Page 73 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

The Challenge to Power: Brother, Nephew and Son •19

and attacked the house, but neither side emerged truly victorious
from the fierce fighting that followed, and many on either side
were killed or wounded. Shortly afterwards, however, Khalid and ;>■
his brother agreed to leave Sharjah. Sultan then seized some of
the men they left behind and tortured them cruelly in a futile
attempt to extract from them a confession that the Baluchis who
worked in the Agency at Sharjah had helped Khalid.45
Although that was Khalid’s final attempt to regain control of
Sharjah from Sultan, the relationship between the two men never
achieved any degree of cordiality. Sultan continued to refuse to <
abide by the terms of the 1924 agreement, and Khalid continued
to press him to do so; it was only after 1937, when Khalid had
strengthened his power immeasurably as regent of Kalba, that he I
was able to force Sultan to give him his due. Sultan died in
1951 and was succeeded by his son Saqr, who was deposed in
1965 by his cousin Khalid bin Muhammad, son of Sultan’s brother
Muhammad. Saqr went to Egypt and plotted the overthrow of
Khalid. In January 1972 he murdered him, but the United Arab
Emirates had by then been formed; it refused to allow Saqr to
succeed by bloodshed, and banished him once again, at the same '
time placing Khalid’s brother Sultan in the seat of power. '
In Ras al-Khaimah before 1921,46 power struggles were invariably
over attempts to secede from the authority of the Qawasim of |
Sharjah. The present shaykhdom of Ras al-Khaimah can be traced
back to the days of Sultan bin Saqr al-Qasimi, who, after 1820,
when Ras al-Khaimah was restored to him after a period of six
years,47 was ‘indifferently described as “Shaikh of Sharjah” and
“Shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah”’.48 During his long reign Sultan desig­
nated his brothers and sons as his representatives in charge of
the towns of Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah. Sultan’s representatives
tried to throw off his authority and declare themselves independent;
in 1840, for example, one of his sons tried to establish himself
as independent ruler of Sharjah. In this he was unsuccessful, but
he retained the post of wali of Sharjah until his death in 1846.
The unquestionable power of Sultan bin Saqr kept the Qasimi
territories united despite occasional secessionary movements encour­
aged by the Bani Yas, his principal enemies. When Sultan died,
in 1866, his son Ibrahim, who had been governing Ras al-Khaimah,
immediately declared his independence. His brother Khalid, Sultan’s
successor as shaykh of the Qawasim, refused to accept the situation,
and in May 1867 he attacked Ras al-Khaimah town, expelled
Ibrahim, and brought the region firmly under his own control.
In 1868 Khalid was killed in a battle with the ruler of Abu
Dhabi, and his brother Salim then assumed the role of ruler of
Sharjah. Salim’s nephew Humayd bin ‘Abdallah became responsible