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Chapter Eight

                decline of another. The control of the trade often meant that attempts
                were made also to dominate the population in the distant ports of
                one’s trading partners. It was not just a group of daring Porlug  uese
                adventurers who conquered the traditional trade emporia of the Gulf
                and parts of the Indian Ocean; this was the result of carefully-
                prepared strategy at the Court in Lisbon aimed at taking over by any
                means possible every sector of the very profitable trade between the
                Indian Ocean coasts and Europe.1
                  None of these major trading ports were located in the territory
                which later became known as the Trucial Stales. But minor ports on
                the Arab coast were occupied by the Portuguese from lime to time to
                ensure that Arab trading communities could not set up rivals to their
                trade emporium. Thus the port at Khaur Fakkan, which at the time
                was probably paying tribute to the king of Hormuz, was destroyed in
                the first expedition against the Arab trade in the Gulf in 1506 by
                Alfonso de Albuquerque.2
                  In 1625, after being defeated near Bandar ’Abbas by Dutch and
                English vessels, the Portuguese commander took refuge with the
                remainder of his vessels at an anchorage on the Arabian coast,
                probably Khaur Khuwair near Ra’s al Khaimah, and established a
                temporary base there. Khasab near the tip of the Musandam
                Peninsula also served as a Portuguese base at times.3 The Arab coast,
                as well as the nearer islands on the Persian coast, was sometimes
                visited to obtain shipments of water for Hormuz. The Portuguese
                built a fort al Julfar near Ra’s al Khaimah in 1631, when their power
                was already on the wane and after the key position at Hormuz had
                been irretrievably lost to a combined Persian and English force.
                There may have been other minor Portuguese fortifications else­
                where on the coast between Dubai and Khasab as well as on the east
                coast in the vicinity of Khaur Fakkan. The inadequate harbours and
                few watering places of the Arab coast of the Gulf were not in
                themselves important to the Portuguese, nor did they figure prom­
                inently in the struggle of English and Dutch trading companies to
                replace the Portuguese. While the latter’s attention was focused on
                the Persian coast the Arab tribes were able to regain control of their
                ports. But the continuous conflict between the Portuguese and the
                Dutch, the English and occasionally the Turks4—with the Persians
                trying to promote their sovereignly over important trading places
                endangered and at times all but eliminated the trade undertaken by
                Arab vessels. During this struggle the Imam of Oman, Sultan bin Saif,

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