Page 155 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Four

they were confronted with such a variety of different gods worship­
ped by themselves and by neighbouring tribes. They were people
whose communities were divided from one another by different
moral values, by different habits and codes of practice in their daily
lives, in marriage and divorce, in the treatment of ill-health and burial
rites, and in the laws of inheritance.
Although the original dispensation granted by the Prophet to
Oman releasing the people from the obligation to remit the annual
zakah to Medina was withdrawn after the battle of Dibah, the
political sovereignty of the Caliphate over the south-eastern part of
the Peninsula was at first sufficiently unobtrusive to permit the
traditional structure of tribal rule to continue undisturbed. The
General Hudaifah administered Oman for three years before the
Julanda’ princes Jaifar and 'Abd resumed their positions as tribal
Rulers. Their status was now greatly enhanced, because they were
also leading in the adoption of the new law, the new faith, the novel
sense of togetherness in an Islamic society, and, above all, the
expectation of a life after death. The Rulers in Nizwa13 and probably
elsewhere in Eastern Arabia were placed under the distant super­
vision of the Caliph’s governor of al Bahrayn, Hajar and Oman,
resident in al Bahrayn.
In Oman the growing enthusiasm for the new faith was not
dimmed by any particularly obvious political exigencies, and Islam
probably helped the development of Omani nationhood at that
time.14

2 Influence of the Ibadis’ struggles against
the Caliphate
It is not surprising that most of the survivors of the attack on the
Kharijites in the battle of Nahawan in West Persia in ad 657 (ah 37)
fled to Oman, where they soon found new supporters, and where a
modified version of Kharijite thinking became the basis of the Ibadi
State. The Kharijites maintained that none of the contenders for the
Caliphate should rule over the peoples who had adopted Islam
merely because they were closely related to the Prophet Muhammad
or were his companions or of his tribe, the Quraish. They believed
that the most pious and respectable and the most politically and
militarily able man from among the Muslims should be elected Imam.
The Caliphs and the pretenders to the Caliphate rose repeatedly to

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