Page 243 - Truncal States to UAE_Neat

Chapter Six

Muslims. The Rulers usually dealt with cases which were neither
strictly diving claims nor within the usual routine of the shari'ah
courts, because these cases had a political aspect.

Members of ruling families interfering in the pearling
industry
The growth of the pearling industry in all its aspects, that is the
number of boats, participants, and merchants, of pearls fished and
marketed, the duration of the year’s diving season and the total
income of the industry, meant a steady growth in tax receipts for the
Rulers. Frequently a Ruler further increased his income by introduc­
ing new forms of taxation or by changing existing practices and
regulations. In some shaikhdoms the Ruler himself or the headman
had a share in the pearling business as the owner of boats or as a
pearl merchant. Such direct interest and involvement in the industry
inevitably led to disputes between these Rulers and leading mer­
chants in town, and increasingly so when the industry started to
shrink from 1929 onwards.
When ’Abdul Rahman bin Saif of Hamriyah was murdered by his
nephew Saif bin 'Abdullah and his brothers in May 1931, he left
20,000 Rupees-worth of debts to merchants and others in Dubai and
Umm al Qaiwain, some of the creditors being Indian; he also owed
1,500 Rupees to Persians in Sharjah. The reason why his nephews
turned on him was that they suspected that he had used their
inheritance, amounting to about 10,000 Rupees, as security for his
own business, but instead of being a successful pearl merchant he
got further and further into debt and was unable to restore the boys’
property when they became old enough to claim it.*13 Saif bin
'Abdullah and his brothers were themselves “engaged in a pearling
venture which did not turn out a success and ended in leaving them
in much reduced circumstances’’.44
In 1927, when Sharjah was already in a state of turmoil due to the
fact that the deposed Ruler, Khalid bin Ahmad, was attempting to
regain control by attacking Sharjah town with a number of beduin,
the young ruler, Sultan bin Saqr, permitted the diving boats to go to
the “small dive’’ before the main season started, an occasion when
traditionally all the proceeds after tax were divided between the
captain and the crew only, the financiers being excluded. In a report
to the Political Resident of 9 June 1927, the Residency Agent noted
that the “boatmen were taking the notable’s (financiers) divers”, who

218