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Arabia, the Gulf and the West

years of rhe eighteenth century onwards. It was heightened, as we have seen
atter the Wahhabi incursions from Najd by religious antagonism.

Abu Dhabi underwent much the same economic decline as did the other
Trucial Shaikhdoms as a consequence of the dwindling of their maritime trade
from the late nineteenth century onwards. It experienced somewhat less
distress, however, than did Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah because its territorial
resources were greater. Up to the death in 1909 of Zayid ibn Khalifah, the

longest lived of the Al Bu Falah rulers, Abu Dhabi was the most important of
the Trucial Shaikhdoms. After Zayid’s death its fortunes waned, largely as the
result of fratricide within the ruling family and the outbreak of prolonged
fighting among the tribes of the interior after 1920. No fewer than four of Zayid
ibn Khalifah’s sons succeeded him in the years between 1909 and 1928, and
only the first of these, Tahnun, died a peaceful death. Hamdan ibn Zavid, his

successor, was slain by his brother, Sultan, in 1922; Sultan was killed by his
brother, Saqr, in 1926; and Saqr himself was murdered by one of Sultan’s
tribesmen in 1928. The successor chosen by the shaikhly house was Shakhbut
ibn Sultan, an elder son of the late Sultan ibn Zayid. To stop the blood-letting
within the family, Shaikh Sultan’s widow, Salama, had Shakhbut and his three

brothers (Khalid, Zayid and Hazza) vow never to raise their hands in violence
against one another. The vow was kept. When Zayid deposed Shakhbut in
August 1966 - primarily because of the unrest being generated among the
tribesmen by Shakhbut’s refusal to spend the oil revenues as quickly as he
might — he did so without bloodshed. Shakhbut was first sent into exile at

Beirut and then allowed to return four years later.
The deposition of Shakhbut touched a sensitive nerve in the ruling family at
large, for it revived memories of the Saudis’ attempts in 1955, during their
occupation of the Buraimi oasis, to induce Zayid to turn against his brother and
throw in his lot with Saudi Arabia. Nor was this the only attempt made by the

Saudis at the time to dispose of Shakhbut. Two of the sons of the late Saqr ibn
Zayid who had been implicated in the murder of Shakhbut’s father, Sultan ibn
Zayid, and who had for some years been living in exile at Dubai, were invited to
Saudi Arabia in the latter months of 1954 and there given a large sum of money
for the purpose of bringing about Shakhbut’s overthrow. When the two tried
to recruit some tribesmen to carry out the coup the plot was discovered and
frustrated. So deep was the shame felt by the Al Bu Falah shaikhs that two of

their number should have conspired with their hereditary enemies against
them that they thereafter adopted the family name of ‘Al Nihayan’, and
dropped that of ‘Al Bu Falah’, as the official designation of the dynasty.
Aside from the division within the UAE caused by the persistence of the
historic Qasimi-Bani Yas rivalry, there is a further enduring source of PollUC*

friction in the deep-seated animosity that exists between the Al Bu Falah (or
Nihayan) of Abu Dhabi and the ruling family of Dubai, the Al Maktum. T
animosity has its roots in an internal squabble among the Bam Yas nearly a