From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates [antikvár]

Note on TransliterationThe author and the publisher had hoped to be able to spare the reader the inconvenience of diacritical marks over and under Arabic words and names. But it is even more important to render, in particular the less well-known tribal names, into English in such a way that the Arabic-speaking reader can reproduce the original version. Because for an English d, t, th, s and h there is more than one Arabic letter and sound, one has to resort to dashes and dots or a combination of two letters in order to accommodate the full range of the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet.The system employed throughout this book makes use of the familiar two-letter combination for rendering the letters Tha , Kha ?. , Shin J , Dha j> and Ghain . They are th, kh, sh, dh and gh, thus reducing the occurrence of diacritical marks. All other letters and the sign Hamza are transliterated as in the Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic by Hans Wehr. The reader is referred to the complete list of the Arabic and English letters on page xxi.With hesitation the author decided not to use vowels other than a, i, and u, even if the pronunciation is in some instances much nearer to o or e. The choice of these three most distinctive vowels is a common compromise, also used in Wehr's Dictionary, to reproduce the three signs Fatha, Kasra and Damma which are part of the Arabic script although they are hardly ever written. However, if and when these signs are added in their places above and below consonants of an Arabic text, this process has to follow the rules of Arabic grammar. But colloquial Arabic, regionally coined words, local adaptations of foreign languages (particularly Farsi, Urdu and Hindi) and local place names and tribal names are not always governed by these rules. In some instances there may be some difference of opinion as toxixForewordBy Sir Geoffrey Arthur, K.C.M.G., formerly Political ResidentWhen the United Arab Emirates was established as a state at the end of 1971 it had few admirers in the West: it was incomplete, it looked loose and ramshackle, and it was bornso said the facile commentators of the dayunder the ill star of British patronage. It has since acquired a host of fair-weather friends, but I do not recollect that a single special correspondent of a major Western newspaperlet alone a politician or a statesmantook the trouble to attend the ceremony of its formation.Those who were present on that December day were perhaps more optimistic than their distant critics, who could not forget the collapse, a few years earlier, of the South Arabian Federation, and who noticed the superficial similarities, but not the deeper differences, between the Aden Protectorates and the Shaikhdoms of the Trucial Coast. It was not the British who created the United Arab Emirates: it was the Rulers themselves, and in particular the Rulers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, supported by a few trusted advisers of unusual ability. The new state thus attracted the support, and not the hostility, of the other Arab countries. It had no important internal enemies.As Dr Heard-Bey points out, it had two further advantages: it was blessed with well-established natural leaders and endowed with great wealth. It is perhaps fortunate that at the time of the formation of the Federation, that wealth was not spread evenly among the Emirates. It was concentrated, but the hands that held it were exceptionally generous. The attractions of the Federation were manifest to all.xxiv