Word: turki
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Saud claims Buraimi as part of Saudi Arabia; and Britain, as "protector" of Trucial Oman, claims it for a Trucial Oman Sheik and the Sultan of Muscat. Since the summer of 1952, the claimants had fought their siege with angry words and glowering looks. Ibn Saud sent Emir Turki Ibn Utaishan to occupy Buraimi, supposedly in answer to an appeal for protection by the villagers. Britain countered by stationing three young officers and a batch of Trucial Oman levies in a string of Beau Geste mud forts sprinkled around the oasis, to harass and starve the Emir into retreat (TIME...
Last August a camel caravan lumbered into Buraimi bearing 40 Saudi officials, clerks and armed men headed by a doughty Arabian named Emir Turki Ibn Utaishan. They started wooing the bewildered inhabitants and chiefs with lavish feasts, silver riyals and sweet talk. Immediately, the Trucial Sheik of Abu Dhabi and the Sultan of Muscat appealed to their "protector" Great Britain to repel the "invaders...
Britain obliged; a thin red line of British-officered Oman levies marched up and set up camel-hair tents encircling the oasis; London sent a note demanding Turki's withdrawal. At this point, Washington, the perennial "third party" in the Middle East, stepped in, negotiated a secret "standstill" agreement. It lasted barely a few months: soon Saudi Arabia denounced Britain's "provocative actions" and Britain announced "complete freedom of action...
Palmorston Style. Fed up with the past humiliations in Iran and Egypt, the British were putting on a fine old-fashioned Palmerstonian display of Empire. R.A.F. fighters buzzed up and down the 750-mile-long camel tracks running into Saudi Arabia, searching out reinforcements bound for Turki. Jeep-borne Oman levies roamed everywhere, terrifying camel caravans. From a 40-foot-high Beau Geste-like tower of mud-brick reinforced with palm logs-containing storerooms for food, water and ammunition, and slotted for rifles-a young British major named Peter MacDonald was happily running the show...
...shot has been fired. In bleak, besieged Buraimi, Turki still holds out; he has 800 bags of rice, enough for many meals. Around him circle a busy band of British. Happiest of all are the local sheiks. They figure that all this excitement means oil. One of them has already decided how to spend his first oil royalty check-on a fancy new airplane...