

Comments on changes in the sands Livelihood from animals was the traditional basis for peoples in the sands, with profits for most really coming from carrying goods for traders and escort services for the families of men involved in Gulf pearling to the Shamailiyya and Gulf coasts. The carrying trade by camels provided by inhabitants of the sands linked into sea carried trade; as sea trade declined and changed to local collection and distribution, based on Dubai or Bahrain, and then disappeared with the increasing use of lorries and road building, so did carrying by animals. Providing escort services declined at the same time; families could travel by lorry, and summering ended altogether by the early 1970s. Some Khawatir were making changes to their traditional livelihood strategies from the early 1930s; one family were developing a well and date garden in the sands from 1932. The renting of date gardens by Khawatir in Idhn was probably not new, but had occurred in the past. As recalled by the Amir of Ghayl and other Mazari, renting of date gardens by Khawatir was widespread during the years of migrant labour and continued after unification and employment by the state; many jobs were in Abu Dhabi, so it was convenient for garden-owning Mazari to rent gardens to older Khawatir. Some Khawatir had gardens at Dhaid; in 1954 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 575) they had refused to pay anything towards the repair of the falaj there, and so had been refused irrigation water, and access to their dates stored in

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their gardens at Dhaid. Before unification, Khawatir owned date trees and gardens by marriage and inheritance at Maydaq and in wadis near Thoban. They also spoke of selling bulls to date garden owners for raising water, goats and sheep as live animals for meat to town dwellers, and firewood to Zaab traders. Men from the sands went to work in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from the mid-1940s, and later in the TOL and then TOS. By the late 1960s, men joined the army and other security services. When their area was surveyed by a PDTC oil exploration team in 1947, an agreement was signed with Shaikh Sultan bin Salim and the two shaikhs of the Khawatir, on behalf of all their brothers, sons, and successors, to be paid Rs 11,000 a year, and a third of any oil income from those explorations, in return for protecting the companys personnel and property, and to give help. After Shaikh Saqr bin Muhammad took over, British backed agricultural development became important for areas of the sands, as Hamraniyya was considered a suitable area (Trucial States Council 1966 – 67: Stevens 1970). Commercial agricultural development around Hamraniyya and Digdaga used the concept of dead land and the registration of land with the Land Registry Office to get title. While the first developers were associated with the ruler and his family, and wealthy outsiders, local tribesmen – Khawatir, Mazari, a few Habus and Shihuh – registered gardens later. By 1959, Shaikh Saif bin Ali al-Khatri had a garden and requested repairs for his garden pump (Walker 1994; vol 4; 491). Although commercial vegetable gardens were initially successful, water tables dropped, and there has been increasing competition from imported vegetables. Since living from camels was no longer viable by the early seventies, in the early 1980s the Rulers of the Emirates started to develop camel racing as a means of redistributing oil wealth among the bedouin and to halt the rapid marginalisation of camels. Owners and trainers of camels can acquire social reputation and material benefits. Although the most important camel races are in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, other Emirates, including Ras al-Khaimah, have their own races; many people maintain a few camels because they like camels, and a calf may be spotted by a scout for one of the big stables.

Ruus al-Jibal At Jidda, inland from Ghamda, Dhahuriyyin recalled:

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Our real fields were up at Sall Istam. We used to stay up there nearly all the time, we grew wheat, kept goats, and had date trees up there. Now Im old, I dont go up much, my knees are giving out. A lot of people of this whole area went to work in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. When that ended, they went to work in the Emirates, and a lot of them have moved there.

At Sili in Wadi Shaam, a Dhahuri remarked: “In the past we sold grain we didnt need; now, we grow grain and feed it to the goats.” At Aboiyim, a Dhahuri said, There were maybe twenty families here, four over at Ramaylah, thirty up at Sili, and three up at Khashfah. Then, families were small; father, mother and two or three children. It wasnt so much that children died, although of course they did, but that women didnt get pregnant so easily because they worked very hard and were very active. And if a woman got pregnant and didnt want the baby, she had ways to lose it. So population increased very slowly and this was much better for everything. I dont remember the bad years or people being snatched and sold in Buraimi, Ive heard about it. In my memory, the young men here went to work in Dammam but I didnt go.

Another Dhahuri mentioned, Before there was electricity, people used paraffin lamps, fannus. I think there were lights before that, because some people used to stick a wick into a date and float the date on paraffin in a dish, and that must have been modifying an older idea. The group of deserted houses at Sall Istam belong to a family from our section of Dhahuriyyin who went to Kuwait or somewhere forty or fifty years ago and never came back. Men going off to work and not returning wasnt unknown, but it was unusual for a group not to come back. In fact, all the men of a wider family going was unusual, normally it was one man from this family, another from that, until there was a small group of them. Families were small then, just two or three children; men and women were too tired for sex from all the hard work. When I saved money by being in the army, I bought a date garden at alJir. People make date gardens in the wadi now because with a rig, digging a well is easy; growing wheat has no point, but date gardens are useful, gardens can be sold, they supply your family and feed the animals, and the government will buy the dates.

In Wadi Ghalilah, an elderly Shutairi explained: The top mountain fields were neglected when everybody went to work in Kuwait and then in Abu Dhabi, and then got government jobs here. Now, retired active men are redoing them; as they have good pensions they have the money for materials and workmen if they dont want to do all the work themselves.

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Two men from al-Assad Shutair said, We didnt go to Kuwait, he was already married and I was a boy. Men went to get money for marriage, they didnt go because they needed money for food or clothes. There was never, ever, hunger in the mountains. Hunger was what traders and people without land in coastal towns suffered, never us. There was a little money about even in the hard times, but it was quicker to get the money for marriage by going to Kuwait. If a young man didnt go, he still got married, but it took longer.

At Wadi Hajil, older Shamaili explained: Pottery stopped being made because it was too expensive; that was the reason. The potters had to buy things themselves and they fixed the prices of the pots partly on that basis. At first, say, the price was half a riyal, then a riyal, then two, four … and people said, This is too expensive. I can buy four or five enamel or aluminium or plastic dishes or pots or containers or whatever in the suq/market for that! Before, everything was barter and values were different. People did go down to the market in Ras al-Khaimah town with a load and sell it. But earlier, pottery was really big business, and whole bu¯m loads used to go off to southern Iran. There was a lot of profit in pottery.

At Hajar, a Shamaili remarked: “I was born here, we didnt move until 1979 or 80. My grandfather was a potter, but my father wasnt. He went to Kuwait to work, and then came back here and got a job, and I dont know anything about potting.” Another Shamaili said, “My grandfather was a potter at Hajar in Wadi Hajil, and he was also a gunsmith – repairing guns, filling cartridges, and putting guns together. My father didnt become a potter, he was a driver for Rashid Maktums father in Dubai in the late 1940s and 50s.” Another Shamaili said, “It was only those without land who were affected by the sanat al-ji. The British came round and gave families ration cards. People got an allowance of rice and sold it in the market in Dubai.” Another recalled: When people went to work in Kuwait, everything here was abandoned. The mountain fields were left, the fields on the sayh were left, the date gardens were left. Only the women and children were here, I was about ten (c. 1943). The women collected firewood and exchanged it in the market for fish. We had milk from the goats, we ground grain in the handmill, and I remember we ate a lot of dried meat.

Some Bani Shamaili commented, This house was built new in the 1960s, before we had oil money. We built it like an old house but used concrete blocks; the roof beams were imported cut wood, and we plastered it with cement. It was different because the

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buildings were enclosed by walls and it was out in the open, away from the mountain slopes, so we could drive a Land-Rover to it. Great numbers of young men from here and Shimal went to Kuwait, Bahrain or Saudi Arabia for work from the sanat al-ji until the end of the sixties – on boats, as dock workers, or building labourers. That is how the mountain fields stopped being used, and people never really used them again as they had done. People went because there was so little money here, there was no trade because of the war. At unification, there were very few mountain fields being cultivated because people had been away. Then they got jobs here, and moved down.

Another said, About the mid-seventies, people began to build houses using cement and imported wood away from the mountain edges out on the plain, because they wanted to drive to their houses. They had cars because they had jobs. Some of those houses were hardly lived in and some never, because the shaabiyya with electricity and piped water were built with tarmac roads to them, and people moved there.

At Fara, a Habus commented, We cultivated our family fields here and at al-Ittimar, Rayaila and Hibs right up to Unification. If people didnt go to Kuwait or Saudi Arabia for work, how were they going to live if they didnt cultivate their fields? We sold firewood, clarified butter, cheese, goats for meat, and honey.

At shaabiyya Faria, a Habus said, “These houses arent real shaabiyya, but small villas. We always had houses and small fields here. This date garden was a grain field, I put in a well with a diesel pump. There were no longer profits from wheat.” Up at Slai a-Quda, a Habsi remarked, My father and other peoples fathers went to work in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the fifties and sixties. They went for one, two or three contracts, but more and more people went away. With not enough people to do the work, it became very hard for the women and children and those who remained. From the mid sixties, a lot of people joined the police or the army, because that was the only work here. A little bit later, there were labouring jobs in Abu Dhabi. We were like the Hindis are today. From the late fifties, people stayed down more and more, and by the late sixties, most people stayed down most of the time. Then there was unification, and people got pensions, and then Indians were imported as labourers. I was in the army. We came down finally between 1971 and 1973.

At Wadi al-Aini, a Khanbuli remarked, “We moved to this farij at the mouth of the wadi in 1978 because we could get here by car; cars cant reach the old farij.” An elderly woman recalled,

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We had so much at al-Aini. We regularly sold wheat, firewood and charcoal, honey, clarified butter, live goats, figs and miiz fruits – anything we had a surplus of. We had everything, we never noticed the years of want; the only people who suffered were the Qawasim and the people on the sayh. We locked our houses because they held stored food, often money, and sometimes gold.

At ar-Rawdhah, a man said, “The electricity came in 1972. In the past we grew wheat here, the whole place was covered in wheat. In my fathers time, they sold wheat regularly in good years.” Bani Murri, in Wadi Banna, said, Now we live in shaabiyya Julfar, but we used to be here in the winters and in the summers high up at Sall Imit. We had goats and we grew wheat, we were fine. In my grandfathers time, we changed to buying Basra dates in Ras al-Khaimah, but before we had bought dates for storing in Dibba Baiah. We abandoned the high fields because there were no longer any profits. Profits started to come from jobs.

A Haslamani said, In the past, for marriage the man had to give the girl, as a present, three pairs of shoes, three complete changes of clothing, and silver jewellery. That took money, but we had money from selling pottery and goats. The man had to provide the house and he had to be able to keep himself and his wife, of course. The mahar, the payment to the girls father or brother, was very often in kind – a donkey or a gun. In the past, we did everything ourselves, we provided everything we needed directly, from our own efforts and from what we owned. Now, we still provide everything from our work but indirectly as we dont work on our own property but for the state.

At Slayh al-Ghalib, a Khanbuli recalled, We used to eat miiz and nabk, wild fruit from trees, and hammath, sorrel. Growing yeh, long watermelons, is quite recent. I dont remember selling wheat, but I know it was earlier. We had date trees at Dibba. I never went to work in Kuwait and neither did my father; at that time, we had a date garden in Nakhil. We renovated our stone houses from 1982 onwards, using cement as mortar, and sometimes we used corrugated iron over beams to support the earth and gravel of the roofs. We didnt use blocks, we had stones. These houses we did ourselves were warm and dry in winter and cool in summer; the villas that cost three million dirhams leaked in the first winter, theyre cold in the winter, and in the summer, we need the air conditioning on all the time. But it isnt possible to live up here all the time. That was then, this is now.

At Wadi Nahaila, a Habsi recalled, “We made our profits from selling live goats and firewood in Ras al-Khaimah town. The walls for old fields in

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the sayh were just enough to hold the flood waters. People started building higher walls when they had jobs and couldnt herd their goats properly.” In Wadi al-Birr, a Habus family said, “We came down out of the mountains after Unification because of electricity, piped water, education, and the security of paid employment.”

Comments on changes in the Ruus al-Jibal In the years after c. 1942, virtually all sources of profits in the Ruus alJibal – wheat, firewood and charcoal, honey, goats and dairy products, and pottery in Wadi Hajil, Lima, Wadi Banna, and a little at Sili in Wadi Shaam – became unprofitable for almost everybody, so that by the 1990s, living in the mountains was not viable. People continued to use their farij in the mountains for weekends and holidays, some had goat flocks looked after by Pathan workmen, who also rebuilt houses and cisterns, and if there was enough rain, grew wheat or barley. Some continue to live in mountain localities, in the sense of having their main residence in mountain wadis which are accessible by car, and where the Emirati or Omani state has brought electricity and water facilities. But no-one any longer lives from the mountains in the way they did in the past; they live from the state, through employment or pensions. Wheat was the most profitable resource for some farij with good soils and good slopes for runoff channels. Archive information shows that in certain fields in such places, in good years, good seed, plenty of goat manure, and good husbandry, yields of 1:80 or 1:100 were normal. Fields that yielded 1:20, 1:30 were considered poor, and owners of such fields got their profits from other resources such as goats, honey and/or firewood, or another set of fields in a more favoured locations. The higher fields were the most productive. A surplus of wheat was normal, and exchanging grain and selling wheat as grain or flour was usual, according to producers and traders on the coasts as the mountains were part of the regional grain market. Wheat did not grow successfully on the coasts (archive information: Costa and Wilkinson 1987: Lorimer 1908 – 15; vol 2, 429). Experienced men at various places on the Gulf, Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts said they had grown wheat and barley, but not the same varieties as in the mountains, and had problems with rusts; their wheat and barley had never been commercial and would not store. Ruus al-Jibal wheat grew well with extremely good storage qualities; this wheat had come down to be exchanged and sold on the coasts.

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Cheap Australian wheat began to be imported as flour and grain before the Second World War via India and later to Dubai, from archive material; the Australian Wheat Board was formed in 1939, exporting wheat to India from 1940, and to Dubai from 1942 (AWB, personal communication). Private Australian companies were surely exporting Australian wheat to India and so on to the Gulf before this date. Bayly ((2004; 456) states the huge expansion of agricultural production in the Americas, Australia and South Africa from the mid 19th century caused grain prices to fall dramatically during the century, especially after improvements in on-ship storage in the early 20th century. Local silver currencies lost value from c. 1860 (Landen 1967; 128), and were sometimes in short supply, as in 1918 and the 1930s; imported grain may have become cheaper, but it had to be bought with scarce money. As men went to work in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia for longer and repeated contracts, and more men went, money slowly returned to the region. Larger quantities of wheat and flour were imported into Dubai more often and distributed to regional towns and markets. By the beginning of the 1960s, small quantities of imported flour were available in most markets; by the end of the 1960s, imported flour had replaced local grain for most people in or near a town. Initially, men from the Ruus al-Jibal went to work for a single contract to get money for marriage, and their families continued to do all the mountain work. But gradually, during and after the 1950s, it was clear that traditional economies, like traditional politics, were being transformed from the outside; the region and its people were becoming part of the modern global economy. Profits were no longer from owned mountain land but employment, and it was quicker and less effort to buy imported materials and products than to provide them from ones own resources. Men went on repeated contracts, to save money to buy goods that would let them profit from the new situation. Some mountain families developed gardens and houses at places where they had usually spent summers; others moved out of the Ruus al-Jibal altogether to towns, like Sharjah or Ajman. Some spent most of their time at lower farij, building bait arabi, growing grain, collecting and selling firewood and honey, and keeping goats. The lack of some mens labour made it difficult for the remaining men, the women, children, and the old, to use the high fields effectively – showing how much labour was needed to produce profits from mountain farij. After the mid seventies, when there was secure employment for all, many people in the Ruus al-Jibal began to modernise

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their houses in the mountain farij, repair and rebuild cisterns, and maintain fields and goat flocks, with workers from Pakistan. There are complicated connections between: scarcity of money; need for money for marriage as opposed to goods; relative profits and speed of acquiring enough money between wheat growing and migrant work; drought years; labour within and between families and farij; and families perceptions of opportunities and resource management. From archive material, Shihuh and Dhahuriyyin said they had got profits from wheat and goats, and had a money component in their mahar, the marriage transfer of resources. Bani Shamaili also had a money component in mahar, some had profits from pottery, others from goat and dairy products, and firewood, and they were close to the markets of Ras al-Khaimah town and Rams. Habus on the other hand, with profits mostly from firewood and honey, had no money component in mahar; nor did Khawatir in the sands when their profits came from carrying goods and escort services. It is unclear what effect these differences had on participation in migrant work, as the components of mahar can be changed, and not all of it need be paid before the wedding. But people did connect the need for money for marriage and first going to migrant work; as there was a drought at that time, wheat profits would have been lacking; goats, firewood and honey depend more on humidities and dews, so possibly their profits remained. Money from migrant work enabled marriage at an earlier age for men. Pottery, too, was undercut by cheaper imported glass, plastics, enamel and aluminium household goods. Dostal considers pottery in the Wadi Hajil had stopped being a commercial enterprise by 1947 (1983; 140). Lima pottery continues in a small way, women use clays from Rams and elsewhere to make incense burners and medicine plates. Goats, until the recent long drought, remained profitable, although it was goat trading that people said was really profitable. Most goat flocks are for family use, with the surplus for the market. Clarified butter and cheese production has also been affected by the drought. Honey collection remains profitable, although the wild mountain bees are suffering. Firewood collection and sale no longer continues in the mountains. Indian workers cut firewood from juwaifa that abounds on unused garden land and on the sayh.

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Western Hajar At Baqil, Wadi Khabb (Fujairah), a Sharqi recalled, Before, clothing was very scarce. People had garments made from lif or they wore goatskins or sacks. Sacks were also used as bedding, only a few people had blankets they bought. That was all because there was very little money. We ate and we had shelter, and that was because we provided it ourselves.

At gardens in Arqiya, a Mazrui family remarked, Our father bought the first piece of land here for developing into a garden, he grew date trees and some fruit. Altogether in these gardens we have about fifty sorts of dates, just a couple of trees of each sort, and they are for the whole family, which is now about fifty people. The money came from his savings from employment in the Trucial Oman Scouts. The next two gardens are mine and my brothers, we grow vegetables for the market and fodder, and the money came from our army service. That new garden is my sons, from money from his service in the army. The fruit trees are lemons, limes, tranj – knobbly lemons; chiku, Indian grapes; figs, oranges, local yellow oranges; juwaifa, guava; breadfruit, fifuj; juwaifa hindiya, Indian guava; rumman, pomegranate; sidr, and bau. Down this side we grow fodder – jit or alfalfa, grass, and musaibila which is like a big grass, and we cut it and it comes again. The only vegetables we are harvesting are cousa, courgettes, and gira, bitter gourd. The aubergines are nearly in flower; spring onions, white radishes and coriander are almost ready. The nursery beds have tomatoes under fleece. We prefer American seed to Dutch, because the crop ripens at the same time so we can clear a bed and get on with the next crop. We sell the vegetables in Sharjah and Dubai markets. The gardens pay for themselves and we make a profit. These deep pits (2 m deep, 3 m wide and 4 m long) are for animal manure. The animals graze the mountain slopes by day and they are penned at night. The pens are cleared out and the dung deposited in the pits; it is watered heavily and left for six months to a year before being spread on the beds for a new crop.

In Wadi Ku¯b, a Mazrui said, Only unmarried men went from Wadi Ku¯b to work in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Bahrain. They went only to get money for marriage, which took six months. A few went more than once, but very few. In those days, there were about 130 households here in three farij. After 1945, there was a really bad smallpox epidemic and only about thirty families remained. In the war, when I was small, we were perfectly alright. We didnt sell much because there was nothing to buy in the suq, there were no boats coming in. I remember being vaccinated by the British Army, they came in a helicopter, in the early 1960s.

At Ghayl, the Amir said,

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Before, a long time ago, if we needed money we carried goods for traders, sharecropped, or even worked on boats. The waqt al-ji didnt affect us at all, except there was very little money around. In any case, the British army made sure that every community had food. Later, in the fifties and sixties, we went to Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia for work. We had always grown vegetables, but we grew more and more varieties of them after the British set up agricultural schools in the late fifties. One was at Idhn and one at Ghayl; my sons went to the one at Ghayl, and it was good. Two of my sons went into the Trucial Oman Scouts and that was really good; they got 300 dirhams a month and all found. Going to work for wages in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia started a long time ago, before the second world war. I am sure it started before the war, it became necessary when everything got very expensive in the early thirties when the rupee collapsed. So there wasnt any money for clothes, rice, iron tools and things, weapons, things like that from outside. Things were more difficult during the war because shipping was difficult, there were blockades and stuff. Tobacco growing finally collapsed two or three years ago, but the markets for local tobacco had been gradually disappearing for a long time, since the war. Tobacco, dates and grain all needed animal manure and there was never enough. We bought gaisha for fertiliser at Fujairah, but when money got scarce in the late 1920s and 1930s, early 40s, our agriculture suffered. The people selling the sardines would take some of the price in goods, but they insisted on some being in money, as they needed money too. When we could fertilise all the crops properly, we had yields of 1:100 in grain, but when we couldnt they dropped to 1:20, 1:10. The fields without water, like those at the tops of wadis, and al-Isaimir and al-Barid, they were the first to be abandoned. I was born c. 1916, and I dont remember people living there. The old date gardens at Idhn were at the sides of the wadis and on silt in the wadi beds, just like at Ghayl and al-Mawrid; grain fields were up on the wadi terraces. When pumps came, they delivered more water so people expanded their irrigated date and tobacco gardens on to the wadi terraces; growing grain wasnt important any longer because there was more money and imported grain and flour were cheap. The new vegetables had a market in the expanding towns, and they had to be irrigated.

Another elderly Mazrui explained, Before we had pumps, all the gardens were along the bottoms of the wadis, with big walls built round them to stop them being washed out during rain storms. The gardens used to be further up the wadi. All these gardens up at the sides are new, since pumps, which we got during the late fifties and early sixties. We were encouraged to invest in pumps by Mansur, the Englishman with the dogs who lived at Digdaga. He was interested in Ghayl for growing vegetables, because the water at Digdaga was going salty then. He encouraged us to grow new vegetables we had never grown before. That was when we first grew tomatoes; I remember Mansur showing me how to tie the to-

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mato plants up to canes. The vegetables went for sale by lorry to Ras alKhaimah town, Umm al-Qawain and Dubai. Before there were cars, we transported goods by camel to Sharjah and Dubai; the only water was at Falaj al-Mualla and it was brackish. At that date, there were silver coins, then they disappeared and we used baisa (Indian pice).

In Wadi Ku¯b, a Mazrui said, “Ive never left here to join the army or anything like that, Ive always been here. I lived from my dates, and I sold firewood, charcoal, and honey, and I have goats. I never grew grain because I didnt have fields, I had gardens.” An older Sharqi in Wadi Ku¯b recalled: When we went to Dubai to sell our goods, we didnt need to buy anything, we had all we needed in the mountains. The Ras al-Khaimai who said the Ruus al-Jibal were like a supermarket was right! I lived through the hard times of the war, but we didnt know about them, we never had any shortages, we had everything we needed.

At Asima, a Mazrui said, A long time ago, in the gaith, merchants came here from Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Fujairah to buy our mangoes and limes, and anything we had a surplus of – dates, grain, anything. But in my lifetime, we bought grain to eat and grew grain for the animals.

An elderly Mazrui explained, This new garden of mine was measured out, I had to pay 2,500 dirhams and I have to farm it for five years before I can sell it. When I started gardening it, it was profitable, I made money! Now there is no profit because cheaper vegetables come in from outside.

Another said, In the past, gardens were for peoples subsistence, and what wasnt needed was given away, exchanged or sold. Everybody had a surplus. In the summer, people were here from all over for the fruits and the dates, it was lovely. Now people dont sell anything, and nobody comes here.

The Amir recalled: We sold mangos, limes, tranj and oranges. We carried them on camels and donkeys, and then we had Land-Rovers. Most of my time we had Land-Rovers. We didnt employ people for garden work in the past, we did it ourselves, and people from here didnt go pearling. From the 1940s, people from here went to Kuwait for work. Before, if people didnt have enough date trees or land for grain, they made a share partnership for work, or they did carrying for people, or they collected firewood and took it to Ras al-Khaimah for sale.

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Before, a group of men from the family and neighbours built the storehouses and our karin. The older houses were built with stones but I remember making blocks from sand and little stones. Cement was around before the second world war. In the 1950s, cement, blocks and corrugated iron, plywood and bought roof timbers came in and by the end of the fifties, they were what buildings were made from. At first, people used them to make buildings like the old storehouses and karin, but then we built bait arabi, our first modern houses. Certainly by the late fifties here, there were people who built houses as a job, and they built bait arabi. Building contractors were early, long before unification and the shaabiyya. In the forties, the only market in land was in date gardens. As soon as there was a market for land for building houses and shops and offices, everyone from all over was in it! We certainly were, and people from Tayyiba and Masafi and Munaiy. In those days, everything was so cheap. We had money, we sold fruit and people worked in Kuwait. A gallon of paraffin lasted a month or two; now they are always asking you for a thousand dirhams for the electricity. Then, everything was cheap and there wasnt much money; now theres lots of money and everything is expensive. So you are, in fact, no better off. There were three or four shops here, before 1950, owned and run by people from the community, and they sold dates, paraffin, flour. Imported workers for gardens came in around unification.

In Maydaq, a Sharqi remarked, In the past, we made profits from selling charcoal, mangos, limes, and some dates, in Sharjah, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah and Ras al-Khaimah. Earlier, we didnt employ bayadir in the gardens, we did the work ourselves. Later, we employed bayadir and they were paid in dates. Later on again, we paid them in money, two or three rupees a month, and fed and clothed their entire families. This was while and after we were working in Kuwait and other places. When I was a labourer on building sites in Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, I sent home a hundred dirhams a month. People used the money to buy gardens, to buy land to make into gardens, to build the first modern houses, and to get married. The Shaikh of Fujairah gave me a garden at Thoban on what was empty land. Most years the garden is profitable, but that includes the sales of lambs and kids raised on fodder dates, grass and bought hay, as well as vegetables like onions. Traders used to come from Dhaid and buy my animals and produce, now I take them into Dhaid.

In Masafi, a Maharsi said, “In the old days, long before oil, the people of Masafi sold mangos in Dubai and Sharjah and brought back cloth and fish; and they took them to Fujairah as well.” Another remarked, We used to sell and export huge quantities of mangos and oranges, but now most of the mango trees are dead. When the spring began to dry we built

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the falay, but then that dried too. No-one from here ever went to work in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. The only people who went out to work went to Tayyiba or Asimah to work in their gardens. We did go to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj. When people went on camels, it took three months to get there. When I went, a group of families got together and we hired a bus. There were epidemics in the past, there was a smallpox epidemic after the war; ten or twelve people died here, but it was really bad at Khor Fakkan.

Another Maharsi commented, Im building a family museum. Ive got the first pump that we installed in our well, and this smaller pump is the first one that came to Masafi, by camel from Sharjah. Mansur, the Englishman at Digdaga, organised it. And Im getting the first Land Rover in the Emirates, which came in 1950.

In Daftah, the Amir remarked, Everyone thinks in the past, people lived from selling firewood, but that was only in the bad times before Unification, and those days are all over, thank God. We moved from the old farij above the gardens in 1966, when we moved to the first modern houses, the bait arabi. In 1982, we moved again to the shaabiyya up by the main road.

At Madha, a Bani Saadi recalled, We sold our tobacco to Iranian traders in Khor Fakka. Before the Iranian traders came because of trouble in Iran, there were Shihuh traders who were displaced by the Iranians. They could do this because they were agents for Iranian traders in Dubai and therefore they could get goods more cheaply to sell in Khor Fakkan.

A Mazrui north of Shawqa commented, “None of the date gardens in these little wadis are old. The oldest isnt more than thirty to forty years. Before that, everyone here was bedu and didnt have date gardens.” In Habn, a Mazrui explained, We have grown tobacco for at least two hundred years, perhaps longer. We have no knowledge of why we started to grow it or where it came from; but there has always been a steady demand so we have grown it. Im in my forties so I dont remember the sanat al-ji but Ive heard about it, it was during the German war. It didnt affect us at all, it affected only the people on the coasts and the bedu. I tell you, the world has been turned upside down. Before, we the mountain peoples had everything, and the coast people and the bedu had nothing. They relied on us. Now we have to rely on the coast people for jobs, it is impossible for us to live from our own resources. Everything is imported.

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In Wadi Mamduh, a Maharsi said, “We have grown tobacco for a very, very long time and it always sold well until about thirty years ago. Then tobacco started coming in from outside and we couldnt sell ours so well, so we stopped growing it for export.” In Wadi Sfai, two Mazari recalled, People who used tents made their living by carrying goods for people on their camels. No-one ever died from hunger or even went hungry; we always had dates and we always had milk, dates because of the wells, and milk because of the trees and the humidities. If we needed money to buy rice or clothes or for getting married we sold a goat or goats. A goat sold for half a dirham but the brideprice was only four or five dirhams. For clothes, we needed two or three lengths a year. That was all the money we needed. I dont know when we stopped growing tobacco. Our tobacco stopped being profitable when cigarettes became readily available, and that was around unification.

On another occasion, the elder of the two said, I remember barley tea and wheat tea. It was what our grandfathers grandfathers drank before coffee became more or less common. Coffee has always been expensive, but we have nearly always been able to buy it. I went to work in Saudi Arabia but I hated the work so much I came back after three months.

At Sfai, a Jiljili recalled: When I was a young man I went to work in Saudi Arabia, I was a coolie in a cement factory. This was the mid to late fifties. I didnt send any of my money home, I saved it all. First I bought some camels, so we could carry our goods to market and not have to pay someone to carry them for us. The rest of my money I used for getting married. Then I bought more goats with profits from my tobacco, and more land already planted with date trees. It was quite easy, because things were cheap then, you have no idea. A really nice female goat was four riyals. Land wasnt much either, and we could make money by selling tobacco, firewood, charcoal, honey, clarified butter and cheese.

At al-Ayaili, a Maharsi remarked, “We used to export tobacco to Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and a country north of Saudi Arabia Ive forgotten the name of. Then the market vanished, we couldnt sell it. Now we leave growing it to the Omanis, they dont have as much oil money as we do.” His brother added, Tobacco has been grown here for at least a hundred years and possibly for two hundred or more. It was definitely grown in my grandfathers time and he died sixty years ago. I stopped growing tobacco two years ago. A year ago, Bahrain, our major market, put high customs duties on tobacco. At

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least a hundred date varieties are grown round here. Many are new, from outside the area, and we grow these now because they fetch better prices, six to seven dirhams a kilo. The old varieties we grow now for the animals. Land-Rovers came here in the early 1970s.

In Lidiid in Wadi al-Ayaili, two men said, “This place hasnt been used or lived in for at least ninety years. al-Barid was finally left forty-five to fifty years ago, but people started not using it at least sixty years ago.” Another commented, People left farming because they could no longer make a living from it and they felt there were better opportunities elsewhere. This started a long time ago, it was gradual. When I was a young man in the 1960s, the old men talked of al-Isaimar, al-Barid, al-Khadhra and al-Ayaili being full of people, but they have never been so in my lifetime. There was always a gradual move away. People went to places like Sharjah, but I myself stayed in the Amirate of Ras al-Khaimah and joined the army.

At Munaiy, a Dahamni said, We grew tobacco, it was our big crop for earning money. Our profits from tobacco were such that we never had to go to work in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia except for a few who were short of land. We never noticed the shortage of money in the sanat al-ji because we were able to barter our tobacco for the merchants goods. We were selling and buying from the same merchants, not selling to one and buying from another, and the merchants wanted our tobacco.

One continued, “My family came from al-Barid, they had land there. It had been in decline for years and years, and the last person to live there left in 1964.” Another went on: “What caused people to stop growing tobacco was that its markets were lost to imported American and English tobaccos. That was quite a long time ago.” The Amir confirmed, Our main product for sale was tobacco, sold to merchants either for goods or cash or a mixture, which depended on the seller and the purchaser. There is absolutely no profit in gardens. I put my spare money into building shops and renting them out. Most of them are in Ras al-Khaimah town. Bought flour came here as far as I remember in the 1960s, like Peshawar rice. Flour and rice came here late because we had everything. In times of famine, which we didnt experience but we knew about because we visited coastal towns, grain called sahwi was imported. Cars came here early, because Wadi al-Qawr was easy for them; but using camels and donkeys there were far more routes. Up to 1953, 1955, we used to go to Buraimi to trade, we exchanged grain for salt fish. Daud bin Hamza of Saham traded in dried limes to Bahrain mostly, and in pumps for wells. I think, and so do other older men here, that Lorimers information of about ten houses of Dahaminah at Munaiy is wrong, and so are the num-

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bers for Nuslah; the numbers are definitely too low. Maybe his informant didnt know about all the furuj in the various side wadis and the shuaiba, or thought they were irrelevant.

Two Dahamna said, Cigarettes came into our lives at the end of the war, with British soldiers. Wed known about them before, but they werent available. From then on, there was a gradual decline in our tobacco trade, it was less easy to sell. Before, the merchants came round and you could get everything you wanted on credit against your next harvest. Gradually, they stopped offering credit, because the market for local tobacco wasnt secure enough. The tax Bahrain put on local tobacco two years ago finally finished the trade off. People grow it for themselves and friends now.

An elderly Omani said, We concentrated on growing tobacco. Selling one camel load of tobacco got a man enough money for a year. A camel load sold for twenty rupees. We were wealthy! The earliest modernisation of the gardens here was in the mid to late sixties but most gardens were modernised and expanded after unification.

A Dahamni from Sukhaibar commented, We didnt know how to make jiss or saruj because we were rich, we got bayadir to come and do it for us. Before we were rich, we would have known. We were really rich. We had everything – tobacco, grain, animals, dates, water, and the people on the coast had nothing. Now the world has been turned upside down. They have everything, and we have to go and work there because what we have isnt important anymore.

A group of Bani Kaab commented, The reason farij Mahmud was never lived in again is that by the time the descendants of those who would have been thinking about rebuilding it, there were no profits to be made there. Profits then only came from irrigated gardens or employment. Before, it was different, people lived from the different kinds of lands and – or – the animals they owned.

In Wadi al-Qawr, a Kaabi said, People from here went to work in Kuwait almost as soon as there was work there. My elder brother went. He went by lanj from Ajman, and the voyage up to Kuwait took two months. He worked in Kuwait for two years. Bani Kaab from al-Ain did go to Khor Khuwair to buy salt fish for trading in al-Ain; they took clarified butter and honey to buy the fish. The movement for the summer started to get less maybe as much as fifty years ago. By thirty years ago, around unification, it stopped altogether. It wasnt just because of air conditioning, although that was important, especially for the women

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and children; you cant imagine the heat of the simuum, the southwest wind, it was terrible. No, it was a combination of things. Traders moved to more profitable goods and places. And when lorries came in, in the sixties, they traveled so much faster than camels they didnt need to break their journeys so much. So they no longer stopped at small places like Munaiy. It wasnt only bedu who bought lorries, it was anyone who had the money and saw the opportunity for business. One man here had a lorry and took goods and people up to Riyadh and Bahrain, he was like a bus. Other lorries went to Dubai and Sharjah. So producers had to take their goods to a depot. Abdullah Khamis at Huwaylat owned the first car in the area in 1967. Lorries were before, from the beginning of the 1960s. Electricity came here in 1973 or 74.

Comments on changes in livelihoods in the western Hajar Major change was recalled as starting in this region in the early 1930s, when there was an acute shortage of rupees; Kanoo (1997; 49) notes at that date a real shortage of silver coins, and variations in value between rupees minted at different dates and different qualities of silver. There had already been a shortage of rupees in 1918. The precipitous decline in pearling profits, the Wall Street Crash, and the general world trade depression all combined to reduce local purchasing power and merchants abilities to maintain trading. People in the western Hajar were able to barter for what they needed with the exception of dried fish for fertiliser. This lack of fertiliser led to a reduction in grain yields from 1:100 to 1:20. There were never again surpluses of grain for trading. The people most affected were those who lived from animals and grain land at the heads of wadis, in the shuaiba and farij like al-Barid and Isaimir. People say that although these areas had started to be abandoned from the turn of the 20th century, it was from this time that abandonment quickened. There was livelihood, but few profits. The Amir of Ghayl, aged nearly ninety, emphasised that people needing money and without resources had always worked for carriers, or as sharecroppers or on boats. People from this region depending on carrying and grain went to migrant work in Kuwait as soon as the opportunities were there. Irrigated gardens growing dates, fruits like mangoes, oranges and limes, and tobacco, along with goat keeping, remained profitable. Up to the early or mid fifties, merchants went to the gardens at Asimah and Munaiy (the two places mentioned) to buy crops of fruit and tobacco, but later, producers had to take their produce by camel and donkey,

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then by Land Rover or lorry, to merchants in towns. The shift may have come from an increasing availability of imported products and less reliance on local produce. Mango and fruit crops from this area decreased because of the drop in water tables. Tobacco profits went into a slow decline from around the time of the second world war; cheap western cigarettes were being imported into Bahrain by 1936 – 7 (Kanoo 1997; 60 – 62). By the late 1990s, the last market for local tobacco, Bahrain, imposed heavy taxes on this tobacco for health reasons, and it was no longer grown commercially. Date gardens used to be on silts in wadi beds or at the sides of wadis, with flows of water channelled between the trees. Fields on the plateaux, above the wadis, were for grain. During the late 1950s and 60s, pumps became common, and many traditional grain fields on the wadi terraces became redundant and were made into date gardens, as money was more plentiful from migrant work and growth of local markets, and imported cheap flour available. People said that imported flour came into the region late, because earlier they had everything; for them, flour was introduced because they had money, not because they lacked grain. Men from date garden owning families or garden working families went to migrant work in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia from the mid 1950s at the latest. A Jiljilis explanation of how he spent his savings from work in Saudi Arabia was typical; marriage, and spare savings were reinvested in productive enterprises, often an expansion of existing activities, from which profits could still be made. Men employed in the Trucial Oman Scouts used their savings in the same way. British advisors at Digdaga encouraged commercial vegetable crops at Ghayl, when water at Digdaga began to go salty. A few Mazari in that area continue to grow vegetables for the markets of Sharjah and Dubai, taken by lorries. Most garden owners are certain that there are few profits from commercial gardens; profits come from employment, and gardens supply the needs of the wider family. These gardens are managed by the retired, and the work done by paid employees from the Indian subcontinent. Before, gardens were profitable from tobacco, and the work was done by owners or sharecroppers, sometimes bayadir or khawadim. Men who went to Kuwait or Saudi Arabia were paid a hundred dirhams a month, and could pay a bayadir 3 or 4 rupees a month, feed and clothe him and his family, and still save. Another change, fuelled by money from migrant work, was the change in houses, which in this region started at the end of the fifties. Before that, people had sent down the odd sack of cement or pice of cut wood for repairs. Then, people bought enough of the modern materials

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to build new houses; initially, like the old houses, but then bait arabi. In Asimah and other places, there were men who made their living from building bait arabi. Another innovation was small local shops; on the coast, these were invariably run by Iranians, but in Asimah, local people kept shops. When money really became available, in the late sixties or mid seventies, people in the western Hajar invested in buildings – shops, offices, housing – in Ras al-Khaimah town and other urban cemtres.

The transformation through modernisation It is clear from the archive material that peoples worlds did turn upside down. This was a complete economic transformation, just as there was a political transformation. Earlier, partial transformations were never capable of making redundant virtually all traditional livelihoods and sources of profits, and local resources remained of fundamental value. There had been hard times before, times with severe shortages of cash or times of drought from lack of useful rains. But these were to be expected, and people adapted. In situations with a severe cash shortage, people exchanged goods rather than sold them for money, mahar changed to being all goods, and as most people had subsistence resources they owned, they fed themselves and had shelter. In drought times, wells and ghayl for gardens continued to function, and trees using humidities provided browse for animals; those depending on mountain fields used fields in areas unaffected by drought, relied on their stores or ate other foods, moved to temporary work outside drought areas, or moved permanently. In this transformation, what had been of economic and moral value no longer had value. The last stages in the economic and social transformation came with the political unification of the Emirates into the federal state of the UAE, founded on oil wealth, and exemplified in the lives of its populations by nationality and citizenship, employment, and living in shaabiyya (low cost social housing). People were living in a modern way. Some men commented that when they went to work in Kuwait or now when employed in Abu Dhabi, they had used a more recognisable tribal name than the one they used locally. A Qiyudi remarked, “My grandfather called himself Sharqi because he needed a name people there would recognise. Small groups names arent recognised, so everyone is Hubsi, Sharqi, Mazrui, Shihhi …”

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While the conveniences of piped water and electricity are appreciated, people regarded shaabiyya, social housing, as a deliberate effort by the federal government to change peoples behaviour, and to break down tribal and family networks and communities. Shaabiyya were allocated along male descent lines, whereas traditional houses in tribally identified farij, were so sited as to allow freedom to women to move around. A Tunaiji remarked, The allocation of shaabiyya on lines of male descent was bitterly resented because it broke up the existing family residence networks, built through women and the carrying out of common interests. It stopped people knowing all their relations, and put a man with people with whom he or she had maybe only a shared descent in a common ancestor and very few shared interests.

A Shihhi commented, Veiling marks a real division between living in the mountains and living in the shaabiyya. In the mountains women never wore abaya or burqa. When women came down selling firewood and things in the market, they wore a burqa then. But in the mountains, if there was a man present who wasnt closely related to them, they put their shaila across their faces. The relationships between the sexes were much freer and easier in the past, and this has completely vanished in the shaabiyya.

Other comments on shaabiyya were that no-one knew their neighbours, there was no sharing of meals or visiting, they were noisy, and unsociable. A Habsi remarked, “We did move down to the shaabiya but we hated it – the noise, the walls, being shut in, but especially the noise. As soon as we could have electricity up here, we moved back.” Time has ameliorated some complaints; neighbours who did not know each other have come to do so through the children; families have managed to rearrange allocations of houses; some families and groups have moved out of the shaabiya and built groups of small villas away from the main conurbation in their tribal areas, with the state extension of electricity and piped water. A few of the older shaabyya, even if suffering from rising damp, were better laid-out, so that their inhabitants developed more comfortable and neighbourly spaces. Most have altered and extended their shaabiya to accommodate their own preferences in living style. A Ras al-Khaimi commented, Now I live in a new villa, but I spend a lot of time at my old house which was a bait arabi built on the site of our old khaimah. Thats where I meet my friends, my old neighbours. Neighbourliness has gone; in the old days, anyone short of food was fed by his neighbours, and he did the same for them.

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People were generous. At my new house, I dont know a single one of my neighbours. I only know if they have guests because I see more cars outside.

There remains a feeling that Ras al-Khaimah town shaabiyya are unneighbourly; a Sharqi in Qidfa said, The shaabiyya here and along the Fujairah coast are different to those around Ras al-Khaimah town. Ours were quite late, the early eighties, and we arranged who had what house among ourselves because we owned the land the houses were built on. This land was our old grain fields. All my family have houses in this block, and the block was built on our old fields. That block are our neighbours, and they were our neighbours on the grain fields, that land was their fields. So we all know our neighbours, we cooperate with them, we sit outside on the pavement and enjoy ourselves together. Do you see this in Ras al-Khaimah town? No!

This is not completely true, but it is true of many, and of the groups of villas. The transformation from making a livelihood from owned resources to employment is further differentiated by formal state education with the purpose of creating an educated work force for the benefit of the state. A Ras al-Khaimi said, In the 1950s, Saqr got enthusiastic about education. One of his slaves used to be sent along the beach to catch boys and take them to the school. The teachers were awful, Palestinians and Jordanians, and later, Egyptians. We were beaten all the time for not doing our lessons – but every boy learnt to read and write within a year.

A Shamaili remarked: Im in the navy here. Im home from studying English in Los Angeles. I want to do an engineering degree, and for that I need English. The state paid my fees, but my family had to pay for my keep. The archive is a good idea, because I know very little about the past; my grandmother is alive but I cant understand her easily.

The Amir of Shimal Fowk explained, There werent any schools until the 1960s except for traditional Quranic schools. The mutawwa here went to Rams, where Rashid Ali Klaib had a school, he was paid by the ruler. He taught the Quran, reading, writing, arithmetic, and some history and geography [a wider curriculum than that recorded in Inner Oman (Eickelman 1983)]. Then Rashid Ali was sent to Shimal, but he wasnt here long because the government employed Egyptian teachers and sent them to the villages; that was how I got educated. Now all children go to school, and some study abroad in Europe and America.

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The Khatri who explained his camel herding grandfather had started a small date garden at Saadi in 1932 continued, My father was educated, he was one of the first students at al-Ain University. And my mother was educated, too. When my father started the big modern commercial vegetable garden, my parents thought life had changed and nothing could go wrong; they had good land, water, education, there were markets, oil money was coming. That was why they had twelve children! They thought technology and oil money could overcome difficulties. And now what? The five gardens only make profits if my father takes every subsidy going, the water is getting lower and lower, and his crops are undercut by cheaper imports. I got married when I was eighteen, which was much younger than the age men got married in the past, but the money for the mahar was there. My wife was sixteen when we married; we have three children, and were not having any more, there wont be the jobs in the future. Me and my brothers are engineers, a military pilot, in the army, in Etisalat, all technical jobs. But for the future?

Agricultural development was an acceptable face of modernisation in the 1960s from archive information, but has proved unsustainable because of dropping water tables and increasing salinities. A Kaabi in Wadi al-Qawr remarked, Twenty years ago, we didnt have gardens. My brother has a garden over there in Oman, my three gardens are here, on land above the wadi. The ghayl that flowed most of the year had gone, and everyone thought we could dig wells and have gardens on the wadi terraces. We did for a bit, but the fruit trees are dying, I cant grow jiit anymore, and even the date trees have yellow leaves. The water is sulphurous and slightly saline, and the earth is so tired it wont hold the water anymore. I dont think these top gardens will survive at all, even if there are rains, because they have no flood flows. The old gardens in the wadi arent so bad, and they will have sayl flows if there is rain. The ghayl in the wadi and side wadis dried up, long before this drought, from the pumping we all did. There were two to three hundred pumps working here. I dont know what will happen.

In Shimal, a garden owner said, The water has gone down by a factor of ten. This is fact, not exaggeration. This amount of drop in the water level is inland, as on the coast the drop is masked by the seeping in of salt water which raises the level in the wells but is unusable. Gardens are really in a bad way after six years of drought. Selling dates and vegetables covers the costs, and we have them and milk and meat for the house, but profits? You would need a microscope.

Many people are ambivalent about development sponsored by the state or large companies owned by those close to rulers. Their unease is not

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so much about technologies and profits as such, but perceived contradictions between much commercial development and the moral economy. A man came to see a Shamaili about running a small farm. To produce food for the family, and to “have some place to go that is quiet, decent and sensible. The only things development has brought us are air conditioning and diabetes.” A Khanabila commented, The government have at last agreed that dead land does not exist in the mountains, as land with trees and perennial plants is productive and managed. We negotiated over this for years. Now, every bit of land in the mountains is registered, so if the government or a big company want a quarry, they have to buy that land from the owners. Not everybody is willing to sell for a quarry, and some people have bought up land from those of the same tribe who werent interested. In other places, the land ownership is a patchwork of small owners, and it is known that many of those would be unwilling to sell, as they have goats or trees, or houses. A quarry for necessary local building is one thing. But quarries all over the place to build artificial islands for Dubai is quite different; there is no benefit to the people of Ras al-Khaimah, only for Dubai and the companies who employ cheap foreign labour, and their governments. I do worry about the future, my heart is uneasy about where we are going.

Many men said the security of government employment was a main reason for the abandonment of fishing and date gardening, where the work was done by imported labourers from the Indian sub-continent. At the same time, women worked less hard, and had more children. A Ramsawi said, In the past, when men were fishing or working with the dates, women herded and collected firewood, and they were far better for the work. Now they do nothing, and theyre fat and diabetic; if they want something, they shout for the maid to get it for them.

Ill health happened in the past, but then was often from overwork or accidents; now much ill health is from lack of hard physical work and the change in diet. Debt is also a problem for some. A Ras al-Khaimi explained, Theres a family in debt for five million dirhams. The woman is trying to sort it all out; shes mortgaged the villa to pay off immediate debts and she came to me and people like me to ask for a loan of a hundred thousand. It isnt difficult to get into debt. People borrow to have a villa, then they want to furnish it nicely, they have four or five cars so theres petrol, repairs and insurance, a couple of maids, a driver, electricity bills, food from the supermarkets, childrens computers and things for school and college … and all sorts of weekly payments like forty dirhams for ironing, that sort of thing.

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Then some business venture goes wrong, and they are in debt. Or they dont bother to keep accounts and see what they are spending, what they have borrowed and how much they have to pay back; people close their eyes, they dont want to see.

Others have savings, unspent gifts from rulers, or inheritances. Putting money in a bank is often regarded as slightly improper, it is better to build a house for rent or a shop as a small business. Around many shaabiya are small shops: groceries, laundries, fruit and vegetable shops, dressmakers, tailors, bakeries, small restaurants, suppliers of building and electrical equipment, electricians, public kitchens, stationers, wedding decoration suppliers, and so on. These businesses are said to have few profits, after costs, but they provide useful community services. Others invest in bigger businesses; fish trap makers, plant nurseries, building contractors, pharmacies, tyre repair shops, metal workshops, furniture workshops, electrical goods, interior design shops, computer suppliers, air conditioning suppliers and repairers. Nationals own these businesses; they are managed by an employed Muslim expatriate, or the building is rented to a Muslim expatriate with his own business. Some people, often retired, continue to maintain their owned assets in the countryside; they have date, vegetable, and fodder gardens; goat flocks, cows, or sheep in the sands and garden areas; mountain fields and goats in the Ruus al-Jibal; look for wild honey; or have fishing boats, traps and nets. For these enterprises to supply a market, they employ expatriate workers, whose wages come from profits or, in bad years, savings. Many use their mountain fields, gardens and beaches for pleasure as well as use. Before, personal reputation and the use of social networks built up by active participation in the moral economy were important; these no longer count in the modern economy and the transformation makes many feel devalued. Such men are not all old. A Ras al-Khaimi said, I am really angry with the way life is changing. I have been dealing with my local bank for years. Now, my word is no longer good enough, I have to go to the bank and sign papers as proof of my word. I am really angry at this lack of trust, typical of business affairs now. Reputation doesnt matter any longer. Then they are surprised people behave improperly; trust and reputation have become irrelevant, so why should people go to the effort of getting a reputation for proper behaviour, and being a man whose word can be trusted? It is the same when I go to a shaabiyya to find someone. I bang on the metal gate, and maybe the maid or a small boy will answer. The maid wont know who lives there, and the small boy says he doesnt know where his father is. Actually, he is probably telling the truth because families no longer

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eat together. This is going to cause huge problems in the future, because if families dont eat together, how do the young learn how to behave, to know who is who, and what is important? I used to know Shaikh Sultan quite well, but I havent been to see him for years. The only people who go to see the shuyukh now are those with their hands out. I think thats shameful. Thats another change, wanting more and more money and not being prepared to work for it.

Another man remarked, Before, a man could usually sort out affairs by himself with people he knew, and if he couldnt, he went to the shaikh; that was hukm. Now, a man cant do anything for himself; thats daulat. I have to write letters, make phone calls, see secretaries, and even then I might not see the man I want. And I am always paying out. Once the older children start work, they need a car to get there; but they cant afford it, so I have to. Let alone marriage and a house. The younger ones need clothes and stuff for school and college, and they want the things their friends have. I am endlessly paying the government for electricity, for licences for this, that and the other. Ours is a house people drop into; my wife feeds three or four extra people a day. None of this is much, but it adds up. When I look at things carefully, it seems to me we are no better off now than we were before. The young used to be innocent, they knew nothing. People were careful what they said in front of children and the young. Now, with television and films, they know it all. Prostitution was very rare. Shaikh Saqr had patrols against it, and if girls were found selling themselves, they were shipped off to Dubai. Now massage parlours advertise all over the town, and prostitution is everywhere. Very nearly all the abandoned babies left at hospitals or mosques are the children of non-nationals; there are far fewer than there were, but there shouldnt be any with the pill and condoms.

In Khor Kalba, a Zaab said, “Before, we worked hard all the time, and we had the things we needed. Now, we have a much easier life, we have money to buy things we want, not only things we need. But our minds are never at ease, and we are never comfortable with ourselves as we used to be.” A young Habus remarked, In the towns, the sense of community, jamaa, is not as important as it used to be. That is because people dont work in farij in their fields any more, and because no-one now needs their neighbours as they used to. Now you can pay Hindis and Baluch and people to do your own work, but we used to depend on our neighbours. This inter-dependence between people and their neighbours made a community. And this gave everyone a focus, an aim for the groups of people who lived, worked and married together. Community should be important, it is what holds a group of people together whether it is a big tribally mixed group over a big area, or a group of close neighbours. We need bonds and responsibilities to each other to behave properly.

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This is why we like Ramadan so much, it seems to be the only time now that groups of neighbours do anything together. There is a saying that a Muslim has a duty to know seven neighbours on either side; but I think most people cant claim that they do.

Many people consider the present way of living to be unsustainable; problems with droughts, water, and desalination plants are the main example. Employment and population growth concern many. In the past, when there was no modern technology and people had what they needed if no more, the region had sustained itself through droughts, epidemics, and times of hardship. The purpose of the archive was to record the lives of people in Ras al-Khaimah and its wider region before oil wealth. As a Mazrui in Wadi Ku¯b said, “It is a very good idea of Shaikh Sultans to have information about how we used to live, because the young dont know, and they ought to be able to find out if they want to. Because our life in the past had value.” A very elderly Ruhaibi stated, We had fields and lands at ar-Rahaba and the Bih which is a branch off the Rahaba, and at Ruqba, which is one of the little farij up on the ledge. Our high mountain fields were at Nidd, Luqtaa, Shifra, Gawa, Artana and many, many others. Each of the little ledges we lived at in the summers, each of the ways up there, each of the fields up there, each collection of houses, each one had its name. In the past we looked after ourselves. Now the government has taken from us everything we valued, and has given us nothing that we need.

A Sharqi at Habhab remarked, “There are advantages to modern ways of life, obviously; but in my opinion, life was better in the past. Then we were comfortable in our hearts. We knew each other, we sorted things out amongst ourselves, we knew what we were doing, we looked after ourselves.” A Khanbuli has the last word, “That was then, this is now.”

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9 Back to History People had many thoughts about events and changes of the tribal past. Three views of history were expressed by local people: as tarikh, concerned only with rulers, and so tribespeople did not have history; as the re-establishment of a disrupted moral social order, which was the concern of tribespeople; and the placing of regional tribal groupings in the traditional histories of the wider region, which also concerned tribespeople. People were aware of different ways of thinking about the past and the impossibility of verifiable historical truth. Davis (1992; 19 – 25) distinguished four kinds of thought about the past in Libyan and Yemeni societies, outside the European cultural tradition. First: autobiography and biography, which use linear time and tend to be associated with state style ruling groups. Second: precedental history that takes events out of their context to present them as precedents; incidents, events become examples of this or that rather than links in a chain of cause and effect, a set of examples of the working of right principle (Davis 1987; 111), in which oppositions between equivalent groups are demonstrated but no hierarchies created. Local and tribal histories in Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia are frequently concerned with the re-creation of a moral order and space broken by mens greed, weakness or selfishness, put in the discourse of violent political action and honour disgraced and defended (Lancasters 1999; 14 – 15). Time in precendental history is either all pervasive or continually circulating. Third: myth, not concerned with true words about the past which distinguish the fourth type of history, a chronological linear account associated with the origins and development of major institutions in a society. Constructions of identity use these ideas of thinking about the past, since there is no identity – ethnic or other group of any kind – without a past (Davis 1992; 21). Thought about the past depends also on events and the social relations between the producers of history. Local people of the study region used, as noted in Chapter 1, identities as a way of talking about themselves and others, as individuals and tribespeople, and as participants in particular modes of sources of livelihood and profits associated with regional resources. Individuals used autobiographical and biographical time to describe their own identity, and precendental time for

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tribal histories and identities. Descriptions of sources of livelihood and profit over time used biographical and precendental time as speakers switched between individual behaviour and group rationales, and used linear chronological time, true words, to account for changes. Identities based on the idea of the citizen of a nation state derived from chronological time but also from precendental time in which group histories were transformed from tribe, honour, self reliance and autonomy to state and dependence, from hukm or government to daulat or state. Several people pointed out that history, any history, was essentially about ideas of ruling, or moral relations between groups which were themselves moral communities of individuals making constant small decisions that maintained or worked against the community. Islamic scholars, local knowledgeable persons, and western scholars consider true words to be basic to regional ways of thinking about the past. Wilkinson (1976; 141 – 2) comments on the most meticulous scholarship and accounts … refreshingly free of cant of, among others, al-Salimi and al-Awtabi in their studies of the crisis period of the Ibadhi Imamate of Oman. Al-Juhany (1983; 12 – 13), considers local accounts of preWahhabi history of Najd as chronologies of events; the establishment and rebuilding of towns, lists of raids and conflicts, deaths of prominent people; and some episodes related to epidemics, droughts, rainfalls and weather recorded as brief and ambiguous statements which are usually put in the passive form of speech … by faqihs (men of the law) … [as] a great deal of what they were recording involves murders, raids and events of a violent nature, they preferred not to pronounce judgements. Discussing the transmission of oral tradition of Al Naim of Qatar, Montigny (2005) writes that Al Naims ethnohistorical narration functions to construct identity and to show their prestige and political acumen in the building up of the Qatari and Bahraini states … their version of reality … shaped through discussion and eventual consensus presents an ideal image as to what the role and actions of the tribe were and should be and so precendental history. But precendental history is not static; when the Naim political context shifted in 1995, memories of formerly forgotten historical events were revived and became part of consensual tribal history. Al Naim regarded true words to reside in narratives of tribal wars and raids. Rwala in the north of the peninsula (Lancasters 2004; 49 – 50) considered true words lay in the narrative glosses that preceded recitations of epic poems of tribal raids and wars, since the prose narratives were the consensus of responsible persons as to what had happened. Poems were composed by individuals exercising artistry,

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and so were not true accounts although they encouraged a tribal reputation. They also commented on the use of satire and figures of speech in poems of historical raids (Lancasters 1999; 169). In the study area, tribesmen described wars in terms of consensual narratives, not in poems composed by individuals although some referred to such poems. The study area of Ras al-Khaimah Emirate and adjoining regions is situated between three historical regional powers, Oman, Iran, and Arabia. For much of the 18th century, control of the study area and its wider region was disputed between southern Iran and Oman; for much of the 19th century, Oman and Arabia competed for influence. Political relations between the local area and outside powers were expressed through the actions of the various coastal rulers and the agents of outside powers; their wars and raids are described in these terms in Omani accounts and in the reports of western powers, particularly the British, active in the Gulf and the north-west Indian Ocean. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol. 1) includes several annexes of regional histories and relations of the different rulers with various outside powers; that of The internal history of Trucial Oman at this time is confusing but not without meaning. The central fact was a contest for leadership between the Shaikh of Sharjah and Ras alKhaimah and the Shaikh of Abu Dhabi (Lorimer 1908 – 15; vol.1, 710), a contest in which the Shaikh of Dibai [Dubai], who held the balance of power, profited so largely and so unscrupulously that the principals from time to time forgot their feud in an effort to exterminate him by united action. Besides hostilities traceable to the antagonism between Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, there was, however, much desultory fighting due to the predatory raids and the reprisals which they provoked; and some incidents of considerable importance arose out of aggressions by the Shaikh of Sharjah on his smaller neighbours.

This description has some rough similarities to remarks made by tribespeople when talking about rulers and wars of which they had knowledge. Tribal histories are concerned with the promotion and defence of tribal assets and honour, and documented most recently in the accounts of oil exploration, boundaries, and other aspects of the rise of nation-states. The local emphasis on jamaa, community, which lives, works, and marries among itself, moves history away from these concerns towards more diffuse discussions of change. Tribespeople described changes in markets, in goods traded, boat design, the ownership of gardens, fields, and water resources, sales and purchases of lands, the making and dissolving of political tribal alliances, disputes between tribal groups, the taking of protection by individuals and

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families, the building or rebuilding of forts and towers, wars between rulers or between tribe and ruler, peace settlements, and participation in these events by their predecessors. Some of these events were placed at a certain number of past generations, in the period of rule of a named ruler, or to a document or inscription. Initially, tribespeople made general statements of ownership and association with their locality, such as weve been here for always or we know we came in but that was a very, very long time ago. Proof derived from because we have no stories and no knowledge of anything else. Such statements of collective identity used precedental time while local, individual and family ideas of the past, drawn from autobiographical and biographical details, expanded to reflect a series of memorials of ownership and use by local and tribal communities over time and space. Some of these ideas of the local past developed into memorials of changes in ownership and use over time and space between groups; others into changes of group identities and the construction of new groupings. Memorials of ruling, the keeping of the peace and the defending of interests and assets, linked to group identities used by those outside, were achieved through ideas about and participation in means of ruling which came to define and identify tribal groups. Some mentioned changes by rulers that had affected their communities. Many people used metonymy and context when using group names and in the naming of groups or individuals when talking about historical changes. Some recalled changes of identity over time made by members of families and local groups by buying or selling land, marriage and inheritance, or movement and taking protection. Some old people thought the past was irrelevant, it was finished with as the political and economic transformation of the region had transformed history into heritage. Many young men thought having a record or knowledge of the past would be useful and interesting, as the ways of life in the past had had a moral value. A few thought a record of the past was important so that people could learn from the past for the present and the future, since the same questions of personal power and general good appear again and again. Al-Taburs (1998) study of the region includes traditional tribal histories, which emphasise the arrival of tribes with links to the classic genealogies in the region or their position as original, asil, inhabitants. This emphasis on genealogy and honourable origins is that of a formal, public statement. Informally, many considered behaviour more important than origin. A Shihhi in Dibba Baiah said, “Which tribe, which group lived where, was irrelevant. We never asked. Provided a man behaved properly, it didnt matter which tribal group he came

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from. It was the same for anyone who came in; if they behaved properly, they became part of the group, they were asil.” This use of asil, the root of which is to be or become firmly rooted (Lane 1984 [1863]; vol 1, 64), becomes conflated with the usual meanings of original, authentic, and genuine. For this individual and many others, proper behaviour, moral order, and so being firmly rooted in a local community was more important than a group identity with a past. al-Tabur also employs chronological linear accounts where his informants provide true facts. We were interested in the ways people thought about the past and their own pasts, how they thought about the institutionalised social, political and economic processes through which their society and its moral order functioned, and how they thought collective tribal and group identities had developed and changed over time. Our material was compiled from informal conversations and discussions, and reflects the concern of local people with true words to illustrate the processes of change. Previous chapters considered information on the first two; this chapter is concerned with the third, the development of and changes over time in tribal and group identities according to local tribespeople and to attempt some sort of linear chronology from documented and published sources. Information for each area is given firstly by local people, then from published sources. The chapter ends with an attempt at a linear account of the origins and development of the society and its institutions. A Habus and a Khatri said, “Before, a long time ago, there were the Shihuh in the mountains, and the bedu in the sands; they were the Arabs. On the coast, the people were all Persians and Indians, not Arabs.” Many coastal people referred to themselves as Gulfis, Khaliji, referring to the earlier economic, political, and social situation in the lower Gulf before the rise of nation states, when individuals and families moved between the Arab and Persian coasts of the Gulf in search of livelihood or protection. Many families who so moved had tribal relations and connections on both sides, and lived in similar fashions. Such movement has taken place at least from the beginning of recorded Omani history. For some people now and in common use in the early part of the 20th century, Arabs who had at some date moved to the Persian coast, lived there, and whose descendants later returned to the Arab side were known as Huwala. In the 17th and 18th century, Huwala were an important group of Arab tribal families, among whom were Qawasim, living from pearling and sea trade on the southern Iran coast opposite Ras al-Khaimah. A few individuals who were not of tribal descent had links to India through work and

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marriage. Some tribespeople on the Gulf coast said they knew of, or had been told of, individual Indians who had moved in, and been assimilated, as had individual Iranians.

The Gulf coastal towns and places on the Shamailyya and Batinah coasts Jazirat al-Hamra was traditionally Zaab, living from sea and land trade, pearling, and fishing. A Zaabi said, Most Zaab relied on Khawatir animals for transporting goods. Muzra in the sands was a place where caravans collected to go up to Dubai, using Khawatir camels. To protect this trade, we had an alliance, a hilf, with Naim and Khawatir. This continued into the 1960s, when they backed us, at least in a moral sense, in our bid to retain our independence. There were always some Zaab at Shinas, Murair, Bu Baqra and Kalba, although most of the Zaab families now in those places moved from Jazirat al-Hamra after the second war with Ras al-Khaimah, about 105 years ago [information November, 2003]. The dead from that battle were buried in the graveyard with the circular wall round it, outside al-Jazirat; they were killed by the bedu. I dont know when the first war with the Qawasim was. My grandfather had to leave Habhab when it was taken over by Fujairah in the 1950s, and that was when Abdullah b Hasim al-Ghariib was Amir of al-Jazira; before that, Habhab had belonged to Ras al-Khaimah. It was then that many Zaab moved to Khatt, Nakhil and Fahlain; my family moved to Khatt, and my grandfather had a store in Ras al-Khaimah town.

A Zaab at Ghayl said, When everyone left Jazirat al-Hamra in 1968, people took everything with them, including the big carved wooden doors of their houses. Sixty per cent went to Abu Dhabi, the rest stayed in the northern Emirates and they are the ones who now live in the new part of Jazirat al-Hamra. The house with the wind towers, dated 1955, belonged to Abd al-Qadr az-Zaabi.

A Zaabi at Khor Kalba remarked: A long, long time ago, Zaab were here as traders until they were driven out by the Portuguese; they came back when the Portuguese had been defeated – this is in a book by the Ruler of Sharjah. There was a fort here, and under it the archaeologists think there was an earlier sur.

The Amir of Bu Baqra on the Batinah coast explained, All the different branches of the Zaab originally come from Najd. Some went to Syria, some went in the direction of Hofuf and Bahrain, and

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some of these went across to Iran, and others turned and came to northern Oman. In Syria, we are known as Zuubi, we are around the Jabal al-Arab and in the mountains of northern Jordan. From northern Oman, we spread by trading and pearling to Zanzibar and Sawahil, where we are known as Zabun. Our ancestors came from Jazirat al-Hamra, which is really Jazirat al-Zaab, first to Khor Kalba and then to Bu Baqra, then to al-Khusda in Saham south of Suhar, and Ruwaishid. This is by or during the 19th century. There are more Zaab at Shinas, Lawa, Suhar, and Khabura. When we first got here, to Bu Baqra, there were only bedu, Fuhud from Jabal Akhdar, they are part of Bani Jabir. We had an alliance with the Qawasim from the days when we were both fighting the Portuguese. The Portuguese had problems with the government of Jazirat az-Zaab, and that is when the alliance started. You can read about it in a book written by the Ruler of Sharjah, but I cant remember the title. At the beginning, there were no troubles between Zaab and Qawasim. I dont know what the first war between the Qawasim and the Zaab was; the trouble a hundred and five years ago was between Zaab and bedu encouraged by Sultan bin Saqr of Sharjah. [c.1900, the Ruler of Sharjah was Saqr bin Khalid (r.1883 – 1914). So either nearer a hundred and fifty years ago, or the ruler was actually Saqr bin Khalid]. The bedu were Khawatir and other Bani Ghafiri, Mazrui from Idhn. In my great-grandfathers time, and he was Muhammad bin Nasr and died in 1972, there was trouble between him and Sultan bin Salim [al-Qasimi, ruler of Ras al-Khaimah from 1919 – 1948, when he was replaced by Saqr b Muhammad al-Qasimi].

A Jabri at Bu Baqra commented, Ive been told that a hundred years ago, there were only Fuhud Bani Jabir living here. When the Zaab moved in, they were a rather small group. An alliance, hilf, was made between Bani Jabir, Biduwat, and Zaab. My mothers mothers father was Ali Abdullah at-Tawil az-Zaabi, he traded in pearls to Iran and brought back dates, and he was the shaikh here. It was after his death that Muhammad bin Nasr took over.

European sources indicate that in 1645, Zaab from Jazirat al-Hamra in Oman were at Rig, off the Iranian coast in the northern Gulf. Tabur (1998; 364), from Hamid b Sultan al-Shamsi, says when the Zaab left Riq, one part went to bu Baqra and the larger part went to Jazirat alHamra; by 1756 (Floor 1979), Zaab had returned to Jazirat al-Hamra, and paid the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah large dues. Niebuhr (1792; vol. 2, 147) notes that there were Zaab at Riq; some had left, and some stayed. In 1763 (Taylor 1985 [1856]; 7), Jazirat al-Hamra was among the as-Sirr ports blockaded by Ahmad bin Said of Masqat since 1749/1162 for trading and pearling without his permission. The blockade was lifted in 1764 when Ahmad bin Said had Jazirat al-Hamra, Fasht and Sharjah, the Qawasim kept Ras al-Khaimah town only; this agreement lasted until Ah-

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mads death in 1771. The struggle between Masqat and the Qawasim continued, with Jazirat al-Hamra on the Gulf coast and Khor Fakkan on the Shamailiyya coast changing between them. In 1775 (Taylor 1985 [1856]; 8), the Qawasim were said to have Jazirat al-Hamra; in 1785 and/or 7 (Allen 1982; 116 – 7), Hamad bin Said established control over Jazirat al-Hamra and Khor Fakkan; in 1793 (Allen 1982; 118), the Qawasim repossessed them. There are no indications of whom, if either, Zaab supported. Around 1800, the Zaab were committed to Wahhabism (Davies 1997; 327 from Lam ash-Shihab); Zaab, like Tunaij, used their conversion against the Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah under Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr. In May 1809 (Davies 1997; 324, from Lam ash-Shihab) Hassan bin Ali, the Wahhabi amir of Ras al-Khaimah, was summoned to Diriyya; his position was taken by Ahmad bin Ahmad Maini or Manay from the Zaab until his return. In November 1809, the first British force destroyed boats at Jazirat al-Hamra (Buckingham 1829; 423). A British report dated February 1820 notes the town was deserted with some buildings standing (Lorimer 1908 – 15; vol 1, 669); its shaikh, Qadhib bin Ahmad, signed the 1821 treaty, died in 1822, and was succeeded by Mahzam bin Abd ar-Rahman. Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr deposed Mahzam bin Abd ar-Rahman and installed Ahmad bin Abdullah. An 1826 report (Warden 1985 [1856]; 327) noted Zaab had returned; the population was 2,600 men, women and children; 15 pearling boats, 10 fishing boats and 8 trading batil; 100 stone houses, 300 huts; no date trees. By 1831 (Warden 1985 [1856]; 327), the population was 4,100; 20 pearling boats, 22 fishing boats, and 12 trading batiil; no date trees. Brief notes in 1836 and 39 indicate the population had risen to 5 – 7,500, and that town populations constantly fluctuated from changes in trade and disputes. By 1854, Jazirat al-Hamra was governed with Dibba by Ibrahim bin Sultan al-Qasimi as wali appointed by his father, the Shaikh of Sharjah. Together, the two towns produced a revenue of 1,800 reals; for comparison, the places from Mamzar to Hamriyya and including Sharjah town paid 2,000 reals. In 1901 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 104) the wali of Jazirat al-Hamra was Mahzam bin Mahmud; the Zaab population was 600 [souls but probably houses]. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol 2, 622 – 3) noted c.500 houses of Zaab in the small northern quarter of Umm Awaimir and the larger southern quarter of al-Manakh; 100 camels, 100 donkeys, 150 cattle and 500 sheep; 25 pearling boats, and ten small boats carrying firewood to Sharjah and Dubai; their date trees were at Khatt. In 1910, (Walker 1994; vol 1, 190), Shaikh Mahzam bin Hamud al-Zaabi of Jazirat-al-

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Hamra was killed in Ras al-Khaimah town by Sultan bin Salim al-Qasimi; the public reason given was that Shaikh Mahzam objected to Sultan bin Salims proposed governorship of Ras al-Khaimah and its dependencies, but in reality said to be because of his objections to Sultan bin Salims wish to marry a girl from Mahzams family. Shaikh Mahzam was a father-in-law of Shaikh Saqr bin Khalid, ruler of Sharjah. In 1939 (Walker 1994; vol 5, 554) Muhammad bin Nasir al-Zaabi, Shaikh of bu Baqra in Oman, arrived in Ajman, with Rs 6,900 from the Sultan of Masqat for the Ruler of Ras al-Khaimah in payment for building a fort in Wadi al-Qawr, and to settle the question of monthly payments for the fort garrison. It was reported in 1947 (Walker 1994; vol 3, 199) the Shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah had agreed to pay the Shaikh of Jazirat al-Hamra an ad hoc payment of Rs 12,000 (Rs 4,000 for the Shaikh and Rs 8,000 for his followers), and an annual payment of Rs 5,000 plus half the income from any oil found in the area of Jazirat alHamra. By 1950 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 558), this money had apparently not been paid; the shaikh of Jazirat al-Hamra was demanding an annual allowance from the Rulers oil concession money, but the ruler was unable to make one. In 1951 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 565), the dispute between Shaikh Saqr of Ras al-Khaimah and Shaikh Abdullah bin Hassan ended when Shaikh Saqr attacked Jazirat al-Hamra with 70 men and occupied the village; Abdullah bin Hassan and his son were captured and imprisoned in the fort for three months. On their release, they went briefly to Kalba and then to Dubai, where Abdullah bin Hassan became a businessman. By 1968, Zaab were again on bad terms with Shaikh Saqr bin Muhammad, and accepted an invitation from Shaikh Zayid of Abu Dhabi to move there. Most of the historical information from the archive about Ras al-Khaimah town concerned its furuj,described in Chapters 2 and 6. An Al Ali remarked: “Our family did come from Umm al-Qawain originally, but I have no idea when. History and the past are not interests of mine. My family used to summer in Hudaiba, we had a house behind the cinema, towards the Saqr hospital.” Another Al Ali said “The Al Ali here arent from Umm al-Qawain, but from the same family. We have been here a long time, two to three hundred years at least, and probably more if anyone knew.” Ras al-Khaimah town is mentioned first by bin Majid in the late 15th century. The 17th century poet bin Dahir (Ghanem 2001; 306) was said by Muhammad al-Makki to be buried in Kharran graveyard, and to have

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mentioned a big flood before his time, when heavy rains and a storm at sea combined to bring the sea almost up to Hail, descending suddenly, badaha, on 90,000 people in Ras al-Khaimah and Maarid. Muhammad alMakki said It is interesting to learn that Maarid existed as a place so much earlier than I had known. We are sure that 90,000 people is poetic licence, for effect, because none of us can see how there could have been that many people living here before. Davies (1997; 211) mentions the garrison of Ras al-Khaimah town was composed of 3,000 men of the Qawasim, “Taal” [probably Zaab], “Shahine ” [Davies suggests Shihuh but Shahin of the Awanat is more probable], Matarish, of B. Khalid and c.1,000 mercenaries who had been in Mahratta service. [In 1802, the Baroda Resident said 2 – 3,000 potential Arab mercenaries entered Gujerat and Kutch annually; it is therefore possible that some of the garrison of Ras al-Khaimah were Arabs from the wider region (Davies; 1997, 378, n 143)]. In addition to the garrison, there were another 8,000 inhabitants. In 1818, the number of houses at Ras al-Khaimah was estimated at c. 1,000, the same as Lorimer nearly a century later. Many of the population left for Sharjah after the 1819 bombardment; in 1826 the population was said to be 3,750 and in 1831 5,400 (AGI 1856; 327). At both dates, Sharjah had more than double the population of Ras al-Khaimah. Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr al-Qasimi (ruled 1803 – 1866) was both Shaikh of Sharjah and Shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah. Both towns were administered by a close relative who carried out his orders (Lorimer 1908 – 1915; vol. 1, 756). For most of this period, Ras al-Khaimah was administered by a son, Ibrahim bin Sultan. Ibrahims son, Mushari, was appointed governor of Dibba in 1855 and murdered there by Shihuh because of his tyrannical behaviour. After Sultan bin Saqrs death in 1866, Shaikh Ibrahim proclaimed his independence at Ras al-Khaimah town. In May 1867, Shaikh Khalid bin Sultan, Saqrs successor in Sharjah, attacked Ras al-Khaimah town, expelling Shaikh Ibrahim and reincorporating the town and its dependencies into Sharjah. Shaikh Khalid was killed in single combat by the Shaikh of Abu Dhabi and succeeded by his brother, Shaikh Salim bin Sultan. Salim bin Sultan appointed his nephew, Shaikh Humaid bin Abdullah, as governor of Ras al-Khaimah (Lorimer 1908 – 1915; vol.1, 759). In 1869, Shaikh Humaid bin Abdullah proclaimed himself independent of Sharjah and between 1871 and 1873, re-annexed Shaam, Rams and Shimal which had at some time separated themselves from his principality (Lorimer 1980 – 1915; vol. 1, 760). Walker (1994; vol 1, 104) in 1901 reported the wali of Ras al-Khaimah town was Hamud bin Majid al-Qasimi [inconsistencies in the names of

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governors of Ras al-Khaimah town can be explained by the use of Deputy-Governors]; 250 houses of al-Mahharah, 150 of Al-Ali, 300 of Ahl Ras al-Khaimah, and 200 of Al bu Muhair, 9 Hyderabadi traders and 20 Persian traders. Lorimer recorded in 1906 – 7 (1908 – 15, vol 2, 1007 – 8) c. 1,000 houses, half of stone and gypsum mortar, the other half arish; c. 250 houses of Maharah, 150 of Al Ali, c. 400 houses of Ahl Ras al-Khaimah, 120 of Al bu Muhair, a few Darawish Naim, 10 families of Baluchis from Bashhakard district of Persia, and 33 khojah. Maaridh was inhabited by Persians from Rams. Al-Maharah are now unknown, Heard-Bey (1996; 435, n124) considering they may have merged with Zaab. An Ahl Ras al-Khaimi said Maharah was a harat of Ras al-Khaimah, it was the suq, market, so perhaps al-Maharah were market traders and their families, who moved away to a more prosperous town. Surveys from 1818, 1822, 1829, and a sketch in 1855 (Taylor 1985 [1856]; 14 – 15: Brucks 1985 [1856]; 541) have no consistent information on Maharah. After the storms of the late 1940s and 1950s, during which the point was washed away, Al Ali who had lived there moved to Maarid and other parts of Ras al-Khaimah town. In the 1950s, Maarids inhabitants included Zaab, Murri, Al Ali, Shihuh and others from Bukha, Iranians and the Sirkal family. A Shihhi said, “I came from Bukha about fortyfive years ago. There was a war between the rulers of Bukha and there was nothing in Bukha. We were invited by Shaikh Saqr and we settled in Maarid which at that time had no stone houses, everyone lived in arish” [a narrative device, as the stone and gypsum Zaab and Sirkal houses were built by then, and other people said they lived in Maarid about that time in khaimah with stone, mudbrick, or yarid walls.] The population of Ras al-Khaimah and Maarid in 1959 was c.8,000. The historical mentions of Julfar refer to a succession of sites along this coast or to this coast in general; its economic importance from preIslamic time to the mid 18th century was mentioned in Chapter 8. It had a political importance as the entry to Oman for Abbasid and Buyid military and naval expeditions wanting to impose their authority on independent Omani rulers. The coastal regions, including Julfar, had become part of Hormuz by the time of Ibn Battutas visit in c.1330 (1962; ii, 408 – 9). Piacentini (pers.comm.) considers that the tribes of Julfar had influence in Hormuzian political affairs. The coasts were then controlled by Portuguese, while Nabhan muluk controlled the Omani interior and B Hilal and B Jabir amir held many of the northern forts, including Buraimi. There were minor rebellions in Julfar and other coastal places against the Portuguese during the 16th century. In 1622, at the capture of Hormuz by

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the Persians and English, Arabs captured there came from Julfar (Bathurst 1967; 49 – 50). Persian forces took Julfar and in 1630, permitted Portuguese to build a fort at Julfar (Bathurst 1967; 71). At this time, Imam Nasir b Murshid was extending his Imamate in Oman; the as-Sirr area, up to Julfar, was controlled by Al Hilal (from whom Naim come) and Jabir muluk (Bathurst 1967; 73 – 4), whose bedu sections had their headquarters at Aflaj near Dhank in Omani Dhahira. The leader of Al-Hilal was Nasr b Qatan; there is a very old mosque in Hudaiba called al-Qatan. After Ruy Freyres strengthening of the coastal towns, Julfar and Mascat were important for Portuguese control of the sea. Using ibn Qaysars biography of Imam Nasir bin Murshid, Bathurst (1967; 86 – 88) describes the taking of the Persian fort at Julfar by a force under Ali bin Ahmad and some Yaariba; the Persian garrison was helped by the local population of as-Sirr, and by the guns of a Portuguese ship. Reinforcements of the Imam arrived and beseiged the Portuguese fort, whose garrison eventually sued for peace and evacuated their newly built fort. A wali of Julfar was appointed and Omani troops garrisoned both forts. Slot (1993; 160, n109) mentions Ali al-Casmi as one of the two Omani negotiators with the Portuguese in 1646 over an armistice agreement that recognised Portuguese rule over Masqat in exchange for the surrender of fortresses between Dibba and Masqat to the Omanis. After the Al-Hilal lost their places in Oman, following the capture and killing of Mani b Sinan alUmayri, malik of Sumayil who had a house in Dibba, Nasir b Qatan and other Hilali leaders took refuge with Portuguese in Suhar. Their followers took to highway robbery in the hill pass leading to Julfar (Bathurst 1967; 97 – 98 from ibn Qaysar), probably Wadi Hamm, and raided Bani Khalid and Bani Lam camels and property in al-Batinah. OmaniPortuguese conflict continued at sea, with constant sea battles. In 1719, a Portuguese fleet took on the Omani fleet off Kunj. The Omanis lost five hundred men and were forced back into Julfar to wait for reinforcements from Mascat (Bathurst 1967; 212). During the Hinawi-Ghafiri wars, the Amir of Julfar was Rahma bin Matar al-Huwala or al-Qasimi, who supported Muhammad bin Nasir, the Ghafiri leader, and led a force of 5,000 bedu and hadhr to support Muhammad bin Nasir in his attacks on the Batinah. By 1736, Nadir Khan, the Persian ruler, had a fleet and forced the Shaikhs of Julfar and the southern coast of the Gulf to submit. When Imam Sayf bin Sultan 11 asked the Persians for help, Julfar was the main port used by Persian troops. After Nadir Khan had split from Imam Sayf bin Sultan ll, he returned to Julfar and built a garrison there, sending Shaikh Rahma to

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Gombroon (Bathurst 1967; 286). At the end of 1737, the governor of Fars was sent to Julfar at the head of an expedition to take Mascat; the Persians reached Mascat in April 1738, taking the town but not the forts. The two Omani leaders met with tribal chiefs, and combined to get rid of the Persians. The Persians abandoned the seige of the Mascat forts and retired to Barka, where the naval commander died from poison; the governor of Fars beseiged Suhar and then went to Julfar, reportedly with Shaikh Rahma and his son as guides supplied by Imam Sayf; and then to Persia, leaving a garrison at Julfar. In 1742, Imam Sayf turned to the Persians at Julfar and offered to become a Persian vassal if they would help him regain Oman. Nadir Shah wanted Mascat to free Persian trade from Omani interference, and to reduce the Huwala, as in 1740 the Persian fleet, manned by mostly Huwala Arabs, had mutinied over arrears of pay and poor rations, and taken the fleet to Khor Fakkan, from where they raided the Gulf and tried to retake Bahrain. The leaders, Abdullah al-Shaikh and Rahma bin Matar, wanted to be free of Persia and Oman, and took Khasab. The Huwala changed to supporting Imam Sultan when Imam Sayf asked for Persian help; it may have been Imam Sayf who persuaded the Persian garrison at Julfar to march against Khasab in April 1742/1155. The Huwala were badly beaten, with 300 men captured and Shaikh Rahma killed (Bathurst 1967; 303 – 6 using EIC Factory Records, Persia and Persian Gulf, vol V; Gombroon Diary 19 April 1742; Otter 1748; vol 2, 163, 169). After this, Julfar is hardly mentioned. In Rams, a Ramsawi explained, Nobody in Rams is asil, the descendant of an original inhabitant. They have all come from everywhere; Tunaij came from Dhaid, people came from Iraq, Persia, Hasa, Qatar, Bahrain, Bukha … Its because the town is on the coast, and so its people are a mixed bag who are Ramsawis, Rams people. There are bedu, Bani Yas, who have become Ramsawis. Ramsawis were traders, fishermen, pearl divers, date growers, bayadir. In Rams, people dont really talk about others in tribal terms but as traders, fishermen, date-growers, bedu, bida. In the past, people never said someone was Shihuh, they said he was a mountain person, a biday.

A Tunaiji commented, Tunaij are part of Bani Qitab, also known as al-Qitba and Qitban. Tunaij came to Rams about two hundred years ago, maybe a little more, and they were everywhere – here, Dhaid, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, wherever there were opportunities. It sounds as if in the past Rams was populated entirely by Tunaij because people working for Tunaij – khawadim or bayadir –

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often took the name while they were working here. There are similar sounding family names: the Manasir are part of the Dosiri, but Mansur families in Ras al-Khaimah and Rams might not be from the Manasir Dosiri but Iranian families called Mansur. Some family names come from nicknames, and there are group names given by outsiders, like Shihuh; some say Dhahuriyyin are another example. My mothers family came from Bukha in 1970, when Qabus decided Bukha was Omani. Other Bani Hadiya Shihuh from Bukha moved down in 1924 or 25. Even at that time, many Shihuh at Bukha had relations here, in Shimal, or Ghalilah, and had inherited fields here which for some of them, some of the time, were more convenient than their fields behind Bukha. Another wave of people left Bukha for here and Maarid between those dates, from interference by Taimur, the father of Qabus.

Another Tunaiji said, As far as I know, a bin Salih household, a small group of closely related families, settled here maybe two hundred years or so ago. I dont think it was earlier than that. More Tunaij followed them, and they bred, and now Rams is about 60 % Tunaij. Why they moved to Rams I dont know, maybe it was to do with the carrying trade, because Tunaij did carrying for Zaab and the people of Dibba. These three were a sworn alliance, a hilf. Where the original Ramsawis came from I dont know, but there were close links between the people of Bukha and Ramsawis, and most of them are Bani Hadiya. Before modern times, Ramsawis lived along the shore, by the creek; Tunaij had their houses in the middle, where the towers are; and beyond them were Maraziq. Maraziq were tribespeople from Arabia who took the name of the place in Rams where they lived; that was called Maraziq because originally it had been lived on by Iranians who came from Marzuq and another place in Iran (Lorimer 1908 – 15; 1091, Marazig at Bustanah; 1246, Maraziq at Mughu).

An elderly Ramsawi said, Im Naimi, from the Darusha section. The only Naim who came to Rams was my sixth grandfather, and I think he came because of a killing. He came from Sunaini southwest of Buraimi; first he went to Hudaiba, then to Muharriq behind Rams at the foot of the mountains and married a local girl, and we stayed there for some time and moved between there and Rams. The people who live in Rams and say they are Shihuh often arent Shihuh at all, but Iranian. The bin Salih are confusing. There are bin Salih from Muhammad bin Abd ar-Rahman bin Salih of as-Suwailim of Diriyya, he was the Wahhabi missionary sent here around two hundred years ago. This was like the Zaab, who also had a missionary. The Tunaij at Dhaid never had anything to do with Rams. The confusion arises because the first Shaikh Saqr married a daughter of this Muhammad bin Abd ar-Rahman bin Salih. About the same time, he also married a daughter of the Tunaij shaikh in Dhaid who was also bin Salih. Shaikh Saqr appointed his father-in-law, the Tunaij bin

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Salih, as Amir of Rams; the only Tunaij who came to Rams were the relations and retainers who came with the bin Salih appointed as Amir. I think that the outlying towers of the qalaa at Dhaya, like the qalaa itself, were owned by the government, hukuma, of Rams. The lower qalaa, Burj Abdullah bin Khamis, was the seat of government, it was where everything happened. Now, they belong to the Qawasim. Before them, to the bin Salih. Before them, to the Kharus, and he was very unpopular because he collected boy slaves. The Kharus were part of Yaariba who came from Nizwa and ruled this area before the bin Salih and the Qawasim. But the Kharus didnt really rule because the Shihuh ruled by public assemblies and they were here using the town and living in the mountains behind all the time. Before him, it belonged to the Persians, to Hormuz. Rams had walls from the mountain spur by the quarry down to the coast, roughly where the towers are, and there had been a gate. Rams had three harah: the al-Farsi harat, and you tell me Lienhardt records Awaimir living there in 1953 – 4; I remember a few families of Suwaidan who lived there. Then there was the central or Tunaiji harat, where the Suwailim and eight or nine families of Manai from a tribe of the same name. The gharbiyya or western harat was also known as the Marazqi harat but the Maraziq had gone.

A Shihhi remarked: “My father was born in Shaam, married a Rams girl, and bought this garden in 1910.” A Mansuri remarked: “My family are of bedu origin and we came here from Abu Dhabi.” In Shimal, a Shamaili said, “When the Wahhabis were here, they destroyed a sanam at Rams.” A Shutairi commented: “The people of Rams and the Shihuh had an alliance, as Rams was a market and port used by Shihuh.” European sources first mention Rams in 1620, (Boxer 1930; 51 – 2 [Ruy Freyre de Andrade 1647]) when Ruy Freyre Andrade learnt at Kumzar that Julfar and Rams were in revolt. Off Khasab he attacked two ships, killing everyone except two old shaikhs of Rams on their way to the Shah of Persia to offer friendship and valuable presents of carpets and horses. For them, he demanded a ransom of 120,000 patacas [a soldier received 6 patacas for three months bread, rice and meat] from Rams. This was collected in 1622; Andrade sent a ship to the bar off Rams and set the shaikhs servants ashore to collect it before going to Julfar where the Portuguese established themselves in the great mosque, plundered the suburbs and bombarded the fort (Boxer 1930; 53). The following year, Rams was listed among the forts to which the Persians and their Arab allies retired and as trading ports producing good revenues (Boxer 1930; 182).

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In 1749/1162, Ahmad b Said of Oman was in Rams when he attacked the Qawasim ports of as-Sirr before imposing a blockade (Taylor 1985 [1856]; 14). In 1775, the Qawasim took Rams from Oman, who in 1786/ 1200 retook Rams, with Khor Fakkan and Jazirat al-Hamra; Hamad Said died that year. During the reign of Sultan bin Ahmad, the Qawasim retook these ports (Taylor 1985 [1856]; 14). al-Rashid (1981; 24) says the people of Rams at that time were Shihuh; Rams was a port of the Shihuh in alliance with the Qawasim (Kelly 1968 [1958]; 18) The Tunaij of Rams, like the Zaab, accepted Wahabism about 1800 before the Qawasim. Davies (1997; 326 – 7) quotes Lam ash-Shihab; when they accepted Wahabism, they supported Abd al-Aziz bin Saud totally, because they had been subject to Qasimi tyranny. So they told Mutlaq al-Mutairi, the Saudi commander, we will engage in maritime plunder and fight the idolators and deliver a fifth of the booty to the Imam, but we want to take over dhows and baghlahs from the Qawasim, because we have only got small craft such as batiils and baqqaras. So Mutlaq addressed the people of Ras al-Khaimah The time has come to undertake cruises and kill everyone who rejects our creed. If you refuse to do this, you must deliver up 20 dhows and baghlas to your brothers in religion, the Zaab and Tunaij, and they will execute it and retain possession of your vessels and receive their share of the booty. This obliged the Qawasim to comply with Saudi demands although for three years they were reluctant participants, unlike the Zaab and Tunaij, who informed the Saudi ruler if the Qawasim fell short. This was reversed in 1803, on the accession of Sultan bin Saqr, and the Zaab and Tunaij are not mentioned again.

By 1808, Rams was sending out boats without the permission of Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr (Kemball 1985 [1856]; 130). In 1809, Hussain bin Ali al-Qasimi, the Shaikh of Rams, was invested by the Wahabi chief with the fullest authority over as-Sirr, enabling him to compel Qawasim leaders at Lingah and Ras al-Khaimah (Hassan bin Rahma al-Qasimi Amir, and Ibrahim b Sultan naval Amir) to cruise with vessels of Rams. The British 1809 bombardment destroyed Rams shipping, as at Jazirat alHamra and Ras al-Khaimah; altogther, 60 large ships and 43 smaller were destroyed, with a value of $55,000 or c£15,000, and goods returned to Masqat were valued at Rs200,000 or c£20,000 (Davies 1997; 190 – 1). In 1818, Captain Taylor (1985 [1856]; 15) reported the sandbar off Rams made the creek secure; Rams had towers and c. 400 houses under Abd ar-Rahman bin Salih al-Tunaiji. In 1819, British forces found Rams abandoned, and the people at Dhaya with its strong fort; Hassan bin Ali, the shaikh of Dhaya, was a signatory of the 1820 peace treaty.

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In 1822, Hassan bin Ali was deported to Sharjah, and Muhammad b Abd ar-Rahman b Salih appointed as ruler of Rams by Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr, with 1,250 inhabitants, 250 huts, 15 fishing boats and 4,500 date trees (Warden 1985 [1856]; 327). By 1831, the population was 1,650 with 300 huts, 18 fishing boats and 6,720 date trees, although another source noted in 1827/9 Rams was still in ruins, with 300 – 400, the remains of the former unhabitants, living in the date gardens; they fished, sent boats to the pearl fishing, and worked on Ras al-Khaimah trading boats. Kemball 1985 [1856]; 100) c.1836 noted Rams owned a baghalah in the east African trade, 5 smaller boats in the Gulf trade, and contributed $80 revenue to Ras al-Khaimah. In 1901 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 104) Rams had 300 houses of Tunaij, under Salih bin Abd ar-Rahman bin Salih. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol 2, 1006) recorded c. 400 houses, mostly stone with mud mortar, a few arish; 3 pearl boats, 10 fishing boats, 1 sambuk that fetched dates from Basra; a shop owned by a Persian; c.7,000 date trees at Dhaya. In 1911 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 195), the shaikh of Rams was accused of conniving at the shipping of arms, in spite of remonstrances by Shaikh Salim of Ras al-Khaimah and the Resident Agent, and fined $2,000 under threat of demolition of Rams by HMS Fox. In 1914, Shaam and Shihuh fought against Rams, settled by Abdullah b Sinan of Dibba Baiah (Walker 1994; vol 2, 492). By 1921, Ras al-Khaimah was claiming Rams as a dependency. In June, Abd ar-Rahman bin Salih, the headman of Rams and his allies, Shaikh Ahmad b Sulaiman of Bukha and Shaikh Salih bin Muhammad of Dibba Baiah, fought Shaikh Sultan bin Salim of Ras al-Khaimah; the latter had detained 513 divers working for nakhuda, subjects of places on the Trucial Coast, in debt to British Indian subjects. The Residency agent in Sharjah arranged a four month truce for the pearling season. In July, Abd ar-Rahman bin Salih was murdered at Shaikh Sultans instigation and his brother Muhammad was appointed Amir, who agreed to sever relations with the Shihuh; to maintain good relations with the people of Rams; to pay the Ruler of Ras al-Khaimah Rs 1,000 a year from revenues of Rams; and that Shaikh Sultan bin Salim should build a fort dominating the creek at Rams. Sultan bin Salim on his side undertook to appoint Muhammad bin Salih as Amir; not to harm Muhammad bin Salih or his brother, or take their possessions; to consult Muhammad bin Salih before taking hostile action in respect of reports received about him, and to allow him to verify them; and to pay blood money to the two Shihuh leaders. In August, Muhammad bin Salih broke the treaty and was sent to Sharjah, while Sultan bin

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Salim allowed Shihuh free use of the port of Rams, and the Shihuh agreed not to cause trouble. In January 1922, Muhammad bin Salih fled from Sharjah and occupied the fort in Rams; the affair was sorted out by the British on the same terms with the proviso that disputes arising from Shaikh Sultan bin Salim not keeping his promises should be referred to the Political Resident (Walker 1994; vol 2, 437ff: IOR 14/180 – 11). The people of Rams complained to the Senior Naval Officer, representing the Political Resident, in the following October of Shaikh Sultan bin Salims oppressive behaviour. In 1933 there was a bad epidemic in Rams, and the following year the pearling season was very poor, so that Rams found it impossible to pay Rs 1,000 to Ras al-Khaimah as agreed. The Shaikh of Rams visited the SNO of HMS Shoreham at Khor Khuwair to present Rams case to the Ruler. In 1949, just after Shaikh Saqr bin Muhammad had become ruler of Ras al-Khaimah, some Shihuh assisted by the Shaikh of Rams rose against the Ruler of Ras al-Khaimah. The leader, Said bin Badi, was blinded by Shaikh Saqr, against the advice of his father and brothers, and Shihuh rose against him; the matter was settled by the Ruler of Dubai (Walker 1994; vol 1, 554). An elderly Ramsawi said, About the blinding of Said bin Badi in 1949. This was started by Humaid bin Saqr, who wanted to take over the bin Salih tower in Rams. Abd arRahman b Salih, the headman of Rams, called in Said al-Badi, Amir of Shimal, to help him resist. He lost and Saqr blinded Said al-Badi. I dont know what happened then.

In 1950, like other local leaders, the Shaikh of Rams demanded an annual allowance from the Rulers oil concession payment, but the Ruler was unable to oblige (Walker 1994; vol 1, 558). The following year, Saif bin Abd ar-Rahman, Shaikh of Rams, made several disturbances claiming an allowance, with Shihuh support (Walker 1994; vol 1, 565). In 1952, Shaikh Saqr took full control over Rams, with British support, and the bin Salih family left Rams. In 1955, the population of Rams was c. 400 houses of Tunaij with c. 1,300 trees (Walker 1994; vol 3, 353). A local Shihhi said, Khor Khuwair had rather a mixed population. Khor Khuwair included anybody from the southern end of Ghalilah and the mouths of the wadis who wanted to fish. Hulayla in the past, maybe nine hundred years ago, was full of people. The south end of Hulayla near Rams was Maraziq, and the rest were people now unknown who moved north to Shaam, Ghalilah, and other places. People still say My family came from Hulayla. Shaam,

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Ghalilah and Khor Khuwair have always been Shihhi. Khor Khuwair used to be called al-Haam, it was only the creek that was Khor Khuwair.

A Bani Hasuun from Khor Khuwair remarked, Ive been told that Khor Khuwair is really old, and predates Shaam and Ghalilah. But who knows, when you remember the very old tombs from long before Islam at Ghalilah.

At Ghalilah, an elderly Shihuh commented, In the past, Ghalilah was bounded by walls from the mountain spurs to the sea on the south and the north, from where the old sanam was. People brought their possessions inside the walls when there were attacks. These attackers were from outside, they were outside authorities, Qawasim, Turks, Portuguese, and before the Portuguese, the authority [Hormuzi] at Dhaba at Shimal.

Another man recalled, There were three furuj; one here with fifteen houses, one nearer the mountain with ten houses, and one to the north with fifteen houses. And they had houses on the sand ridge above the beach, as well.

Another said, The mounds on the edges of the date gardens are very old indeed, and we have no idea what they might be. The tombs the archaeologists excavated were to the east, nearer the foothills.

At Shaam, an elderly Shihhi said, We are all Shihuh here, all Shutair. Whoever said Shaam was Tunaiji was completely wrong. Shaam has never been Tunaij, not a hundred and fifty years ago, not ever.

A Ramsawi remarked, The Juan family and the people of Shaam who arent Shihhi came from Khasab. Shihhi means bida, mountain people. But the people of Shaam are Shihuh, even though they arent all bida.

A very elderly Shihhi said, Before Shaikh Saqr, all the Shihuh in this area went to the Amir of Bukha, Ahmad b Sulaiman b Malik – the family in which there were all the rows. A lot of people left Bukha and went to Maarid because of the quarrelling.

The first European mention of these places was by Balbi in his 1580 account of the Arab coast of the Gulf – Sirr Corcor [Sirr Khor Khuwair] (1962; 121). A Dutch expedition in 1645 mentions Shaam (Slot 1993;

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150), where friendly contact was made and its pagoda noted. The 1826 British survey of the Qawasim coastal places mentions Ghalilah. These two, or probably all three, as Khor Khuwair was often subsumed under Ghalilah, had a population of 1,250, 15 fishing boats, 250 huts, and 9,000 date trees (Warden 1985 [1856]; 327); in 1831, there were 2,000 more date trees. Brucks 1827 survey (1985 [1856]; 540) mentions Shaam as a considerable village of about 250 Tunaij and nearly as many of mixed tribes; the village Shaikh was also the governor of the small district of the same name, with about 900 persons of the same tribes. The area had a considerable amount of cultivated land and date groves with some good wells. Shaam was the boundary between Masqat and the Qawasim, and had suffered much during the predominance of the pirates, but are now recovering. [Brucks records Tunaij and Shihuh in Tbait, Fudgha, Ghamda and Bukha. This probably reflects political allegiance, with Tunaij being Shutair Shihuh who looked to Rams, and Shihuh being Hadiya looking to Bukha]. c.1859 or 1860, Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol 1, 722) noted a dispute between Shaam and Bukha; a fugitive from Shaam at the instigation of the Shaikh of Bukha, stole a baqqarah and some fishing nets from Shaam and brought them to Bukha; the Shaikh of Bukha was fined $100, collected by a British naval ship. In 1863 Palgrave (1865; vol 2, 316) landed at Shaam, a largeish village lining the beach. Between 1872 – 1886, Miles (1994 [1919]; vol 2, 445) noted c.2,000 inhabitants mostly Tunaij, a section of the Shihuh for the whole district; to the south was a well watered ravine full of palms and 16 wells in a line, possibly the remains of an ancient falaj, leading to a conical hill on the beach, called al-Sanain, and the remains of an Islamic saints tomb. In 1885 – 6, Shaam revolted against the Shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah, but was reduced to submission by the Shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah and his cousin, the Shaikh of Sharjah, and fined $1,600, of which part was paid at once. The Shaikh of Bukha put out to sea with an armed force, apparently to assist the Shaikhs of Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah against Shaam, but was admonished. In the 1901 list of Ras al-Khaimah dependencies (Walker 1994; vol 1, 104), the Amir of Shaam was Hasan bin Sulaiman; Shaam had a population of 200 Shihuh, Ghalilah 150, and Khor Khuwair, 30. Lorimer (1908 – 15; 2, 1684) noted Shaam had c 300 houses of Banu Shutair Shihuh, living by pearl diving, fishing, and cultivating dates, grain and vegetables; they owned two pearl boats, 6 – 7 coasting vessels taking firewood and dried fish to Sharjah, and 8 sambuqs for fishing; c. 7,000 date trees,

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and the usual animals. Ghalilah (Lorimer 1908 – 15; vol. 2, 1005) had c. 50 mud and stone houses of Ayyal Saad Shutair, 5 fishing boats and c. 4,000 date trees. Khor Khuwair had c. 30 houses of Bani Shutair, with c. 2,000 date trees. In 1914, Shaam supported Rams. Thomas in 1930 (Walker 1994; vol 6, 21) said the Shihuh of Shaam followed Shaikh Salih bin Muhammad of Dibba Baiah. In 1936, a dispute arose between Bukha and Shaam (IOR 14/227 – 1); in April, Bukha fishermen came to fish out of Shaam, hauling their boats up the beach at night and sleeping by them. One night, a boat was not in its usual place; villagers had taken it to the sea. The boats owners were angry, eventually weapons were used, and a man from Shaam was killed. Darkness fell, and the Bukha fishermen returned home. In May, Shaam men attacked Bukha and took a dhow. The Shaikh of Bukha accused the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah, Shaikh Sultan bin Salim, of a breach of the 1879 mutual treaty, and wrote to Shaikh Said Maktum of Dubai, the representative of the Masqat government, the Residency Agent at Sharjah, and the Shaikh of Dibba Baiah, complaining of the aggression by Shaam at sea, that they had destroyed his watchtower at Dara, and that Ras al-Khaimi divers were in debt to Bukha merchants. The Political Agent in Bahrain wrote to Sultan bin Salim to investigate the matter; he found no proof against the Shaam men and effected a reconciliation. In 1937, Shaikh Sultan bin Salim declared Jabal al-Qir was his northern border and probably then he appointed Ali bin Salih Shutair as Wali of Shaam (Walker 1994; vol 3, 433 – 4), as the ruler of Bukha made no claim and had no representative in the area. c.1941 – 2, the Shaikh of Bukha asked Shaikh Sultan bin Salim for permission, which was granted, to build a stone garage in al-Jir, as he came by boat to al-Jir and continued by car when going to Sharjah or Dubai. In 1949, he appointed Salih b Ahmad Bani Hadiya as his representative, first as a commercial agent but later to build up a following. In 1950, trouble arose between 400 supporters of Bukha and 1,000 supporters of Shaam, and HMS Flamingo was sent to make peace. The Shaikh of Bukha signed an agreement, later repudiated, to inform the Shihuh community living in Shaam that Shaam was RAK territory under the governship of the wali, Ali b Salih. In 1951 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 565), the Masqat government sent a deputation led by the Wali of Barka to Shaam to settle the troubles permanently, and claimed the area of Shaam, Rams and Khatt. It was decided to settle the Shaam troubles without further reference to the Shaikh of Bukha or the Masqat government; in February 1951, the PO reported that the Bani Hadiya, numbering 50 – 60 when not reinforced

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from Bukha, had had enough of fighting, and their wali informed him that if Shaikh Saqr appointed a strong and just wali to control the area, they would willingly recognise his rule. The walis own property had suffered in the fighting and if peace wasnt secured, he and his family would move to Ras al-Khaimah town. In 1952 (Walker 1994; vol 3, 435), Bani Shutair from the Shaam area opposed the Trucial Oman Levies northeast of Rams after the expulsion of the bin Salih of Rams, but later sent a spokesman offering to submit to the Ruler of Ras al-Khaimah. In 1955, (Walker 1994; vol 3, 535), Shaam was a large village of 300 houses, and 7,000 date trees; Qir/Jir had c. 30 houses; the coastal hamlet of Sunum had c. 150 date trees; Ghalilah had 50 stone and mud houses of Ayyal Bani Saad Shutair and c. 4,000 date trees; Khor Khuwair had 30 houses of Bani Shutair and c. 1,700 date trees. In July 1963, (Walker 1994; vol 6, 274), the Wali of Shaam made his own bid for independence as a result of Habus complaints against Shaikh Saqr and the subsequent negotiations. Only two brief remarks in the archive touched on history at Khasab. A Kumzari said “No-one now has any idea about the cause of the split in the Shihuh into Hadiya and Shutair, or when it happened. But to say it took place a hundred and fifty years ago is nonsense. If it were then, people would have at least some idea of what it was about.” A Dhahuri in Shaam commented: The people in Khasab are not Shihhi, despite their names. These came about recently, because of the need to register for passports and identity documents. Originally, Khasab was inhabited by Dhahuriyyin and bayadir who were Arabs from Persia, Persians from Persia, and maybe some from India. This was a long, long time ago.

No conversations about history were held with people in Kumzar. Published sources refer to Khasab and Kumzar. King (2001; 72), quoting al-Maqdisi, mentions Khasab in the 10th century AD as one of the qasaba (strong places) of Arabia. Aubin (1953; 159) mentioned the flight of Saif ad-Din Nusrat to Kumzar and then to Laft on Qishm during inter-family fighting over the succession to the throne of Hormuz in the 680s/1280s. bin Majid (trans. and ed.Tibbetts, 1971; 213) writing in 1489 – 90 says Musandam was a collection of very dangerous islands with strong currents and these are the habitations of al-Kamara [Tibbetts – Kamara unknown but probably Kumazara] and some ruffian Arabs.

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Albuquerque mentions Khasab and Kumzar in 1507. Khasab paid 12 lacs as revenue to Portuguese Hormuz in c. 1541 – 3 (Aubin 1973; 219). Balbi (1962; 121) lists both Khasab and Kumzar in 1580. Ruy Freyre Andrade (Boxer 1930; 51 – 2) based his fleet at Khasab in 1622 – 4, and (1930; 189) wrote that the townsmen of Kumzar had served as sailors in the armadas of rowing vessels at Hormuz. Khasab was still in Portuguese occupation in 1640 (Bathurst 1967; 96, from Philippus). Slot (1993; 150) noted the visit of the Zeeumew Dutch expedition to Khasab and Kumzar in 1645, and in 1647/8 (1993; 160) recorded Shaikh Malik of Khasab, assumed to be an ancestor of the bin Malik Hadiya Shihuh rulers of Khasab. A Portuguese fleet, sent from Goa in 1652 to destroy Omani ships and secure a better site than Henjam, anchored off Khasab and were invited to settle by Shaikh Malik in an attempt to succede from Omani control (Bathurst 1967; 136, who notes that this information comes from external, not Omani, sources). The Portuguese had started to build a garrison when they learnt the Imam was coming with a large force, and left (Bathurst 1967; 114 – 5, from Carmelite and Portuguese records). The Dutch ship Meerkat visited Khasab in 1666; the fort was garrisoned by the Imam of Oman, there were fifty to sixty houses and many date palms; the people were fishermen and in summer people came in from the countryside to harvest the dates. Kumzar had 50 fishermens houses. Ibn Ruzaiq (1871; 150 – 2) wrote that in 1738/9, when Imam Saif b Sultans only option was to ask the Persians in Julfar for help, the Qawasim joined the opposition against him, occupying Khasab at some time between 1739 and early 1743 when they were chased out (and see above, Julfar 1742). Imam Saif b Sultan died in 1743, and followed by Imam Ahmad bin Said of Suhar who in his attacks on the Qawasim pushed his conquests as far as Khasab, the governor of which place, Hassan bin Abdullah as-Shihhi, who was formerly subject to the Qawasim, submitted voluntarily to his government in 1162AH /1749 (Taylor 1985 [1856]; 7). In 1781, Khasab may have been under Qawasim rule again as Risso (1986; 63 – 5) relates the seizure by Arabs of Khasab of the cargo of a Bushire dhow owned by merchants from Bushire, Masqat, and Basra. In retaliation, the mutasellim of Basra seized a cargo of coffee believed to belong to a merchant of Khasab. Shaikh Saqr bin Rashid al-Qasimi went to Basra to get the return of this coffee, asserting his father Rashid had made an agreement with the Pasha of Baghdad to be answerable for the restitution of Basran property taken by peoples from the southern end of the Gulf. By 1786, the Qawasim did not have Shihuh territories. Hanthal (1987) re-

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produces some documents collected by bin Malik shaikhs of Khasab and Bukha; the earliest is dated 1211/1796. Captain Taylors 1818 report (1985 [1856]; 13 – 14) mentions Khasab as a Shihuh port, with weavers from Qishm making cloth – wuzra and turbans – for local markets. Brucks (1985 [1856]; 618) states about two hundred of the men had been in the pirate boats (these men may have been Kumazarah or Dhahuriyyin who like the Qawasim were Ghafiri, while Shihuh were Hinawi). In his 1829 survey, Brucks states (1985 [1856]; 534 – 5, 537 – 8) Kumzar had c. 300 inhabitants, subject to the Imam of Masqat; Khasab had 3 – 400 Shihuh inhabitants, living in the date groves; a little inland, wheat, barley and vegetables grew; the people were partly cultivators and partly fishermen; they sent boats to the pearl fishery, and had some little trade in salt fish, getting dates and grain in exchange. In 1839, Shaikh Sultan b Saqr, having failed to reduce by land Shihuh of Khasab, Kumzar and Ras Musandam, sent a naval force to blockade their ports; but on hearing the news of the Egyptians in Hasa, decided to abandon it (Kemball 1985 [1856]; 335). In 1858, (Lorimer 1908 – 15; 1, 623) Captain Jones visited Bukha, Khasab, Kumzar and other places on the Musandam coast by steam frigate and got some Qasimi prisoners released by the Shihuh; at Khasab, a notorious local pirate was surrendered to Captain Jones, who handed him over to Sayyid Said at Masqat. Lorimer (1908 – 15; 1, 623) notes the Shaikh of Khasab in 1863 complained to the British Resident in the Gulf that boatloads of men from Kumzar had burnt down his village of Ghassah. In 1887, Lorimer (1908 – 15; 1, 626) reported a man in the service of the Masqati Wali of Khasab was killed in fighting between Bani Shutair and Bani Hadiya in Khasab. The Sultan of Masqat sent his sons, Sayyids Faisal and Fahad, to Khasab by sea; they fined and collected $500 from each side, and reconciled the two factions. In 1890, fighting between Shutair and Hadiya broke out again in Khasab; the Sultan of Masqat sent a ship, and 3 Hadiya and 4 Shutair shaikhs were taken to Fort Jalali in Masqat. In 1893, the Shaikh of Khasab put to sea with an armed party to enforce a claim on the property of his dead father-in-law at Shaam (Lorimer 1908 – 15; 740). Kemballs 1901 report (Walker 1994; vol 5, 32ff) stated Sulaiman bin Malik bin Zaid was the Shaikh of Khasab. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol 2, 1607) noted Khasab had 300 houses of Shihuh, nearly all Bani Hadiya of whom c.300 were bayadir, and a few Bani Shutair. The surrounding date groves belonged partly to Shihuh of other places. Six seagoing boats went to Dubai, Lingah and the Batinah coast; they had no pearl boats of their

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own, but some went to the pearl banks in Dubai boats. The wali with 15 soldiers collected $600 zakat a year, and had land and a date garden allotted to him by the Sultan which covered his expenses; he paid and received nothing from Masqat. Kemball noted Yasir bin Sulaiman Kumzari as shaikh of Kumzar; other notable men were Abdullah b Sultan Kumzari and Rahma bin Hassan. Kumzar had 600 houses of Bani Shutair, and two large white washed mosques. The people were fishermen, with 40 – 50 fishing boats, and 5 sea-going boats to Qishm, Dubai and Masqat with cargoes of salt fish and sharks fins; small quantities of dried and salted fish were exported to Kuwait and Basra. They had no pearl boats of their own, but a few men went on Sharjah and Dubai boats. In 1928, Thomas noted boat building at Kumzar and Khasab. Thomas (1931; 215 – 253) and Hanthal (1987; 166 – 179) describe the 1930 dispute between Khasab and the British who wished to erect a survey point inland. The Kumzar shaikhs were Shaikh Muhammad Mahdi and Shaikh Abdullah b Sultan (Walker 1994; vol 6, 21 quoting Thomas), who kept in close touch with the Shaikh of Dibba Baiah; Muhammad bin Hilal and Yasir bin Zaid were also mentioned. The shaikh of Khasab was Shaikh Hassan bin Muhammad, who had succeeded his uncle Said bin Sulaiman in 1926. At Lima, the Amir stated, On the historical side, I can tell you that about a hundred and ten years ago, the Shihuh fought Ras al-Khaimah, where the Saqr Hospital is now. This fighting was led by Lima, but all the Shihuh joined. Everyone went to Dibba Baiah, and went down that way, they didnt come down the mountains directly into Ras al-Khaimah. The fighting had something to do with land, and I dont really know what the outcome was. In 1902, Ali bin Brayyim and Zaid Sinan Kumzari were the Shihhi leaders who helped the Sharqi drive the Qawasim out of Bithnah, and many Shihuh joined them in this. Much earlier than this, more than two hundred years ago, maybe four hundred years ago, Shihuh fought with Oman; contingents of Shihuh were active all the way down the Batinah coast as far as Masqat. At one time, Lima was bombarded by the Hollandiya, we had a fort at the bottom of Lima Qadimah, nearly on the beach. A lot of people had taken refuge in it, and there were defenders on the towers. The Dutch bombardment destroyed it, and everyone inside was killed when the building collapsed on top of them. At some time, we took three cannons; one of them is here at our old house, one is at our house in Salhad, and one is somewhere in Dibba Baiah. We dont know when this was, or from whom we took the cannon, or where this happened. The list of the shuyukh of Lima is Bani

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Mansur, Bani Shawkat, Bani Braiyyil/m, Bani Ali; there is a document that dates the first Bani Mansur shaikh to c. 1795, but it is lost.

One of his sons continued, Lima is very old. At the back of Lima is a built zigzag track into the mountains, called Tariq al-Khail, the horse track. We dont know why horses would be going up and down, so its use must have stopped more than two hundred years ago. al-Alama is west of Lima bay and used to belong to the Haslamani, but it was bought forty years ago by Bani Hassun because they needed land. Haslamani were decreasing in numbers and they didnt need it. There are two very old graveyards here, and in each of them the ruined masjid was built on an old mound, sanam. People stopped living at Lima Qadima a long time ago, except for a few who left forty years ago.

Balbi mentions Lima in 1580 (1962; 121). Ruy Freyre de Andrade in 1624 (Boxer 1930; 189) found Lima in Persian hands; he and his forces stormed the fort and killed the defenders. The Dutch ship Meerkat visited in 1666, when there were two small villages on the bay with some date trees, and to the south a very small village called Lima Qadima (Slot 1993; 177 – 8). Thevenot (1727; vol 2, 156 – 7) who was in the region in 1668 noted that Lima was a good port for wintering. It is possible that the Amir of Limas account of the destruction of the fort at Lima by the Hollandiya, referred to above, may have taken place in the 1670s. At this time, the Omani –Portuguese conflict continued at sea and the Dutch, pursuing their aim of preventing other European nations trading at Mascat, provided the Omanis with munitions, pilots and useful advice (Bathurst 1967; 173, quoting Abbe Carre at Nakhilu, and 183, at Kunj in March 1674, where he had to wait for eight days because of constant fighting). Brucks (1985 [1856]; 621) in 1835 described Lima as  a small village of huts, made of stones, and very small, and built up the side of a hill with a hundred families of the hill tribes. In 1901, Kemball reported (Walker 1994; vol 5, 32ff) Muhammad Braiyim was the shaikh of Lima and Hiil, Lima coming under Kumzar. In 1902, Sir Percy Cox visited Lima by ship to ascertain which rulers the people of the Ruus al-Jibal coast followed; Shaikh Muhammad Braiyyil told him Lima followed Masqat. In 1907, Lorimer (1908 – 15; 1610 – 11), reported Lima had 150 houses of Bani Shutair and a few Hadiya, with 8 sea going boats to Masqat, Trucial Oman, and Persian ports, and fishing boats. Thomas in 1930 (Walker 1994; vol 6, 21) said Lima was three quarters Kumazarah, under Muhammad b Braiyyim, with 70 rifles, and a quarter Hadiya, under al-Murr b Ali, with 50 rifles.

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At Dibba Baiah, a young local historian said, The story of people here refusing to pay zakat to Abu Bakr is right. That was why those people became known as Shihuh, they had shahha-ed, they withheld the zakat. These people owned the land here then and before then, and they were Shanuah Azd. I havent read books, I get my knowledge from asking old men and my uncles, and I know only about Dibba Baiah. Many people in Dibba Baiah are from very small tribes. When there was trouble with outsiders trying to control Dibba or move into it, the people of Dibba Baiah called upon the Shihuh in the mountains for protection, because these Shihuh regarded Dibba Baiah as belonging to Shihuh and they had gardens here. In this way all the people in Dibba Baiah became Shihuh although they knew that by descent they werent Shihhi. In the time of Hassan bin Rahma [pre 1820], the only Muqabil shaikh of Dibba Baiah died. The Muqabil started in Salhiyya and Hail, near Ras al-Khaimah town, a long time ago, before the time of Hassan bin Rahma. There were 640 of them; 600 stayed in Hail and Salhiyya and forty of them came to Dibba Baiah by way of Masafi, and the place they lived at here was called Hail.

A highly respected elderly local historian, Khamis b Said explained, The Muqabil were Shihuh and Shutair, and came from Hail in as-Sirr; before that they had been in Bukha. This was a long, long time ago, when Hamad Said was the ruler of Zanzibar [ruled from 1784 – 92 (Wilkinson 1987; 14)]. Before that, the people of Dibba, if they needed mediation by a shaikh, used the Naqbi shaikh at Haiyir or the Sharqi shaikh at Fujairah. The shaikh who ruled before the Muqabil shaikh was a shaikh of the Harth, the important people in the region at the time, and this was possibly in Yaariba times. The only Muqabil shaikh was Sulaiman bin Muhammad Abu al-Khair; he was the one who came from Salhiyya or Hail with four hundred and sixty men, sixty of whom went on to Oman. It was he who rebuilt Dibba qalaat on the foundations of the Portuguese fort (Bocarro ed. I Cid 1992; vol III. Plate XIII), following it exactly. When he died, he was followed by Yasir b Zaid Kumzari who married Sulaimans widow. He was followed by Salih b Ali Hassan, who was followed by Mahdi b Ali. He was followed by Rahma b Hassan who was followed by Abdullah Sinan who was followed by Salih b Muhammad, who was followed by Zaid Sinan, brother of Abdullah. Zaid Sinan was followed by Muhammad Mahdi who was followed by Hassan bin Rahma, the son of Rahma b Hassan. Hassan b Rahma was followed by Ahmad b Hamdan b Malik who was followed by Ali Zaidu who was followed by Muhammad bin Salih, the son of Salih b Muhammad. He was thrown out and Ahmad bin Hamdan returned, and he was followed by Muhammad bin Salih. The Shutair – Hadiya split took place in the time of Sulaiman bin Malik the forefather of Muhammad bin Ahmad, about the time of the Hinawi-Ghafiri split.

An elderly Shihuh remarked,

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The Naqbi at Hajar, or Haiyir, were there before the Shihuh came down and rebuilt the qalaat, and started to add people to their numbers. The Naqbi remained until the Shihuh killed the Qasimi representative, Mushari b Ibrahim al-Qasimi. Then most of them moved to Dibba Husn.

A Naqbi in Ras al-Khaimah town said “The Naqbi were originally from al-Haiyir at Dibba Baiah, that was their dira.” A very elderly Mahbib remarked: Mahbib acquired date gardens at Haiyir in Dibba Baiah at least a hundred, no, more like a hundred years and fifty years ago. It was in the time of Sultan bin Saqr (died 1866), when there was fighting between the Sharqi and the Qawasim. The Naqbi were in an alliance with the Qawasim, and the Sharqi opposed them, and the Shihuh supported the Sharqi. Some Naqbi moved to Dibba al-Husn, which is why it belongs to Sharjah.

A Khanabila said, “It was the Naqbi who lost out in Haiyir in Dibba Baiah who went to Luluiyya and Zubara on the Shamailiyya coast. There were people in Haiyir who werent Naqbi, but when they moved to Luluiyya and Zubara they called themselves – or were called by others – Naqbi.” A Shihhi interested in local history said, About the Shihuh and the taking of Bithnah. A couple of Shihuh killed a Qasimi supporter in Dibba, or possibly it was the other way around. Anyway, the Shihuh of Dibba were happy to co-operate with the Sharqi against the Qawasim at Bithnah. All went to plan. The Sharqi and Shihuh invested the fort from the surrounding mountains and the next day they found the defenders had fled. I dont know if the Sharqi left a garrison, but the Shihuh went home. It was only later that the Shihuh discovered they had been given Bithnah as a gift – the letter is in Dr Hanthals book (1987; document 10). They didnt want it and none of them went back there. The Shihuh who fought there were mostly Maqadiha and Lassmi, and some Khanabila and others.

A Khanbuli remarked, “My grandfather was at the taking of Bithnah, and my father was one of the senior and respected Shihuh of Dibba Baiah who threw out Muhammad bin Salih and brought in Ahmad bin Hamdan bin Malik.” A Haslamani who had lived in Dibba Baiah said, “It does seem possible that at some distant time there had been a Harth shaikh in Dibba because the Harth were close to the Shihuh. Both are descended from Harith bin Malik bin Fahm alAzdi.” Elderly Dhahuriyyin at Dibba Husn explained,

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Dhahuriyyin from Hablain, Shaisa, Filim and so on, all that north-east coast of Musandam, always used to summer along the Shamailiyya coast from Qidfa to Khor Kalba. Over time, many Dhahuriyyin bought date trees and then whole gardens at Qidfa. But after a time, relations with the Sharqi shaikh in Qidfa became bad and we were driven out and returned to Hablain and Shaisa. Later on we settled in Dibba Husn, because we preferred the Qawasim to Oman who taxed us but provided nothing; and because the Shihuh didnt like them, so we supported them.

A Dhahuri said, This happened when my father was a small boy. All the men had been invited to a feast by the Sharqi shaikh at Qidfa. While they were being entertained, the shaikhs jaish, his armed retainers, slipped out and cut down all our trees, so we had to go. We went back to Shaisa and came here later on.

The group of elderly men continued, About people leaving Jiddat at Shaisa a hundred and twenty years ago that you read about (Zimmerman 1981; 189), there was no general move to leave. People just drifted for no known reason, except that no-one liked the Omani government of the time, but the only government then was taxes.

Dibba is an ancient town, one of the great markets of pre-Islamic Arabia, and the market of the Arabs when Suhar was the Persian controlled market. It is mentioned in the classic Arab histories as the site of a major battle in the wars of the Ridda; Wilkinson (1969; Appendix C) and Rawas (2000; 42 – 48) state that Omani sources written nearer the time indicate the disturbances in Dibba were local and small. In the 10th century AD, Dibba, like Julfar, was one of the qasaba, citadels or metropolises, of Arabia. Albuquerque (Aubin 1973, 120) was the first European to mention Dibba in 1507, and noted a modest fort. In 1515, Dibba paid 500 to the revenues of Portuguese Hormuz as part of the governate of Qalhat (Aubin 1973; 233). Balbi mentioned Dibba in 1580 (1962; 121). In 1615 at Bandar Abbas, della Valle (1650; vol. 2 468 – 471, 426 – 428) met the son of the ruler of Dibba, Said Khamis, when the Persians were contacting Arab leaders hostile to the Portuguese; della Valle wrote that Dibba originally supported Hormuz, but when Said Khamis realised the weakness of the Portuguese, he supported the Persians and Arab allies. Between 1620 – 24, Dibba, led by al-Khamis (al-Busaid 2000; 162 – 4), like Rams, Julfar, Khasab, Khor Fakkan, and Suhar, revolted against the Portuguese. In 1623, when Ruy Freyre de Andrade sailed to Masqat with a few ships, the Persian forces and their Arab allies retired to the coastal fortresses, including Dibba (Boxer 1930; 181 – 2). In 1624, Nasr b Murshid was elected Imam at Rustaq and appointed local Amirs, one

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of whom, Mani b Sinan al-Umairi, malik of Sumail, had a house at Dibba (ibn Ruzaiq/Badger 1871; 53 – 4). [Mani bin Sinan was captured and put to death by Imam Nasir bin Murshid for inciting people to rebel, possibly c. 1633 (Bathurst 1967; 97)]. Ruy Freyre de Andrade (Boxer 1930; 189) visited Dibba that year during his reorganisation of Portuguese possessions on the Omani coast; Dibba had been given to the Portuguese by Muhammad, the nephew of the late ruler of Hormuz, who lived in Masqat (Slot 1993; 129). In 1629, the Portuguese offered Dibba to Mandeans of Lower Iraq in an attempt to solve troubles there; but the Mandeans realised that although the Portuguese had the fort at Dibba, Arabs had the land (Slot 1993; 130). Bathurst (1967; 93) puts the Mandeans journey to Dibba in 1633, after the attack on Dibba by Imam Nasir b Murshids army with a Dahamish force under Khamis bin Makhzum, mentioned in ibn Qaysars biography of Imam Nasir. The combined forces entered the town and took it over, including the date gardens; the Portuguese fort was beseiged until the Wali of Julfar agreed a truce and appointed an Ibadi to care for the spiritual needs of Muslims in Dibba. Bathurst (1967; 87) comments the text is obscure, but indicates the Omanis built a stronghold occupied by the Imams official, and Portuguese had only the fort. The Dutch Zeemeuw cruise of 1645 reported Dibba was in Portuguese hands, unlike Kumzar. In 1647 – 8, the Arab forces recognised Portuguese rule over Masqat in exchange for all the forts between Masqat and Dibba (Slot 1993; 160). In 1666, the Dutch ship Meerkat, assessing the possibilities for trade on the Omani coasts, reported from their interpreter that Dibba (which they could not enter from adverse winds and currents) had 300 houses of date tree branches, the largest of the four forts from Portuguese times was still standing, and a multitude of date trees; to the north was a river where the fishermen lived (Slot 1993; 177 – 8). In 1758, the Imam of Oman pushed his strengthened naval force as far as Dibba (Slot 1993; 347) against Shaikh Rahma b Matar of Julfar. In 1761, there were said to be plans for a meeting of all the warring tribes, Qawasim, Bani Main, and Naim, B. Qitab, and Yaariba and Al bu Said Omanis at Dibba but this never took place (Slot 1993; 384). In 1795, Imam Sultan b Ahmad of Oman attacked Dibba by sea, killing many Sharqiyyin and Naqbiyyin (ibn Ruzaiq/Badger 1871; 228); in 1798, Sultan b Ahmad attacked Dibba again, but was driven off by Naqbiyyin and Sharqiyyin (Walker 1994; vol 4, 514), and successfully in 1799, when he appointed Qays as wali.

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In 1807, the Qawasim had Dibba, but ceded it to Masqat the following year (Allen 1982; 121). The Qawasim with the Wahhabis under Mutlaq al-Mutairi took over Dibba and other ports on the Shamailiya coast (Davies 1997; 323). Taylor in 1818 (1985 [1856]; 12) noted Dibba was only half a days journey, across the cape from Julfar. Major-General Sir William Grant Keir in 1820 mentions a small batiile from the piratical port of Dibba (Bombay Diaries; T315/33, p115). In 1835, Brucks noted the coast at Dibba was covered with date groves, fine cattle, and fair supplies of vegetables; the inhabitants had a few trading boats and supplied some of the bedouin tribes with grain. Dibba belonged to the Imam of Masqat, whose nominal revenue from Dibba was c. 4,000 German crowns, not always paid (1985 [1856]; 623). In 1831, Shaikh Sultan b Saqr al-Qasimi took Dibba, with Khor Fakkan and Kalba. The first war between the Qawasim and the Shihuh took place c. 1836 or 1839 over the area of taxable land and the destruction of a Shihhi fort by order of the Qasimi governor (Lorimer 1908 – 15; vol 1, 622). In 1839, Lieutenant Kemball (1985 [1856]; 335) reported Shaikh Sultan b Saqr, after unsuccessful attempts by land against the Shihuh at Khasab, Kumzar and Ras Musandam, sent a naval force to blockade their ports but, alarmed at news of the Egyptians activities in Hasa, decided to make peace. The Qawasim and Omani rulers made an agreement in 1851 about the tribes north and west of Khatmat Mlaiha; Dibba Baiah was Omani, and Dibba Husn was Qasimi. In 1854, Dibba and Jazirat alHamra were governed by Ibrahim b Sultan al-Qasimi, producing a revenue of 1,800 reals [Mamzar to Hamriyya, including Sharjah, paid 2,000 reals]. In 1855, some Shihuh murdered Mushari b Ibrahim al-Qasimi because of his tyrannical behaviour, having appealed to the rulers of Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah (Lorimer 1980 – 1915; vol. 1, 622); the second war between the Shihuh with Sharqiyyin allies, and the Qawasim lasted to 1858 (Lorimer 1908 – 1915; vol. 1, 779). Miles (1994 [1919]; 2,451), in Oman between 1872 – 1886, noted Dibba had a population of c.3,000 in 13 hamlets. The claims on Dibba by the Qawasim and Oman between 1798 to 1902 are briefly described in Walker (1994; vol 4, 514). Kemballs 1901 Report (Walker 1994; vol.5, 32) gives Yasir b Sinan as the shaikh of Dibba Baiah, with Karshah, Zaghi, Haffa, and Shariyah; he was an independent, permanent chief but considered a subject by Masqat, paying zakat on dates to the wali at Khasab. The ruler of Dibba Husn was Ahmad b Sultan al-Qasimi, who also held the places to Bidiya. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol 2, 1006) says Dibba Baiah had c. 450 houses of Bani Shutair and a few Bani Hadiya, and lived by cultivating dates and fishing;

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they owned 14 sea-going sambuq carrying dates and fish to Masqat and places in the Gulf; some wheat, barley and sweet potato were grown. Dibba Husn had 100 bayadir houses, 50 Awanat houses, 15 Naqbiyyin houses, and 10 Sharqiyyin houses, and c. 10,000 date trees. Thomas in 1928 reported Dibba Baiah was the most important Shihuh port after Rams, followed by Lima and Shaam; in 1930 Shaikh Salih b Muhammad of Dibba Baiah was the most important Shihuh shaikh, and had built a suq of 14 shops. [This may be the period people were referring to when they said in their grandfathers time they had used Dibba as their market.] He also says in the Omani Civil war at the end of Sayyid Faisals reign (1881 – 1913), Shihuh fought at Bidbid under the Sultans banner (Walker 1994; vol 6, 21). In 1940 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 536), the people of Dibba Husn falsely accused Shihuh of kidnapping a boy; the Shihuh, annoyed at this, burnt Qawasim houses and cut down date trees. The Wali of Khasab with the Shaikhs of Fujairah and Bukha mediated a settlement on the basis of dafin, burial, apart from a tower erected by the people of Dibba Husn which remained. In 1941, (Walker 1994; vol 5, 726) the dispute continued together with another between the Qasimi ruler of Kalba and the Shihuh shaikh of Dibba Baiah over Ghuna and Madha. Sayyid Ahmad bin Ibrahim, Minister of Internal Affairs at Masqat, met Shaikh Humaid bin Abdullah, the acting Regent of Kalba at Dibba; the Sultans men occupied the Shihuh fort and the Qawasim tower, the source of the trouble. Part of the settlement was the deposition of Shaikh Hassan bin Rahma of Dibba Baiah, with the Shihuh to provide a successor; if they failed, the Sultan would appoint one. The Sultan appointed the Shaikh of Bukha, Muhammad b Ahmad, in 1941 whom the Shihuh did not accept; in 1942, Hamdan bin Ahmad of Bukha, and a nephew of Hassan bin Rahma, was appointed as Shaikh of Dibba Baiah. Disputes over this tower continued in 1944. By December 1946, Hassan bin Rahma was wali of Dibba Baiah, and wrote to the Political Agent in Sharjah, complaining that Shaikh Sultan b Salim had included Shihuh lands with his for oil concessions. In Qidfa on the Shamailiya coast, a Yamahi Sharqi explained, The people of Qidfa go back to the days after the Hinawi-Ghafiri split [so perhaps c. 1750?]. The land was Sharqi, and the people, Yamahi, Hamudu, Fuhud, were not separate tribes, they were Sharqiyyin from the days of Muhammad bin Matar. We are Yamahi from the mountains behind Dibba, from Dhanna. We bought land here five grandfathers ago [c. 1760?].

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A younger Qiyudi commented, My fifth grandfather was the first in our family to be born in Qidfa [c. 1790?], before that we were inland at Madhah, and nine to ten grandfathers ago [possibly after 1600, although on another occasion he said three hundred years ago, so probably between 1600 to 1700], we are fairly sure we were in Oman, at a place near Ibri. The Sharqi came from Nizwa and were appointed governors by the Omani ruler in about 1790. This was Matar and his son Muhammad, and they governed from 1790 to 1809. There were then five or six Sharqi governors until Hamad bin Abdullah in 1879, and he ruled until 1932. By 1879, the Sharqi were governors for the Qawasim, Qidfa was part of the Qawasim state; but after that date, the Shaikh of the Sharqi made an alliance with the Shihuh against the Qawasim. To promote this alliance and because there was empty land, he gave land which could be made into date gardens to Dhahuriyyin and Shihuh from Dibbah. In Qidfa, Dhahuriyyin had gardens from maybe 1850, so maybe that was different – or perhaps the date is wrong, or maybe some Dhahuriyyin already had date gardens then. Shihuh took up gardens at Madha and Girath. The first member of the Sharqi family to live here didnt come until about 1880. This was Hamad bin Abdullah who set the Shihuh up in Bithnah. By this date, he was an independent ruler, he was no longer a governor on behalf of the Qawasim. The idea was to attack Bithnah not by way of Wadi Ham but through the wadi from Madha, this was in 1902, 1903. After this, the Sharqi were protected by Bani Yas who were Hinawi, and the Sharqi changed from Ghafiri to Hinawi. The Shihuh were given Bithnah as a reward but werent interested. The Shihuh who came here came in 1903 after the taking of Bithnah were brought in to guard Qidfa and Mirbat against the Naqbi of Khor Fakkan; they lived from animals, they didnt have gardens until about 1981. The Dhahuriyyin who got gardens here had always used Qidfa, but not Mirbat, for the summers. By the 1930s, they owned most of the gardens. Between 1930 and 1978 Abdullah b Hamdan, a cousin of the Sharqi shaikh, became the major force in Qidfa, though he wasnt the governor. He was very acquisitive and the Dhahuriyyin were an easy target as they werent Sharqiyyin. The old Dhahuri at Dibba Husn was dramatising when he said his fathers trees were cut down, its a common way of talking but it isnt literal fact. This took place in the 1930s, it must have been when he was a boy, not in his fathers boyhood. Most Dhahuriyyin who had gardens here sold them in the 1950s and 60s, and that was when people like my family bought them; my grandfather bought three-quarters of his holdings from Dhahuriyyin. The Dhahuriyyin went back to Dibba [Husn]. There are some very old tribes who continue, like Kunud from Kinda, and Kinda were an important tribe before the time of the Prophet; there are a few behind Kalba where they have Sur al-Kunud. Im puzzled by Dhahuriyyin; it is in Lorimer that maybe there is a connection to the Dhawahir. But it is also known that the Dhawahir are a tribe who came together about two hundred and fifty years ago or earlier, around Buraimi, from parts of Bani

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Jabir, Daramika, and Saad; all these tribes also continue in other parts of Oman in their own right.

Kemball in 1901 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 110) said Qidfa had no headman, a population of 35 [or houses?] and lived by pearling, fishing and date gardens. Lorimer (1908 – 15; 1697) wrote that Qidfa had c. 100 houses of Sharqiyyin; 60 camels, 60 donkeys, 100 cattle, 100 sheep and goats, and c. 7,000 date trees. In 1955 (Walker 1994; vol 3, 523) Qidfa had about 40 houses of Sharqiyyin, a fort, and c. 900 date trees. 25 years before, it had paid zakat to Kalba [not according to some local people]. A young Qiyudi, interested in history, considered Lorimers figures for the number of houses to be probably right but their inhabitants were definitely not all Sharqiyyin; while Walkers figures were possibly roughly accurate if counting only winter houses. He said, All these house figures are dubious, because winter houses were easily visible, but summer houses in the gardens were not. I also find Walkers tree estimates really odd. I counted over 1,000 trees in a group of eight gardens whose boundaries are known not to have changed for at least fifty years. With pumps, trees can be planted a bit more closely, but even allowing for this, my group of eight gardens is only one of several similarly sized garden groups, so I think Walkers figures were wrong.

Few conversations about history were held in Khor Fakkan or Kalba. At Khor Fakkan, a Naqbi interested in history said, The Naqbiyyin were a section of Katham, originating somewhere between Yemen and Hijaz. They arrived first in Oman at Khabura on the Batinah and gradually made their way to Khor Fakkan which is and has always been their centre. No-one knows when these migrations took place, but we have always been here, we are asli. We were at Khor Fakkan when Albuquerque came and we put up a spirited but unsuccessful resistance. Khor Fakkan and its fort were destroyed. But do you really think we were here when the Portuguese came? The Naqbiyyin were placed in or given Haiyir, Khatt, Daftah, Wadi Naqab – which took its name from the Naqbiyyin – and Fahlain by the Qawasim as a protection against the Sharqi.

In Kalba, a Naqbi remarked: I know there are Naqbiyyin at Fahlain near Hail in Ras al-Khaimah, at Haiyir in Dibba Baiah, and in Dibba Husn. But I dont know if living on the Gulf coast was later than living on the east coast. I do know that Wadi Naqab was originally Naqbi, and I think it was sold to – or acquired by Habus – more than two hundred years ago. If it had happened more recently, there would be more detailed knowledge about them. Kalba was always more important for Naqbi than Khor Fakkan.

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The first mention of Khor Fakkan and Kalba in the literature appears to be ibn Battuta in 1330 (1962; vol 2, 399), who noticed their streams, groves, and palm trees. Samarqandi, sent as an ambassador to the Deccan, sailed from Qalhat and returned to Khor Fakkan in 1442 (Reinaud; 1985; 1, clxiii). At Khor Fakkan, the population resisted Albuquerque in 1507, so the town was pillaged and burnt, and prisoners had their noses and ears cut off; there was a large colony of Gujerati merchants. Khor Fakkan paid 1,500 in tax to Portuguese Hormuz as part of the Qalhat governate in 1515 (Aubin 1973; 233). In 1541 – 3, Khor Fakkan paid 25 lacs of revenues, twice as much as Khasab and nearly as much as Qalhat. Balbi (1962; 121) mentioned both places in 1580. Boxer (1930; 182) says Khor Fakkan was among the forts to which the Persians and their Arab allies retired in 1624 when Portuguese under Ruy Freyre de Andrade attacked the coastal towns. Al Bu Saidi (2000; 158), using Bocarro (1992 [1635]; vol. 2, 580), states that Guaspar Leite took the fortress of Kalba in March 1624 as the people of the area, called Casmi (Qasimi) had rebelled, and it had belonged to the King of Hormuz, as vassal of the Portuguese state. Khor Fakkan and Kalba forts are illustrated in Bocarro ed. I Cid 1992; vol 3, plates XI and XII. Portuguese rule over these coasts ended in 1647 – 8 (Slot 1993; 160). In 1737, during Nadir Shahs Omani wars from 1737 – 44, (Badger /Ruzaiq (1871; 138) the amirs of his forces wrote to Imam Saif b Sultan in Masqat that they had reached Khor Fakkan before going to as-Sirr. Khor Fakkans reputation as a good harbour in bad weather was shown by Huwala sailors taking the Persian ships there after the 1740 mutiny (Bathurst 1967; 304) and by Imam Sayfs arrival in bad weather in 1742, after he had taken Mascat town. It is said there was a plan for a general reconciliation between the newly restored ruler of Bushire, the Shaikhs of Hormuz and Julfar, and the wakil of Masqat in Khor Fakkan in 1774, which never took place. In the late 18th century, Khor Fakkan and Kalba, like the other places on the Shamailiyya coast, moved between Omani and Qawasim rule. Brucks in 1835 (1985 [1856]; 623 – 4) stated it was a place of some trade with a safe harbour, c 400 inhabitants who owned a few trading boats, and c. 50 Hindu traders. The Imam of Masqat received a nominal revenue of c. 3,000 German crowns from it. Kalba had a fort and a village of about one hundred inhabitants, fishermen and cultivators. Khor Kalba had a fort on the side of a creek into which boats of 20 – 30 tons could go; it had some trade, particularly with the inland tribes, and about two hundred inhabitants. Between Khor Kalba and Shinas were the forts and vil-

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lages of Murair, Kadrawain, bu Baqra, and Aqr, each with 70 – 100 inhabitants, some employed in the coasting trade, the others as fishermen and cultivators. In 1850, Sayyid Qays of Suhar asked Shaikh Sultan b Saqr of Sharjah for support against the Masqat authorities who had seized his brothers in return for help in recovering the lost possessions on the Batinah coast. The two chiefs took Suhar, Shinas, Ghallah/Kalba, and Khor Fakkan (Disbrowe 1985 [1856]; 355). In 1851 (Lorimer 1908 – 15; 1, 708) Sayyid Said recovered Suhar and Shinas, Ghallah and Khor Fakkan remained with Sharjah. Lorimer (1908 – 15; 2, 516) reported Khor Fakkan had c. 150 houses of Naqbiyyin and Arabised Persians, c. 800 inhabitants who cultivated dates and wheat, and went pearl diving; c. 5,000 date trees, 4 – 5 coasting vessels which went to Masqat and places in the Gulf, and 7 ships. Said b Ahmad al-Qasimi held it for the Shaikh of Sharjah. Ghallah/Kalba (2,576) had c. 300 houses, mostly date branch huts, and a few mudbrick stores; the inhabitants were Naqbiyyin, Sharqiyyin, 20 families of Kunud, 20 families of Abadilah, Baluchis and Persians, living from fishing and cultivating dates (25,000 trees), wheat, millet, and tobacco; 10 sea-going boats to Masqat, Makran and Persian coast ports, and 14 fishing boats; a small fort, with a representative of the Sharjah governor of the Shamailiya.

Date garden areas of the Sirr At Shimal Taht, an elderly Hasasna Shamaili said, When I was a boy, I was told by knowledgeable old men, my father among them, who had been told by their fathers, and so on, that the sadd was the earth that was removed when a channel was dug for boats to reach Qasr Dhaba from Hudaiba when Kush/Julfar got silted up. Before the time of bin Majid the Navigator, there were two rulers, one for Julfar and one for Kush which was the same as Shimal. I know this seems unlikely now, but that is what I and others here were told, and the coast at that time was almost certainly different.

Another Hasasna remarked: “When the Wahhabis were raiding, they destroyed the sanam in Shimal and behind Rams. The one in Shimal was behind that old house.” A younger man said These mudbrick buildings on the tell is as-Siba, which is known to be over a hundred years old. Siba belonged to the ad-Dunna family who were the rul-

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ers here. The ad-Dunna were a local family, and they had date gardens, but they have disappeared. There was a cannon at Siba, but it disappeared. Siba used to be the centre of Shimal Taht, and the Hasasna lived in their date gardens. Centres move all the time.

Two Khanabila Shamaili at Shimal Fowk commented: “Before the Qawasim were recognised as the shuyukh here, more than seventy years ago, Shimal had its own shuyukh. We had Rashid al-Alu, and the Hasasna had Muhammad bin ad-Dunna of as-Siba.” Two Khanabila Shutair considered, About two hundred years ago, Bani Shamaili didnt exist. The inhabitants of what is now Shimal were Bani Kushha … Kushha is k-sh-h, kushha is to disperse, to be displaced, which is what happened to the people of Kushha when it declined from being Julfar, and Julfar moved to what is now Mataf. Kushha was called that later on because it has mounds, like haunches, which is another meaning of that root. Sall above Shimal in the mountains didnt belong originally to the Shamaili, it belonged to Dhaya.

A Khanabila Shutair and a Shamaili said, There are just two butn of Shamaili, Khanabila and Hasasna; Bani Saad, who are mostly at Ghaylan, Muharriq, Yabana, and Ghabbas, are part of Hasasna. Muharriq means kilns, and it is known that those kilns were for jiss.We didnt know there were old kilns at al-Ashkar, although we knew people used to dig clay there. Bani Kush were Bani Kushha, and they were Iranians, Sassanians to be exact.

The Amir of Shimal Fowk remarked: “All the fields at as-Sall belong to the Khanabila Bani Shamaili. The fields that belong to the Hasasna Bani Shamaili at Ghaylan are over the ridge to the east, and those of the people of Dhaya are further on. Hasasna Shamaili at Shimal Taht dont have mountain fields.” A Hasana Shamaili at Ghaylan said “We have fields and houses at Barama above here, and at Yabana in Wadi Ghabbas. We had our kilns here, and we have been here for a long, long time.” A Khanabila Shutair said, Bani Saad now at Ghaylan became part of Bani Shamaili in the time of my ancestor Qdur (more than six generations ago so perhaps mid-18th century) as the result of a battle over al-Ashkar. At that time, Bani Saad were based at al-Yabana which then had running water and date gardens, and was a regular stopping off point for people going up and down. Ive been told the name Yabana is recorded in documents, but I have no idea where these documents might be or even if they exist.

A Khanabila Shamaili at Ghabbas commented:

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The houses at Yabana are owned by families from Ghaylan. Ghaylan owns Barama, and the houses at Barama are very old, like the ones at Halla. They were used before Islam came. … Islam has always been unchanging, but people change and need to be brought back, and I mean before the time when people were brought back (so pre-1790s).

A Habus at Wadi al-Aal remarked: There were kilns up at the back of the wadi that belonged to the potters of Khanabila Bani Shamaili. The forefathers of people in Shimal Fowk sold them to my forefathers; I reckon it wasnt that long ago, maybe in my grandfathers time. There were more kilns at Faria and at al-Ashkar that belonged to Bani Shamaili, who sold the land to Habus.

A Khanabila Bani Shamaili said, The long abandoned farij of Halla is very old. The reason we know it was called Halla is that my grandfather [born ?1910] was told by his grandfather [born ?1850] who was told by a very old man [born ?1790] who was the last person to live at the upper farij of Lughshaib that his great-grandfather [born 1700?] had told him. It must be very old because no-one knows where its fields were, so that would mean about three hundred years, too.

The Amir of Shimal Fowk said, We havent lived at as-Sall in the mountains since the time of the Ridda, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. We are the Khanabila who split from the Khanabila who did not accept the responsibility of paying zakat and therefore withdrew, shahhu, and joined with others like themselves and they all became Shihuh, and stayed living in the mountains. We Khanabila who accepted Islam and the responsibility of paying zakat came down and entered the wider world brought about through Islam. We joined with the Bani Hassan who were already living where they are now and became the Bani Shamaili. The area where we lived was Jirfal, all the land from here right down to the coast at Mataf and Sharisha. After it was Julfar, it was part of Sirr, then it was Shimal.

In Taburs Julfar Abr at-Tarikh (1998; 347), Muhammad bil Kayzi, Amir of Shimal Fowk, described the Hasasna and Khanabila as the sons of Hassan, the forefather of Bani Shamaili. A Khanabila Shutair commented, So in the Julfar book bin Kayzi says the Khanabila Shutair and the Khanabila Shamaili were different, and bil Houn of Shimal Taht says they are the same, which is roughly what bin Kayzi said to you. In my view, the Khanabila Bani Shamaili are not as a group related to Khanabila Bani Shutair. Some individuals may be, because Bani Shamaili, like all groups on the sayh, are very mixed. People on the sayh came from Iran, from Oman, they might be bedu or Shihuh, anywhere or anything. And there is the custom of people assuming the name of the family they were working for or

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with whom they were living. The process was of people moving into the sayh from outside, often for protection after internal family killings, working as labourers in date gardens or as sharecroppers on arable land, and making enough money to buy date trees or a garden, or to marry into a date garden owning family. The Futtaim family did this, and so did lots of others. Bin Kayzis family came from Oman maybe five generations ago, and the bil Houn came from Ghalilah about eighty years ago. And there were Shihhi, who may well have included Khanabila, who moved down for a variety of reasons, and bought date gardens, and then their descendants stayed down because of inheriting gardens. Date gardens were available for anyone with the money to buy them, and the buyer, regardless of where he originally came from, became Shamaili or Ramsawi or whatever. Equally, a lot of people called Shihhi had forebears who were employed by, or were sharecroppers with, or were khawadim of, Shihuh. At some time in the distant past, Khanabila Bani Shutair made an ahad (an oath to treat the other as ones own) with Bani Shamaili who were given Ghabbas. As an extra, the Bani Shamaili spokesman said they would take the name Khanabila as a witness to the ahad. So bin Kayzi and bil Houn are both right and both wrong, because the two groups werent the same although some families in them were, and they then became the same although all the people in the two groups werent. It is all very complicated, and no-one can really know the truth. What is important is how we live together now.

Tabur (1998; 357 – 9) writes that Hamid b Sultan al-Shamsi (1986) considered that Bani Shamaili, like Bani Kush and Bani Ziraf, all came from the people of Julfar. Bani Ziraf possibly gave their name to a variety of dates grown in as-Sirr [see Hudaiba]. Bani Ziraf had sheep and goats, collected honey, grew onions, and made a great deal of pottery. It is said Bani Ziraf originally came from Naim who drifted away from Yemen after the breaking of the dam. Bani Ziraf were the owners of Kush, an earlier Julfar, and as well as pottery, also lived from pearl diving and seatrading. They became weak and broke into little groups. At Shimal, they lived in the area called al-Fasliya between Shimal Fowk and the sea. Some moved to Dhaid where they lived by an old falay which they called Falay Bani Ziraf, and became traders carrying Indian spices and silks. Muhammad b Ays al-Zirafi had a private bank and safe deposit at Barka on the Batinah coast, about 1770AD. Eighty-five Bani Ziraf houses at Shimal Fowk migrated to Shaam during the rule of the first Shaikh Salim b Sultan b Saqr between 1868 and 1883, and there are now Bani Ziraf in Shaam. Tabur (1998; 345) recounts a story heard from Rashid b Hassan al-Shamaili, aged 86 in 1997, who had heard it from his father who had heard it from someone of the district: Years ago, a group from Rams and Shimal went, at the end of the summer, to the Batinah by the track that crosses the mountains. At Sij, they met an old man who

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said his group were the remnants of Bani Kush who had fled into the mountains when the Portuguese took Julfar. And they were told of fighting between the Portuguese and people from Shimal and Rams, and the graveyards of the fallen, and the giving and taking of protection. An elderly Ramsawi said, Bani Ziraf were the big family or tribe when Julfar was very, very rich a long, long time ago, before the Portuguese. Julfar was so rich that even needles were made of gold. It was all destroyed in an earthquake, no-one knows when. And the Bani Ziraf died out. They might easily have been in Khasab and Kumzar as well, and that some are said to be buried in the old cemetery at Hudaiba seems perfectly reasonable.

A local historian at Dibba Baiah remarked: “As far as I know, Bani Ziraf had been an important family a very long time ago, but perhaps not as long ago as the time of the Portuguese. I think I have heard that they were the Amirs of Khasab before the bin Malik.” Shimal as an inhabited and named place existed certainly by 1820, since the families of the defenders of Dhaya took refuge there (IOR: Bombay Secret Proceedings vol 45; 100, dated January 1820). As Shimal means uniting it presumably had different groups, probably Hasana and Khanabila. In 1901 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 104), Shimal had two headmen, Said b Samnu andAli b Rashid, representing Shimal Taht and Shimal Fowk; the population was 240 (probably houses), living from date gardens. Lorimer (1908 – 15; 2,1825 – 6) noted 200 houses of Bani Shamaili, 50 camels, 20 cattle, 700 sheep, and 4,000 date trees. Dostal (1983; 140) from fieldwork c. 1967 presents Khanabila potters information on the ending of pottery production at kilns in Wadi Hajil; before 1947 at Hajar; at Shidde before 1927; at Sharqe before 1907 or 1917, and before unknown dates at Shaqun and Sikh. The Shamaili kilns at al-Ashkar, al-Aal and Faria were not mentioned. Dostal links pottery production at Barama to sherds excavated from 16th century levels at Mataf/Julfar by Hansman (1983; 139). Shamaili and Dostal assume continuous production of pottery. No-one at Ghaylan remembered the pottery kilns operating, nor when they had been in production, although they knew pottery had been produced there by their forebears. In March 1955, Walker (1994; vol 3, 437) noted that Ahmad bil Houn, brother of Muhammad bil Houn, the Ras Al-Khaimi wali of Shimal, stated in the presence of Shaikh Humaid b Muhammad of Ras al-Khaimah and Ubaid bin Salim that Bani Shamaili of Wadi Hajil were loyal to Saqr b Muhammad and paid him zakat, and listed the hamlets of Bani Shamaili in Wadi Hajil.

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A local man described the buildings of Hudaiba [in Chapter 6], and considered at least one harat existed before the Qatan arrived, thought to be three to four hundred years ago. He linked old Islamic graves in the Sharqiya cemetery to the Bani Ziraf and the time of the Portuguese. On another occasion he said, The best rutub, fresh dates, are Ziraf. They are called Zirafi after the Ziraf who had a mazar in the Sharqiya graveyard; the Zirafi dates are long and thick. Hudaiba has a core of people from small Arab tribes, and there have always been some people who came from Fars and Baluchistan. People of Hudaiba owned their own gardens, they worked for each other, they got into debt with each other, families went up and families went down. They had relationships with the people of Ras al-Khaimah town, who were much the same, only they were fishermen and small traders. About the time the Qawasim became powerful [1750s], things changed. All the farij from Shimal to Fahlain were much smaller then; perhaps there were as few as two thousand date trees, and no more than five thousand. When the Qawasim came in, the al-Ali came in from Persia by way of Umm alQawain, and the Muhairi from Abu Dhabi. They were merchants, and the Qawasim set about enlarging all the gardens the whole way along using the labour of the inhabitants. Gradually, the bigger merchants lent money to the small garden owners and thereby acquired gardens, and they bought gardens as well. Local people continued to be owners, but ownership was more precarious. A second period when land ownership changed was just before the first world war; again, merchants were lending money to garden owners from Shimal to Fahlain and so acquiring gardens, and they bought gardens too. I was told this by my father who was told by his father who had observed these things. Did you hear about the excavations at the channel, masila, that goes from Qasr Dhaba (Velde 2003)? Im not convinced it was a wall, sur. Noone would build a huge wall that would keep water out of the gardens. Water coming from the mountains to the gardens was very important for them. Unless perhaps there were entrances in the wall for water to go to the gardens, but no-one has mentioned them. I had always heard it was a channel for boats.

The account of the first period when land ownership moved from small owners to merchants is like that mentioned by Wilkinson (1987; 222) in Oman under the Yaariba rulers Saif b Sultan 1 and 11, in the late 17th century and first two decades of the 18th century. In 1901, Walker (1994; vol 1, 104) stated the headman of Hudaiba was Mukhluf b Ubaid; there were 40 houses, and the people lived from date gardens. Lorimer (1908 – 15; 2, 1825) noted that Hudaiba had 30 houses of bayadir from mixed tribes; the usual animals, and c. 500 date trees. In

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1955, Walker (1994; vol 3, 534) recorded 35 bayadir houses, and 500 date trees. In Hail, a Shihhi remarked: “Ahl Hail arent Bani Shutair or Bani Hadiya, although we are Shihuh. The Ahl Hail are Bani Muqbil.” Another said, We are indeed Muqabilat, and there were certainly Muqabil from here who went to al-Hail in Dibbah Baiah. The Maqabil had come here from Bukha, most of them, and a few had come from Khasab. We think the reasons for their migration were something to do with land, but we dont know any more details, or when this happened. It is too long ago.

About Hail, a Bani Ibrahimi said, “The people of Hail are from Bani Ibrahim, they split off and went to Hail in my grandfathers great-grandfathers time [c. 1790,] or earlier. But I dont know why.” In 1901, Walker (1994; vol 1, 104) noted the headman of Hail was Zaid bin Said, with 60 houses of Shihhiyiin living from their date plantations. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol.2, 1825) reported 50 houses of Bani Hadiya Shihuh from Khasab and Bukha; 20 camels, 50 donkeys, 20 cattle, 150 sheep; 1,000 date trees. At Fahlain, an elderly Naqbi said, Naqbiyyin have always been in Ras al-Khaimah Amirate, us and the Qawasim. We didnt come here, we were always here, and we were here even before the Azd. Were not Azd, were Naqbiyyin. We used to live in the mountains, and then we moved down into the gardens. I dont know what bits of the mountains we lived in, no-one knows because it was all too long ago, in our forefathers forefathers forefathers time, long, long ago. Now we are in Fahlain, Salhiyya, Digdaga, Khatt, Kalba, Khor Fakkan, and Dibba. When we were moving out of the mountains, there was a seven year war with the Shihuh.

Another Naqbi, from Fahlain but met in Ras al-Khaimah town, explained, The Naqbi were originally from Haiyir at Dibba Baiah, that was our dira. We have always been at or owned Khatt, Fahlain, Wadi Naqab, Khor Fakkan, Kalba, Dafta, although we have always shared these places with others. A long, long time ago, the original Naqbi were at Haiyir, and other small tribes from these other places joined with them, and these became the Naqbiyyin. The original Naqbi didnt move into these other places, and the small tribes of these places didnt move away from their places, they just took their lead from the original Naqbi in Haiyir. This all took place long before Islam. I dont know if Naqbi left Wadi Naqab for any reason. They cant have quarrelled with the government before the Qawasim because there wasnt any real government before the Qawasim. Maybe they had trouble

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with the Sassanians. The Qawasim became rulers two hundred and fifty years ago, but there was trouble with Sassanians, Persians, while Oman was freeing itself from the Portuguese. So before Islam could have been when we were brought back to Islam by the Wahhabis. But when all this happened isnt important.

Tabur (1998; 366) says a long time ago, Ahmad b Abdullah b Rashid alNaqbi was the Amir of Fahlain. The old mosque at Fahlain (Tabur 1998; 383) was renovated by Shaikh Qadib ibn Ahmad in stone and jiss, with a beautiful mihrab, and enlarged it to hold about three hundred people. It is said that Qadib bin Ahmad was the first shaikh of the Zaab when they returned from Jazirat al-Riq to the Arab side of the Gulf, probably at Jazirat al-Zaab/ al-Hamra. As this took place before 1756 (Floor 1979), it is unlikely that this Qadib bin Ahmad was the same Qadib bin Ahmad who signed the 1820 peace treaty. Tabur notes the old families of Fahlain say this is the oldest extant mosque of all the mosques in Ras al-Khaimah, older than the mosque at Fulayah, and it ressembled the mosque at Bidiya except that it was less embellished. The 1901 survey of possessions of Ras al-Khaimah did not mention Fahlain. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol.2, 1825 – 6) records 60 houses of Naqbiyyin; 25 camels, 50 donkeys, 30 cattle, 200 sheep, and 2,000 date trees. In 1955, Walker (1994; vol 3,533) noted a village of 60 houses of Naqbiyyin with c. 2,500 date trees. A very elderly Mahbib who had regularly gone between Dibba Baiah and Muharrig [near Rams] by way of Khatt recalled: “Khatt was Naqbi, Zaab and Sharqiyyin. Habus were near Khatt, but they were never in Khatt.” A Damhani Sharqiyyin said “The Sharqi family made an alliance with many of the small tribes in the mountains between Khatt and the east coast. Thats why there were some Sharqiyyin in Khatt before. Habhab just south of Khatt has always been Sharqiyyin.” The Amir of Habhab remarked: “The sharia at Khatt would have been the qadi from Ras al-Khaimah sent by the ruler. Habhab was mostly Sharqiyyin, Khatt was mostly Naqbi, and Shihuh came down in the summer. Khatt is now very mixed, originally it was all Naqbi.” A Shihuh remarked: “Khatt and Haiyir were originally Naqbi, and their mountain areas were in between, where Habus and some Sharqiyyin are now. Where Habus are now, Naqbi were earlier.” Some Awanat in Khatt stated, We were here before the Qawasim, because a forefather was mentioned by bin Dhahir, the 17th century local poet. We were in Dhaid, Digdaga, and

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Khatt. A cooking pot with a scratched inscription Shahin was found in Shaikh Saqrs date garden in Khatt. There was Shahin b Saif b Hamad b Abdullah b Nasr b Saif b Shahin; Saif had a son called Sultan, who died in Oman in the time of the first Shaikh Saqr; he died about a hundred and fifty years ago [Saqr bin Rashid, Saqr the First, ruled from 1780 to his death in 1803]. Sultan had four sons, Shahin, Saif, Muhammad, and Abdullah; Shahin b Sultan married Aisha bint Abdullah b Rahma al-Qasimi and lived at Fulayah. The Awanat used to have west Khatt, which was most of the date gardens, while the Naqbi had east Khatt and the hills above. The tower by the secondary school was built and owned by Awanat. The Naqbi were at first only in the mountains. Awanat brought Habus from places on the sayh as bayadir and then gradually they bought up the gardens. All the gardens in west Khatt were eventually bought by Habus from Shahin. Zaab only summered in Khatt, they were date traders, not owners of date gardens. There was a Husn Shahin in Dibba Husn two hundred years ago, but where exactly it was, and whether or not anything remains, is unknown [from enquiries in Dibba Husn, nothing remains; it was possibly under the police station].

A Ramsawi said “The Awanat were on both coasts, but originally they came from al-Awai which is near Buraimi, after the Madam plain.” An elderly Imam in Khatt remarked: The majority of the date gardens of Khatt are owned by Zaab, and have been for a while. The Naqbiyyin own some, and in the last ten years Habus have bought some. The Naqbiyyin came from Dibba, where some of them still are, and some of them have stone houses in the mountains behind, as do Habus. There wasnt a Zaab quarter and a Naqbi quarter; Khatt, in my memory, was mostly lived in by Zaab, and Naqbiyyin lived among them. The old mosque there was built by Zaab, and the tower by the mosque was built by Zaab and owned by them. The other tower belonged to Naqbiyyin. The tower on the hill overlooking Khatt belonged to the Qawasim, it was built by Shaikh Sultan.

A Habus commented: “Khatt has always been confusing; people have always been buying and selling bits of it, and I dont know the details.” Attempts to meet respected men in Khatt recommended as knowledgeable failed. These remarks and comments indicate changes over time, but no definitive order of change. Published sources provide more information. Tabur (1998; 366) says the Naqbiyyin have been at Khatt since time immemorial. He lists the six sections, butun, of the Naqbiyyin in Khatt with details of their arrival in Khatt. 1 – Bani Ali, whose wujud, Mansur b Ali was the Amir of Khatt three hundred years ago and extended the authority of the Naqbiyyin over Khatt; his progeny are there to this day, and their Amir now is Muhammad b Rashid b Ali b Mansur b Ali an-

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Naqbi. They are in west Khatt. 2 – Bani Hashim, who have been in Khatt for around a hundred years, and live in east Khatt. 3 – Al-Ruwaishid lived in the mountains, and came down to Khatt about a hundred years ago; they live in east Khatt. 4 – Ahl ad-Dra have been in Khatt for about two hundred and fifty years, and live in east Khatt. 5 – al-Bakura have been in Khatt for about a hundred years, and live in west Khatt. 6 – Ahl-Samsum have always lived in west Khatt. So according to this information, Naqbiyyin arrived over a period of more than three hundred years, apart from the Ahl Samsum.The Naqbiyyin built a mosque with red plaster in the middle of the date gardens about a hundred years ago (1998; 383), called Masjid al-Thaqab, because of the falaj al-Thaqab, an old falaj in Khatt; the Amir of Khatt, Muhammad b Rashid al-Naqbi said the mosque was built by Shaikh Abdullah b Abd ar- Rahman b Saibu, the Imam of the mosque. Concerning the Awanat in Khatt, Tabur (1998; 360 – 1) says Awanat are from Al bu Shamis Naim. Old men remembered some Awanat had lived at Khatt and Muwailah. In Khatt, they built and owned two towers, Burj Shahin and Burj al-Mazaraa; both of these became Zaab, who rebuilt them in the 1920s. Sultan bin Saif al-Awaini said that Abd al-Latif b Ays al-Sirkal said to him that when he first remembered the English, Shaikh Shahin was the Amir of Khatt. The last Awanat to live in Khatt were Shahin b Sultan al-Awaini and his four sons, Gathib, Shahin, Majid, and Hamad. Tabur gives two accounts of the Awanat move to Dibba Husn. In the first, from Shaikh Saif b Ali al-Khatri, a long, long time ago, the Awanat had lived with Khawatir, al-Biduwat and al-Marawna to the south; when Mutlaq al-Mutairi came to Idhn, the tribes divided; some were with the Mutairi, but Biduwat left for Hatta, Awanat to Dibba Husn, and Marawna to Wadi Naqab. The second came from elderly men who said a long time ago, the Awanat had lived at Khatt and Muwailah, and before that, they had lived to the north. But there had been a killing involving Awanat slaves, so they moved west and settled there. According to Abdullah b Miftah al-Khatri, the district of the Awanat began south of al-Saadi and went north to Aud al-Thil at Kharran. Shahin at Dibba Husn said 250 years ago or more, Shaikh Shahin bin Saif alAwaini with many of the slaves and servants settled in Dibba Husn [consistent with Sultan b Shahin b Saif dying in the time of the first Shaikh Saqr]. Badger/ibn Ruzaiqs (1871; 144) description of Nadir Shahs wars in Oman between 1737 – 44 mentioned the arrival of Imam Saif b Sultan of Masqat in 1737 at Khatt.

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In 1901, Walker (1994; vol 1, 104) the headman of Khatt was Sultan bin Ali bin Mansur; Khatt had 30 houses of Awanat and Naqbiyyin, living from date gardens. Lorimer (1908 – 15; 2,1005) noted c. 100 houses of Awanat, Naqbiyyin, and Sharqiyyin, and some Zaab from Jazirat alHamra stayed there in the hot weather months; there were 20 camels, 30 donkeys, 25 cattle, and 300 sheep and goats. The gardens were irrigated from hot springs, overlooked by a tower built by the Shaikh of Sharjah, with c. 20,000 date trees, three fifths owned by Zaab. Walker (1994; vol 3, 533) states Khatt was a village of c. 100 houses of Awanat, Naqbiyyin and Sharqiyyin; Zaab visitors; c.20,000 date trees. The movement of Naqbiyyin sections into Khatt took place over three hundred years; one section claimed to have always lived there. Naqbiyyin in Khatt may be an aggregation of small tribes from the nearby mountains who wanted date gardens and who preferred Qawasim rule to Sharqi rule [or Ghafiri to Hinawi, in an earlier idiom]. Awanat came in, owned parts of Khatt alongside Naqbiyyin, some of whose constituent parts were still moving in, developed Muwailah and then went to Dibba Husn [perhaps c. 1750 if using the migration by Shahin bin Saif, or c. 1800 if the arrival of Mutlaq al-Mutairi], to be replaced by Naqbiyyin sections, later on by Zaab in the 1920s, and in the 1980s and 90s by Habus. Individuals may have changed their tribal identity by protection or by marriage and inheritance. Incomers moved in and out by buying land, working in date gardens as bayadir and saving to acquire land, and by marriage and inheriting land. Some group movement was said to come from decisions about living under Wahhabi rule.

Sands There were few remarks about the history of the bedu tribes of the sands. An Awaini said, The Khawatir came long after the Awanat; they came about two hundred years ago, and they gave seventy slaves to Muhammad b Nasr al-Shahin at Husn al-Muwailah. The qadi family in Khatt were the Rijban, Riyban. We didnt share Husun with them, but they were there often because they were the qadi. I havent heard of the Chibali. Husun was built by Husain b Muhammad al-Awaini who was khall to the first Sultan bin Saqr (ruled 1803 – 1866), and Husain b Muhammad had a brother called Darwish. The place where Husun was built used to be called Inaiz and more than two hundred years ago was all date gardens with yazara wells. The husun was like the Awaini capital and was for living in, it was a family headquarters, and peo-

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ple passing by used it as a place of safety for themselves, their animals, and goods.

A Mazrui at Husn Muwaylih remarked, “As far as I know, Husun Muwailah was shared between Awanat and Riyam? Riyan? A name like that, anyway. Before they owned it, the area belonged to the Chibbali, a bedu tribe.” A Shihuh commented, Husun al-Muwailah belonged to the Awanat who were strong in Khatt, they used it in the winters. All year round, it was used by caravans going through, it was where traders got together ready to move on with their goods. The Chibbali exist, and maybe they did have it before, I dont know. Quite a lot of them live behind Digdaga Police Station. They are definitely bedu and on their own, they arent Khawatir or Ghafili.

A Khatri said, “The mudbrick tower and buildings in the sands near the new electricity line is Mazairia, and the Khawatir owned it. Its old, but I have no idea when it was built or by who. There are places like that all over the sands.” A Zaabi remarked: “Muzra, Mazairia, was a place where caravans collected to go up to Dubai, using Khawatir camels.” Another Khatri commented, Mizra or Mizairia belonged to the Zaab. The al-Ali of Umm al-Qawain, the Bani Qitab of Sharjah, the Naim of Ajman and the Khawatir of Ras alKhaimah (who are also Naim from Al bu Khuraiban) are all Bani Ghafir who listened to the teachers sent out by the Sudairi and became Muslim. This is the beginning of what has happened in the last two hundred years. Seventy years ago, in 1930 or thereabouts, there was a war between the Khawatir and the Al bu Falasah, between Ghafiri and Hinawi. Why there was a war, I dont know. The father of Shaikh Zaid of Abu Dhabi adjudicated at a meeting at Tawi Suhaili, and Sultan al-Khatri – Ali Sultans father – was one of the Khawatir negotiators. Shaikh Zaid was present at that meeting, aged about thirteen or fourteen.

Documentary information is limited. Lorimer (1908 – 15; 2,942 – 3) noted four wells in the sands area of Ras al-Khaimah; at Hadithah, there were two wells, stone lined at the top, used by Ghafalah and Khawatir nomads, with fine ghaf trees; Hamraniya was “a small green oasis” with two wells, belonging to Ghafalah and Khawatir; Saadi had two wells, used by Ghafalah and Khawatir; and bu Yailan had two wells, used by Ghafalah, Khawatir, and passing caravans. Walker (1994; vol 5, 276) mentions information collected in 1947 about the history of the sections of Naim, Al bu Shamus, to which Awanat belong, and Al bu Kharaiban, to which Khawatir belong. Their origin was Qahtani or Yemeni who became Ghafiri at some unknown date. The Naim tribe was proverbially disunited.

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Naim were driven out of the Dhahirah (the area west of the Hajar mountains towards Buraimi) in the days of Tahnun, ruler of Abu Dhabi from 1818 to 1833 and the grandfather of Zaid b Khalifah. Thanun gave some of them sanctuary on the coast and eventually restored them to Qabil and Sunaina by defeating Bani Ghafir. Since those days, they have been almost permanently at kaff (in a state of non-aggression) with Al bu Falah. Heard Bey (1996 ed; 46 – 53) discusses Buraimi and its area in terms of the aims of the Rulers of Oman, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, but does not mention the taking and return of Sunaina and Qabil. A Qitbi said, The Bani Qitab with other tribes opposed the Persians who had landed at Sharjah and went onto Ajman. The tribes gathered at Hatta. The Persians were at Ajman, which is why it is so called. The Qawasim came from Qishm and landed between Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah, and the tribes joined up with them. The only tribe to support the Persians was the Khawatir. The battle took place at Fallah, just outside Ajman. The tribes knew who the spies of the Persians were, because they didnt face the enemy while waiting. There was a gale blowing and a sandstorm was blowing from the direction of the Persians. Those who were loyal faced into the storms and sand in readiness, while the spies turned their backs to the wind. The Persians were defeated and the Qawasim then controlled all the coast from Sharjah to Ras al-Khaimah. They only controlled the coast, they didnt have any control anywhere else. The Qitab were then given Fallah as their haram. Bani Qitab and Musafiriin are ibn amm and somehow we are related to the Manasir, but I dont know the details of how. Some of the Musafariin and possibly some Qitab joined up with Bani Jaradat who lived in what is now Saudi Arabia – they are camel herders living in and around the Empty Quarter. I dont know the dates of when any of this happened [possibly towards the end of the Omani-Persian wars between 1695 – 1720, when Qawasim appear to be at Qishm and Ras al-Khaimah town, and Rahma b Matar al-Qasimi starts to act as a regional power (Slot 1993; 249 – 253)]. Long, long ago Bani Qitab wintered at Dhank and we were the first people to build a fort at Manama.

Hamerton, travelling from Sharjah to Buraimi in 1840, mentions Ghuraif, an old ruined fort with several wells and trees, which formerly belonged to Al bu Shamus Naim of Buraimi who were driven out about 70 years earlier [so c. 1770] by Bani Kaab, and then occupied by Bani Qitab (Ward 1987; 437).

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Ruus al-Jibal history is presented as tribal history; Dhahuriyyin; Shihuh; and Habus Dhahuriyyin at Shaam explained, There are three versions of the origins of the Dhahuriyyin, and we are telling you this to make sure proper information is recorded. The first version is that we came from Malik bin Fahm al-Azdi after the breaking of the Marib dam, and we divided from the Shihuh after the wars of the Ridda because we paid zakat and they withdrew from doing so. The second version is as follows: Malik bin Fahm and the Bani Qudaa, whose shaikh was Muhra bin Haidan, left Yemen and went to Oman, again after the breaking of the Marib dam. Muhra bin Haidan stayed in Shihr at a place called Wadi Dhahuur. Some of these people, the Bani Qudaa, migrated to the Ruus al-Jibal with the King of Arabia as-Saidiyya (Arabia Felix) which was Yemen, that is between Shihr and Salalah. They went by way of Sur in Uman and by Hormuz. Both of these places are very ancient, and it is said that Hormuz was founded by Dhu al-Qarnain, Alexander the Great. Someone became the King of Hormuz and he gave the Ruus al-Jibal, including the island of Larak, to the Dhahuriyyin, and we are still here. Confirming this, Dr Ahmad Jalal al-Tadmuri quotes unknown Portuguese sources which say the King of Hormuz with his family and all his ministers and their families peopled an empty Musandam. In the third version, al-Quraish in Mecca were divided in two, one in the mountains called al-Dhahur and the other at the foot called al-Butn. Sama bin Luaiy al-Quraishi who was a Dhahuri had a problem with his brother and left Mecca and went to Oman. When he got to Oman he married an Azdi wife. We dont find the third version at all convincing. Of the other two, we prefer the second, because there is more detail. We recognise that these versions of our history compress a great many events over a very long time, they are a way of talking about our past. Dhahuriyyin are Ghafiri, Shihuh are Hinawi. Shutair get their name from sh-T-r, to cut; Hadiya means to continue in the same path. When the British and Omanis took Khasab about thirty years ago, they practised divide and rule. They induced the Kumazara, some of the Dhahuriyyin and some of the Shuhuh to help them, so those groups are known as Bani Shutair because they cut themselves away from the rest, who are Bani Hadiya because they continued in the same path. Shutair and Hadiya werent forebears, they werent people, they were the names for two groups derived from each chose to do in a particular situation. We recognise the group names were already in use at that date, and we dont know what the original event was that caused the division; the events in about 1930 reinforced the situation.

East of Ghamda, a Dhahuri remarked,

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Im from Hurais, part of Dhahuriyyin. The Dhahuriyyin used to have nearly all the Ruus al-Jibal. I think the Dhahuriyyin started off at Khasab, and the Shihuh started at Dibba. We have been moving south, and they have been moving north, and we meet at Jabal Raan al-Harim. All the people on the coast say they are Shihuh but they arent, they are Persians, Baluch, even Pakistanis.

Dhahuriyyin at Shaam said, Bani Kamal were Dhahuriyyin. The family of Bani Kamal from which the shaikhs of the Dhahuriyyin came died out quite a long time ago. Al-Kamali, the family who provided the qadi for bin Malik, shaikhs of Bani Hadiya, are quite different, they were Arabs from the Fars coast. We know nothing about the shaikhs of the Dhahuriyyin except for Bani Kamal. Sima, Asfal and Ghabbina in Wadi Sall Alaa all belonged to the Qdur Dhahuriyyin. The Shihuh who now live there had always wintered there, they have their mountain fields up above at Bilad and places. They wanted to buy land at Sima, Asfal and Ghabbina for winter houses. Plots of land for houses were sold to them as individual Shihhi by individual Bani Qdur, but the whole process of sales and purchases was worked out by the then madruub of Bani Qdur and Bani Abdullah Muhammad. This is thought to have taken place in the time of Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr and well before the times of his troubles, so I reckon this was actually around a hundred and fifty years ago [c. 1850]. Gradually the Shihuh who had winter houses in those places acquired fields in them by purchase and marriage. Bani Qdur were decreasing in numbers before the sales took place, which was the reason the sales took place. We have no sea people on the west coast, but we do on the northeast coast, where they are all known by the name of the place they own there. So there are Ahl Hablain, Ahl Mansal and so on, lots of them.

The remark made by a Dhahuri that Dhahuriyyin were given the Ruus al-Jibal by a King of Hormuz may refer to the flight by Saif al Din Nusrat to Kumzar [and then to Laft on Qishm] during inter-family fighting over the succession to the Hormuz throne in the 680s/1280s (Aubin 1953; 159). Dhahuriyyin are first mentioned in British sources as an established Omani tribe in the 18th century (Warden 1819, 1985 [1856]; 300). They are next mentioned in connection with the building of a short lived telegraph station in the mid 1860s at what the British called Elphinstone inlet, between Hablain and Maqaqa. Disbrowe, the British Resident, had assumed the area came under Oman, but Dhahuriyyin at Hablain stated they followed Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr of Sharjah (Lorimer 1908 – 15; 1, 623). Disbrowe established relations with the Dhahuriyyin of Hablain and Maqaqa but found them difficult. In 1868, the telegraph station was removed to Jask on the Iranian coast, because of the excessive

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heat and the insolence of the natives, notwithstanding the periodical gifts their chiefs received, had been frequently such as to make the presence of a gunboat necessary (Lorimer 1908 – 15; 1, 623). This is an example of The inability or unwillingness of the [British} Indian government and its agents in the Gulf to countenance or comprehend any local viewpoint that did not coincide with their own, (Wilkinson 1987; 236). Kemballs 1901 report (Walker 1994; vol 5, 32ff) stated the Dhahuriyyin leaders on the north-east coast were Sulaiman b Abdullah al-Dhahuri at Maqaqa, Ahmad b Saud at Hablain, and Ali Muhammad at Filim. Lorimer (1908 – 15; 2, 1607ff) mentioned Filim had 60 houses of Dhahuriyyin who fished and had some date trees at Dibba, and owned 5 large sambuks and 30 small fishing boats; Hablain had 25 houses of Dhahuriyyin with 5 or 6 fishing boats; Mansal, 6 houses of Dhahuriyyin and 4 fishing boats; Maqaqah, 100 stone houses of Dhahuriyyin, 5 sambuqs to Makran ports and 15 fishing boats; at Muntaf, 15 Dhahuri houses and 6 – 7 fishing boats; at Qanah, 40 Dhahuri houses and 10 fishing boats, and they moved to Shamm seasonally; at Shabbus, 20 houses of Dhahuriyyin with 4 fishing boats; at Shaisa, 15 houses of Dhahuriyyin, but belonging properly to Kumazarah, 3 large boats going to the Batinah and 20 fishing boats, who got their supplies from Khasab and moved to Dibba and Khor Fakkan in the summer; and Sibi, 7 Dhahuri houses and 2 fishing boats, its people went to Karshah and Dibba for the summer. Zimmerman (1981; 170) gives details from 1978 – 9 of the seasonal movements of people at Mansal, Maqaqa and Shaisah; all owned goats and grain fields, in addition to fishing boats. Concerning Shihuh, a Shihhi in Dibba Baiah said, As far as I know, the Shihuh were originally Shanuah Azd, and they were here a long time before the coming of Islam. When Abu Bakr demanded sadaqa, the Shanuah Azd withdrew from paying because they preferred to look after their own. They were already living in the Ruus al-Jibal and had been, because otherwise how could they have been able to withdraw from paying zakat?

A Shihhi in Khor Khuwair said, All Shihhi come from Umar bin Khattab and it all becomes very confusing with Malik bin Fahm and the Azd and the Ridda and so on. The important thing is that we are all Shihhi. Shihuh are Shutair or Hadiya. Hadiya and Shutair were brothers – I dont mean real brothers born of the same parents, but brothers is the way we talk about groups very close and similar. The division happened a long time ago, much more than a hundred and fifty years ago, and Shutair and Hadiya were both Hinawi.

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A Mahbibi remarked, Habus are definitely not Shihuh. Mahbib, Qiyaishi, Bani Ali, Bani Bakhit, Khanabila, Maqadihah, Salhadi, Rawdhi, Ahl Sij, Haslamani, Murri … they are all Shihuh.

A Bani Lassam Shihuh commented, In my opinion, Habus, Shihuh and Dhahuriyyin are the same in their behaviour and customs. They are different tribes but the same people; they have all always been here. The Naqbiyyin, that people say are also a very old tribe, are different and I dont know where they come from. I dont think Shihuh are descended from Azd. I dont know why people say they do, but it is untrue. Shihuh, Habus and Dhahuriyyin were here when the Azd came to Oman. I think the Shihuh have been here the longest of all the tribes because they are more numerous than the Habus and Dhahuriyyin, and because they own more places, and the places they own are scattered more widely.

A Khanbuli Shutair Shihuh said, People who say Shihuh are from Azd and people who say they are not are both right and both wrong, and I am sure that both sorts of people would actually agree with me. Because it is known that when Malik b Fahm and other Azd came here, there were Arabs here already. And we know by looking around in the Ruus al-Jibal and seeing the very old tombs from before Islam that there were people in the Ruus al-Jibal long before Islam came here. Some of the people in the Ruus al-Jibal were those who withdrew from paying zakat, and some of the Azd at Dibba withdrew from paying zakat. So there were Azd and those who were already here as Shihuh. In addition, some people from the small tribes who had been here before the Azd and became Shihuh may have gone to Basra or somewhere later on and become Azd because that was a name known where they went; if they or they descendants returned here, they may well have become Shihuh again. Shutair is spelt with a soft t and means to tear off, like you do bits of bread. Hadiya does mean to remain in one place but it also means to be quiet for a long time and then burst out, like a bird in a bush that hears you coming. But I dont know why the two parts have those names. It must have happened too long ago for anyone to remember. In the recent past, it is known that some Shihuh became Habus. Sabtan in the Ruus al-Jibal is Bani Daid, Bani Idaid, Shihuh. A long time ago, maybe two or three hundred years, some families from Haramsha of Bani Daid moved from Sabtan to Khatt because they wanted land and they managed to get land there. The important neighbours for these Haramsha were the Habus around; over time they married with them, and moved in with them, so that they became Habus. Most Haramsha who have become Habus dont know they were originally Shihhi, although some do. In 1970, when people had to register for citizenship papers, the Haramsha reg-

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istered themselves as Habus. But the idea of an original group of identity wasnt very important to them. What mattered was that they identified themselves with where they were; who they were was where they were.

A old man in Khatt said, Im Shihuh from Dibba, but Ive lived in Khatt since Unification when Zaid gave people houses. I accepted a house in Khatt because, although I had a date garden in Dibba and a house and fields east of Sabtan, I got very tired carrying firewood down to Ras al-Khaimah from Sabtan all the time. Im part of Haramsha Bani Daid, from the part that didnt leave and go to Khatt maybe three hundred years ago.

A Haslamani said, “The only people who stopped being Shutair and became Habus were some Haramsha and Masharba. The Haslamani are also from Bani Daid but we remain Shutair Shihuh.” A young Musharbi met in Ras al-Khaimah town remarked: The Musharba are from Bani Idaid – or Daid – who joined the Habus at Khatt. I dont know why or how, and I dont know anything about the Haramshe except that they too are from Bani Idaid and joined the Habus. I come from the al-Hamr, a group descended from Hamr, our ancestor five to six generations back. The al-Hamr have lands at al-Quda, Wadi al-Birr and Wadi Nahal, but we come from Umm Ayrik beyond Yinas and alQuda, above the starts of Wadi Naqab and Wadi Nahal. My father has a house above the central graveyard at al-Quda, and the house that Hamr lived in is still there, but now it is a small, square outbuilding.

A Haslamani commented, The list of Shihuh tribes given in Lorimer (1908 – 1915; vol. 2, 1805 – 1810) sounds more or less right. I dont know Bani Muhammad Ubaid of Bani Hadiya. I know Bani Ali of Bani Hadiya, they go from north of Dibba Baiah to Lima, and the hills above. Bani Ibrahim arent Hadiya, theyre Shutair, and at Burairat at the mouth of Wadi Bih. Bani Ham Mazyad – we say Mazyuud – are Hadiya, in the hills east of Khasab. Khanazirah are Bani Hadiya in the mountains south of Khasab, after Jabal Raan al-Harim, part of Wadi Banna, and they have some of Sij. Shutair – Bani al-Asamm are Bani Lassam, in and behind Dibba Baiah. Ahl Hail are at Hail in Dibba Baiah. Bani Hamad are at Kabbah or Hayir above Lima, as in the book. Bani Kanar are an old tribe, and they have Kunaif. Mahbib have Dhaya. The Maqadihah have Saqattah as in the book, and Ras and Waab near Sabtan, but their place in Wadi Bih isnt called Musaylif but Khartum Zibaat. Ahl Maqam have Khabbah Sawr, not Sawt, a place in Dibba Baiah. Bani Murra arent at Sall Alaa, thats Dhahuriyyin. Ghishah is Qisha and its up behind Bukha. I know Qiyaishi, but Ive never heard of a place called Baighut. The Saad –or al-Assad – are above Ghalilah, as in the book. Ahl Salhad are at Salhad. I dont know a book called Tarikh ash-Shihuh by Dr Falah Hanthal.

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A Salhadi added “What the list says is more or less correct, but people werent together all the time, they went off as one or two families with their goats.” A Khanbuli said, Ive looked at Dr Hanthals book, and most of it is about Hadiya because his informants were bin Malik. The lists of places he gives as belonging to the various groups seems to be accurate for Khanabila, but they are nearly all winter places in Wadi Bih. Every group has many, many places in the mountains, and no-one knows them all.

A Khanbuli explained, Khanbuul, the ancestor of the Khanabila, had four sons, one of whom was Hurrais. Hurrais in his turn had four sons, Hudaid, Mazyuud, Muhammad, and Qdur. Qdur had four sons one of whom was another Hurrais. I come from Hurrais bin Qdur. Qdur had another son by a different mother, called Said who was the forefather of the Bani Said in Karsha. Hudaid is the ancestor of Bani Hudaid at Musaylif. Mazyuud was the ancestor of Mazaid or Bani Mazyuud at al-Kuur and al-Matan in the area of al-Aini and Salhad. The fourth son, Muhammad, came from outside and was given protection, and Bani Muhammad are usually known as Bani Muhammad bin Rashid. Where they came from is unknown but they were definitely bida from Ruus al-Jibal. Qdur, who at that time was head of the family, gave them al-Abyath, and he accepted them so that they could help in a fight with another tribe … Shihhi … it was about land.

Groups often said movements out of and into land were usually achieved by sales and purchases. At the same time, people said disputes over land were common, and sales often ratified the settlement of a land dispute. Examples of land sales between men of different tribes included al-Aal and Faria by Bani Shamaili Khanabila to Habus, and of Sima, Afsal and Ghubbina in Sall Alaa by Bani Qdur Dhahuriyyin to Shihuh, among whom were Qiyaishi who bought Ghubbina. Unlike the Haramsha who moved to Khatt and its area, these Qiyaishi remained Shihuh Shutair Qiyaishi, because they bought land only for winter houses and later, winter fields, and continued to use their high lands and houses. A Qiyaishi at Ghubbina said, We are the same tribe as Qiyaishi behind Rams. We have been here for as long as any of us can remember. We have a few small fields here, fields on the tops and a few at Sij, which we got by marriage. There was some trouble between us and the other Qiyaishi, and we think it must have caused blood, but we were already here. The trouble, whatever it was, took place on the fields on the tops of the mountains. We really dont know any more, it happened too long ago, which must be more than two hundred years ago.

His son at a shaabiyya in Ras al-Khaimah remarked:

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As far as we know, Qiyaishi have always been at Ghubbina, Wadi Shaha and Wadi Saali, and the places up in the mountains, and we have always had fields east of Sij, like Mintara and the others which eventually bring you to above Ghubbina. As far as we know, there hadnt been any trouble that took place on the top fields that forced people to move.

A Qiyaisha at Kubda behind Rams said, “The Qiyaishi at Ghubbina are Qiyaishi originally from here. They moved to Ghubbina after a killing, more than two hundred years ago.” A Khanbuli said “The Qiyaishi at Ghubbina must have gone there seeking protection after a killing.” The different reasons given for Qiyaishi at Ghubbina may come from the speakers distance from the Qiyaishi participants at Ghubbina. For the inhabitant of Ghubbina, being at Ghubbina is not really interesting; his interest was on the high mountain fields and he made no reference to anyone moving because of some trouble which could have been settled by payment of compensation. The son, who had never depended for livelihood on their fields, saw Qiyaishi owning a series of high mountain fields from those above the southern edge of Sall Alaa to those of Qiyaishi to the west of Jabal Khanzur, and was unaware of trouble. The Qiyaishi at Kubda behind Rams saw the Ghubbina Qiyaishi as isolated from those of wadi Shaha and wadi Saali, Nidd, Mayya and Lahsa; the rationale is they must have been from here, they left, people leave because of killing. The Khanbuli makes the same assumptions; for him, too, Qiyaishi come from Wadi Shaha and its area. Most Qiyaishi lived and had their fields in Wadi Saali, Wadi Shaha, Nidd, Mayya and part of Lahsa which was shared with Bani Bakhit. A Qiyaishi at Ubbraihi in wadi Shaha explained, There were four original farij in Wadi Shaha. The first was Mswait, at the top of the wadi with the three tombs from before Islam and the old graveyard. Mswait developed into Luwaiba on the west side and Umm Mayya on the east. The third was where we are now, at Ubbraihi or Buraha, with another tomb. The fourth was Khamm Matar lower down. Waab Rbaay is the farij with the date trees up the wadi.

A Ramsawi commented, In the 1960s, Sall Dhaya was used by Ramsawis, and as far as I know, had always been. My father had fields there he had bought from a man who lived in Dhaya. Then it was bought or acquired somehow by Qiyaishi who had been using Uraibi, just inland of Ras al-Khaimah town, as a watering place and had their lower fields all the way along the edge of the sayh. The Qiyaishi sold these to Habus – or Habus acquired them in some way – and at the same time, Qiyaishi acquired Sall Dhaya. The Mahbib used to use the water at Uraibi and the sayh like the Qiyaishi. Gradually the Uraibi area

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was taken over by Habus, who were as thick on the ground as ants. The quarrels you have heard about between groups of Habus were over ownership of and rights to the water, and eventually Shaikh Saqr stepped in and settled them. Qiyaishi and others had stopped using Uraibi a long time before because it was too difficult and tiresome with Habus bickering among themselves all the time.

A Habus in Uraibi stated, “Qiyaishi used to own Rabiya and they sold it recently to Habus, as well as Uraibi. Kubda north of Dhaya was always Qiyaishi and as far as I know Sall Dhaya always belonged to Ramsawis.” A Khanbuli said, I remember some Habus or perhaps one Habsi buying land around the mouth of the wadi south from Rabiya – cant remember its name – from Qiyaishi in 1973 or 74. It was something to do with someones sister marrying a Habsi. But when people talk about – as in this instance – Qiyaishi selling land and Habus buying – in reality it is an individual Qiyaishi and an individual Habsi. Purchases and sales of little bits of land go on all the time, and always have, and nearly always they were between people connected through women, the khuwayyil. If a Qiyaishi, for example, marries a Habsiyya, and she inherits a good piece of land which her husband works and their son inherits, her son might well move there, especially if he marries there. If his son does the same, in five or six generations their descendants will be, to all intents and purposes, Habus. The fact that their forebears in the male line were Qiyaishi isnt important, it doesnt matter. Its only when someone from outside – like you – asks about transfers of land, that anyone remembers.

Two elderly Mahbib at Shaabiyya Mahbib said, Neither of us have ever heard anything about Mahbib or Qiyaishi using the sayh or the wells at Uraibi, so it must have been more than two hundred years ago. We had always been up at Khamid, coming down to Maharriq when we needed to, and going over to Dibba Baiah to collect our dates. The farij east of the southernmost tower at Dhaya was part of Muharrig, it was all one. I was there when I was a boy, in the late 1920s, early 1930s. Those gardens on the sayh west of the farij and south of the tower had been date gardens, you can tell by the walls and water inlets and the wells. There may have been grain and vegetable fields around the edges. But I cant remember them ever being used, nor can I remember dead date trees, or even the holes where date trees had died and rotted. My father or grandfather said they had been date gardens, but the water had gone salt and then dried up altogether (possibly 1860?1890?). At about the same time, the spring at the back above the farij dried up, and that was when the earlier farij up on the hillside was abandoned for the lower one.

A very elderly Mahbib said,

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Mahbib have always been at Khamid. The people who were at Muharriq a long time ago were asli, original, Shihhi, called ad-Darusha, and they just died out. The people who moved in were Shamaili, Hasasna Bani Shamaili. That farij was always called Muharriq and although Muharriq means a kiln, we have never heard of pottery being made here.

A Khanbuli commented: Mahbib really hardly ever came down from Khamid. Muharriq was used by Hasasna Bani Shamaili, but they didnt own it; they used it for making jiss, they had a kiln, muharriq, there. The Darusha or Daraisha who were there before, were Persians, Sufis, Darawish. When the Sufis had to leave Persia when Sufism became unpopular, this group came here.

A Qiyaishi said, “I have heard that Mahbib had not always lived at Muharriq, and that before they lived there, it was the rabdu, where animals were penned for the night.” A Ramsawi remarked, So a Mahbibi mentioned that before they lived at Maharriq and before – or perhaps while – the Shamaili were using it, the Darusha had been there. My family who lived at Muharriq are from the Darusha or Darawish section of the Naim; it was my sixth grandfather, Hassan, who took protection from Saqr the First (ruled 1780 – 1803) and he had come from Sunaina, southwest or west of Buraimi. First he lived in Hudaiba, then he moved to Muharriq – we dont know why – and married a local girl. From what tribe she was isnt known, but she wasnt Mahbiba because at that time the Mahbib werent there. When I was a child growing up there, Mahbib were there then. Mahbib originally had a place in Wadi Ghalilah, and in a sense they still do because Bani Assad and Bani Juma who live there now are butun, groups of families linked by male descent, who joined the Mahbib. The forebears of Bani Assad and Bani Juma came in from somewhere that is now Saudi Arabia at some unknown time. Bani Assad came in some two hundred years or maybe more before my forebear Hassan married (so this could be c. 1600). It is Bani Azaizi Mahbib who are the real mountain Mahbib.

A Shihhi from the bil Hin remarked, bil Hin are a group from our ancestor Hin, nine generations back. The bil Hin started five hundred years ago (so 500 years is poetic exaggeration if nine generations is accepted; or nine generations telescopes the greater numbers of generations over five hundred years; nine generations is reckoned to be the number that can be remembered) at a place called Shaha. I dont know if this was in Wadi Shaha. The Qiyaishi, Bani Ibrahim and Haslamani also come from Shaha. I dont mean that these tribes are genealogically closer to each other, all Shihuh tribes are equal to each other. But here, every three hundred years or so, when people reach the ninth or tenth generation and the group is too big, a tribe splits in two and the names change.

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Some tribes decrease in numbers; a Haslamani said, “The Haslaman were a big tribe about two hundred and eighty years ago, but now we are small.” The sales of land at Ghubbina, Asfal and Sima by Qdur and Bani Muhammad Rashid Dhahuriyyin were because these tribal sections were decreasing in numbers. The splitting of some tribes, qabilah, about every three hundred years is an abstraction of a general principle of generation, and explains changes in named groups over historical time. This is not a mechanical process, but happens if and when necessary, not with ashira, the most inclusive group name like Shihuh, Naqbiyyin, or Kunud, but with qabila, the tribes inside these confederations like Mahbib or Khanabilah of Shihuh, Qdur of Dhahuriyyin. Within the qabail are other divisions whose names are said to be real at least for the generations nearest the speaker. From archive information, some tribes, ashira, are thought to be of greater historical depth than three hundred years or nine generations – Shihuh, Dhahuriyyin, Naqbiyyin, Mazairia, Kinud, B Kaab, B Kitab, and Naim for examples. The tribes of the Ruus al Jibal have dirah, owned resource areas. What happens to tribal dirah when individuals or families sell land to members of other tribes, even if there are blood relationships through women? In reality, tribal dirah are more flexible than they are described, rather as tribal identity is; there are ambiguous areas, just as there are individuals whose tribal identity is flexible; he says hes X but really hes Y, or they were W but now theyre Z; this area is used by A but is owned by the B, or the F say this is theirs but it really belongs to us the G. The sale of Ghubbina to individual Shihuh by individual Qdur and Bani Muhammad Rashid Dhahuriyyin transferred small plots of land, and later a few fields to Shihuh ownership, but Dhahuriyyin retain the area in their dirah, retaining rights of supervision of Shihuh visitors and guests at weddings. A Khanbuli at farij Slai al-Ghalib said, It was my ancestor Ghalib who bought Slai and Wadi Rabiya from Qiyaishi, and they had the big house up at Slai. Before that, Khanabila were confined to their lands in the high mountains and in Wadi Bih. At that time, Qiyaishi owned all the foothills from the mouth of Wadi Bih to the mouth of Wadi Rabiya, and from Wadi Rabiya south to Khatt was Naqbi. The people who owned the area before the Qiyaishi were the Muqabilat, shaikhs at Dibba Baiah. I dont know when that was, or if they were here and shaikhs at Dibba at the same time. The Naqbi were originally a small tribe at Haiyir in Dibba Baiah who then came together with other small tribes at different places and became Naqbiyyin. When, where and why are unknown. It is known that Habus moved into the foothills after Ghalib bought Wadi Ra-

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biya. Habus acquired a lot of Slai through marriage and we bought some back, and Ive bought more. Tawi Rabiya at the foot of the mountains was here when we came, so I dont know who built it. But we repaired it so we owned it.

At Burairat Dakhili, a Bani Ibrahimi remarked: “Bani Ibrahim have always owned Tawi Burairat, forever, until we sold it to Shaibans grandfather relatively recently.” Some Habus stated that their tribal origins were unclear. One said, “There are lots of stories, qisas, about where Habus come from; from the Portuguese, people from the south like Dubai and Abu Dhabi – lots of stories.” Another Habus commented: “Habus are very mixed. Some were Shihuh, some from Fars, some Portuguese and some from I dont know where; and gradually they became a tribe.” A Khanabilah said, Habus are definitely people who came in from elsewhere at some unknown date. They arent bida and most of the land they say is theirs was sold to them by Shutair. Some came later, from Hasasna Bani Shamaili. Habus are called Habus because they first were given land around Jabal Hibs, so they were Ahl al-Hibs. At some time, Habus were in Khatt which was then Shihhi and Naqbi; these Habus came from Adnan, northern Arabs. The details of what happened are very confused. I dont know them, I shouldnt think anyone knows them. The important thing is that the Habus came in at various times; some from Qahtan, some from Adnan, some from Qatar, some from Persia, some from Bilad ash-Sham. How, why and when is completely unknown, except that this was before Islam. And they were given land at Hibs by Bani Hadiya. This is why they are the southern Habus as opposed to the rest of Bani Hadiya and why there are no northern Habus.

On another occasion, this man remarked: Habus, as far as I know, started as groups in the sayh who had come in from Yemen and were related to Habus in Oman. They were herders. Gradually they were joined by other people on the sayh and in the foothills, and got land, and became – or are on the way to becoming – a Shihuh tribe. Some of the Habus from Wadi Nahalah south are known to be Shihhi in origin, like the Haramsha. For all these groups, it is essential to have at least five grandfathers, forebears of direct descent in the male line, before a new tribal grouping is generally accepted.

Another Khanbuli said, It was about two hundred and sixty years ago, maybe more, that Habus started becoming a tribe. Before that, the ones in the south were probably Shihuh. And those to the north, behind the date gardens on the sayh behind

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Ras al-Khaimah town, came from anywhere, and that has always been the same on the sayh and in the foothills. At about the same time, Naqbiyyin seem to have been withdrawing from Wadi Naqab and its environs. I heard that the reason was something to do with government but the details are unknown, and who knows if what one hears is correct? Usually, there are several reasons for changes in the named groups who live in or own an area. The Habus spread out like ants and bought out the Naqbi. The Haramsha were part of Bani Idaid in Sabtan and its area, and some of them bought out the Naqbi in Slai al-Quda, and I think part or all of Wadi Quda, and then in time they sold part of Slai and part of Quda to Habus. The little farij along the edge of the foothills were used by Mahbib and Qiyaishi tribes of Shihuh. Over time, that was where the people who became Habus and who were Habus moved in. I dont know when Mahbib and Qiyaishi started to move out, but a long, long time ago.

A Shutair in Lima said, I work in Masqat; in someones majlis there I met a very old Habsi. I asked him if Habus in Ras al-Khaimah were related to Habus in Oman. He told me Habus were originally of the Sharqiyya in Oman, but it was said that a very long time ago, a Hubsi left after a killing to the northern coast of Oman where he had married and stayed, and that the Ras al-Khaimah Habus were this mans descendants.

Some Haslamani commented: The Habus are real Shihhi, and they have always been in the area. However, Habus are very mixed, being made up of individuals and families who have come together over the years. We assume there has always been a Habus tribe because of Jabal Hibs, but they have always accreted. All tribes do this, its a living system that develops because of individual and family circumstances.

A man from Hudaibah remarked: “I know people have become Habus. Shihuh became Habus, people from Hudaiba became Habus, and people from Shimal became Habus.” A Habus said, Habus are close to Bani Hadiya because when we governed ourselves we went to the same bin Malik shaikh as the Hadiya who used Bukha did. Habus certainly owned part of Khatt, the rest was owned by Naqbiyyin. Quda does mean to allocate, but as far as we are concerned Slai alQuda and Diyar al-Quda are just names, they dont record an occasion of allocating land there between Habus families and groups.

Another remarked, “I asked my father about Uraibi and Habus. He said Habus never had the well at Uraibi, the water in that well was for

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Qiyaishi and Khanabila, and he had been told this by a Khanibli – a Khanbuli.” The father commented, All that dirah [now Habus] had at first belonged to Naqbiyyin, and that was a long, long time ago, well before the time of Sultan bin Saqr al-Qasimi. We Habus got Hibs first and then we spread gradually in the area by buying land. We paid for our purchases of land with money that we earned from the sales of surplus produce from fields, date gardens and animals, or by working in date gardens and fields or with animals. This took more than two hundred years. The buying of Wadi Naqab started because the Naqbi were on bad terms with the rulers and so they sold their land in the Naqab and moved over the mountain, one part to Dibba and one part to Khor Fakkan. The Shihuh were already in Dibba, as were the Sharqiyyin. The Naqbi went and they bought into their new places. The Haramsha were at Slai al-Quda before the Habus and they shared it with the Masharba. At that time, Slai and Tafif were owned by Naqbi who sold them to Haramsha. At this time, which is at least three hundred years ago and more, the Habus were small and weak, living in the sayh; and the boundary between them and Bani Shamaili was at al-Ashkar where the fields are called Waab al-Harb. The Qiyaishi used to own Rabiya and they sold part of it recently to Habus, as well as Uraibi.

Al-Tabur (1998; 349), using al-Siyabi and al-Salimi, links Habus of Ras alKhaimah to splits within the Omani Habus of the Sharqiyya during the Hinawi-Ghafiri wars; it is said that under the leadership of Nasr b Abdullah b Ahmad al-Habsi they linked up with tribes under Rahma b Matar al-Qasimis leadership (1700 – 1740). This event presumably resulted in the arrival of Habus on the Sayh around Ras al-Khaimah town, from which the processes described above then took place. Lorimer mentions Habus only as part of Bani Hadiya. They first appear in British documents in 1901 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 104), having 25 houses and date gardens at Qusaydat. In 1951, Walker (1994; vol. 3, 433 – 4) noted the Masqat government sent a deputation, led by Saiyid Badr b Said, Wali of Barqa, to Shaam to settle Omani claims to the area from Shaam and Rams to Khatt, presumably because Shihuh and Habus of those areas had used the Shaikhs of Bukha for dispute settlement. The British Political Officer for the Trucial States categorically denied this claim. After further fighting around Shaam, their amir agreed to accept Ras al-Khaimah rule if Shaikh Saqr would appoint a strong and just agent to control the area. In 1952, (Walker 1994; vol 3, 438) Habus allowed entry to a PDTC party, after the payment of shifaya by Shaikh Saqr, but refused a second application to visit on the advice of the Shaikh of Bukha, and the Sultan of Masqat informed the Political Resident that the Shaikh of Bukha had complained that the Qawasim, as sponsors of

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PDTC, were encroaching on Habus territory near Khatt. In 1955 (Walker 1994; 439) reports In support of Ras al-Khaimahs claims, Saif b Rashid al-Habsi, one of Saqrs retainers, told me in the presence of witnesses, that the Habus lands and men belong to Shaikh Saqr b Muhammad and they pay zakat to him. Shaikh Saqr makes an anuual payment of Rs9,000 to the Habus and other tribes. The acceptance of Shaikh Saqrs rule was not without incidents; in 1963 Habus held up the RAK Mineral Survey in the Ruus al-Jibal, as a retaliation against Shaikh Saqr awarding gardens on the sayh in their traditional grazing areas., and the Wali of Shaam made a bid for independence that year as a result of Habus complaints against Shaikh Saqr (Walker 1994; vol. 6, 274). There are groups, persons, structures, and events which link the Ruus al-Jibal to depths of time, or to dated events in regional history. Kumazarah serving in the fleet of Portuguese Hormuz, the Portuguese bombardment of the fort at Lima (Boxer 1930, quoting Ruy Freyre de Andrade), and Kumazarah and possibly Dhahuriyyin serving in Qawasim pirate fleets (Brucks, 1985 [1856]; 618) have been mentioned. The Amir of Lima recounted occasions when Shihuh from Lima had participated in events mentioned in documented sources. A Khanbuli at Slai al-Ghalib said “My grandfathers grandfather was a sadiq (attesting witness) after the British attacked Ras al-Khaimah. He was sent to Abu Dhabi to summon the ruler of that place to come to Fulayah to sign the treaty, and he attested to the signings of the rulers, including the Qawasim.” At ar-Rawdhah, an inscription written by Rashid b Khuzam ash-Shahum on a house belonging to Muhammad bin Humaid ar-Rawdhi is dated 1132/1719 – 20). A copper coin found at ar-Rawdhah was said to be Persian, and probably dated from 1114 / 1702 – 3). Also at ar-Rawdhah, two elderly Bani Rashid inspecting a family house knew the roof was last redone by their great grandfather, so between 1850 – 70. Fields, cisterns, and houses in the mountains were considered to be old; most have been maintained in use by constant repair, only some houses and cisterns are known to have been built from new. Khanabila Bani Shamaili were sure that a long unused field must be very old,from before Islam, from its situation in relation to the current flood and wadi flows and depths of deposits of silt and stone debris. An elderly Khanabila Bani Shamaili in Wadi Ghabbas considered two groups of fields were very old, as “my grandfathers grandfather couldnt remember them ever being used.” One group had a broken retaining wall; inside another retaining wall was visible but at a different angle to the existing one; the present fields overlay an earlier group. His second group of very old fields were sited where present flood

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flows could not reach; either the wadi flows had completely changed, or the fields were built when rain patterns gave long periods of gentle rain rather than short storms. Owners of mountain fields considered the system of use thousands, rather than hundreds, of years old. A Khanbuli said, “Half of Lima belongs to Khanabila. An old document dating from maybe 150 years ago, maybe 180 years ago, declares this is so and gives the markers of the owned areas.” His mother stated, “Mukhirbat the ruins in Wadi al-Aini was always called that; we didnt call it by that name when we left it and went down to al-Lihhy” [which implies Mukhirbat was a rebuilding, probably by Khanabila, of a site owned by a now forgotten tribal group]. A Dhahuri at Sili in Wadi Shaam recalled, We used to live at Su as-Sidma [sidma means to dry up] half way up the mountain on the way to Sall Istam, but the spring dried up. Then we used Sili much more. That was a long time ago, as no-one remembers anyone who remembered anyone who lived at Sidma. We just know that before the spring dried, we lived there.

Similar remarks were made by many people about several places. Printed sources mention coastal Shihuh and Dhahuriyyin. Badger /ibn Ruzaiq (1871; 110 – 111) wrote the followers of Rahma b Matar alQasimi of Julfar did not know good Arabic, when supporting Muhammad b Nasr al-Ghafiri at Rustaq in the 1720s. These troops are assumed to have been be Shihuh, but most Shihuh were partially defined as Hinawi (Omani), whereas some Dhahuriyyin and Kumazara were Ghafiri (Qasimi). Lorimer (1908 – 15; 2, 1807 – 9) estimated the total Shihuh population in 1907 at c.21,500; 14,500 on the coast and 7,000 in the interior. Between 1886 – 90, Shihuh of the Ruus al-Jibal adjoining Ras al-Khaimah raided date gardens near Ras al-Khaimah town and Khatt (Lorimer 1908 – 15; vol 1, 626, 735). In 1950, a member of the Desert Locust Survey was robbed in Wadi Ghalilah by Mahbib and Ayyal Saad Shihuh (Walker 1994; vol 3, 436). In 1952, (Walker 1994; vol 6, 132 – 3) the Shaikh of Dibba Baiah wrote to PDTC working in al-Hail near Ras al-Khaimah, complaining of their activities in Shihuh areas. Tabur (1997; 385) states that there were seven old mosques in Wadi Ghalilah built from local materials by local Shihuh groups, and five at Sili in Wadi Shaam built by Dhahuriyyin. The Dhahuriyyin had an old mosque at al-Qashba in Wadi Shaam of which nothing remains. There were other old mosques at Shaam, Jir and Waub al-Zaid.

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Western Hajar People talked about land being abandoned because of water sources drying up or from lack of labour from epidemics, as well as gardens being being bought and sold. A Sharqi at Manama remarked: Haqala, with its garden, falay and ghurfa, belonged to some Naim for a long time, but they sold it to someone from Khadra. Khadra is now split between Ras al-Khaimah and Dubai; Haqala, Shawqa and Munaiy are all Ras al-Khaimah; Masafi is divided between Fujairah and Ras al-Khaimah, and Manama is now split between Fujairah, Ajman, and Sharjah. These borders are new, but all the people who live in these places continue to be entwined one with another, as they always have been. The borders were decided by the relations the people in each place had with rulers on the coasts, where they had gone for arbitration or for markets, and where people owned gardens or went for the summers.

A Mazrui at Idhn stated: Mazari have Wadi Kuub nearly up to al-Yaruuf; Idhn and Ayyim; Fara, alMawrid and Ghayl; Asimah; Wadi Sfuni, Habn and Wadi Sfai. A hundred years ago, no Khawatir here owned anything, they came only for the summers and to get dates. The fort and towers were built long before Khawatir came, and they were built by the forefathers of bin Hamad of the Mazari. Our faces were always turned towards the Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah. The person who really knows our history is Saif Rashid Saif at Ghayl.

Another Mazrui at Idhn said, Khawatir do own gardens in Idhn now but a hundred years ago they didnt. They got gardens or land in Idhn bit by bit over the years by buying gardens or land. There wasnt a war about Khawatir moving in or taking land, the move into owning land at Idhn was gradual and peaceful. When Mazari left Idhn to go to the sands with their animals or to the coasts to sell things, Khawatir were our rafiq/escorts.

Saif Rashid Saif, the Amir of Ghayl, explained, Mazari came in after the coming of Islam, and we are from Bani Tamim. Since then we have been here, getting on with our lives and minding our own business. The towers and fort were built by Mazari, really against robbers. The hill top enclosure north of Idhn hasnt been used for as long as anyone can remember, there arent even any stories about it being used. Only three gardens in Idhn are owned by Khawatir, but many Khawatir now rent Mazrui gardens there and earlier, from the 1940s maybe, they used to sharecrop the gardens. Mazari have always been at places on the

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Batinah coast, at Aqr and Sur al-Mazari, for as long as anyone knows, cultivating, fishing and trading.

A Mazrui visiting Shimal commented: “I know several Mazari in Shinaas, Aqr and Sur al-Mazari and some in Suhar, Ibri and in Saudi Arabia. None of us has any idea when any of these Mazari groups moved to these places or where they moved from, except that it was a long, long time ago.” A Mazrui in Wadi Kuub remarked: “Im fairly certain the Mazari came here after the Prophet, we were already Muslims when we came here, and I know Sharqiyyin tribes were here already.” Another Mazrui in Wadi Kuub said, “The Mazari certainly came in from outside. Sharqiyyin have been here for ever, but the Mazari moved in gradually. Now the Sharqi are at Yaruuf and beyond, but before they were this end of the wadi as well.” A Zaabi at Faraa remarked, That graveyard has graves from before Islam and after. I dont mean before and after the Wahhabis, I mean before and after Muhammad. There are stories that there were battles here at the time of the Ridda, and the people who were killed were buried in that graveyard, and it was already an old graveyard. There are known names associated with the dead, they were fleeing from Dibba and were overtaken. The little graveyard further on is an Islamic graveyard after the time of Abu Bakr. Local people associate Muhallab with Dibba and the fighting there. Muhallab was from this area and he went with a party from the area to negotiate with Abu Bakr; they wanted to withdraw from the formal commitments of Islam. Abu Bakr persuaded Muhallab not to withdraw.

In Habn, a Mazrui said, The Mazari are from Malik bin Fahm, from Azd, and we have always been here even though Malik bin Fahm came from Yemen. Mountain people are the original, original people; that is us, the ahl al-hajar, and the bida, who are further north and different. A long time ago, we used to go the Amir in Kalba if we needed to [pre-1951]. But then there were problems between the Qawasim of Sharjah and the Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah. Eventually, when Salim b Sultan was replaced by Shaikh Saqr, we went to the Amir at Munaiy and took our zakat there. The fort on the top of Jabal al-Mna always belonged to Mazariand it is very old, at least a thousand years old. It was in use before there were guns, even muskets, because it is known that the guards up there used bows and arrows, bows of wood and metal. There used to be a stone that marked a bowshot from the Husn, but now the stone is under the school. The fields and furuj at the top of Wadi Baqarah and at Silwa are Naqbiyyin, but they havent been used for generations. There were trees growing on those fields when I was a child, and no-one ever mentioned anyone

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who had cultivated them. The water level of the spring at Silwa dropped, and so there wasnt a falay any longer. The new big commercial garden on the north side of Wadi Baqarah was developed by a Naqbi from Ras al-Khaimah town, he had a well drilled for water.

Below Ghaba, a Mazrui said, There used to be a whole farij here. The ground used to go as far as that big grey rock in the middle of the wadi, and the top of the stone used to be level with the ground. The farij used to be on that ground, but it was washed away one night in a flood about eighty years ago. My father couldnt remember it, but his father did.

A Mazrui visiting at Daftah remarked: “Ive been told by Saif Rashid Saif at Ghayl that some families of Mazari came from Liwa to Ghayl in the hungry time in the early 1940s, during the war, because they were so poor.” A Qiyudi said, “Before about 1880, the Mazari of Wadi Farfar were always attacking Fujairah because Mazari were allied with the Qawasim. After 1880, they made an alliance with the Sharqi and so became Sharqiyyin.” Tabur (1998; 384) states Idhn had an old mosque, which held about a hundred people, built by Mazari in mudbrick around a hundred years ago. Hamad al-Muzari, the Amir of the Mazari, and Rashid b Said al-Mazari built a mosque at Faraa at Ghayl more than a hundred years ago. Mazari also had old mosques in the district of al-Zafir and at Asimah. Walker (1994; vol 1, 104), using the 1901 survey of Ras al-Khaimah, stated the head man of Idhn was Sultan bin Hamad of the Mazari, with 15 houses of Mazari, and date gardens. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol 2, 1434) noted Mazari lived in the district of Ras al-Khaimah and Shamailiyya, in Wadi Ham, Wadi Sfuni, and Wadi Sfai; they were Ghafiri and Hanbali. Idhn had ( vol 2, 942) 40 houses of Mazari, 2,000 date trees, 15 camels, 50 donkeys, 30 cattle, and 400 sheep and goats. Wadi Kuub was not mentioned. At Faraa, the headman in 1901 was Sultan bin Ali al-Mazrui, with 25 houses of Mazari who lived from firewood, charcoal and dates; Lorimer (1908 – 1915; vol 2, 619) noted 20 houses of Mazari, with 1,500 date trees, 10 camels, 40 donkeys, 20 cattle, 250 sheep and goats. Asimah (Lorimer 1908 – 1915; vol 2, 618) had 50 houses of Mazari and Shairah, with 4,500 date trees, 20 camels, 40 donkeys, 40 cattle, and 400 sheep and goats. In Wadi Sfuni, there were 40 houses of Dhababihah and 30 of Mazari, with 3,000 date trees, 30 camels, 200 donkeys, 60 cattle, 1,000 sheep

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and goats. There is an old mosque at the Mazari farij al-Hassan in Wadi Sfuni. Lorimer (1908 – 1915; vol. 1, 782) noted that the Shaikh of Sharjah employed the Mazari and Jalajil bedouins to harass Fujairah as a reaction to the herdsmen of Fujairahs revolt against the Qawasim. In 1937, Shaikh Sultan bin Salim al-Qasimi said Sfuni, al-Ghaba and Mamduh, all Mazari, were among the principal places in his district of Ras al-Khaimah (Walker 1994; vol 3, 252). By 1955, Walkers appendix K (1994; vol 3, 425 – 539), Wadi Sfuni and Wadi Naidain were inhabited by Mazari and Quwayyid. Dhababihah had gone to the Batinah in the 1930s, after Dhababihah in Wadi Hilu had disputes with their neighbours and Shaikh Sultan bin Khalid of Sharjah (Walker 1994; vol 1, 461). In the early 1950s, the Amir was Muhammad bin Sultan (Codrai of PDTC in Walker 1997; vol 3, 449), who lived at Ghayl with his sons Ali, Abdullah and Saif (Walker 1994; vol 3, 530); Ghayl had c. 40 houses and 300 date palms. Walker (1994; vol 3, 449) in 1955, 45 houses of Mazari at the mouth of Wadi al-Ayyim; 30 houses at al-Ayyim, a settlement at Khwaikhib, a small settlement east of Idhn at Khawairat, and another at Yibah in Wadi Yibah, off Wadi al-Ayyim. In 1955, Walker (1994; vol 3, 533) noted 35 houses of Mazari at villages in Wadi Kuub, made up of Mughanni with 20 Mazari houses, al-Bidai with 7 houses, Waala, and Negaira. In 1957, he recorded the following Mazari villages north of Ghayl; Ayyim, Yibah, Idhn, Khwaikhib, Mughanni, Negaira, Kuub, and Waala; south-east of Ghayl – Shaibat, Dauut, Milah, Khilais, Kharuys, Kharis, and Ghayl Hammama; and in Wadi Faraa, Faraa with 25 Mazari houses and 1,200 date trees, Likhyal, al-Mawrid, Wamaid (Shairah and Mazari), al-Bidai (Shairah and Mazari), Wadi Sidr, Fagi, Tawi Yal, Zikat, Asimah (Mazari and Shairah), al-Baha, Algat. In 1955 (Walker 1994; vol 3, 531) Asimah had c. 50 houses of Mazari and Shairah, and 4.500 date trees. The acting Political Assistant visited Asimah in 1959, whose headmen were Rashid bin Saif and Rashid Mansuri (Walker 1994; vol 4, 475 – 489), after fighting between Sharqiyyin from Tayyiba and the people of Asimah. Sharqiyyin killed a man from Asimah and did Rs 14,000 worth of damage, burning down the eastern half of Asimah; the people of Asimah did Rs1,000 worth of damage to Tayyiba. The Trucial Oman Scouts were sent in and with their arrival, trouble stopped, and the dispute resolved through mediation by the Ruler of Umm alQawain between the rulers of Fujairah and Ras al-Khaimah. In 1961, Tayyiba people attacked Asimah people working on the road (Walker 1994; vol 4, 493).

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Lower down Wadi Sfai are Jalajil. An elderly Mazrui remarked, Shaabiyya Sfai is all Jalajil, a very old and original tribe, from the Shihuh. Their ancestor was a Shihhi who killed someone and fled to Wadi Saham east of Wadi Ghuna, and now in Fujairah. There he married the daughter of a very rich man who had lots of goats. Fay and al-Ayaili are mostly Maharsa and some Mazari and Jiljili.

At al-Barid in Wadi al-Ayaili, a Maharsi said, “The Jalajil are the same as the Ayaili, and they are at Sfai.” Two elderly Jalajil at Sfai commented, The Jalajil did come from the Shihuh a very, very long time ago, but I dont know from which tribe. It was one man who left, and his name was Muhammad, and he had a son called Ahmad, and he had a son called Salim, and we are all descended from them. That is all we know. The Jalajil occupy all this part of Wadi Sfai – Sfai, Waili and al-Ghuna – and there are Jalajil in Wadi Saham over the mountain too. There used to be a rock with all our history written on it below the look-out towers, but it was bulldozed when they built the road.

A Kaabi said, “I know that the Shaikh of Sharjah, Sultan bin Saqr (Sultan bin Saqr 1 ruled 1803 – 60; Sultan bin Saqr 11 ruled Sharjah 1921 – 1948), had got Mazari and Jalajil to harrass Fujairah a long time ago.” Lorimer (1908 – 1915; vol. 1, 782) noted that Shaikh Saqr of Sharjah (1803 – 1860) had forced Jalajil to use Kalba/Ghallah for their trading rather than Fujairah, in response to the Headman of Fujairahs request to the Shaikh of Dubai for help in getting compensation from Bani Qitab who had mistreated Jalajil traders at Fujairah. A man from Wadi Farfar met in Khor Fakkan said, “We arent Sharqiyyin”. His companion said, “They used to be but now theyre not, the people there are Jalajil and Kinud.” Lorimer (1908 – 15; 2,1432 – 3) reported there were 50 settled Jalajil at Farfar and Hail in Shamailiyya (ie Wadi Saham and Wadi Farfar), divided in allegiance between the Shaikh of Sharjah and Shaikh Hamad bin Abdullah al-Sharqi. Naqbiyyin at Daftah made few comments on their past. One said, We consider that a long, long, long time ago, athar, athar, athar, we were originally based in Dibba. All the three forts have been here for a long time, from before the quarrels between the Qawasim in the early 1950s. My father was the Amir of Daftah and the mutawwa, and he insisted on keeping our allegiance to Saqr and not moving to Sharjah.

Another said, “The rock carvings in the wadi have no meaning as far as I know. They are probably from the days of the Persians before the Qawasim came into the mountains and made it all one,” which might suggest

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either Qawasim rule in the area between 1747 when Nadir Shah died and the mid 1770s, when the Masqat government was allied with the Qawasim Shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah (Warden 1985 [1856]; 170), or the Qawasim expansion under Shaikh Saqr b Rashid al-Qasimi who succeeded his father in 1775 (Warden 1985 [1856]; 301). An elderly Naqbi remarked, We had shiff, like an alliance but not, with Qawasim and Mazari in the days of Humaid b Abdullah al-Qasimi [probably the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah 1869 – 1900; or possibly Humaid b Abdullah, nephew of the Regent of Kalba and ruler of Dibba Husn in the 1930s and 40s]. I dont know whether Naqbi started in the mountains and then came down to the coast, or the other way around. Naqbi of the coast and Naqbi of the mountains have all been where they are now for always – except possibly for Fahlain. The report from 1928 about Sharqiyyin killing Abdullah Khamis, the Amir of Daftah, at Masafi is correct. We then killed the Sharqi Amir of Safad.

In 1901 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 109), Khamis b Abdullah was the headman of Daftah, with 40 Naqbiyyin houses. Lorimer (1908 – 15; 2, 619) recorded 10 houses of Naqbiyyin, 20 donkeys, 30 cattle, 150 sheep and goats, and 1,000 date trees. Shaikh Sultan bin Salim claimed Daftah as part of Ras al-Khaimah in 1937 (Walker 1994; vol 3, 252 – 3); Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmad, the Regent of Kalba, claimed Daftah for Khor Fakkan in the same year. Walker (1994; vol 3; 424 – 539) stated that in 1955, Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah claimed Daftah. The then wali of Khor Fakkan, Nasir b Salim, said in the old days Daftah belonged in part to Khor Fakkan and part to Ras al-Khaimah; zakat was normally, but not always, paid to Ras al-Khaimah, while Khor Fakkan settled disputes and took zakat when Ras al-Khaimah didnt. In 1952, the people of Daftah went to Nasr and told him they wanted to pay zakat to Ras al-Khaimah for always. He left under pressure, and Daftah had paid zakat to Ras al-Khaimah since then. Shaikh Sultan bin Salim, ex-ruler of Ras al-Khaimah, told Walker he thought Daftah belonged to Kalba because its inhabitants were Naqbi. When he had been ruler of Ras al-Khaimah, bedu tried to cause trouble in Daftah, so he had offered help, which the Daftah people refused, as they were Said b Hamads (Ruler of Kalba 1903 – 37). The Ruler of Fujairah stated Daftah belonged to Sharjah for dispute settlement but Ras al-Khaimah took zakat as they provided markets and protection. To support his statement, he said in Hamad b Saids time (1937 – 1951, Heard-Bey 1996; 91 – 92), Hamad had imprisoned Naqbiyyin leaders from Daftah and Luluiyah for causing trouble, later releasing them. Ras al-Khaimah had queried Hamads right to do this, but to no avail. Shaikh Saqr of Ras al-Khaimah kept a wali and soldiers at Daftah and de-

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clared that Daftah belonged to him, having repelled a Sharjah attack in early 1954. In 1748, (Risso 1986; 42) Imam Ahmad b Said (Hinawi) assumed the government of Oman, and the northern tribes (al-Ghafiri) suggested to Bil-Arab bin Himyar he should promote his claim. The people of asSirr intended to invade Sohar; there was a battle at Bithnah in Wadi Ham, many were killed and the people of as-Sirr returned. The names mentioned of the northern tribes were Naim and Bani Qitab, while the people of as-Sirr were not tribally identified. A Mahdani met at Daftah said, The people of Madha werent Shihhi, but they used Muhammad bin Salih, the Shihhi Shaikh of Dibba Baiah, as their government. This was fifty, seventy years ago. Then the people of Madha felt there was no profit in being with Muhammad bin Salih, they needed a stronger government than he could provide. The people of Madha went to Oman to see Said bin Taimur. Then there was a meeting at Madha, between Said bin Taimur of Oman, the al-Qasimi shaikh, Hamad bin Ahmad al-Sharqi, and Muhammad bin Salih ash-Shihhi; these were the governments on this side of the mountains. They were our guests and we feasted them. Then they said to us, Who do you want? And the people of Madha answered Oman. And from then on we were Omani.

His elderly father at al-Ghuna said, Bani Saad are Shihuh from Shutair, and we have always been here in Ghuna. Madha is part Hadiya and part Shutair, and it was Hadiya from Madha who took up gardens at Mirbat. Im not sure when they did that, I would think about a hundred and fifty years ago. Earlier, the land here was Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah, that was in the time of Hassan b Rahma [c. 1805 – 1820]. Then it was under Qawasim of Sharjah, that was Sultan b Saqr. A separate Qasimi entity at Kalba came later. Later on [between 1863 – 1883], Shihuh took it back by war with the Qawasim, and that was in the time of Humaid bin Abdullah (1869 – 1900). That finished the long period of fighting between everyone in the region which started with the fighting over Dibba Baiah and Dibba al-Husn, and everyone got sucked into this, Qawasim, Shihuh, and Sharqiyyin. That was in the time of Sultan bin Saqr al-Qasimi (1803 – 60), and he took over the whole area of the Shamailiya coast. That was when the Qawasim soldiers were so awful; not, of course, that I remember it myself, but Ive been told about it. They were in all the forts, and always demanding food and services and money. When I was a small boy, some sixty-five years ago [c.1935 – 40], there was the meeting in Madha to decide which ruler we should follow. Both the Qawasim rulers came, the al-Sharqi of Fujairah, the wali of the Sultan

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of Oman from Suhar, and Muhammad bin Salih from Dibba Baiah. Muhammad bin Salih wasnt popular here, he was too busy in Sharqi-Qawasim quarrels. We chose Oman because with Oman we had freedom, and because the Wali, Hamad b Saif al bu Saidi, was a good man.

A Khanbuli Shutair Shihuh remarked: “Bani Saad at Madha and Ghuna are definitely real Shihuh.” At Madha, a Madhani said, “The towers on every little hill are left over from the Jahaliyya” [the period of ignorance before Islam, and used for any period without the rule of law and so marked by fighting]. Another Madhani said, I am Shihhi, my family are from the Jahwan tribe who came here from a place a hundred and fifty kilometres south on the Batinah coast. I dont know when this was, so a long time ago. Originally, the Jahwan came from the Hadramaut. We are definitely Shihuh. Madha is very old, because it was prosperous from its lands and water. I myself found two Umayyad gold dinars and a silver coin from the time of Alexander the Great here in Madha. You can see the dinars in this poster for an exhibition, and the coins are now in the National Museum in Masqat. The fertility of the area was the reason the Portuguese built a fort (Bocarro ed. I Cid 1992; vol III, plate XIV) at the junction of Wadi Ghuna and Wadi Madha. I have my own museum which is housed in a building the Sultan gave me, here in the garden, and in the majlis I have things Ive collected over the years.

A Qiyudi at Qidfa whose family came from Madha commented: “Earlier in Madha there had been the Saadiyiin, and there are more of them in Oman, and four or five families like ours. Because we all owned land there, we joined together in an alliance for mutual protection, and were known as Madhani. In 1970, we turned to Oman.” In Daftah, an elderly Naqbi said, “Harat Bani Humaid is Dhahuriyyin. I know, because I have a garden there. When they came down in the summer, it was really difficult to understand what they said.” An undated note (c.1940 – 41) from Shaikh Saqr of Sharjah (Walker 1994; vol 5, 710 – 12) said Shaikh Humaid b Abdullah of Ras al-Khaimah (died1901) came to help Shaikh Majid b Sultan of Kalba (appointed pre1883) when he became old and weak, demolishing Shihuh towers in wadi Madha and imprisoning their shaikhs who returned to the Ruler of Kalba and paid zakat. In 1901 (Walker 1994; vol 1, 109), Madha and Ghuna shared a wali, Abdullah bin Salim; the people were Bani Saad; both places had fifty souls. Ali bin Saif was the headman of Harat Bani Humaid in 1901, 40 Bani Humaid lived there, from date gardens. Lorimer (1908 – 15; vol 2, 1696) reported that Ghuna had 50 houses of B Saad, a section of Shihuh

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or possibly Dhawahir; estimated resources were 1,500 date trees, 400 sheep and goats, a few camels, donkeys and camels. Mahda had 100 houses of Bani Saad, and Harat Bani Humaid had 6 houses of Bani Humaid under Khor Fakkan; 30 donkeys, 20 cattle, 300 sheep and goats, and c. 300 date trees. In 1902, Zaid Sinan, shaikh of Shihuh at Dibba Baiah, erected two towers at Ghuna and one at Madha; the Sharjah Agent considered the action was in support of al-Sharqi of Fujairah against any coercion by his suzerain of Sharjah (Walker 1994; vol 5, 657). At that time, Shihuh looked to Shaikh Zaid of Abu Dhabi and sought his protection against the Qawasim. Shaikh Saqr b Khalid of Sharjah complained about Shihuh actions to Shaikh Zaid, who told the Shihuh if they wished to be under his protection they must leave the towers. The Shihuh did not, and Shaikh Saqr declared his intention to march on them, calling on Shaikh Zaid to accompany him in accordance with the treaty. In 1939, Shaikh Khalid b Ahmad, Regent of Kalba, wrote to the Political Agent in Sharjah complaining of the action of the ruler of Masqat in writing to the Shihuh, Muhammad b Hamad al-Sharqi, and some people of Bani Saad living in a small village [Madha] outside Khor Fakkan headed by two brothers, Hilal and Ubaid bin Muhammad; the letters said, in effect, that the Qawasim had sold the country to the British through oil concessions. Shaikh Khalid b Ahmad considered the purpose of the letters was to cause insurrection. In 1941, Sayyid Ahmad b Ibrahim, the Omani Minister for Internal Affairs, met Shaikh Humaid b Abdullah, the acting Regent, of Kalba at Dibba to settle disputes between Shihuh and Qawasim, including those at Madha and Ghuna. The Qawasim agreed to evacuate Wadi Madha, and Shaikh Humaid b Abdullah was to visit Masqat to discuss final terms; in January 1942, it was decided to leave Wadi Madha under Bani Saad, who acknowledged the Sultans supremacy (Walker 1994; vol 5, 726 – 8). The Sultan of Masqat, looking back in 1955 (Walker 1994; vol 5, 705), said trouble broke out in 1941 between the people of Wadi Madha and Shihuh, and Madhani had asked Qawasim for help through a temporary alliance. Ahmad b Ibrahims settlement transferred Wadi Madha from Wilayat Dibba to Wilayat Shinas; the naib wali of Shinas visited the wadi regularly and collected zakat of about 600 jirab of dates a year (a third to Muhammad b Salim of Madha; a quarter to Ahmad b Hilal al-Saadi of al Ghuna; 10 jirab to Hamud b Ghali of Harat Bani Humaid; and the rest to the Wali of Shinas for his expenses), and stated there had never been any allegiance to the Qawasim (Walker 1994; vol 5, 720).

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In 1954, the question of whether Madha, Ghuna, and Harat Bani Humaid in Wadi Madha followed Sharjah or Oman arose again, possibly because Sharjah had taken back Kalba and Khor Fakkan in 1951 and wanted to increase its territories. In November 1954, the Masqat Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Walker 1994; vol 5, 660 – 2) noted the Sharjah flag had been raised over Ghuna and the Wali of Shinas had been refused admittance to Ghuna. In December 1954, Ahmad b Hilal, shaikh of al-Ghuna and Harat Bani Humaid, made a statement at the Political Agency in Dubai (Walker 1994; vol 5, 691 – 3); he said the people of al-Ghuna and Harat Bani Humaid for many years had paid zakat to Kalba. About 40 years ago [c. 1914], when Hamad bin Majid was Shaikh of Kalba, his grandfather Muhammad bin Ubaid, had refused to pay zakat to the Shaikh of Kalba, who imprisoned Muhammad, his two brothers, a cousin and a companion for five months and fined them each 500 French riyals [=$MT]. On their release, they agreed to pay zakat to Kalba, which they did for four months but then called in Shihuh from Dibba Baiah and Kumzar to help them. The Shihuh sent two hundred men, and in return for this protection Muhammad b Ubaid agreed alGhuna, Wadi Madha and Harat Bani Humaid would pay the Shihuh 80 jirab of dates each year. This continued until his father, Hilal bin Muhammad, renewed his friendship with Said b Hamad of Kalba. They began to reduce the quantity of dates from 80 to 40 jirab and stopped payment in the time of Shaikh Humaid b Abdullah, nephew of the Regent of Kalba, when they paid zakat to the Qawasim and repaired the road between Khor Fakkan and Qidfa. After Said b Hamads death, they continued to pay zakat to Shaikh Humaid, and in 1941, supported the Qawasim in Dibba Husn against Shihuh of Dibba Baiah. At the end of the war, Sayyid Ahmad b Ibrahim, the Sultans representative, and Shaikh Humaid b Abdullah for Shaikh Khalid b Ahmad, met at Fujairah to decide the future of Wadi Madha; they agreed to leave the wadi as a neutral area for three years, under the Wali of Shinas. The people submitted to the Wali of Shinas for helping them and paid zakat to him until 1951 when they came to the Agency and declared they wanted to leave Masqat. From 1951, they began again to pay zakat to Sharjah. They asked Shaikh Saqr b Sultan of Sharjah to send forces to protect them; he always said he would refer matters to the Political Agent. Eventually, Masqat sent forces and occupied the villages; the Wali of Suhars forces killed two people, looted their belongings and turned out some of the people. In early 1955, Ahmad b Hilal, the ex-wali of Madha, with other proSharjah people from Wadi Mahda complained of their exile in Khor Fak-

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kan, and said Shihuh guards occupying the wadi had been stealing sheep at al-Ghuna and Harat Bani Humaid. Ahmad b Hilal al-Saadi then went to Sayyid Ahmad b Ibrahim in Masqat, with a letter asking for forgiveness for the trouble he had caused, and he and his companions went home. In August, two Shihuh in Wadi Madha killed Ahmad b Hilal in retaliation for two Shihuh killed the year before by his men, and for whom blood money had not been paid. The Masqat authorities sent men to the Shihuh Shaikhs for the blood money of $MT1,200. In 1956, the sons of the Masqati wali of Madha, Muhammad b Salim, refused entry to and shot at Ali Bustani, the Political Assistant in Sharjah, and the Intelligence Officer of the TOS, at Wadi Madha. The British authorities regarded this as attempted murder while the Sultan of Masqat considered the matter customary shots in the air, and Ahmad bin Hilal was regarded locally as a renegade (Walker 1994; vol 5, 751). Madha, al-Ghuna, and Harat Bani Humaid are now Omani, while Nahwa and Shis higher up Wadi Madha are in Sharjah. In Wadi al-Qawr, a Kaabi commented, Weve always used the top end of wadi al-Qawr and the head of wadi Mlah, but most of our land is over the border in Oman. My family never used to have gardens in Wadi al-Qawr, but now I have bought one; my brother has our family gardens over the border in Oman. Bani Kaab used to be independent, and our shaikh lived at Mahadah in al-Jau; we didnt recognise a ruler and we were our own government. But then the British divided us between Oman and Abu Dhabi, and our community in Ras al-Khaimah. Murair was the port that Bani Kaab used, and Dahamina, everyone from this area.

A Kaabi at al-Yif in Wadi Mlah remarked, My father bought this garden for Rs 400 before I was born, and that was more than fifty years ago. He bought it from two Awaimir brothers, they went back to Saudi Arabia. The Awaimir brothers had bought it from a Qaidi, from the Quwayyid, and they had bought it from a Dahmani a long, long, time ago, maybe hundreds of years ago. Ive replaced most of the old date trees with varieties that sell better; the old varieties never sold well. Ive been told that 125 years ago, people here took their dates to Dibba and sold them there. In my fathers time, we took all our surpluses to Munaiy for sale. The farij at the top of Wadi Mlah is called farij Mahmud because it is in Wadi Mahmud; but who Mahmud was, or even if there was a Mahmud, no-one knows. My father had no memory of farij Mahmud being cultivated, and nor did my grandfather [so possibly not since before c.1910].

The spokesman of a group of Kaabi at Munaiy said,

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Farij Mahmud was left well over a hundred years ago, it hasnt been cultivated or lived in within living memory. It was left because the people had died from diseases, malaria and especially smallpox were the killer diseases. Out of ten people, six would die. The survivors left the place for fear of contamination from the disease, they went to live in their other gardens and fields, but they retained ownership. I know that was why Farij Mahmud was left, because of disease. Before, after two or three generations, the descendants of the survivors and the inheritors of the dead would return to the abandoned place and rebuild. So the use of many farij was cyclical, over and over again. But this time, no profits came from fields, only from employment and irrigated gardens.

A Kaabi at Munaiy said, “We know that men from Bani Kaab and Dahaminah went to support the Qawasim in the war between the Qawasim and the Sharqi about thirty years before unification – so 1940.” The Dahamni Amir at Munaiy remarked, Bani Kaab have always been our neighbours, and they have always cultivated on and off in Wadi al-Qawr and Wadi Mlah and owned land there, but over time they have bought more land there. But even though Bani Kaab own more land in Wadi al-Qawr and Wadi Mlah, the two wadis still belong to the Dahaminah, they remain part of the Dahaminah dirah.

B Kaab were among the troops in service of Muhammad b Nasr al-Ghafiri in 1723, with auxiliaries from Julfar led by their Amir, Rahma b Matar al-Qasimi, and B Kulaib (Badger/Ruzaiq 1871; 110 – 11), and may have included men from Wadi al-Qawr. Wadi al-Qawr was controlled by allies of Muhammad bin Nasir al-Ghafiri (Bathurst 1967; 243 – 4). Miles, in Oman between 1872 and 1886, (1994 [1919]; 429) mentioned Bani Kaab in Oman at Mahadah in al-Jau and in Wadi Qawr. Walker (1994; vol 3,467) noted the 1332/1914 Qawasim agreement that granted Hajer [an area in Wadi Qawr] to Munia [Munaiy] to Ras al-Khaimah. In the 1920s, the Bani Kaab shaikh, Ubaid b Juma, whose grandfather had been imprisoned in Najd, opposed Saudi tax collectors (Wilkinson 1987; 281 – 2); in 1926, Thomas secured a precarious attachment of Bani Kaab to Masqat (Thomas 1931; 165). The Sultan of Masqat wished to control B Kaab and other tribal raiding on the Batinah coast; at the same time Bani Kaab and others used the mountain wadis for trading to the coast. In the late 1940s, Bani Kaab were feuding with Bani Qitab (Wilkinson 1985; 282, 284) and involved in agreements for oil exploration in the Dhahira, made between each tribe and the oil company. c. 1951, some Bani Kaab, headed by Abdullah b Salim, surrounded the Trucial Oman Levies post at Khurus, demanding its surrender, and planted a Saudi flag. The TOL corporal was allowed to go to Sharjah for in-

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structions. A force of 3 armoured cars, 5 jeeps, and 30 Levies arrived at dawn, and 4 Vampire fighting planes flew over the TOL post; the tribesmen withdrew. In February 1952, (Walker 1994; vol 5, 561), Bani Kaab attacked the TOL post at Khurus at the head of Wadi al-Qawr, apparently incited by false rumours from Munaiy and Huwailat that it was a permanent post and the land had been sold to Christians. The attacks were averted, a reconciliation made over lunch, and TOL recruited three of the attackers. In 1953, (Walker 1994; vol 3, 466) the Bani Kaab Shaikh, Abdullah Salim, denied any claim to the whole wadi Qawr which he, or his successor, Ubaid b Juma, may have had and said Bani Kaab of the area paid no zakat. Settlements in Ras al-Khaimah with Bani Kaab inhabitants (Walker 1994; vol 3, 520) were: al-Qawr with c.600 date palms cultivated by Dahaminah, Shamisat Bani Kaab, and Bidawat; Mlah with c.40 date trees and one Bani Kaab inhabitant; and Yaif [al-Yif] with 20 palms cultivated by the people of Mlah. The Amir of Munaiy said, Dahaminah have always been here, there is no knowledge of us coming in. My family, the al-Nasr, have been Amirs for a long time. The first to rule Munaiy who is known was Muhammad b Abdullah al-Hanjari, and the al-Nasr come from the al-Hanjari, and he was long before the Qawasim ruled from Sharjah (1815). As far as I know, Munaiy has always supported the Qawasim ever since they became rulers. The reason is that Wadi alQawr was a main thoroughfare between Buraimi and the northern end of the Batinah coats at Bu Baqrah and the two Murairs, and between the Batinah coast and the Gulf coast. This area was rich from the tobacco grown here for a long time. So this area would always have had a relationship with whoever was the regional government. The forts at Waab and Sukhaibar were rebuilt by Sultan b Salim al-Qasimi against robbers, especially Kaab from Oman in the 1930s; this may have been at the request of the Dahaminah, I dont know. The Qawasim didnt build the fort at Munaiy, it was ours and we built it, as the people at Nuslah built theirs. The Qawasim took them over only in the late 1940s. My father told me, and he had been told by his father, that the husn at Rafaq by the wadi had been rebuilt about 180 – 190 years ago. The Dahaminah dira is Nuslah, Rafaq, Fashgah, Qawr, Khurus, Huwailat, Munaiy, and Ayaili; its people in order of numbers are Dahaminah, Kaab, Maharsa, and Quwayyid. Lorimers information on the number of ten Dahaminah houses at Munaiy and six at Nuslah is definitely wrong, the numbers are too low for a hundred years ago. Perhaps his informant meant only Nuslah and Munaiy, and not all the places in the various side wadis and grazing areas that belonged to them.

Another Dahamni remarked,

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The Qawasim here were from Salim b Sultan, a different branch of the family to Saqr in Ras al-Khaimah. Saqr took over in the 1950s, not that many years after he took over from Sultan b Salim in 1948. It was Sultans son Salim who tried to redo the falay in 1985, after it stopped in 1978 or 1980, but the water table was too deep by then.

In 1901, the headman of Munaiy was Ahmad b Sultan; 10 houses of Dahaminah, with date plantations; the headman of Nuslah was Muhammad b Abdullah, 10 houses of Dahaminah, with date plantations (Walker 1994; vol 1,107). Under the 1332/1914 agreement, the east end of Wadi al-Qawr was under the de facto control of Ras al-Khaimah and the west end, beyond Khurus, of Sharjah; among the local walis witnessing this agreement were Nasr b Sultan the Ras Al-Khaimi wali of Fashga and Said b Ali, Shaikh of the Dahaminah (Walker 1994; vol 3, 467). In 1937 (Walker 1994; vol 3,465), Shaikh Sultan b Salim of Ras alKhaimah told the Political Officer that Wadi al-Qawr was partly his property and partly Kalbas under the 1914 agreement. The Kalba authorities kept control in the wadi, Shaikh Sultan b Salim paying Humaid b Abdullah to act on behalf of Ras al-Khaimah. In 1938, the Residency Agent in Sharjah reported the people of Wadi Hilu and Wadi al-Qawr had gone to Khalid b Ahmad of Kalba, requesting him to consider them as his subjects. Khalid b Ahmad opened up Wadi al-Qawr for cars, Abdullah b Humaid taking Kalba men for that work. In 1359/1940 Shaikh Sultan b Salim of Ras al-Khaimah took over road maintenance from Kalba, and levied tolls for that purpose. By 1942, Humaid b Abdullah had lost control of Wadi al-Qawr. In 1938 – 9 (Walker 1994; vol 5, 522), the Sharjah Residency Agent told the Political Agent at Bahrain that Shaikh Sultan b Salim of Ras al-Khaimah had agreed, at the request of two walis from Masqat, to build a tower near Nuslah and at Farfar, to close all passes beside Wadi Qawr, and to post five guards in each tower. The Masqat government would pay Shaikh Sultan b Salim Rs 2,000 for the guards wages, and construction costs. Shaikh Sultan pointed out that Masqat should continue to pay allowances to Naim, B Kaab, B Qitab and other tribes not to raid for kidnapping on the Batinah coast. This agreement was verbal, to be agreed with the Sultan of Masqat, and put in writing. Discussions had started in 1935 when Shaikh Sultan b Salim wrote to the Sultan of Masqat, suggesting mutual co-operation in fortifying the common boundary by Wadi alQawr to prevent raiding (Walker 1994; vol 5, 544). In July 1939 (Walker 1994; vol 5, 547 – 555), Dahaminah of Wadi alQawr sent a message to Shaikh Khalid b Ahmad of Kalba that the

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Wali of Suhar with some Bani Jabir were preparing to take up important positions in Wadi al-Qawr. Shaikh Khalid ordered Dahaminah and B Kaab of Wadi al-Qawr to prevent the Masqat authorities encroaching on Qasimi territory, which a force of c. 300 Dahaminah and Kaab did. Shaikh Sultan b Salim arrived in Kalba to discuss the situation with Shaikh Khalid b Ahmad. Masqat stated that towers, if needed, would be built on the Omani side of the border. An undated note, but between August 1939 and January 1943, records the arrival of Shaikh Muhammad b Nasr of Bu Baqra in Ajman, bringing with him the Rs 6,000 from the Sultan of Masqat in payment to Shaikh Sultan b Salim of Ras al-Khaimah for building a fort in Wadi al-Qawr, and to settle the monthly payments to the guards in the towers. In 1943, the Resident Agent said Wadi al-Qawr was under Ras al-Khaimah, but security was not maintained; Shaikh Sultan b Salim kept guards at Huwailat, paid for by Masqat. In 1944, Shaikh Khalid b Ahmad of Kalba asked the Political Officer for government assistance in building a tower at the west end of the wadi, because of incursions by Awaimir and Bani Kaab. In 1945 and 1946, (Walker 1994; vol 3, 465) Shaikh Sultan b Salim of Ras al-Khaimah negotiated with the Sultan of Masqat, resulting in financial help for building a tower at Munaiy and refurbishing his fort at Huwailat, to establish security over the eastern Wadi al-Qawr. In early 1955, Shaikh Saqr b Muhammad of Ras al-Khaimah complained that Masqat had established a border post at Umm al-Ghaf and a customs post at al-Aswad, to levy duties on dried fish fertiliser from the Batinah for Munaiy, and on goods coming in from Sharjah. AlAswad belonged to Washashat. In 1955 Walker (1994; vol 3, 520 – 1) noted Dahaminah settlements in Wadi al-Qawr: Huwailat, 15 houses of Dahaminah and Biduwat, and the seat of Shaikh Sultan b Salim, ex-ruler of Ras al-Khaimah, c.200 palms; Fashga, c. 15 houses of Dahaminah, 150 – 200 date trees; Rafaq, 20 houses of Dahaminah, a fort which was the seat of the wali of Ras al-Khaimah for Munaiy and al-Qawr, and the home of the Dahaminah shaikh; c.150 date trees; and Nuslah, c.6 houses of Dahaminah, c.120 date trees. Dahaminah plantations in Wadi al Qawr were: Muzraa Rubiya; Raha; Muzraa Rashid; al-Husein; and al-Fay. Munaiy had c.30 houses of Dahaminah, B Kaab, and Biduwat, c.450 date trees, and a fort belonging to Shaikh Sultan b Salim; Sukhaibar, 10 houses of Dahaminah, a fort, 150 date trees. Dahaminah settlements in Wadi Barid were: Ayaili with 9 houses of Dahaminah and Barid with one Dahamni house; Dahaminah plantations were al-Fay, Murair [Isaimir], Hathara [Khadhra], and

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Ladid. [The descendants of former owners regarded all these plantations as furuj with houses, fields, and graveyards, and falay for date trees.] A Dahamni at Huwaylat remarked, Walker is right about the main outlines, but we never had wali, we had amir. In 1945 or 1946 Rafaq lost its Amir and became amalgamated with Munaiy. The fort at Rafaq had not been used as a residence or a fortification for a very long time. The majlis and the masjid were rebuilt at some time and it was used as the diwan for the Amir of Rafaq, and abandoned when Rafaq was amalgamated with Munaiy. In our opinion, Walkers reports were not scrupulously precise, he did not always listen carefully.

This diverse information from local people over the region illustrates the range and variation in depth of local historical knowledge, precedental and autobiographical. Much of what people said about the earlier years concerned their methods of securing livelihood and profits, the tasks that these necessitated, the varied environments in which these took place over varying seasons and years, and their associated institutionalised processes and practices. These successions of tasks, seasons, and years, and the associated social and moral relations built through participation generate a sense of time or temporality (Ingold 2000; 200), present in the ideas expressed about individual and collective identity. In the area of study, temporality, acceptable participation in social relations over time, expressed as precedents, was more relevant to the development of individual and family identity than true words of history (Davis 1992; 19 – 20) which are seen to be ultimately unverifiable, although each person is assumed to speak true words, to be telling the truth as far as he knows it. The apparent contradictions between what people said on different occasions may be reconciled from their selection of recalled and remembered information in different contexts and for different audiences. Linear chronology and true words of history that illustrate the development of institutionalised processes of a socially and culturally coherent decentralised society are compatible with precedental history and its recreations of moral order because there is a general acceptance that ideas of moral order inform and predicate major institutionalised processes. Histories of the region which include the study area analysed events and reasons in various ways. Ibn Ruzaiq/Badger, like descriptions of tribal politics in general, used good rulers and bad rulers – also a feature of IO reports and Lorimers accounts of the histories of the different rulers. Lorimer also used the need for control of the expanding economic base of the lower Gulf and north-west Indian Ocean, as do Slot, Hawley and

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Heard Bey. Bathurst and Wilkinson concentrated on ideas of centre-periphery for their analyses of the Yaariba period and the Imamate tradition respectively. Our limited attempt to construct a linear chronological account of the development of the major institutionalised processes of the society of the study area must be, from the nature of its dependence on memory, incomplete and contain errors, since memory, records, documents, and interpretations of events are fallible. The society of northern Oman is said to begin with the movements to Oman of Azd groups and others who left Yemen at various dates associated with breakings of the Marib dam. The arrival of Malik bin Fahm alAzdi in Oman epitomises these movements, and Wilkinson (1977; 128 – 136), using Omani sources, considers the Malik b Fahm stories to compress nearly a thousand years of history. There were already Arab groups in Oman, including the mountains, according to oral tradition, and given archeological evidence of all the constituents of irrigated and rainfed agriculture, and the numerous variations of ancient burial mounds in virtually all areas, including the western Hajar mountains and the high mountains of the Ruus al-Jibal. Accounts of Malik bin Fahms arrival report a fully functioning Arab society in Oman (Potts 2001: King 2001). Hoyland (2001; 117 – 121) describes Arab tribal societies from the Bronze Age to the coming of Islam, using pre-Islamic poetry, mostly of the 6th century, to inform comments from classical authors and inscriptions at least a thousand years earlier. People were members of tribal by descent from males and women remained members of their natal group after marriage. Others could come into a tribe as allies or hulafa; through protection as individuals or groups coming in because of killings or impoverishment; as jiran; or as slaves, abid, usually prisoners of war. mr as opposed to bd signified any dominant – subordinate relationship, which shifted contextually and was relative; amir comes from mr and familiar as the leader in a variety of situations. There were tribal kingdoms whose kings functions were to initiate and sponser major public works, to see the rulings of the legislative assembly were carried out and to serve as commanderin-chief in time of war, similar to those of tribal shaikhs and coastal rulers of the recent past. Kabir, local leaders by virtue of their abilities, skill and experience, were the head of a tribe or professional group, or an agent of the king. Law, sunna, was customary tribal law; innocence or guilt were decided by oath, contest or evidence; the injured group sought retribution or received compensation. Difficult disputes were taken to arbitration, and those knowledgable in the customary law gave their opinion on difficult points (Hoyland 2001; 121 – 3). The economy included irrigated and

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rainfed agriculture, livestock, crafts, fishing, pearling, and trade and carrying by sea and land. The study area was part of the north west Indian Ocean economy, with transit trade in luxuries, and regional and local trade in more basic goods, at markets at Sohar under Persian administration, and at Dibba, organised by the Julanda of Azd, two of the ten great markets of ancient Arabia,while Julfar was a port of Mazun, Persian coastal Oman (Wilkinson 1977; 171). The seamen of the Sassanian empire were from Azd. Costa (1993; 158) regards the jirz, the long-handled small axe of inhabitants of the Ruus al-Jibal [and some in the western Hajar], to indicate 4,000 years of cultural continuity. Kinda, from whom the present Kinud come, were an ancient tribal group known to be present in the Wadi Ham area of the western Hajar. Other groupings that claim to be or are said to be among the original inhabitants are the tribes making up the Naqbiyyin, Sharqiyyin, Shihuh, Dhahuriyyin, Shairah, Dahaminah, and perhaps Quwayyid. As Malik b Fahm and the Azd are seen as the beginning of Omani history, in some contexts individuals and groups sometimes claim descent from different Azd groups, and in others as already present in the region. The coming of Islam is used by local people to separate those who were here already and those who came later. The demand for zakat by the Caliph Abu Bakr is considered to separate those who accepted this formal duty of Islam, and those who disagreed with sending the zakat to Mecca for central distribution and withheld the tax to provide for those in need of the local community. The withholders became known by outsiders as Shihuh. It is unknown whether such groups lived only in the Ruus al-Jibal or at other places, since groups who now say they are Shihuh, such as some at al-Ghuna and Madha, are not clear whether they withheld the tax, migrated at some unknown date from the Ruus alJibal, or became Shihuh by political alliance. The tribes of northern Oman rejected Ibadi doctrines and turned to Shafi Sunni doctrines following the Rustaq dogma of 443/1052 (Wilkinson 1987; 11: 1993; 558) which decreed that the role of the main northern Omani tribes in the events of the late 3rd/9th century had been the cause of civil war. Northern tribal opposition to central Omani (Ibadi) control thus became rationalised in religious terms. From c. 1230AD, over the next three centuries, tribal groupings from Amir, and some Tamim and Bakr b Wail gradually moved into northern Oman (Wilkinson 1987; 80 – 1), among whom were Bani Jabir, Amiri Naim (1987; 335, n13;

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Lam al-Shihab, Naim from Qahtan), and Bani Hilal (from whom come Al bu Falah); in this period Mazari from Tamim come in. Some Dhahuriyyin said one version of their origin told of a King of Hormuz who gave the Ruus al-Jibal and the island of Larak to Dhahuriyyin; this might be Saif ad Din Nusrat who fled to Kumzar during interfamily fighting over the succession to the Hormuz throne in 680s/1280s (Aubin 1953; 159). The Kings of Hormuz claimed Arab descent from the tribe of Qudaa, some of whom migrated to Qalhat and thence to Hormuz. At Mahas, a Dhahuryiin farij in the Ruus al-Jibal, two copper coins from Hormuz had been found, one with adil Jarun written on it. While these Dhahuriyyin linked themselves to the ancient Yemeni tribe of Qudaa, and their name to a wadi near Shihr where the tribe stayed on its migration, Shihuh considered Dhahuriyyin took their name from their long ownership of parts of the Ruus al-Jibal, of which they were the backbone; others used dhahur as turning their backs on withholding the zakat. Qasr Dhaba at Shimal was associated with the time of rule from Hormuz, and attacks from Shimal by Hormuz on Rams and Ghalilah. The sadd, dam or barrier, between Qasr Dhaba and Hudaiba is said by local people to have been a ship canal, probably used in summer when traders arrived on the monsoon. There is a story of the Hormuzian governor having a local wife, possibly a Shihhiya. The horse trail down the mountain to Lima may have been used at this time when the horse trade to India was so valuable. Some Bani Shamaili saw themselves as descendants of groups who had lived around Julfar and provided essential services and goods for export to its traders – grain, dates, dairy products, live animals, pottery, honey and firewood – with a dira comprising the dispersed clusters of kilns, clay sources, fields and cistern sites in the coastal plain and Ruus al-Jibal foothills. These statements demonstrate the reliance of trading ports on hinterlands which included networks extending into the mountains. Which Julfar is problematic, but presumably when Julfar was at Kush, the site now known as Mataf. The story told by a Bani Khushha at Sij to Bani Shamaili and Ramsawis, then passed down and told to alTabur in 1997, refers to Bani Kushha fleeing into the Ruus al-Jibal when the Portuguese took Julfar and to many fights between the Portuguese and locals. Albuquerque took Julfar in 1507 and Portuguese control lasted, though broken by rebellions, through to 1647 – 8 when the Portuguese abandoned all fortresses except for Masqat, which fell to the Omanis in 1650. Trouble between the Portuguese and locals was known from

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written sources in 1521 – 2, 1614 – 5, in 1623 – 4, and 1632 when Omanis took the Portuguese fortress at Julfar. The transmission chain of this story is consistent with the later dates; Rashid b Hassan al-Shamaili was born c. 1912; his father was probably not born before 1882 – 1887, and could have heard the story c. 1900. That narrator said Years ago, so possibly c. 1840. It is generally held that people remember specific events for around two hundred years, which would them go back to 1640 and the last years of Portuguese rule in the area. Shimal was said to have been inhabited by Bani Ziraf from Julfar, as well as Shamaili, from an unknown date but possibly from the end of the Portuguese occupation. They may then have lived at al-Fasliya and moved later, some to Dhaid, and some to Shimal Fowk (al-Tabur 1998; 357) to a date between 1868 – 1883, when Bani Ziraf households left for Shaam; this may be the time when some Khanabila Shamaili said people had stopped living at Sall and the upper farij at Lughshaib in Wadi Hajil was no longer inhabited. Bani Ziraf were also associated with Hudaiba, where there are said to be Bani Ziraf graves from the Portuguese period; Khasab, where it was thought they may have been the shaikhs before the bin Malik, recorded as the shaikh of Khasab in 1647/8; and Kumzar, where Bani Ziraf was one of the two shaikhly families in the 19th and 20th centuries, and involved in trade. Khanabila Bani Shamaili commented that Halla, a long-abandoned farij south of wadi Hajil, was very old; The only reason we know it was called Halla is that my grandfather [born c. 1900?] was told by his grandfather [born c?1840] who was told by a very old man [born c. 1780?] who was the last man to live at the upper farij at Lughshaib, that his great grandfather [born ?1690] had told him. It must be at least three hundred years ago it was left, because no-one has any knowledge of where its fields were. Zaab gave the arrival of the Portuguese as the reason for their departure to the island of Rig in the northern Gulf, and the expulsion of the Portuguese as the time for their return. A Ramsawi said that the al-Assad section of the Mahbib had come in two hundred years before his sixth grandfather had come in from Sunaina in the time of the first Shaikh Saqr (ruled 1780 – 1803), so c. 1600. Barendse (1998; 308), from Resendes Livro do Estada da India Oriental, writes that the Portuguese fortress at Dibba, like other Portuguese strongholds, was close to “fortified villages under Yaariba shaikhs.” Such fortresses were under Portuguese command with a small number of Baluch lascarins and retainers from allied shaikhs who were 40 % of the

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Masqat customs revenues. Some small forts had no Portuguese, only forces of Baluch and Arabs from al-Batinah who fought Arabs from the mountains (Barendse 1998; 309) and made skirmishes into the date gardens and mountains against local Arabs supporting Yaariba rule. Soldiers and commanders of Portuguese forts were assigned a quarter of the dates of some Batinah villages, which they sold to Sind and Persia (Barendse 1998; 309). The Yaariba period (c.1624-c.1753 – 4) was briefly mentioned by a Naim at Rams, who considered that although Rams was under a Yaariba governor, the effective government in the Ruus al Jibal hinterland was Shihuh; a Shihuh remarked that having a Harth governor of Dibba was quite reasonable, as Harth and Shihuh both came from Azd. The Yaariba malik of Sumail in 1624, Mani b Sinan al-Umairi, had a house at Dibba. In 1647, Shaikh Malik was the ruler of Khasab (Slot 1993; 160), probably the forebear of the line of bin Malik Hadiya Shihuh rulers of Khasab (Hanthal 1989). Awanat at Khatt said a forefather was mentioned by the local 17th century Nabati poet, ibn Dhahir, which showed they were then in the area, with built defensive centres at Muwailah, Dhaid and Awai, linking the Sirr to Buraimi. Around three hundred years ago tribal movements took place that are remembered now, involving assimilation, separation, and movement by purchase. Three hundred years is said to be the absolute limit of memory, of what my grandfathers grandfather told him from what he had heard. Three hundred years was also said by a Shihhi to be the time of nine actual generations after which memory fails and a tribal wider family starts to disintegrate; others spoke of five named forebears, not literally of five generations depth but telescoping a deeper generational depth of around three hundred years. Around this time, Hamilton, who travelled in the wider region between 1680 and 1727, noted assimilation of Portuguese and other non-Arabs; Ever since the Portuguese left Masqat to the Arabs, there has been continual war. In the main, the Arabs gain more … the Portuguese use their captives severely, the Arabs with humanity, making them prisoners at large, without putting them to hard labour, and allow them as much diet money as their own soldiers. If any of the Portuguese are artificers or mechanics, they may work at their trade to earn money to redeem themselves  (1930 [1727]; 50 – 51). From archival researches, Colley (2003; 118 – 9) reported that many poor Europeans saw a Muslim society to offer better opportunities than their home countries.

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Around this time, c.1650 to 1700, it is said that the southern Ruus alJibal was inhabited by Shihuh and Naqbiyyin. Groups that were or became parts of Bani Shamaili were in the foothills of the lower Wadi Bih; the abandonment of Halla with its distinctive saifi style of buildings (like those at Barama and Sabtan) may have taken place around this time. From this period, some individuals and/or families from Haramshe and Musharbe sections of Bani Idaid of Sabtan and eastwards came down because, it is said, there had been a series of long droughts and they needed agricultural land; they bought land at Slai al-Quda, Wadi Quda, and Tafif from Naqbiyyin. It is possible that these droughts were those of the late 1660s mentioned in Dutch documents and by Juhainy (1983; 113). Tabur (1998; 366) was told that Naqbiyyin had always been at Khatt, and that their wujud Mansur bin Ali was the Amir of Khatt three hundred years ago and extended Naqbi authority over all Khatt, although only two of the six Naqbi sections now in Khatt were there at that time, the others being in the mountains around Wadi Naqab. One of these mountain Naqbi sections came down to Khatt more than 250 years ago, the three others later. The Naqbi tower in Khatt has parallels with a tower at Nizwa said to have been built in 1666 (Kennett 1995; 80). Habus said that around the time Haramsha and Musharbe were buying parts of Slai al-Quda, Wadi Quda, and Tafif, they were a series of disparate small groups and families on the sayh south and east of Ras alKhaimah town. Their border with Bani Shamaili was at al-Ashkar, where the fields are called Waab al-Harb. Tabbur (1998; 349), from alSalimi, says Habus, under the leadership of Nasr bin Abdullah bin Ahmad, parted from the Habus of Omani Sharqiyya during the Hinawi-Ghafiri wars, and linked up with tribes under Rahma bin Matar al-Qasimi (c.1700 – 1740). The first land Habus got is said to have been on Jabal Hibs, on the south side of Wadi Bih. They then gradually spread in the former Naqbi lands, buying land in Wadi Naqab when those Naqbiyyin were said to be on bad terms with the rulers. If this was so, it would be unlikely that these rulers were Qawasim, with whom Naqbiyyin emphasis their close relationship. Local agents of Persian rulers during the 1695 – 1720 war or in the time of Nadir Shah, 1737 – 44, before the Qawasim became rulers, are possible, or other regional rulers such as Awanat of Naim (Wilkinson 1987: 139). Those Naqbiyyin were said to have gone to Dibba and Khor Fakkan, where they bought into their new places. Habus made the money to buy land from working in date gardens, share cropping arable land, and raising animals, and also acquired land through marriage and inheritance.

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A battle with the Persians, probably between 1737 – 1744, was mentioned by a Bani Qitab; Khawatir were said to be the only tribe who supported the Persians, who had landed at Sharjah and went to Ajman; they were opposed by the tribes, who gathered at Hatta and then went to the coast between Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah where Qawasim coming from Qishm had landed. The battle took place at Fallah, outside Ajman. The Persians were defeated, Bani Qitab given Fallah as their haram area for their sole use, and the Qawasim controlled the coast between Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah. A coin and inscriptions on the house of a Humaidan of Ahl Rawdha at ar-Rawdha in the Ruus al-Jibal date from 1702/3 and 1719/20. A Khanbuli Shutair Shihuh had been told that Bani Said, of Yabana off Wadi Ghabbas and at Ghaylan and Barama, had become Bani Shamaili as the result of a battle there in the time of his forefather Qdur. Qdur was said to have let Bani Muhammad bin Rashid come in to help in a fight over land, and so was given al-Abyath. Khanabila claim they always had part of Lima, Waab at Dibba Baiah, and al-Aini and its surrounding farij. Whether this long established claim of ownership extended to all the places they now hold in Wadi Bih is not clear; Mukhirbat means the ruined place, and apparently has been called this for as long as anyone knows, but assumes an earlier farij owned by a now unknown group. There was also a story of fighting over Khanabila fields furthest down the Wadi Bih, possibly with Bani Shamaili. Yaariba rule ended with thirty years of civil war, from c. 1721 – c. 1753, between Hinawi and Ghafiri groupings. Local people throughout the study area said the civil war was essentially about ideas of ruling. Under the Yaariba the successful regional economy had developed winners and losers; By the end of Sultan b Sayf 11s reign (1719) this was almost translating itself into a social revolution, with rich merchants and landlord classes exploiting a substrate of slaves and peasants whose ranks were being swelled by dispossessed or diminished tribesmen. Tribal power itself was being undermined by the fortifications built by the Imams which were put in the hands of privileged walis and the tribes themselves were divided into favoured and unfavoured groupings (Wilkinson (1987; 222). This is comparable, on a smaller scale, to the account of Hudaiba given by a local man interested in history, who said that when Qawasim, Al Ali and Muhairi merchant families came in at some time around the late 17th or early 18th centuries, they acquired date gardens on the sayh by debt and purchase from members of small local tribes. Khamis bin Said, an eminent local historian at Dibba Baiah, considered

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the division of the Shihuh into Shutair and Hadiya probably occurred around 1720 – 1730, from similar disagreements about ruling between the bin Malik of Bukha, who regarded their name to entitle them to act as malik, rulers and owners; and those who saw the name as simply a name without political overtones, and this group included the bin Malik of Khasab (possibly this reflects later tensions between Shihuh of Dibba Baiah and the then bin Malik of Bukha, as bin Malik of Khasab and Bukha were both Hadiya). It was probably around this time that Muqabilat Shihuh from Bukha and Khasab left and came to Hail, on the plain inland from Ras al-Khaimah town, and acquired mountain land. Ideas about ruling were informed by religious thought. The rapid growth of the Omani interior economy was partly by establishing Omani sea power and controlling sea trade, but the investment of sea and trade revenues in land development were newly possible from a ruling by a religious scholar concerning the ownership of abandoned land (Wilkinson 1987; 220). Not only Yaariba but others, like the east Africa merchants of the Sharqiyya, accumulated wealth to unheard of amounts, some certainly from enforced sales and pressure on small owners; Yaariba power made or broke the income and political standing of tribes. After 1719, the ulema reacted to the illegitimate practices of Yaariba rule, but their search for a proper state of head ultimately led to their support for Yarab bin Nasir al-Yarabi who quite ruthlessly exploited tribal enmities in following his goals (Wilkinson 1987; 220 – 223). The Qawasim leaders in the Sirr supported the Ghafir faction in the Omani civil war, as did Naim and Bani Qitab from the Buraimi region; Buraimi and the Sirr were linked by trade. In the aftermath of the war, the Qawasim became rulers of Ras al-Khaimah. From 1739 to 1743, the Qawasim occupied Khasab, but were expelled by the new Imam Ahmad bin Said of Suhar. Hassan bin Abdullah as-Shihhi, the governor, submitted voluntarily to the Imam in 1162/1749 (Taylor 1985 [1856]; 7), although fighting between Oman and Ras al-Khaimah over Khasab continued sporadically. The Ras al-Khaimah region was Sunni, and its rulers and people were affected by changes in legal opinions and religious teachings. Juhany (1983; 286 – 7) discusses the changes in Islamic scholarship in Najd in the mid to late 18th century arising from ibn Abd al-Wahhabs concentration on the original sources of Islam to find solutions to current social, political and economic problems. It is known Shaikh Rashid b Matar al-Qasimi retired from ruling c. 1775, to devote himself to religion (Warden 1985 [1856]; 301); a dome was built by Qawasim over the grave of Sayyid Hassan, the spiritual guide of Shaikh Rashid b Matar, which became a

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place of veneration and frequently visited by the inhabitants of as-Sirr (alRashid 1981; 46 – 7). A group of 460 Muqabilat Shihuh were said by Khamis Said, a noted local historian, to have arrived in Dibba Baiah from Hail in as-Sirr when Hamad b Said ruled Zanzibar (1784 – 92), and when the Qawasim and the Omanis were each trying to extend their rule over the Shamailiyya coast. This group came to Dibba by way of Masafi, and sixty of them went on to Oman. Their leader, Sulaiman b Muhammad Abu al-Khair, was the first Shihuh shaikh in Dibba to rule. Before that, the people of Dibba, if they needed mediation, used the Naqbi shaikh at Haiyir or the Sharqi shaikh at Fujairah. The shaikh who ruled before the Muqabil shaikh was a shaikh of the Harth, the important people in the region at the time, presumably in Yaariba times. A younger man, who got his knowledge from old men, said that when there was trouble with outsiders trying to control Dibba Baiah or move in, the people of Dibba Baiah who were from very small tribes called upon the Shihuh in the mountains for protection, because these Shihuh regarded Dibba to belong to the Shihuh as they had gardens there. In 1795 Imam Sultan of Oman attacked Dibba, killing many Naqbiyyin and Sharqiyyin (ibn Ruzaiq/ Badger 1871; 228), and again in 1799, but driven off by Naqbiyyin and Sharqiyyin (Walker vol 4, 514). Shaikh Sulaiman b Muhammad Abu al-Khair is said to have rebuilt Dibba qalaat on the foundations of the Portuguese fortress, and died in the time of Hassan bin Rahma, ie pre-1820. It is said that at this time, many people in Dibba became Shihuh, by political allegiance or protection. A Khanbuli, whose ancestor Ghalib was a sadiq, attesting witness, to the 1820 Peace Treaty, bought Slayh from Qiyaishi, said the Qiyaishi had bought it from Muqabilat, but he didnt know if this was before or when they were shaikhs of Dibba Baiah. Awanat, from Naim around Buraimi, where they had a husn at Awai, claim a forebear was mentioned by Ibn Dhahir, a local 17th century poet. They were in the Jiri plain north of al-Saadi in the sands as far as Kharran, possibly in west Khatt by c.1700, and at Dhaid where they owned aflaj. The Awaini who built (or rebuilt) Husn al-Muwailah was khall to the first Sultan b Saqr [ruled 1803 – 1866], and a Shahin bin Sultan had married Aisha bint Abdullah bin Rahma al-Qasimi, and lived at Fulayyah. Another claimed the Husn had been built 50 years earlier, when that area was called Inaiz and had date gardens. At west Khatt, Awanat had brought in Habus as bayadir who gradually bought gardens. It was said Khawatir came into the area two hundred years ago, and had given seventy slaves to Muhammad b Nasr ash-Shahin at Husn al-Muwai-

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lah. Al-Tabur (1998; 359) transmits an account that before Wahhabi troops arrived in the area, Awanat, Khawatir, al-Bidawat, and al-Marawina lived on the Jiri plain. When Mutlaq al-Mutairi, the Wahhabi amir, came to Idhn c. 1808 – 9 these tribes, apart from Khawatir, separated; some Awanat going to Dibba Husn, Bidawat to Wadi Hatta, and Marawina to Wadi Nagab. The long running fighting between the Omani rulers and Qawasim became more complicated when the British in Bombay supported Oman, and the Qawasim, like Tunaij at Rams and Zaab at Jazirat alHamra, became Wahhabi and part of Wahhabi expansion. Zaab and Tunaij were dissatisfied with excessive revenue demands from Qawasim rulers, and with the management of the naval war and booty (Davies 1994; 325 – 6, from Lam ash-Shihab). The few mentions of this period by local people were concerned with the destruction of sanam at coastal sites, a brief explanation in terms of Omani-Qawasim politics, and a Shihuh whose forebear had been a sadiq (attesting witness) at the 1820 peace treaty. Shihuh considered that by 1800, Habus had acquired Wadi Naqab from Naqbiyyin and were possibly in the process of getting land in Wadi al-Quda and Slai al-Quda. At the same time, Habus say that as individuals or small families they were moving into Rabiya in the foothills and Uraibi on the sayh, which had belonged to Qiyaishi, Mahbib, and perhaps Khanabila Shihuh; as people from these Shihuh groups had no memory of owning land at these places, this lack of knowledge was regarded as showing that their possession of these places was less important to them than formerly. After the death of the Muqabilah shaikh at Dibba before 1820, the Shihuh at Dibba elected a Kumzari, Yasir bin Zaid, who married the widow of Shaikh Sulaiman bin Muhammad. Yasir bin Zaid had strong links with the island of Larak which exported salt, crucial for the salt fish trade. Local memories and published materials acknowledge illustrate the first war between the Shihuh and Qawasim over the area of taxable land and the destruction of a Shihuh fort in 1836 or 1839. A second war between the Qawasim and Shihuh in 1855 – 8 started with the murder of the Qawasim representative, Mushari bin Ibrahim al-Qasimi, by Shihuh because of his tyrannical behaviour; in this war, Shihuh and Sharqiyyin were allies. Local memory has the war ending with the division of Dibba into a Qawasim entity at Dibba Husn inhabited by Naqbiyyin, Awanat and some Sharqiyyin, and Shihuh at Dibba Baiah with a few Naqbiyyin at Haiyir. It is said that Naqbiyyin inhabiting Zubara and Lu-

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luiya on the Shamailiya coast came from Dibba at this time, although not all were Naqbiyyin by descent. In 1851 the Qawasim and Omani rulers made an agreement about the tribes north and west of Khatma Mlaiha; Dibba Baiah was Omani, Dibba Husn Qasimi. Qawasim actions against Shihuh and Sharqiyyin on the coast were constrained by the terms of the 1820 treaty with the British, in which naval actions were forbidden. An elderly B Saad at al-Ghuna in Wadi Madha said, In the time of Hassan bin Rahma (1814 – 1820), the land here was Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah, and then under Qawasim of Sharjah, Sultan bin Saqr. Later on, Shihuh took it back by war with the Qawasim, and that was in the time of Humaid bin Abdullah (1869 – 1900). That ended the long period of fighting between everyone in the region that started with the fighting over Dibba Husn and Dibba Baiah. Bani Saad are Shihuh from Shutair.

Whether this was by descent or political alliance and mutual support is unclear, but in many ways unimportant. Archive material showed various tribal and individual movements to places on the Shamailiya coast after c.1800. A Mahdani family who had moved from somewhere near Ibri between 1660 and 1700 moved c.1800 to Qidfa. A Yamahi Sharqiyyin at Qidfa said their family from Dhanha had bought land at Qidfa five grandfathers ago [1780s?]. It is said that the al-Sharqi were appointed by the ruler of Oman as his local representative, based at Fujairah, in the 1780s. The 1851 Khatma Mlaiha Agreement put the Shamailiya coast under the Qawasim. In the Ruus al-Jibal, Khanbuli said Khanabila had owned about half of Lima, with documents from about 150 years ago to show this; other Khanabila said they had been told Khanabila came originally from Lima. Qiyaishi and other Shihuh, who had had high mountain fields at Mintara and other places for a long time already, bought land for winter houses at Ghubbina, Sima and Asfal around Wadi Sall Alaa c. 1850 from Dhahuriyyin Qdur. Individual Mahbib bought date gardens at Dibba Baiah around this time. Habus movement into the southwestern Ruus al-Jibal continued, and the Naqbiyyin finished their move to Khatt a hundred years ago. Around 1870/1880, according to a Qiyudi, the Shaikh of the al-Sharqi family made an alliance with the Shihuh against the Qawasim. About the same time, Dhahuriyyin from Ras al-Khaimah Emirate took up date gardens at Qidfa, and Shihuh from Dibba got gardens at Girath and Mirbat. By Lorimers time, the Sharqi Shaikh was in control of the Shamailiyya coast between Dibba Ghurfa and Fujairah with the exception of Khor Fakkan, Luluiyah and Zubara, and Bithnah and Safad in Wadi Ham. In

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1902, the Sharqiyyin with Shihuh allies, from Bani Lassam, Maqadihah and some Khanabila, under Ali bin Brayyim and Zaid Sinan Kumzari, took Bithnah; these Shihuh were offered date gardens there, but were not interested. In the 1890s, early 1900s, Shihuh from the Ruus al-Jibal fought Ras al-Khaimah, where the Saqr hospital is now. The Shihuh were led by Lima, and went down to Dibba Baiah and then across the mountains by Wadi Fay. The Amir of Lima said the fighting had something to do with land, and couldnt remember what the outcome was. These events may be those mentioned in Lorimer (1908 – 1915; vol.1, 734 – 736) dated to 1886, 1888 and 1890, and described as raids, petty raids, and feuds between Ras al-Khaimah and Shihuh. The historical events of the 20th century that people spoke of could, at one level, have taken place at any time; and on the other, came into being because of globalisation through modern technologies and geo-politics, and the impact of the oil economy and the development of the UAE as the political entity. The background is the loss of profits from virtually all traditional methods of economic activity which enabled the independence of families within the moral relations of sharing, co-operation and generosity to the necessity of employment. Some spoke of the disappearance of profits from pearling affecting wealth on the Gulf coast, others of difficulties of making a profitable living from sea trade, and by implication from the carrying trade on land, in the late 1920s to the 40s. It was in the 1920s that Awanat finally moved from Khatt, and sold their gardens to Zaab at Jazirat al-Hamra; in 1932, the earliest Khatri garden started at Umm al-Araj; and from the 1940s, Mazari at Idhn spoke of Khawatir renting date gardens. At the same time, men at Rams and Shaam, who had worked in pearling but also in fishing or date gardens, talked of being self-sufficient with profits enough to buy a fishing boat or a date garden, and people of the Ruus al-Jibal and the western Hajar emphasised they had been comfortable from their multi-resource livelihoods unlike those on the coasts. Habus and Shamaili individuals spoke of tribespeople coming together at times to withstand former rulers demands for taxes, not because of poverty, but as an unnecessary imposition. A few accounts described dissatisfaction with tribal leaders as rulers. A Bani Saad described the meeting at Madha in the early 1940s, attended by both Qawasim rulers (of Kalba and Dibba Husn?), the ruler of Fujairah, Muhammad bin Salih the Shihuh shaikh of Dibba Baiah, and the wali of Suhar. “Muhammad bin Salih wasnt popular here, he was too busy in

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Qawasim – Sharqi quarrels. We chose Oman, we chose by acclamation, because with Oman we had freedom and the wali, Hamad bin Saif bu Saidi, was a good man.” A Hadiya Shihuh said he and others had left Bukha for Rams and Maarid “because the ruler of Bukha did nothing, turned away traders, and so there was nothing.” Such dissatisfaction was not with tribal leaders as such, but with particular tribal leaders who did not act in tribesmens interests. Tribal leaders demands in opposing activity by oil exploration surveys for a share of fees paid to rulers if these surveys took place in tribal territories, and for employment should any result, and over the ownership of hitherto uncultivated land and wells caused friction between rulers and tribesmen and tribal rulers. Habus, Shihuh, Khawatir, and Zaab spoke of such friction in general terms from the late 1930s. Men who had worked in Kuwait or later in Abu Dhabi recalled with irritation the expenses charged by rulers for the necessary paperwork, which cost more than the boatfare. Mazari and Naqbiyyin at Daftah recalled trouble in the 1950s between Qawasim rulers and the Sharqi of Fujairah over borders being manipulated to involve local tribespeople. IOR records and Walkers (1994) publication of his work on the internal boundaries of the UAE document details from a British perspective. TOS reports remarked that many local skirmishes were caused by rulers disputes, and were resented by local communities, who asked for the presence of TOS groups to prevent fighting, as at Masafi and Asimah in 1959 (Walker 1994; vol 4, 475 – 82, 489 – 91), and Dibba Husn in 1963 (Walker 1994; vol 4, 513 – 541). Since the Treaty of 1820, and the political and economic transformations described in Chapters 7 and 8, tribespeople have been concerned with accomodations to changing political and economic circumstances and their effects on livelihood and movement. The transformation of a tribal society to a nation state with an oil-based economy did indeed turn peoples lives upside down. Local opposition to external agents of transformation was often seen by such agents as backward isolationism rather than as a moral preference for honourable autonomy and control of resources by those who own and live from them. When local sources of profits and a lack of money were lacking because of cheaper imports and the almost total loss of pearling, migrant work was eagerly accepted, and modern imports brought in to develop local irrigated agriculture, fishing, and carrying. When oil developments took place in Abu Dhabi, and employment in state bodies became common, many families moved to their places of work in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah and Ajman. Within the Emirates,

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9 Back to History

the allocation of shaabiyya housing meant that many families of the Ruus al-Jibal, sands, and shuaibat of the western Hajar had to move to sites near roads where modern services could be provided. Although economic and political transformations have turned peoples lives upside down, many tribespeople mourned what they saw as a moral transformation, where money and the ability to buy services has done away with former moral relations of self-sufficiency, independence, sharing, generosity and co-operation. Some people no longer feel comfortable with themselves or with society. How local tribespeople will manage the effects of these transformations, especially the last, and how people will combine being a citizen with a tribal identity is unclear. This attempt, inadequate as it is and doubtless unsatisfactory to many, does show that the archive material, published local histories, and other published material can be used for history in the sense of linear chronology that shows something of the development of and changes in social institutions and processes. The oral and published sources include some historical information on rule and ruling; the re-establishment of disrupted moral orders; and material about the placing of regional tribal groupings in the traditional histories of the wider region. And as well, they provide some historical information on external political events, attitudes, and ideas, and economic matters. The generosity of so many local people in all parts of the region in providing so much information on so many aspects of life before oil has enabled the archive to be collected as a resource for the future.

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boundary settlement 1957 – 63; vols 7 and 8 – maps. Archive Editions, Farnborough, U.K. Walker J.F. 1999. Tyro on the Trucial Coast. The Memoir Club, Durham, UK. Ward, P. 1987. Travels in Oman: on the Track of the Early Explorers. Oleander Press Ltd, Cambridge and New York. Watson, A. 1983. Agricultural innovation in the early Islamic world. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Watt, W.M. 1973. The Formative Period of Islamic Thought. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Wehr, H. 1980. A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. Otto Harrassovitz, Wiesbaden and Librairie du Liban, Beirut. Wellsted, J.R. 1978 [1838]. Travels in Arabia. Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt, Graz, Austria. Whitelock, F. 1836 – 8. An Account of the Arabs who inhabit the Coast between Ras al-Kheimah and Abothubee in the Gulf of Persia, generally called the Pirate Coast. Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. Vol. 1. 32 – 54. Wild, A. 2004. Coffee: A Dark History. W.W.Norton and Co., New York. Wilkinson, J.C. 1964. A sketch of the historical geography of Trucial Oman down to the beginning of the 16th century. Geographical Journal. Vol. 130. 337 – 349. Wilkinson, J.C. 1969. Arab Settlement in Oman: The Origins and Development of the Tribal Pattern and its Relationship to the Imamate. Unpublished D.Phil. Thesis. University of Oxford. Wilkinson, J.C. 1976. Bio-bibliographical background to the crisis period in the Ibadi Imamate of Oman (end of 9th to end of 14th century). Arabian Studies iii, 137 – 164. Wilkinson, J.C. 1977. Water and Tribal settlement in South-East Arabia: a study of the Aflaj of Oman. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Wilkinson, J.C. 1987. The Imamate tradition of Oman. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Wilkinson, J.C. 1993. Frontier Relationships between Bahrain and Oman. Bahrain through the ages: the history. Eds. A.K. al-Khalifa and M. Rice. Kegan Paul International, London and New York. 548 – 566. Zhang, J-Y. 1983. Relations between China and the Arabs in Early Times. Journal of Oman Studies. Vol. 6, pt 1. 91 – 109. Zimmerman, W. 1981. Tradition und Integration mobilier Lebensformgruppen. Eine empirische Studie uber Beduinen und Fischer in Musandam, Sultanat Oman. Dissertation, Gottingen. India Office records. IOR Bombay Secret Proceedings, vol. 38, vol. 45. IOR 14/227 – 1. IOR 15/1/14/39. Memorial of the government of Saudi Arabia, Arbitration for the Settlement of the Territorial Dispute between Muscat and Abu Dhabi on one side and Saudi Arabia on the other. 1955. 3 vols. Government of Saudi Arabia, Cairo. Published in English and Arabic editions. The Trucial States Council; Survey of soils and agricultural potential in the Trucial States, December 1966/January 1967, University of Durham, Middle East Centre.

Index Ayat, signs from God 37 – 38, 42 Adra, N. 23 – 24 Agios, D. 283, 404, 406 Agreements, ahad 16, 245, 254, 326, 342 – 344 Agriculture see date cultivation, grain etc. Ahl al-Bahriyya, people whose profits came from the sea 32, 35, 36, 45 – 98, 111, 115 Ahl al-Hajar, mountain people (Western Hajar). 32, 36, 38, 209 – 235 Ahl al-Jabal, mountain people 223 Ahl al Muzairia, cultivators 111 Ahl an-Nakhla, people whose profits came from date trees 35, 107 – 115, 128 – 129 Aila, pl. awail, 13 – 14, 24 – 25, 213, 222, 225, 231, 242, 312, 314, 316, 318, 320, 448, 459 – 460 Aishb, annual plants 41, 112, 201 Albuquerque, A de, 272, 387, 494 Allen, C.H. 365, 397, 473 Ardh, see soils, earth. – Ardh mawt 101, 354 – 356, 374, 440, 462 Asdiqa, friends 152 Asil, authentic, original 111, 469 – 470, 478 Aswar, sur fortified enclosures 346 – 347, 350, 352, 407 Aubin, J. 335, 385 – 389, 404, 494 Barbosa, D. 388 Barendse, R.J. 391 – 393 Barter, maqayitha 239, 242, 253 – 254, 259, 261, 268, 271 Bathurst, R.D. 360 – 361, 382, 384, 392, 477 – 478, 491, 494 – 495, 540

Bayadir, agricultural workers 35 – 36, 103, 110 – 111, 115 – 6, 120 – 121, 125 – 126, 128, 146, 170, 193, 212, 217, 230, 233, 235, 247, 250, 256, 266, 290, 305 – 306, 310, 320, 323, 343, 432, 438, 451, 457, 487 Bedu, nomadic and/or living from animals 12, 29, 35, 36, 66, 67, 79, 91, 132 – 135, 175, 200 – 216, 240, 243, 251 – 254, 257, 267, 317, 319, 355, 379 Bida, people of the Ruus al-Jibal 11, 36, 38, 87, 173, 247, 314, 354 – 355, 378, 416 Bilad, district 33 – 34 Birth 13, 162 Birth control 162, 187, 224, 231, 441 Boats 378 – 379, 389, 404 – local 48 – 50, 52 – 55, 61 – 68, 71, 75 – 77, 81, 85 – 88, 90, 95 – 98, 244, 252 – 252, 271, 274 – modern local 66, 68, 417 – 418 – steamships 76 – 77, 399 – 401, 408 Boxer, C.R. 389 – 390, 480, 491, 494 – 495, 527 Brucks, G. 397, 476, 485, 491, 527 Buckingham, J.S. 473 Buildings, structures, see Living Building materials and methods see Houses, Living Buildings, decorative features 85, 92, 119, 230 Al-Busaidi, I.Y. 336, 360, 494 Butun, families, tribal sections 14, 24 Buying and selling 239, 241, 243, 245 – 257, 268 – 272, 276 – 277 – Forward buying/ijra for dates 247 – Forward buying tobacco 268 Buyut, families, tribal sections 14 Buyut, isolated small groups of houses/shelters 33, 155, 179

570

Index

Camel caravans 63, 134, 135, 233, 255, 267 – 268, 271, 277, 378 – 379, 392, 400 Celebrations 23, 162, 166, 175, 177 – 178 Centres see Marakiz Children 53, 71, 75, 79 – 81, 83, 87, 88, 112, 113, 118, 134, 154 – 155, 158, 164, 167, 174, 175, 177, 180, 182, 215, 217, 221, 224, 226, 352, 420, 463 – 464 Clothes see Living Coastlines 68 – 72, 91 – 94 Communities, jamaat 24 – 25, 27, 36, 44, 90, 161, 178, 182, 194, 212, 239 – 242, 290 – 292, 296, 298, 316, 318, 332, 334, 352, 407, 459, 464 – 465 Contracts 135, 214 – 215, 286 – 287, 292, 302 – 303, 337 and see partnerships, shares Content as a social value 12, 185 – 186, 465 Costa, P. 346 – 347, 407, 546 Costa P. and Wilkinson, T.J. 403 – 404 Credit and debt 283 – 294, 381, 462 – 463 Curtin, P. 386, 396 Custom/addat 10 – 11, 182 Bin Dahir/Dhahir 17th century local Nabati poet 69, 474 – 475 Daliil, escorts 271 Dancing 21 – 24, 166, 215, 230 Davies C. 365 – 366, 404, 473, 475, 481 Davis J. 466, 544 Debt see credit Dews, nida 100, 124, 127, 132 – 133, 138, 148, 182, 225 Dira, tribal areas 28 – 31, 132 – 133, 326, 355, 380 Dostal W. 153, 185, 237, 280, 376, 404, 447, 505 Droughts/jifaf 133, 146 – 147, 225, 232, 393, 436, 461 Drumming 20 – 22, 166, 215 East India Company EIC 364 Embroidery 73 – 74, 163, 174 Epidemics 123, 420, 423, 448, 452

Exchanges/mabadala 176, 242, 252 – 253, 262 Fakhdh/fukhudh 13 – 14, 29, 31 Falaj, falay see under water Families, see aila, awail Farij/afraj/furuj/furjan 30 – 34, 73, 79, 89, 95, 105, 123, 141, 143, 148, 154, 159, 161, 182, 205 – 6, 219, 224, 316, 332, 455 – 456, 464 – 465 Fenelon K 408 – 409 Fernandez J, 43 Festivals Tilu 248, 251 Fighting 225, 234, 315, 321 – 330 Foods see Living, each area Forts, husun 133, 222, 224, 226, 314, 316, 346 – 354 Following, followers 299, 332 Floor, W. 303, 361, 393 – 394, 472 Funerals 81, 149 Gazelle 179, 225 Ghani, self sufficiency, wealth 1, 111, 157, 185 – 186, 296, 376 – 381, 433 Ghuraiyib, those who are close to you 17 Ghurfa 107, 110, 131 – 132, 219, 281, 317, 326, 346 – 348 Gifts, hadiya 242 – 243 Grazing lands – Ruus al-Jibal mountains 137 – 139 – Sayh 102 – Sands 132 – 133 – Shaiban, pastures 133, 200, 206, 231, 239, 456 – Western Hajar 200, 206, 226 – 227, 231 Graveyards 81, 152 – 153, 162, 212, 213, 216, 218 Hadhr, settled 35 – 36, 66 – 67 Hanthal, F. 23, 24, 326, 332, 354, 370 – 371, 490, 493 Haqq, rights 64, 77, 108, 212, 239, 241, 258, 318, 321, 354 – 355 Haqq al-karama right of generosity, right to a share of dates 258

Index

Haqq ash-shugh, right of work to dates 258 Haqq as-saif summering right , communal meals at summering places 258 Haram 10, 29 – 30, 166 Harat, collections of buildings 33, 64, 90, 347 Hashad, community work group 92, 117, 161, 212 Hawley, D. 369, 373 – 374, 376 Heard-Bey, F. 192, 286 – 287, 370 – 371, 375 – 376, 476 History – Economic, of the area 383 – 403 – Ideas about, 8 –9, 466 – 470 – Origins and development of local society 470, 544 – 558 – Traditional, of coastal towns with commercial date gardens 470, 474 – 475, 478 – 480, 506 – Traditional, of tribes 6 – 9, 468 – 470, 471 – 472, 483 – 484, 490 – 491, 492 – 494, 497 – 499, 501 – 504, 507 – 509, 511 – 513, 514 – 515, 516 – 526, 529 – 531, 533 – 534, 535 – 536, 539 – 540 – From published sources/documents 472 – 474, 475 – 478, 480 – 483, 484 – 490, 491, 494 – 497, 499, 504 – 505, 507 – 11, 515 – 516, 526 – 528, 532, 534 – 535, 536 – 539, 540 – 541 Honour, personal 298 – 299, 301, 315, 321, 380 Houses and contents 459 – 460 – coastal towns 73 – 74, 78 – 81, 82 – 83, 85, 87 – 93, 95 – 96, 416, 419 – date gardens 116, 118 – 119, 434 – sands 134 – 135, 437 – sayh 106 – 108 , 434 – Ruus al-Jibal 154 – 184, 442 – 444 – Western Hajar 209 – 235, 451 – 452 Hoyland, R.G. 545 Humidities, rutuba 100, 105, 127, 132, 133, 211, 240 Ibn amm 17 – 19, 24 – 25, 173, 182, 341 Ibn Battuta 272, 287, 385, 500

571

Ibn Ruzaiq, S/Badger, G.P. 303, 335, 360, 394, 495, 510, 528, 540 Identities and references 13 – 16, 24 – 25, 35 – 36, 323, 329, 458, 470 – 471, 478, 487 Illness and cures 78, 122, 123, 162, 210, 217 – 218, 227, 426, 432, 462 Ingold, T. 36, 544 Inhabitants not tribal – Baluch 3, 4, 35, 75, 115, 117, 134, 160, 259 – 260, 313, 350, 438, 464 – Bangla Deshis 3, 8, 103, 121, 432, 434 – Indians 8, 9, 431, 443, 464, 470, 487 – Iranians 3, 4, 35, 77, 259, 470, 487 – Omanis 193, 230 – 231 – Pakistanis 3, 8, 103, 431, 434, 447 – Zuttut/gipsies 24, 90 – 91, 117, 127, 176, 219, 259 – 261, 422 Inheritance, irf, wirth 27, 33, 77, 110, 149, 154, 167, 174, 226, 241, 318 Integration across region 9 – 10, 17 – 19, 130, 135 – 136, 378 Investing, investments 283, 291, 293 – 296, 381, 403 – 404, 408, 448, 451, 454, 463 IOR, India Office Records 29, 148, 321, 325 – 326, 370 Jamaat, see communities Jewellery 74, 168, 173, 174, 215 – 216, 259 – 260 Al-Juhany, U.M. 337, 364, 376, 393, 467 Kaafila, protectors, guarantors 223, 275, 340 Kanoo, K.M. 287, 292, 369, 401 – 402, 408, 456 – 457 Kemball, A. 283, 398, 481 – 482 Khair, a benefit, public good 131, 216 Khaliji, Gulfi 35, 273 Khanith, effeminate men, transvestites 24 Kharrif, date harvesters at Dhaya 247 Khawadim, paid servants 65 – 66, 103, 111, 121, 124, 182, 212, 217, 233, 264, 434

572

Index

Khuwaiyil, relations through women 18, 30, 32 – 33, 90, 130, 152, 154, 241, 323, 341 King, D.A. 47 King, G.R.D. 384 – 385, 406 – 408 Lancasters W.O. and F.C. 466 – 468 Landen, R.G. 398, 400 Land routes between east and west coasts 54 – 55, 92 – 94 Lazima, necessities 185 – 186, 329 Lienhardt, P. 84, 285, 291 – 292, 303, 311, 336, 340, 370, 376, 398, 420 Livelihoods and profits/maash wa faida 3 – 6, 26 – 29, 35 – 36, 239, 341 – Nature of, 43 – 44, 46 – 47, 83, 93 – 94, 128 – 129, 135 – 136, 149, 184 – 187, 236, 242, 376 – 383, 417, 421, 431, 452, 464 – 465 – Boat building, repairing 76, 81 – 82, 84, 88 – 9, 92, 98, 416 – 417 – Building 78, 230, 231, 415, 437, 451, 454 – contracting 76, 411, 451 – trading imported building materials 76 – 77 – trading building land 76, 79, 411, 415, 451 – Charcoal manufacturing – Ruus al Jibal 146, 149 – Western Hajar 209, 217, 223, 230, 232 – Cotton cultivation and uses – Ruus al Jibal 176 – Western Hajar 209, 216, 219, 221, 234, 295 – Date cultivation 435 – 436 – Sands, 133 – Coastal plains, sayh 102 – 103, 106 – 111, 114 – 115, 122 – 129, 240, 247, 422 – 432, 435 – 437 – Ruus al Jibal 138, 157, 159, 164, 175 – 176, 180, 181 – Western Hajar 209 – 213, 214, 216, 219 – 223, 225, 227 –229, 232, 435 – 437, 449, 452, 454 – 455 – Dry date procurement 239 – 255

– – –

– – – –

–

– – –

– Coastal plains and towns 242 – 244, 246 – 250 – Sands 241, 255, 258 – Ruus al Jibal 241, 244 – 246, 248 – 255 – Western Hajar 244, 254 – 254, 448 Rutub, fresh dates 240, 247, 250, 251, 253 Employment as agricultural worker, see baidar, khadim Employment as casual worker in date harvest 241, 243, 246 – 250, 253 – 254 – watering dates 211 Employment by ruler 78, 133, 230, 404, 442 Employment in Trucial Oman Levies/Scouts (TOL/S) 405, 448 – 449, 454 Employment by state 417 – 419, 434, 441, 444, 455 Firewood collection for sale or exchange 416 – In sands 133 – On sayh 105 – 108, 447 – Ruus al Jibal 146, 149, 160, 182, 447 – Western Hajar 209, 219, 222 – 223, 230, 232, 275 Fishing 45 – 46, 60 – 68, 83 – 87, 124, 127, 246, 285 – 286, 296, 417 – 418, 421 – 424, 427 – Amila system with nets for commercially valuable species 63 – 64, 68, 84, 286, 430 Fish drying and salting 61 – 62, 64, 66 – 67, 71, 89, 270 – 273, 421 – 422 Fodder collection 112, 230 From animals, bawsh – In sands 132 – 134, 243, 438, 439 – 440 – On sayh, coastal plains 105, 107 – 108, 113, 121, 123, 126 – Ruus al Jibal mountains 143, 145, 148 – 149, 155 – 156, 162, 164, 175, 179, 182 – 183, 249 – 255, 277 – 278, 447

Index

–

–

–

– – – – – – –

– –

– Western Hajar mountains 209 – 210, 213 – 214, 219, 222, 225, 232 – 233, 424, 448, 452, 454 Fruit cultivation – On sayh 123, 124, 127 – Ruus al Jibal 144 – 145, 164, 169, 179, 183, 276 – Western Hajar mountains 214, 216, 219 – 221, 234, 256, 275 –276, 448, 450 – 452 Grain cultivation – In sands 133 – 4 – On sayh 105, 107, 108, 113 – 116, 122 – 128, 432 – In Ruus al-Jibal 140 – 141, 145 – 146, 148, 151 – 156, 159 – 160, 163 – 164, 167 – 170, 179, 181 – 183, 416, 433, 441 – In western Hajar 204 – 209, 211 – 214, 216, 217, 219 – 223, 226 – 230, 232, 234, 449, 454 – 455 Grain processing and storage – On sayh 108, 121 – In Ruus al Jibal 148, 151, 153, 155 – 157, 160 – 161, 164, 168 – 169, 174, 182, 403, 419, 421 – 422, 443 – 447 – Western Hajar 211, 214, 228 – 229 Grain procurement 241, 243, 247, 249 – 254, 432, 449 Healers 78 Honey collection for sale 123, 126, 148, 160, 170, 183 – 184, 209 – 210, 219, 223, 275 , 295 – 296, 447 Islamic Imams, mutawwa, qadi 78, 87, 103, 111, 215, 218, 234, 313, 316, 319 Magicians, seers, kahin 21, 84, 178 Metal workers 82, 90 – 91, 117, 127, 154, 160, 176, 219, 220, 259 – 261 Migrant work 76 – 77, 84, 120 – 121, 156, 212, 227, 294, 405, 412, 414, 422 – 425, 440 – 443, 448 – 449, 453, 455 Pearling 56 – 59, 157, 230, 242 – 243, 246, 251, 254, 256, 270, 286 – 289, 424 – 425, 427 – 428 Pottery making

–

– –

–

–

– –

–

–

573 – Ruus al Jibal 117 – 118, 149, 153, 160, 170 – 172, 184, 253 – 254, 259, 280, 442 – Western Hajar 210, 219, 220, 230 – 231 Rope making – Coasts 86, 88 – 90 – Sands 134 – Sayh 106 – Ruus al Jibal 179 – Western Hajar 230 Tanning – Sayh 106 – Ruus al Jibal 175 Tobacco/alyun cultivation – Shamailiyya and Batinah coasts 92, 125 – 7, 254 425 – 426 – Western Hajar 211, 221 – 229, 232, 234 – 235, 289 – 290, 449, 453 – 455 Trading and carrying by land 282, 404 – Coasts 55, 63, 91, 92, 246, 254, 255, 265, 269, 270, 273, 277 – Sands 134, 243, 253 – Sayh 126, 130, 273 – Western Hajar 212, 225, 242, 257, 260 – 261, 267, 273, 449 – 450 Trading and carrying by sea 45 – 56, 72 – 79, 92 – 95, 131, 153, 242, 249 – 251, – 252, 254, 261 – 262 , 264 – 265, 269, 274, 282, 284, 404, 418 – 420, 422, 428 – 430 Trading slaves 51 – 52, 267, 412, 415, 425 Trading in towns 75 – 79, 156, 265 – 269, 278 – 280, 415 – in summer at date gardens 265 – 267 Vegetable cultivation for use and sale – Sayh 109, 115 – 116, 124, 278, 433 – 434, 437 – 438 – Western Hajar 220 – 221, 223, 229, 230, 448 – 450 Womens work – Coasts 63, 66, 67, 73, 74, 77, 78, 89, 90, 243, 253 – 254, 424

574

Index

– Sands 134 – Sayh 106, 107, 111, 115, 120, 121 – 122, 126, 276, 431 – Ruus al Jibal 149, 151, 156, 162, 165 – 166, 167, 172 – 4, 175 – 176, 182, 187, 243 – 244, 251 – 252, 276, 278, 459 – Western Hajar 210, 214, 217, 219, 224, 231 – Wood workers – Coasts 84 – Sayh 117 – Ruus al Jibal 176, 259 Living – In coastal towns 72 – 95, 419, 459 – 460 – In Ruus al-Jibal 147 – 184, 442 – 445, 459 – In sands 132 – 135, 437 – On sayh 105 – 128, 434, 459 – In Western Hajar 209 – 235, 451 Lorimer, J.G. 53, 68, 110, 130, 185, 269, 283, 286 – 287, 330, 359, 368 – 369, 376, 400 – 401, 406 – 408, 435, 469, 473, 475, 485, 489, 496, 508, 511, 515 – 516, 528, 531 – 534 Magalhaes – Godinho, V, 386 – 391 Marakiz, centres 315 – 316 Market (abstract idea) 239, 449, 451 Markets (actual) 34, 77, 79, 247, 250, 253, 268, 275 – 280, 300, 313, 383, 386, 405, 434, 448 Marriage 16 – 21, 150, 168, 178, 226, 241, 341, 344 – 345, 442, 448, 461 Mazar, a place visited for private prayer 39, 234 Merchants 46, 59, 92, 258, 280 – 281, 283 – 285, 287, 291, 336 – 337, 346, 382 – Arab 281, 287, 396 – Al-Assad family 262, 267, 278, 283, 293, 330, 420 – Bahraini merchants for tobacco 265 – Bil Oun 92, 267 – Bin Hamza of Saham 269, 454 – Hindu 57, 261, 389 – Al-Shamsi family 3, 267, 283

Miles, S.B. 123, 272, 400, 485, 496, 540 Money 1, 20, 92, 75, 76, 77, 78, 133, 153, 156, 165, 167, 174, 178, 209, 226, 229, 251, 282 – 282, 294 – 295, 377, 389, 400, 421, 432, 442, 449, 451 Moral premises IX, 1 – 2, 8, 10 – 12, 298 – 299, 381 Moral relations 1 – 2, 12, 150 – 151, 185 – 189, 224, 239, 253, 258, 291 – 292, 296, 334, 381, 467, 470 Mottahedeh, R.P. 333 – 334, 337 Mountains 5 – 6, 27 – 28, 38 – 40 – Ruus al-Jibal 5 – 6, 38 – 40, 137 – 147, 347, 377 – 378 – Western Hajar 1, 5, 32, 38, 198 – 208, 352, 377 Movement – Avoiding raiders 217, 222, 226, 347, 352 – Because of drought 133, 146 – For livelihood 9 – 10, 31 – 32, 35, 56, 58, 60 – 61, 110, 119, 133 – 134, 142, 152, 163, 171, 172, 178, 183, 209 – 210, 225 – 227, 231, 332, 341, 470 – For markets 210, 214 – 215, 217, 219 – 223, 228, 244 – 253, 264 – 265, 269, 275 – 279, 341 – For protection 11, 35, 318 – 319, 333, 340, 470 – For summer to coasts 240, 243, 251, 253 – 254 – For summer in Western Hajar oases 222 – 258 – For supplies of dry dates at coasts 133, 154, 240 – 255 – No movement for date or grain supplies 240, 248 – 249, 251, 253 – 255 – For summer water 252, 257, 347 – Moving into 325, 332, 341 – To resolve dispute 330 – 333, 341 Mudharaba, underwriting contract 287 Mutualistic exchanges 240, 242 – 244 Mutual obligations 341 – 342 Nadba, songs and dances of celebrations 23, 81

Index

Najmabadi, S. 61, 301, 405 Nakhuda, the man responsible on a trading ship 46 – 52, 284 – 285, 292 Navigation 46 – 47 Niebuhr, C. 336, 361, 394, 397, 472 Nusaiyib, connections through marriage 18, 90, 130, 241, 342 Oil development 369 – 373, 402, 404, 461 Partnerships/sharika 46, 50, 61, 63, 65, 68, 96, 116, 117, 214 – 215, 223, 229, 275 Pilgrimage, Hajj 52, 452 Piracy 364 – 366 Pires T. 387 – 388 Place names 39 – 40 – In text, see 573 – 576 Poetics of dwelling 36 – 40 Poetry 98, 230, 332 Portuguese 9, 386 – 392 Praying 20, 93, 166, 234 Profits, faida 239, 269 – 275, 277 – 278, 280, 286, 289, 294 – 296, 403, 439, 442, 448, 450, 461 – Loss of 396, 399 – 403, 411, 413, 421, 438, 442, 450 – 451, 454, 461 Premises of society 10 – 12 Qalaat, stronghold 90, 183, 221, 314, 323, 328, 347 – 353 Al-Qasimi, S.M. 364 – 366 Qasr, circular stone tower 222, 325 Qurya, villages 34, 103 Rafiq, escort 117, 133, 277 Raids, raiders 112, 217, 221, 222, 224, 235, 314, 315, 322 – 324, 328 – 329, 341, 352, 405 Al-Rashid, Z.M. 364 – 366, 481 Al-Rawas, I. 383 – 384, 494 Reid, A. 385, 389 – 392 Renting – Arable land 120, 211 – Arish for summer shelter 78, 257 – Boats for pearling 286

575

– Camels for carrying and escorting 134, 253, 255, 257, 277, 379, 426 – Camels and owners for carrying 222, 268, 276 – Date gardens, trees, bunches 145, 215, 239, 241, 246 – 247, 250, 344 – Space on boats 53, 75, 270, 411 – Stores 163, 252 Rights, see haqq Risso, P. 395, 535 Rival, L. 37 Robbers, haramiyiin 217, 223, 315, 322 – 324, 328 – 329, 352 – 353 Rock carvings 165, 173, 176, 177, 181, 212, 221, 533 Rulers 299 – Bin Salih, Rams 85, 131, 313, 330 – 331 – Al-Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah 131, 193, 302, 306 – 307, 312 – 314, 316 – 317, 321, 324, 326, 328 – 331, 333, 336, 345, 352, 353 – 354, 358 – 369 – Al-Qawasim of Sharjah 4, 305, 309, 312, 313, 316 – 317, 329, 336, 373 – Ruler of Kalba 303, 324, 344 – Ruler of Ajman 313, 345 – Al Ali, Shaikhs of Umm al-Qawain 313, 330 – Al-Maktum, Shaikhs of Dubai 131, 291, 313, 317, 333, 347 – Al Nahyan, Shaikhs of Abu Dhabi 302, 329 – Shaikh of Fujairah 216, 219, 309, 312, 314, 317, 321, 325, 328 – 330, 345, 372 – 373 – Rulers of Hormuz 335 – Al bu Saidi rulers of Oman 308, 312, 317, 324, 327, 331, 336 – Yaariba of Oman 313 – Functions of rulers 299, 301 – 302, 323 – 324, 326 – 327, 329, 345 – 346, 353 – 354 – Changes in rulers functions 360 – 375 – Revenues 300 – 302, 316 – 317, 324 – 325, 326 – 329, 336, 345 – 346, 354 – 360

576

Index

– Wars 327 – 329, 331 – 332 Ruling, Hukma 298 – 299, 311 – 312, 314, 324, 329, 467, 469 – Alliances, hilf 315, 338 – 339, 340 – 341, 345 – Shaff, shiff 339 – 340 – Aman security 335, 353 – Arbitration 299, 301, 313, 328, 330 – Authority, salta, imarat 314, 315 – Disputes and settlement 301, 313, 318 – 326 – Ideas about 303, 332 – 333, 335 – 336, 552 – Local descriptions of 311 – 333 – Local rationales 337 – 360 – Local terminologies 299 – 300, 304 – 311, 337 – Mediation 299, 301, 314, 321, 328 – 329 – Rationales of 333 – 337 – Women 318 – 319, 323 – 324, 344 – 345, 352 State, Dawlat 313, 467 Sabil, public good 216 Sadaqat, alms 152, 239, 241, 250 Salaf, free loan or advance of money or goods 294 Sanat al-Ji, the hungry year 412, 414, 416, 418 – 419, 421, 433, 448 – 449, 452 Schimmel, A.-M. 37 – 38 Schools 87, 90, 215, 234, 432, 434 – 435, 449, 460 – 461 Seasons – Gaith 57 – 59, 73, 121, 122, 126, 142, 145, 154, 160, 163, 183, 220, 240 – 255, 264, 266, 450 – Kharif 62, 247 – Mawsim 255 – Rabiya 145 – Sferi 183 – Shitta, 62, 65, 79, 82, 122, 127, 138, 145, 163, 183, 231 – Sayf 62, 64, 67, 126, 137, 145, 160, 163, 183, 220, 254, 266 Serjeant R.B. 10, 47, 283 – 285, 296 – 297, 383, 385

Shares and share agreements 50, 61, 63, 64, 65, 111, 115, 152, 154, 167, 186 – 187, 194 – 196, 200, 202, 216, 224, 225, 241, 250, 252, 258, 292, 359 Share partnerships see partnerships Shellfish 71, 80, 82 Singing 20 – 22, 98, 108, 166, 230, 250, 257 Skins 43, 106, 174, 220, 223 Slot, B. 336, 360 – 361, 390 – 391, 394, 484, 491, 495 Soils 38, 100 – 101, 105, 127, 154, 221, 461 Star calendar 103, 193 Storage 106, 107, 153, 156 – 157, 161, 165, 184, 210, 219, 223, 233, 236 – 238 Storms 55, 68 – 69, 73, 99, 100, 108, 122, 123, 137 – 138, 146 – 147, 180, 205, 228 Structures see Living, each environmental area Summering 134, 135 – 136, 240 – 246, 249 – 258, 410, 426, 450, 455 – 456 – Al-Tabur, A.A. 102, 194, 469 – 470, 472, 503 – 505, 508 – 510, 526, 528, 531 Taghut 10 Tawwash, small pearl traders 57, 59, 242 Taylor, Capt, R. 287, 359, 395, 398, 472 – 473, 476, 481, 496 Technologies 403 – 410, 421, 423 – 424, 426 – 427, 461 – Local 403 – 410 – Imported 397, 399, 403, 406, 408 – 410, 431, 433, 437 – 438, 449 – 450, 455 – 456, 461 – 462 Texeira, P. 389, 392 – 393 Thevenot, J. de 382, 390, 392 – 393 Thomas, B.S. 52, 357, 370, 490, 540 Tibbetts, G.B. 386, 487 Tides 69 – 70, 105 Towers, burj, bury 89, 110, 133 – 134, 225, 322 – 325, 354 – 355, 407 Trade 281 – 282, 386 – 387, 389 – 391, 396 – 397, and see barter, exchange, buying and selling, livelihoods and profits, traders

Index

– From historical sources 383 – 403 – Coastal 392, 394, 396, 400 – Date trade 263 – 264, 266, 384, 388, 393, 396 – Firewood 396 – Fish, salt and dry 265, 270 – 273, 385 – 387, 396, 398 – Goats 277 – 278, 387 – Grain 249 – 254, 386 – 387 – Horse 385 – 388, 396 – Pearls 263, 265, 384 – 385, 388, 393 – 394, 396, 398, 401 – Tobacco 265 – 269, 392 Traders 239, 250, 259 – 261, 261 – 282, 456 – Jizaafiin – 280 – 281 – Saffariin – 280 – 281 – Subu – selling on commission 280 – Local Arab 261, 264, 266, 270, 273, 279 – 280, 423 – Bahraini 261, 265 – 266 – Baluch 260 – 261, 273, 423 – Indian 261, 476 – Iranian 77, 90, 261 – 262, 265 – 266, 270, 273, 280, 294, 312 – 313, 333, 412, 423, 476 – Iraqi 261, 270 – Kuwaiti 261, 270 – Saudi Arabia 276 Transformations – Economic 376 – 383, 410 – 458 – Morality 1 – 2, 380 – 382, 459 – 460, 462 – 465, 557 – 558 – Political 375, 458, 557 – Work 377 – 378, 381 – 382, 422, 431 – 432, 436. 444 – 445, 451 Trees, perennials, shajar 37, 41 – 42, 84 – 85, 88, 100, 116, 123, 130, 132, 137 – 138, 146 – 148, 152, 162, 183, 197, 201, 225, 228, 231 Tribal infrastructure 10 – 12 – Tribal marks, azl 163 – 164, 233, 321 – Tribal ownership 26 – 34, 45 – 46, 62, 64 – 5, 326, 523 – 524, 526 – 527 Tribes 469 – 470 – Abdali 215, 501 – Ahl Ras al-Khaimah 3, 16, 49, 51, 57, 58, 62, 75 – 76, 77 – 78, 79 – 81, 99,

– – – – –

– –

– – – – –

– – – –

–

– –

577 147, 244, 247, 288, 312, 413 – 414, 459 – 460, 463 – 464, 476 Al Ali 3, 69, 79, 345, 415, 474, 476, 506 Al bu Muhair 3, 476, 506 Al Murrah 3, 15, 52, 112, 415 – 416 Awaimir 235, 277, 314, 315, 324 – 325, 329, 360, 539, 543 Awanat 59, 102 – 103, 134, 264, 316, 347, 350, 475, 508 – 509, 511 – 512, 549 – Shahin 347, 475, 511 – 512 Bani Jabir 4, 34, 53, 68, 70, 127, 310, 426, 472, 543, 546 Bani Kaab 5, 191, 197 – 198, 215, 232 – 235, 244, 255, 257, 289, 305, 318, 321, 324, 329, 345, 352, 373, 455 – 456, 539 – 543 Bani Kush 504 – 505 Bani Khalid 475 – Matarish 375, 475 Bani Qitab 244, 253, 254, 257, 315, 322 – 323, 329, 513, 535 Bani Saad 191, 221 – 222 , 276, 311, 452, 535 – 539 Bani Shamaili 1, 4, 15 – 17, 33, 104, 112 – 119, 138, 142, 160 – 163, 242, 312, 315 – 316, 320, 322, 327, 347, 432 – 434, 442 – 443, 501 – 504, 522, 524, 527, 547 Bani Ziraf 504 – 506, 548 Bidawi 127 – 128, 269, 276, 426, 472, 510, 541, 543 Chibbali 511 – 512 Dahaminah 5, 18, 20, 30 – 32, 191, 197, 229 – 233, 235, 244, 257, 289 – 290, 305, 323 – 324, 329, 352 – 353, 358, 372, 377, 454 – 455, 539 – 544, 546 Dhahuriyiin 3, 5 – 6, 18, 26, 29, 33, 35 – 36, 52 – 53, 59 – 60, 66, 125, 143 – 147, 152 – 155, 241, 244, 250 – 252, 254, 304, 306 – 307, 321, 326, 339, 345, 367, 372 – 373, 423, 487, 493 – 494, 514 – 516, 527 – 528, 546 – 547 Dhawahir 498 – 499 Duru 315, 329

578

Index

– Ghafalah 5, 36, 132, 135, 329, 371, 512 – Habus 5, 11, 14 – 15, 20 – 23, 105 – 107, 137 – 138, 143, 147, 178 – 183, 244, 246 – 247, 277, 279, 306, 312, 314 – 317, 321, 325, – 327, 344 – 345, 351, 356, 371, 373, 443 – 445, 459, 464 – 465, 470, 508 – 509, 523 – 526, 550 – Jalajil 5, 32, 191, 227 – 228, 257, 275, 328, 352, 358, 373, 453, 533 – Khanajira 18, 215, 235 – Khawatir 5, 7, 31, 36, 132 – 134, 216, 246, 257, 306, 312, 315 – 316, 320, 329, 331, 348, 350, 371 – 372, 437 – 439, 470, 510 – 513, 529 – Kunud 4, 501, 533, 546 – Al-Maharah 476 – Maharza 5, 19, 31, 191, 196, 204, 219, 222, 228 – 229, 255 – 256, 277, 312, 321, 325, 328, 330, 373, 451 – 454, 533, 541 – Manai 480 – Manasir 277, 315, 324 – 325, 329 – Mansuri 480 – Marawna 510 – Maraziq 479 – 480, 483 – Masafirah 5, 36, 132, 135, 513 – Mazairi 5, 7, 12, 18, 22, 31 – 33, 37, 71, 93, 132, 134, 191, 195 – 200, 203 – 206, 211 – 213, 223 – 227, 241 – 242, 255, 257 – 258, 275, 305, 315, 317, 322, 324, 328, 330, 350 – 352, 358, 372 – 373, 377, 426 – 427, 448 – 451, 465, 529 – 531, 546 – Naim 3, 7, 50 – 51, 79, 243, 248, 274, 330, 414, 476, 479, 529, 535, 546 – Awanat from Al bu Shamis Naim – Khawatir from Al bu Khuraiban Naim – Naqbiyiin 4, 14, 19, 29, 53, 56, 89, 91, 102, 107 – 108, 125 – 126, 131, 191, 197, 219 – 221, 240, 254, 273, 276, 304, 314, 321 – 322, 325, 327 – 328, 339, 358, 425, 452, 491, 497, 499, 507 – 511, 523, 526, 533 – 535, 546, 550

– Qiyudi 15, 125 – 126, 290 – 291, 321, 458 – Quwayyid 5, 31, 35, 191, 198, 205, 222 – 224, 235, 257, 274, 325, 341, 373, 539, 541 – Shaairah 5, 191, 215, 546 – Sharqiyiin 5, 19, 20, 67, 91 – 2, 125, 132, 191, 195 – 196, 199, 203 – 204, 209 – 211, 216 – 218, 240, 273, 276 – 277, 279, 287, 290, 306, 315, 320, 322, 325, 330, 338 – 339, 357 – 359, 424, 448, 451, 458, 460, 465,495, 497, 529, 534, 546 – Shihuh 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 – 19, 29 – 32, 36, 39 – 40, 52 – 53, 55, 58 – 67, 70 – 91, 104 – 105, 122 – 126, 138, 147, 175 – 178, 243, 255 – 256, 273, 277 – 278, 304, 310, 312 – 314, 320, 339, 341, 345, 347 – 349, 355, 357, 367, 421, 459, 469 – 470, 476, 493, 516 – 526, 549 – Shutair 89, 138, 146, 221, 244 – 245, 251, 306 – 309, 313, 327, 355, 372, 480, 484, 489 – 490, 516 – 517, 552 – Ahl Hail, Bani Muqbil, Muqabilat 89 – 91, 253 – 254, 307, 309, 314, 357, 492, 507, 518, 523 – Ahl Maqam 89, 518 – Ahl Salhad 31, 89, 248, 519 – Bani Assad 64, 155 – 156, 244 – 245, 431, 518, 522 – Bani Bakhit 158, 248, 520 – Bani Hamad 13, 29, 518 – Bani Hassuun 85, 241, 464 – Bani Ibrahim 105, 181, 507, 518, 523 – Bani Kanar 518 – Bani Lassam 31, 89, 124, 183 – 184, 248, 253, 290, 325, 350 – 351, 493, 518 – Bani Murra 169 – 171, 173 – 174, 253, 444, 518 – Haslaman 20, 89, 169 – 171, 173 – 174, 253, 273, 305, 322, 327, 444, 493, 518, 523 – Khanabila 13, 16, 30, 39, 89, 124 – 125, 138, 163 – 170, 181 –

Index

– – –

–

–

182, 248, 252, 304 – 305, 317, 320, 322, 324, 340, 351, 443 – 444, 462, 493, 519, 521, 527 – 528, 551 – Kumazarah 3, 32, 36, 88 – 89, 251, 274, 306 – 309, 313, 327, 349, 423, 487, 527 – Mahbiib 144, 157 – 158, 247 – 248, 256, 305, 493, 518, 520 – 521 – 522, 548 – Maqadihah 89, 125, 183, 493, 518 – Qiyashi 26, 117, 142, 144 – 5, 151 – 2, 158 – 160, 245, 247 – 248, 251, 256, 320, 377 – 378, 518 – 521, 523, 526 – Rahaibiyiin 1, 157, 185, 248 – 249, 320, 377, 465 – Hadiya 6, 13, 15 – 16, 221, 250, 306, 313 – 314, 327, 479, 489, 516 – 519, 524, 552 – Ahl Rawdhah 14 – 15, 142, 151, 168 – 169, 252 – 253, 256, 527 – Bani Ali 152, 246, 256, 423, 518 – Bani Idaid 15, 138, 142, 351, 518 – Haramshe 15, 518, 524 – Masharba 518 – Bani Mazyud 518 – Khanazirah 40, 151 – 152, 169 – 171, 251, 518 – Tuwar Salim 16 Suwaidan, Sudan 480 Suwailim 480 Tunaij 3, 7, 14 – 15, 19, 24, 35 – 36, 84 – 85, 120, 242, 247, 306, 312, 333, 431, 459, 478 – 480 – From Bani Qitab, 14 Zaab 3, 7, 9, 28 – 29, 34 – 36, 49, 51, 55, 60 – 62, 67 – 68, 70 – 74, 92 – 93, 107, 111, 127, 131, 134, 229, 246, 254, 256 – 257, 274, 287, 304 – 305, 310, 314, 320, 324 – 325, 331 – 332, 339, 345, 349 – 350, 373, 410 – 411, 425 – 426, 464, 471 – 475, 508 – 509, 512, 548 Zahhum 205, 341

579

Della Valle, P. 494 Varthema, L. 387, 392 Villiers, A. 48 – 51, 57 – 58, 284 – 285, 291, 382, 404 – 406 Wahhabis 8, 9, 396. 480 – 481, 511 Walker, J.F. 67, 191 – 192, 265, 285, 311 – 312, 323 – 324, 328, 330, 349, 353, 355 – 360, 369 – 372, 409, 435, 473 – 475, 482 – 483, 485 – 487, 491, 495 – 497, 499, 505 – 507, 511 – 513, 516, 526 –527, 531 – 532, 534 – 535, 536 – 544 Water – Carrying by boat 52, 251, 264, 265, 426 – Channels 86 – Falaj, falay 122, 124, 129, 138, 142 – 143 – 145, 152, 183, 191 – 198, 216 – Falay daudi 44, 104, 123, 129 – 130, 191 – 195 – Falay builders and cleaners 129, 191, 193 – Falay ghaili 191 – 199, 201, 203 – 204, 206 – Ghaal 126, 129, Ghailan 124, Ghayl 127, 129, 461 – Musaila 120, 138 – 139, 195 – Qanat 79, 124, 195 – Cisterns, birkat 139, 141 – 144, 152 – Degrees of permanence 124 – 127, 143, 144 – Dews see dews – Disputes over 139, 320, 326, 328 – Distribution between persons 102, 139, 142 – 144, 192, 193, 320 – Drinking 69, 71 – 72, 79, 81, 83, 99, 103, 120, 123, 141 – 143, 152, 161, 184, 192, 198, 201, 216, 218, 240, 251 – Drought 133, 146, 202, 207 – 208, 227 – 228 – Flood flows/sayl 10, 99 – 100, 120, 123, 126, 129, 137 – 140, 196 – 197, 199, 201 – 207, 461 – Ghudran 146, 196, 200 – Habisa temporary surface flow 200

580

Index

– Habsa, earth and stone barriers to hold back water 196, 197, 203, 204 – Habuut, depressions behind habsa to hold water 197 – Holding tanks 216, jabbiya 112, 120 habisa 196, 199, 204 – Praying for rain 146, 178 – Qualities 42, 100, 124, 199 – 200 – Rainpools 142, 143, 196 – Rains 38, 69, 99, 124, 133, 137 – 138, 146, 151, 152, 192, 196 – 197, 199, 203 – 205, 207 – 208 – Recharge 38, 100, 123, 124, 144, 196, 208, 437, 461 – Rights 102, 143 – 144, 326 – Salt in, 100, 120, 127, 199, 228, 426, 433, 461 – Seeps, mawrid 122, 139, 142 – Shares 124, 139, 194 – 196, 199, 200, 216 – Snow 208 – Springs 100, 102, 139, 144 – 145, 195, 216, 320 – Sudden drops in 206 – 207 – Summer 195, 240 – Surface 99, 123, 144, 194 – 197, 200 – Table 99 – 100, 123, 193, 195, 207 – 208, 438, 461 – Underground 99 – 100, 144, 191 – 196, 201

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Upwelling 144, 196 – 197 Washing 83, 121, 162, 216, 218 Watering places, mawarid 142, 144 Wells, tawi 100, 104, 132, 145, 193, 198 – 201, 207, 461 – Beach 69, 71 – 72, 83, 123, 125 – Bida, bidy 355 – Deep 100, 103 – 4, 152, 184, 200 – Ghayl 201 – Habisa 198 – Minsafa, pivoted bucket 198 – 200 – Yazara, bull worked 113, 123, 129, 198, 200

Weapons 20, 22 – 23, 108, 160, 165, 174 – 175, 177, 224, 226, 259, 321, 323, 326, 406 – 408 Weddings 21 – 23, 166, 215, 230 Wellsted, J.R. 208, 285 Whitelock, F. 299, 336, 397 – 398 Wilkinson, J.C. 105, 124, 334 – 335, 339 – 340, 355 – 356, 371, 384 – 385, 392, 394, 396, 467, 494, 516, 540, 545 – 546 Winds 55 – 56, 110, 126 – 128, 208, 211, 245, 254 Zimmerman, W. 34, 66, 141, 186, 245, 255, 376, 516

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List of Figures Maps and Diagrams Fig. 1 Sketch map of general area Fig. 2a Sketch map of Ruus al Jibal and Musandam Fig. 2b Sketch map of northern part of area with place names mentioned in text Fig. 3 Sketch map of southern part of area with place names mentioned in text Fig. 4 Sketch plan of house complex at Jazirat al-Hamra Fig. 5 Sketch plan of Bin Salih complex, Rams Fig. 6 Shaam – sketch plan of two buildings Fig. 7 Sketch plans and details of Siba complex, Shimal Taht, site c 100 m in length Fig. 8 Bait arabi and mudbrick buildings in courtyards, Shimal Taht Fig. 9 Diagram of yazara well, Shimal Taht Fig. 10 Diagrammatic plan of irrigation channels from well and sayl in date garden, Shimal Taht Fig. 11 Sketch to show siting of cistern, water-channels and fields, Upper Lughshaib, Wadi Hajil Fig. 12 Sketch plans of house sites in Ruus al-Jibal Fig. 13 Diagram of flow channels watering fields in Quda Fig. 14 Developing mountain fields over time Fig. 15 Sketch map of date gardens, water channels and grain fields, at Wadi Mawrid, Ghayl, site c 1 km in length Fig. 16 Sketch plan of house complex, Asimah Fig. 17 Sketches of several house complexes, Wadi Ayaili Fig. 18 Sketch plan of fields at ar-Riyam, Wadi Ayaili Fig. 19 Animal shelters in Western Hajar

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Captions for Photographs (e-Book only, ISBN 978-3-11-022339-2) Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo.

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Photo. 5 Photo. 6

Rain and sayl at Ghamdah, Ruus al-Jibal Jaruf fishing at Rams Shrine of Shaikh Masud, Musandam Ustadh Ahmad Zaid Mohammad Juma al-Kumazari – boat-builder, Khasab, with a repaired batil built by his grandfather General view of Kumzar Lima – old fish-salting tanks in foreground

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List of Figures

Photo. 7 Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo.

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Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo.

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Khamis Said and the transmission of history at Dibba Baiah, Musandam Modern shasha with outboard motor, Aqr, Batinah Coast, Oman Dates stored for dibs collection, Dhaya, Coastal Plain Yazara well, Shimal, Coastal Plain Sayl entering garden, Dhaya, Coastal Plain Old mosque at Fahlain, Coastal Plain Habhab, Coastal Plain Muzaira; old caravan assembly point in sands Biladi cows in sands Habus wedding in W. Naqab, Ruus al-Jibal Graveyard and two-storey building, Sabtan, Ruus al-Jibal Graveyard and old gravemound, Salhad, Ruus al-Jibal Beni Lassam Shihhi honey-gatherer, Isban, Ruus al-Jibal Water channel to fields at al-Aini, Ruus al-Jibal Inside a bait raha, Slai al-Quda, Ruus al-Jibal Long water channels leading to fields, Slai al-Quda, Ruus al-Jibal Slai al-Quda – fariq, fields & water channel; yanz in left foreground, Ruus al-Jibal Fort at Nuslah, Western Hajar Ghayl at Mawrid, Western Hajar Tobacco & onion fields, W. Sfai, Western Hajar Grain & tobacco fields at Isaimir, Western Hajar Khaimah with yarid roof, Sfai, Western Hajar Fariq with tobacco shed, W. Sfai, Western Hajar Graveyard & old gravemound at al-Ghuna near Madha, Western Hajar

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Fig 1. Sketch map of general area

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Fig 2a. Sketch map of Ruʻus al Jibal and Musandam

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Fig 2b. Sketch map of nothern part of area with place names mentioned in text

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Fig 3. Sketch map of southern part of area with place names mentioned in text

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Fig 4. Sketch plan of house complex at Jazirat al-Hamra

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Fig 5. Sketch plan of Bin Salih complex, Rams

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Fig 6. Shaʻam - sketch plans of two buildings

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Shimal Taht: tower/ghurfa, mosque, house buildings; site 100m in length.

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Fig 7. Sketch plans and details of Siba complex, Shimal probable sabla, summer sitting place for men, Taht, site c 100m in length

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Fig 8. Bait arabi and mudbrick buildings in courtyards, Shimal Taht

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Fig 9. Diagram of yazara well, Shimal Taht

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Fig 10. Diagrammatic plan of irrigation channels from well and sayl in date garden, Shimal Taht

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Fig 11. Sketch to show siting of cistern, water-channels and fields, Upper Lughshaib, Wadi Hajil

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Fig 12. Sketch plans of house sites in Ruʻus al-Jibal

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Fig 13. Diagram of flow channels watering fields in Qudaʻ

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Fig 14. Developing mountain fields over time

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Fig 15. Sketch map of date gardens water channels and grain fields, at Wadi Mawrid, Ghay, site c 1 km in length

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Fig 16. Sketch plan of house complex, Asimah

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Fig 17. Sketches of several house complexes, Wadi Ayaili

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Fig 18. Sketch plan of fields at ar-Riyam, Wadi Ayaili

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Fig 19. Animal shelters in Western Hajar

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