Jassim the Leader: Founder of Qatar

by Mohamed Althani

  The upshot was that bin Turaif, whether through Bahraini strength or his own poor leadership, took 400 of his kinsmen into exile at Abu Dhabi, with a burning desire to attack Bahraini shipping at the earliest opportunity. But he hadn’t appreciated the seismic shifts that were taking place in the mid-1830s. The Gulf was changing, rapidly. There was no way the British authorities would ever allow bin Turaif to flout their maritime peace for the sake of his own private war against Bahrain. As far as the British were concerned, he was in a ‘friendly and neutral port’ and things were going to have to stay that way. In fact, the government in Bombay was looking to extend its maritime peace, drawing up the ‘Operations for the Maritime Truce’ in 1835. Halul Island was incorporated into a restrictive no-war zone that extended 10 miles north of Ras Rakkan, at the extreme northern tip of the peninsula.

  Isa bin Turaif was not done yet, as we shall see, but in the meantime there were plenty of other dissidents wanting to escape the powers that be in Qatar, a region outside the restrictions of the Trucial coast. One Abu Dhabi outlaw, Jassim Ragragi, who seems by all accounts to have been a rascal of the first order, decided to seek refuge in Wakra, pursued by the East Indiaman Amherst (named after an incompetent governor-general of India whose wife lent her name to a species of pheasant in Bedfordshire). The sight of a British warship was enough to convince Ali bin Nasir, who was expelled to Wakra by Abdullah, that it would be a good time to leave, and he promptly sailed to join bin Turaif at Abu Dhabi in March 1838. Sensing the beginning of a bigger anti-Bahraini alliance, bin Turaif now decided to flirt with Egyptian power.

  Muhammad Ali, an Albanian who theoretically took orders from the Sublime Porte but actually ruled Egypt, Syria and Arabia’s eastern shores by himself in the late 1830s, had transferred command of his troops in Najd in May 1838 to Khurshid Pasha. Khurshid had set up his headquarters at Anaiza, roughly two hundred miles to the north-east of Riyadh. He spent the summer there, much to British concern, consolidating the Egyptian hold on the country and building up a supply depot. Reinforcements of troops, about two thousand men, were sent to him, and with these he set out in late September for Riyadh. Shortly afterwards, Khurshid began to advance eastwards into Hasa. Ahead of him, he sent messengers to the sheikhs of Bahrain and Kuwait, informing them of his advance and asking them to provide supplies for his troops when they reached the Gulf coast.

  For bin Turaif to dangle the name Khurshid Pasha in front of British officials would no doubt have garnered their most earnest attention. Egyptian influence, already threatening to overcome Ottoman power, would jeopardise British interests. Thus, a Captain Edmunds, Assistant Political Resident in the Gulf, was sent to reconcile Bahrain’s Sheikh Abdullah with bin Turaif, after accepting two promises. The first was bin Turaif’s word that he would end contact with Khurshid Pasha, and the second that he would stop harassing the Bahraini pearling fleet. Unbeknown to the British during that May of 1839, however, Bahrain had not been waiting idly for an imposed British compromise and had met Muhammad Effendi, a secret agent of Khurshid Pasha, in Hasa. In fact, Abdullah had gone one step farther, agreeing to pay Egypt some three thousand German crowns a year on the understanding that the Egyptian governor and general would support Sheikh Abdullah’s plans to control north-eastern Qatar.

  Bin Turaif had been outmanoeuvred once again; Sheikh Abdullah had clearly undermined any alliance bin Turaif might possibly propose with Khurshid. But the deal wasn’t as clever as it first appeared. Paying tribute to Egypt went down like a lead balloon among Sheikh Abdullah’s clansmen, and a large portion of his tribe decided to quit the island altogether. Although opposition increased, Sheikh Abdullah pushed on with his plans and landed troops on Qatar’s eastern coast in June 1839, asking Muhammad Effendi to attack one of his own dissenting clansmen. Khurshid Pasha’s reputation was done immeasurable harm after the troops he sent were repulsed. Abdullah was forced to retreat, and 2,000 of the Al bu Kuwara, who had once supported the Bahraini sheikh, emigrated from Qatar to the island of Kharg in protest. Most of these tribesmen had been based in Fuwairit, and their departure meant that Muhammad bin Thani now became the undisputed head of the town.

  Emboldened by Abdullah’s reversal of fortunes, Isa bin Turaif now insisted the British back his plans to resettle his entire clan in either Bida or Wakra, and dropped a compromise proposal of re-establishing his people on Kharg Island. Proposal followed counterproposal; some even included bin Turaif’s suggestion that Britain govern the whole of Bahrain with the help of his tribe and dissatisfied factions of the Al bu Kuwara, who had abandoned Abdullah. Hennell, the British Political Resident, spelled out his reluctance to get involved in a letter to the Sultan of Muscat. ‘The reasons which had principally led me to oppose the hostile views of Isa bin Turaif against Shaikh Abdullah, were firstly the circumstance that his so doing would promote the views of Khushid Pasha in his then projected attack on Bahrain, and secondly … if the Al bin Ali effected an independent establishment for themselves upon the Qatar Coast then dispute with Shaikh Abdullah would resolve into a mere local quarrel in which I did not see any call for our interference.’ In short, Britain was worried about an Egyptian takeover of Bahrain, and that a new independent state-let inside Qatar and run by bin Turaif might just promote such a chain of events.

  Worried by developments, Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Khalifa bin Shakhbout now began to put real pressure on bin Turaif to leave. Khalifa, who had only just recovered from a power struggle with his brother Sultan, faced his own challenges, most important of which was a growing exodus of residents to a newly established Dubai. Bin Turaif, not willing to outstay his welcome or spend any more money, was also keen to leave, and told Hennell that he was going to take the Al bin Ali to Wakra. The British official immediately sensed that the joining of the Al bu Aynain, under Sheikh Ali bin Nasir, and the Al bin Ali, under bin Turaif, was a recipe for a breakdown in his own relations with Bahrain. Hennell made a show of asking Bombay for their opinion on allowing settlement of Wakra, even writing that bin Turaif had ‘afforded the most satisfactory proofs that he promises not only power, but the desire to suppress and punish all proceedings of a piratical character’. Sheikh Abdullah somehow came to know of the plan and made a deal with Sheikh Khalifa to harry bin Turaif as soon as he arrived in Wakra from the south while Bahrain planned to attack from the north.

  Outmanoeuvred once more, bin Turaif acknowledged his second diplomatic defeat on visiting Hennell aboard the Clive in December 1839. He now dropped the idea of returning to his beloved Qatar, and proposed settling the Al bin Ali on Qais. A small island in the Gulf, Qais is the last land of any size before a ship can reach the Strait of Hormuz, as one sails from Iraq along the Persian coast. Its happy situation made it an ideal maritime stronghold of the medieval seafaring world, and it even took the place of Siraf, the famous emporium of the Abbasid period, as the main centre of commerce between Iraq, Iran and India. The last Islamic geographer to use the great library at Baghdad before its destruction, Yaqut al-Hamawi,* had visited Qais several times on his commercial travels in the thirteenth century and described its important location and murderous climate.

  Bin Turaif’s choice of Qais met with British approval; in fact Hennell jumped at the idea. He didn’t do so out of consideration for conditions on the island or the livelihood it might provide the men who were to live on it. He agreed because Qais fell within the boundary line laid down by London as the limit of Arab maritime hostilities. The British would now guarantee that any migrants on Qais would be free of fear of molestation from either Sheikh Abdullah or Abu Dhabi’s Banu Yas. By February 1840, the Al bin Ali were safely transferred and the immediate consequences of Hennell’s decision became obvious to him.

  A British attack

  While the futures of bin Turaif and Ali bin Nasir had remained undetermined in Abu Dhabi, a semblance of order had been maintained in Bida and Wakra by the Sudan tribe, headed by Salman bin Nasir al-Suwaidi. But once it was clear that the respective heads of the Al bin
Ali and Al bu Aynain would not be returning any time soon, Bida became a sanctuary for every kind of undesirable troublemaker in the Gulf. Men such as Jassim Ragragi had taken to inviting the brightest and best of the Gulf’s criminal world. Ships were being raided with increasing audacity and all fingers pointed to Bida, a miniature version of the Caribbean’s Tortuga, if you will. Last to join this piratical brotherhood was another Abu Dhabi outlaw, who went by the name of Ghuleta. Their unlawful operations might have continued a little while longer were it not for this new arrival. Unfortunately for Bida, Ghuleta seemed incapable of appreciating that there were some ships it would be better not to board. Stealing a Basra-based ship under British protection while moored in the Persian port of Bandar Dillam was the final straw. The Resident’s ship, HMS Clive, made for Bida and anchored off the coast in full view of the entire populace. The ship’s captain, A. H. Nott, invited Sudan chief Salman bin Nasir aboard for a chat and the situation deteriorated rapidly.

  The problem for Salman bin Nasir, who had managed to imprison Ghuleta, Ragragi and the other ringleaders by the end of 1840, was that he considered himself a victim of the pirate gang just as much as the British. He felt no compulsion to pay any compensation for piracy that had been committed along neighbouring coasts. Hennell welcomed the gang’s arrest but demanded the whole community of Bida accept ultimate responsibility and pay a fine of 300 German crowns on the pirates’ behalf by the end of February 1841 at the latest. Salman was in a quandary. First and most obviously, he didn’t have 300 German crowns. Secondly, it had taken all his efforts to finally capture the pirate gang, who had made his own people, the Sudan, suffer much more than the British ever had. No one likes living with pirates. Lastly, of course, Salman was unaccustomed to being held responsible for the crimes of people not under his protection. The British had no concept of tribal justice, which necessitated returning criminals to their own tribes for punishment.

  But with all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy, HMS Coote, HMS Sesostris and HMS Tigris anchored off Bida on 25 February 1841. Commodore Brucks communicated his intention either to pick up the cash, and the ship stolen from Bandar Dillam, or to bombard the town until he was able to do so. Salman handed over the ship, but declined to accept responsibility for handing over any monies, writing back to the commodore:

  Your demand is not a just one. Your business belongs to Ragragi who is no subject of mine. He is of the Banu Yas and [Abu Dhabi’s] Sheikh Khalifa bin Shakhbout. If it could be proved that I have gained anything from Ragragi’s acts of piracy, I would return the money twenty-fold. The boat in which he committed his crimes was from Ras al-Khaima, which I impounded along with the ones he has plundered. He himself has since escaped. In doing this I thought I was performing a good act which all would approve of. Ragragi’s boat is here and at your disposal. When my men searched his vessels they were empty and deserted. Enquire into the business and do justice. If I am in fault, enforce your demand. If I am right, do not harm me.

  The newly promoted Commodore Brucks was not there to investigate, however, but to collect. Rejecting Salman’s note, he ordered his squadron to open fire on Bida the next morning, destroying the fort and the mud-brick houses built around it. If anything can be said in defence of the British action, it is only that at least this time the reason for the attack was made plain and warning given. (In 1821, neither the Al bu Aynain chief, Buhur bin Jubran, nor a single one of his people had any idea why the East Indiaman Vestal had burned the town down, as the British Political Resident admitted a few months later.) In any case, the Sudan chief had to stop the shelling and hide his rage as he agreed to hand over his people’s wealth: 42 silver bracelets, one sword, a silver hair ornament, four pairs of gold earrings, two pairs of silver earrings, two daggers and nine bead necklaces. It seems that it was the Sudan women who paid the ultimate price of piracy, losing husbands, homes and jewellery – their only financial asset.

  Having ‘restored order’ at Bida, Brucks was keen to get his hands on Ragragi and steered a course up the coast towards Fuwairit, where he expected his quarry to take refuge. At the same time, Brucks urged Sheikh Abdullah to write a letter on his behalf to the chief of the town. Abdullah obliged and wrote, on 27 March 1841, to a Sheikh Muhammad bin Thani, head of the Mi’daad and chief of Fuwairit, asking him not to harbour Ragragi or afford him any protection.

  This was noteworthy. It was the first reference in a British source to Jassim’s father, Sheikh Muhammad. It was also the first document to recognise Al Thani authority over the town that had also been home to other Banu Tamim clans such as the Al bu Kuwara. Jassim’s career had begun. His father was the recognised head of an important town. He was now part of the political order. The misfortunes of Isa bin Turaif were yet to haunt Fuwairit, but Jassim had learnt his first lessons: the fractious nature of tribal rivalries and the error of relying on regional powers such as Britain or Egypt.

  5

  JASSIM’S FATHER

  MUCH IS KNOWN about Muhammad bin Thani as a politician and diplomat. He laid the foundations which would one day permit Jassim to establish an independent, sovereign Qatar. But what of Muhammad bin Thani, the man and father? Here things become a little more uncertain, for William Gifford Palgrave is the only man known to have jotted down some fairly sketchy impressions of the sheikh. The language he chose to employ was often condescending and arrogant. He would describe Qatar in 1863 as ‘rubbish’ and its houses as ‘rubbishy’. What would such a man be likely to say, then, about the peninsula’s most prominent leader?

  Before finding out, keep in mind that Palgrave had a complex and controversial character. A would-be Jesuit missionary, he could barely tolerate the company of those he was trying to convert. On his return to England, he renounced his Catholicism and spent two years writing up A Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia. There was something of the orientalist Richard Burton in him, but without the sparkling intellect. Later travellers in the Arab world, such as Harry St John Philby, known to his Arab friends as Sheikh Abdullah, were of the opinion that Palgrave was an outright liar. His fame is, perhaps in part, due to a talented and influential father. Sir Francis Palgrave founded Britain’s Public Record Office and married well. Nevertheless, William provides our only description of Sheikh Muhammad’s appearance and character.

  ‘Bin Thani, the governor of Bida, is indeed generally acknowledged for head of the entire province,’ he wrote. ‘He is a shrewd wary old man, slightly corpulent, and renowned for prudence and good-humoured easiness of demeanour, but close-fisted and a hard customer at a bargain.’ The description goes on. Muhammad had more ‘the air of a pearl-merchant than a tribal chieftain’, but that may have had something to do with his style of dress. ‘He wore a Bengali turban, of the date of Siraj al-Dawla [who died in 1757], to judge by its dingy appearance; his robe was an overdress which a Damascene grocer would have been ashamed to display out of doors.’ Despite Palgrave’s scorn, it is clear Muhammad was a hard-working, hands-on ruler rather than a ruby-encrusted raja of some East Indian province. The Brit abroad also reveals that by 1863 Muhammad bin Thani had control over Bida as well as Fuwairit, with the power to tax and collect revenue.

  Al Thani rise to power

  Muhammad had become a major political player in the Gulf at the very beginning of the 1840s. This was an achievement and a testament to his acute diplomatic skills. The 1840s were one of Qatar’s most bloody and unstable decades for a century. Bahraini dynastic disputes were spilling over on to the peninsula with increasing frequency and loss of life. Meanwhile, Britain’s Royal Navy had grown confident in her unchallenged strength in the Gulf. Possessing the only steamships in the region, Queen Victoria’s navy held considerable power over all things maritime. So it was that any local leader whose political fortunes rose in that decade must have known a thing or two. To understand how the Al Thani grew in strength, we must complete the story of Sheikh Isa bin Turaif.

  In 1841, many more clansmen from the Al bin Ali and A
l bu Aynain had left Qatar to join the exiled bin Turaif on Qais Island. A potential invasion force was clearly gathering to attack Bahrain, which was in the throes of civil war. Both Bahraini factions wanted to be sure of support in Qatar, and pressure was growing on Muhammad bin Thani and other local leaders to choose a side. The alternatives were equally appalling. Should the Al Thani back the veteran but intransigent Sheikh Abdullah Al Khalifa or his inexperienced great-nephew Muhammad bin Khalifa? The young Jassim, around eighteen at this time, wouldn’t have backed either. He was far more impressed by men such as Faisal bin Turki, who was working hard with his Wahhabi confederates to build up the Second Saudi State.

  Over the course of the next three years, both Al Khalifa factions would take turns at establishing their forces in Dammam, Khor Hasan and Zubara. Neither party was prepared to compromise. Both sides wanted absolute power and both would do battle at the drop of a hat. For example, in 1843, fighting flared up when Muhammad bin Khalifa stopped the marriage of a young Muharraq beauty to one of Abdullah’s sons. Eventually, Abdullah’s old age began to tell and his grand-nephew had the better of their encounters, especially once bin Turaif and Bashir bin Rahma decided to take his side in the conflict. Even Abdullah’s sons recognised the end was nigh and joined the opposition. Muhammad’s hold over Bahrain was almost complete. Bin Turaif brought his clan back from Qais to Bida in triumph, once the pearling season closed. He immediately replaced the shell-shocked leader of the Sudan, Salman bin Nasir, sending him and his clan into exile in Lingeh, their prestige in tatters following the British attack two years earlier.