Page 116 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Tribal Rebellion, Marxist Revolution 113

brother of the shaikh of Abu Dhabi who served as the Bani Yas wali in the
oasis, with the object of making his way along the northern edge of the sands to
the territory of the Wahibah tribe in the east. When the imam learned of
Thesiger’s defiance of his edict he was highly annoyed, although he relented to

the extent of allowing the explorer to return to Buraimi by way of the Oman
steppes. He was less forgiving when Thesiger reappeared the following year
and crossed the dirah, or tribal range, of the Duru, with the intention of
reaching the Jabal Akhdar. Determined that he should not do so, and particu­
larly that he should not make contact with Sulaiman ibn Himyar, the imam
sent a hundred armed men to Thesiger’s camp with orders to kill him if he

advanced any further. Since Thesiger could not reach the Jabal Akhdar,
Sulaiman ibn Himyar came down from the mountain to meet him. The reason
why the Bani Riyam chieftain was ready to defy the imam’s interdict was that
he wanted Thesiger to convey a request from him to the British political
resident in the Gulf for recognition as independent amir of the Jabal Akhdar,
with a treaty status comparable to that of the Trucial Shaikhs. Thesiger passed
on the request but it was not granted.
A more promising avenue for the pursuit of his ambitions opened up to

Sulaiman ibn Himyar when the Saudis occupied one of the Omani villages in
the Buraimi oasis in August 1952. The sultan, Said ibn Taimur, responded to
this provocation by assembling a large force of tribesmen at Sauhar, while the
Imam al-Khalili declared a jihad against the interlopers and gathered several
hundred tribesmen at Dariz to co-operate with the sultan’s forces. At the last

moment (as related in the previous chapter) the Saudis were saved from having
to beat a humiliating retreat from Buraimi by the intervention of the British
government, which brought pressure to bear upon Saiyid Said to disband his
tribesmen. It was, as has already been remarked, an ill-judged act of interfer­
ence. Not only did Said ibn Taimur suffer a loss of reputation among his
subjects for abandoning the expedition but the Saudis were left with a base at
Buraimi from which to mount a campaign of subversion among the tribes of

inner Oman. Sulaiman ibn Himyar, who had kept well clear of the fray,
accepted an invitation from the Saudi commander at Buraimi in November
1952 to journey to Riyad to discuss matters of mutual interest. There was little
he or his new-found friends could do in concert, however, while the old imam
lived, so the Bani Riyam chief was forced to cultivate the unfamiliar virtue of
patience.

In May 1954 the Imam Muhammad ibn Abdullah al-Khalili died, at the age
of some sixty-eight years. Although to the world outside he had presented an
image of dour intolerance and rigid xenophobia, in fact his tenure of the
imamate had been the very embodiment of the spirit of Ibadism - stern,
austere, withdrawn, self-contained, while he himself had been respected by all
°t is piety and saintliness. It was unlikely, as the taint of the twentieth
century spread to Oman, that his successor would be of the same metal. Two