Page 147 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

vessel, manned by 350 men. His story is the epitome of a tribal
feud, typical of those feuds which used to disturb the peace of the
Gulf. There arc still frequent quarrels among the Shaikhs, and
the tribes, but they are now more likely to be caused by boundary
disputes over oil bearing seas or lands, than by the clash of
personalities.
Early in the 18th century, the Utubi tribe, progenitors of the
Khalifah, and the Subah, ancestors of the ruling house of Kuwait,
emerged from the Arabian desert, and settled at Granc, which
was on the Arab coast at the top of the Gulf. Both tribes trace
their descent from the famous Aneza tribe, and so claim kinship
with the Sand family of Arabia. They built a fort at Granc,
which became known as Kuwait, Kut being the Arabic word
for a fort.
In about 1766, the Khalifah, which was the name by which
they were later known, accompanied by the Jalahamah, a sub-
tribe of the Utubi, moved down the coast to Zabara on the Qatar
peninsula opposite Bahrain. Bahrain was, at this time, held by a
Persian garrison. Since the Portuguese occupation of Bahrain,
which lasted for about a century until 1622, the islands had been
constantly over-run by different Arab tribes. In 1718, Bahrain
was held by the Omanis, but by 1783, it was a dependency of
Persia.
The Khalifah came to Zabara to be nearer to the pearl banks,
for since settling in Kuwait they had become a sea-faring people,
engaged in pearl diving and trading at sea. Zabara had little to
commend it as a settlement, it is an arid, salty stretch of coast,
with a few wells containing brackish water. The Khalifah built
a town defended by a strong fort, whose ruins and those of a large
mosque, can still be seen. They became prosperous, and were
joined by other Arabs, many of them coming from Basra after
the city was taken from the Turks by the Persians in 1776.
The presence of a flourishing Arab settlement on the Qatar
coast, only thirty miles across the sea, was a threat to the Persians
in Bahrain. The Khalifah began to make forays into Bahrain,
and the Persians retaliated in 1782 by sending a fleet and a military
force, commanded by the Shaikh of Bushirc, to reduce Zabara.
The Khalifah refused to surrender when called upon by the Per­
sians to do so, and in the battle among the white sand dunes on
the coast, the Persians were ignominiously defeated, and they
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