Page 114 - UAE Truncal States

Administering a Tribal Society

and Ahmed bin Sultan cannot see his way to check their encroach­
ments and hence the revenues of the place are now insufficient for his
expenditure. ” HI
Unlike certain other wali posts within the Qasimi territory and
throughout the Trucial Slates, the importance of holding Dibah lay
not so much in the need to have a trusted man there to control the
tribal inhabitants (’Awanat, Naqbiyin and Sharqiyln)20 but in its
function as a fiefdom. The wali usually was an important member of
the Qasimi family whose claims to a share of the ancestral empire
had to be considered; he was not often an absentee fief but usually
resided in Dibah.21
In 1919 the Ruler of Sharjah, from 1914 Khalid bin Ahmad,
appointed his brother Rashid bin Ahmad bin Sultan as wali in
Dibah. After Khalid’s deposition22 in 1924 his successor Suljan bin
Saqr appointed a negro slave, Bakhit bin Sa'Id, but in spring of 1926
the son of the previous Qasimi wali, Ahmad bin Rashid (bin Ahmad
bin Sultan) “. . . with the concurrence of the inhabitants has been
appointed the Shaikh of that place and has occupied the forts
there."23 Ahmad bin Rashid at once informed the Ruler of Sharjah,
Sultan bin Saqr, and the other shaikhs as well as the Residency
Agent at Sharjah, of this fait accompli. Soon the father, Rashid bin
Ahmad, regained control of Dibah for himself and remained the wali
there until his death in December 1937.
When Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmad, ex-Ruler of Sharjah, became the
strongest power in the eastern area after being appointed Regent of
Kalba in 1937, the affairs of Dibah were closely supervised by him
rather than by his rivals in Sharjah or Ra’s al Khaimah, and he again
set up his nephew, Ahmad bin Rashid (bin Ahmad bin Sultan), as
wali of Dibah in January 1938. But when during his old age he
delegated that power to his nephew Humaid bin ’Abdullah, the
latter’s mismanagement paved the way for re-integration under the
authority of the Ruler of Sharjah. In 1950 Saqr bin ’Abdullah, a
nephew of the ex-Ruler of Sharjah, Khalid, became wali of Dibah, and
held the post until he died in 1958.
The wealth of Dibah was not in trade, although it had a small suq,
nor primarily in pearling, but in dates from an estimated 10,000 trees.
Tax collected in Dibah as well as in the two neighbouring little
villages of Wamm and Muhtarqah was all paid to the wali.
The wali in Dibah often had to contend with encroachment by the
Shihuh. He therefore needed powerful allies or else had to hold them

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