Page 110 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Tribal Rebellion, Marxist Revolution 107

from being primarily a religious office to one in which the secular abilities of the
incumbent were as important as his theological attainments. The imamate was
suppressed in the middle of the twelfth century, and Oman was ruled for the
next two-and-a-half centuries by a dynasty of maliks, or kings, known as the
Nabhaniyah or Bani Nabhan. When the imamate was revived at some time in
the first half of the fifteenth century it led a precarious existence. The Bani

Nabhan still dominated the interior of the country, while the coastal towns
were, from the early years of the sixteenth century, under the control of the
Portuguese. The restoration of the imamate to a central role in Omani life came
about as a consequence of the election to office of the head of the Yaaribah clan
of Rastaq in the third decade of the seventeenth century. Under the Yaaribah,
Oman became a formidable naval power in Arabian and Eastern waters. After

driving the Portuguese from Muscat and the other coastal towns of Oman, the
Omanis went on to attack the Portuguese possessions in India, and at the end of
the century they drove the Portuguese from their strongholds on the east
African coast, which thenceforth fell under Omani domination. Unfortu­
nately, while the Yaaribah had introduced the principle of hereditary succes­
sion into the imamate, contrary to Ibadi doctrine, they could not ensure the
calibre of their successors. By the third decade of the eighteenth century the

dynasty was in a state of collapse, and its demise unleashed a series of conflicts
over the succession to the imamate which plunged Oman into almost continu­
ous civil war for the next quarter of a century.
It also subjected the country to foreign invasion and occupation, when in
1737 the last Yaaribah imam appealed to the Persians for military aid against

his enemies. A Persian army twice ravaged Oman, and Persian garrisons
remained in the country until they were expelled in 1744 by Ahmad ibn Said,
ruler of Sauhar and head of the Al Bu Said clan. Five years later Ahmad ibn
Said was elected imam, initiating the reign of the Al Bu Said dynasty which has
ruled Oman down to our day.
One of the lasting effects of the civil wars of the eighteenth century was to
emphasize and perpetuate a basic disunity among the tribes which had existed

since the Arab settlement of Oman in the pre-Islamic times. The earliest
immigrants in the first millennium BC were Yemeni or Qahtani Arabs from
south-western Arabia, who settled mainly in the central mountain complex of
the Jabal Akhdar, in the Sharqiyah and in Jaalan. By the second century ad the
migration of these Yemeni tribes had ceased. It was followed in the fourth and
fifth centuries ad by a fresh series of migrations of Nizari or Adnani Arabs from

central and eastern Arabia, who settled north of the Samail Gap, along the
inner slopes of the western Hajar and on the Trucial Coast. As a general rule, to
which a number of exceptions must be admitted, the tribes of Yemeni stock
were Ibadi by religious conviction, while those of Nizari origin were Sunni.
One of the exceptions to the rule was the Bani Ghafir of centra! Oman, a Nizari
tribe which was Ibadi by religious profession. The tamimah, or paramount