Page 61 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Two

were exclusively ManasTr; however, Ihe gardens there did not yield
enough dates to include the owners in the small group of LTwa date-
growers who had to pay tax.30 There were nine other exclusively
ManasTr villages in the LTwa, but most other villages have been
shared between the Bani Yas and the ManasTr since the first half of
this century, because more ManasTr became at least semi-settled and
wanted to own date gardens. They bought some established gardens,
planted others or obtained them by inter-tribal marriage. The
ManasTr also owned many of the scattered and usually fairly
unproductive dale gardens south of the LTwa and in various other
desert locations. Some 30 families, most of whom lived as nomads in
the Khatam, owned date gardens in the Buraimi oasis although very
few of them have actually settled there. Like the Bani Yas, the
ManasTr usually built palm-frond huts near their date gardens,
especially in and around the LTwa oases. But the majority of the
ManasTr used these houses only during the date harvest and very few
remained in the LTwa throughout the year. After the date harvest the
ManasTr families closed these houses, covered up the wells nearby
and concentrated exclusively on the problem of where to find
sufficient of the right kind of grazing for their large herds of camels.
They preferred Dhafrah, Khatam and Ramlah al Hamra\ but some
families also frequented other parts of the desert. Thus the ManasTr
were particularly closely associated with the Mazin', who are the
largely nomadic section of the Bani Yas. Some ManasTr went to
Dalma for the pearling season, but compared to the Bani Yas they
owned fewer boats and usually participated on boats owned and
partly manned by the Bani Yas.
The ManasTr owned camels but only about half of them owned
date gardens in the LTwa, Khatam and the Buraimi oasis. An
important occupation, according to the Memorial, was the transport
of goods and persons when the Bani Yas moved in large numbers
between Abu Dhabi and Buraimi at the beginning of the hot humid
weather in Abu Dhabi, and for the return journey in autumn. Already
during the 1920s when profits from pearling showed signs of
stagnation, if not actual decline, and the carrying trade suffered from
the general recession, the animals of predominantly camel-breeding
ManasTr fell in value. As a result, there was a marked increase in
raids by small groups of nomadic ManasTr on the settled population
of the shaikhdoms in the north. On most occasions the families and
villages who suffered losses from such raids turned to the Ruler of

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