Word: sheiks
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Miserable little Qatar (pop. 35,000), a sun-seared knuckle of sand and stone jutting into the Persian Gulf, was a latecomer in the Middle East oil boom. But when oil poured out in 1949 and the gold started pouring in, wizened old (69) Sheik Ali bin Abdullah bin Qasim Al Thani had no trouble adjusting his spending habits to those of the other sheiks of Araby...
...Doha, capital of Qatar (pronounced gutter), gaudy pink, green and gold palaces sprang up around the huddle of malodorous mud hovels; one vast pile, reserved for the visiting heads of state, was equipped with air conditioning and window curtains operated by pushbuttons; the outside walls of the Sheik's own palace were studded with bare light bulbs that went on by night even when the Sheik was away, which was more often than...
Cars for Jewels. Discovering Switzerland, Ali took to spending summers near the Alps to beat the heat (around 120° from April to October) at home. To get there, he chartered airliners for himself and his retinue, which was so large that it spilled out of the Sheik's palatial villa on the shores of Lake Geneva into hotels near by, where the damage to furnishings one season amounted to $20,000. And when the cool weather arrived up north, the whole entourage would flee across the Mediterranean to Ali's magnificent mansion on the heights above Beirut...
Foreign merchants awaited his trips with anticipation, for the aging Sheik was a generous man. When Saudi Arabia's King Saud went to Qatar for a royal visit laden with gifts in the form of bags of precious stones, Sheik Ali reciprocated by presenting Saud with 16 automobiles, one with gold fittings...
...East, where Arab government revenues flow from oil royalties. Although Mideast production is up 13% this year, the Arab nations expect heavy revenue losses from the cuts; Iraq says it will lose about $20 million, and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran, being bigger producers, will lose even more. Cried Sheik Abdullah Tariki, Saudi Arabian director of petroleum and mineral affairs: "It is a plot by the oil companies, not even remotely justified by the Russian challenge." When the Arab Petroleum Congress meets in Beirut in October, it is expected to press for a bigger share of the profits, move ahead...