Page 267 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Savon

sovereignly over the Bani Yas of Dubai village. The fort of the A1 I3u
Falah representative was located on the western side in a quarter
called Shindaghah. The growth in pearling and trade rapidly made
Dubai a focal point for immigration, and at the turn of the century an
estimated 10,000 people inhabited three main quarters of the town.
The original site of the Bani Yas fishing village was in all
probability the quarter of Shindaghah, situated in a triangle between
the open sea in the north and the creek to the east. At the time the
Gazetteer was compiled, the 250 houses which made up that quarter
were exclusively occupied by Arabs. Although buying and selling of
land has brought about some change in this pattern of settlement, the
recent development of that area due to the building of a tunnel under
the creek and the necessity to compensate the owners of land and
houses affected brought to light the fact that most of the properly in
that quarter still belonged to the ruling family and other Bani Yas
families.
Dubai proper is situated on the same side of the creek as
Shindaghah, but further inland. It developed into the more important
of the two western quarters, probably because boats could be
offloaded there more easily. Al FahTdi Fort may date back to before
1820, when fortifications were mentioned in the preliminary agree­
ment between the Bombay Government and Dubai; it is clearly
marked on a survey map of 1860. In the nineteenth century the fort
and the principal mosque made the quarter of Dubai proper the focal
point of the entire City State. The Indian community5—Khojah and
Hindu—were confined to this quarter, which had about 50 shops
and 100 houses. The third quarter. Dairah, on the east side of the
creek, was at the turn of the century by far the biggest, with about
1,600 houses, inhabited by Arabs as well as Persians and Baluchis.
The suq of Dairah had about 350 shops, and was thus the biggest
market on the Trucial Coast.
By the first decade of this century the population of Dubai had
already become more mixed than that of Sharjah town or of Abu
Dhabi. The Bani Yas only just held the majority, with 440 houses,
because the Al Bu Mahair as well as the Mazarf of Dubai—unlike
those of Abu Dhabi—did not consider themselves as integral parts of
the Bani Yas.6 Arabs from Bahrain, Kuwait and the Persian Coast
with another 400 houses, 250 houses of the Sudan, 30 houses of
people originating from al Hasa, 30 of the Marar and 10 of the
Sh waihiyfn (part of the Bani Ka'ab tribe) completed the Arab element
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