Page 79 - Arabian Studies (II)

The A uthority ofShaykhs in the Gulf: 69
and the town shaykhs levied taxes for their own use as bedouin
shaykhs could never have done. Part of the taxes was used to pay
men at arms, followers who ate the shaykhs’ food and obeyed their
commands, supporters again such as bedouin shaykhs could never
have. The three major activities of the towns were fishing, trade and
pearl fishing. Taxes on fishing amounted to no more than the renting
out of sites for fish traps on the shore, but trade allowed for customs
duties; and from the pearl fishing industry each boat paid a diver’s
share of the profits to the ruler of the state from which the boat
operated. The diving tax was supposed to pay for the shaykh’s
guards. The tax was called taraz, and one of the words meaning a
guard in the Coast of Oman is mutdrizi, ‘the man who receives the
taraz'. In both cases, however, the rate of tax was low. The Gulf
states were in competition with each other, and so an increase of tax
in any one of them would have inclined those who supplied wealth
to transfer their business to another state.
Settled life could also be protected by fortifications. Towns need
defences against enemies and marauders, and the rulers built solid
forts in which they lived and which they frequently used for defence.
It was not, however, always defence against enemies from without —
at times rulers were defending themselves against some of their own
people. In the incident to which I referred at the beginning of this
paper, when Khallfah bin Shakhbut was informed of a plot against
his life, the first thing he did was to shut himself up in his fort for his
own safety. Down to recent years, when rulers have been over­
thrown, the seizing of the fort has often been the main stepping-
stone to power. Here again a ruler’s position was very different from
that of a bedouin shaykh, who could depend only upon his
fellow-tribesmen who were gathered around him.
A rationale for the attachment of guards to their shaykh was
provided by an adaptation of conventions and institutions of the
desert. In the first place, the guard was eating his shaykh’s food.
Both he and the shaykh were thereby under an obligation to protect
each other against enemies. But further, the guard was attached to
his shaykh by oath, the 'ahd Allah, or ‘oath in the name of God’. By
virtue of its religious status, such an oath was held to override the
duties of tribal loyalty. It was this which, in case of need, enabled a
guard to act even against his own fellow tribesmen on the ruler’s
instructions without risking shame or acquiring a reputation for
treachery. 1 3
One further influence pressed the shaykhs of the towns to increase
their authority: the influence of external political forces which made
demands eliciting a particular local response. In the first half of the