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Chapter Savon

                sovereignly over the Bani Yas of Dubai village. The fort of the A1 I3u
                Falah representative was located on the western side in a quarter
                called Shindaghah. The growth in pearling and trade rapidly made
                Dubai a focal point for immigration, and at the turn of the century an
                estimated 10,000 people inhabited three main quarters of the town.
                  The original site of the Bani Yas fishing village was in all
                probability the quarter of Shindaghah, situated in a triangle between
                the open sea in the north and the creek to the east. At the time the
                Gazetteer was compiled, the 250 houses which made up that quarter
                were exclusively occupied by Arabs. Although buying and selling of
                land has brought about some change in this pattern of settlement, the
                recent development of that area due to the building of a tunnel under
                the creek and the necessity to compensate the owners of land and
                houses affected brought to light the fact that most of the properly in
                that quarter still belonged to the ruling family and other Bani Yas
                families.
                  Dubai proper is situated on the same side of the creek as
                Shindaghah, but further inland. It developed into the more important
                of the two western quarters, probably because boats could be
                offloaded there more easily. Al FahTdi Fort may date back to before
                1820, when fortifications were mentioned in the preliminary agree­
                ment between the Bombay Government and Dubai; it is clearly
                marked on a survey map of 1860. In the nineteenth century the fort
                and the principal mosque made the quarter of Dubai proper the focal
                point of the entire City State. The Indian community5—Khojah and
                Hindu—were confined to this quarter, which had about 50 shops
                and 100 houses. The third quarter. Dairah, on the east side of the
                creek, was at the turn of the century by far the biggest, with about
                1,600 houses, inhabited by Arabs as well as Persians and Baluchis.
                The suq of Dairah had about 350 shops, and was thus the biggest
                market on the Trucial Coast.
                  By the first decade of this century the population of Dubai had
                already become more mixed than that of Sharjah town or of Abu
                Dhabi. The Bani Yas only just held the majority, with 440 houses,
                because the Al Bu Mahair as well as the Mazarf of Dubai—unlike
                those of Abu Dhabi—did not consider themselves as integral parts of
                the Bani Yas.6 Arabs from Bahrain, Kuwait and the Persian Coast
               with another 400 houses, 250 houses of the Sudan, 30 houses of
               people originating from al Hasa, 30 of the Marar and 10 of the
               Sh waihiyfn (part of the Bani Ka'ab tribe) completed the Arab element
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