Jassim the Leader: Founder of Qatar

by Mohamed Althani

  Policy disputes

  The term Wahhabi is used very freely these days and very often inappropriately. The Russian media, for example, use it as a term of abuse for Muslim activists in Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as in Russia itself, rather than the vague and equally derogatory term ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ preferred in the Western media. In fact, the name is properly used to describe an Islamic revivalist movement which sprang up in the Arabian peninsula in the eighteenth century. They differed from their contemporary Wesleyans in Christendom in one major respect – Wahhabis had solid political backers and were not held back by the West’s division between the secular and the spiritual. As is the case with so many revivalists in the course of history, Muhammad Abd ul-Wahhab, the founder of the movement, felt that the local practice of the religion had lost its original purity. The worship of graves and the veneration of saints were clearly prohibited yet had become common practice. The fledgling community of reformers found protection with the Al Saud clan, and the relationship endured. But never at any time did Abd ul-Wahhab’s followers refer to themselves as Wahhabi. Even today, its adherents prefer the term Salafi, which links them to Islam’s founding fathers, ‘the pious predecessors’. But I have employed the word in the strict sense; Wahhabi here refers to the devout followers of the religious movement who attached themselves to the Saud family for support.

  The Second Saudi State had come to an end after losing its struggle against the Al Rashid. The clan itself sought refuge in Kuwait. In a complete reversal of the 1991 Gulf War situation, it was Kuwait which helped the Al Saud revive their fortunes. Supplying weapons and men, a small band of steadfast warriors led by Abd ul-Aziz Ibn Saud made their way back towards Riyadh in 1902. Ibn Saud, the grandson of Faisal bin Turki, successfully assaulted the fort, killing the chief, Ibn Ajlan, as he was finishing the morning prayer. He then famously held Ibn Ajlan’s head up over the battlements before tossing it to the people of city. The Al Saud were back, and many were pleased about it – most notably the ‘retired’ Sheikh Jassim.

  Jassim immediately wrote to Ibn Saud to offer his congratulations to the grandson of an old friend and ally. The sheikh was already contemplating an anti-Ottoman alliance. As the years passed, Jassim had come ever closer to Wahhabi religious convictions and maintained contact with their protector, Ibn Saud, sending tribute, weapons and friendly assurances. He was fully aware of the effect his actions would have on the Ottomans, but did not concern himself with, or care to know, their view. He was more interested in gauging the impact this new alliance would have on his anti-Wahhabi nemesis, Sheikh Ziyad of Abu Dhabi. Jassim was excited at the prospect of change in 1902 and began to show all of his old vigour.

  But Jassim’s brother had no such ideological convictions, and began to chafe at an alliance being renewed without any reference to him – the man who had actually been trying to run Qatar over the last four years. You have to feel a little sympathy for Ahmad. He had always been seen in the subordinate position of deputy. Many an official would address letters to Sheikh Jassim for Ahmad to pass on, as if he were a messenger. The British wouldn’t discuss a treaty until Ahmad inherited the sheikhdom. The Ottomans detested Jassim but still refused to bestow the title Qayamaqam upon Ahmad. Official visitors continued to pay their respects to Jassim instead of greeting him in the capital. This was the case in 1903, when Gaskin disembarked from HMS Lawrence on a mission to ascertain the mood in Qatar.

  Gaskin met Jassim on 16 September at Lusail, where he and his immediate family had lived with two or three allied kinsmen and their families since the Battle of Wajba. The venerable sheikh maintained he had retired from government and transferred responsibility for its future welfare to his brother, informing the Ottomans that they should refer all matters to Ahmad before severing all connections. He now claimed to pay little attention to the actions of the Mutasarrif at Hasa. Gaskin’s conversations with Jassim convinced him that the old fox was retired and disapproved of any Ottoman expansion inside Qatar, including his son’s appointment as the mudir of Wakra. The truth, however, was that Jassim was not retired, and was in communication with the Al Saud and with Ottoman officials. He had pulled the wool over Gaskin’s eyes with consummate skill for reasons that will become clear.

  Gaskin’s next stop was at Wakra to meet Sheikh Ahmad, who had confirmed the appointment of Jassim’s son as mudir on a salary of six Ottoman lira per month, following the withdrawal of Yusuf Beg Effendi. (Jassim’s son, Abd ul-Rahman, never took a single lira and refused to offer any guarantee of his future loyalty to the Porte despite Ottoman insistence.) This was the last occasion on which Ahmad would press to know whether Britain would offer its protection, and he warned that, if left to its own devices, the Ottoman Empire would absorb the whole peninsula and remove the Al Thani from power. Gaskin seemed to accept the argument, noting his prediction that the tribes of Qatar would soon disappear entirely because more of them had grown rich through pearl hunting, whereas they used to rely on the generosity of Jassim. The British official thus reported to his political agent that the Al Thani needed British support to enable them to maintain their hold over the tribes. Fortunately, his superior, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Kembell, was unimpressed. ‘I am inclined to doubt if it is the case that the influence of the Al Thani family in Qatar is rapidly waning. It may, however, be less than it was … What these people fear is the extension of Turkish rule over Qatar, as they know that they could not resist the Turks for long; and it is for this reason that the arrangement with His Majesty’s Government is desired.’

  Following the visit, Ahmad’s patience with his brother was at an end. He didn’t accept that an alliance with Ibn Saud was in the country’s best interests, nor did he like Jassim’s backing for an Ottoman expansion in various extremes of the peninsula. The appointment of the uncooperative, anti-Ottoman Abd ul-Rahman bin Jassim, against his better judgement, had weakened his standing with the Mutasarrif and now he was forced to devise a different strategy since the British, with whom Jassim no longer wished to align himself, were not prepared to offer their protection. This frustration would now turn into their first fraternal clash, which centred initially on the Turkish deployment of soldiers and administrators to Zubara, Udaid and Wakra.

  Both men appreciated that the control of each settlement was at times a subject of dispute. Zubara was the focus of trouble with Bahrain, Udaid with Abu Dhabi, while the Al bu Aynain in Wakra were uneasy with the situation. But Jassim wanted, with or without their knowledge (he really didn’t care), to use Istanbul’s power to assert his position in the face of his British-backed rivals in Kuwait and Abu Dhabi. Ahmad didn’t agree. He was set against any such Ottoman deployment. He believed it had been proposed in an attempt to increase control over entry points for smuggled guns and to stop use of these areas as bases for the Al Thani and their confederates. Ahmad’s analysis was much closer to the mark. The year 1902 was, after all, a rare and prolonged period of attempting to establish the Ottoman flag around Qatar – the year of anti-British military reconsolidation elsewhere in Hasa, Yemen and Kuwait. The British were convinced it was Jassim who had asked the Porte to establish administrative units in those three places, had become suspicious of Ahmad by extension, and sent HMS Sphinx to try to prevent any Ottoman official from arriving at their new posts. Amid the confusion, it was easy for the situation to deteriorate and different tribes to back different policies.

  Ahmad fared better in the low-intensity proxy war fought by his confederates, but Jassim would soon call upon his renewed friendship with the Al Saud to deal with his younger brother, who had never shared the same Wahhabi sympathies. In the summer of 1905, Ibn Saud was on his way to Qatar to resolve the differences between them and claimed he was acting under Ottoman authority. In reality he was coming to aid Jassim, whose supporters the Ajman had lost to his brother’s backers, the Murra. But Ahmad couldn’t afford for Ibn Saud to arrive, particularly as he knew Jassim had sent money and weapons to him for use against the ru
ler of Abu Dhabi, with whom both allies had quarrels of long standing. On the other hand, Ahmad couldn’t be absolutely sure these weapons wouldn’t be used against him either, and so decided to side with the Abu Dhabi sheikh and Ibn Rashid.

  This change in alliance required Ahmad to hedge his bets, and so he decided to go on a charm offensive with the Ottomans, making some extraordinary proposals to the garrison commander at Bida. He attempted to repeat Jassim’s success of 1871: gain Ottoman backing that could give decisive protection in a bid to become the internationally recognised Qayamaqam. Ahmad was now treating the Ottoman troops well and wanted to deepen the bonds between himself and the Sublime Porte. Detailing repeated British attempts to pry settlements away from Ottoman Qatar, he asked for the dispatch of fresh troops to block the schemes. Since he recognised that such a deployment might be difficult under present circumstances, Ahmad offered to pay for their transport or even supply enough money to support one or two battalions. In return he wanted public marks of Ottoman approval, including a rank and people to govern. In short, he wanted to become the Qayamaqam.

  The commander was intrigued by the scheme. It could make control of Qatar immeasurably easier. With Ahmad’s help the land could be run by about as many men as were now present in Doha; if the Saudi faction came to dominate in Najd and Qatar, no one could foresee the troubles that might ensue. He forwarded the request for troops and a ship to guard against the incursion of Ibn Saud. The question of the Qayamaqam title was more doubtful. While wishing to encourage Ahmad, the commander acknowledged that it would be impolitic to take the office from Jassim without a compelling reason. The best solution would be to give Ahmad a rank and make it clear to everyone that he would succeed his brother. The attempt at compromise gives a good indication of the Ottoman predicament in trying to maintain a legitimate claim of sovereignty over Qatar. It still depended on Jassim’s goodwill, and there was little Ahmad could do about it.

  But Ahmad was not ready to give up yet, and his support base was not insubstantial. In an apparent move to ‘restore law and order’ among the Bedouins on the south-western frontier of Qatar in April 1905, Ahmad led a raid with his Al Murra and Banu Hajir against Jassim’s Ajman and Banu Khalid in Jafura, close to Hasa. Achieving no major success, the raiding party, which lost five men, returned to Qatar. Ahmad had come to the end of the line. He still managed to impose a semblance of order among the Bedouins on his south-west border, but his alliances were unravelling. Relations with the Ottomans were the first to fail when he unwittingly killed an Ottoman subject in September at Bida. On learning of his mistake, he expressed his regret to the Ottoman authorities and offered the usual blood money of 800 rupees, which was refused by the murdered man’s relatives.

  While Ahmad dealt with accusations of murder, the new political agent at Bahrain, Captain Francis Prideaux, had arrived in Qatar at the head of a delegation of interpreters, clerks, non-commissioned officers and an armed guard to collect information for the Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, which was then under preparation. He was given money to purchase a Qatari horse to aid him in his travels, taking notes of anything that His Majesty’s Government ought to know about Qatar. Once again, Prideaux didn’t stop to talk to Ahmad but rather made straight for Lusail to meet the person who really mattered to them. Jassim received Prideaux well, and made him feel very welcome, answering his questions posed to provide copy for the Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, to be written by John Lorimer, a British civil servant. But he made no effort to convince Prideaux that he desired an alliance of any kind. By the end of his stay at the farm, however, Prideaux was under no misapprehension, noting that nothing of any importance took place in Qatar without Jassim being consulted and giving his consent.

  The Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf

  Before describing Prideaux’s meeting with Sheikh Ahmad, I simply have to tell you about Lorimer’s 5,000-page monumental work, based on meetings such as those Prideaux conducted with Jassim. The Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf was designed as a practical reference book for British officials newly arrived in the Gulf. It told them why things were the way they were, and what was said about whom. It has some of the most fantastic gossip ever to have been written in an official government document. For instance, the Sheikh of Sharjah is described thus: ‘In private life the Shaikh was weak, miserly and uxorious; in public business he was apathetic and seemed incapable of exertion. He alienated his subjects and former Bedouin adherents by indifference to their grievances and requests; and he forfeited the respect of the other Trucial Shaikhs by his general insignificance, both as a man and as a ruler.’

  It gets even better, but before proceeding, it must be mentioned that the great weakness of its ‘historical section’ is that there is no attempt at viewing things other than through British official eyes. There is a bland assumption of the eternal wisdom and benevolence of imperial policy. And this was its great weakness. There is no suggestion that ‘Hippopotamus’ Murray, the British minister in Tehran, was an arrogant fool, even though the British foreign secretary himself, Lord Granville, observed that ‘Murray’s letters to the Shah are singularly offensive. His demands are quite absurd; yet orders are to be sent to occupy an island whose name I forget in the Persian Sea.’ Instead, the Gazetteer presents the war as a just and necessary vindication of imperial prestige. This blatant jingoism allows Lorimer to write on ‘the hostility of Sayyid Faisal towards British interests’ as if this arose from some extraordinary vice in the ruler’s character. There is no hint that he may have been goaded beyond his strength by the maladroit British agent, Major Fagan, whom Lord Curzon regarded as ‘quite hopeless’.

  A point essential to the understanding of the development of British policy in the Gulf in the early years of the century is totally omitted by Lorimer. There is no mention of the conflict between the expansionist urge of the government of India under Lord Curzon and the cautious line of the Foreign Office, unwilling to upset the status quo. For twenty years there was a divergence of views between successive viceroys and Whitehall ranging from the early days of the century over the proclamation of a formal protectorate over Qatar to the 1920s, when one side backed Ibn Saud and the other King Husain of the Hejaz in a civil war. Curiously enough these clashes of policy were regarded by French analysts, quite mistakenly, as yet one more ingenious triumph of the dreaded British Secret Service, which would always have ‘its man in power whichever side won’.

  The Gazetteer also omits matters of considerable importance. Lorimer does not say that the fat-headed action of Admiral Douglas in threatening to bombard Muscat in February 1899 (unless the Sultan publicly cancelled his cession of a coaling station to the French at Bundar Jissah) caused consternation in Whitehall. Again, there is no mention of the government of India’s consideration of the use of force to prevent a Turkish occupation of the Kuwaiti-claimed island of Bubiyan in the spring of 1902.

  But getting back to the gossip, the section dealing with Kuwait from 1902 to 1906 is hilarious; even the most apparently trivial matters find a place in it. The tome mentions, for example, the arrest of Sheikh Mubarak’s representative at Basra on the charge of possessing an illegal newspaper and the pandemonium caused by Mubarak’s unjustified claim to an unoccupied island. In the Bahrain section, some poor soul was sent to list all the chief features of the coast, then all the hills (four in number!), the villages (with numbers of huts), springs, tribal groups, boats (listed by ports), weights, measures and taxation. He tells us that there are 200 special white donkeys (the females are preferred as less noisy), 850 cattle (fed on dates, dried fish and old bones) and that imported goat meat costs 8 annas a pound. It is difficult to see what more information any man might hope for.

  Sheikh Ahmad’s demise

  Following his meeting with Jassim, Prideaux sailed south down to Bida. He was keen to understand the sudden cooling in relations. Just a few years earlier, Ahmad had been anxious to bring Qatar under British protection. Ahmad gave a diplomatic response, claiming that alt
hough he still wanted such a treaty, he could do nothing to bring it about so long as the Ottoman forces remained in Bida fort. He asked, already knowing the answer, whether the British had any intention of evicting the Ottomans from Bida. Prideaux said it was impossible and may have felt he was the one blocking Qatar’s inclusion into the Trucial system. In truth, however, it was Ahmad who had grown cold over the idea. The Trucial system in 1905 appeared to have broken down, or at least demonstrated that it was certainly not just an external protection agreement.

  In the spring of that year, British troops had occupied Manama, the new administrative centre of Bahrain, using as a pretext the dispute which had arisen between a European citizen and a nephew of Sheikh Isa. London had taken over the administration of the island. The political agent had let the houses and property of the inhabitants they considered as offenders be looted in total disregard of Sheikh Isa; they seized the taxes which had been collected and the pearling revenue of the region. It was rumoured that Isa, who had until then claimed to be independent, had now started claiming to be a subject of the Ottoman government. Although this claim was insincere, the Sublime Porte decided to investigate the matter and act against Britain over the issue. This was enough to make any regional sheikh think twice about signing an agreement with Britain – it was a novel development that boded badly for non-interference on internal matters, but there was more. Mubarak al Sabah, the Sheikh of Kuwait, who saw danger in the face of a defection to Kuwait by certain traders in Bahrain, had attempted to close the British consulate in Kuwait. This move resulted in the British sending warships to Kuwait, threatening him with the loss of his position.