Page 199 - Truncal States to UAE_Neat

Chapter Five

considerable distance inland and therefore people could not engage
in agriculture and fishing at the same time. This was particularly true
in Abu Dhabi where the oases of LTwa and the Buraimi area area long
way from the barren shores and islands, the homes of fishermen.
Fishing therefore became, together with pearling, the exclusive
occupation of a small group of people in the shaikhdom of Abu
Dhabi.
Some of Abu Dhabi’s islands were permanently inhabited by
fishermen, mostly Rumaithat and also some Qubaisat, both subsec­
tions of the Bani Yas. Those people who lived on islands in the west
such as Sir Bani Yas had to fetch water from Dalma Island, where
there was a permanent source of fresh water. An alternative means of
obtaining water was to trap the occasional winter rain by support­
ing, on a number of poles, large sails with a hole in the middle, but the
winter rains were unreliable and the supply could not last for very
long. The Ghaghah group of islands also, in the west, had a village
with stone huts on one of the islands; the inhabitants built cairns on
the islands to guide their boats through the shallow channels. To the
east of Abu Dhabi Island, too. some of the neighbouring inshore
islands such as Sa'diyat had permanent fishing villages on them,
inhabited mostly by Rumaithat. Dalma, in the open sea in the west,
was the most important of the inhabited islands but was not used as
a base for fishing; some of its permanent inhabitants went to other
islands in the winter to fish from their more protected shores.
Fishing on the entire coast of Abu Dhabi and its islands was
undertaken on the strength of fishing rights which were rented from
the Ruler. For example, the area between Khaur al 'Udaid in the far
west up to just west of al Hamra’, about 100 kilometres of coast with
many islands and sandbanks, was at one time in about 1940 rented to
Darwfsh bin Haddad of the Rumaithat, who paid 350 Rupees per
year to the Ruler.18 Families who lived from fishing on the islands and
on the coasts paid one-fifth of the catch to the main holder of the
fishing rights. Such rights were held primarily by Rumaithat, but
were also held by some of the Qubaisat, Al Bu Falasah and Rawiishid
sections of the Bani Yas. Inhabitants of the LTwa who went fishing
during the winter did not themselves obtain fishing rights but gave
the customary one-fifth of the catch to the holder. Many Bani Yas
from the LTwa left their pearling boats pulled up on the shore for the
winter months if not in use for fishing. No ManasTr, 'Awamir or Al
Murrah tribesmen went fishing because few of them owned boats,
but some of them joined in the pearling dive as crew; they did not

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