The Trucial States (also known as Trucial Oman, Trucial States of the Coast of Oman, the Trucial Coast, and the Trucial Sheikhdoms) were a group of sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf. They were a British protectorate from 1820 until 1971, when they became the United Arab Emirates.

The sheikdoms included:

The sheikdoms permanently allied themselves with the United Kingdom by the Perpetual Maritime Truce of 1853, until in 1892 they entered into "Exclusivity Agreements" with the British - following on from Bahrain in 1880 - which put them under British protection. This was an unclear status which fell short of a formal protectorate, but required Britain to defend them from external aggression in exchange for exclusive British rights in the states. Until 1969, the Indian rupee remained the de facto currency of the Trucial states as well as the other Gulf states such as Qatar, Bahrain and Oman until these countries introduced their own currencies in 1969, after the great devaluation of the Indian rupee. In 1952, the Trucial States Council was established to encourage co-operation between the seven remaining sheiks.

Armand Amar (born 1953) is an Israeli-born French composer, who grew up in Morocco. Amar won the César Award for Best Music Written for a Film for Le Concert (Radu Mihaileanu) in 2010. He won the 2010 César Award for Best Music Written for a Film for Le Concert (Radu Mihaileanu).

Amar was born in Jerusalem, to an Israeli mother and a Jewish-Moroccan father with a French passport. As a child, he immigrated to Morocco with his father. In 1968, he began playing the congas. He also practiced the tabla and the zarb in the following years.

In 1976 he met South African choreographer Peter Goss, who introduced him to dance. In the subsequent years, he worked with a number of choreographers in contemporary dance.

His works are focused particularly on Eastern music. He is the author of several ballets and soundtracks films such as Get up and walk, The Trail, Indigenous, Live and Become, The First Cry, Earth from Heaven and Home. He has also collaborated twice with Costa Gavras, scoring Amen. and The Ax.

King Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia (1876 – 9 November 1953) (Arabic: عبد العزيز آل سعود‎ ‘Abd al-‘Azīz Āl Su‘ūd) was the first monarch of Saudi Arabia, the third Saudi State. He was usually called Ibn Saud in English-speaking countries.

Beginning with the reconquest of his family's ancestral home city of Riyadh in 1902, he consolidated his control over the Najd in 1922, then conquered the Hijaz in 1925. Having conquered almost all of central Arabia, he united his dominions into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. As King, he presided over the discovery of petroleum in Saudi Arabia in 1938 and the beginning of large-scale oil exploitation after World War II. He was the father of many children having 45 sons, including all of the subsequent kings of Saudi Arabia.

Abdul-Aziz was born in 1876 in Riyadh, in the region of Najd in central Arabia.

In 1890, the Al Rashid conquered Riyadh. Abdul-Aziz was 15 at the time. He and his family initially took refuge with the Al-Murrah, a Bedouin tribe in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia. Later, the Al Sauds moved to Kuwait.