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Social Aspects of Traditional Economy

household, they obtained such glowing reports of conditions that
they sometimes decided to go and live there themselves.
Thus in general the trading in slaves is a phenomenon which
coincided with disturbances of the traditional economic patterns in
the Trucial Slates, and was not what the distant beholder might
imagine it to be. The deprivations of a 19th century factory worker, or
the distress of the unemployed in Europe after the First World War
could cause more individual suffering than when people were taken
and forced to work at what they would almost certainly have chosen
to do anyway. If not the law of the land then the ethics of the religion
protected those who fell prey to the slave traders from inhuman
treatment.

5 The role of women in the economy
The description in earlier chapters of the various economic activities
in the desert, the oases and on the coasts showed the role played by
the men as the bread-winners of the households. The role of women
was particularly important in the families and communities where
the men were absent during the pearling season, and it was not made
any easier for them by the many pregnancies which most women
experienced during part of their lives.
Whether the men were there or not, women traditionally per­
formed certain duties in the household, including supervising the
servants. They went at least twice a day to the well or the falaj to
fetch water in earthenware jars; at the same time the clothes of the
family were washed and spread on the sand to dry. Beduin women
spun camel and goat hair into thread which they used to make
clothes for the family, camel trimmings, and the large pieces of
material needed for making tents. In the households on the coast or in
the hinterland women sewed the family’s clothes with the exception
of the 'aba'ah (locally also called bishl) for men, which came from
Bahrain or al Hasa. Apart from the daily food preparation which
usually included fresh fish for the midday meal on the coast and
dried fish in the oases, it often fell to the women to deal with any
excess milk production by making it into butter or curds.
During the peak of the pearling industry, when most able-bodied
men from the LTwa spent the entire summer on the boats, women
were in charge of the organisation of harvesting the family’s date
crop, which came frequently from several groves scattered in hollows
among the dunes. When they were little girls they would have
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