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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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