Page 213 - UAE Truncal States
P. 213

I


                Chap In r Five

                6 Trade

                Trade in pearls
                It may safely be staled that trade other than barter would have
                hardly existed in the Trucial States but for the proceeds from the
                pearling industry. Pearls and mother-of-pearl constituted almost the
                only export. The importation of foodstuffs and other goods grew
                along with the growth of the pearling industry during the last
                decades of the 19th century and in the 20th century, until in 1928
                and 1929 a peak was reached which was followed by a very sharp
                decline.
                  The exportation of pearls involved a certain amount of internal
                trade which is worth describing in some detail because it also offers
                an interesting insight into the social stratification of the ports of the
                Trucial Coast.13
                  The first link in the line of pearl traders is the lawwash. In the
                context of the trade in Abu Dhabi most la wa wish visited the pearl
                banks from Abu Dhabi or Dalma in boats while the dive was in full
                swing. They bought there and then pearls from the nukhada. Other
                [awdwish wailed ashore for the boats to return. Exceptionally large
                or perfect pearls were sold by the nukhada as separate items; all
                other pearls were sorted by the lawwash in the presence of the
                nukhada according to their sizes. For this process a number of brass
                or copper bowls (sieves) with standardised holes in the bottom were
                used. The five sizes which were commonly used throughout the
                Arabian pearling ports all have names,44 but some dealers also used
                more sieves to sort their pearls into very finely graded lots. Not every
                nukhada sold the season’s catch to a lawwash, because some made
                contact direct with a pearl merchant, tajir(pl. tujar), and others were
                under an obligation to transfer the whole season’s take to a financier
                at a prearranged rate.45
                  A tajiris a wholesale pearl merchant; he does not obtain the pearls
                by going himself to the boats, but they are offered to him either by the
                lawwash or by the nukhada, often through contacts made by a
                middleman, dallal, who gets a commission from both parties. The
                lajir used to pay in cash, and he also received cash when he parted
                with the pearls. But during the 1920s it became quite common for
                pearls to be taken on credit and the tajir was paid after the pearls had
                been sold in India, and, with luck, before the following  season.
                  The pearls of the Gulf used to be bought up by tujar from Bahrain

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