Page 111 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

io8 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

shaikh, of the Bani Ghafir was one of the contestants for the imamate in the
early stage of the civil wars of the eighteenth century. A rival candidate was the
tamimah of the Bani Hina, another tribe of central Oman, which was Yemeni in
origin. Each attracted the support of other tribes, and as the contest between
them intensified it drew in most of the tribes of Oman, on either the Hinawi or

the Ghafiri side. Even after the deaths in battle of the two main contestants the
tribes continued to identify themselves in political terms as Hinawi or Ghafiri.
The reason why the differentiation persisted was because it conformed, by and
large, to the underlying distinction in Omani society between tribes of Yemeni
and tribes of Nizari origin: most of the Yemeni tribes aligned themselves with
the Hinawi faction, most of the Nizari with the Ghafiri faction. Although some

important exceptions must again be admitted to this rule, the identification of
the Yemeni tribes as Ibadi in religious belief and Hinawi in political affiliation,
and of the Nizari tribes as Sunni and Ghafiri, is of sufficient validity to serve as
an aid to understanding the course of Omani politics since the eighteenth
century.

The character of the civil wars had a profound effect upon the nature and
significance of the Ibadi imamate. It debased the office by making it a trophy to
be won by force of arms, and it brought into contempt the theological
qualifications normally required of a successful candidate. What was of equal
moment, because the war ended with the accession to power of the Al Bu Said
dynasty it transformed the traditional basis of ruling authority in Oman; for

Ahmad ibn Said, the founder of the dynasty, relied for his strength more upon
his maritime and mercantile resources than upon his standing as a tribal and
territorial magnate. His successors in the Al Bu Said line were essentially
merchant princes whose interests and energies were directed primarily to
enterprises outside Oman - to trade with India, conquest in the Gulf and

dominion in East Africa - and who depended substantially upon the fruits of
these enterprises to maintain their rule in the country. None of them, with the
exception of Ahmad ibn Said’s immediate successor who reigned only a few
years, assumed the office of imam. Instead they were content to rule as
temporal princes with the title of ‘saiyid’ (in its meaning of ‘lord ), a style b\
which they have since been customarily known to their people, although later
Al Bu Said rulers also adopted the title of ‘sultan’ which was first applied to

them by Europeans. ,
Throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century Oman was su jecte
to a series of invasions by the Wahhabis or Saudis of Najd, whose puritanica
zeal and fierce intolerance matched those of the Ibadiya themselves.

Wahhabi incursions contributed greatly to the estrangement o t e in an
tribes, both Ibadi and Sunni, from the Al Bu Said rulers. Saiyi 31 1
Sultan, the greatest of the Al Bu Said princes, who reigned from i o to
was, like his predecessors, more interested in overseas trade an js
than in the internal affairs of Oman. From the middle years of his i e un i