Jassim the Leader: Founder of Qatar Read online

  Nevertheless, owing to the tribe’s connections with Bahrain, Prideaux took the opportunity to visit Jassim at Lusail, to discuss the ‘problem’: the Al bu Aynain tribesmen had appealed to the Ottoman Wali of Basra for protection, sending one of their kinsmen, Ahmad bin Khatan, as an envoy to request that an Ottoman military garrison be established in Wakra. The Wali, Muhurrem Pasha, had written to Jassim asking him to settle the dispute peacefully, but also told the Al bu Aynain that they too should apply to the Mutasarrif of Hasa for assistance against the Al Thani. In the meanwhile, the British consul at Basra learned of the Wali’s interview with the Al bu Aynain’s envoy and warned Muharrem that ‘His Majesty’s Government does not recognise Turkish sovereignty on the Qatari peninsula’ and no Ottoman interference would be allowed in Wakra. The consul, Francis Crow, reminded the Wali that his intervention in the affairs of Wakra was contrary to the Porte’s previous instructions to abolish the mudirate of Wakra and not to interfere there.

  Crow’s note, however, created uproar in Istanbul. On 25 July 1908, the Ottoman Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the British assertion.

  Ottoman sovereignty over the Qatar peninsula definitely exists. Jassim bin Thani, a Qatari citizen, in his official capacity as Qayamaqam appointed by the Sublime Porte, is in charge of the administration of tribes and of ensuring safety and order in the place. He, together, with the naib, his deputy, along with the administrators at Zubara and Udaid and other districts, are on the payroll of the Ottoman State. Jassim affixes his signature on official papers in this official capacity of Qayamaqam of Qatar. A flawless civil administration and the presence of a military power consisting of a battalion and two artillery units in Qatar are sound evidence of Ottoman sovereignty. Abd ul-Rahman Effendi, son of Jassim, appointed administrator to the district of Wakra by decision of the administrative council, is now discharging his duty.

  The British response came quickly. Bahrain was warned that Ahmad bin Khatan and his fellow tribesmen should be censured; their mission to Basra to solicit Ottoman troops for Wakra was highly inappropriate. Henceforth, no Bahraini subject should be permitted an opportunity to ‘carry the grievances of their kinsmen or encourag[e] the latter to represent them to the Turkish authorities or other foreign Governments’. And even though the Wakra ‘crisis’ had been solved thanks to Jassim’s personal intervention, Prideaux wanted to make sure no Ottoman official ever had a pretext to deploy in Wakra again. He anticipated that the tribe might still leave Wakra to avoid tax and further direct confrontation with Abd ul-Rahman. If this happened, the Ottomans, merely by threatening to intervene, would ‘bring the Al Thani to the point of conciliation where the tribesmen would meet them’, thus making good use of the opportunity to increase their authority in the Qatar peninsula. To avert such a possibility, Prideaux had already written to Sheikh Jassim on 30 January 1909, expressing his desire to meet him at Lusail, Abu Dhaluf or Fuwairit.

  Conspicuously absent from the three suggested venues was Doha or Wakra, for fear of attracting Ottoman attention. Agreeing to meet in a month’s time at Lusail, Prideaux was once again informed that the Al bu Aynain problem at Wakra had been solved. He attempted, however, to draw Jassim’s attention to an alleged Turkish plan to assume the administration of the Doha customs. This was unlikely, and the adroit Jassim replied that, even if this were true, the revenue from this source was very meagre, amounting to only 400 rupees a month. Such a revenue was insufficient even to defray the cost of the officials needed to run it. No sooner had Prideaux failed in encouraging Jassim to raise tension on the back of Wakra than the Ottomans attempted to do the very same thing in Wakra itself. With Mahir Pasha’s backing, a thousand members of the Al bu Aynain, headed by Abdullah bin Ali, were encouraged on 5 October 1909 to leave Wakra for Qasr al-Subaih, a town on the mainland about thirty miles north of Qatif which was under Kuwaiti control. Initially Sheikh Mubarak extended all kinds of assistance, including supplying food, but soon came to realise that they were now agents of the Wali of Basra and the Mutasarrif of Hasa, and would remain so until Ibn Saud forced the Ottomans out of eastern Arabia.

  Zakhnuniya

  Despite the mass emigration from Wakra, neither the British nor the Turks were able to find the spark that would ignite a full-scale diplomatic confrontation, though it was as if both sought it. This would change soon. In March 1909, while British attention was focused on the increased trade in arms, Istanbul encouraged the mudir of Uqair to occupy a tiny desert island, which had no permanent population but a broken-down fort, 10 miles to the south of his town. It was called Zakhnuniya. The new spurt of energy was due to the change of government in Istanbul, following the overthrow of Sultan Abd ul-Hamid II by a combination of army officers and young bureaucrats. The revolution was part of what came to be known as the Young Turk movement, the main aim of which was nothing less than the salvation of the Ottoman Empire through restoration of the constitution of 1876, curtailing the power of the Sultan. The revolutionary regime brought a new dynamism to the politics of Arabia and posed, for the last time, as a genuine power with which to be reckoned. The British ambassador in Istanbul, Sir Gerald Lowther, was convinced that more Ottoman naval units would soon be cruising the Gulf as the fleet had been augmented by German-built ships. As the presence of more Ottoman ships in the Gulf would increase Ottoman influence, Lowther advocated sorting out unfinished business in Qatar, the only littoral country which remained outside the British Trucial system of administration, so as to prevent any possible Turkish toehold in the Gulf.

  The island was frequented only by the migratory Dawasir tribe during the winter fishing season. The Bahraini-built fort, where the mudir hoisted the Ottoman flag, was almost in ruins. It had been abandoned for almost forty years. Nevertheless, the mudir claimed the island in the name of the Sultan Mehmed V, a mere puppet of Talaat Pasha – whose distressing policy towards Armenian citizens is still capable of provoking debates in the US and French senates 100 years later. The four soldiers who helped conquer Zakhnuniya told the few Dawasir to be found that they should recognise themselves as Ottoman subjects. The Dawasir men may only have been humble fishermen, but they were no fools and declined to accept the gracious offer of citizenship, arguing that they would most likely lose their possessions in Bahrain if they obliged. Despite this slight shower on his parade, the mudir nonetheless could return home proud to have done his duty. He would have been in no doubt that Britain could not let the ‘invasion’ of Zakhnuniya pass unanswered.

  Sure enough, Britain interpreted events in the most dramatic way possible. Zakhnuniya was claimed by Bahrain, and its occupation each Friday by some day-tripping Turkish patrol raised the question not only of British protection over Bahrain but of the limits of Ottoman jurisdiction on the Qatar coast. It constituted, therefore, no less than a clear breach of the status quo that Britain was determined to maintain. Prideaux proceeded to the island on 18 March, which was a Thursday, to take stock of the situation. But he had arrived a whole day ahead of the weekly invasion force, and so found only one fishing boat on the beach on the west side of the island. He had noticed, however, a flag of suspiciously Ottoman appearance carefully rolled up and fastened tight to a flagpole. From Zakhnuniya, Prideaux proceeded to Hawar island, about one mile off the west coast of Qatar, which had been a dependency of Qatar from time immemorial. Here he found two winter villages consisting of 40 large huts belonging to the Dawasir and under the authority of one Isa bin Ahmad Dawasary – who considered himself independent of both Bahrain and Qatar.

  Keen to prevent any Ottoman attempt at claiming a single Hawar island, Prideaux now urged Bahrain to make a claim just to avoid a Turkish takeover. ‘I strongly deprecate letting the Turks keep Zukhnuniya, as they will then naturally be encouraged to go on to Hawar, but if Shaikh Isa doesn’t want or dare to assert his sovereignty over Hawar we shall be in rather a quandary.’ But Sheikh Isa of Bahrain was not interested and made no such claim, satisfying himself by stating on 30 March 1909 that Zakhnuniya belon
ged to him as his father had built the fort there 50 years ago and his subjects periodically resided there in order to fish. Delighting in Britain’s irritation, the Mutasarrif of Hasa now sent 60 soldiers and four field guns to Khor al-Udaid, which Britain claimed belonged to Abu Dhabi. Jassim had no intention of intervening, content to sit back and allow the Ottomans to extend Qatar’s borders. At one point, Britain considered landing Indian troops. But events elsewhere in the Gulf would once again change the situation. Before long, the Ottomans backed down, withdrew their mudir from Udaid and agreed to abandoning Zakhnuniya. Istanbul had a lot more to gain from a new power entering the Gulf for the first time. German power had arrived.

  Qatar achieves autonomy

  While Nostradamus enthusiasts will no doubt find that the French apothecary had in fact written a quatrain predicting Germany would actually help bring about the last stage of Qatar’s journey to independence, Jassim and his fellow countrymen were blissfully unaware of the Anatolian Railway Company and its grand designs. Established in 1888 by two German financiers, Herr Kaula of the Wurtembergische Bank and Dr George Siemens, the director of the Deutsche Bank, the Anatolian Railway Company planned to construct a route from Istanbul to Ankara. Their experience in the United States, where they had personally witnessed the opening of the Northern Pacific network by the former president Ulysses Grant in 1883, had inspired them. Within in a decade they had the capital and the political clout that would allow Baron von Marschall von Bieberstien, the German ambassador to the Sublime Porte and staunch nationalist, to persuade the Turks to extend the line all the way to Baghdad.

  The scheme’s main objective was to exploit the Ottoman markets as an outlet for its own rapidly growing industry. The Ottomans were equally keen as it would enable them to supply their eastern colonies with far greater ease and speed. But Britain was very concerned. It was Von Marschall who had declared in the Reichstag that the maintenance of the independence of the Boer republics in South Africa was a German interest. He was also an advocate of a strong naval policy for Germany and exponent of Berlin’s resolute opposition to any practical discussion of the question of restriction of armaments. He was exactly the kind of man who would recognise the value of extending the railway to Kadhamah in Kuwait, the best harbour in the entire Gulf and the most suitable place for a military base. The British were in a difficult position; London still had not made public its secret Trucial agreement with Kuwait signed almost a decade earlier.

  London came up with two policy directives to thwart German expansion. First, it started buying up huge tracts of land along the Kuwait coast, and secondly, it prepared to come clean about its secret deal with Kuwait and so clear up who governed what in the Gulf. On 29 July 1911, the British Foreign Office informed Haqqi Pasha, the ambassador in London, that Kuwait was in fact under British protection and proposed that ownership of the railway should be split into 20 per cent shares for the Turks, Britain, France, Germany and Russia. The letter also urged Istanbul to recognise Britain’s absolute right to police the Gulf, and thus the Porte should renounce its claims to Qatar. Negotiations began, but stopped over the Agadir crisis, or Panthersprung, off the coast of Morocco. This was the first time Germany would challenge British naval superiority, in July 1911. Two months later and the Ottomans suffered the outbreak of the Tripolitan war, when their troops would be the first in history to experience bombs dropped from enemy aircraft and dirigibles. When negotiations restarted, Qatar was the one sticking point, and the Porte suggested joint jurisdiction. But London would not accept. Sir Arthur McMahon, the Foreign Secretary to the government of India, wrote most passionately on the subject. ‘Turkish ownership in Qatar will give them for the first time in history a foothold in the Arabian Gulf with many potential possibilities of development, not only in the interior of Arabia but in regard to the Gulf itself, which will in time enable her to claim the right of intervention in Gulf matters of which we desire to retain a monopoly.’

  After much horse-trading that lasted until 7 April 1913, the Ottomans agreed to withdraw their troops from Qatar entirely, on condition that the peninsula remained autonomous. The government of India also cleared the way for Qatari autonomy, stating that the Turkish proposal was acceptable on condition that the autonomy should mean ‘complete renunciation of all claims to suzerainty on the part of Turkey’ and Britain should have the right to conclude necessary agreements with Qatar to ‘secure maritime peace or suppression of illicit arms traffic’. Britain also agreed, once more, to stop Bahrain attempting to annex any part of the peninsula. The agreement held even after Ibn Saud conquered Hasa province in May 1913, though it meant that London and Istanbul had come to an arrangement without any regard to Riyadh, which was now in the forefront of Gulf politics. (The Turkish garrison at Bida found itself in a sea of hostility, and would end its days in ignominy. Most soldiers would desert, escaping to the Persian coast. The last few officers and men left when HMS Pyramus arrived on 20 August 1915 during the First World War.)

  It fell to British political agent Sir Percy Cox to inform Jassim on the particulars of the Anglo-Ottoman Convention in June 1913. Cox had planned to ask the Sheikh of Qatar permission for a British agent – who would be Muslim if he preferred – to be allowed to settle at Bida, along with a new Banyan community. Some of Cox’s requests were more demanding, such as a promise from Qatar to permit only British or Turkish officials to correspond with him, in a bid to keep Ibn Saud and possibly even the Kaiser at arm’s length. But it is fair to guess Jassim would have welcomed the agreement as a realisation of his life’s work – Qatar’s independence.

  But the 88-year-old Jassim passed away peacefully in his sleep on 17 July 1913. Prideaux had once described him as the ‘patriarch of ancient times’, but in reality he was the father of a new nation-state. The towns of his birth, which had almost been seasonal, were firmly established. The tribal and sedentary communities were fused irrevocably. The first purpose-built roads and schools had been established. The Ottomans had been defeated and pushed out. The peninsula’s borders were recognised by the greatest powers of the day. Qatar was a nation-state and the authority of its next ruler was established and accepted.

  Qatar’s total independence would last three years. In 1916, Jassim’s son would embrace the protection afforded under the Trucial system. Abdullah did not share his father’s relationship with Ibn Saud, who was looking ever more closely at Qatar. Britain had played on his anxieties, with the Resident exclaiming: ‘I have not a doubt that Ibn Saud could eat up Qatar in a week and I am rather afraid that he may do so.’ Nevertheless, when Jassim was buried at Lusail, it was Qatari sand which was poured into his grave. He was buried then as the father of a nation, and is honoured as such today, and will be for ever.

  CONCLUSION

  QATAR LOST a great leader and a great man on 17 July 1913. In his lifetime, Jassim had such an invigorating effect on his own society that it was easy to forget what daunting historic tasks he had set himself. He sought and succeeded in forging an independent nation where none had ever existed. He did this in the face of an ever expanding imperial world, while freeing his own people from disunity and insecurity. When asked sarcastically by a petty British official whether any other Bedouin expended so much energy in opposition to the British, Jassim replied that no two Bedouins’ combined efforts could equal his own.

  His was a cause hard to accomplish and heavy with risk. Yet it was pursued with selflessness, and an almost naive openness and simplicity. On 3 May 1881, Jassim wrote to Britain’s Political Resident in the Gulf, stating: ‘Qatar is not the property of anyone, except of him who inhabits its land and guarantees its peace … we and the people of Qatar have more right to it [than you].’ He was also capable of the most personal sacrifices, even divorcing his wife, Jafla – the mother of his son Abd ul-Rahman – in a successful bid to settle a blood feud between the Al bu Kuwara and Amamara tribes. (Jafla was of the Al bu Kuwara.)

  In the terrible weeks following the murder of his so
n by tribesmen from Abu Dhabi, it was no accident that both Abd ul-Rahman bin Faisal and Ibn Sabhan of the Rashid chose to join him from hundreds of miles away in his search for retribution. He was well liked; even his enemies held a grudging respect. Whether for his obvious affection for his grandchildren and his farm, the annual family retreats into the desert or, as copies of his will demonstrate, support of charities and education around the Arabian peninsula, there was a genuine and popular affection too. The crowds that gathered in Bida to welcome Jassim home following his year in a Bahraini prison were unprecedented. As he unveiled the Qatar-red flag for the first time, Jassim’s ride out of Bida with a cavalry unit to face one of the most feared warriors in eastern Arabia is the stuff of Hollywood film. Even Jassim’s enemies recognised his strength and willingness to raise himself above tribal disputes. Thus it was that the Naim came to him for help when their leader had been imprisoned by the Al Khalifa in Wakra.

  It is hard to deny that Jassim’s life was providential, when we look at what he achieved in his 35 years in power. Qatar cannot be said to have had a national economy, but the standard of living in 1910 was a major improvement on that of the 1870s. Although it would be left to Jassim’s son for Qatar to see its first paved roads and telegraph wires, tribesmen and trader alike accepted that they belonged to something bigger than the tribes and towns of their forefathers.