Saqr bin Mohammed Al Qasimi

Sheikh Saqr bin Mohammed al-Qasimi of Ras al-Khaimah, who has died aged 92, was the world's longest-serving ruler. He oversaw the transformation of that Arab emirate, strategically located in the north, from a sleepy backwater dependent on a declining pearling and fishing industry into what is today one of the fastest growing and economically diverse parts of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). For generations, the al-Qasimi royal family, who were in the 19th century branded as pirates by Britain's imperial naval commanders, maintained a fierce independence from their neighbours. Saqr agreed only reluctantly to allow Ras al-Khaimah (RAK) to become part of the UAE in 1972. Being linked to larger and wealthier emirates such as Abu Dhabi and Dubai nonetheless proved useful, as RAK failed to discover significant reserves of oil or gas of its own and has therefore at times depended on federal subsidies. Born in RAK, Saqr was one of the sons of Sheikh Mohammed, who ruled only briefly before being sidelined by the British in favour of his supposedly more compliant younger brother, Sultan. When Sultan was declared ruler in 1921, the whole emirate had fewer than 15,000 inhabitants, no schools and very little infrastructure, other than a small port in a sheltered creek. Saqr was educated at home by local Islamic clerics, as well as a tutor from the Najd region of Saudi Arabia, becoming a noted scholar in the teachings of the Qur'an and the Hadith, or sayings and deeds of the prophet Muhammad. He also became passionate about history – later teasing British officials about the way London had ordered HMS Liverpool to bombard RAK's capital in 1819 – and he honed his skills in the traditional sport of falconry. More than one British official referred to the tenacious Saqr as a "wily old bird" and it was true that he demonstrated considerable political skill, even cunning. After ousting his uncle Sultan in a bloodless coup in 1948, he then set about uniting and winning the loyalty of his emirate's disparate population, which included fishers, bedouin and indigenous mountain tribes. He also angrily disputed what he said was the illegal Iranian occupation of three islands that had traditionally been under al-Qasimi control. Thanks partly to exploration fees from foreign oil companies, Saqr was able to fund the establishment of schools for boys and girls, a hospital and the expansion of the port. But the failure to find much oil meant RAK instead relied increasingly on the exploitation of minerals in its Hajar mountains and the production and export of ceramics. When Harold Wilson's Labour government started Britain's withdrawal from East of Suez in the late 1960s, the Trucial States or Arabian Gulf protectorates, which included RAK, decided that they needed to unite if they were to cope with independence. Bahrain and Qatar chose to go their own way, and it took a year to persuade Saqr that RAK should become an integral part of the UAE. These negotiations centred on how much clout RAK would have within the new federation, despite its relative poverty, and most observers agreed that Saqr brokered rather a good deal. For many years, Saqr, his various wives and a growing number of children inhabited an old fort, which is now an ethnographic museum. He largely eschewed the extravagant trappings of royalty savoured by some of his Emirati counterparts and as he gradually outlived them, he acquired enhanced status in the region. In the 1980s, he handed much of the day-to-day running of RAK to his eldest son, Khalid, who oversaw much of the emirate's modernisation. It therefore came as something of a shock in 2003 when Saqr replaced Khalid with his younger half-brother, Saud, who has effectively run the emirate ever since. Khalid went into exile in Muscat and Sharjah, but returned to RAK on learning of his father's death, in order to stake his claim to be the rightful heir. Saud has been accused by critics of snuggling up too closely to Iran, from which RAK is separated by the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant proportion of the world's oil tankers pass. As the UAE is one of the US's closest allies in the region, this has caused certain diplomatic tensions, though how much Saqr was aware of this during his long years of illness is a matter for conjecture. Saqr is believed to be survived by some of his wives and at least four sons and two daughters. Sheikh Saqr bin Mohammed al-Qasimi, ruler of Ras al-Khaimah, born 1918; died 27 October 2010...