Britain had previously regarded Qatar as a…

Britain had previously regarded Qatar as a Bahraini dependency, but the attack by Bahrain, and the Qatari counterattack, spurs the British political agent, Colonel Lewis Pelly, to impose a settlement in 1868.

His mission to Bahrain and Qatar and the resultant peace treaty implicitly recognize the distinctness of Qatar from Bahrain and explicitly acknowledge the position of Mohammad bin Thani, an important representative of the peninsula's tribes.

Until this point, the Al-Thani clan had been only one among several important families on the peninsula.