Page 192 - UAE Truncal States_Neat

The Traditional Economics

a bag. Since camels may drink ten lo twelve gallons each at a lime,
watering a herd of them during the summer is extremely arduous
work, especially since they have lo be taken further and further away
for grazing as the vegetation in the vicinity of the well is eaten up.
Under such conditions a camel is usually watered every two lo three
days.5 During the winter camels may go for six or seven months
without any water, provided that the grazing is plentiful and of the
right kind. The beduin families would themselves live on little other
than camel milk and dales during that time.
Under these conditions it is understandable that, although each
animal is valuable as a source of meal, of dung for fuel to cook on, of
wool and skins to make rugs and containers,6 as a rule only the
female camels were raised, with the exception of a few stallions to
serve the mares. In general most male calves were slaughtered on
occasions such as a wedding or lo celebrate the arrival of an
important visitor.
Beduin who also owned date gardens divided their time between
that property and their camels. There are differences among the
population of the Trucial Slates as lo how much of the time such
people led a nomadic life. Very few of the Manaslr, for instance,
resided in their houses in the Llwa all the year round, and the bulk of
the tribe was usually somewhere in Dhafrah, or even as far away as
Qatar and Dhahirah, seeking the best grazing for their large herds of
camels. Most Bani Yas except for the Mazarf were more inclined to
slay in the LTwa and entrust their camels to other Bani Yas or to
ManasTr tribesmen to be looked after during the winter. In the
summer, when even many Manaslr wanted to be in their Llwa homes
for the date harvest or to go to the coast for the pearling season, the
camels had to be kept near the wells in the Llwa.
The grazing in the Llwa and lo the south in Bain al LTwa is
plentiful, but the predominant plant is harm (zygophyllum) which is
salty and acts as a purgative, so that the camels need lo be watered
three or four times a day. When the camels were kept near date
gardens there was also the additional problem of supervising them,
because if they strayed into the small oases and ate from the date
trees the consequence was inevitably a dispute between the owners
of the camel and those of the date palms.7
All along the coast some tribes who had undisputed rights to
certain islands used to ferry their camels across the sea by boat to
make use of the winter-grazing on the islands.

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