Some Social Aspects of the Trucial States

In the Trucial Coast of Oman, external forms present immediate and striking evidence of the extreme social difference between women and men. Women, whether young or old, appear in public as little as can be managed. When they do appear, they wear masks and veils and their black outer clothing stretches down to their feet. In the coastal villages, if a woman sees a strange man approaching in the street, it is proper for her to turn to the wall until he has passed. I f she has the opportunity, she may hurry away down a side street to avoid him completely. In this part of Arabia, as in other Middle Eastern countries, traditional houses are designed so as to provide a maximum of privacy for the women of the family. The rooms are built around a courtyard on to which the windows face, the houses presenting only blind walls to the street. Immediately inside the doorway which opens from the street into the courtyard of a house, one usually finds a curtain wall, so that even when the door is opened people cannot see in. Such external forms as these are connected with a whole complex of attitudes towards women and of beliefs about their proper status, how they should behave and how they should be treated. Taken together, these matters form an important part of the local value system and play their part in determining the social forms observed in Trucial Coast society even in circumstances from which women are absent. The wealth that is now coming into the Trucial States cannot help but

produce profound changes in the society, and there can be no doubt that one of the things that is likely to change most is the status of women. There are two obvious reasons for expecting this. One is that wealth opens up communications and in so doing it not only provides oppor­ tunities for people to gain some knowledge, however superficial, of other societies and to compare their own society with these, but it actually forces them to do so. Of course, for technological reasons, such com­ parisons are going on increasingly throughout the world in any

case, but one may expect wealth to add considerably to the speed of the process in this particular instance. Secondly, the sudden development of education for both boys and girls encourages them to reject an old way of life and develop something new. The purpose of this paper, however, is not to discuss change, which in

any case is at its very beginnings, but to give some account of the tradi­ tional position of women in Trucial Coast society. One cannot, after all, notice change, let alone assess or analyse it, without first having con­ sidered its point, or points, of departure. And though the segregation of women from men not closely related to them is one of things that must at once meet the eye of any visitor to the towns and villages of the Trucial Coast, this segregation makes it difficult for a visitor to gain any precise knowledge of the women’s position. Apart from its being difficult for a man to talk to women there, it is not even proper for him to ask very much about them, particularly to ask in any detail about specific cases. Things are not quite so bad as suggested by the Kuwaiti historian Yusuf ibn cIsa al-Qinaci, who says that a traditional Kuwaiti, mentioning a woman in the course of telling a story to his friend, would say, Akramak Allah, an apologetic expression he would not use ‘if he were mentioning an insect’. But gathering information is a slow process, and in the earlier stages one can easily be misled, particularly in assessing the extent of male dominance. In the Trucial Coast, as in numerous other places, men are not as dominant in society as they claim to be. The difficulty here lies in gathering other information with which to compare the men’s general­ izations. People in the Trucial Coast regard women as being inferior to men in

an absolute sense. They hold this to be a fact established by the divine dispensation and made clear in religion. This, rather than heavier res­ ponsibility, is held to be why the Koran lays down as a general principle that a woman inherits half of what is inherited by a man when the two are in equivalent positions relative to a deceased person. In law, the evidence of a man as a witness is equal to the evidence of two women, a circumstance which suggests a certain absolute standard of comparison. The Koran itself states quite clearly that men have pre-eminence over women. When they speak of women in general, men in the Trucial Coast will often say that women are prone to temptation and need to be kept in check by men if they are not to go astray. And the views of some of the more old-fashioned people can be extreme. I have several times been told quite seriously that it was a good thing to teach girls to read, so that they could read the Koran and devotional books, but a bad thing to teach them to write, because they might be tempted to write letters to young men. In the past, however, it was most unusual for women to be

literate at all. One of the things often mentioned to illustrate the remark­ able progressive-mindedness of Shaikh Manic, the Dubai shaikh who tried to bring into being a reform movement in opposition to Shaikh Sacid ibn Maktum, the father of the present ruler, some thirty years ago, is that he taught his daughter to read and write. The local picture of the ideal good woman is that she should be modest

and shy and should stay at home as much as possible. She should avoid contact with men other than those who are closely related to her. Moreover, she should not mix too widely with women outside the family circle, since some of them may be immoral and may lead her into difficulties. She should look after her husband and children and manage the household economically. I f her husband is happy at home, he will not spend so much time wasting his money outside the house. Among the poorer people it is thought that a woman ought to sew at home to earn a little extra money in order to buy extra things for her children. Many women are very devout, and they may shame some of the men

into keeping up with religious observances. On the two main feasts of the year, when the prayers are performed in the open air, the women appear in public and form up into ranks a little distance behind the ranks of the men in order to join in the prayers and listen to the sermon. But mortuary ceremonies stress the distinction between the sexes. A woman is haram, forbidden, to strangers in death as in life. Whereas it is a meri­ torious act for any man to help to carry the bier of a dead man, a woman’s bier is carried only by men closely related to her. The body of a man is wrapped in a single shroud, but a woman’s body is wrapped in two and a curtain is spread over the grave so that onlookers cannot see the body being laid out there. There can be no doubt of the inferior status of women in the society

of the Trucial Coast, and the seclusion in which women are expected to live is one of the results of their subordination. Their place is, very definitely, in the home, and they have no place in the market or in the public meeting. But of course the ‘home’ in question is not that of a tiny elementary family, but of a wider family group. And this family group is one upon which many of the affairs of the Trucial Coast, social, eco­ nomic and even political, turn. In relation to families, the very limitation of a woman’s scope can be regarded from another point of view as a specialization, and the fact of the seclusion of women can be seen to exclude men from a range of contacts which women have among them­ selves. The public role of men and the private role of women in the society are symbiotic in a sense far beyond simple conjugality. The seclusion in which women are expected to live places them under

considerable economic disabilities. Most women would find it very hard to support themselves independently of men. If a woman is particularly enterprising, and if the men of her family permit it, she can open a little shop in her house, selling goods entirely to other women from round about. But most shopping, even for household goods and supplies, is done by men. Given the necessary business acumen, richer women with inherited capital can speculate on property values and invest in merchant voyaging and smuggling. In order to do so they need to have men acting on their behalf, agents through whom they can deal with other men. (I am afraid I do not know enough of such situations to be able to tell how easy or difficult it is for them to get honest treatment or to check the actual profits made out of their money in some of these transactions.) Without any capital at all, there is no respectable way for a woman to earn money except by sewing and perhaps selling a few eggs and a little milk from the chickens and goats in the yard. Employment for wages, even as a domestic servant, is out of the question because of the impera­ tive need to avoid men of other households. In the past, slave women did domestic work, but here it was perfectly legal and respectable for their masters to have sexual relations with them if they so wished. It is said that in the 1930s and 1940s when many slaves were emancipated because they were no longer profitable and their owners could no longer afford to keep them, many slave women found they could turn only to prostitution to earn a living. On the other hand, neighbours in Ras al-Khaimah told me of two slave women living together in great poverty who had remained so modest that they had never been into the market there. The economic disabilities of women, which follow from their seclusion,

have a marked effect on family relationship, particularly when a husband can divorce his wife at will and then has no further responsibility to support her. So long as a divorced woman has a son the weakness of her position can become, paradoxically, a strength, giving her such a strong claim over the son in terms of helplessness that the claims of the father in terms of authority cannot compete with it. This is one of the points where one can see a clear discrepancy between some generalized local values and other values which are applied to particular cases. In general, authority and responsibility are associated with the father and the paternal line. Perhaps one remark made in passing in the course of a conversation about religion suggests ways in which people think of the paternal line better than does many a more general formulation: a young man who was telling me that any sensible person ought to be a Muslim said, ‘What is the good of being a Christian and obeying God without obeying his Prophet Muhammad ? It is just like obeying your father without obeying your father’s brother’. And in one sense the lives of agnates are con­

sidered to be interchangeable. The blood feud is still possible, though unlikely, in the towns of the Trucial Coast, and here a man and his agnates to the fourth or fifth generation are held commonly answerable for any killing committed by any of them. One commonly hears people say that it is not important who a man’s mother is, what counts is who his father is. A proverbial local expression has it that ‘Descent is from the foot’, which is explained by another expression supposed to express a man’s attitude to divorcing his wife: ‘I have kicked off my sandals and will get some more’. Nevertheless, a man who divorces his wife runs a serious risk of alienating his sons, particularly among the poorer people. The practical need of the mother weights the moral obligation on her side, A man can divorce his wife at will, and even on the spur of the moment,

simply by pronouncing the appropriate formula. When this happens, the divorced wife must veil her face immediately in front of her husband, pack up her belongings and return to her father’s house. Her father or, if he is dead, her brother is expected to look after her until she is married again. For an older woman the situation can be a very difficult one. It may be hard for her to marry again, and she may find herself treated as a nuisance in her brother’s house. So long as her father is alive a woman is usually secure, but in her brother’s house, where her presence may make demands on very limited sleeping accommodation and a slender income, tension often arises between the woman and her sister-in-law. For the social reasons I have mentioned already, there is nothing a poor woman can do for herself in these circumstances, and so if she has a son he is under a strong obligation to look after her. I f his father divorces his mother, a son is thought to be obliged to look after the mother, who formed his body out of her blood and her milk. He is expected to leave his father’s house and set up a house of his own where his mother can live with him. I f the son is too young to do this at the time of the divorce, then he should do so as soon as he is old enough. Only if the mother marries again does the obligation lapse. The position of a woman who wishes to obtain a divorce from her

husband in the Trucial Coast is, in practice, rather stronger than in some other traditional Islamic societies. Perhaps this should be attributed to the influence of bedouin society as compared with the influence of peasant life. Though a woman can only divorce her husband in exceptional circumstances, her family acting on her behalf before a court, it is possible for her to leave him, and if she does so there is no social pressure to oblige her family to send her back. Social pressure works the other way, impelling the husband towards divorcing her. A husband who tries to hang on to his wife against her wishes lays himself open to ridicule and contempt. When, as often happens, a man divorces in haste and repents

at leisure, he tries to get his wife back by what is called ‘making her satisfied’, which means giving her money or property. The more a woman is able to get out of her husband in these circumstances, the greater is her future security likely to be. Women are expected to keep their own assets. Even among the poor, it is not usual for a wife to confuse her money with her husband’s. The woman who is in charge of the housekeeping for a poor family will have her husband’s money entrusted to her and he will ask for it when he wants it. But if she has any money of her own she keeps it separately. In spite of the inferior status of women in the society of the Trucial

Coast, here as elsewhere, the true basis of marriage is thought to lie in the love and mutual comfort which a husband and wife give to each other. But in formal terms the marital bond here, being easily dissoluble, is weaker than in some other societies. The bond of a woman with her natal family is correspondingly stronger. When a woman marries, her husband takes over responsibility for her from her father, but if she is divorced the responsibility reverts to her own agnates. In law it is held that a husband has a right to forbid his wife to visit even her father except if he is mortally ill. In practice it is much more common to find fathers inter­ vening between their daughters and their sons-in-law, trying to protect the daughters’ interests and promote their wellbeing. A complaint brought before the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah will illustrate the way these questions arise among the poor. (As far as they can, richer people try to settle their disputes among themselves and keep the rulers out of their affairs.) In this instance, a father complained that his daughter was not being properly treated. Her husband and his brother, who was also married, had a house with only one room and a yard. At night the two married couples slept in the same room. The complainant thought this improper and suggested that his daughter and her husband should go and live in a hut that his daughter’s brother owned some distance away from the house. The hus­ band protested that if they were obliged to do this he and his brother would be put to the expense of maintaining two separate households, whereas it was much cheaper and better for them to share the house­ keeping. He said that if they were not allowed to share the room for sleeping it would be better for him and his wife to go and sleep in the hut at nights and live in the house in the daytime. In any case, his brother was shortly going to work in Kuwait and later he was going there himself. Having found that there was no date fixed for the departure of either brother, the ruler said that the present sleeping arrangements were dis­ graceful and could not be allowed to continue. On the other hand, the hut was too far away for the complainant’s daughter and her husband to go and sleep there every night. He thought it unnecessary for the brothers

to divide their housekeeping, and so told them that they must dismantle the hut and re-erect it in the yard of the house. He then granted a further request from the complainant that his daughter should be permitted to live with her parents whilst her husband was away in Kuwait. Such a case as this illustrates how the local ideology stresses the agnatic

bonds of men rather than those of women, but it shows also how the latter can undermine the former. Powerful men can often draw daughters’ husbands, and even more their daughters’ sons, into their own orbit. Even when women are transferred in marriage to the keeping of another family, as social persons they carry the social group of their own family with them into their married life. It is significant that if a wife is unfaithful to her husband, so long as he divorces her as soon as he finds out, the situation carries much less shame for him than it does for her father, her paternal uncles and her brothers. I f she is to be punished - and sometimes she may be killed - it is for her own family to punish her. In this society where the premise of divorce is a part of the idea of marriage, it is only in a limited way that a woman’s social person is transferred to her husband and his family on marriage, since the transfer is, at most, no more final and absolute than the marriage itself. The contrast in social circumstances between men and women implies

certain contrasts in inclination and will. This is particularly the case where moving from place to place is in question. Here, as far as men are concerned, the seafaring and bedouin traditions associated with the old ways of livelihood open to the people of the Trucial States lead to atti­ tudes markedly different from those of a peasantry, more particularly a peasantry in countries where cultivable land is scarce. Seafarers, like bedouin, can move from place to place without great financial loss, and it has been common for people in the Trucial Coast to move in order to avoid oppression or to seek greater profit. Sometimes they have moved in quite large groups, like the group of Al Bu Falasah and Rumaithat who set up the present government of Dubai in 1833. But many more have moved singly and in small groups, as they still do. For women, however, movement has very different implications from those it has for men. Given a social circle restricted to the women of related families and their friends, a woman who goes to live in a foreign place with her husband loses much of her company and the emotional security it provides, and if her husband treats her badly she has nowhere to turn for help. Hence women are on a whole unwilling to move away from their fathers’ fami­ lies. Conversely, a man moving into a new place is likely to marry a local wife. By doing so, he integrates himself into a particular group of the community he joins. Hence, as far as geographical movement is con­ cerned, the influence of women is towards stability and integration in

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two senses, on the one hand restraining men from moving and on the other, if they do move, helping to integrate them into their communities of adoption. For the same reasons of security as make it uncommon for women to

move away from their natal families, Arab parents in the Trucial Coast prefer in general to give their daughters in marriage to men who are related to them already. In discussing the matter, people do not usually express any strong preference for the marriage of paternal first cousins - that famous Arab marriage - and speak with enthusiasm of the son of the father’s sister or the son of a brother or sister of the mother. Even affinity, once established, is a cause for promoting further marriage ties. People say that when they are related to some other family already they know much better how their daughter is likely to be treated if she marries into it. In such marriages there is a further idea of holding families together and, among richer people, of preserving the family property and the family reputation. ‘What falls from the moustache drops into the beard.’ It is thought shameful for a girl to marry her social inferior, but if she marries amongst those who are kin already the question of inferiority does not arise. People speak of high social position in terms of two criteria, origins - of being of pure Arab stock - and wealth. Neither of these without the other is enough to establish a man in high position. Though purity of stock is the more strongly stressed of the two, when a family has been wealthy for some generations there seems to be less doubt raised about its purity than there might be otherwise. Whilst these criteria set the pattern of new marriage alliances, the reaffirmation of old marriage ties by the making of new ones on the same lines steadies down the process of social mobility. Hence the pattern of marriages is an element in the stability of the social classes. Here, although I have been asked to write about social questions, I

must touch briefly on history and politics before I can continue with any discussion about women in relation to the class system of the Trucial States. To judge from what one is constantly told when one inquires into history and politics from local people, anyone who judges the Trucial Coast from its days of poverty in the thirty-year interregnum between the collapse of the pearl fishing industry and the new wealth of oil could be seriously misled by appearances. The traditional system of social hierarchy in the Trucial States was founded on occupations and fortunes which, in those impoverished times, had wasted away. In the traditional system, as it was described to me over and over again when I was doing research in the Trucial States - and this would go equally well for Kuwait - the more important and wealthy families in the towns were those that managed the pearl-fishing industry and the dhow trade. These were

thought to be the truly honourable occupations, and success in them required not only the management of capital but also the management of men, often in large numbers. Both industries ran on profit sharing and debt, and each family of pearl merchants and boat owners had a number, and sometimes a great number, of families of pearl fishers and seamen working for it, depending often on its patronage whether financial or political and usually relying on loans to keep going until the next season came round. The prestige of such leading families increased their control over people and their control over people increased their prestige. Their dependants were potential fighting men, and in addition many of the leading families regularly entertained bedouin supporters. When I was doing research in the Trucial States, people often spoke of the importance of such families in the past and of how they had become impoverished when the pearling industry collapsed, losing not only their livelihood but also their capital, since most of that was loaned out in debts which could not be recovered. There were many complaints that British representa­ tives in the Trucial States, whose decisions were influential, attached far too much importance to the shaikhs relative to other families and thereby increased their power over what it had been before. In the times of poverty the leading Arab families found it difficult to

engage successfully in other sorts of trade, and the external distinctions of wealth largely disappeared, but one of the things that marked family and personal status, the inclusiveness and corresponding exclusiveness of marriage between families, could not disappear with the same speed as did economic prosperity and economic differentiation. Long-term relation­ ships of family with family through the giving of women in marriage - family matters only hesitantly discussed with strangers - would seem to have survived to a considerable extent, and such marriages express some­ thing surviving from the old class system. Through women, family is still excluded from family, however familiarly the men of these families mix with each other and however little they seem to be distinguishable in wealth. The broad, public society of the men is quite a different thing from the smaller and more private societies of the women and the houses. It seems quite possible that the former leading families still retain a net­ work of influences to allow them to return to high positions. I think therefore that it would be a great mistake to suppose, even in a

place like Abu Dhabi which was hit particularly hard by the collapse of pearl fishing and which until recently had a ruler who, whatever his virtues, could not bring himself to spend money or even to allow other people to make it, that all the people were an undifferentiated proletariat attached to a little aristocracy of shaikhs - though there are shaikhs who might like it to be so and to convince other people that it is indeed so.