Page 82 - Arabian Studies (II)

72 Arabian Studies II
men who controlled the largest business enterprises and gathered
about them large sections of the labour force. Loans and debts
played a great part in the organisation of the pearl-fishing, industry.
The system was one of patronage. Particular wealthy families would
have many other families attached to them as economic clients for
several generations together, and the clients of an important family
might run into hundreds of men, apart from their wives and children.
They represented a political following. The leading families had the
same power to resist the extension of shaykhly authority as did the
families of the sectional shaykhs of the tribes, and some of the latter
might indeed be pearl merchants and boat owners. Leading families
could lend support to one section of the ruling family as against
another. Their followers were capable of bearing arms. The support
of leading families was particularly important when some of the
merchants were wealthier than the rulers, as often happened before
the decline of pearl fishing and the development of oil. If internal
pressure did not prevail, the merchants could sometimes take their
followers, their jama'ah, away with them, like the sectional shaykhs.
By the start of the present century, it had long been impossible,
mainly because of the British, for seafarers to sail away from one
state and seize some spot in which to assert their independence. But
people could still use their mobility to protect their freedom and
keep authoritarian government in check. The desert customs of
refuge and protection still facilitated the transfer of population from
one state to another, and such movements proceeded, too, within
terms of a shared language and culture. The politics of power were
thus prevented from developing within the strict borders of
individual national units, since the political borders were so easily
crossed.
A last example of withdrawal can be taken from Ibn Rushaid’s
History of Kuwait. It concerns Shaykh Mubarak of Kuwait and the
pearl merchant Hilal al-Mutayrl. At the turn of the present century,
Shaykh Mubarak had formed the opinion that the pearl merchants in
Kuwait were contributing too little to defence. And Mubarak’s
opinion was of consequence, since he was the most forcible ruler
Kuwait ever had. Most of the merchants came to terms with
Mubarak. Three, however, maintained their opposition, and he
insulted and threatened them in his public majlis. The three thought it
safer to leave Kuwait. When the pearl fishing season ended, they sent
instructions for their boats not to return to Kuwait but to go to
other parts of the Gulf, where the merchants joined them. Hilal
al-MuJayrl went with his boats and men to Bahrain.
Mubarak realised he had made a mistake, because the people who