Word: shakhbut
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Dates: during 1963-1963
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Five times a day for the past 30 years, thin, threadbare Sheik Shakhbut bin Sultan faced west, bowed low, and prayed for an oil strike. His realm of Abu Dhabi was desperately in need of some good luck. Up and down the Persian Gulf, the states of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran were rolling in oil wealth. But year after year, Abu Dhabi's 25,000 sq. mi. of sand, date palms and barren offshore islands just got hotter, more humid and windswept than before...
...unprofitable when the Japanese cleverly introduced cultured pearls to the world. There was nothing left to Abu Dhabi but intrigue: of the twelve predecessors of the present sheik, only three died peacefully in their palace beds. The rest were either murdered or violently deposed, usually by close relatives. Sheik Shakhbut took over in 1928 when his uncle was assassinated, after having earlier killed Shakhbut's father who, in turn, had come to power by killing his older brother. Shakhbut is said to have ruled so long and safely only because his own two brothers swore a solemn oath...
Bugs in the Treasury. In his long years of oil-less rule, Sheik Shakhbut ran his country on customs duties of $140,000 a year, fought some desultory wars with his neighbors in Sharja and Dubai, and lived quietly in his mud-walled palace on an offshore island. He installed an air conditioner in his bedroom but seldom used it because he disliked the noise. He also put in a flush toilet and a pump to supply it with water; sewage disposal was simply a pipe jutting out from the palace wall. Nearly every day, the sheik sat cross-legged...
What delights Shakhbut is the traditional life of his people. "The thing that pleases me most," he says, "is hunting for bustards with our falcons. It's tremendous to see the falcon fighting the bustard and killing it. Each falcon has its own special owner and refuses to hunt for anyone else." The sheik is also a connoisseur of camel's milk-his only drink-and can tell by the milk's taste what the camel has been eating and where it was in the desert. For the best milk, he explains, "we feed camels...