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Chapter Six

                 191 h century. The growing foreign demand for pearls at that lime
                 meant that ever-increasing profits were being made. Beduin who
                  participated in a pearling co-operative organised on a tribal basis
                 also earned more cash; whereas previously the season’s savings  were
                 just enough to purchase the few imported commodities required,
                 now there was extra cash available. The beduin could either buy
                 more camels, and pay for them to be looked after in his absence, or he
                 could buy established date gardens and arrange for them to be
                  tended by other tribesmen. Others pul their money back into the
                 pearling industry, thereby speeding the transformation from an
                 industry of tribal co-operatives to an industry with entrepreneurs
                 and a whole strata of participants who became locked into a system
                 of financial interdependence. Most pearling boats of Abu Dhabi town
                 were eventually owned by individuals, who because of the cost of
                  fitting out the boats and financing their food supplies in advance,
                 required a system of loans which was adapted from the practices
                 which were already well established in some other ports of the
                 Trucial States.
                   This system led to a new stratification of the society of the desert
                 shaikhdom of Abu Dhabi. A growing number of families could afford
                 to buy their own pearling boats and even make enough profit in a
                 season or two to build a good two-storey house in Abu Dhabi town.
                 They spent less and less lime at their traditional properly in the Lfwa,
                 gradually becoming absentee landlords, and some even saved
                 enough to buy a date garden in one of the villages in the Buraimi
                 oasis. This change for the better in the economic situation of these
                 families meant also that they now had the means to employ others to
                 work for them. Some of the tribesmen who remained in the desert
                 were paid to look after the camels, lend the gardens, bring firewood
                 to the town and provide transport for the seasonal move to the oases.
                 During this period of increasing prosperity a shortage of labourers
                 developed which was covered by importing slaves. They worked as
                 domestic servants and were employed to tend date gardens,3 but they
                 were  used most profitably by their owners as divers.

                 Changing population pattern of Abu Dhabi town
                 Abu Dhabi town grew in size with the expansion of the pearling
                 industry. Many of the formerly beduin tribesmen took to staying
                 there for the winter and lived off the money they earned from pearling
                 during the summer, or they obtained advances from their captains  on

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