Keywords

1 Introduction

In 1651, Thomas Hobbes used the metaphor of the Leviathan, a giant sea snake of overwhelming power, to refer to the state. The frontispiece that serves as cover of the treaty, designed by Abraham Bosse following guidance of Hobbes himself, depicts the figure of Sovereignty as a gigantic man with a sword and a scepter guarding a peaceful city, Fig. 34.1. The body of this figure is formed by an uncountable number of individuals, showing that the Hobbesian idea of Sovereignty was that of voluntary transfer of power to the sovereign. One of the central elements of Hobbes’s theory is, in this fashion, the social contract between the people and the sovereign, which he described as the founding element of the Leviathan:

I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Action in like manner. This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a Common-wealth, in latine Civitas. This is the Generation of the great Leviathan. (Hobbes 1968[1651], p. 227)

In the Gulf, the social contract between rulers and ruled is largely defined in tribal terms. Previous works acknowledge the importance of tribal institutions. Fromherz (2012) shows the importance of persistent informal tribal networks in Qatar, Al Qassemi (2012) presents the importance of tribalism in a contemporary setup, Herb (1999) explains the stability of the Gulf monarchies because of their dynastic system, based on tribal affiliation, and cooke (2014) examines the cultural manifestations of traditional tribal forms of expression in a capitalist and technological context. This particularity might as well provide some insight to the question posed by Anderson (1991), which has led to a great deal of research on the Khaleeji political system: why are the Arab monarchies, and specifically, the Khaleeji monarchies, so resilient? (Fig. 34.1).

Fig. 34.1
A photograph of a crowned man's giant torso looms large over a mountainous terrain. He holds a sword and a scepter in either hand. The man's attire is an assemblage of numerous people.

Cover illustration of the original edition of the Leviathan (1651), by Abraham Bosse. It shows the allegory of Sovereignty, whose clothing is formed by all the individuals agreeing to give their power to a common entity. British Library

Full size image

The institution of the majlis is a central constituent of the Qatari form of power, a central element of a Khaleeji Leviathan, because of its relation to the tribal social fabric of the Gulf, the way it provides legitimacy to the ruler, and ultimately, its relation to the British colonial system. The majlis evolved from being an institution that was part of a segmentary society to be incorporated into a central bureaucratic state, and the role it played in the political transformation of the Indian Ocean world during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was largely a consequence of colonial policy.

The Qatari peninsula has maintained a longstanding peripheral status in a number of trade and cultural networks. It has been on the periphery of the British Raj, the Indian Ocean world, the dynamics of the Arabian Peninsula, the Ottoman empire, and the wider Middle East. It constitutes, therefore, a premier example of “border thinking” (Mignolo, 1999), questioning the epistemologies behind the geographies of power in which it has been placed, potentially providing valuable information about the political systems in the whole region.

This region, the Indian Ocean and the Gulf as part of it, was experiencing a crucial transformation that started around the last third of the nineteenth century and that had a profound impact on the concepts of sovereignty and identity of its dwellers. Sovereignty became increasingly centralized while identity started to be identified with territory, in a gradual and colonial mimesis of the nation state, an innovation that has been described “as colonialism’s most poisoned legacy” (Bose, 2009, p. 25). Similarly, a new configuration of identities resulted in a performance increasingly in line with these central authorities, where the rather fluid and cosmopolitan nature of the Indian Ocean met an alien form of central sovereignty. Increasingly during the nineteenth century, identities started to be bound by land, and notions of diaspora and belonging were transformed in a region in which every port city counted with important contingents of Arabs, Persians, Baluchis, Banyans, or Zanzibaris, among others. This cosmopolitanism also relied on a concept of identity fundamentally defined by mobility and genealogy, often transcending the limits of land (Ho, 2006).

Throughout the Indian Ocean, centralization was achieved with indigenous institutions and performances of power. In this sense, Cohn highlights how in Victorian India Mughal rituals were reframed under British rule to shift from a performance of incorporation to become a performance of subordination (Cohn, 1992). The Gulf was part of this transformation, too. While the British had been present in the region through a series of mostly maritime treaties during the central years of the nineteenth century, their new ways of policing the Indian Ocean transformed their relationship with the Gulf. From the British side, this new paradigm toward the region gained momentum with the visit of George Curzon to the Gulf in 1903 (Bose, 2009, pp. 39–41). Since then, the process of centralization sped up, and using mechanisms that were largely a transformation of indigenous mechanisms.

In Qatar, the network of consultation procedures that were well embedded in the tribal society of the Gulf served as a vehicle that prompted the Al Thani to the full control of the Qatari peninsula and a new relationship with the rest of the tribes in the area. This process followed a similar pattern in other parts of the Gulf, with the Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi, the Al Qassemi in Sharjah and Ras al-Khaima, or the Al Khalifa in Bahrain. But if the majlis and assorted consultation practices were already in place before the British grip on power intensified, what was the change that made it become a vehicle for centralization?

2 What is the Majlis System? Semi-Private Spaces and Politics in Qatar

Studying the origins of the Dhofar revolution in Oman during the 1960s and 1970s, Abdel Razzaq Takriti argues that British officials were pushing the Sultan to lighten up his absolutist form of government and incorporate elements of the “so-called traditional Arab leadership” in order to contain the revolts in the south of the country:

Advantageously for Britain and the rulers connected to it, the majlis was not an abstracted space of collective inclusion (such as parliament for example): it was a grounded physical space, constrained by actual and symbolic walls. It was a place of rigid particularity - action and discourse took place on behalf of delineated units (such as the tribes and the merchants), precluding the potential rise of universal notions that could dangerously encompass the entirety of a population in a given territory (especially ‘the people’). It was a system held together by a chain of leadership, linking tribes, tribal coalitions, ruling families, rulers, Political Agents, Political Residents, and ultimately Whitehall. (Takriti, 2013: 46)

What Takriti calls the majlis system is a network of consultations that serve as a link between society and the sovereign. Majlis meetings serve as a place for information exchange along tribal lines and as a performance of the social contract. But this system, albeit described as Arab and traditional, was in fact a version tailored following British necessities. According to Takriti, the British officials thought that the majlis system mentioned above could be an effective method to appease insurgencies and hinder the formation of any identity or group that could possibly question the legitimacy of the Sultan.

The majlis, as an institution common across the Arab countries and history, is referred to as a “tribal council or council of tribes (…), a gathering of a select group of people in the presence of a leading notable, a religious dignitary, or a well-known poet,” and as “an institution set up to deal with matters pertaining to the public interest or domain” (Choueiri, 2009, p. 462). Focusing on the Gulf countries, Herb describes the majlis as “an informal social gathering of men, often held weekly in a special room built for the purpose; in Kuwait this is known as diwaniyya” (Herb, 1999, p. 41). According to Herb (1999), it is also an informal institution. In this sense, North (1991, p. 97) distinguishes between “informal constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct), and formal rules (constitutions, laws, property rights)” that define informal and formal institutions, respectively. Informal institutions, then, are those whose ways of functioning are not recorded, but widely known.

The word majlis, nevertheless, refers to two realities. First, it names a room of the house, usually close to the main entrance and somewhat separated from the family area, where guests are received and social gatherings happen (Jaidah, 2009, p. 22). And second, it refers to these gatherings themselves. As Lefebvre puts it, “[social relations] project themselves into space, becoming inscribed there, and in the process producing that space itself” (Lefebvre, 1991. p. 130) The relation of the majlis-space and the majlis-institution is, then, metonymic, and a clear example of this claim.

The spatial features of the majlis make it a crucial institution to understand the social contract in the Gulf. As Lefebvre (1991) states, space is defined and produced by social relations. Dealing with capitalism and space, he points that social life is presented through different forms of spatial organization. In a similar way, Bourdieu (1989) talks about social space as a set of relationships between people which usually have a physical and spatial representation. Bachelard (2014[1958]) and De Certeau (1984) treat space as a language, and the latter states that “a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities (…) and interdictions” (De Certeau, 1984, p. 98).

Institutionally, the modern concept of the state and its associated political vocabulary has been developed from the assumption that politics is a public matter and has to be carried out in the public space. The Romans called the res publica not only the Republic itself, but also politics as a whole. In fifth century BCE in Athens, the sacrosanct space for politics was the agora. Originally a marketplace, it became the main space where citizens—male, free, and owners—would exert their political rights by using their voices, literal, and metaphorically speaking. As a public space, it made politics something that was carried out in public, where citizens could be updated about what was going on with Athens (Osborne, 1999, p. 129). Referring to more recent times, Habermas (1989) has coined the term “public sphere,” which he defines as the “sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor” (Habermas, 1989, p. 27). He also argues that liberal democracies need a strong civil society to be functional. When referring to other arenas, he distinguished a public and a private realm, the latter including the space for “commodity exchange and social labor” and the “conjugal family’s internal space,” as opposed to the public realm, the authority, as incarnated by the police and the court. Then, the idea of this bourgeois public sphere has evolved from the notion that private agents gather together in public to control authority. And, since Habermas opposes the Court as the place for authority to the town as the “life center of civil society,” (Habermas, 1989, p. 30) it is relevant to emphasize how the agora of Athens, the birthplace of politics in the Western tradition, was a public space, particularly when acknowledging how the agora influenced subsequent city planning from its origins in the north side of the Mediterranean to the modern United States and beyond (Sassen, 1991).

Conversely, traditional architecture and urban design in the Gulf does not favor public and open spaces. Instead, most of the social life happens in the beit, the house, which usually has a courtyard in the center of the building as the closest image of an open, public space, but most frequently enclosed in the domain of the private house (Jaidah, 2009, p. 11). It is, then, reasonable to infer that political institutions in the Gulf might have taken a different shape that the Western political vocabulary might not take into account. The house also serves as a place for exchange with other people, and many degrees of privacy can be defined within its domain. As opposed to a strict distinction between public and private spaces, Eddisford and Roberts (2015, p. 11) find four different possibilities: public (including shops, souqs, mosques or public squares), semi-public (places linking public spaces with the house), semi-private (places within the house where the interaction with other people happens), and private (the most restricted space, usually linked to the presence of women).

Where in Athens most social interactions regarding politics happened in the agora, a public space, in the Gulf it is this semi-private space where that happens. Particularly, there is one specific room, called the majlis, where most of this interaction takes place and therefore, it becomes a privileged space to analyze the way politics are carried out in the Gulf. The majlis, then, is a private space, as opposed to the agora. Sometimes, the majlis can take place outside the house, in an open space covered by tents of fabrics, or at the benches in the outer walls of the house. In that case, it is called dikka, yet it does not necessarily challenge the idea of private or semi-private space that the majlis bears. On the one hand, the surrounding areas of the house are still part of it. Also, the tents or the use of outer walls to partially cover the space are a form of temporary built place that encloses it from the wider, open and public space.

If space is socially produced, and the place for interactions in the Gulf are private or semi-private spaces, then the study of the majlis can shed light on the origins and causes of a political institutional system in the Gulf countries, different to that of the countries that are part of a political tradition which claims to have its origins in classical Athens. If space, politics, and social relations are all three related, a different spatial allocation of the political institutions might have resulted in an institutional trajectory that can be illuminating to understand the development of the Khaleeji Leviathan.

3 Birth and Development of the Khaleeji Leviathan. The Majlis as Seen by the British Empire

The relevance of the majlis has been acknowledged by some travelers, colonial agents or researchers since the sixteenth century, and particularly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lorimer’s Gazetteer, as an example of that, and published in secret between 1908 and 1915 represents the aim of creating a handbook for British agents and diplomats about geography, history, and customs in the Gulf so they can easily pursue the interests of the empire. Fuccaro (2015, pp. 17–34) highlights its importance in influencing the policymakers in London when dealing with the region.

Lorimer mentions the institution of the majlis a few times in the Gazetteer. They are basically defined as arbitration tribunals when certain demands or requirements imposed by the British officials are disputed in certain circumstances. These are usually disputes about sea security, taxation, or commercial matters (Lorimer, 1915a, p. 726, 1427, 2243). He even describes a specific type of majlis for mercantile cases with foreigners, called majlis al-’urfi or majlis at-tijarah, where some of its participants have to be nominated in consultation with the British Political Agent (Lorimer, 1915b, p. 250). The fact that the British had the power of intervening in what they defined as an indigenous institution shows, on the one hand, the degree of colonial dominance over the local population and leaders, and also the interest of the officials in preserving local institutional framework, at least nominally, while holding a tight control over the matters that affected the metropolis. The colonial power, then, relies on the majlis for internal disputes but keeps high rank individuals as their real interlocutors. Similarly, the Persian Gulf Précis accounts a case in which the British political power recommended holding a majlis to resolve a dispute between the sheikhs of Sharjah and Fujairah (Saldanha, 1989).

Lorimer, as Fuccaro (2014) points out, and also Saldanha, have a biased vision due to the nature of their documents. British interests are the central element of the publications, and the use of the majlis only partially reflects its relevance. The fact that it is used to resolve disputes between subjects and not between subjects and the metropole—even when dealing with rules imposed by an external power, namely the British, the Ottomans, or another sheikh—reveals that the British agents acknowledged at least to a certain extent the importance of the majlis in Khaleeji societies to solve problems and maintain stability.

In the second volume, which describes tribes and regions in the Gulf, Lorimer is a bit more generous with the majlis. When describing the “Anaizah tribe, he says that “they possessed arbitrary powers, but wielded them in a constitutional manner, deferring to some extent to their Majlis or council,” allowing them to a certain degree of power sharing thanks to this institution” (Lorimer, 1915b, p. 76). Conversely, when he analyzes the effectiveness of the majlis resolving problems that have to do with an external power—the Ottomans, in the following case—he finds that “the Councils, while they afforded little protection against the misdeeds of evil officials, were apt to obstruct the action of those of the better sort; and it was alleged that their existence even increased the area of active bribery and corruption,” and continues: “They required in fact, to render them really useful institutions, more public spirit and a higher civic morality than were to be found in the people” (Lorimer, 1915a, p. 1489). In a way, the malleability of the majlis by external powers, which had benefited the British power in the previous examples, becomes a source of criticism when it is an issue with an external power.

The colonial vision that Lorimer provides in his Gazetteer is one specifically targeted for policymakers in London. His account was a guide for politicians in the metropolis to help them arrange their relations with the Gulf in a more effective way. In this sense, all the references that Lorimer makes were framed from this perspective, and that is why his focus and treatment of the majlis, and the sociopolitical system of the Gulf is defined by its context and its functionality. In this regard, Lorimer does not have a particularly good opinion about the majlis, but he understands that it keeps a social status quo, in the sense that Takriti mentions in his study of the Sultanic power in Oman alluded above. More in detail, the Gazetteer does not question the position of the institution as a part of the Khaleeji structure of power as long as it does not interfere with the interests of the British empire. This is reflected in his references to the majlis as an arbitration tribunal between tribes and groups of interest affected by British decisions in terms of sea navigation, taxation, or commercial issues (Jaidah, 2009, p. 11). Lorimer provides a partial vision, then, although a very important one. As early as 1908, he reflected the importance of the majlis as an institution that the British, as a colonial power, wanted to maintain to deal with the Khaleeji societies. He also suggests that these majalis were important in maintaining social stability as a basic mechanism for problem solving in a tribal setting.

This can also be informed by other cases in the Gulf. Al-Nakib (2016, p. 30) shows how, in nineteenth century Kuwait, “[t]his political arrangement [the majlis system] and balance of power between the rulers and the merchants maintained a high level of sociopolitical stability in Kuwait until that remained relatively undisrupted until the rise of Mubarak I.” Similarly, she also states that the urban arrangement of the city provided an informal setup that fostered the tribal component of the political, social, and economic life of Kuwait.

In this sense, and in parallel to archival sources, buildings provide a similar account regarding the importance of the majlis and its relation to the Khaleeji Leviathan that appeared in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The case of the Old Amiri Palace, as a foremost space of power in the Qatar of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, is revealing. Although not a purely domestic building, most of its architectural features are the same as those of traditional houses. The biggest difference might be the size; the Old Amiri Palace is a compound with different edifications under the same ownership. Today, the Old Amiri Palace has been restored and is part of the recently (2019) inaugurated National Museum of Qatar. Before that, from 1975 to the 2000s, it served as the venue for the Qatar National Museum. The building had been in a state of abandonment since Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani moved its residence to the Amiri Diwan in 1923, but after its restoration during the 1970s, it won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1980.

The Old Amiri Palace served as Sheikh Abdullah’s residence from the late nineteenth century to 1923. During this period, the complex grew and some additions were made, a frequent characteristic of Khaleeji architecture (Jaidah, 2009, p. 22). Also, during this period, the Ottoman empire went furtherly east to dominate the Al Hasa province of Saudi Arabia, and Qatar became a frontier or a subject at various times until 1916. That year, Sheikh Abdullah, then emir of Qatar, signed a treaty with Sir Percy Cox, the British Resident in the Gulf, in which the British empire agreed to give protection to Qatar (Cox, 1916). The treaty deepened the agreement in which Qataris were free to rule their country as long as their coast remained safe for British ships. As the residence of the then emir of Qatar, the Old Amiri Palace seems to be particularly well suited for studying the relation between politics and space in the Gulf.

The complex, as described by Jaidah included the following apartments: beit of Sheikh Abdullah, beit of Sheikh Hamed and beit of Sheikh Ali (the sons of Sheikh Abdullah), watchman’s quarters, quarters of the mosque janitor, public apartments of East Gate-house and North Gate-house, public apartments of the little majlis, and public apartments of the inner majlis. Sheikh Abdullah’s beit was the starting point of the development. As stated above, the complex grew by addition and adaptation according to new needs and demands. The dependencies of Sheikh Abdullah’s sons within the family complex reveal the importance of the extended family in the Gulf, also in the ruling family. The number of associated people, like the watchman and the janitor, indicate the need of services for the emir and their associates. But most importantly, part of the complex is formed by a number of public apartments and dependencies for guests. The construction of these dependencies points out that there was a respectable number of people visiting the palace that needed accommodation, creating the necessity for these spaces. In a particularly hectic moment for Qatar, as said before, political meetings created new demands for space most notably when politics is carried out in private spaces and not in the public sphere (Jaidah, 2009, p. 67, 71).

Also, not just accommodation pushed for the development of these spaces. The majlis, as a privileged space to understand politics in the Gulf due to its primordial function to welcome guests and have meetings, is a particularly relevant space to observe. At Sheikh Abdullah’s complex, both the little majlis and the inner majlis show how gatherings and meetings were common and varied, and thus required spaces that fulfilled different needs for a growing number of people who visited the venue. The Old Amiri Palace, in fact, echoes in a spatial language what was happening politically to Qatar at the time—the state was being centralized around the figure of the Al Thani family thanks to the intervention of the British empire. Therefore, due to the interest of the British officials in keeping a controlled version of the indigenous forms of governance and not imposing an imported system of government, politics and political institutions experienced some transformations. That is what the Old Amiri Palace shows, a growing importance of the ruling family, and an increased politicization of the spaces in which these matters were handled, here the architectural attention given to the majalis.

Different to the Old Amiri Palace, the Radwani House is a traditional high status Qatari house in the central district of Al Jasra. It was first built in the 1920s or 1930s and, as the Old Amiri complex and many of the edifications in Qatar has also been part of numerous adaptations and reforms to this day. Today, it is part of the Msheireb Museums, along with the Ben Jelmood House, the Company House and the Mohammad bin Jassim’s House. The Radwani House shows customs and life in Qatar through the space of a traditional house.

The importance that the government has given the Radwani House, its content, and most importantly, the huge research and excavations that have been done recently make it an exceptional place to look at to understand the role of private spaces in Qatari and Khaleeji politics. Also, if the Old Amiri Palace provided an example from a politically involved segment such as the ruling family itself, the Radwani House was dwelled by high class Qataris, not too involved in politics in principle (Eddisford & Roberts, 2015, p. 47).

Contrary to the Old Amiri Palace, the Radwani House does not stand alone. It is part of a historical district of Doha that was redeveloped between 2006 and 2009, and it was surrounded by other edifices, and the house itself shared walls with those properties. Its façade is largely undecorated and the entrance leads to the majlis, the only room with windows, and a staircase that leads to a second majlis in the second floor. They are also the most decorated rooms of the house. The rest of the rooms, other than the hammam, may have different purposes and do not feature anything that can make a distinction between them (Eddisford & Roberts, 2015, p. 52).

The majlis, as stated before, is part of the semi-private part of the traditional Qatari house and it may be accessed without entering the private parts of the house, reserved for the family. This, as the rest of the characteristics of the Radwani House are the same as those of the Qatari vernacular architecture. In fact, during the boom of construction that took place in Qatar during the 1940s and 1950s after the discovery of oil (Jaidah, 2009, p. 28), the model of the domestic house was very similar to the Radwani House. This economic growth also granted the opportunity to build high rise houses.

Sometimes referred to as “architecture of the veil,” for its largely undecorated façades but richer interiors, Qatari traditional architecture is also an example of Islamic architecture (Jaidah, 2009, p. 11). As described above, spaces are related to social habits in a way that one creates or reinforces the other. This architecture of the veil, then, reveals a pattern of social interaction largely centered in the private spaces. The decoration of the majlis, as opposed to other parts of the house, also supports this claim. But the majlis-institution can also take place outside the house. Eddisford and Carter (2017, p. 90) indicate that the dikka was present in the Old Amiri complex, and in many other villages outside Doha. The lack of remains of this type of majlis in Doha might suggest that the centralization of the state did not promote the development of majalis in semi-public spaces and, instead, fostered more private, inside the house, majalis.

Doha did not become the capital of the Al Thani state until 1847 (Crystal, 1990, p. 27). The Old Amiri Palace dates back from the late nineteenth century, and the Radwani House was most likely built around 1930. Three dates might be important here: 1847, as the moment when Doha became the central segment of Qatar; 1868, when the British recognized Mohammed bin Thani as representative of the tribes of the Qatari peninsula; and 1916, when Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani signed a treaty with Percy Cox to guarantee the safeness of Qatari waters (see above). These three moments represent further centralization of the authority in Qatar, and its consequences could be felt in tax collecting and in the way other tribes related to the Al Thani, even where they were geographically (Crystal, 1990, p. 112). This centralization created the incentives for the private space to become the place where politics had to be done. Whereas the classical model of state formation argues that tax collecting led to more centralized states where the public sphere became a space of accountability (Tilly, 1975), in Qatar it was external pressure what led to further centralization and the private, or semi-private spaces evolved to become increasingly political and a main vehicle of the new institutional apparatus, largely reliant on tribal affiliation.

An explanation for this phenomenon could be the more ego-centered transformation that the networks around the figure of the emir experimented, meaning that the tribes were progressively less connected to each other and more through the figure of the emir and his trustees. From a tribal system based on arbitrations where many of the tribes were taking part with a more equal share, the newly recognized central authority of the emir would have become a more important node of the network. This would have also been reflected in the development of more and bigger majalis over the years in the Old Amiri Palace in detriment of other properties and even more when Sheikh Abdullah finally moved to the Amiri Diwan in the second quarter of the twentieth century.

4 Conclusion

Space matters in politics. British colonial policies toward the Indian Ocean transformed concepts of sovereignty and identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where the majlis as a space and as an institution proved to have a fundamental role in the performance of authority in Qatar during these years. A “Khaleeji Leviathan” emerged as a consequence of this, and a social contract along tribal lines between ruler and ruled was established as a result (Heard-Bey, 1982, p. 19). As seen, the remains of domestic houses and palaces provide a relevant source to study how social structure in the Gulf is defined by indigenous, informal institutions more than formal ones. The ways in which the majlis, as a room for guests, is present but different according to the affluence of the family that owns certain types of houses or the moment when these houses were built reveal how the institution also changed over time. The majlis had a bigger presence in more affluent tribes, particularly in the ruling family, and that these rooms were more and more important in politically involved houses the more centralized the state of Qatar became. The evolution of the Old Amiri Palace, which incorporated a number of edifications as Qatar became an increasingly centralized entity, and other examples like the Radwani House serve as an example of this pattern.

From the point of view of the colonial power, Lorimer’s Gazetteer, composed between 1908 and 1915, and the Persian Gulf Précis (1903–1908) written by Jerome A. Saldanha show how the British empire used the majlis as an institution to solve certain problems with the requirements they imposed, usually related to taxation or commerce. The British, therefore, realized that the majlis (1) provided an institutional framework for a stable British suzerainty in the Gulf and (2) it could easily be depicted as an indigenous, traditional institution that conferred legitimacy to the emerging model of central sovereignty.