"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎٧‎٠‎١] (١٧٨٢/٨٤٤)

701
Bani Yas by confiscating their boats, he found no difficulty in accom
modating himself to the Resident's demands, made known to him
through Commodore Robinson.
The Native Agent established at Sharjah in 1823 was now, appar
ently, the medium of all ordinary communications between the Resident
and the Trucial Shaikhs.
The incumbent during a considerable part of the formative period
now under consideration, when the personal character of the functionary
must have been a matter of great importance, was one Mulla Husain.
The relations of Mulla Ilusain with Shaikh Salih, a brother of Shaikh
Sultan-bin-Saqar, who acted as Deputy-Governor of the town of Sharjah
until 1838 when he was superseded, were extremely cordial; and the
removal of Salih was accordingly regarded by the British authorities
with some dissatisfaction.
In 1852 the relations between the Sharjah Shaikh and the Residency
Agent, then Haji Yii'qub, to whom insults followed by reparation were
twice offered, became exceedingly strained: this state of matters was
partly due to revelations made by the Agent in connection with the
slave trade, and it was aggravated by an order of the Court of Directors,
that compensation payable to persons uuder Sharjah jurisdiction should
not in future be handed to the Shaikh for disbursement. The order in
question, which was issued in contrariety to the advice of the Resident,
seems to furnish a clue to a charge of misappropriating money which,
among others, the Shaikh levelled at the Agent.
The article in the General Treaty of Peace referring to the slave
trade, on which Government in 1823 had placed a somewhat restricted
interpretation, was expanded during the period now in question by three
separate treaties concluded with the Trucial Shaikhs.
The first of these, signed in 1838, conferred on British Government
cruisers the right to detain and search, anywhere at sea, vessels belong
ing to the ports of the signatories which might be suspected of carrying
off or embarking slaves ; also the further right of seizing and confiscating
such vessels in event of the suspicion being found correct. It does not
appear that the Shaikh of Umm-al-Qaiwain subscribed this agree
ment.
The second treaty, that of 1839, conceded similar rights of deten
tion and search over a part of the Indian Ocean in regard to vessels
suspected of being engaged in the slave trade, and authorised the
confiscation of the same with their cargoes should they be found carrying
slaves. This treaty contained an express declaration that Somalis were
"Hurr " or free and therefore not liable to enslavement, and it made the
Ihe Shiirjah
Agenuy.
Treaties
for the
Bupptession
of the
slave-trade,
1838, 1839
and 1847,