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Tribal Rebellion, Marxist Revolution 111

enjoyed British backing, he could not be deposed; while on his side the sultan
was driven to acknowledge that his authority over his turbulent subjects in the
mountains had been reduced to little more than a fiction.

British interest in the fortunes of the Al Bu Said dated back to the closing
years of the eighteenth century, when the landing of the French expeditionary
force under Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt in 1798 led the British authorities in
India to secure an undertaking from the Al Bu Said ruler of Muscat in the
autumn of that year to exclude the French from his dominions. It remained
British policy for a hundred and fifty years thereafter, down to the dissolution

of the Indian empire in 1947, to prevent any other power from obtaining a
foothold in Oman, lest it should compromise the security of the British
possessions in India. The policy could not be pursued in isolation from
developments in Arabia and the Gulf in the intervening century and a half; and
so the British found themselves upholding the independence of Oman against
various attempts by the Saudis, the Turks and others, to subvert it, either by
direct assault or by intrigue. The British also found themselves driven by

events to sustain the rule of the Al Bu Said within Oman, largely as a conse­
quence of the undertakings given by successive Al Bu Said sultans to prohibit
the slave trade to their own people, to reduce the arms traffic and to afford
protection to British Indian subjects residing in their dominions. Thus, a sense
of obligation, not just self-interest, informed the British attitude to the Al Bu
Said, an obligation which was reinforced by a further undertaking given by the

Al Bu Said in 1891 not to alienate any portion of their territory to a foreign
power.
British Indian troops saved Muscat from capture by the imamate forces at
thebeginning of 1915, and they continued to guard the capital for the next five
years. Faisal ibn Turki died in October 1913 and was succeeded by his son,
Taimur, who proved no more acceptable to the inland tribes than his father had
been, and for much the same reasons. Nevertheless by 1920 the tribes were

ready to make their peace with him, partly as a result of the economic distress
they were suffering, partly because they had been thrown into confusion by the
assassination of the Imam Salim al-Kharusi in July 1920. The two sides met in
September 1920 at Sib, on the coast to the north of Muscat, where, with the
assistance of the British political agent at Muscat, a settlement of their
differences was negotiated and signed.

In the years following the conclusion of the modus vivendi at Sib relations
between the sultan at Muscat and the tribes were relatively harmonious, if
somewhat distant. So long as the sultan did not attempt to interfere in their
territories, the chiefs of the imamate confederacy did not challenge his
government elsewhere in the country or his right to conduct its external
affairs. A new imam had been elected within days of the murder of Salim
al-Kharusi. He was Muhammad ibn Abdullah al-Khalili of the Bani

uwaihah, a grandson of a notable mutawwa leader who had played a