Page 86 - UAE Truncal States

The Tribal Structure of Society

into the sands. The U.K. Memorial therefore calls them "pastoral”
rather than beduin.05
The NaTm of Buraimi sporadically professed their loyalty to the
Sultan in Muscat. The paramount shaikh, Saqr bin Sultan al Hamuda
of Buraimi, who personally owned half the dale gardens at Dhank,90
visited Muscat in 1938. The question of allegiance of the various
factions of the NaTm became an important issue after the Sultan of
Muscat had signed an agreement in 1937 with Petroleum Conces­
sions Ltd. to explore for oil in all the territory under his authority.
The NaTm saw that they had the option of professing themselves
subjects of the Sultan in Muscat, the Imam who ruled in the virtually
independent mountainous area of Inner Oman, the Al Bu Falah Ruler
of Abu Dhabi or one of the other Trucial Rulers, or else to try to
maintain their own independence. With the exception of the last
alternative, all other options had at different times different attrac­
tions because the NaTm could expect a subsidy of some kind from
any one of the Rulers in the area in exchange for their allegiance,
although the NaTm no longer had a fighting force as big as before,
I
consisting in the 1940s of a mere 300 to 400 rifles. Whichever course
the shaikh decided upon, he could never be sure of the complete
loyalty of all the NaTm to the chosen overlord. This possibility of a
choice further deepened the rift between the various factions of the
NaTm and between the shaikhs of subsections, headmen of villages
■
each becoming that much more independent themselves. Thus at
times during the later 1940s the nominal tamlmah of the NaTm lived
in fear of losing his position to the NaTm Ruler of 'Ajman, Rashid bin
Humaid, who had already seized the NaTm-dominated village of
Masfut in 1948 from Shaikh Saqr bin Sultan al Hamuda, who had
been unable to oppose Rashid’s forces because he could not raise any
armed men. Some of the shaikhs of the subsections, such as Ahmad
bin Saif al Saif, of the Khawatir at HafTt, could muster about 100
armed men at the time. Shaikh Saqr’s influence obviously did not
match that of his father, who had been responsible for the NaTm
holding their own in the Buraimi oasis during a period of growing
influence of the Al Bu Falah there.
The Sultan in Muscat recognised that in order to gain genuine and
lasting authority over the territories and villages inhabited by the
NaTm, he had to weaken the position of the dissenting shaikhs of the
various sections by assisting the tamlmah to assert overall authority
over the tribe. For a brief period in 1948 his Minister of the Interior,
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