Page 179 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

Boundary Disputes: Chaos in Order 145

the sliaykh of Hamriyyah,11 and representatives of the Bani Ka‘b
and Khawatir tribes; the reason for the attack was Sultan’s refusal
to abide by the terms of his 1924 covenant with Khalid. The
Senior Naval Officer actively intervened to avert the impending
hostilities, and called for a meeting of rulers. Khalid and his brother
‘Abdallah, Hamad bin Ibrahim of Umm al-Qaiwain, ‘Abd al-Rah-
man bin Sayf of Hamriyyah, Sa‘id bin Maktum of Dubai and
Sultan bin Saqr all attended. The first meeting solved nothing,
but at the second, three days later, which Humayd bin ‘Abd
al-‘Aziz also attended, an agreement was reached. Sultan promised
to pay Khalid an allowance in return for having confiscated his
property, and to appoint him as wali of Dhayd.12
After having openly sided with Khalid bin Ahmad against Sultan,
the Bani Qitab refused to show any signs of friendship, and in I
July 1931 Muhammad bin ‘Ali bin Huwayydin, who had become
paramount shaykh of the Bani Qitab when his brother ‘Abdallah
died in December 1925, declared war on Sultan; he was angry
at Sultan’s weakness and could not ignore the fact that members
of the ruling family, especially Sultan’s brother Muhammad, were
plundering certain areas around Sharjah. Sultan did not rise to
the challenge, and before long he had lost all hold on the Bani
Qitab. In 1931, for example, some bedouin of the Bani Qitab
carried off a negress belonging to a merchant of Sharjah, and
Sultan could do no more than plead with the Residency Agent
to intervene.13 During the war with Ajman in 1933, the Bani
Qitab, together with the Manasir, fought on the side of Sharjah,
but it must be noted that they had been called in by ‘Abd al-Rahman
of Hirah.14 So much did the importance of the Bani Qitab increase
during the 1930s that they acquired de facto control of the interior
of the Trucial Coast from Dhayd in the north to Jabal Fa’iyah
in the south, an area under the de jure control of Sharjah.
Thus when, in the winter of 1936, a geological party from Petro­
leum Concessions tried to enter Jabal Fa’iyah with a permit from
Shaykh Sultan of Sharjah, it was turned back by the Bani Qitab.15
The next year, Sultan promised the Resident to try to help the
geologists again,16 but the second party to set out met with no
more success than the first had. Fowle could think of only one
way to overcome the opposition of the Bani Qitab. The ruler
of Ajman, eager to demonstrate his tribal connections, had told
the Political Agent in Bahrain that he could arrange for a visit
to Fa’iyah, and Fowle suggested in February 1938 that Sultan
should be bypassed and the new offer accepted. He realised that,
under the terms of its concession from Sharjah, Petroleum Conces­
sions specifically undertook not to visit Fa’iyah without the written
permission of the ruler; but the obligation was qualified by the