Page 344 - INDIANNAVYV1

312 HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY.
Uiu and Damaun, Portuguese possessions in India, and sacked
the churches. His son, Seif, in 1698, drove the Portuguese
from Mombaza, Pemba, and Kilwa, and added these possessions
to Oman ; this prince had a formidable Navy, one of the ships
carrying eighty guns. So powerful had the Omanees becon]e
that, as we have mentioned during the course of this narrative,
the trade of the English East India Company was greatly en-
dangered, and one of their agents in Persia—who had all, indeed,
successively insisted on the necessity of sending an armed force
to destroy them— declared that '' they were likely to become as
great a plague to India, as the Algerines were in Europe"
Some of the ships owned by these " pirates," as Morier calls
them, had from thirty to fifty guns; and one of their fleets,
consisting of five ships, carried between them fifteen hundred
men.
Niebuhr makes no mention of Ras-ul-Khymah, under that
name, but there appears an account of the origin of the w'ord in
a curious work,* which formerly was in the library of the famous
Orientalist andtraveller, Sir W. Ouseley, written by an European
officer of the household of the late Seyyid (or Syud) Said of
—
Muscat. He says of Ras-ul-Khymah : " Their founder, Joasmi,
pitched his tent on a point of land a little elevated above the
sea shore, which being very conspicuous to all other ships passing
by, the sailors called the place Ras-el-Keima, which in Arabic
signifies ' the point of the tent,' and in process of time a town
being built, the original name w'as transferred to it." During
the latter part of the eighteenth century, the arms of Mohammed-
ibn-Abdul-Wahab,t whose name signifies " Bestower of
Blessings." subdued the whole of Nedjed and the countr}'-
between Derreyah, the capital, and the Gulf; and "before he
died," says Palgrave, " he saAv his authority acknowledged from
the shores of the Persian Gulf to the frontiers of Mecca." For
three years these fierce pirates held out against the Moslem
reformer, but, at length they gave in their adhesion to the new
tenets, and, after the manner of proselytes, enforced its behests
upon all disbelievers with fiery zeal. For a long time the
Joasmis only attacked the crews of native trading vessels, and,
according to their invariable custom on such occasions, gave the
crews the option of forthwith conforming to their religion or
* " History of the Seyd Said, Sultan of Muscat, with an account of the
Wahabees, by Sheik Mansur, an Italian, who was physician to the Sultan, and
commanded his forces against the Joasmis."
t For furtlier particulars regarding the history, government, and religion of
tlie Wahabees, I would refer the reader to Burckhardt's " Notes on the Bedouins
and Wahabees." According to Palgrave's " Central and Eastern Arabia," the
following was the succession of Wahabee chiefs:—Saood, the founder of the
dynasty ; Abd-ul-Aziz, his son and successor ; Saood II. the disciple of the
founder ; Abd-ul-Asiz, his son, who was assassinated about 1803 ; Abdullali, a
younger son, beheaded at Constantinople ; Toorkee, son of Abdullah, assassinated
in 1834 ; and Faisul, son of Toorkee.