Honour Is in Contentment: Life Before Oil in Ras Al-Khaimah (UAE) and Some Neighbouring Regions

624 Pages·2011·4.619 MB·English

by  William O. Lancaster, Fidelity C. Lancaster

William Lancaster and Fidelity Lancaster
Honour is in Contentment
Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur
des islamischen Orients
Beihefte zur Zeitschrift „Der Islam“
Herausgegeben von
Lawrence I. Conrad
und Benjamin Jokisch
Neue Folge
Band 25
De Gruyter
William Lancaster
and Fidelity Lancaster
Honour is in Contentment
Life Before Oil in Ras al-Khaimah (UAE)
and Some Neighbouring Regions
De Gruyter
ISBN 978-3-11-022339-2
e-ISBN 978-3-11-022340-8
ISSN 1862-1295
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Lancaster,William,1938(cid:2)
Honourisincontentment:lifebeforeoilinRasal-Khaimah(UAE)
and some neighbouring regions / William Lancaster and Fidelity
Lancaster.
p. cm. (cid:2) (Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen
Orients.BeiheftezurZeitschrift“derIslam”,ISSN1862-1295;Neue
Folge,Bd.25)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-3-11-022339-2(hardcover:alk.paper)
ISBN978-3-11-022340-8(e-ISBN)
1.Humangeography(cid:2)UnitedArabEmirates(cid:2)Ra’sal-Khaymah
(Emirate) 2. Ethnology (cid:2) United Arab Emirates (cid:2) Ra’s
al-Khaymah(Emirate) 3.Ra’sal-Khaymah(UnitedArabEmirates:
Emirate) (cid:2) Social life and customs. 4. Ra’s al-Khaymah (United
Arab Emirates : Emirate) (cid:2) Social conditions (cid:2) 20th century.
5. Ra’s al-Khaymah (United Arab Emirates : Emirate) (cid:2) History (cid:2)
20th century. 6. Petroleum industry and trade (cid:2) United Arab
Emirates (cid:2) Ra’s al-Khaymah (Emirate) I. Lancaster, Fidelity.
II.Title. III.Title:Honorisincontentment.
GF696.U5L36 2011
953.57(cid:2)dc22
2010043072
BibliographicinformationpublishedbytheDeutscheNationalbibliothek
TheDeutscheNationalbibliothekliststhispublicationintheDeutsche
Nationalbibliografie;detailedbibliographicdataareavailableintheInternet
athttp://dnb.d-nb.de.
©2011WalterdeGruyterGmbH&Co.KG,Berlin/NewYork
Printingandbinding:Hubert&Co.GmbH&Co.KG,Göttingen
(cid:3)Printedonacid-freepaper
PrintedinGermany
www.degruyter.com
1
2
3
4 Preface
5
6
7 The material onwhich this bookisbased was assembledas an archive at
8 the request of HH Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr al-Qasimi, the then Deputy
9 Ruler of Ras al-Khaimah and Director of the National Museum. HH
10 Shaikh Sultan(cid:2)s aim was to record information about how people had
11 lived their lives before money from oil transformed life in the Emirate
12 and the whole region. HH Shaikh Sultan considered that the young
13 were growing up unaware of how their predecessors had managed their
14 lives in the past, and that former ways of life, based on local resources
15 and traditional social practice had value that should be known – or at
16 leastavailable–totheyoungergeneration.Anthropologistsfromoutside
17 the region were considered to be more suitable than local personnel for
18 this task. There are some tribal histories and collections of local knowl-
19 edge about buildings, date cultivation, traditional medecinal practices,
20 and crafts, but no region-wide recording of earlier economic and social
21 practices and processes.
22 HHShaikhSultanwasanxiousthatpoliticsshouldnotbepartofthe
23 archive. However, as former processes of ruling came into conversations
24 to explain aspects of former particular economic or social activities, and
25 as most local processes of rule concerned the resolution of disputes and
26 the enabling of economic and social activities, these sorts of politics
27 were acceptable.
28 Information, from observation and discussion, was collected in five
29 six-monthlyperiodsbetweenOctober1997andApril2004,andashorter
30 periodinspring2005.Ithadbeenhopedtorecordconversationsontape,
31 but the great majority of informants were unwilling. Most did not want
32 their conversations to be attributed by name, so a convention of tribal
33 or place identity was used in the archive, although many, especially
34 those met with frequently, were known by name and acted as references
35 when inquiries moved to a new area or new people were met.
36 Findingknowledgeableandinterestedpeopletooktime.Evenifindi-
37 viduals were retired, many were engaged in family enterprises like date
38 gardens,farms,goatherds,orfishingboats;withsmallandlargebusiness-
39 es of different sorts; occupied with local administration, or other local
40 matters: people were busy. It seemed as if information more than a gen-
VI Preface
1 eralised (cid:3)life was hard in the past but we were independent and looked
2 after ourselves(cid:2) had to be earned by knowledge on our part from obser-
3 vations on land- and seascapes, from previous conversations with others,
4 frompreviousexperienceorthereadingofpublishedsources.Manyindi-
5 vidualsinallareasweregenerouswiththeirtimeandknowledge,andwe
6 are immensely grateful.
7 People asked how we knew we were getting correct information, if
8 thesuppliersofinformationwereunwillingtohavetheirnamesattached.
9 Initially, the only check was experience of similar work in other parts of
10 theArabianpeninsula–Jordan,northernSaudiArabia,andtwoareasin
11 southeastOman.Whenitwasexplainedthatinformationgivenwouldbe
12 recorded in the archive, translated into Arabic, and available at the Na-
13 tionalMuseuminRasal-Khaimah,peopleviewedthearchiveasapoten-
14 tialpublicgoodandwerewillingtocontributebycarefullydescribingand
15 explaining their former activities. Informants evaded discussion of mat-
16 ters considered not the concern of the archive. Information was checked
17 by observations in many localities, and by repeated discussions on the
18 topics with other people in the same and other localities, and when pos-
19 sible,frompublishedsources.Theseconstantchecksandtheaccumulated
20 material established generally agreed facts, by an indirect consensus.
21 Some confusion arose over the different ways Arabs and Europeans
22 uselanguage.AsWatt(1973;315)says,Arabspeakerstendtodescribean
23 immediate situation in its particular context, whereas Europeans tend to
24 talk and listen in terms of general definitions. There may therefore be a
25 tendencybyenquirersandreaderstoassumegeneralisationsacrosssocial
26 groupings,locationsandtimewhereasthespeakerisdescribingaspecific
27 point. Local speakers consciously use literary devices, such as metonymy
28 and metaphor, for effect in narratives and some poetic descriptions,
29 whereas when speaking of jural or economic practices, their use of
30 words is precise. Local discourses on tribal ownership and movement
31 are predicated on sets of premises, with users switching between these
32 sets in a single short speech. To outsiders, these switches are confusing,
33 whereas local audiences hear them as compressed shorthands and com-
34 prehend the missing unspoken modifying words. Listening for what is
35 not said is important. Information, knowledge, has been worked for by
36 the speaker; it has cost time and effort, and become a possession. A
37 speaker will communicate what, in his or her opinion, his audience
38 need to know, rather than all he knows on that topic. Speakers select
39 their words, taking into account what time is available, the degree of in-
40 terest,thecompositionoftheaudience,theconcerntotransmittheinfor-
Preface VII
1 mation,andsoon.ArabtermswithnoEnglishequivalentareleftinAra-
2 bic,withanEnglishexplanation;thesewordshaveprecisemeaningsthat
3 elucidate local practice, and using an inexact English term at worst
4 changes local meaning and at best confuses.
5 An archive depends on people(cid:2)s memories of what they themselves
6 experienced, of what they heard from their parents, grandparents, and
7 others. Some individuals are interested in the past and seek to find out
8 more from the knowledgeable old, perhaps especially in a period of
9 rapid transformations; others are not, and see no purpose in such an ex-
10 ercise. Memory is essentially individual, but shared individual memories
11 byrelatedfamiliesorbytribalgroupingsmaybeusedtomaintainorcon-
12 struct identities, to put forward claims on land or other resources, or to
13 construct relationships with other families or groups seen to be useful
14 in the new economic and political situations. Assemblages of memories
15 ofpastwaysoflifehaveilluminatedprocessesandtechniquesofproduc-
16 tion, distribution, and labour; adaptations to change; celebrations and
17 loss; and facets of daily life.
18 Historyistheestablishmentoffactsaboutthepastinthefurtherance
19 of knowledge, usually by documents. In this society, families do have
20 documents recording the transfers of property or the settlement of dis-
21 putes,buttheseareprivatepropertyandnotforthepublicdomain.Rec-
22 ognisedfactsconcernedwithtribalhistorieswithinthesocietyareknowl-
23 edge held by a few old men regarded as authorities, and transmitted or-
24 ally to a few younger men considered by these experts as worthy succes-
25 sors. Even these experts preface their remarks by such phrases as “only
26 God knows the truth but in my opinion, and this is what I was told by
27 X….” Other people mentioned historical facts which concerned the eco-
28 nomic and political transformation of the society in the 20th century
29 through external events, and the change in the role of rulers following
30 the establishment of the Permanent Maritime Peace in 1853. A few in-
31 formants had libraries containing western historical works in English or
32 in translation, and Omani and Gulf authors. To establish historical facts
33 to check the memories contained in the information we were being
34 given,wewenttothestandardEuropeanandArabsources,intranslation
35 where necessary. The checking of historical information against memory
36 on the whole meant that dates could be refined for information from
37 memories, and also raised some queries about details of information in
38 Lorimer(cid:2)s Gazetteer.
39 Contributorstothearchiveusedlanguageaccordingtothequalityof
40 their information and their attitude to it. When passing on generally ac-
VIII Preface
1 cepted information or when not sure of its accuracy, they prefaced re-
2 marks by “They say…”, while when speaking of violent events in which
3 theythemselveshadnotparticipatedtheyusedthepassivevoice,asJuha-
4 ny(1983;13)mentionsforpre-WahhabichroniclesofNejd,wheretheau-
5 thorsweremenoflawandpreferrednottopronouncejudgement.Weas
6 authors havedifficulty indecidingwhetherto usethe ethnographicpres-
7 ent or the past, given that what informants are talking about is the past,
8 although they themselves often used the present – or in Arabic the un-
9 completed – tense. Of course, to some extent, the activities of the past
10 do continue; gardens are cultivated, mountain fields are used if there
11 has been rain, boats are repaired, people celebrate weddings, sort out
12 local disputes, and so on. Nor is the ethnographic material itself without
13 time, ofnecessity itisboundupwithchange andhistoryasmuchascon-
14 tinuities.
15 Manylocalpeople,especiallytheyoung,saidtheywantedthearchive
16 material in Arabic in book form, together with historical material from
17 thewiderregion;thishasbeenachievedandpublishedas“Al-cizzfil-Qi-
18 na¯ca” by al-Saqi Press (Beirut and London) in 2007. This book is for an
19 English-reading audience and aims to be an ethnographic description of
20 the small tribes of the Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah and the wider region
21 in which they participated. The area of study is a rough triangle 180
22 kms by 120 kms by 110 kms from Musandam in the north to Wadi al-
23 Qawr in the south to the Gulf coast in the west and the Shamailiyya
24 coast in the east. Its population of more than 20 tribes (depending on
25 where the line is drawn between tribe and confederation) recognise a
26 shared social system, with a wide range of distinct regional livelihoods.
27 Much of the ethnographic interest of the region comes from its varied
28 anddistinctenvironmentsinarelativelysmallarea,andthelargenumber
29 ofsmalltribesandpartsoflargerdispersedtribes,whoseconceptsoftribe
30 and tribal ideology and social practice not only resemble each other but
31 also in many respects those of tribes across the Arabian peninsula.
32 The ethnographic description starts with social matters of tribe, fam-
33 ily and community, social infrastructure, premises, practices, and identi-
34 ties.Identitiesareframedbytribalidioms,andinaddition,bytheidioms
35 ofregionandlivelihood.Livelihoodisasmuchaboutprofitsandmarkets
36 as it is about subsistence, and depends on labour and investment. These
37 two, labour and investment, are tightly linked to debt and credit. Some
38 scholars, such as al-Turki and Cole (1989), see the market as a unifying
39 structure of traditional Arab society; others, like Serjeant ([1970] 1991;
40 197),seecreditanddebttobetheeconomicunifierbetweenregionalpro-
Preface IX
1 ductive strategies, while yet others such as Lienhardt (1993; 92–101,
2 esp.97)andLancaster(1997[1981];43,73ff)seetheunifierasthesystem
3 of moral relations based on the fundamental premises of Arab tribal so-
4 cieties which emphasise generosity and individual autonomy, and which
5 enable the decentralised political arenas to function. Political, jural, reli-
6 gious and social processes also have dynamic unifying functions across
7 tribes, regions and livelihoods. Arbitration by rulers as the last resort
8 for dispute settlement provided political and jural unifying relationships,
9 while the collection of zakat by rulers had economic, political and reli-
10 gious relationships across tribes, regions, and production. Marriage prac-
11 tices gave unifying networks between tribes and regions, as did local po-
12 litical processes of dispute settlement. Whilelocal people describe them-
13 selves in tribal identities and identities from region and livelihood, these
14 descriptions obscure connections between tribe, region and livelihood
15 thatmanifestthemselvesthrougheconomicandjuralprocessessuchasla-
16 bour, profits, debt and credit. These processes themselves are necessary
17 because of the geography of the area, with diverse environments in the
18 study area, and the role of the study area as part of the wider region of
19 theGulf,thenorthwestIndianOcean,andthesoutheastArabianpenin-
20 sula.
21 This geography and its effect on livelihoods and living are described
22 in chapter 2 for the sea coasts, chapter 3 for the coastal plains, the date
23 gardens, and the sands, chapter 4 for the Ru(cid:2)us al-Jibal mountains, and
24 chapter5 forthewesternHajarmountains.Chapter6describesthedistri-
25 butionofsurplusesbygifts,exchange,barter,orsalestotradersoratmar-
26 kets;togetherwiththeexistenceofprofitsorsurpluses,theroleofcredit
27 or debt, and labour. Chapter7 is concerned with ruling and rulers, and
28 chapter8describesthelossoftraditionalsourcesofprofitsandeconomic
29 transformation. Chapter9 discusses shifts over historical time in tribal
30 identities and territories, and local ideas concerning these processes.
31 The ethnography describes ways of life that in many respects have
32 vanished.Insodoing,muchoftheinformationispresentedininformants(cid:2)
33 ownwords,asmorestraightforwardthananauthorialvoice.Archivema-
34 terial was collected between 1997 and 2005, but depended on memories
35 of life before 1970, so for some aspects information was not available;
36 techniquesoractivitiesweretoolongago.Thecontributionoftheauthors
37 is to link information from archive contributors to published material
38 from scholars and earlier travellers in the region. Much of the informa-
39 tionchallengestheconventionalviewthatbeforeoilwealth,lifeinthere-
40 gionwasimpoverishedandmust alwayshavebeenso.Informationgiven
X Preface
1 generously and patiently by many, many people provides a view of a so-
2 cietythatconsideredthewell-knownhad¯ıth“Honourisincontentment”,
3 inscribedonahousein1132AH/1719–20ADatar-RawdhahintheRu(cid:2)us
4 al-Jibal, to epitomise how they lived in the past.
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