The imposition of restrictive economic policies by Reza Shah in the 1930s led to the migration of most of the Huwala back to the Arabian Peninsula.
[5] The term "Huwala" does not refer to Sunni Larestani Achomi families such as Kandari, Janahi, Khaloori, Zarooni, and Bastaki.
[citation needed] It appears that the Huwala was a tribal confederation formed in Coastal Oman, similar to the Al-Utub cofederation, who were at times their arch rivals.
A book by Dejanirah Couto and Rui Loureiro into Portuguese interactions in Hormuz defines Huwala as "migrant Arabs".
In fact, they were each other's fiercest competitors for access to the pearl banks.Author Lawrence G. Potter defines Huwala as ..Groups of Sunni Arabs that migrated from Oman and the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula to the Iranian side the Gulf, between Bushehr and Bandar Abbas, probably starting in the eighteenth century.
They eventually returned to the Arab side, especially after the discovery of oil and the imposition of restrictive economic policies by Reza Shah in the 1930sContemporary historians of that period, such as Niebuhr, Lorimer, David Seton, and others, did not neglect to record for us a huge number of political and social events in the Gulf during the period preceding the period of the recent migration of the inhabitants of the southern Iranian region to the Gulf states during the reign of Shah Reza Pahlavi at the beginning of the twentieth century AD.
[12]: 17–18, 19 [14]: 63–64, 67 [18] According to the Saudi historian Jalal Al-Haroon, there are two types of Huwalas:[12][14][19] Zur is a reasonably large town which is fortifies in the local manner and which has some pieces of artillery.