Page 461 - Truncal States to UAE_Neat

Notes to Chapter Four
45 The use of rock salt as a disinfectant and astringent after giving birth
was universal. But because the salt had been stored and handled
unhygcnically the risk of infections was augmented; the salt also
hardened the tissue, making every subsequent birth more difficult.
4G For some details on these fratricides and an abridged genealogical chart
see Anthony, John Duke, Arab Stales of the Lower Gulf; People, Politics,
Petroleum, Washington, 1975, pp. 128f.
47 The strong reaction of most local women against second marriages of
their husbands underlines the fact that among the average families in
the Trucial States polygamy was quite exceptional. Only in recent years
a greater number of men have used their vastly increased financial
resources to set up houses for a second or a third wife, and some even
brought new brides from other countries such as India and Egypt. The
reaction of some of the local first wives was simply to leave husband—
and if necessary children—and to go back to their fathers; see also
below, pages 149ff and 233ff.
48 Labourers in the date gardens were not in every case domestic servants
but often people who had their own households and were paid for their
work in kind; see also below, pages 224f. There were few people of
African origin resident with any of the LTwa-based tribal families.
49 Everywhere in Arab countries the function of slaves was primarily that
of domestic servants, unlike in ancient Greece and Rome or in America.
The moral outcry against this institution was in the case of the Arab
countries of the Gulf only justified with regard to the way in which these
people used to be captured in their native countries, the mode of their
transportation in overcrowded boats and the transactions until some­
one was established with his master. They did not normally change
hands after that and there was no place for the regular sale of slaves in
the coastal towns after the First World War. See also below, pages 231ff
and 288ff.
50 See the article on ‘ABD in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1960, pp. 24-40.
51 The issue of interference by the British Government in transactions in
and possession of slaves caused a great deal of ill feeling, particularly in
Dubai, where during the 1930s several of the pearl merchants and
owners of boats which were chiefly manned by their slaves, saw their
business threatened. See below, pages 251f.
52 Although many families were quite glad to liberate their slaves to rid
themselves of these additional mouths to feed, there was on the other
hand a marked increase in abductions of people into slavery on the
Trucial Coast during the 1940s and 1950s. This was yet another
reflection on the desperate economic situation in the area at the time;
money could no longer be made easily in any respectable business or by
selling the camels one had reared. But there was still a ready market for
slaves in al Hasa in Saudi Arabia. Therefore some daring bands of
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