Page 268 - UAE Truncal States
P. 268

A City Stale - Example Dubai

         wilhin the town. The remainder of Ihe population was made up of
         250 Persian households. 200 Baluchi houses and the Indian British
         subjects.
           The only inland settlement which could be considered as being
         subject to the Rulers of Dubai was Hajarain in the Wadi Hatta,
         which, in its disputes with the inhabitants of the Na'im protected
         village of Masfut, looked to the Ruler of Dubai for support. In later
         decades the name Hatta was adopted for that village, and for some
         time now rulers of Dubai have had a representative in Hatta and
         services for the village are now the responsibility of the municipality
         of Dubai. The inland oases of KhawanTj and 'Awir, some 17 to 20
         kilometres from the coast, in relatively well-wooded dune country,
         are both more recent developments of gardens and out-of-town
          houses which became possible with the installation of pumps in
          water wells.
           The data which are available on the economic activity of Dubai in
          the first decade of the 20th century may not be correct in all details,
          but they provide part of the general picture of a growing multi­
          national, sea-orientated pearling and trading community. Dubai had,
          of all the Trucial Slates’ ports, the highest number of men employed
          on pearling boats (6,936 according to Lorimer)7 although it had only
          335 boats, while 410 boats belonged to Abu Dhabi. But while many of
          the people who manned those boats which sailed from Abu Dhabi
          came in from the desert at the beginning of the pearling season, the
          crews manning the Dubai pearling boats, and their families, lived in
          town all the year round. The gross revenue from taxes levied by the
          Ruler of Dubai at that time, 41,388 Rupees was only surpassed by
          that of Abu Dhabi, 43,964 Rupees. The number of exempt boats and
          men was, however, so high (210 boats and 3,813 men) that the Ruler
          had a net income of only 20,860 Rupees,8 but the community of
          exempt people did have to pay for the upkeep of 100 beduin guards to
          watch over the, by then, no longer walled quarters of the town during
          the absence of most of the local fighting men in the summer. The
          exemptions which Dubai accorded at that time, particularly to the
          majority of the Bani Yas—though they could also extend to others—
          left the community as a whole much better off. In later decades this
          relative laxity in taxation encouraged entrepreneurs in the pearling
          trade to settle in Dubai.
            The rule of the liberal and far-sighted Maktum bin Hashar not only
          covered part of the period during which the pearling industry
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