Page 190 - UAE Truncal States
P. 190

The Traditional Economics

        increase the settled population. This trend was particularly obvious
        in Abu Dhabi, where the originally beduin Bani Yas first established
        the LTwa settlements and later Abu Dhabi town as centres for a semi-
        settled existence; in due course whole sections of the tribes no longer
        accompanied their camels to the grazing grounds, but placed them in
        the care of beduin. The other ports of the Trucial Coast also grew in
        size and importance over the same period, drawing primarily on the
        nomadic population of the entire eastern Arabian promontory. The
        influx of nomads into the pearling communities on the coast was
        supplemented by immigrants from the predominantly Arab ports on
        the opposite shore of the Gulf, such as Lingah or Bandar 'Abbas.
          The total of 8,000 beduin among the 80,000 inhabitants of the         i
        Trucial Stales, as estimated in the Gazetteer,1 probably decreased
        further over the following two decades due to the boom in the market
        for pearls. But statements on the relative percentages of settled and
        nomadic people remain highly speculative, even after a census
        carried out in 1968, because of the way in which both modes of
        existence were intertwined. It is equally difficult to state accurately
        how many people were engaged in any one particular economic
        activity. As was emphasised previously, the versatile tribesman was
        often himself a camel-breeder, a dale grower, and a pearl diver, or else
        those skills were shared among the members of one family.


        2 Husbandry in the Trucial States

 i      The camel has always been and still is the most important domestic
        animal raised on this coast and its hinterland. In the 1980s many       i
        households even in the towns still keep a female camel in the yard for
        her milk. Throughout the Arabian Peninsula the only known type of
        camel is the one-humped dromedary. Of the tribal people who inhabit
        permanently or visit the Trucial States very few are exclusively
        camel-breeders; even the almost entirely beduin Bani Qitab and the
        Manaslr own date gardens. However, most of the 'Awamir and
                                                                                !
        splinter groups of the Rashid, Manahll, 'Afar, A1 Murrah and others
        who also roam the entire area between their homelands to the west
        and north of the Hadhramaut and Dhafrah, used to organise their         !
        entire lives around the requirements of their animals.
          In all of Eastern Arabia camels have usually been owned by
        individuals, not by the family or the community. Since every Arab
        recognises his own animals from among the hundreds in a herd, a
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