Page 43 - UAE Truncal States

V

Chapter Two

The Tribal Structure of
Society

1 The basis of the tribal organisation of the
population in Eastern Arabia

Ageless characteristics and changing conditions
“By and large, Arabia south of the Fertile Crescent has kept its
political as well as its social independence. The reason, simple
enough, is that the hard facts of Arabian climate and scene are not
only changeless but their inhospitable rigour have [sic] always
constituted its defence. No one has long or keenly envied the
Arabians their country; they have on the whole been little molested,
by reason merely of the very aridity and heat, dust and desert, of
which so much of the peninsula is formed, and by which its various
provinces are divided. They have enjoyed the safety of the undesired,
and have lived lives to which a hundred generations have specialised
them, in conditions barely tolerable to others.”1 As this sums up the
position of most of the Arabian Peninsula through the centuries of
worldwide conquest and colonisation, so its south-eastern corner
was indeed by-passed by the main stream of history altogether. This
cannot be said of the same region today, while its oil helps to keep the
industries of the world running.
When the new age opened for this area, the local population had
had only a distant glimpse of the industrialised world, its ways of
life, its endeavours and its values. Adapting to some features of this
other world would be difficult enough for a conglomerate group of
people who had no particular clearly-defined concept of life nor of
their position in their own environment. How much harder it must be
to make a success of the necessary adaptation in the case of the
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