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In public, British officials asserted that the three islands belonged to the Trucial States.

In 1965, the most politically, socially and educationally progressive of the ruling sheikhs in the Trucial States, Saqr bin Sultan al-Qassemi of Sharjah, fell foul of the British.

Born December 25, 1949, the second son of late ruler Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, he grew up in what was known as the Trucial States, a collection of Arab sheikhdoms along the southern shore of the Persian Gulf that were part of a British protectorate since 1820.

He moved to the United Arab Emirates in 1975, just a few years after the federation’s creation out of a collection of sheikhdoms that the British referred to as the Trucial States.

Dubai initially split off from Abu Dhabi in 1833, and the pair fought a border war in 1947 when the British still held sway over what was then known as the Trucial States.