Page 155 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

European Accounts of Muscat 145
part of the globe’; ‘in few parts of the world can the
necessaries, nay even the luxuries of life, be obtained in
greater profusion’; the slaves and lower classes ‘are often
perfect models for Hercules’. There is also a reference to
Muscat’s ‘lofty minarets’.
1831 STOCQUELER, J. H., Fifteen months pilgrimage through
untrodden tracks of Khuzistan and Persia. London, 1832, 3-8.
Visited in March. Sayyid Said received him on a verandah,
surrounded by well-dressed Arab guards with swords and
spears and some dirty Abyssinians. The Imam, ‘a warrior and
trader, just governor and chivalric lover’, asked penetrating
questions about the recent French Revolution. He is
passionately interested in breeding horses and the writer saw
40 fine stallions and 20 mares from Cutch and Bahrein. The
Imam exports horses or gives them as presents. He has 10,000
fighting men. The writer’s ship loaded with hides and matting
for Bushire.
1833 SKINNER, Major Thomas, Adventures during a journey
overland, London, 1836, ii, 285-8. He visited in June and
thought that he would have melted. The rocks glowed like
heated ovens and the iron on the ship was too hot to touch in
early morning. The temperature was 103 in the shade. The
bazaars were good and the part facing the harbour well built
but he was glad to return to the ship ‘perfectly ready to
believe that Muscat deserves its infernal reputation’.
ROBERTS, Edmund, Embassy to Eastern Courts, New York,
1837, 351-63. Visited in September, when ‘perspiration
poured from the body like rain.’ He put the circumference of
the city at one mile with a population of 12,000 with 5,000
more in the suburbs, and ‘no place presents a more forbidding
aspect.’ There are few decent houses because most are
demolished by rain and float in pieces through the streets
which are converted into canals. The lanes ‘or rather slits’ are
irregular and full of rubbish. ‘The inhabitants are indolent
and those who are neither sailors nor soldiers, mechanics nor
merchants, are miserably poor.’ There are numerous blind
beggars. Hindu barbers work in the streets. There is a daily
slave sale near sunset—they are oiled and hawked around the
streets and so are cashmere shawls, swords, spears, rhino
shields. Weavers dig a hole for their feet with a seat a step
higher and use a primitive loom with a palm leaf shelter.
Blacksmiths have bellows of two skins so arranged that one
fills while they blow with the other: they have stone anvils
and keep fire and water in holes in the ground. Other trades
are those of the coppersmiths, rope-makers, caipenters and
sandal-makers. Fishnets are circular, 15 feet in diameter, and
weighted to sink 10 feet. In the harbour are two fin-backed
whales, including Muscat Tom who has visited daily for 20