Page 118 - UAE Truncal States

Administering a Tribal Society

bin Ahmad delegated many of the affairs of the eastern area to his
nephew Humaid bin 'Abdullah, who gained a corrupting influence
over the young Hamad bin Sa'Id in Kalba. The Regent Khalid bin
Ahmad was by then too old and ill to interfere in the deteriorating
state of affairs. When Humaid bin 'Abdullah died in 1950 the British
Government favoured Hamad bin Sa'Id as Ruler of Kalba; but he was
murdered in 1951, probably by the secretary of Saqr bin Sultan bin
Salim. The last of the descendants in the male line of the Qawasim
headmen and Rulers in Kalba having died, it seemed the most con­
venient arrangement to let Kalba revert to direct administration
from Sharjah, of which it has been a dependency ever since.

Shamaillyah—Fujairah
The most important single factor causing the decline of the influence
of the shaikhs of Sharjah in the eastern part of their realm was the
fact that within the conglomerate of settled tribes in the Shamaillyah
one tribe was disproportionately more numerous than any of the
others. The Sharqiyln were about 6,000 strong in a population of
about 10,000 while of the other tribes in the Shamaillyah or the
Naqbiyln none was more than 1,000 persons strong.30 The admini­
stration of Shamaillyah was arranged in the same way as that of
Dibah, that is, that the Qasimi wali was a fief and entitled to the use
of the revenue, some 2,000 M.T. Dollars in 1905; he did not have to
remit any of the revenue to the Ruler in Sharjah.37 So long as the
Qawasim had a wali on the east coast he had his seat in Ghallah
(Kalba) or at the long established natural port of Khaur Fakkan,
which has always been more important economically and had a
mixed population of Naqbiyln tribesmen and Arabised Persians.
Because of the distance and difficulty of access of the Shamaillyah
from Sharjah the district could be held by Qawasim Rulers only with
the co-operation of the big tribes. As long as the leading shaikh of the
Sharqiyln considered himself and his tribe as subjects of the Shaikh
of Sharjah, the rest of the Shamaillyah could be administered by the
wali in Kalba. Several times in the 19th century the Sharqiyln leaders
withheld their co-operation, but they were always brought back into
the fold of the Qasimi rule by the various means of pressure available
to strong Qawasim Rulers of either Sharjah or Ra’s al Khaimah.
The Qawasim Rulers had discovered early on that it was not easy
to maintain their own appointee as wali in the village of Fujairah.38
There the tribal leaders of the Sharqiyln were in a strong position to
93