Word: sheiking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Helping Hand. Sheik Hamed, who was primarily interested in hunting bustard with his falcons, was willing to give his "adviser" a virtually free hand. With Hamed's backing, Belgrave packed off the imported cops and established an effective police force. Only once has Belgrave felt it necessary to give his red-turbaned cops a hand. During an and-Jewish riot in 1947, the 6-ft. 4-in., 200-lb. adviser dispersed the mob pillaging a Jewish home by standing at the top of a flight of stairs and bowling the mob leaders back down the stairs into the arms...
Belgrave's wife, to the horror of Bahrein's purdah-loving elders but with a behind-the-scenes assist from Sheik Hamed's No. i wife, won permission to open a school for girls. In a series of bitter struggles with the usurers and dhow owners, who had long run the Bahrein waterfront, Belgrave reorganized the pearl-diving industry and gradually won Bahrein a lucrative reputation as the only honest transshipment port in the Middle East...
...turning point came in 1932, when Standard Oil of California hit oil on Bahrein. Belgrave persuaded the Sheik to take a step unprecedented for an Arab ruler: to split Bahrein's oil income ($8,500,000 in 1955) three ways−one-third to the Sheik, one-third to "the people" and one-third to a national reserve fund. The consequence is that while the oil wealth of neighboring Arab countries has often been squandered on Cadillacs, harems and princely pub-crawls, Bahrein's oil has helped to propel a whole people into the 20th century...
...success in Bahrein had made him one of the most influential and respected men in the Middle East and Bahrein a shining example of what Western techniques and money could do for backward nations. In gratitude for Belgrave's achievements, Queen Elizabeth knighted him in 1952. Sheik Hamed's son and successor, Sulman bin Hamed al Khalifah, told a visitor: "We consider Mr. Belgrave to be not an Englishman but a Bahreini. He is my hand...
...very successes Sir Charles had conjured up a genie he could not control. Soon after World War II, Bahrein's emerging middle class, merchants who owed much of their prosperity to Belgrave, began to agitate for "democratic reforms." The Sheik, on Belgrave's advice, refused to make any major concessions...