Untold lives blog

In August 1924, the Sultan of Nejd, Ibn Sa’ud, launched an invasion of the short-lived Kingdom of Hejaz, in the west of the Arabian Peninsula.  Meeting little resistance, his Ikhwan forces swiftly captured – and brutally plundered – the city of Ta’if.   After this, the Kingdom’s ruler, Sharif Husain bin Ali al-Hashimi, abdicated in favour of his son, Ali bin Husain al-Hashimi.  The Ikhwan continued to advance and in October captured the holy city of Mecca, leaving the newly incumbent Ali isolated and virtually surrounded in Jeddah.  These rapid territorial losses had left the Kingdom vulnerable militarily and strained economically.

 

Ali bin Husain al-Hashimi (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons)

Desperate to gain any advantage that could halt the Ikhwan’s advance, the Kingdom had managed to procure a small number of aircraft.  However, its only pilot was a White Russian refugee named Shirokoff [Shirokov], who was paid a bottle of whisky per day and £60 in gold every month.  Shirokoff is said to have made regular reconnaissance flights, but he refused to fly at less than 9,000 or 10,000 feet and his observer was a “one-eyed officer who always wears dark glasses”.  This prompted Reader William Bullard, Britain’s Agent in Jeddah, to comment sardonically that “it is not believed that the reports brought back are of great value”.

The Kingdom’s aircraft were not armed but Shirokoff was repeatedly pressured to drop hand grenades on Ikhwan positions, even in Mecca, an order he adamantly refused to follow.  He pointed out that if the grenades did not blow the plane up, they would burst before reaching the ground anyway.  Bullard remarked “it is difficult to see what could be gained by the bombing of Mecca by a non-Moslem airman” - doing so would provide Ibn Sa’ud with a propaganda victory.  Shirokoff was said to have supplemented his “inadequate” daily ration of whisky by “heavy purchases and drinking at the expense of his admirers”.  Bullard speculated that “he may one day reach the point of exhilaration at which the prospect of dropping explosives on Mecca will cease to appear objectionable”.  Not long after Bullard expressed this fear, Shirokoff was dead.

 Ibn Sa’ud with his cousin Salman Al-‘Arafa c. 1920 pictured in ‘Heart of Arabia’ (1922) by St. John Philby (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons)

In January 1925, the pilot was flying above an enemy camp when his plane exploded and all those on board were killed.  That particular day, ‘Umar Shakir, a Syrian anti-Ottoman intellectual and journalist who had fled to the Hejaz, was on board.  Shakir was a friend of Shirokoff’s spotter, and had boarded the plane “without authority”.  Shakir was said to have been “clamouring to be allowed to go and drop bombs” and it appears that he did just that.  Bullard speculated that Shakir had attempted to throw one of the improvised bombs and it had exploded in the plane.

 A bird’s eye view of Mecca and surrounding hillsides, August 1917. Photograph by Samuel M. Zwemer, National Geographic Magazine.

As the Kingdom’s position became increasingly desperate, it resorted to procuring a fatwa [religious ruling] that justified the bombing of Mecca by Christian pilots from a Shaikh said to be named ‘Shengetti’.  Subsequently, a limited number of aerial raids were made on Mecca by newly recruited foreign pilots, but they proved ineffectual and were soon halted.  By December 1925, Jeddah had been formally surrendered to Ibn Sa’ud and Ali fled to the court of his brother King Faisal in Baghdad, where he died a decade later.  The Hejaz region has been under the rule of the Al Saud ever since, and in 1932 became a part of Ibn Sa’ud’s newly established Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Louis Allday
Gulf History/Arabic Specialist British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership 

@Louis_Allday

Further reading:
British Library, IOR/R/15/1/565
British Library, IOR/R/15/5/36
British Library, IOR/R/15/5/37

On 10 November 1929 the Colonial Office received a letter from Philip Perceval Graves of The Times asking whether the Government held any information on a Danish author and traveller named Knud Holmboe.  Holmboe had written to The Times the previous day, briefly describing his plans for a trip across the Arabian Peninsula. He hoped to visit Palestine, Mecca, Medina and Oman, before reaching Aden.  Holmboe requested an appointment with the newspaper’s foreign news editor.  Graves told the Colonial Office that since he assumed that British permits would be required for parts of Holmboe’s proposed trip, it might be interested to know of the Dane’s intentions. 

Graves also wrote:

'[h]ow he means to reach Mecca and Medina is his affair and perhaps "it is his funeral" is all that need be said of that part of his scheme. The rest might be possible'.

Graves’s words would prove to be sadly prescient, although perhaps not quite in the way that he might have imagined.

Knud Holmboe from Desert Encounter (London, 1936)

A fluent speaker of Arabic, Holmboe, who was born in 1902 into a Danish middle class family, had converted to Islam a few years previously.  He had already travelled extensively in the Middle East. The initial part of his proposed journey took him by car from Morocco to Libya, where he witnessed the shocking treatment that was inflicted upon the Libyan Muslim population by its Italian colonial rulers: thousands of Bedouins were imprisoned in concentration camps and summary executions occurred on a daily basis.  According to Holmboe, during his time in Cyrenaica there were thirty executions a day.

Holmboe was deported from Libya to Egypt, where he was imprisoned before being sent back to Denmark.  He recorded his observations in a book Ørkenen Brænder (English title: Desert Encounter), which was first published in 1931. In the book, Holmboe writes:

'[i]t became more and more clear to me that the Italians understood nothing of the soul of this people, of whom they had appointed themselves rulers'.

Predictably, the book was banned in Fascist Italy (it would not be translated into Italian until 2004) but sold well elsewhere in Europe. However, Holmboe did not live to enjoy his book’s success. Having returned to the Middle East in late 1931, intent on completing his pilgrimage to Mecca, he was killed in Aqaba, in modern-day Jordan, allegedly by members of a local Bedouin tribe in the employ of Italian officers, although this claim has never been verified.

David Fitzpatrick
Content Specialist, Archivist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership 

Further reading:
IOR/L/PS/12/2071, ff 401-402
Knud Holmboe, Desert Encounter (London, 1936)

‘We regret that no-one in Bahrain is interested in “pre-packed airports.”’ So ran the briefest and most succinct of letters from the Political Agent in Bahrain to the Board of Trade in London, in December 1949. What were “pre-packed airports”, and why was no-one in Bahrain interested in them?

Extract of a letter from the Political Agency in Bahrain to the Commercial Relations and Exports Department of the Board of Trade, London, 1 December 1949. IOR/R/15/2/508, f 193 

The Political Agent’s note was in response to a letter, sent by the Board of Trade in London in September 1949, reporting on a combined Dutch-US company that was comprised ‘of specialists in each constituent field of airport construction’, and who were offering the ‘pre-packed airport’, which could be built in any place as required.

This approach was in stark contrast to the way in which the British-administered airports in the Persian Gulf, at Bahrain and at Sharjah (in the United Arab Emirates), had developed. These sites, established by the British in the 1920s and 1930s, had grown up in an ad-hoc and oftentimes haphazard manner, in response to wartime as much as peacetime needs. Moreover, in the wake of India’s independence in 1947, and as the Royal Air Force scaled back its operations in the Gulf, a host of commercial aviation concerns – both British and foreign – were demanding access to improved airport facilities across the region.

British officials in the Gulf were unprepared and uncertain about how to respond to these changes. One Government official in Bahrain noted in 1949 that ‘we have no clear picture of the respective functions of the R.A.F., I.A.L. [International Aeradio Limited] and B.O.A.C. [British Overseas Airways Corporation] at Muharraq [in Bahrain].’ In official correspondence of the same year the Political Resident Rupert Hay conceded that ‘far more foreign aircraft are using the airfields without permission than with it’.

Extract of a letter from the Political Resident, William Rupert Hay, to the Foreign Office, 9 July 1949. IOR/R/15/2/508, ff 164-168

There was a gross underestimation on the part of British officials over the future potential of air travel, as well as a clear lack of understanding of the Gulf’s future potential as an international hub for air travel, and of the safety implications this raised. In October 1949 the newly installed Political Officer in Doha concluded that the future prospects for an expansion of ‘air traffic [in Qatar] is unlikely’, and that he did not think ‘there would ever be a demand in Qatar for a complete “pre-packed airport” installation.’

Extract of a letter from the Political Officer in Doha to the Political Agent in Bahrain, 29 October 1940. IOR/R/15/2/508, f 190

Meanwhile, British Government officials were meeting at the Ministry of Civil Aviation in London, to discuss airfield crash facilities at Bahrain. The facilities at Muharraq, the meeting’s minutes noted, are ‘quite hopeless for any aircraft emergency.’ Proposals made during the meeting included the installation of ‘two standard RAF foam tenders, plus two water bowsers’.

 
Extract of advance notes from a meeting held on 19 October 1949, on Bahrain (Muharraq) Airfield Crash Facilities. IOR/R/15/2/508, ff 185-189

Such equipment could deal with, but not prevent accidents occurring, and, less than a year later, in June 1950, a double tragedy occurred when two Douglas DC-4’s, both operated by Air France, crashed on the approach to Bahrain within two days of each other. A total of eighty-six people died in the two incidents. While investigators attributed the cause of the accidents to bad weather, the tragedies were a wake-up call to British officials, who acted quickly to equip the airfield at Muharraq with radio landing aids and runway approach lights.

Mark Hobbs
Subject Specialist, Gulf History Project

British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further Reading:
British Library ‘File 13/2 VIII Air facilities in Arab shaikhdoms’ IOR/R/15/2/508 

Could the Phoenicians, the ancient Mediterranean people who gave us the modern Latin alphabet and founded Carthage, have originated in Bahrain? A pioneering 19th century British archaeologist and his wife thought it possible.

Theodore Bent was born in Yorkshire in 1852. His marriage to landowner’s daughter Mabel Hall-Dare saved him from an intended legal career. The Bents shared a love of travel, and Mabel became a lifelong contributor to Bent’s work and writing.  Visits to Italy in the late 1870s were followed by extensive tours of the Greek Islands and Asia Minor in the 1880s, where the Bents developed a deep interest in archaeology. Bent’s researches led him to produce books and articles for both the popular press and learned journals.

In 1889 Bent visited Bahrain. Sir Henry Rawlinson, who had deciphered the cuneiform script of ancient Babylon, had recently suggested that Bahrain was the site of ‘Dilmun’. Sumerian poets had written of Dilmun as an abode of the blessed, the refuge of Ziusudra, the Sumerian Noah.

An entry in the Persian Gulf Administration Report, 1888-89, recording the arrival of the Bents in the Gulf and the start of their excavations amongst the ancient tumuli at Bahrain: IOR/V/23/56, No 259, f.51r

Bent’s excavations among the island’s ancient burial mounds led him to draw frequent parallels between the objects he found there and known Phoenician artefacts. His conclusion was that there had been close links between Bahrain and the Phoenicians, and that the Phoenicians might even have originated there.

‘Theodore Bent receiving visitors at the mounds, Bahrein’, from Southern Arabia, to face page 24: YC.1995.b.7122, f.24a

Bahrain was indeed the epicentre of the Dilmun civilisation of eastern Arabia, a maritime trading culture that flourished from the third millennium BC, before being absorbed by the Babylonians in around 600 BC. However, despite the fact that a tradition of the Phoenicians originating in Bahrain (the Greek Tylos) is as old as the historian Herodotus, modern archaeology finds little evidence to support the theory.

An entry in the Persian Gulf Administration Report, 1889-90, recording the opinion of Mr and Mrs Bent that their researches had confirmed the statements of ancient writers that the Bahrain Islands were the original home of the Phoenicians: IOR/V/23/58, No 274, f.201r

More journeys to southern Arabia followed in the 1890s, when the Bents did much to expand European knowledge of the Hadhramawt (Mabel becoming the first European woman to visit the area). They also visited Socotra and the little-known country around Aden.

Bent’s last journey was in southern Arabia in 1897. Here he and his entire party were struck down by malaria, which in Bent’s case turned into pneumonia. Bent died at his home in London four days after his return to England. In a memorial tribute Sir Clements Markham, President of the Royal Geographical Society, mourned a ‘very accomplished man, both as an archaeologist and geographer, a charming companion and a true friend’.

Reference in Field Notes: Aden Protectorate (1917) to the death there in 1897 of Theodore Bent, after he and his wife had been ‘quite prostrated by malaria’: IOR/L/MIL/17/16/7, f.18r

Mabel Bent saw the account of their Arabian travels into print as Southern Arabia, which was published in 1900. Her book has been described as ‘a classic even of the great age of exploration’.

Martin Woodward
Project Officer, Gulf History Project
Archival Specialist British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
Southern Arabia, by Theodore Bent, F.R.G.S., F.S.A., Author of The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, The Sacred City of the Ethiopians, The Cyclades, Or Life Among the Insular Greeks etc. and Mrs Theodore Bent.. YC.1995.b.7122
 ‘37 File 483 Memorandum on Bahrain; Major E L Durand’s Notes on the Antiquities of Bahrain’. IOR/R/15/1/192
Elizabeth Baigent, ‘Bent, (James) Theodore (1852–1897)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)

In 1939, in the early months of the Second World War, British officials began making enquiries into the presence in Bahrain of members of a paramilitary Islamic social movement that sought the overthrow of British rule in India, and drew inspiration from Adolf Hitler.

The Khaksar movement was founded in Lahore in 1931 by Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi, a Cambridge-educated mathematician and Islamic scholar.

The movement was overtly Islamic, but claimed to wish to give equal rights to all faiths. It was highly organised, and rapidly acquired millions of members. It was also militaristic, with khaki uniforms, organised marches, and mock warfare. The movement’s emblem was the spade, egalitarian symbol of the dignity of labour, which its members literally carried around with them.

Khaksars in uniform, 1930s. The figure in the centre of the back row carries the Khaksar belcha (spade). Source: Wikipedia.

The Khaksar movement’s philosophy was enshrined in a creed and set of principles, which emphasised discipline and self-sacrifice, and encouraged the spread of Islam. However, the movement denied any involvement in politics, and its anti-colonialism went unstated.

The movement’s dictatorial beliefs and uniform prompted comparisons with contemporary Fascist organisations in Europe. Indeed, Mashriqi is said to have met Hitler in 1926 and to have been influenced by Mein Kampf, which he translated into Urdu.

Bahrain was the centre of the embryonic oil industry on the Arab side of the Gulf in 1939, and with the advent of war against those same European Fascist powers, the region constituted a key source of oil for Britain’s war effort.

The British compiled lists of those involved with the movement in Bahrain (about forty people, all of them members of the Indian community), including oil industry workers and a tailor.

Part of a letter dated 20 December 1939 from the Assistant Political Agent, Bahrain to the Director, Intelligence Bureau, Government of India, New Delhi, giving information on the Khaksar Movement in Bahrain, which he describes as ‘the object of much derision by the Arab population’: IOR/R/15/2/168, f 24.

The conclusion reached by British officials was that there was ‘nothing objectionable’ in the activities of the movement’s members in Bahrain, which were confined to a weekly uniformed march, and regular meetings. The British Political Agent in Bahrain was also sceptical about the movement’s wider appeal to Muslims, stating that it was ‘not likely ever to be of much significance on the Arab Coast, where a movement whose symbol is a spade can excite only derision’.

However, all that changed in March 1940 when more than thirty Khaksars were killed by police in a protest at Lahore. The movement was now viewed by the authorities as a danger and banned, and the ban prompted further enquiries into the strength of the movement in Bahrain. Fifteen further members, including workers at a shipping company and the RAF base, were identified by tracing the distribution of the Khaksar newspaper, Al Islah.

The Gazette of India, 20 March 1940, published the day after the deaths of Khaksar members at Lahore, announcing the Chief Commissioner of Delhi’s decision to declare the Khaksar Movement an unlawful association: IOR/R/15/2/168, f 31.

If the British feared a wartime outbreak of pan-Islamic unrest they need not have worried, because the Gulf states gave loyal support to the Allied cause throughout the war. Inayatullah Khan too, on his way to jail in New Delhi, pointed out that he had previously offered to raise a force of 50,000 men to fight alongside the British.

However, the implications for British rule in India were different, and the activities of Mashriqi and the Khaksars were a contributory factor in achieving the independence of Pakistan in 1947.

Martin Woodward
Archival Specialist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
British Library: 'File 1/A/47 Khaksar Movement'. IOR/R/15/2/168
Amalendu De, History of the Khaksar Movement in India (1931-1947) 2 vols (Kolkata: Parul Prakashani, 2009) I
Roy Jackson, Mawlana Mawdudi and Political Islam: Authority and the Islamic state (Taylor and Francis, 2010)

 

On 18 October 1914 a British officer named Lieutenant Fitzpatrick arrived at Bahrain bearing a letter marked ‘very secret’  for the Bahrain Political Agent, Captain Terence Keyes. The letter was from Keyes’ superior, Political Resident Lieutenant-Colonel Knox, and informed him that 5,000 Indian troops would be arriving in Bahrain in less than a week's time.

   

Sketch of camp, 1 mile south of Manama (Bahrain Island), IOR/R/15/2/1820, f 3. The key lists divisions that were part of Indian Expeditionary Force ‘D’. 

Keyes and Fitzpatrick had just five days to select a site on Bahrain’s main island, capable of supporting a camp for 5,000 men. The two men quickly set about identifying disembarkation points in the town for the troops and livestock, routes through the town’s narrow streets to possible camping grounds, water supplies and sanitation.

On the morning of 22 October, the Ruler of Bahrain, Shaikh Isa bin Ali Al Khalifah was informed of the plans. The Shaikh’s response, Keyes later wrote to the Resident, was ‘extremely satisfactory’. Shaikh Isa did, however, raise one point: the camp site selected, close to his own fort, would prove awkward in the following June, when his ‘own people’ had arranged to encamp in the very same place.

 
Extract of a sketch map indicating disembarkation points and route through the town to camp sites. IOR/R/15/2/1820, f 14.

Shaikh Isa’s comment alludes to the fact that the Indian troops bound for Bahrain – troops that comprised part of the Indian Expeditionary Force D, and that would go on to fight against the Turkish Army in the First World War’s Eastern theatre in Mesopotamia – were not working to any fixed timetable. Their stay in Bahrain was to be open-ended, entirely dependent on events in the war.

Unsurprisingly, the arrival of the transport ships and other military vessels off the Bahrain coast on 23 October 1914 was met with excitement and unease in the streets of Manama. Even though the vessels could hardly be seen from the harbour and wharves of the town – the convoy being moored more than three miles out because of the islands’ shallow coastal waters – there was much nervousness about their presence.

In spite of the support of Bahrain’s rulers and the most prominent Arab merchants in the town, Keyes wrote that ‘several deputations of Arabs endeavoured to work the Shaikh up against the landing of the troops'. They might have been encouraged by Herr Harling, Bahrain agent for the German company Robert Wonckhaus & Company. Harling, so Keyes claimed, was stirring up anti-British feeling amongst Bahrain’s Persian inhabitants, and conniving with ‘some minor member’ of the Al Khalifah ruling family. On 28 October Keyes had Harling arrested, with orders for his internment for the duration of the war.

   
Extract of a letter sent by the Political Agent at Bahrain, Captain Terence Keys, to the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, 4 November 1914, describing the German Herr Harling’s activities at Bahrain. IOR/L/PS/11/86, P 4923/1914.

Meanwhile, the ladies of the American Mission were sent out on a charm offensive to allay the fears of the female inhabitants of Manama. In spite of all efforts though, Keyes had to concede that there was a growing sense of uneasiness and objection to the anticipated presence of the troops, in spite of all his efforts to dispel any concerns. Rumours abounding (reported by Harling in a letter sent to the German Consul at Bushire) that a further 15,000 troops were on their way to join the 5,000 already arrived at Bahrain doubtless did little to help matters.

 

Extract of a letter sent by the Political Agent at Bahrain, Captain Terence Keys, to the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, 4 November 1914. IOR/L/PS/11/86, P 4923/1914.

Ultimately, the 5,000 troops that anchored off the coast of Bahrain did not set foot in Bahrain. They remained on their vessels until 2 November, when they sailed to the Shatt-al-Arab, in response to Turkish hostilities against the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.

 

Extract of a translation of a letter written by Herr Harling to the Imperial German Consulate in Bushire, 24 October 1914. IOR/L/PS/11/86, P 4923/1914.

Mark Hobbs
Subject Specialist, Gulf History Project British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership 

Further reading:

‘Campsites in Bahrain’ IOR/R/15/2/1820

‘Bahrain: arrival of Expeditionary Force D; state of feeling on the island; intrigues of Messrs Wonckhaus, and his deportation’ IOR/L/PS/11/86, P 4923/1914.

‘Correspondence of Wonckhaus agent at Bahrein’ IOR/L/PS/11/91, P 1203/1915.

‘File 8/16 Bahrain Intelligence Reports’ IOR/R/15/2/314

‘Naval Staff monographs (historical) vol 4 no 15 - Naval operations in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf’ IOR/L/MIL/17/15/73

‘Report by Brigadier W. S. Delamain, C.B., D.S.O., on the operations of the Indian Expeditionary Force "D" up to 14th November 1914' IOR/L/MIL/17/15/88

‘Critical Study of the Campaign in Mesopotamia up to April 1917: Part I – Report’ IOR/L/MIL/17/15/72/1

Paul Knight, The British Army in Mesopotamia 1914-1918 (London: McFarland & Company, 2013)

Born on this day in 1886, Edward William Charles Noel remains one of the lesser known British political officers and spies who served in the Middle East during the First World War. In his book, On Secret Service East of Constantinople, Peter Hopkirk likens Noel to Ludovic ‘Sandy’ Arbuthnot, friend of Richard Hannay in John Buchan’s novels.

Noel began his career as a subaltern in the Indian Army and later served as British Vice-Consul at Ahwaz, in Persia. During the First World War he took part in various secret missions, one of which involved assisting the Russian Tsarist General Peter Polovstov and his wife (who were disguised as a United States missionary and his wife) in their escape from Russia. 

Personal file of Edward William Charles Noel IOR/R/1/4/1284

As Hopkirk states, Noel remained throughout his life an elusive character. The British Library holds copies of a published official diary by Noel, which documents his activities on special duty in Kurdistan during 1919, but Noel kept no private diaries and despite living well into old age never felt compelled to write his memoirs.

However, there are various stories about Noel’s early career in the Indian Army. For instance, he may well have been the first (or at least one of the first) to cycle all the way from England to India, in 1909, and again in 1910.

David Fitzpatrick
Content Specialist, Archivist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership 

Further Reading:
Peter Hopkirk, On Secret Service East of Constantinople: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire (Oxford, 1995)
Edward William Charles Noel, Diary of Major E.M. Noel, C.I.E., D.S.O., On Special Duty in Kurdistan from June 14th to September 21st 1919 (Basra, 1920).
Documents from the India Office Records about Noel's service are listed in Explore Archives and Manuscripts

How did a black African slave come to be chosen as the leader of an Arab Gulf sheikhdom in 1937?

When Sheikh Said, Ruler of Kalba died on 30 April 1937, the leading citizens (or ‘notables’) of this small Trucial State elected his 12-year-old son Sheikh Hamad as his successor. This meant that a regent was needed to rule over Kalba until Hamad came of age. The choice of the notables was Barut bin Yakut, an African, and a man whose official status was that of slave.

Slavery had been largely abolished in the British Empire in 1833, but the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, most of which later became an informal part of the British Empire, retained the custom. Indeed, slavery in some Gulf states was not formally abolished until the 1960s.

Oilfields map of the Middle East [detail], showing Kalba: IOR/R/15/1/700, f 248.

There was a long history of the enslavement of East African people by Gulf slave traders, and Barut would have been part of this trade. However, Gulf slavery at this period is not to be compared with the worst historical excesses of slave ownership, and the system also presented talented people with opportunities for personal advancement.

It seems that Barut had lived in Kalba since the end of the nineteenth century. The sheikhdom, on the Gulf of Oman, became independent from Sharjah in 1903. By then Barut had risen to be the head slave of Sheikh Said, and acted as governor of the state during the Sheikh’s absence.

In the uncertainty that followed Sheik Said’s death in 1937, Barut initially fled Kalba, fearful of who might take over power. But following the election of the young Sheikh Hamad, the inability of the notables of Kalba to agree on a suitable choice for regent from amongst their own number led them – unanimously – to choose Barut, on the grounds that he was ‘capable, experienced and well acquainted with the affairs of the state’.

Letter dated 1 July 1937 from the notables of Kalba to the Political Agent, Bahrain informing him of their choice of Barut as regent for the boy Sheikh Hamad bin Said: IOR/15/2/2016, f 148.

The notables’ choice left the British authorities in the Gulf with a dilemma. Although there were precedents for slaves acting as heads of tribes in the region, any decision to formally recognise Barut as regent would be embarrassing given his legal status. The British also feared that the rulers of the other Trucial States (the modern United Arab Emirates) would be reluctant to accept a slave as de facto ruler.

Letter dated 13 August 1937 from the Secretary of the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf to the Political Agent, Bahrain, reporting the Political Resident’s view that official British recognition of a slave would appear ‘somewhat queer’ in the eyes of the Trucial Sheikhs IOR/R/15/2/2016, f 179.

In the event, the British authorities put pressure on the notables of Kalba to choose someone else, and the decision led to the appointment as regent of Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed, the former ruler of Sharjah and a close relative of the young Sheikh.

Despite being appointed Regent of Kalba, Sheikh Khalid preferred to spend his time sorting out tribal differences elsewhere, and control over Kalba’s day-to-day affairs was again left to Barut.

Kalba’s independent existence came to an end in 1952, when the state came back under the direct administration of Sharjah.

Martin Woodward
Archival Specialist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
British Library: 'File B/17 Kalba - Affairs regarding.'. IOR/R/15/2/2016
Frauke Heard-Bey, From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates (London and New York: Longman, 1982)
Jim Krane, Dubai: The Story of the World’s Fastest City (London: Atlantic Books, 2009)
Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Origins of the United Arab Emirates (London: Macmillan, 1978).