Page 220 - UAE Truncal States_Neat

The Traditional Economics

door from I he old house. The doors arc usually made of l wo equal
parts dividing vertically in the centre. A small door with an arched
opening is often built into one part of the main door. On forts the
doors arc particularly splendid, made of thick wood, studded with
large iron spikes and fitted with intricate locking devices. A verse
from the Koran may well be carved into a panel above the door.
Weaving
Very little cotton grew locally; the yarn, which was mostly imported
from India, was dyed locally with indigo and other natural dyes.50 In
Buraimi, Ra’s al Khaimah, and possibly some of the larger settle­
ments, there used to be professional weavers. The weaver sal in a pit
in the open air in a courtyard with a wooden weaving frame al a
convenient level above the knees.57 The finished product was sold to
customers in the vicinity and also found its way into the local suqs.
As mentioned earlier, the other locally-woven items such as tents
made of goat hair and sheep wool were not made by professional
weavers and were not for sale but were woven by the women as
required.
According to the Gazetteer, an industry of weaving fine sheep wool
'oba ah, presumably with gold braid, had been developed in Sharjah,
but not enough were made to meet local demand so they were also
imported from Bahrain and al Hasa. Most of the cloth used by the
population of the Trucial States was not made locally but imported
from India and elsewhere. As recently as the early 1920s there was no
tailor in Abu Dhabi town; the women of each family made the clothes
for everyone with the exception of the men’s faba’ah, while the
shaikhly families and the well-to-do merchants had servants to do
this work.

Camel-trimmings
On first sight it seems surprising that camel-saddles and camel-
trimmings were not always made by the camel-breeders on the
Trucial Coast themselves, because the locally used haivlani saddle is
easily made; it requires very little wood, a small amount of woollen
material and date palm fibres for stuffing.58 The descendants of the
nomads who originally developed this type of camel-saddle are the
full nomadic tribes roaming the areas to the west and south of 'Ibri
and as far as Hadhramaul. Tbri was a centre for the trade in camel-
saddles and trimmings made by these beduin, from whence the suq
of Buraimi was supplied.
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