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Qatar The Merchant Families
The merchant sector in Qatar differed from other gulf
Arab
countries before the exploitation of oil in its small size
(Doha
was an insignificant port compared with ports in Kuwait,
Bahrain,
or Dubayy), in the absence of foreigners (the Indians were
forced
out in the late 1800s, leaving Qatar the only gulf amirate
without Indians until the 1950s), and in the dominant role
of a
single family, the Al Thani. Although there were merchants
before
oil, there was no merchant class as in Dubayy or Kuwait.
Two
important families before oil were the Darwish and the Al
Mana,
who made their living through trade, pearling, and
smuggling and
who competed for favor with the ruler. The Darwish and the
Al
Mana maintained their influence by trading loans and
advice to
the shaykh for monopolies and concessions.
With the arrival of Petroleum Development (Qatar), the
Darwish reaped huge profits through their monopoly on
supplying
labor, housing, water, and goods to the oil company. This
monopoly ended, however, when workers, small merchants,
and antiBritish Qataris used Abd Allah Darwish, the patriarch of
the
Darwish family, as one of several convenient targets for
an
antiregime strike in 1956. By this time, however, with oil
revenues growing, the shaykh could remove himself from
financial
dependence on the merchants, who lost a measure of
political
influence.
A series of citizenship and commercial laws promulgated
in
the 1960s helped to channel economic benefits in the
direction of
Qatari nationals in general and the merchants and ruling
family
in particular. Only Qataris were permitted to own land,
for
example, and companies were required to be at least 51
percent
Qatari owned. In the 1970s, some laws were enacted that
worked
against merchant interests by limiting prices and profits.
As they had before the discovery of oil, the Al Thani
continued engaging in trade and in other enterprises.
Sometimes
they used their family connections to win lucrative
contracts for
themselves or for firms in which they had more common
business
partners, such as the Jaidah, the Attiyah, and the Mannai
families.
Data as of January 1993
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