A confrontation over the waters of the Gulf .. This is how the Qawasim crushed the myth of Great Britain for decades

In the late fifteenth century, with the victory of the Spaniards and Portugal over the Muslims and their expulsion from Andalusia, the naval, military and land power inherited by these empires began to compete for the discovery of the New World, and also for the purpose of discovering a new sea route away from the heart of the Middle East that they ruled at that time. Two powers harbor intense hostility towards the West, especially with the catastrophe of Andalusia, the Ottoman Empire in the northeast of the Mediterranean, and the Mamluk State in the southeast of the same sea. For this reason, the Spanish and Portuguese exploration movement became active, amid intense competition between the two groups.

If the Spanish were able to discover the Americas and immediately began implementing the Spanish colonial project to acquire the treasures and gold of these virgin areas, the Portuguese succeeded at the same time in discovering the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa, and then from the beginning of the sixteenth century they became permanently present in The south of the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Sea of ​​Oman, even India and Southeast Asia, and they were able to establish some Portuguese trading colonies in southern India, and throughout the sixteenth century they were the cause of non-stop attacks on the Arab Gulf regions in Oman, the Emirates, Bahrain and present-day eastern Saudi Arabia.

At the same time, they were able to exploit these victories and geographical expansions in controlling the wealth of these regions, either through expanding their trade or through plunder and blitzkrieg, and for this reason, the Dutch and the French entered the field of competition since the end of that century, and soon established their own companies in The regions of India and Southeast Asia used to use the same policy as the Portuguese before them.

When Britain was able to crush the Spanish fleet at the famous Armada site in the North Atlantic near Britain in 1588, and established it as a rising naval power, it developed a plan to control the huge commercial and economic gains that its competitors achieved from the Portuguese, French and Dutch in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Gulf. Britain became the dominant colonial power in the region.

British East India Company

This is what prompted Britain to establish the East India Company on the authority of Queen Elizabeth I in 1600, to become the spearhead in the fierce competition for the East trade in India, China and the South Asian regions, and then the English set out towards the treasures of the East Asian with much enthusiasm, planning, and little morals. and pronouns.

The new British company soon made huge profits from its trade and the privileges it had acquired under the patronage of Britain's kings and queens, and while the company's preferred method of establishing control over the market was negotiation, it was "willing to use both force and fraud if the need were to be made". As Nick Robbins says in his book "The Company That Changed the World"[1].

By the eighteenth century, the British East India Company had become a warlike organization that did not care about the blood of the Indians, and fiercely defended its interests by legitimate and illegitimate ways. It engaged in fierce battles against the Dutch, French and Portuguese, and then intervened with every possible military force in the political affairs of the Islamic Mughal state throughout The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries AD, and it killed rulers who were opposed to it, and supported others who supported it and helped it in the commercial and military control of their country, most notably the Bengali leader “Mir Jaafar” (Jafar the traitor as it means in Bengali), who was recognized by the English as ruler of Bengal within the year 1760[2].

Because of widespread bribery and corruption in management, the East India Company was forced to seek a loan from the British government, which used this opportunity to reform the company and bring it directly to the British government.

Then Britain decided to appoint a general administrative governor for India, so the last quarter of the eighteenth century came only and the Indian subcontinent was in complete submission to the British, who secured their existence by prevarication and trade, then monopoly, then eliminating local and international competitors, and eventually the military occupation of the peninsula. The Indian continent, with its wealth and economic, agricultural and commercial treasures, has always been considered the jewel of the British crown.

The British were able to neutralize the danger of the merchants and ships of Oman and Bahrain through a malicious policy that played on intimidating the danger of the commonalities on both sides.

The problem of the British India Company was the honorable competition with the local and regional merchants of the Arabs in particular. When the British East India Company obtained its first commercial concession in Persia in 1616, it failed to compete with the local merchants in the Persian Gulf, and at the end of the eighteenth century trade declined This company has greatly deteriorated, and suffered huge losses.

John Lorimer, an expert in the affairs of the Persian Gulf, attributed what happened to the British East India Company to several reasons, the most important of which are the increased piracy activity of the Ka’ab tribe and the sheikhs of the region, the increased activity of the Qawasim and their threats to the English, the outbreak of the plague in Iraq in 1773, and the Persian occupation Basra (1776-1779), and the outbreak of civil war in Persia in 1779. Lorimer agrees with another historian familiar with Gulf affairs, John Kelly, who says in this regard: “What actually happened is that The role of the company has changed from an active participation in trade in the Gulf to a mere protection of local trade in India” [3].

In light of this, the attempts of the British East India Company to rectify its situation and control trade in this region directly required the removal or weakening of the local commercial competitors, led by the Omani merchants, the inhabitants of Bahrain and the Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah. The British were able to neutralize the danger of the merchants and ships of Oman and Bahrain. Through a malicious policy that played on intimidating the danger of the Qawasim on both sides, they began to launch a propaganda campaign against the Qawasim to make them appear as pirates, and the areas in which the Qawasim lived in Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, Umm al-Quwain, Ajman, Hamriyah and Jazirat al-Hamra were called "the pirate coast".

It is noteworthy that the influence of the Qawasim at that time in the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth century extended to the areas located today on the Iranian coast overlooking the Arabian Gulf [4].

Qawasim and the confrontation of the British

Historians are divided about the origin of the Qawasim. Some see that the Qawasim is a name that goes back to the tribe of Bani Ghafer in Najd and has migrated since the seventeenth century to the coasts of Oman, while others believe that the Qawasim descended from the Arabs of the Al-Hawala tribe, which was residing on the eastern coast of the Arabian Gulf, which is now located. Under Iranian rule, while the ruler of Sharjah, Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, confirmed in a small letter entitled “The Decisive Saying in the Lineage and History of Qawasm,” through detailed family afforestation, that the lineage of his Qawasim tribe goes back to the family of Al-Bayt from the offspring of Hassan bin Ali bin Abi Talib, may God be pleased with him. about them [5].

Whatever the lineage, the documents of the British archives dating back to the eighteenth century AD confirm that the name “Qawasim” became a flag on each of the Qawasim tribes, in addition to the allied tribes in the regions of Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and even the entire Omani coast, and perhaps this great influence is what made them At the forefront of the resistance to the British presence in the Persian Gulf at the time [6].

Maritime trade was the only source of livelihood for the Qawasim on barren land unsuitable for agriculture, and their trade with the ports of India, in particular, was of great importance. From their source of livelihood, foreign competition for trade has been a feature of life for a long time, and the local population was adapted to living in these conditions, but the English at that time introduced a new amendment, they required that all ships engaged in trade in the Persian Gulf carry English permits, This indicates that they considered themselves masters of these waters, as the historian Mikhen Leonovich mentions in his important book "The Qawasim Alliance and Britain's Policy in the Persian Gulf" [7].

Placing charges against the Qawasim was part of the intended and systematic policy of the English, as the British East India Company was adopting this policy, and it was demanding to "repress the pirates", and the English agents and residents were repeating this claim strongly behind it, and working to confirm this lie in order to find a pretext for the use of sailors and ships In his previous book and through an investigation of all the maritime events that took place by the Qawasim in the Persian Gulf at the time, Meegen confirms that the Qawasim did not participate in all those events that accused them of piracy, and that the events in which they participated were nothing but self-defense from the real pirates The English.

In the book "Guide to the Gulf" of the historian and employee of the British colonial government of India John Gordon Lorimer (d. 1914), we find a chapter devoted to "the emergence and suppression of piracy" between 1778 to 1820, the year in which the British destroyed the Qawasim fleet and imposed on them the armistice agreement that The English made the true masters of the area.

Lorimer describes the region as described by his country Britain's propaganda as "the coast of piracy", and annually details the "aggressions" carried out by the Qawasim against British merchant ships or the ships of allied countries in the region at the time, saying: "On May 18, 1797, a fleet of Qawasim boats attacked Towards the coast of Rams the ship Basin and seized it despite the British flag being raised above it, then took it to Ras Al Khaimah, where it was held for two days before being released by the order of the Sheikh.

Lorimer - the British colonial employee in this region - considers that "it was not possible to obtain compensation for this insult to the British flag, and thus leaving the Qawasim unpunished has yielded its natural fruit" [8].

By this, he intends to increase the reprisals carried out by the Qawasim fleets against the British merchant ships.

Qawasim in the shadow of the first Saudi state

At the end of the eighteenth century AD, the first Saudi state (1744-1818) had managed to extend its influence and control over eastern Arabia in Qatif and Al-Ahsa, and then extended in the Buraimi oasis, which is divided today between the Emirati Al Ain and the Omani Buraimi, which was taken by the Wahhabis under the leadership of Mutlaq Al-Mutairi and his forces A stable and attractive base to increase their influence and extend their religious and political authority and their military movements to both Oman and the Omani coast "Emirates", and after many military confrontations, they were able to force the Qawasim to follow the Wahhabi call by approximately 1800.

Since then, the Qawasim attacks against British aggressions have been given a religious overtone, and the attack on British warships and merchants has become a confrontation against the British Christian enemies of religion. As a result of this new policy, the Qawasim extended their naval activity to the Indian Ocean where their ships appeared off the Malabar coast north of Bombay, India for the first time. In the year 1808, the Qawasim used to send one-fifth of the spoils they obtained from their naval operations to the Saudis to confirm their belief in the Wahhabi call and their subordination to the House of Saud[9].

The Qawasim attacks against British ships in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea expanded, and they were able to seize many British ships, and by 1809 the Qawasim fleet in Ras al-Khaimah on the Arab coast of the Gulf and Linjah on the Persian coast amounted to 630 large ships and 810 smaller ships, while the number of The men working on these ships are 8,700 men, on whom the leader of the Qawasim relied in demanding payment from the British government in India in order to allow the British ships to pass in the Gulf freely, and for this reason Britain prepared an armed naval campaign with 13 warships loaded with artillery and 1500 soldiers and officers of their campaign One of the troop carriers, and the mission of the campaign was to destroy the naval power of the Qawasim and force them to conclude a treaty in which the conditions of Britain were imposed [10].

The last stage and dependency on Britain

In November 1809, this British military campaign launched a fierce attack on Ras al-Khaimah, which lasted for two whole days, in which the Qawasim showed fierce resistance. And their high maneuvers that managed to save their ships in the deep bays and bays, however, as soon as the year 1812 began, the Qasimi ships returned to attacking the British ships.

In the years 1813 and 1814, several ships flying the British flag were captured near the shores of India[11].

In the period between 1811-1818, the first Saudi state entered into an open and dangerous confrontation against the military campaigns of Muhammad Ali Pasha coming from Egypt, and this campaign culminated in the entry of Diriyah and the elimination of the first Saudi state in 1818. Despite this, the Qawasim attacks on British ships It did not stop, but continued even after the fall of the Saudi state, which confirms the belief of al-Qawasim in the importance, and perhaps inevitability, of confrontation with the British.

In the face of these attacks that undermined Britain’s trade, reputation and influence in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, the British government decided to send a large military campaign to destroy the Qawasim force once and for all, and in November 1819 this campaign was launched from Bombay in India, led by General “William Grant Ker” (William) GrantKeir) with the specific aim of destroying the Qawasim fleet in Ras Al Khaimah, whether commercial or military, then destroying the ships, bases and ports of Al Qasimia in Umm Al Quwain, Rams, Hamriyah, Al Hamra Island, Ajman and Sharjah, and then attacking the Qawasim ports that were under their hands at the time on the Persian-Iranian side such as Mughah He went and left, and the general was given the power to make appropriate political decisions.

The number of land forces that participated in the campaign reached 3,547 European and Indian soldiers, in addition to 15 frigates and a large warship armed with dozens of cannons and 18 ships to transport forces and other leaders. In December, the English cannons launched their bombardment of Ras al-Khaimah for seven continuous days, and with fierce and valiant resistance from the Qawasim, but because their ammunition ran out, and the impact of the English cannons, which dropped many dead, the Qawasim withdrew from Ras al-Khaimah, which was subjected to great looting and sabotage, and seized The British have 80 ships.

After negotiations between the two sides, the British imposed a treaty on the leaders of Sharjah, Ras al-Khaimah, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ajman, Umm al-Quwain and Al-Hamra Island[12].

The Ras al-Khaimah agreement was signed on January 20, 1820, and it became the basis on which the British political and economic hegemony rested on the countries of the Persian Gulf, and through it Britain secured its empire in India. in destroying the power of the Naval Qawassim and forcing them to submit to their authority in the end;

It is to be credited to the Qawasim that for decades they sought to resist the foreign presence in their region with unparalleled valor.

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