Page 191 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

i88 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

return for implicitly renouncing his claim to Khaur al-Udaid in favour of the
Saudis he was accorded a generous frontier at the base of the peninsula
roughly along the lines that the British had proposed a dozen years earlier’

Additional consolation for Shaikh Ahmad for relinquishing the Al Thani claim
to Khaur al-Udaid came from the knowledge that by effectively transferring
his family’s hypothetical rights to Saudi Arabia, he was also impugning Abu
Dhabi’s title to the inlet.
Oil revenues transformed the life of Qatar from the early 1950s onwards,

though rather more slowly than was the case in Kuwait or Bahrain. There was
the same influx of immigrants, the same rash of construction, the same
mindless extravagances on the part of the principal beneficiaries of the oil
wealth. On the other hand, no effort was made to establish a comprehensive

system of state welfare comparable to that instituted by the Al Sabah in
Kuwait. Gifts and subsidies were doled out to the tribes and their shaikhs, in
sufficient amounts to keep them content without unduly sharpening their
appetite for more. The evidence of this sparing disbursement of funds could be

seen in the early 1960s, a full decade after the oil revenues had begun to flow in,
in the depressed and virtually unchanged condition of the fishing villages
strung along the coast to the north of Qatar. Discontent with the Al Thani’s
parsimony combined with a number of other grievances, among them resent­

ment at the truculent behaviour of the ruling family’s retainers (and some of its
lesser members as well), to bring about a general strike, embracing most
sections of the working population, in April 1963. It had its effect, the lot of the
ordinary Qatari improving to some degree thereafter.
Most of the oil revenues, however, were still earmarked for the upkeep and

enjoyment of the Al Thani and their horde of retainers under a financial regime
cynically known as ‘the rule of the four quarters’ - a quarter for the ruling
shaikh, a quarter for the other Al Thani shaikhs, a quarter for the family s

reserve funds, and a quarter for the rest of the population. Oddly enough, the
division of the spoils was not as grossly one-sided as would appear at first sight,
for the Al Thani themselves comprise, if not quite half the population (as the
local wits would have it), at least a fair proportion of the native inhabitants.
Qatar had a population in 1970 of possibly 90,000 (no accurate figures are

available), of which roughly 40 per cent, or about 35,000, were native Qataris.
The number of Al Thani shaikhs was reported to be anything between 450 an
700. Their close dependants presumably numbered a few thousan , an

retainers several thousand more - a formidable constituency by any meas
and one which required an equally formidable outlay of money to
style befitting its conception of its own importance. As an in cation
extent of the expenditure involved, it might be mentioned that ever ^nua|
every Al Thani shaikh was automatically entitled from birth to

stipend of £3,600, rising to £ 15,600 at the age of thirteen. By t e mi

sum had been increased to £24,000.