Page 102 - Arabian Gulf Intellegence

60 ARAB TRIBES.

in the Gulf they have employed every effort to check, and to which they
have ever manifested a decided hostility. The Imaum of Muskat has
no greater merit: with more powerful resources to maintain its inde­
pendence, His Highness was equally compelled to preserve the
existence of his Government by an abject submission to the authority of
the Wahabee Chief. The Imaum acknowledged allegiance to the
Wahabees, and his whole fleet would have engaged in piracy but for
the timely interposition of the British Government in 1809.
The Records of the Bombay Government, and every other authority
I have consulted, fully corroborate the fact, that previously to the estab­
lishment of the Wahabee power,—and I would except also the period
from 1694-95 to 1736, during the ascendancy of the Muskat Arabs,__
the tribes in the Gulf were engaged in commercial enterprise ; in the
cultivation of extensive groves of the date tree ; and in the pursuit of a
lucrative pearl fishery : their vessels resorting to the ports of India,
Yemen, Africa, Sind, Kutch, and Bussora, which afforded profitable
employment to the maritime portion of the population of the Gulf.
It is a very extraordinary fact,—at least I have not been able to trace
anything to the contrary,—that during the whole period of the ascen­
dancy of the Wahabee power in the Gulf, the Imaum of Muskat has
not lost an inch of territory, nor a single port, that belonged to his
ancestors, on the shores of Oman.
Neither has he any claim to the ports of the Joasmees. Oman has
from the earliest ages been divided between two tribes, the Beni
Yemen or Beni Hinavi, and the Beni Nasir or Beni Gafree. The
Imaum is the head of the first, and his ancestors have possessed one of
the two principalities into which the province is divided, namely
Rastag, of which Muskat is the principal port.
The Chief of the Joasmees is the head of the other tribe, and has for
ages possessed the other principality, called Seer or Julfar, of which
Ras-ool-Khyma is the chief seaport. His ancestors settled in Oman
before those of the Imaum of Muskat.