Page 31 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

receiving many calls. The Dutch had established themselves at
Muscat, and the Dutchman in charge had the car of the Imam,
constantly trying to make trouble between him and the other
European nations and so deprive them of trade. Fryer sums up
the position of the English by saying ‘the Persians allow us little
more than a name’.
In 1673 a curious French mission had obtained some concessions
from the Shah. Sir John Chardin, himself originally a French­
man, gives an amusing description of this bogus embassy in his
Travels in Persia, published in 1720. It consisted of some mem­
bers of the French East India Company, who had no diplomatic
standing. A ship’s captain ‘made himself an Ambassador’, and
when he and several of the party died on their way to Isfahan, the
interpreter, a French merchant born in Persia, after much thought
about whether he should dress in European or Persian style,
assumed the role of Ambassador. He was encouraged by the
Capuchin monks who were anxious that a French mission should
appear and, according to Chardin, the monks composed and
wrote the letters which were delivered to the Shah. The letters
were palpable forgeries in Chardin’s opinion, ‘Pieces too ill con­
triv’d to bear being made Publick’. However, the ‘Embassy’
was accepted by the Shah, possibly the ‘King’, as Chardin calls
him, ‘was in his wine as usual’, for Chardin describes him as being
constantly drunk.
In 1688, England and Holland were again at peace, but the
Dutch were now beginning to lose credit in Persia and the Gulf.
Their arrogance and the aggressive measures which they adopted,
made them unpopular with those people with whom they wished
to trade. At the beginning of the 18th century, the French were
making some progress, but they were never in as strong a position
as the other European competitors. In about 1708 the Shah ceded
to them the island of Kharak, but they made no use of it and,
towards the end of the century, it was held for a short time by the
Dutch. Perhaps the most important development in the Gulf in
the 18th century was the remarkable rise to power of the ruling
dynasty of Muscat and Oman.
No state in the Gulf has had such a turbulent past as Oman,
whose history goes back to early times when some of the coast
towns were important trading centres. The original inhabitants
consisted mainly of Yemeni tribes, who settled in Oman; their
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