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Chapter Three

                their grievances and disputes, and to dispense justice in consultation
                with a qacli and the mulawwcT. The diving court, salifah al ghuus,
                was responsible for settling disputes arising out of the preparations
                for the annual diving season and the many debts and claims which
                usually followed it.
                  Throughout the decades when the wali of Ra’s al Khaimah was
                sometimes de jure dependent, sometimes de facto dependent, and
                sometimes independent of the Ruler of Sharjah, the contentious
                issues usually concerned economics rather than status. Whoever
                was governor of Ra’s al Khaimah levied the customary taxes, chiefly
                on pearling, but also on dates (one twentieth of the crop in kind) and
                on animals, and collected customs duties (1.5 to 2 per cent). Such
                income was primarily used for the administration of Ra’s al
                Khaimah, which included maintenance of the fort and lowers, salary
                for some 70 armed guards, hospitality and subsidies to beduin tribes
                of the area. The rest was given in allowance to the members of the
                Qasimi family who lived in Ra’s al Khaimah and at the time of the
                Gazetteer numbered eight males.13
                  More than once in the history of the Qasimi realm and of other
                shaikhdoms, an ex-Ruler attempted to regain control of part or all of
                a shaikhdom because he could not see any other way out of his
                obligations to his debtors, his family and his supporters. Ra’s al
                Khaimah was in this respect not as coveted as Sharjah, which had a
                substantial income from pearling: according to the Gazetteer 23,400
                Rupees were collected there as tax in 1906.14 The wail's of Ra’s al
                Khaimah were usually not required, and the independent Rulers not
                inclined, to remit any of the revenue from Ra’s al Khaimah to Sharjah.
               The income to be derived from the former therefore helped to solve
                the economic problems of Salim bin Sultan, ex-Ruler of Sharjah, who
                managed to install himself as Ruler in Ra’s al Khaimah in 1910.15
                  In 1917 Salim bin Sultan’s eldest son Muhammad look over most of
                the affairs of Ra’s al Khaimah because his father had become
                partially paralysed, but after Salim’s death in 1919 the younger son
                Sultan gripped the reins of government and was recognised as Ruler
               of Ras al Khaimah by the British Government in 1921.
                 During the meagre years of the Second World War and after,
               Shaikh Sultan alienated his subjects by unduly neglecting their
               welfare, and his brother by signing an oil concessions agreement
               with PCL in secret. Thus it was possible for his nephew Shaikh Saqr
               bin Muhammad to take over as Ruler of Ra’s al Khaimah in March

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