Page 64 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The Retreat from the Gulf 61

land area of central Arabia, began to make their way at the turn of the
nineteenth century to plunder the villages of inner Oman and exact tribute
from their inhabitants. The Najdis’ incursions were made under the spur of a
movement of religious revivalism known as Wahhabism, of which a fuller
account will be given later, in the chapter on Saudi Arabia. It is sufficient here
to notice that the progress of the movement was intimately linked to the rise to
power of the house of Saud, of Dariya in Najd, the ruling members of which,
from the late eighteenth century onwards, also filled the office of imam of the
Wahhabiya. The Wahhabis made their first appearance east of the Jafurah at
the outset of 1800, when a force of horsemen and camel-riders rode 500 miles
across the desert to seize the oasis of al-Buraimi, hard by the foothills of the
Hajar mountain range of Oman. Buraimi was the key to inner Oman and to the
neighbouring shaikhdoms along the Gulf coast. The oasis measured about six
miles across and was roughly circular in outline. It had perhaps half a dozen
settlements and a plentiful supply of good water, brought from the nearby hills
in underground channels. The soil was fertile and grew a variety of fruit and
crops, as well as providing pasturage for livestock. South of Buraimi ran the
tracks to Nizwa, Bahlah, Izki and the other ancient towns of central Oman. To
the eastward a pass wound its way through the Hajar mountains to another
major town, Sauhar, on the Gulf of Oman. To the north and west the tracks led
to Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, a hundred miles away. Whoever
held Buraimi in force could overawe these shaikhdoms and much of inner
Oman besides. The point was not lost upon the Wahhabi invaders from Najd,
who garrisoned the oasis for several years on end at intervals during the
nineteenth century.
To a large extent the Wahhabis’ successive occupations of Buraimi were
made possible by their ability to exploit the numerous feuds, factional rivalries
and sectarian differences that divided the tribes of northern Oman and the
adjacent coast of the Gulf. Among those they attracted to their standard or
converted to their interpretation of Islam were the Qawasim of Sharjah and Ras
al-Khaimah, the strongest of the seafaring tribes of the southern littoral of the
Gulf, whose piratical exploits over the years had won for this stretch of
shoreline the name among European mariners of ‘the Pirate Coast’. Under the
spur of Wahhabi teachings, the Qawasim in the early years of the nineteenth
century launched what amounted to a seaborne jihad against European and
Indian shipping, not only within the Gulf but further afield. A British expedi­
tionary force was dispatched from India against them in the winter of 1809—10,
and again in the winter of 1819-20; and at the conclusion of the second
expedition the Qawasim were compelled, along with the other tribes of the
irate Coast, to subscribe to a treaty (the General Treaty of Peace of January
1820) outlawing piracy forever. Thereafter the British authorities in the Gulf
ept a close watch upon the degree of influence exercised by the Wahhabi or
audi rulers of Najd over the maritime shaikhdoms of the Gulf, so as to ensure