Page 167 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

European Accounts of Muscat 157
between Muscat and Sedad is accessible only by boat and
serves as a Christian cemetery. There arc fine gardens and the
view at Sedad (picture) is one of the most striking that he had
ever seen. The route to Muttrah in wet weather was partly by
sea and then by a pass at the back of the headland. It was the
commercial centre with a Monday suq which brought in the
countryfolk. Each nationality had its own ward. The richest
merchants in the country had houses there and the Indian Dr.
Jayakar lived there for 25 years. Bent returned in 1895.
(Jayakar published various articles on wild life but no
description of the area).
1892 WEEKS, Edwin Lord, From the Black Sea through Persia
and India, London, 1896, 138-44. He visited in December and
was reminded of Claude Lorrain and of Venetian painters.
The Postmaster accompanied him as interpreter to see the
Sultan, who was a handsome young man interested in
photography and in Paris. The reception room was decorated
with old clocks. He saw some pretty, good-natured dancing
girls with transparent veils and golden anklets. He was carried
out to his canoe on the back of a Lascar.
CURZON, George Nathaniel, Persia and the Persian
Question, London 1892, ii, 433-46. ‘One of the most
picturesque places in the world’, it reminded him of a mixture
of Aden and Corfu. He put the population at 5,000 within the
walls. The British Consulate was being rebuilt as the old one
had fallen to pieces and was now the handsomest structure in
town, better than the Sultan’s ‘plain, substantial’ palace. A
small hollow at the foot of the western rock stores 1,700 tons
of coal for the Royal Navy. Both men and women were
extraordinarily black, their Arab blood swamped by African.
The women ‘increase their natural hidcousness’ by a mask. In
the palace there was a murderess in the cage opposite the lion
but murder was not regarded as such a serious crime that it
needed retribution. The Hindus monopolize the main shops
and ‘British ascendency is well-established and popular' and
he expected to see the Union Jack flying over the castles. ‘We
should tolerate no alien interference.’ He described the attack
of 1889 in which the defenders lost one old woman and a dog.
Indeed Arabs say ‘as big a coward as a Muscati’. Exports,
worth £210,000 a year, are dates, fruits, fish, limes, grapes and
walnuts: imports, worth £280,000 a year, are Bengal rice,
sugar, coffee, cotton (Manchester and Bombay), silk, oil,
opium, pearls, wheat and salt. The Customs are farmed to a
Banyan for £17,000.
189? SYKES, Percy, Ten Thousand Miles in Persia, London, 1902,
87-8, with picture. The population including the suburbs is
about 8,000. Service there shows what ‘the white man’s
burden’ really means and is so detested that a posting there is

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