Page 181 - Arabian Studies (II)

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Development of Culture on the Coast of Oman 173

was a student of the reformer Muhammad ‘Abduli in Egypt, and the
scholar al-AIusT in Baghdad to come to Sharjah to teach in his school.
However, during his visit to Doha in Qatar on his way to Sharjah,
Shaykh ‘Abdullah b. Jasim, ruler of Qatar, asked him to stay and
open a school there. This school at Doha, which lasted from 1915 to
1938, inaugurated modern education in Qatar, and produced all the
educated elders of this state today. Subsequently, ‘AIT al-Mahmud
paid for twenty students at his school from various towns to study at
Doha, where they spent five years.
The post-First World War period witnessed further advances in
education. In 1921 another mission of students was sent to Doha to
study with Ibn Mani‘. Four new schools were opened, three in Dubai
and one in Shaijah. In Sharjah it should be particularly noticed that
under the influence of post-war changes in the area, teachers at the
Qasimiyyah school, which had begun in 1917, now came from
Zubair in Iraq as well as from Najd.
In 1926, a significant step towards the broadening of education
was ‘AIT al-Mahmud’s decision to help an intelligent young student,
Muhammad b. Ghubash from Ras al-Khaimah, to continue his
advanced studies at al-Azhar. After four years, Ibn Ghubash returned
to occupy the position of judge in his town. In the same year ‘AIT
al-Matimud helped two other students ‘Abdullah al-Qa$TmT and ‘Abd
al-‘AzTz b. Rashid from Najd, to go to al-Azhar, thus furthering his
reputation as a man deeply concerned with the advancement of
education throughout the area.
All these schools and educational activities were badly affected by
the decline of the pearl industry after 1927 and many were forced to
close. All the teachers who had come from outside the Coast of
Oman now went back to their own countries. When the financial
situation improved in the late 1930s, it should be noted that the few
schools which were re-opened were directed and run by the young I
educated generation of the Trucial States, who themselves had
received their education during the first two decades of the century
when schools had flourished on the Coast.
Simultaneously with these economic and educational changes,
political attitudes on the Coast of Oman underwent fundamental
developments. Oman knew political unity during the Ya‘aribah
dynasty, which ruled the country between 1624 and 1749. A civil war,
however, took place during 1718—49 dividing the country between the
HinawT party, headed by Mubarak b. Khalaf al-Hina’T and the
GhafirT party, led by Muhammad b. Nasir al-GhafirT. This division
was merely a political, and not the traditional tribal one, as both the