Page 190 - UAE Truncal States

The Traditional Economics

increase the settled population. This trend was particularly obvious
in Abu Dhabi, where the originally beduin Bani Yas first established
the LTwa settlements and later Abu Dhabi town as centres for a semi-
settled existence; in due course whole sections of the tribes no longer
accompanied their camels to the grazing grounds, but placed them in
the care of beduin. The other ports of the Trucial Coast also grew in
size and importance over the same period, drawing primarily on the
nomadic population of the entire eastern Arabian promontory. The
influx of nomads into the pearling communities on the coast was
supplemented by immigrants from the predominantly Arab ports on
the opposite shore of the Gulf, such as Lingah or Bandar 'Abbas.
The total of 8,000 beduin among the 80,000 inhabitants of the i
Trucial Stales, as estimated in the Gazetteer,1 probably decreased
further over the following two decades due to the boom in the market
for pearls. But statements on the relative percentages of settled and
nomadic people remain highly speculative, even after a census
carried out in 1968, because of the way in which both modes of
existence were intertwined. It is equally difficult to state accurately
how many people were engaged in any one particular economic
activity. As was emphasised previously, the versatile tribesman was
often himself a camel-breeder, a dale grower, and a pearl diver, or else
those skills were shared among the members of one family.

2 Husbandry in the Trucial States

i The camel has always been and still is the most important domestic
animal raised on this coast and its hinterland. In the 1980s many i
households even in the towns still keep a female camel in the yard for
her milk. Throughout the Arabian Peninsula the only known type of
camel is the one-humped dromedary. Of the tribal people who inhabit
permanently or visit the Trucial States very few are exclusively
camel-breeders; even the almost entirely beduin Bani Qitab and the
Manaslr own date gardens. However, most of the 'Awamir and
!
splinter groups of the Rashid, Manahll, 'Afar, A1 Murrah and others
who also roam the entire area between their homelands to the west
and north of the Hadhramaut and Dhafrah, used to organise their !
entire lives around the requirements of their animals.
In all of Eastern Arabia camels have usually been owned by
individuals, not by the family or the community. Since every Arab
recognises his own animals from among the hundreds in a herd, a
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