ABSTRACT
AT the beginning of June, 1934, I was handed several large and unpleasantlooking bundles of paper, euphetl1istically called files, and asked to study the "Fadhli-Lower Yafa'i dispute." The bundles consisted principally of letters in Arabic, and translations in English, with so-called minutes written on their backs in ink or red, blue and black pencil as struck the f;lucy ofthe writer at the mon1ent. The paper was of Inost inferior quality looped together at one corner and well worn, torn and thumb marked even before they got to me. I give these details not with any sense of grievance, but Inerely to show that the paper study of the subject was itself formidable. These bundles only covered a period of about ten years: there were "previous papers" in the records going back for about eighty. Here lies a clue to the really formidable side of the question and also a clue to the high state of civilization that parts of Arabia have reached. We have our ideas of thorny questions in Europe and those of us who have worked in Whitehall are sometimes apt to measure the importance of a question by the amount of paper dealing with it. Take for example the Nile and its importance to Egypt. Think of the various administrations and people through which the Nile has to pass before it gets to Egypt at all. I have no doubt that the archives of the Foreign and Colonial Offices-not to mention Chanceries and Secretariats abroad-Inust have quite a lot of paper packed away, dealing with the questions of the waters of the Nile. Yet I do not suppose that any other State in the world can boast as much paper on a small matter as there is in the Residency 0 ffice at Aden on the Water question of the Fadhli and Lower Yafa'i tribes-the Inatter of the " canal." Of course with that true political sense which is almost an instinct in Arabs and which they have developed to an astonishing degree, successive Lower Yafa'i and Fadhli Sultans have realized that they had in
this canal, passing from the territory of the one to that of the other, matter for first class intertribal complications. The canal was first dug about eighty or ninety years ago. Presumably they started getting fun out of it straight away, but realizing that you cannot have a first class international bone of contention until you have an agreement in writing dealing with the matter they negotiated one in 1872.
