Page 48 - Arabian Gulf Intellegence

6 OMAN.

known how the Persian Monarch quashed this rebellion, and punished
its author. These disturbances withdrew the attention of the Persi
ans
from the affairs of Arabia, and made them neglect to keep up the gar­
rison in Muskat.
At the period of Taki Khan’s expedition into Oman, there
was at
Sohar a governor of the name of Ahmed bin Sueed, a native of a
small town within the Imaum’s dominions. This Ahmed, being a man
of ability and enterprise, and seeing that after the death of the two
Imaums he should be under the necessity of submitting to such potent
enemies as the Persians, made his peace with the invaders so ably that
Taki Khan confirmed him in his government.
During the civil wars in Persia, a Prince of Dhang, of the house of
Yarabi, the Prince of Sir, and a nobleman named Bel Arrab, had shared
among themselves the spoils of the last Imaum ; Bel Arrab had even
assumed the title.
Ahmed, seizing the Persian officers in Muskat by surprise, forced the
garrison to surrender, and made himself master of the city, without any
effusion of blood. Gaining to his interest the first Kadhi, who officiates
as Mufti in Oman, he obtained from him a decision that he, as the
deliverer of his country, deserved to be raised to the dignity of its
sovereign. In virtue of this decision, Ahmed was proclaimed, at
Muskat, Imaum of Oman.
As soon as Imaum Bel Arrab heard this news, he prepared to attack
his rival, with an army of four or five thousand men. Ahmed, too weak
for resistance, retired into a fortress among the hills, in which he was
invested by his enemy, and would have been obliged to surrender
himself, had he not happily escaped in the disguise of a camel-driver.
Being beloved in his former government, he found means to assemble
some hundreds of men, and with these marched against Bel Arrab,
whose army was still encamped amon g the hills. He divided his little
troops into detachments, who seized the passes of the valleys, and
sounded their trumpets. Bel Arrab, supposing himself to be circum­
vented by a strong army, was struck with a panic, fled, and was slain
in his flight by a son of Ahmed.
After the defeat and death of Bel Arrab, no competitor gave Imaum
Ahmed bin Sueed any further disturbance in the possession of the
throne of Oman, except a son of Imaum Murshid, who made some
Not-
unsuccessful efforts to deprive him of the sovereign authority,
withstanding these attempts, the Imaum yielded up to his rival the
town of Nahhel, with the territory belonging to it. A brother and
two sons of the last Imaum of the ancient family were permitted to
live in a private station, but in circumstances so opulent that they
The reigning
were able to maintain three or four hundred slaves.