islands. It has been remarked, in the context of the limits of the Persian empire in the Persian Gulf in the middle of the 18th century, that "[a]ll the islands off the Persian coast, from Kharqu and Kharaq in the north to Hormoz and Larak in the south, were rightly Persian, though many were in the hands of Arab tribes". Consistent with this, the British in 1800 were also of the belief that "[a]lthough the King exercises no positive authority over any of the islands of the Persian Gulf, those on the northern shore are all considered as part of the Empire". An 1804 map of German origin showed the southern coast of Iran as the habitat of the "Bani Hule" tribe and the islands, coloured in the same orange, were designated as "Thunb unbenohul". The "Bani Hule" or Howalla were a loosely defined grouping of peoples of distant Arab origin but with longstanding residence on the Iranian coast. Regardless of the spelling of the toponym as "Tonb", be it from the Arabic tÂonb (abode) or from the Persian tonb (hill), the attribution to the larger island of this epithet highlighted the islands' intimate association with the Persian coast and its inhabitants. One of the clans belonging to the Howalla or "Bani Hule" of the Persian coast was that of the Qasimi. Their Arab tribal origins are not as clearly established as is, however, their Persian geographical origin immediately prior to their rise to notoriety in the lower Persian Gulf. This occurred in the 18th century. 18th century During the 1720s, the Qasami had emigrated from the Persian coast and established themselves as a force in Sharjah and Julfar (Ras al-Khaimah, now part of UAE). In the period 1747–59, a branch of the Qasemi from Sharjah established itself on the Persian littoral, but it was expelled in 1767. By 1780, the Qasemi branch was re-established on the Persian coast and began to feud with other coastal tribes over pasturage in the islands off Langeh. The Iranian argument for the ownership of the disputed islands is that the Qasami controlled the islands while they were located on the Persian coast, not when they later emigrated to the UAE coast. In April 1873, the islands were reported as a dependency of the Persian Fars province to the British Resident, which the Resident acknowledged. In the period 1786–1835 the official British opinion, surveys,