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On the Arab side of the Gulf he controlled the Political Agents
in the Arab states of Kuwait, Bahrain, and Muscat, and, through
the P.A. at Bahrain, the Political Officer on the Trucial Coast A name used by Britain from the nineteenth century to 1971 to refer to the present-day United Arab Emirates.
stationed at Sharjah.
I found my duties as Under-Secretary neither difficult nor
interesting and employed myself in learning Arabic - which was
both. The language was extensively used on the Persian coast as
was Persian on the Arab coast - indeed the two peoples were
inter-mingled although still distinct. One of the prominent
tribes in Pars was the Khamseh ("Five" in Arabic, from the number
of its sections) and they had, after hundreds of years of
residence, become Persian speakers and Shia. The biggest tribe
was the Qashqai who were Turks and still spoke a dialect of
Turkish. These tribes were semi-nomadic and suffering from the
efforts of the government to settle them in villages. I say
'suffering' advisedly because their traditional economy was based
on their herds of sheep and goats. These they moved up the
mountains in the spring and summer, following the melting snow,
to graze them on the lush grass, and down to the littoral plains
in the winter where it was comparative1y warm and there was still
some verdure. They did not take kindly to being told to build
villages and live in them and watch their flocks starve : but
settled villagers were much more easily controlled and taxed.
The Persian empire of Darius and his successors, whose armies
conquered the Middle East and penetrated as far West as Greece,
wasbased on a similar economy, and it is undoubtedly the most
efficient way of utilising the meagre resources of such an area.
Inter-tribal fighting was a thing of the fairly recent past, but
when it had existed it had been conducted in a typically Persian
and sophisticated manner. The two sides would mass their forces
and menace each other, proclaiming their unshakeable
determination to die to the last man; but, before resorting to
such desperate expedients, a pause would take place during which
both sides would busy themselves with intensive reconnaissance
and spying. Once it was established which side was superior in
numbers and weapons, and proceeding from the premise that all
Persians are equally valiant, the weaker side would quietly
withdraw and disperse. Only hot-headed imbeciles, like Turks,
they explained, would fight when out-numbered and out-gunned!
However accidents would occasionally take place, and a Church
Missionary Society doctor in Shiraz told me of a tribesman coming
into the hospital with a three-foot -1ong ramrod through his head,
one foot of it projecting from the exact middle of his forehead
and the rest from the back. He complained of a head-ache!
Apparently the ram-rod had penetrated betwen the two halves of
the brain without damaging either. One couldn't help marvelling
at the marksmanship of his opponent who, out of ammunition, had
in desperation fired his ram-rod at the enemy with such
remarkable accuracy.