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Maintenance of Power: Political and Social Fabric 59

in his shaykliclom. Yet the means available to him for protecting
those rights were often blunted by British intervention. Since the
ruler had to rely almost entirely on himself, he had all the time
to be conscious of the need to win and maintain the respect of
his people. He had to prove the extent of his authority over the
entire shaykhdom, both the settled people and the bedouin.
Sultan bin Salim was the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah when it (
was re-established as an independent shaykhdom early this century.
Thus, over and above the normal problems of ruling, he had
to cope with the problems of consolidating his authority over his
shaykhdom. His career was marked by an unusually fiery attitude
towards both his fellow rulers and the British authorities, prompted
largely by his desire to establish himself firmly in his new role.
One threat to his authority and to his people’s respect for him
was the alliance that the headman of Rams, a village in Ras
al-Khaimah, concluded with the Shihuh, the hereditary enemies
of the Qawasim. The Shihuh lived in the region between Ru’us
al Jibal and the Musandam peninsula, north of a line between
Sha‘am in the west and Dibba in the cast; this was de jure under
the rule of Muscat, but the Shihuh in most cases refused to accept
any authority other than their own. Shihhi territory was separated I
from Muscat by Qasimi land, the Shimayliyyah tract. The proximity
of Ras al-Khaimah to Ru’us al Jibal was the main source of
the continual hostility between the Qawasim and the Shihuh, whose
lands were so interlocked that it was virtually impossible for relations
between the two to remain calm. Dibba, for example, was divided
into two sections: the northern part of the town was ruled by
the Shihuh, the southern by the Qawasim. Throughout the inter-war
period, and as a result of the decline of Sharjah, Sultan bin Salim
regarded Dibba (south) as being part of Ras al-Khaimah.11
The Shihuh remain even today the least known and most remote
people of Oman—living, as they do, in a mountainous region that
provides them with a natural asylum.12 ‘They are by far the most
primitive tribe in Oman, the most superstitious, and, as regards
the mountain folk, the most difficult to cultivate friendly relations
with.’13 The tribe is composite, and its ethnic origins have long
puzzled historians and anthropologists. One branch, the Kumazara,
were described by Bertram Thomas as being

physically peculiar in their lack of Semitic features characteristic
in some degree of their fellow-tribesmen. It is they . . . who
speak the strange tongue which has baffled and confused strangers.
. . . It is a compound of Arabic and Persian but it is distinct
from them both, and is intelligible neither to the Arab nor
to the Persian nor yet to the bilinguist of both.14

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