Page 42 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

came a test ease. I Ie was asked to give judgement in the case of
a woman who confessed to being an adultrcss. Mis verdict was
that she should be stoned to death and the sentence was carried
out. The easy-going inhabitants of Ayaina were shocked at
Abdul Wahab’s uncompromising attitude and complained to the
Beni Khalid Shaikhs who ruled over Hasa, and so Abdul Wahab
was ordered to leave Ayaina.
At this time, Arabia was split into small independent Shaikh-
doms, whose rulers were constantly at war with each other and
with the desert Bedouin. Finding himself‘not without honour,
save in his own country’, he went to Daraiya, where he was given
friendship and support by the Amir Mohammed bin Saud, the
ancestor of the kings of Saudi Arabia who belonged to a branch
of the famous Anaiza tribe. From then onwards, the Saudi family
became Abdul Wahab’s strongest supporters; after his death in
1792, the Saudi Amir assumed the position of Imam of the
Wahabis, holding religious as well as temporal authority.
For the next thirty years, after Abdul Wahab joined the Sands,
Arabia was the scene of endless fighting between the partisans of
Wahabism and those who opposed the new religious doctrines.
There was not a full scale war, but there was continuous raiding
and attacking. When the Wahabis took a town or conquered a
tribe, they sent out religious leaders to teach the people the new
faith. Usually, after some time the Arabs reverted to their pre­
vious ways of thinking, then another expedition would be sent
against them. However, very gradually, the Wahabis made
progress.
By 1775, all Ncjd was under the Wahabis, and ten years later
they were in control of Hasa and the coast which, being a strong­
hold of Shiism, suffered severely from their religious zeal. Shias
are members of the Islamic sect who regard Ali, the son-in-law
of the Prophet Mohammed, as the rightful Caliph. At the top
of the Gulf the Utub, a sub-tribe of the Anaiza, had come out
from the desert and settled at Granc, on the coast, which became
known as Kuwait; these Arabs were the ancestors of the ruling
families of Bahrain and Kuwait. In 1783, the Khalifah branch
of the Utub, who had moved down the coast to Zabara on the
Qatar coast, invaded Bahrain and expelled the Persians, since
when the Khalifah have ruled the islands.
In the Gulf, piracy was rife. After some preliminary resistance
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