Page 34 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

i o The Origins of the United Arab Emirates
from Qatar to Buraimi, including Livva. A few Manasir
are also
settled at Khan and Jumayrah in Dubai. The main sections of
the Manasir are thc Al-bu-Mundhir, the Al-bu-Rahmah and the
AI-bu-Sha‘r. For some time in thc nineteenth century, the Manasir
paid zakat to thc Wahhabis, but by thc time Lorimer compiled
his Gazetteer they were ‘independent of all control but maintain
some degree of intercourse with thc town of Abu Dhabi’.16
During Shaykh Zayid’s rule, because of his strength and thc
unusual length of his tenure, a certain stability in those areas
under his de facto control was noticeable. His influence extended
along thc coast for about 200 miles, roughly from Khawr al-‘Udayd
to thc boundary with Dubai, at a point near Khawr Ghanadah.17
Inland, the shaykhdom reached thc Buraimi oasis, ‘but without
taking it in’.18 At thc beginning of thc twentieth century, thc
Buraimi oasis consisted of

ten separate villages situated roughly in a circle about 6 miles
in diameter. Baraimi village, being the original settlement, has
given its name to the whole. . . . Thc water supply is from
more numerous fuluj or underground aqueducts coming in from
the hills to thc east. . . . Light though it is the soil is evidently
most prolific, and it was calculated that thc oasis supported
not less than 60,000 date palms besides all the fruits and vegetables
to be found in that region, e.g., grapes, melons, limes, figs, pome­
granates, a few mangoes, and in thc way of crops, wheal, barley
and jowari and quantities of lucerne.19

To the west, Abu Dhabi extended to thc margin of the Rub‘
al-Khali and included Al-‘Uqal, a small littoral district on thc
eastern part of thc base of thc Qatar peninsula; Mijan, a coastal
desert tract between Sabkhat Matti and Al-‘Uqal; Sabkhat Matti,
a saline marsh usually considered to be thc natural boundary between
Hasa (the eastern section of present-day Saudi Arabia) and geographi­
cal Oman;20 and Dafrah, which lies between thc coastal area and
the Rub‘ al-Khali. Dafrah is made up of a number of tracts:
Baynunah, TafT, al-Qufa and Liwa. Thc last, the ancestral home
of thc Al-bu-Falah,

consists mainly of white undulating sand dunes, altogether without
vegetation; hut it contains a score of small depressions. . . . I hesc
depressions are divided from one another by sandy wastes; but
at the bottom of each depression there is fertile soil, supporting
the cultivation of a village which generally stands upon a sandy
eminence near by.21