Page 244 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

■j i o The Origins oj the United Arab Emirates

ilic season. In winter, I uni) had about twenty-five Arabs to every
four Iranians, exclusive of their families; in the summer, the Arabs
would go to the pearl fisheries and only the Iranians remained. The
Iranian population consisted of the shaykh of Ras al-Khaimah’s servant,
and two men employed as water-carriers for the staff of the lighthouse.
1 he population of Abu Musa was estimated in 1929 to be made
up of fifty Arabs, two Iranians and three Baluchis. (L/P&S/10,
P4535/28(2), P6794/29, Political Resident to Government of India, 25
Sep 1929.)
19. Forty miles south by west of Bustanch, the nearest point on the Iranian
coast, Sirri was more prosperous and fertile than Tunb.
20. It is outside the scope of this study to discuss the claim that Iran
made to Bahrain in 1927, various studies of which arc listed below.
The claim was based on the fact that Persia occupied Bahrain early
in the seventeenth century and remained until 1783, when ancestors
of the present ruling family, the Khalifah, conquered it. Persia, however,
never accepted the sovereignty of the Khalifah, and it was not until
1970 that the Iranian Government finally renounced its claim. See
Fercydoun Adamiyat, Bahrain Islands, A Legal and Diplomatic Study of
the British-Iranian Controversy (New York, 1955); Husain M. Al-Baharna,
The Legal Status of the Arabian Gulf States (Manchester, 1968); Malck
Esmail, Le Golfe persique et tes iles de Bahrein (Paris, 1938); Abbas
Faroughy, The Bahrain Islands (750-1951) (New York, 1951). J. 15.
Kelly, ‘The Persian Claim to Bahrain', International Affairs, 1957; Majid
Khadduri, ‘Iran’s Claim to Sovereignty of Bahrain’, American Journal
of International Law, 1951; Arnold Toynbee, ‘The Dispute between Persia
and Great Britain over Bahrain (1927-1934)’, Survey of International
Affairs, 1934.
21. Lorimer, Gazetteer, vol. 1, pp. 746 and 2138.
22. L/P&S/to, P4949/i2(t), P2664/23, British Minister Tehran to Foreign
Office, 18 May 1923 (copy).
23. Ibid., Pi625/23, British Minister Tehran to Foreign Office, 27 Apr
1923 (copy of telegram).
24. L/P&S/i 1/262, P2243/26, British Minister Tehran to Foreign Office,
31 May 1926 (copy).
25. It was the money from this tax that went to finance the Trans-Iranian
Railway, work on which was started in 1927.
26. L/P&S/10, P4535/1928(11), P4783/28, Viceroy to Secretary of State
for India, 4 Sep 1928 (telegram).
L/P&S/i 1/222, P5027/22, Political Resident to Government of India,
27-
18 Aug 1930.
28. A branch of the Khariji sect of Islam, predominant in Oman. See
Roberto Rubinacci, ‘The Ibadis’, in Religion in the Middle East, cd.
A. J. Arberry, vol. 11 (Cambridge, 1969)- In the eighteenth century
the founder of the present Al-bu-Sa‘id dynasty changed his title from
imam to sultan, and at the beginning of the present century a separate
movement under an imam was formed inland, with headquarters at
Nizwa. It challenged the authority of the sultan, who, with British
support, could control only the coastal areas of Muscat and Oman.