Page 141 - Truncal States to UAE_Neat

Chapter Three

household and his retainers, extend hospitality and maintain his
camels, horses, sheep and goats. The rate of agricultural taxation
varied between 5 and 10 per cent, the former being the figure given in
the Gazetteer for the entire area under Qasimi rule.
At times the majority of owners of date gardens were exempt from
this taxation because throughout theTrucial Slates a modification of
the system obtained whereby no tax was demanded from those who
produced less than the niseib, a minimum which varied according to
time and place and was set at 3,600 lbs of dates for the Llwa during
the 1950s.
During the first decade of the 20th century, when the owners of the
date gardens in the villages of the Buraimi Oasis dominated by the A1
Bu Falah were still Dhawahir, the income of the Ruler of Abu Dhabi
eastern part of the shaikhdom was almost exclusively
this tribe. According to the Gazetteer the Dhawahir paid
nf 5,000 jirabs of dates worth one M.T. Dollar per jirab,
obliged to supply lucerne worth some 3,000 M.T.
0 horses which the A1 Bu Falah kept in the oasis,
the population in these villages, such as some
own land, or if they did their gardens were
tall. An increasing number of date gardens which
.• owned by Dhawahir families had become the
.'embers of the Rulers family, and they were exempt
, although not from the dues collected to maintain the aflaj.
-i time the Bani Yas who owned dale gardens in the Llwa were
taxed on their crops. This income was then worth some 2,500 M.T.
Dollars.79
In later decades when the sovereignty of the A1 Bu Falah was
consolidated in the eastern area and when many Bani Yas and other
A1 Bu Falah subjects who earned enough money from the pearling
industry bought date gardens in the Buraimi area, the tribute of the
Dhawahir was abolished and everybody except members of the
ruling family paid taxes at the rate of one jirab for every 10 jirabs of
i
dates harvested. A Buraimi jirab weighed 70-80 lbs, less than half a
Llwa jirab, so that in effect the tax rate for the /alaj-irrigated gardens
of the Buraimi villages was at least double that of the dale gardens in
the desert.80
During the 1950s the tax return from agriculture also declined.
Only about 40 jirabs were collected in a good year from Llwa. During
the summers of 1950 and 1951 only 10 people in all were taxed on

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