Page 213 - UAE Truncal States

I

Chap In r Five

6 Trade

Trade in pearls
It may safely be staled that trade other than barter would have
hardly existed in the Trucial States but for the proceeds from the
pearling industry. Pearls and mother-of-pearl constituted almost the
only export. The importation of foodstuffs and other goods grew
along with the growth of the pearling industry during the last
decades of the 19th century and in the 20th century, until in 1928
and 1929 a peak was reached which was followed by a very sharp
decline.
The exportation of pearls involved a certain amount of internal
trade which is worth describing in some detail because it also offers
an interesting insight into the social stratification of the ports of the
Trucial Coast.13
The first link in the line of pearl traders is the lawwash. In the
context of the trade in Abu Dhabi most la wa wish visited the pearl
banks from Abu Dhabi or Dalma in boats while the dive was in full
swing. They bought there and then pearls from the nukhada. Other
[awdwish wailed ashore for the boats to return. Exceptionally large
or perfect pearls were sold by the nukhada as separate items; all
other pearls were sorted by the lawwash in the presence of the
nukhada according to their sizes. For this process a number of brass
or copper bowls (sieves) with standardised holes in the bottom were
used. The five sizes which were commonly used throughout the
Arabian pearling ports all have names,44 but some dealers also used
more sieves to sort their pearls into very finely graded lots. Not every
nukhada sold the season’s catch to a lawwash, because some made
contact direct with a pearl merchant, tajir(pl. tujar), and others were
under an obligation to transfer the whole season’s take to a financier
at a prearranged rate.45
A tajiris a wholesale pearl merchant; he does not obtain the pearls
by going himself to the boats, but they are offered to him either by the
lawwash or by the nukhada, often through contacts made by a
middleman, dallal, who gets a commission from both parties. The
lajir used to pay in cash, and he also received cash when he parted
with the pearls. But during the 1920s it became quite common for
pearls to be taken on credit and the tajir was paid after the pearls had
been sold in India, and, with luck, before the following season.
The pearls of the Gulf used to be bought up by tujar from Bahrain

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