Al-Thani Family's Qatar History Revisited: Part 1

As the 2017 World Almanac and Book of Facts noted, "military ties" of the U.S. government with the Al-Thani absolute monarchical government in Qatar "have been expanding" and "Camp As-Sayliyah, a base near Doha" in Qatar, "served as a command center for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, March 2003." In addition, "a 10-year defense cooperation agreement" between the Democratic Obama administration and the Al-Thani regime was signed on December 10, 2013. Yet most people in the United States know little about the history of Qatar during the last few hundred years. For example:

Were it not for the support it received, historically, from the UK imperialist and Ottoman Turkish imperialist governments after 1860, the Al-Thani family might have not become the family which has monopolized political and economic power within Qatar since the late 19th-century. As Georgia State University Professor of History Allen J. Fromherz's 2012 book, Qatar: A Modern History recalled:

"...It could be said that the current power of Al-Thani family...has no fundamental historical precedent outside of British interference...The British and Ottoman powers...were interested in legitimizing Al-Thani rule and ignoring or sidelining the rival claims of other tribes..Qatar is ruled by Al-Thani family...This was not always the case...The power of Al-Thani of Qatar is relatively young. The treaty of 1868 between Muhammad bin Thani and Britain...was the first formal recognition of a Sheikh of Qatar. Until the central prominence of Al-Thani had been established by the treaty the Qatar Peninsula lacked a cohesive independent centre...There was simply no known tradition of monarchy or dynastic successor in Qatar before the treaty of 1868 between Muhammad bin Thani and the British Colonel Pelly...

"Before Muhammad bin Thani consolidated his position in the 1850s, several other tribes and prominent men were the leaders of Bidas (Doha). As even the British acknowledged in several reports, Al-Thani were not always considered the representatives of Qatar...Al Thani did not, according to [Assistant to the India Viceroy Lord Curzon J.] Lorimer, have a deep historic claim to power...Indeed, if authority in Qatar were determined simply by which tribe had been there the longest continuously, power would legitimately not be vested in Al-Thani but in Al-Musallam...The ancestor of the current Emir did not arrive in Qatar from the Jabrin Oasis, and subsequently from Kuwait, until the 1750s...

"The power of Al-Thani would not have been nearly as solidified by the end of the 19th century had it not been for Ottoman interference...It was the British Empire that had first recognized Muhammad bin Thani as the leader of Qatar..."

When the UK imperialist government replaced the Ottoman Turkish imperialist government as the dominant imperial power in the Persian Gulf region during World War I, its 1916 Anglo-Qatari Treaty more tightly consolidated the Al-Thani family's political and economic power within Qatar. As the same book also noted:

"...The Anglo-Qatari Treaty...effectively made Al-Thani the sole legal distributor of arms, thereby giving them sole authority over the weapons and means of warfare...The consolidation in the hands of the Sheikh of the right to purchase weapons substantially bolstered his position...The fourth Article virtually hands over all of Qatar's foreign policy to the British government..."

And according to Qatar: A Modern History,  the Al-Thani monarchical dynasty member who was Oatar's emir in 1916, Sheikh Abdallah was, "given the title of Companion of the Most Eminent Order of the British Empire;" while "the 1916 treaty with Abdallah" also "allowed the Anglo-Persian Oil Company [APOC] and the British government to," not surprisingly, "make exclusive claims to potential oil deposits in Qatar."

(end of part 1)