SOME HISTORICAL FACTS ABOUT OMAN
On two separate occasions we visited Maskat. The first time was in 1889
on our way to Persia, and the second in 1895 when we were starting for
Dhofar, on the journey which I shall describe later.
On each occasion we had to reach it by way of India, for like all the
rest of the Persian Gulf Maskat is really an outlying portion of our
Indian Empire. By just crossing a range of mountains in Persia you cross
the metaphorical watershed between our India and Foreign Offices. At
Shiraz you hesitate between India and England. You ask the question,
'Shall I send my letters _viâ_ Bombay, or _viâ_ Russia?' You hasten to
get rid of your rupees, for this is the last place where their merit is
recognised. North of Shiraz you are in a distinctly foreign country. Our
officials hail from the Foreign Office and belong to the legation of
Teheran. You are no longer under British protection, you are in the
dominions of the Shah.
But so long as you are on the shores of the Gulf you are, so to speak, in
India. The officials receive their pay in degenerate rupees instead of
pounds sterling, they live in 'bungalows,' they talk of 'tiffin,' and eat
curry at every meal.
We keep a British ship of war in the Gulf. We feel that it is a matter of
the first importance that those countries should remain under our
protection, and that the Turks should not build forts at Fao and
otherwise interfere with our trade in the Karoun, and that no other power
should have a foothold thereon. The last generation talked much about a
Euphrates Valley Railway, with its terminus at Koweit; we now hear a
great deal about the opening up of the Karoun, but it is the lordship of
the Gulf which is the chief matter of importance just at present both for
India and for ourselves.
In this district Maskat is the most important point; the kingdom of Oman,
of which it is nominally the capital, commands the entrance to the Gulf.
In the ninth century of the Christian era ships trading from Sherif to
China took in water at Maskat from the wells which still supply the town.
Between Aden and the Persian Gulf it is the only harbour where ships of
any size can find anchorage, and it may, in fact, be said to play much
the same part with respect to the Persian Gulf that Aden does to the Red
Sea. In many other ways the places are strikingly similar. They are both
constructed on arid, volcanic rocks, which produce the smallest amount of
verdure and reflect the greatest amount of heat; water in both of them is
the scarcest of commodities. Of all places in the world Maskat has the
reputation of being the hottest, facing, as it does, the Indian Ocean,
and protected from every cooling breeze by rugged volcanic hills, without
a blade of cultivation upon them, and which reflect and intensify the
scorching rays of the burning sun. Aden is said to have but a piece of
brown paper between it and the infernal fires. Maskat would seem to want
even this meagre protection, and 'gives,' as a Persian poet has expressed
it, 'to the panting sinner a lively anticipation of his future destiny.'
The approach to the cove of Maskat is highly striking. Many-coloured
volcanic rocks of fantastic form protect the horseshoe-shaped harbour,
whilst behind the white town, as far as the eye can reach, stretch deeply
serrated, arid mountains, which culminate in the heights of Jebel Akhdar,
or the 'Green Mountains,' some fifty miles, as the crow flies, inland,
reaching an elevation of 9,000 feet. We were told that snow sometimes
falls in the winter-time on Jebel Akhdar, and it rejoices in a certain
amount of verdure, from which it derives its name. This range forms the
backbone of Oman, and at its foot lie Nezweh and Rostok, the old capitals
of the long line of imams of Oman, before Maskat was a place of so much
importance as it is at present. The streams which come down from these
mountains nowhere reach the sea, but are lost in the deserts, and,
nevertheless, in some places they fertilise oases in the Omani desert,
where the vegetation is most luxuriant and fever very rife. Grapes grow
on the slopes of Jebel Akhdar, and the inhabitants, despite the
strictures of Mohammed, both make and drink wine of them, and report says
(how far it is true I know not) that the Portuguese exported thence the
vines to which they gave the name of muscatel. The inhabitants of this
wild range are chiefly Bedou and pastoral, and it is from this quarter
that the troubles which beset the poor sultan, Feysul, generally emanate.
The harbour of Maskat is full of life. The deep blue sea is studded with
tiny craft: canoes painted red, green, and white, steered by paddles,
swarm around the steamer; fishermen paddling themselves about on a plank
or two tied together, or swimming astride of a single one, hawk their
wares from boat to boat. The oars of the larger boats are generally made
with a flat circular piece of wood fastened on to a long pole, and are
really more like paddles than oars. In the northern corner lie huddled
together large dhows, which, during the north-east monsoons, make the
journey to Zanzibar, returning at the change of the season. Most of these
belong to Banyan merchants in Maskat, and are manned by Indian sailors.
Close to them is the small steamer _Sultanieh_, which was presented by
the Sultan of Zanzibar to his cousin Sultan Tourki of Maskat, now a
perfectly useless craft, which cannot even venture outside the harbour by
reason of the holes in its side. From its mast floats the red banner of
Oman, the same flag that Arab boats at Aden fly. It was originally the
banner of Yemen, to which place the Arabs who rule in Oman trace their
origin; for early in our era, according to Arab tradition, Oman was
colonised and taken possession of by descendants of the old Himyarites of
Yemen.
The shore of the town is very unpleasant, reeking with smells, and at low
tide lined with all the refuse and offal of the place. At high tide
shoals of fish come in to feed on this refuse, and in their train follow
immense flocks of seagulls, which make the edge of the water quite white
as they fly along and dive after their prey. Here and there out of the
sand peep the barrels of some rusty old cannon, ghostly relics of the
Portuguese occupation.
In the middle of the beach is the sultan's palace, but it is immeasurably
inferior to the new residency of the British political agent, which
stands at the southern extremity of the town, just where it can get all
the breeze that is to be had through a gap in the rocks opening to the
south; here we were most hospitably entertained by Colonel Hayes Sadler
on our second sojourn. Even in this favoured position the heat in summer
is almost unendurable, making Maskat one of the least coveted posts that
the Indian Government has at its disposal. The cliffs immediately round
the town are of a shiny schist, almost impossible to walk upon, and
reflect the rays of the sun with great intensity.
On either side of the town stand two old Portuguese forts kept up and
manned by the sultan's soldiers; in them are still to be seen old rusty
pieces of ordnance, one of which bears a Portuguese inscription with the
date 1606, and the name and arms of Philip III. of Spain; also the small
Portuguese chapel in the fort is preserved and bears the date of 1588.
These are the principal legacies left to posterity by those intrepid
pioneers of civilisation in a spot which they occupied for nearly a
century and a half. These forts testify to having been of great size and
strength in former times, and show considerable architectural features,
and the traces of a luxuriant and opulent population.
With regard to the ancient history of Oman, there is little known. The
empire of the Himyarites, which filled Yemen and the Hadhramout valley
with interesting remains, does not appear to have extended its sway so
far eastward; no Sabæan remains have as yet been found in Oman, nor are
there any that I have heard of further east than the frankincense country
of Dhofar, over six hundred miles west of Maskat. Neither Ptolemy nor the
author of the 'Periplus' gives us any definite information about the
existence of a town in the harbour of Maskat, and consequently the first
reliable information we have to go upon is from the early Arabian
geographers.
From Torisi we learn that Sobar was the most ancient town of Oman; but
that in his day Maskat was flourishing, and that 'in old times the China
ships used to sail from there.'
Oman was included in Yemen by these earlier geographers, doubtless from
the fact that Arabs from Yemen were its first colonisers; but all that is
known with any certainty is that, from the ninth century a.d. a long line
of imams ruled over Oman, with their capitals at Nezweh or Rostok, at the
foot of Jebel Akhdar. This title, by which the Arab rulers were known,
had been conferred on the Arab rulers of Oman for centuries, and
signifies a sort of priest-king, like Melchisedek, to whom, curiously
enough, is given the same title in the Koran. The election was always by
popular acclamation, and inasmuch as the Omani do not recognise the two
'imams' who immediately succeeded Mohammed, but chose their own, they
form a separate sect. In olden days the men of Oman were called
'outsiders' by their Mohammedan brethren, because they recognised their
own chief solely as the head of their own religion, and are known
otherwise as the Ibadiet or Ibadhuyah, followers of Abdullah-bin-Ibadh,
as distinct from the Shiahi (Shiites) and Sunni, between which sects the
rest of Islam is pretty equally divided. Internecine wars were always
rife amongst them; but, at the same time, these early Omani had little or
no intercourse with the outer world. Of the internal quarrels of the
country, the Omani historian Salid-bin-Ragik has given a detailed
account, but for the rest of the world they are of little interest. In
those days Oman seems to have had two ports, Sur and Kalhat, on the
Indian Ocean, which were more frequented than Maskat. Marco Polo, 1280
a.d., calls the second Calaiati in his 'Journal,' and describes it as 'a
large city in a gulf called, also, Calatu,' and the Omani paid tribute to
the melek or king of Hormuz for many generations, but with the rise of
Maskat, Sur and Kalhat declined.
Oman first came into immediate contact with Europeans in the year 1506,
when Albuquerque appeared in Maskat harbour bent on his conquest of the
Persian Gulf, and with the object, not even yet accomplished, of making a
route to India by way of the Euphrates valley. From Albuquerque's
'Commentaries' we get a graphic description of the condition of the
country when he reached it.
At first the Arabs were inclined to receive the Portuguese without a
struggle; but, taking courage from the presence of a large army of
Bedouin in the vicinity, they soon showed treacherous intentions towards
the invaders, so that the Portuguese admiral determined to attack the
town and destroy it, and the commentator states that 'within were burned
many provisions, thirty-four ships in all, large and small, many fishing
barks, and an arsenal full of every requisite for ship-building.'
After effecting a landing, the Portuguese ordered 'three gunners with
axes to cut the supports of the mosque, which was a large and very
beautiful edifice, the greater part being built of timber finely carved,
and the upper part of stucco,' and it was accounted a propitious miracle
by the Portuguese that the men who performed this deed were not killed by
the falling timber. Maskat was then burnt and utterly destroyed; and
'having cut off the ears and noses of the prisoners he liberated them.'
The commentator concludes his remarks on Maskat as follows: 'Maskat is of
old a market for carriage of horses and dates; it is a very elegant town,
with very fine houses. It is the principal _entrepôt_ of the kingdom of
Ormuz, into which all the ships that navigate these parts must of
necessity enter.'
The hundred and forty years during which the Portuguese occupied Maskat
and the adjacent coast town was a period of perpetual trouble and
insurrection. The factory and forts of Jellali and Merani were commenced
in 1527, but the forts in their present condition were not erected till
after the union of Portugal and Spain, in 1580; the order for their
erection came from Madrid, and the inscription bears the date 1588. Not
only were the Arabs constantly on the look-out to dislodge their
unwelcome visitors, but the Turks attacked them likewise, with a navy
from the side of the Persian Gulf, and the naval victory gained by the
Portuguese off Maskat in 1554 is considered by Turkish historians to
have been a greater blow to their power than the better known battle off
Prevesa in 1538, when D'Oria defeated Barbarossa and obliged Solyman to
relinquish his attempt on Vienna.
When, after the union of Portugal with Spain, the colonial activity of
the former country declined, the colonies in the Persian Gulf fell one by
one into the hand of the Persians and Arabs.
Out of the kingdom of Oman they were driven in 1620, and confined to the
town of Maskat by the victorious imam, Nasir-bin-Murshid, during whose
reign of twenty-six years the legend is told that no man in Oman died a
natural death. Two years later they were also driven from Maskat itself,
and those two forts Jellali and Merani which they had built, the last
foothold of the Portuguese on the Omani territory, were taken from them.
The historian Salil tells the amusing story of the final fall of Maskat
into the hands of the Arabs. The Portuguese governor, Pereira, was deeply
enamoured of the daughter of a Banyan merchant of Maskat; the man at
first refused to let him have his daughter, but at length consented, on
condition that the wedding did not take place for some months. Pereira
was now entirely in the hands of the Banyan and did everything he told
him; so the crafty Indian communicated with the Arabs outside Portuguese
territory, telling them to be ready when due notice was given to attack
the town. He then proceeded to persuade Pereira to clean out the water
tanks of the fort, and to clear out the old supplies of food preparatory
to revictualling them; then, when the forts were without food and water,
and finally having damped all the powder, he gave notice to the Arabs,
who attacked and took the town on a Sunday evening, when the Portuguese
were carousing.
Captain Hamilton gives another account in his travels,[7] and tells us
that the Arabs were exasperated by a piece of pork, wrapped up in paper,
being sent as a present to the imam by the governor, Pereira, and he also
adds that the Portuguese were all put to the sword, save eighteen, who
embraced Mohammedanism; and that the Portuguese cathedral was made the
imam's palace, where he took up his residence for a month or two every
year.
Since those days these two forts have been regularly used by rival
claimants to the sovereignty of Oman as convenient points of vantage from
which to pepper one another, to the infinite discomfiture of the
inhabitants beneath.
The departure of the Portuguese did not greatly benefit the Omani.
Writing in 1624 to the East India Company, Thomas Kerridge speaks of
Maskat as 'a beggarly, poor town,' and 'Ormusz,' he says, 'is become a
heap of ruins.' At last, in 1737, owing to the jealousies of the rival
imams, Seid and Ibn Murshad, Maskat was taken by the Persians. They were,
however, soon driven out again by Ahmed-bin-Sayid, or Saoud, a man of
humble origin but a successful general; as a reward for his services he
was elected imam in 1741, and was the founder of the dynasty which still
rules there.
The successors of Ahmed-bin-Sayid found the obligations of being imam,
and the oath which it entailed to fight against the infidel, both awkward
and irksome, so his grandson, Saoud, who succeeded in 1779, never assumed
the title of imam, but was content with that of sultan, and consequently
the imamate of Oman has, with one short exception, been in abeyance ever
since.
Under the first rulers of this dynasty Oman became a state of
considerable importance. During the reigns of Sultan Saoud and his son
Sultan Saoud Sayid, a large part of the Arabian mainland was under the
rule of Oman, as also Bahrein, Hormuz, Larij, Kishm, Bandar Abbas, many
islands and their pearl fisheries, and Linga, also a good part of the
coast of Africa; and it was they who established the alliances with
England and the United States.
The first political relations between the East India Company and the
ruler of Oman took place in 1798, the object being to secure the alliance
of Oman against the Dutch and French. A second treaty was made two years
later, and it was provided in it that 'an English gentleman of
respectability on the part of the Honourable East India Company, should
always reside at the port of Maskat.'
An English gentleman of respectability has consequently resided there
ever since, and from the days of Sultan Sayid has become the chief factor
in the government of the place.
Sultan Sayid-bin-Sayid stands out prominently as the great ruler of Oman,
and under his rule Oman and its capital, Maskat, reached the greatest
pitch of eminence to be found in all its annals. He ascended the throne
in 1804, and reigned for fifty-two years.
He found his country in dire distress at the time of his accession, owing
to the attacks of the fanatical Wahabi from Central Arabia, who had
carried their victorious arms right down to Maskat, and had imposed their
bigoted rules and religious regulations on the otherwise liberal-minded
Mohammedans of Eastern Arabia. With Turkish aid on the one hand, and
British support on the other, Sultan Sayid succeeded in relieving his
country from these terrible scourges, and drove them back into the
central province of Nejd, from which they had carried their bloodthirsty
and fanatical wars over nearly the whole of the peninsula, and, when all
fear from the Wahabi was over, Sultan Sayid extended his conquests in all
directions. He occupied several points on the Persian Gulf and the
opposite coast of Beluchistan, and materially assisted the Indian
Government in putting down the piracy which had for long closed the Gulf
to all trade; and finally, in 1856, he added the important Arab
settlement of Mombasa and Zanzibar, on the African coast, to his
dominion.
During this long reign Maskat prospered exceedingly. It was the great
trade centre for the Persian Gulf, inasmuch as it was a safe depôt, where
merchants could deposit their goods without fear of piracy; vessels going
to and from India before the introduction of steam used frequently to
stop at Maskat for water. As a trade centre in those days it was almost
as important as Aden, and with the Indian Government Sultan Sayid was
always on most friendly terms.
When Sultan Sayid died, the usual dispute took place between his
successors. England promptly stepped in to settle this dispute, and, with
the foresight she so admirably displays on such occasions, she advocated
a division of Sayid's empire. Zanzibar was given to one claimant, Oman to
the other, and for the future Oman and Sultan Tourki remained under
British protection.
Since the death of Sultan Sayid the power of Oman has most lamentably
gone down, partly owing to the very success of his attempts to put down
piracy; this, followed by the introduction of steam, has diminished the
importance of Maskat as a safe port for the merchants to deposit their
wares. It is also partly due to the jealousies which prevail between the
descendants of Sayid who rule in Zanzibar and in Maskat. Palgrave in 1863
describes Maskat as having 40,000 inhabitants; there are probably half
that number now.
The Sultan of Zanzibar has to pay an annual tribute of 40,000 crowns to
his relative of Maskat in order to equalise the inheritance, and this
tribute being a constant source of trouble, of late years he has taken to
urging the wild Bedouin tribes in Oman to revolt against the present,
rather weak-minded sultan who reigns there. He supplies them with the
sinews of war, namely money and ammunition, and the insurrection which
occurred in February 1895 was chiefly due to this motive power.
One of his sisters married a German, the English conniving at her escape
from Zanzibar in a gunboat. On her husband's death, her elder brother
having in the meantime also died, she returned to Zanzibar thinking her
next brother, the present sultan, to be of a milder disposition, but he
refused to take any notice of her and her children.
The present ruler of Maskat, Sultan Feysul, is a grandson of Sultan Sayid
and son of Sultan Tourki by an Abyssinian mother. Since his accession, in
1889, he has been vacillating in his policy; he has practically had but
little authority outside the walls of Maskat, and were it not for the
support of the British Government and the proximity of a gunboat, he
would long ago have ceased to rule. When we first saw him, in 1889, he
was but a beardless boy, timid and shy, and now he has reached man's
estate he still retains the nervous manner of his youth. He lives in
perpetual dread of his elder brother Mahmoud, who, being the son of a
negress, was not considered a suitable person to inherit the throne. The
two brothers, though living in adjacent houses, never meet without their
own escorts to protect them from each other.
The way in which Feysul obtained possession of the Sultan's palace on his
father's death, to the exclusion of his brother, is curious.
Feysul said his grief for his father was so great that his feelings would
not admit of his attending the funeral, so he stayed at home while
Mahmoud went, who on his return found the door locked in his face.
The palace is entered by a formidable-looking door, decorated with large
spiked bosses of brass. This opens into a small court which contained at
the time of our first visit the most imposing sight of the place, namely
the lion in his cage to the left, into which Feysul was in the habit of
introducing criminals of the deepest dye, to be devoured by this lordly
executioner. Opposite to this cage of death is another, a low
probationary cage, which, when we were there, contained a prisoner
stretched out at full length, for the cage is too low to admit of a
sitting posture. From this point he could view the horrors of the lion's
cage, so that during his incarceration he might contemplate what might
happen to him if he continued, on liberation, to pursue his evil ways.
Another door leads into a vaulted passage full of guards, through which
we passed and entered into an inner court with a pool in the centre and a
wide cloister around it supporting a gallery.
Sultan Feysul was then a very young man, not much over twenty. He was
greatly interested in seeing us, for we were the first English travellers
who had visited him since his accession. We caught sight of him peeping
at us over the balcony as we passed through the courtyard below, and we
had to clamber up a ladder to the gallery, where we found him ready to
welcome us. He seized our hands and shook them warmly, and then led us
with much effusiveness to his _khawah_, a long room just overhanging the
sea, which is his reception and throne-room. Here were high,
cane-bottomed chairs around the walls, and at one end a red chair, which
is the throne; just over it were hung two grotesque pictures of our Queen
and the Prince Consort, such as one could buy for a penny at a fair. They
are looked upon as objects of great value here, and act as befitting
symbols of our protectorate.
The imam fed us with sweets and coffee, asked us innumerable questions,
and seemed full of boyish fun. Certainly with his turban of blue and red
checked cotton (which would have been a housemaid's duster at home), his
faded, greenish yellow cloak, fastened round his slender frame by a red
girdle, he looked anything but a king. As we were preparing to depart the
young monarch grew apparently very uneasy, and impatiently shouted
something to his attendants, and when the servant came in, Feysul hurried
to him, seized four little gilt bottles of attar of roses, thrust two of
them into each of our pockets, and with some compliments as to our Queen
having eyes everywhere, and Feysul's certainty that she would look after
him, the audience was at an end.
Sultan Feysul was a complete autocrat as far as his jurisdiction
extended. At his command a criminal could be executed either in the
lion's cage or in a little square by the sea, and his body cut up and
thrown into the waves. The only check upon him was the British Resident.
His father, Tourki, not long before sewed up a woman in a sack and
drowned her, whereupon a polite message came from the Residency
requesting him not to do such things again. Hence young Feysul dared not
be very cruel--to offend the English would have been to lose his
position.
His half brother, Mahmoud, whose mother was a Swahili, lives next door to
his brother, Sultan Feysul, in the enjoyment of a pension of 600 dollars
a mouth. The uncles, however, are not so amenable. The eldest of them,
according to Arabian custom, claimed the throne and had collected an army
amongst the Bedouin to assert his claims, and was then in possession of
all the country, with the exception of Maskat and El Matra, for Feysul
had no money, and hence he could not get his soldiers to fight. But then
it had been intimated to Feysul that in all probability the English would
support his claims if he conducted himself prudently and wisely. So
there was every likelihood that in due course he would be thoroughly
established in the dominions of his father.
When we visited the town for the second time an even more serious
rebellion was impending, the Bedouin of the interior, under Sheikh Saleh,
having attacked Maskat itself. The sultan and his brother, who hastily
became friends, retired together to the castle, and the town was given up
to plunder. There were dead bodies lying on the beach, and but for the
kindness of Colonel Hayes Sadler, the British Resident, there would have
been difficulties in the fort as regards water. They relied principally
on H.M.S. _Sphinx_, which lay in the harbour to protect British
interests, and to maintain Sultan Feysul in his position.
This state of terror lasted three weeks, when the rebels, having looted
the bazaars and wrecked the town, were eventually persuaded to retire,
free and unpunished, with a considerable cash payment; probably intending
to return for more when the cooler weather should come, and the date
harvest be over. With the consent of, and at the request of, the Indian
Government, Sultan Feysul has imposed additional heavy duty on all the
produce coming in from the rebel tribes, that he may have a fund from
which to pay indemnities to foreigners who suffered loss during the
invasion. A good many Banyan merchants, British subjects, suffered
losses, and their claim alone amounted to 120,000 rupees. As a natural
result of this disaster and its ignominious termination, Sultan Feysul's
authority at the present moment is absolutely _nil_ outside the walls of
Maskat and El Matra, and he is still in a state of declared war with all
the Bedouin chiefs in the mountains behind Maskat.
A few British subjects were scared, but not killed, and as all was over
in a few weeks no one thought much more about it except those more
immediately interested, and few paused to think what an important part
Maskat has played in the opening up of the Persian Gulf and the
suppression of piracy, and what an important part it may yet play should
the lordship of the Persian Gulf ever become a _casus belli_.
Although Maskat has been under Indian influence for most of this century,
it has latterly gone down much in the world; the trade of the place has
well-nigh departed, and with a weak sultan at the head of affairs,
confidence will be long in returning. Unquestionably our own Political
Agent may be said to be the ruler in Maskat, and his authority is
generally backed up by the presence of a gunboat. There is also an
American Consul there, who chiefly occupies himself in trade and steamer
agencies, and in 1895 the French also sent a Consul to inquire into the
question of the slave trade, which is undoubtedly the burning question in
Arabia.
Whilst England has been doing all she can to put slavery down, it is
complained that much is carried on under cover of the French flag,
obtained by Arab dhows under false pretexts from the French Consul
resident in Zanzibar. Sultan Feysul remonstrated with France on this
point, and the appointment of a Consul is the result.
The great reason for our unpopularity in Arabia is due without doubt to
our suppression of this trade. Slavery is inherent in the Arab; he does
as little work as he can himself, and if he is to have no slaves nothing
will be done, and he must die. In other parts of South Arabia--Yemen, the
Hadhramout, the Mahra country, and Dhofar--slavery is universal; and
there is no doubt about it the slaves are treated very well and live
happy lives; but here in Oman, under the very eye of India, slavery must
be checked. Our gunboat, the _Sphinx_, goes the round of the coast to
prevent this traffic in human flesh, and frequently slaves swim out to
the British steamer and obtain their liberty. This naturally makes us
very unpopular in Sur, where the Jenefa tribe have their head-quarters,
the most inveterate slave-traders of Southern Arabia. The natural result
is that whenever they get a chance the Jenefa tribe loot any foreign
vessel wrecked on their shores and murder the crew. In the summer of
1894, however, a boat was wrecked near Ghubet-el-Hashish, containing some
creoles from the Seychelle Islands, after being driven for forty-five
days out of their course by south-east monsoons, during which time three
or four of them had died. The survivors were much exhausted, but the
Bedouin treated them kindly, for a wonder, and brought them safely to
Maskat. For doing this they were handsomely rewarded by the Indian
Government, though they had kept possession of the boat and its contents;
nevertheless, they had saved the lives of the crew, and this, being a
step in the right direction, was thought worthy of reward.
The jealousies, however, of other tribes were so great that the rescuers
could not return to their own country by the land route, but had to be
sent to Sur by sea.
Feysul has had copper coins of his own struck, of the value of a quarter
anna. On the obverse is a picture of Maskat and its forts, around which
in English runs the legend, 'Sultan Feysul-bin-Tourki Sultan and Imam of
Maskat and Oman,' and on the reverse is the Arab equivalent. He has also
introduced an ice-factory, which, however, is now closed, and he wished
to have his own stamps, principally with a view to making money out of
them; but our agent represented to him that it was beneath the dignity of
so great a sultan to make money in so mean a way, and the stamps have
never appeared. Sultan Feysul had done much in the last few years, since
our first visit, to modernise his palace. British influence has abolished
many horrors and cruelties, and the lion having died has not been
replaced.
For the Indian Government the question of Maskat is by no means pleasant,
for, should any other Power choose to interfere and establish an
influence there, it would materially affect the influence which we have
established in the Persian Gulf.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: Pinkerton, vol. viii.]