The settlement of Dubai town is known from 1799. The sheikh (Arabic: shaykh) of the emirate, then a minor, signed the British-sponsored General Treaty of Peace (1820), but the area was seemingly dependent on Abu Dhabi until 1833. In that year a group of Āl Bū Falāsah clansmen of the Banū Yās confederation, chiefly pearl fishers, left Abu Dhabi in a rivalry dispute and took over Dubai town without resistance. From then on, Dubai became, by local standards, a powerful state. It was frequently at odds with Abu Dhabi’s rulers and the Qawāsim (Āl Qāsimī), who controlled the area just north of Dubai, both of whom tried to take control of it, but Dubai’s new rulers retained their independence by playing the neighbouring sheikhdoms against each other. Together with the rest of the original Trucial States, the emirate signed with Britain a maritime truce in 1835 and the Perpetual Maritime Truce in 1853. Its foreign relations were placed under British control by the Exclusive Agreement of 1892. When Britain finally left the Persian Gulf in 1971, Dubai was a prominent founding member of the United Arab Emirates.

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