Page 483 - Truncal States to UAE_Neat

Notes to Chapter Eight

17 In 1839/40 Sa'ad bin Mutlaq, a former Wahhabi wali in Buraimi, came to
Sharjah hoping to re-occupy Buraimi in the name of the new Wahhabi
Ruler, Khalid bin Sa'ud, but it was feared that he was acting on behalf of
the Egyptian general Khurshid Pasha; see Kelly, Britain, pp. 313f and
328ff.
18 Incorporated in London by Queen Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600 as
the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the
East Indies"; 217 merchants subscribed at the time; see Lorimer, Histor.,
p. 10.
19 Factories, whether located in Europe or in the colonies, were organi­
sations which ran warehouses and could sell the commodities which
were consigned to them on account of their principals; they guaranteed
the credit of purchases and could make cash advances to their
principals before the actual sale of the goods. The warehouse-cum-office
compound was often fortified.
20 For an account of the siege by the combined forces and the distribution
of the spoil afterwards, see Lorimer, Histor., pp. 23ff.
21 The Gulf is no exception to the rule that wherever there was profitable
trade conveyed across a sea whose shores offered refuge for the local
population in their bid to intercept the merchant vessels, piracy was
likely to flare up time and again. For such outbreaks of piracy in the Gulf
before the arrival of the Portuguese see Hawley, Trucial States, p. 90f;
Wilson, Persian Gulf, 1959, p. 192f, footnote 2. See also J.R. Perry, "Mir
Muhanna and the Dutch: Patterns of Piracy in the Persian Gulf’ in
Studia Iranica 2 (1973), pp. 79-95.
22 These cases were all minutely reported in the records of the East India
Company which formed part of the material from which Lorimer's
Gazetteer was compiled; see Lorimer, Histor., pp. 633ff and elsewhere.
23 Description of such incidents are numerous in all the accounts of the
Portuguese conquest and rule. See Alfonso de Albuquerque, Com­
mentaries, and Danvers, Portuguese, in particular vol. 1, pp. 158ff on the
capture of Quriyat, Muscat and Khaur Fakkan.
24 Printed in Aitchison, A collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads
relating to India and neighbouring Countries, vol. XI, Delhi, 1933, pp.
287ff.
25 For a description of the various encounters between British and Qasimi
vessels, leading up to the expeditions of 1809 and 1819/20 and the first
British treaty with the Qawasim in 1806, see Lorimer, Histor., pp. 636ff;
Kelly, Britain, pp. 99ff; and Moyse-Bartlett, H. The Pirates of Trucial
Oman, London 1966, pp. 32ff and pp. 237ff. The tail end of the 1809
expedition, for instance the taking of the Qawasim-held fort at Shinas
(reinforced by the Wahhabis from Buraimi) on the Shamaillyah coast,
was a joint British-Omani operation. Before that Ra’s al Khaimah,
Lingah and Laft had been taken by the British naval force; see Kelly,
Britain, p. H8ff.
457