Page 204 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Sorcerers’ Apprentices 201

coast from Rams in the north to Sharjah in the south and inland to the Hajar
mountains.
The greatest of the Qasimi chieftains was Sultan ibn Saqr, who ruled both
Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah from the first decade of the century until his death
in 1866. Throughout his long reign his enmity for his principal dynastic rivals,

the Bani Yas rulers of Abu Dhabi and the Al Bu Said sultans of Muscat, never
diminished; although in his later years it was restrained by the relationship he
and the other Trucial Shaikhs had contracted with the British government. A
wily and devious intriguer, unscrupulous in his ways and lacking the nobility
of character of some of the other Trucial Shaikhs, Sultan ibn Saqr nevertheless
remained true to his treaty engagements, and towards the end of his life he was

one of the pillars of the trucial system. He died as he had lived, at the age of
ninety-seven. ‘I have to report the death of His Highness Sultan ben Suggur,
Chief of Ras-el-Khyma,’ wrote the political resident in the Gulf to the governor
of Bombay in April 1866. ‘The late Chief married a young Arab lady of 15 last
spring, got paralysis of the loins shortly afterwards, and was meditating a
cruise in search of a Doctor when death overtook him.’ After Sultan ibn Saqr’s

death Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah split into separate shaikhdoms, and they
have remained so ever since. None of Shaikh Sultan’s successors in either
shaikhdom has ever wielded the same influence in the affairs of Trucial Oman
as he once did, although two or three have had aspirations to restore the old
Qasimi supremacy. Saqr ibn Sultan, the ruler of Sharjah from 1951 to 1965,

discovered the gospel of Arab nationalism in the late 1950s and tried in the next
few years to promote himself as the Nasser of the Trucial Coast. His increas­
ingly anti-British activities led to his deposition and exile in 1965. As recounted
earlier, he returned secretly in January 1972 to slay his successor, Khalid ibn
Muhammad Al Qasimi, and to try to seize control of Sharjah. The coup failed
and Saqr has languished in confinement at Abu Dhabi ever since. Something of

the spirit of the long deceased Sultan ibn Saqr still lingers at Ras al-Khaimah,
where the ruler, Saqr ibn Muhammad, who has ruled the shaikhdom since
1948, remembers the days of Qasimi greatness and would dearly like to humble
the political and economic pretensions of Abu Dhabi.
Although the Bani Yas, like the Qawasim, were seafarers - by the middle of

the nineteenth century there were more Abu Dhabi boats on the pearl banks
for the annual fishery than from any other port on the coast - they were also, and
perhaps more essentially, a pastoral people, who grazed their flocks and herds
in the region stretching from the Buraimi oasis westwards to the base of the
Qatar peninsula and southwards to the Liwa oasis. Their ruling shaikhs, who
came from the Al Bu Falah section, were basically territorial lords, drawing
their strength less from their maritime resources than from their tribal domains

and the allegiance of the tribes inhabiting them. The rivalry between the Bani
as and Qasimi confederations had its genesis, at least in modern times, in the
increased participation of the Bani Yas in the pearl fishery from the closing