Page 278 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

216 THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES
Buraimi, proceeded to adopt ‘measures for the virtual annexation of
Buraimi’. And, in 1904, lie continues,

About the same time he proved the strength of his influence in the
Baraimi neighbourhood generally by obliging the Beni Qitab to pay blood-
money for two citizens of Ibri town in Dhahirah, whom they had slain.1
3. On the boundaries of Abu Dhabi, Lorimer says:
Inland, the frontiers of Abu Dhabi arc not defined: it is asserted that on
the east they reach to the Buraimi oasis, but without taking it in . . .2
4. Describing his journey from Abu Dhabi to Buraimi in May
• 1902, Sir Percy Cox, then the British Political Agent in Muscat, makes
the following remarks: About Buraimi, he says that he found the
Nu'aim tribe enjoying ‘a special position by virtue of their past his­
tory*. In regard to the influence of Abu Dhabi in Buraimi, he confirms
Lorimer’s statement, previously mentioned, that the Shaikh and his
son acquired ‘material possessions’, ‘date gardens’ and settlements, in
some of the villages of the oasis, such as al-Ja/iali and al- Ain. He then
refers to what he noticed to be commercial ties existing between
Buraimi and Sharjah and Dubai.3
5. According to the Peace Handbook on Arabia, issued by the
historical section at the Foreign Office in 1920, the Trucial Shaikhs
have never ‘wielded effective rule over any considerable territory’.
Their power [the Handbook continues], relative to one another and to that
of Oman proper, which lies in the rear of all and in undefined territorial
relation to them, depends on the ruling personalities even more than on
the shifting politics of Oman; it is therefore of little service to discuss the
actual distribution of their authority or the validity of their respective
territorial claims.4
On Abu Dhabi’s particular claim to territories in the Oman region,
the Handbook remarks:
Abu Dhabi claims a considerable territory on its northwest, reaching to
Khor Odaid, and including all that lies between the intervening Gulf shore
and the Great Desert; but this is a lean region of no social and political
importance.5_________________________________
1 Lorimer, pp. 770-2. Lorimer explains the ‘measures’ taken by Shaikh Zaid
for the annexation of Buraimi by saying: ‘About 1897, or possibly earlier, he
appropriated or reclaimed the estate of Jahali on the south-western border of the
cultivated area; and since then divers pieces of land ... in Baraimi. . . have been
purchased by Shaikh Zaid and his sons . . .’ See ibid.
3 Cox Sir Percy, ‘Some Excursions in Oman’, Geographical Journal, 66 0925),
pp. 200,’ 207, 208. The writer gives the exact distance between Abu Dhabi and
Buraimi as 100 miles. (See ibid., p. 203.)
4 Great Britain,--Peace Handbook, No. 61 (1920), pp. 22, 34.
6 Ibid., pp. 4-5, 33.