Page 273 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Seven

containers were virtually unknown, and leftovers from meals and
food preparation were given to camels, goats, chickens and cats, all of
which had their own area in the yard, there was very little waste to
dispose of. The family used to gel one of the servants to deposit
refuse anywhere outside the house. In some quarters a person would
be paid by the community to collect this refuse from the alleys, and it
would then be deposited on an empty space outside that quarter for
general collection. Proper disposal of refuse was not organised until
some time in the late 1950s, when Shaikh Rashid appointed someone
to undertake this for all quarters of the City Stale.
Throughout that period and even up to the middle of the 1960s the
entire population of Dubai lived in identifiable groups. The neigh­
bourhoods within the different quarters of the town had originally
grown through a process of immigrants moving in with, or settling
next to, their tribal relatives.15 Therefore each neighbourhood also
had a headman, elder or notable who was the spokesman for that
group of inhabitants when complaints had to be voiced, when a
disaster occurred, or when the Ruler wanted a certain decision to be
communicated to all the residents. There was no wali for any quarter
of the town.10 During his rule, Shaikh SaTd bin Maktum used to send
his brother Hashar almost daily to Dairah to settle disputes among
merchants and to hear their complaints and suggestions. The Ruler
or his brother acted as arbiters in any dispute which people cared to
bring to them for settlement. But disputes regarding inheritance or
marriage and divorce were immediately referred to the qadi.17
With no State police, no government-run educational system, nor
organised supervision—for instance by a municipality—of land use,
buildings and market practices, very little contact with government
authority was forced upon the individual. The residents were
nevertheless well aware of the presence of the Ruler’s authority, of
his armed retainers, of his tax collectors and of his duty to act as
arbiter. The most effective coercive force in such a tightly-knit
community as Dubai was then, was public opinion within the groups
and communities.
One of the few services rendered by the shaikhly government to
the community was the co-ordination of improvements along both
sides of the creek, where wooden platforms were built as landing-
points for fabrahs, and to facilitate offloading goods from the boats
and barges. Because customs dues had to be collected on all imported
goods, a system had to be organised whereby boats could not creep

248