Page 167 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

CHAPTER IV

Sorcerers' Apprentices

Swiftly these pulled down the walls
that their fathers had made them -
The impregnable ramparts of old, they
razed and relaid them
playgrounds of pleasure and leisure,
with limitless entries,
And havens of rest for the wastrels
where once walked the sentries.

Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass

Ht^^ffXnTfrom^h Pf°PleS °f the Arabian shore of the Gulf led a life
Society was• nredomi T anCeStOrS had Ied since the advent of ^lam.
shaikhly families a Tk^10 nature’ ruIin§ authority was vested in the
usages byWarn / S°Cial W3S re^lated IocaI ^stoms and

economv Th I P[escriP^n, and not least by the exigencies of a primitive
grouDS Ythp P0PUlaU°kn 3S 3 Wh°Ie W3S divided into sedentary and nomadic
artisans e entary ein® made up of cultivators, fishermen, seafarers,
section s’nf r^k odlers’ wbde the nomadic consisted of tribes or
flocks and r>n '-rL1C customariIY wandered in search of pasture for their
fishcrm^ S were a^so serni-nomadic tribesmen - cultivators or
amr» k U ™ ° ®razed flocks in the vicinity of their settlements - and an
rp ous category known as huwailah (or muhawailah'), detribalized and

ersiamzed Arabs who roamed the Gulf in search of work or adventure.
e ayers o rabian society were traditionally composed of the ruling dynas-
,eS’ a ai^d1^ families of tribes, the religious functionaries (qadis and
u ama), t e merchants and artisans, nomads, seafarers, cultivators and slaves-

much in that order of precedence.
This ordering of society, and the way of life which went with it, has now
largely vanished, except deep in the interior of the peninsula or in the moun­
tains of Oman. Along the coast, from Kuwait in the north to Sharjah in the
south, carnival reigns - a strident welter of frantic expenditure, heedless waste,
conspicuous folly and ceaseless activity, in which it is becoming increasingly
difficult to discern (except in perhaps one or two instances) any enduring