Page 149 - Arabian Gulf Intellegence

BAHREIN. 107

together with his occasional capture of the Bahrein trading vessels,
proving that lie has not abandoned his hostile designs, arc not calculated
to give confidence to the refugees.
Six large Buggalows (not including those belonging to the authori­
ties), thirty to forty of the size employed in the Gulf trade, and from
five hundred to six hundred pearl boats, probably make up at the
present time the shipping of this once extremely commercial and fertile
island; which, according to a rough estimate formed by Major Wilson,
then Resident, numbered, in 1829, twelve large vessels, the property of
the Chief Shaikh Abdoolla bin Ahmed, and the other Shaikhs, his
relations, mounting in all about fifty guns; twenty-one large merchant
vessels now in Bahrein ; five hundred common fishing and cargo
boats ; and fifteen hundred pearl fishing-boats. j
The bulk of the population of Bahrein, which is entirely distinct
from the Uttoobees, who are Soonees, consists of the aboriginal inha­
bitants, professing for the most part the Sheea tenets of the Mahomedan
faith. These are greatly oppressed, and held in a most degraded state
of vassalage by their Uttoobee masters, of which some conception may
be formed from a remark by the same authority (Major Wilson) in 1829,
that “ the enormities practised by the Uttoobees towards the original
inhabitants of Bahrein far exceed what I have ever heard of tyranny
in any part of the world/’
[t may not be out of place here to notice the positive assertion made
by Shaikh Abdoolla bin Ahmed to the Resident, on the latter’s visiting
Bahrein in June 1839, that “ there are many parts between the islands
and the main where neither Buggalows nor ships would be of any
r. service in preventing a large fleet of boats from making its way across
in the course of a few hours.” He added, that “ in the time of Shaikh
Nasir, he had himself successfully attacked Bahrein in this manner,
although his antagonist possessed a strong naval force, but which could
not be made available.”
This assertion, however, requires confirmation, as well from the late­
ness of the discovery of the important fact it disclosed, as from the
circumstances arising out of his policy at the time, as connected with
the Egyptian commander, Korshid Pasha, having rendered it the
interest of the Uttoobee Chief to make it.
Esai bin Tarif and Bushire bin Ramah, after their successful attack
upon Bahrein, removed with their dependents to Biddah, a dependency
of that island, upon the Guttur Coast.
Esai and his tribe, numbering about a thousand men capable of bear­
ing arms, possess three large Buggalows (one copper bottom), which trade
to India; five Buteels, each from eighty to a hundred tons; eleven larg e
Buteels and Buggalows; and about a hundred and thirty pearl boats

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