Page 58 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

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3 The Chall
enge to Power:
Brother
5 Nephew and Son

One of the most distinctive features of the history of the Trucial
shaykhdoms
i it , , 18 thLe .^quency with which their rulers have been
challenged by ambitious members of their own families in unmasked
f°r P°Wer* Thc resuIt has been that all but one of the
shaykhdoms have witnessed devastating internecine quarrels in their
ruling families. Much of this turmoil has been owing to the absence
of the law of primogeniture, and of any other fixed procedure
for the peaceful succession of rulers. The struggle for power has
thus been almost a natural adjunct to the death, natural or otherwise,
of a ruler, and successors have had to make sure of wresting
complete control of the shaykhdom from their relatives before begin­
ning to exercise absolute power. To survive, rulers have had to
display a remarkable combination of fearlessness, fairness, honesty,
intelligence and generosity, and to make sure that none of their
relatives become disaffected in any way. Not to do so has often
proved itself fatal. Only in Dubai, where all the rulers in the
last century and a half have died a natural death, have more
sophisticated methods prevailed.
Although the absence of fixed and peaceful procedures may at
first seem to have produced a generally chaotic system of succession,
the list of the rulers of thc Coast dunng the
a closer look at
past 150 years reveals a fairly distinctive pattern, in which some
order can be discerned. (See Tables 2-6.)
The pattern is as follows: most of the rulers of Abu Dhabi
■ Chariah have been deposed or murdered; in Ajman and Umm
'mS iust a Ibw have; and in Dubai not one ruler has been
formally deposed. The pairing of Abu Dhab. and Sharjah, and

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