ABSTRACT
GENERALLY speaking, the Arab tribes of the Trucial Oman Coast are peace-loving people who are content to cultivate their date plantations, rear their herds of c:tmels and goats, or spend two seasons of the year at the profitable pearl-fisheries. Tribal wars have become less frequent, and raids on villages are nearly always confined to the Bedouin and other nomadic tribes. Meeting an Arab in Sharjah or Dubai at the present day, it is hard to realize that his great-grandfather was in all probability a savage, ruthless pirate who plundered ships and murdered their crews without mercy. The ancestor of the present sheikh, and the forebears of most of his nobles were men of this calibre.
