In the early part of the nineteenth century the Arabian Gulf was an area of great interest to the East India Company in Bombay. From their strategic regional base on the island of Qeshm, off the coast of Persia, and with the support of the British Navy, the British authorities sought military and political control of all key ports on both sides of the Gulf. One of those ports was the shaikhdom of Sharjah. The town of Sharjah stretched inland along a shallow creek and its thriving community lived off maritime trade with Persia and India as well as with the Bedouin of the hinterland. Sharjah's main income, however, derived from the harsh but lucrative annual pearl-diving season. The British were not concerned with such local trade. Their interests lay in maintaining regional security in order to protect larger trading opportunities with India, and they were prepared to use overwhelming force to achieve their objectives. When Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr bin Rashid al-Qasimi inherited the rule of Sharjah in 1803, he was faced by the British on one side and the forces of Wahhabism on the other. Emerging from central Arabia, the Wahhabi movement had succeeded in repelling recuperating from the campaign of the Egyptian Ottoman army, and now sought to extend its sway along the eastern Arabian coast. After being kidnapped deceived and imprisoned by the Wahhabis in 1809, Shaikh Sultan had no wish to see their power grow any further. However, his attempts to resist Wahhabi overtures could never count on support from the British. For more than fifty years until his death in 1866, shortly after the murder of his grandson by his own uncle, Shaikh Sultan steered Sharjah precariously through times of external and internal challenges, while the symbol of British rule flew from the flag-masts above his land.