Page 241 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Six

supported by the Political Resident would exert pressure on that
shaikh for the recovery of the debt. This meant that these merchants
could take greater risks and their gains were that much bigger. This
reassurance frequently more than made up for the disadvantages of
not being members of the local Arab society. However, since most
people who claimed to be British subjects were involved in the
pearling industry, they were part and parcel of that community and
had to abide by the rules.

The status of immigrants
The immigrant merchant communities from the Persian coast—as
opposed to the Indians—often had a more difficult lime trying to
recover their debts. They sometimes tried to claim protection from the
British Government and sent petitions to the Residency Agent in the
same way as some British subjects, but without success.38 The ports
of the Trucial Stales provided ready melting-pots for people from
neighbouring areas who often came without their families hoping to
earn some money as divers or in such other jobs as were open to
them, sometimes because the local population would not do them.
Although these immigrants remained socially and legally out­
siders they were economically fully integrated. This is demonstrated
by the case of three subjects of Mir Barakat Khan of Biyaban in
Persian Makran. They had lived for seven years in HIrah, one had
become a diver for 'Abdul Rahman bin Muhammad, one was a diver
who was not attached or indebted to anyone, and the third worked as
a water carrier. They carried arms and were sometimes engaged as
watchmen in the tower of HIrah. When they were being accused of
' planning an attempt on the life of the Residency Agent—possibly at
the instigation of the banished 'Abdul Rahman bin Muhammad—the
Ruler of Sharjah, Sultan bin Saqr, disclaimed responsibility for their
behaviour and suggested that they should be deported.39
In the 1920s it became increasingly clear that if the influx of people
into the ports from the desert on the one hand and from neighbouring
countries on the other hand had continued, the local institutions,
such as they were, namely Rulers, qudah, diving courts and a few
armed guards in place of a police force, would soon have been
inadequate to cope with the less and less cohesive society and with
its security and its judicial needs.40 Already then the society at least
in the larger towns of the Trucial Coast was affected by the
consciousness of divisions between local tribal, immigrant Persian,

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