It is another two years before oil…

It is another two years before oil is recovered on a commercial scale.

Doha is rapidly transformed from a fishing village to a major port city.

The oil company establishes Musay'id, also called Umm Sa'id, as a tanker terminal on an inhospitable, previously uninhabited site, along the sabkhah (salt flat) terrain characteristic of the east coast.

The revenues from the oil company, later named Petroleum Development (Qatar) Limited and then the Qatar Petroleum Company, rise dramatically with the beginning of oil exports and payments for offshore rights.

In 1949, the distribution of these revenues causes serious infighting in the Al Thani family Qasim when several of Abd Allah ibn Qasim's relatives threaten armed opposition if they do not receive increases in their allowances.

Aged and anxious, Shaykh Qasim turns to the British, promises to abdicate, and agrees, among other things, to an official British presence in Qatar in exchange for recognition and support for his eldest son, Ali ibn Abd Allah.

The loser in this contest is Khalifa ibn Hamad Al Thani, the teenage son of the late Heir Apparent Hamad ibn Abd Allah al Thani, who had died the previous year.

150 adult males of the Al Thani receive outright grants from the government; shaykhs also receive land and government positions.

Seniority and proximity to the shaykh determine the size of allowances.

Ali ibn Abd Allah is at first reluctant to share power, which had centered in his household, with an infant bureaucracy run and staffed mainly by outsiders.

His increasing financial difficulties and inability to control striking oil workers and truculent shaykhs, however, leads him to succumb to British pressure to development of government structures and public services.

In 1952, a British adviser prepares Qatar's first real budget.

By 1954, there are forty-two Qatari government employees.

The first telephone exchange opened in 1953, and the first desalination plant in 1954.