"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎٧‎٧‎٢] (١٧٨٢/٩١٥)

772
son's right by arms. At a meetinor held at Samaih near Khor-al-
Ghanadhah, however, he was induced, by the advice of the Shaikhs of
Dibai and 'Ajman and of his friend Muhammad, the chief Na'aimi
Shaikh of Baraimi, to abandon forcible measures. About the same
time he proved the strength of his influence in the Baraimi neighbour
hood generally by obliging the Bani Qitab to pay blood money for two
citizens of 'Ibri town in Dhahirah, whom they had slain.
f* 116 ?! After the attack on Abu Dhabi town in 1856 the internal history of
1907 tlie Principality was, apart from the affairs of 'Odaid and Baraimi
described above^ wholly uneventful. The wars of the Bani Yas
with the Al Thani Shaikhs of Dohah will be more appropriately related,
though the interior of the Abu Dhabi Shaikhdom did not entirely
escape their effects, in the history of the Qatar promontory. Shaikh
Zaid performed the Hajj in 1880-81, and in 1904 he received a fine mare
with trappings from the Sharif of Makkah.
ANNEXURE No. 8.—INTERNAL HISTORY OF THE DIBAI
PRINCIPALITY.
Of the early history of Dibai town little is known. It existed
already in 1799 ; and in 1825, as appears from the general historv of
Trucial 'Oman,* its possession was an object of ambition to the ruler of
Masqat. _ Notwithstanding the separate signature on behalf of its chief
Hazza-bin-Za al, then a minor, of the General Treaty of Peace in
1820, Dibai appears to have existed until 1833 as a dependency of the
Abu Dhabi Shaikhdom ; but in that year, as related elsewhere,t on the
arrival of a body of 800 seeeders from Abu Dhabi belonging to the Al
Bii lalasah section of the Bani Yas tribe, it attained indisputably to the
status of a separate principality.
Acce«sion
Shaikh
Maktum to
sole power,
1836.
•Admiuistra
tion and
character.
Shaikh Maktum-bin-Buti, 1833-52.
of The leaders of the exodus of the Al Bu Falasah from Abu Dhabi
\\eie Obaid-bin-Sa'id and Maktum-bin-Buti, who seem, according to a
piactrce common among the Bani Yas, to have been recognised as joint
chiefs; but on the death on the 9th of June 1836 of 'Obaid, who was
regarded as the senior of the two, the undivided power devolved upon
Maktum, at that time a haughty and inexperienced youth.
The new principality was exposed for a time to considerable danger,
both from the jealousy of the Shaikh of Abu Dhabi, the former
suzerain of Dibai, and from the ambition of the Qasimi Shaikh of
laijah, between whom a combination was more than once formed for
its suppression ; but the personal courage and the ability of Shaikh
* Vide page 686 ante.
t Vide page 765 ante.