Page 276 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

214 THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES
(a) Extent of control by Muscat
1. In November 1875, almost five years after 'Azzan’s conquest of
Buraimi, Lieutenant Colonel Miles, British Political Agent in Muscat,
visited the region. He expressed the following view:
The most powerful and predominant Ghafiri tribe at present is the
Naim . . . They occupy el-Bereymi proper and Suareh, and their possession
of the fort enables them to overawe the whole of the settlement. Since the
time of Scyyid Azan, they have been practically uninterfered with by the
Muscat Government, but of course own allegiance to the present Sultan.1
In his report of 1878-9 on Muscat, Miles made a list of the towns
and districts which were governed by officials appointed by the Sultan.
The district of al-Dhahirah or Buraimi was not mentioned in that
list.2
2. According to Lorimcr, \ . . the Buraimi Oasis and the Mahadhah
tract, though they belong to Oman, are not included in the Sultan's
possessions'.3The Sultan, Lorimer says,‘had no authority at a distance
from his capital’.4
3. Buraimi was visited in May 1901 by Samuel Zwcmer, an Ameri­
can missionary. He stated that:
The principal tribes east of Bereimi . . . do not acknowledge the authority
of the Sultan of Maskat, but have their own .chiefs, and are, alas, nearly
always at feud with each other.5
4. Lovat Fraser, a British journalist, recorded this about his visit
to Muscat:
Even within the state of Oman the authority of the Sultan can rarely be
safely exercised outside the two contiguous towns of Muscat and Matra
[Matrah].6
5. The British Admiralty Handbook on Arabia refers to Buraimi
as an ‘independent tract’ as follows:
There are two small independent tracts between Oman Sultanate and
Trucial Oman, to which the Sultan of Oman has never laid claim . . . (These
two independent tracts are referred to as ‘Jau and the Buraimi Oasis’.)7
6. Captain Eccles, an officer of the Indian Army who was in com­
mand of the Muscat levies in 1920, gave a talk on 27 October 1920
to the Central Asian Society, London, on Muscat. In that talk,
1 Lt-Col Miles, ‘On the Route between Sohar and el-Bereymi, in Oman',
Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 46 (1877), p. 52.
2 Government of India, Annual Report of the Persian Gulf Residency and Muscat
"JESSE®*® P' 5-, ibid., „,PP ,4.9.
6 7WAmpr S M ‘Three Journeys in Northern Oman , Geographical Journal,
to (1902^ d 63. 4 Fraser, L., India under Curzon and After (1911), pp. 90-1.
7 Great’Britain; British Admiralty, A Handbook on Arabia, vol. 1 (1916), pp.
281-2.