Page 165 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

European Accounts of Muscat 155
1880 Dc RIVOYRE, Denis, Obock, Mascate, Bouchirc, Bassorah,
Paris, 1883, 61-110. He was received by Sultan Turki who
presented him with locally-grown roses. In the palace was a
huge Persian carpet and portraits of Queen Victoria, the
Prince of Wales and the Shah. There was a projecting gallery
around a court-yard with a small fountain and a steep
staircase. The Sultan had another house at Scdab which was a
nice oasis two hours away. A Japanese warship arrived while
he was there. There arc about 1,200 soldiers, many of them
Kurds or Yemenis, all dressed as they wish. They arc billeted
on villages as a punishment. The Sultan kept the keys of the
arms store. The US imports Omani dates.
1881 STACK, Edward, Six Months in Persia, London, 1882, 11-18.
Visited in February. He considered Muscat a flourishing city,
not without stateliness while Muttrah reminded him of Italy.
The Sultan’s steam yacht was in the harbour. All the iron
guns of the picturesque fortifications were rusty. There were
700 fat, comfortable Hindus under British protection.
1883 FRENCH, Bishop Thomas Valpy, in Birks, Rev. Herbert,
Life and Correspondence of Thomas Valpy French, London,
1895, ii, 43-5. Visited in March. The town was ‘an utter wreck
of its past greatness and renown’, exporting only rock salt and
donkeys. The harbour reminded him of Valletta. There was a
great multitude of slaves, who, said Col. Grant, the British
Agent, refuse freedom if it is offered. The tribes were
constantly raiding the town and in a recent battle 33 had been
killed just outside the walls. The Sultan was ‘a poor sunken
and demoralized creature, afraid each day of being poisoned
by his son’. Bishop French retired to Muscat in February 1891
and remained there until his death in May (ii, 361-401). He
preached Christianity in the suqs and found that the people
were sometimes rude. However he regarded it as an ideal
centre for missionary activity, hoping to bring in Christian
Syrian pastors and lady doctors. He lodged with a Goanese
half-caste but discovered that this was a centre for selling
illicit alcohol to Arabs so he moved to Muttrah where there
was no other Christian except a retired Indian Doctor. There
were 10 or 12 mosques in Muttrah. One quarter was for lepers
only and there were about 50 families there. He had never
seen so many women in mosques as in Muscat. There were a
few schools. The suq was like a mole-burrow. The Sultan
received him in a very plain apartment looking over the sea,
furnished with a sofa and a chair. He was about 30, dignified
and affable but practically uneducated, not knowing classical
Arabic. The Prime Minister, on the other hand, discussed
Socrates. French was buried in Muscat, and Birks, visiting the
graveyard in 1894, found 35 other Christian tombs.
1887 HAIG, General F. T., ‘Arabia as a Mission Field’, reprinted