Page 235 - UAE Truncal States_Neat

Chapter Six

following season’s catch. Thus after a series of bad years the divers
too became increasingly indebted.
During the half century when the pearling industry was relatively
prosperous, men were attracted to this industry, settling in the
coastal towns and abandoning their traditional economic activities.
They earned enough in the summer to see them through the winter
when little other employment was available in the towns. Although
they generally did not become sufficiently wealthy to enter into
business themselves, a sequence of good seasons thus encouraged
them to adopt a slightly more extravagant life style which however
did not better the lot of the divers and their families in the long run.
Sometimes following a poor season a diver might request even larger
advances from his nukhada, gambling on the hope that the next year
would be good again. In the event of the death of a diver a nukhada
sometimes lost considerable sums of money which he had lent.
Depending on how powerful a particular group within the pearling
community was at a particular lime and how well connected it was to
the shaikh, the rules governing intricate debt relationships could be
changed in favour of one or another group. Thus at times in the ports
of the Trucial States the nawakhidah were free to recover the debts of
a deceased diver from members of his family or by employing his son
as a diver without pay until the debt was repayed. The son was
treated like a diver who owed money to the nukhada and he was not
normally allowed to take up employment with another nukhada, or if
he did the second nukhada had to pay all the diver’s debts to the first
one.
After some bad seasons or as a result of excessive speculation a
musaqqam or even a merchant might experience financial difficulties
which made it imperative for him to insist that the nukhada repaid
his debts in full or in instalments arranged by the salifah al ghaus.
Sometimes when a nukhada was insolvent he was forced to sell his
boat and other property; only the family’s house and other private
belongings were exempt from seizure.
In the Trucial States the pearling industry provided the most
important reason for continuing to keep slaves. Because some of
them had been on the pearling boats every season since they were
young, they became the most expert of the divers, while many tribal
Arabs who may not have been able to leave their camels or their date
gardens every summer worked as haulers. Slaves thus played an
important role within the industry, and while it expanded slaves

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