'Handbook of Arabia. Vol. I. 1917' [‎37] (46/748)

POLITICS
37
at . . (3) Sultanate of Oman (British Sphere).—This is an old principate
m . J with a chequered history. For many centuries, from the eighth
, 1 onwards, it was a purely elective primacy over the Ibadhi sectaries
f of Oman, who hold, with their Khawarijite teachers, that the leader-
" 6161 ship of the faithful should depend not on an accident of birth, such
, as membership of the Qoreish tribe or descent from the Prophet, but
, !t on personal fitness or on political expediency. The person selected
' J J by them to rule was styled Imam, and his residence was at Rostaq.
He was usually derived from one of the greater tribes, first the
swerei A Z d, and then the Ya'aribah, preference, but no right, being given
!ora f to a son of the last Imam.
It was not till 1741 that a dynasty—the same which is still in
ttierii power—was initiated by Ahmed ibn Sa'id of the Azd tribe, who
W had been elected Imam as a reward for his share in the expulsion
illion p of Persian troops, invited by the last Ya'aribah. His second son,
in, F Sa'id, succeeded, and in the course of a very long life, which lasted
fromi till about 1815, saw himself supplanted in the reality of power
•elysea first by his own son, then by his brother. Sultan, and then by
M lta his nephews, sons of the latter. One of these, Sa'id, who had
lem i been sole regent and de facto ruler since 1804, survived and
edallti succeeded him, but, for reasons never satisfactorily explained, not
sagaim as Imam, but as Sultan, retaining as his title of honour
, but at which he had held hitherto, like all Ahmed ibn Sa'id's descendants'
ceatet' Seyyids, not Imams, the Sultans of Oman have been ever since,
ions mail The fact is important, because, although the Ibadhi doctrine does
) he m not absolutely require that there should be any Imam, a natural desire
gainst' for one has led constantly to the election of an Imam by sectaries
iidence of the interior in opposition to the Seyyid reigning on the coast;
a sutei® and most recently in 1913. That no Sultan since Ahmed's son has
rahandl ever secured this recognition at the hand of the inland tribes, who
g have grown more fanatical under Wahabite infiuence, is due in the
tionoft main to Sultan Sa'id's transference of his seat from Rostaq to
in all 2? Muscat in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, to his frequent
■an app® absences abroad at Zanzibar, &c., and to a certain suspicion of
(]ii)|l v ' : irreligion which has fallen on all the house since it has been in close
relations with non-believers.
in that The result is that the recent Sultans of the Al Bu Sa'id house
,-ri, and- have often been in reality little more than Sultans of Muscat and
itors ^ stretch of the coast north and south, and that anarchy, tempered
of ii# y occasional tribal alliances concluded under a new ' Imam 9
■ose peoi a S ainst tlle Sultan, has reigned in inland districts. At the present
ittachi- moment (1916) an Imam, rather than the Sultan, is recognized bv
the majority of the Oman tribes.