Page 458 - Truncal States to UAE_Neat

Notes to Chapter Four

lime the order and regularity, conveniences and benefits of civilized life
permeated the inhabitants of a country which a short time before was
sunk in the rank and stagnant mire of paganism.” Countries, p. 46.
15 In ad 752 (AH 135) the Caliph Abu al'Abbas sent Khazim bin Khuzaimah
to Oman to avenge a defeat suffered at the hands of the Ibadis (whose
elected Imam was al Julanda’ bin Mas'ud) two years previously, and to
punish the Umayyads who had escaped from Iraq three years earlier
and found refuge with the Ibadis; this was already the fifth invasion of
Oman by a Muslim army since ’Abd and Jaifar had accepted Islam in the
year ad 630 (ah 9).
16 See Miles, Countries p. 52. Yet another example was the devastating
defeat which the amir of Eastern Arabia in al Bahrayn, Muhammad bin
Nur, effected by invitation of the mostly Sunni Nizar faction of Oman in
AD 893 (ah 280) and from which the entire country did not recover for
centuries (because many aflaj were destroyed and the country de­
populated). This campaign also began in Trucial Oman territory:
“. . . altogether an army of about 25,000 men, including 3,500 cavalry in
chain armour, raised principally from the warlike tribes of Maaddic
stock, assembled under the white banner of the imperial general. This
large and well equipped expedition appears to have been divided into
two divisions, one of which set sail from Busra with the impedimenta
and stores in a flotilla of transports and disembarked at Julfar, while the
other, comprising the main body under Mohammad bin Noor, marched
by land from Lahsa (al Hasa) and crossing the Sabkheh reached Abu
Thubi, from whence, engaging on the way with the tribes of Al-Sirr in
skirmishes and desultory warfare, after the fashion of Arabia, he moved
on to Al-Beraimi in Al-Jow orTowwam, as it was then called, where he
arrived on the 24th Moharram, 280 AH (ad 893).” p. 81.
17 A yearly sum, was paid to the Caliph by the provinces in lieu of poll tax
and tithes. If records could be found of such a remittance having been
paid for all of al Gharbfyah province of Oman, this might shed some
light on the administrative links between the Gulf coast and Oman
proper.
18 For instance the Caliph’s amir, Yusuf bin Wajlh, who had taken Oman
from the Carmathians, collected a large flotilla and material at Julfar to
pursue the Persian adventurer al Baridi in ad 942 (ah 331); see Miles,
Countries, p. 105.
19 For the origin of the division of the tribes into Hinawi and Ghafiri
factions, see below, pages 273ff.
20 Sunnis were predominant in the districts of Rud-hillah, Shlbkuh,
Lingah, Bastak, Biyaban and Jashk, in the town of Bandar 'Abbas and
on the islands of Qishim, Hanjam and Larak; in all they were estimated
at about 100,000 souls; see Lorimer, Histor., p. 2350. The Baluchis who
settled among the Arabs of Trucial Oman were also mostly Sunnis.

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