"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎٥‎٧‎٩] (١٧٨٢/٧٢٢)

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The period, we may observe, opened with a severe visitation of the ^ isit e a p|^ ie
country in 1899 by the three epidemic diseases of plague, small-pox and disease, 1899.
cholera, the melancholy results of which are described in the special
Appendix on sanitary matters.
In politics the two chief centres of interest since 1899 have been Sur
and the Rustaq valley.
. Affairs at
Sur, a town never submissive to the authority of the Sultans or Sur.
'Oman, had been hitherto neglected by Saiyid Faisal, who did not once
visit it during the first twelve years of his reign. In 1898, as has been
mentioned before, the inhabitants expelled the Sultan's garrison by force
but allowed it to be replaced on sufferance. By 1900 the people of Sur,
especially those of the Jannabah tribe, had almost ceased, under French
encouragement, to regard the Sultan as their master. jooo
In May 1900 Hilal-bin-'Amr arrived at Sur from East Africa,
joined hands with M. Ottavi, and began to inveigh against the Sultan
and the British ; and the spirit of the Jannabah was now such that, when
summoned by the Sultan to meet him at Masqat, they refused to go and
insolently suggested that he should deal with them instead thiough the
French Vice-Consul. It was this state of matters which obliged Saiyid
Faisal in June 1900 to make a visit to Sur, the first since his accession.
His reception was more favourable than he had expected, for all the
elders of the town immediately paid their respects to him, the chief
Shaikh of the Bani Bu 'Ali came down from the interior with a
thousand men to do him honour, and, as already related, the Sultan was
successful before he left in obtaining from the French flag-holders of
the port, including the Jannabah, a formal profession of allegiance to
himself and a renunciation of French protection. 1901.
In June 1901 the Sultan sent 80 Wahhabi 'Askaris to garrison his
post at Sur, and the French flag-holders, few of whom had observed
their promise given in the previous year, understanding the act as a
threat to themselves, asked M. Ottavi whether he would protect theni in
case of an attack by the Sultan's troops ; his reply was unfavoura e,
and the incident marked another stage in the decline of French influe
at Sur. In the autumn of 1901 Saiyid Faisal paid a second visit to Sur
and was anxious, for fiscal and administrative purposes, to enc ose ^
town by a wall on the landward side. Difficulties as to laboui an ma er
caused him to desist from this project; but, before he left Sur, he a came
into execution an older and lees ambitious scheme that whic . . ^
to provoke the local rebellion of 1898—by erecting blockhouses^ e w>'
Sur and Bilad-as-Sur to command the caravan routes to the interior
46 A