Page 249 - UAE Truncal States
P. 249

Chapter Six


                Social stratification in villages
                An examination of land ownership in these oases, together with the
                question of who docs what type of work in the oasis village
                communities, reveals a social stratification which was partly based
                on  wealth, for the wealthy were those who owned large flocks of
                camels or who were very successful in the pearling industry and
                could buy up date gardens in the hinterland. But another basis for
                this stratification arises out of historical incidents such as the
                dispossession of the original inhabitants when they were conquered
                by newcomers, or when a strong tribe gradually supplanted a weaker
                one, acquiring its share of the land and relegating the former to work
                as gardeners.
                  Other groups in village communities such as the bayasirah, who
                are identifiable at least in the Buraimi oases and who are considered
                niawaJi (subservient), indicates that they might be an element of the
                original inhabitants whom the Indo-Aryan and Semitic groups
                rejected as having no asl (root, in the sense of a place in the Arab
                tribal genealogy) or because they initially rejected Islam.62 The tribal
                Arabs would not intermarry with bayasirah.
                  The term bayadlr (sing, bldar) was widely used in the village
                communities of the Trucial Slates to identify farm workers. They
                were people who might be the descendants of the Persian village
                population of pre-Islamic times who were assimilated by the Arab
                overlords and eventually adopted Arab tribal names. Bayadlr were    I
                numerically the strongest group among the inhabitants of Dibah;
                they had about 100 houses there at the turn of the century.03 They are
                certainly people who have lowly positions within these tribes now
                but they are acceptable partners for marriage within the tribe.
                Bayadlr may buy dale gardens or boats or accept other work than
                that of a bldar. As a worker in the gardens, a bldar was never paid in
                anything but in kind, that is he got one bunch of dates per tree he
                tended in the garden. A bldar's duty was to guide the flow of the falaj
                water at the receiving end when the gardens were flooded one by one,
                to cut off the lower branches of the growing palm trees, to fertilize the
                female dates in spring and to help in the harvest during the
                summer.04
                  The same work was also performed by people of slave origin who
               remained in the households of their masters as servants; but while a
                bldar performed only these particular duties in date gardens,
               servants could be asked to do all the other tasks which needed

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