Page 297 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Eight

decline of another. The control of the trade often meant that attempts
were made also to dominate the population in the distant ports of
one’s trading partners. It was not just a group of daring Porlug uese
adventurers who conquered the traditional trade emporia of the Gulf
and parts of the Indian Ocean; this was the result of carefully-
prepared strategy at the Court in Lisbon aimed at taking over by any
means possible every sector of the very profitable trade between the
Indian Ocean coasts and Europe.1
None of these major trading ports were located in the territory
which later became known as the Trucial Stales. But minor ports on
the Arab coast were occupied by the Portuguese from lime to time to
ensure that Arab trading communities could not set up rivals to their
trade emporium. Thus the port at Khaur Fakkan, which at the time
was probably paying tribute to the king of Hormuz, was destroyed in
the first expedition against the Arab trade in the Gulf in 1506 by
Alfonso de Albuquerque.2
In 1625, after being defeated near Bandar ’Abbas by Dutch and
English vessels, the Portuguese commander took refuge with the
remainder of his vessels at an anchorage on the Arabian coast,
probably Khaur Khuwair near Ra’s al Khaimah, and established a
temporary base there. Khasab near the tip of the Musandam
Peninsula also served as a Portuguese base at times.3 The Arab coast,
as well as the nearer islands on the Persian coast, was sometimes
visited to obtain shipments of water for Hormuz. The Portuguese
built a fort al Julfar near Ra’s al Khaimah in 1631, when their power
was already on the wane and after the key position at Hormuz had
been irretrievably lost to a combined Persian and English force.
There may have been other minor Portuguese fortifications else­
where on the coast between Dubai and Khasab as well as on the east
coast in the vicinity of Khaur Fakkan. The inadequate harbours and
few watering places of the Arab coast of the Gulf were not in
themselves important to the Portuguese, nor did they figure prom­
inently in the struggle of English and Dutch trading companies to
replace the Portuguese. While the latter’s attention was focused on
the Persian coast the Arab tribes were able to regain control of their
ports. But the continuous conflict between the Portuguese and the
Dutch, the English and occasionally the Turks4—with the Persians
trying to promote their sovereignly over important trading places
endangered and at times all but eliminated the trade undertaken by
Arab vessels. During this struggle the Imam of Oman, Sultan bin Saif,

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