Page 226 - UAE Truncal States_Neat

Social Aspects of Traditional Economy

the share they could expect to earn from the dive of the following
season. The population was further increased by people who came
from other areas of the Gulf to Abu Dhabi and other towns of the
Trucial Coast because the pearling industry itself, or the ancillary
trades, attracted them. An example is the 120 Baharinah who came to
Abu Dhabi town before the turn of the century and were mostly pearl
divers or craftsmen such as blacksmiths; some were traders and
used the connections they had with other members of this tribe in
Bahrain, al Hasa, Qatlf and Qatar and in some districts on the
Persian Coast/1
About 500 Persians also immigrated into Abu Dhabi town during
the course of barely a century and a half after the founding of the
town in 1761. About 120 members of an originally Arab tribe from
Khamir in Persia, the Khamarah, and other splinter-groups of people
from neighbouring coasts also settled in Abu Dhabi town. The retail
trade within the suq was mostly in the hands of Persians who owned
about 40 of the 70 shops, according to the Gazetteer.5 All trades and
crafts were also in Persian hands, such as forging copper, brass and
iron and building houses; the more elaborate houses of the town
were built of coral taken from the sea-bed and covered with mud; the
most suitable mud was obtained from the far side of the neighbour­
ing island, Sa'diyat. During the first half of the 20lh century, Arabs
from the Persian shore supplied the clerical services which were
increasingly needed such as the teacher in the Koran school, the
kuttab; the Rulers secretary; the secretary of the wali on Dalma; some
learned men, mutawwa'. The qadi, however, was either from Abu
Dhabi, Bahrain or al Hasa.
These non-tribal Sunni Muslims were assimilated without great
difficulty while this process of relative urbanisation6 continued
and the economic expansion lasted, creating the need for more
divers, more shopkeepers, and more craftsmen; even tailors, bakers,
butchers and builders were now required. Although domestic ser­
vants were usually slaves or at a later dale their freed descendants,
Baluchis from Makran were also employed in increasing numbers.
Perhaps the biggest change in the socio-economic structure of the
towns of the Trucial Coast was the presence from about the mid­
nineteenth century of a number of Hindu merchants. They were
reluctant to make the places where they earned their livelihood their
homes; most of them went back to their families in India from time to
time. In the case of Abu Dhabi they all came from Tatta in Sind

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