Page 73 - Arabian Studies (II)

The Authority of Shaykhs in the Gulf: 63
century and well into the twentieth, the two main checks on the
authority of the shaykhs were such as have been represented in the
examples given. One was the possibility of the withdrawal of a
substantial part of the population. The other was that a shaykh could
be overthrown and driven out, or murdered.
The frequency with which ruling shaykhs in the states of the Gulf
were overthrown suggests an absence of any strong belief there in the
legitimacy of authority in the hands of particular rulers. The families
as wholes, however, were a different matter. They persisted. The
danger to a ruling shaykh of being overthrown usually arose from an
alliance between some other part of the ruling family and some of
the people of the state. When ruling shaykhs were overthrown, as
they so often were, they were invariably replaced by members of
their own families, not by members of other rival families within the
state.
The situation thus suggests the existence of a very definite notion
of the legitimacy of ruling families, and this is an idea one encounters
in the Gulf right down to the present day, though somewhat eroded
by attitudes induced by modern education and broadcasting. Not
only the ruler but every man in the ruling family was a shaykh. In
everyday usage, at least, the ruler had no special title except
ash-shiyukh in recent times, and there is no reason for supposing that
such a special title had existed previously. Ash-shiyukh being simply
the plural form of shaykh, the usage itself suggests the the ruler was
thought of as representing the ruling family. The legitimacy of rule
lay more in the family than in the particular individual who had
become the head of it. The oath of loyalty sworn to a new ruler by
the principal citizens was a treaty. It was not irrevocable. It did not
have the quasi-sacramental force of a European coronation. It
accompanied no rite cle passage and there was no homage. In
harmony with the situation as I have described it, there was no fixed
hereditary principle of succession to office except that the shaykh
had to be a member of the ruling family. The head of a ruling family
was thus in some potential danger from his kinsmen, and, as far as
the general public were concerned, the threat these kinsmen
represented held the ruler’s authority in check.
The overthrow of one shaykh by another shaykh of the same
family was not, however, necessarily, and perhaps not usually, a
simple matter of rivalry and ambition within the family itself.
Rivalries within a family were such that, when there were differences
of opinion among the people, one shaykh or another was likely to
espouse any shade of opinion that happened to be represented.6
Even when relations within the family were not exacerbated, this