Hamdan bin Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan
Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan was the Ruler of Abu Dhabi, one of the Trucial States which today form the United Arab Emirates (UAE), from 1912–1922. Accession. He was the second son of Zayed I to rule Abu Dhabi and acceded on his elder brother Tahnoun's peaceful death. Zayed's eldest son, Khalifa, did not want to rule and so Hamdan, actually Zayed's fifth son (the fourth, Saqr, was to rule following the death of Hamdan's younger brother and successor, Sultan) took up the reins. His rule  was unpopular within the ruling family as he discontinued the subsidies normally paid to family members. He was also said to have disrupted Abu Dhabi's trade relations. While Abu Dhabi's population was violently anti-Wahhabi (a number of incursions into Buraimi had helped to seal Wahhabi unpopularity), Hamdan sent a mission to Ibn Saud in Riyadh. Hamdan oversaw the continuation of the breakdown of authority which had followed his powerful father's long reign and death. In Liwa and Buraimi, fighting broke out between the Bedouin tribes, with the Manasir and Bani Yas fighting a southern confederation of  Awamir, Duru and Al Bu Shamis. An ally of the Wahhabis, Hamdan managed to broker an uneasy truce. In August 1922, Hamdan was killed by his younger brother, Sultan. Zayed's other two sons disagreed with the murder and were estranged, the town of Abu Dhabi becoming disorderly as factions emerged in the confusion following the murder. Later Hamdan’s brother avenged the murder of his brother and killed Sultan, later becoming the Ruler of Abu Dhabi. Sultan inherited the unstable interior that Hamdan had barely pacified, pitching him into a series of wars and outbreaks of peace which dogged  his rule. Personal life. Hamdan's daughter, Latifa, fled to Dubai on his murder and later married Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum. She is the mother of the ruler of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Hamdan's other daughter, Maryam, died in November 2020.