Page 249 - UAE Truncal States_Neat

Chapter Six

Social stratification in villages
An examination of land ownership in these oases, together with the
question of who docs what type of work in the oasis village
communities, reveals a social stratification which was partly based
on wealth, for the wealthy were those who owned large flocks of
camels or who were very successful in the pearling industry and
could buy up date gardens in the hinterland. But another basis for
this stratification arises out of historical incidents such as the
dispossession of the original inhabitants when they were conquered
by newcomers, or when a strong tribe gradually supplanted a weaker
one, acquiring its share of the land and relegating the former to work
as gardeners.
Other groups in village communities such as the bayasirah, who
are identifiable at least in the Buraimi oases and who are considered
niawaJi (subservient), indicates that they might be an element of the
original inhabitants whom the Indo-Aryan and Semitic groups
rejected as having no asl (root, in the sense of a place in the Arab
tribal genealogy) or because they initially rejected Islam.62 The tribal
Arabs would not intermarry with bayasirah.
The term bayadlr (sing, bldar) was widely used in the village
communities of the Trucial Slates to identify farm workers. They
were people who might be the descendants of the Persian village
population of pre-Islamic times who were assimilated by the Arab
overlords and eventually adopted Arab tribal names. Bayadlr were I
numerically the strongest group among the inhabitants of Dibah;
they had about 100 houses there at the turn of the century.03 They are
certainly people who have lowly positions within these tribes now
but they are acceptable partners for marriage within the tribe.
Bayadlr may buy dale gardens or boats or accept other work than
that of a bldar. As a worker in the gardens, a bldar was never paid in
anything but in kind, that is he got one bunch of dates per tree he
tended in the garden. A bldar's duty was to guide the flow of the falaj
water at the receiving end when the gardens were flooded one by one,
to cut off the lower branches of the growing palm trees, to fertilize the
female dates in spring and to help in the harvest during the
summer.04
The same work was also performed by people of slave origin who
remained in the households of their masters as servants; but while a
bldar performed only these particular duties in date gardens,
servants could be asked to do all the other tasks which needed

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