Page 243 - UAE Truncal States
P. 243

Chapter Six

                 Muslims. The Rulers usually dealt with cases which were neither
                 strictly diving claims nor within the usual routine of the shari'ah
                 courts, because these cases had a political aspect.

                 Members of ruling families interfering in the pearling
                 industry
                 The growth of the pearling industry in all its aspects, that is the
                 number of boats, participants, and merchants, of pearls fished and
                 marketed, the duration of the year’s diving season and the total
                 income of the industry, meant a steady growth in tax receipts for the
                 Rulers. Frequently a Ruler further increased his income by introduc­
                 ing new forms of taxation or by changing existing practices and
                 regulations. In some shaikhdoms the Ruler himself or the headman
                 had a share in the pearling business as the owner of boats or as a
                 pearl merchant. Such direct interest and involvement in the industry
                 inevitably led to disputes between these Rulers and leading mer­
                 chants in town, and increasingly so when the industry started to
                 shrink from 1929 onwards.
                   When ’Abdul Rahman bin Saif of Hamriyah was murdered by his
                 nephew Saif bin 'Abdullah and his brothers in May 1931, he left
                 20,000 Rupees-worth of debts to merchants and others in Dubai and
                 Umm al Qaiwain. some of the creditors being Indian; he also owed
                 1,500 Rupees to Persians in Sharjah. The reason why his nephews
                 turned on him was that they suspected that he had used their
                 inheritance, amounting to about 10.000 Rupees, as security for his
                 own business, but instead of being a successful pearl merchant he
                 got further and further into debt and was unable to restore the boys’
                 property when they became old enough to claim it.43 Saif bin
                 ’Abdullah and his brothers were themselves “engaged in a pearling
                 venture which did not turn out a success and ended in leaving them
                 in much reduced circumstances’’.44
                   In 1927, when Sharjah was already in a state of turmoil due to the
                 fact that the deposed Ruler, Khalid bin Ahmad, was attempting to
                 regain control by attacking Sharjah town with a number of beduin,
                 the young ruler, Sultan bin Saqr, permitted the diving boats to go to
                 the "small dive” before the main season started, an occasion when
                 traditionally all the proceeds after tax were divided between the
                captain and the crew only, the financiers being excluded. In a report
                to the Political Resident of 9 June 1927, the Residency Agent noted
                that the "boatmen were taking the notable’s (financiers) divers”, who

                278
   238   239   240   241   242   243   244   245   246   247   248