Maskat

Chapter IV

Some Historical Facts About Oman

On two separate occasions we visited Maskat. The first time was in 1889 on our way to Persia, and the second in 1895 when we were starting for Dhofar, on the journey which I shall describe later.

On each occasion we had to reach it by way of India, for like all the rest of the Persian Gulf Maskat is really an outlying portion of our Indian Empire. By just crossing a range of mountains in Persia you cross the metaphorical watershed between our India and Foreign Offices. At Shiraz you hesitate between India and England. You ask the question, 'Shall I send my letters viâ Bombay, or viâ Russia?' You hasten to get rid of your rupees, for this is the last place where their merit is recognised. North of Shiraz you are in a distinctly foreign country. Our officials hail from the Foreign Office and belong to the legation of Teheran. You are no longer under British protection, you are in the dominions of the Shah.

But so long as you are on the shores of the Gulf you are, so to speak, in India. The officials receive their pay in degenerate rupees instead of pounds sterling, they live in 'bungalows,' they talk of 'tiffin,' and eat curry at every meal.

We keep a British ship of war in the Gulf. We feel that it is a matter of the first importance that those countries should remain under our protection, and that the Turks should not build forts at Fao and otherwise interfere with our trade in the Karoun, and that no other power should have a foothold thereon. The last generation talked much about a Euphrates Valley Railway, with its terminus at Koweit; we now hear a great deal about the opening up of the Karoun, but it is the lordship of the Gulf which is the chief matter of importance just at present both for India and for ourselves.

In this district Maskat is the most important point; the kingdom of Oman, of which it is nominally the capital, commands the entrance to the Gulf. In the ninth century of the Christian era ships trading from Sherif to China took in water at Maskat from the wells which still supply the town. Between Aden and the Persian Gulf it is the only harbour where ships of any size can find anchorage, and it may, in fact, be said to play much the same part with respect to the Persian Gulf that Aden does to the Red Sea. In many other ways the places are strikingly similar. They are both constructed on arid, volcanic rocks, which produce the smallest amount of verdure and reflect the greatest amount of heat; water in both of them is the scarcest of commodities. Of all places in the world Maskat has the reputation of being the hottest, facing, as it does, the Indian Ocean, and protected from every cooling breeze by rugged volcanic hills, without a blade of cultivation upon them, and which reflect and intensify the scorching rays of the burning sun. Aden is said to have but a piece of brown paper between it and the infernal fires. Maskat would seem to want even this meagre protection, and 'gives,' as a Persian poet has expressed it, 'to the panting sinner a lively anticipation of his future destiny.'

The approach to the cove of Maskat is highly striking. Many-coloured volcanic rocks of fantastic form protect the horseshoe-shaped harbour, whilst behind the white town, as far as the eye can reach, stretch deeply serrated, arid mountains, which culminate in the heights of Jebel Akhdar, or the 'Green Mountains,' some fifty miles, as the crow flies, inland, reaching an elevation of 9,000 feet. We were told that snow sometimes falls in the winter-time on Jebel Akhdar, and it rejoices in a certain amount of verdure, from which it derives its name. This range forms the backbone of Oman, and at its foot lie Nezweh and Rostok, the old capitals of the long line of imams of Oman, before Maskat was a place of so much importance as it is at present. The streams which come down from these mountains nowhere reach the sea, but are lost in the deserts, and, nevertheless, in some places they fertilise oases in the Omani desert, where the vegetation is most luxuriant and fever very rife. Grapes grow on the slopes of Jebel Akhdar, and the inhabitants, despite the strictures of Mohammed, both make and drink wine of them, and report says (how far it is true I know not) that the Portuguese exported thence the vines to which they gave the name of muscatel. The inhabitants of this wild range are chiefly Bedou and pastoral, and it is from this quarter that the troubles which beset the poor sultan, Feysul, generally emanate.

The harbour of Maskat is full of life. The deep blue sea is studded with tiny craft: canoes painted red, green, and white, steered by paddles, swarm around the steamer; fishermen paddling themselves about on a plank or two tied together, or swimming astride of a single one, hawk their wares from boat to boat. The oars of the larger boats are generally made with a flat circular piece of wood fastened on to a long pole, and are really more like paddles than oars. In the northern corner lie huddled together large dhows, which, during the north-east monsoons, make the journey to Zanzibar, returning at the change of the season. Most of these belong to Banyan merchants in Maskat, and are manned by Indian sailors. Close to them is the small steamer Sultanieh, which was presented by the Sultan of Zanzibar to his cousin Sultan Tourki of Maskat, now a perfectly useless craft, which cannot even venture outside the harbour by reason of the holes in its side. From its mast floats the red banner of Oman, the same flag that Arab boats at Aden fly. It was originally the banner of Yemen, to which place the Arabs who rule in Oman trace their origin; for early in our era, according to Arab tradition, Oman was colonised and taken possession of by descendants of the old Himyarites of Yemen.

The shore of the town is very unpleasant, reeking with smells, and at low tide lined with all the refuse and offal of the place. At high tide shoals of fish come in to feed on this refuse, and in their train follow immense flocks of seagulls, which make the edge of the water quite white as they fly along and dive after their prey. Here and there out of the sand peep the barrels of some rusty old cannon, ghostly relics of the Portuguese occupation.

In the middle of the beach is the sultan's palace, but it is immeasurably inferior to the new residency of the British political agent, which stands at the southern extremity of the town, just where it can get all the breeze that is to be had through a gap in the rocks opening to the south; here we were most hospitably entertained by Colonel Hayes Sadler on our second sojourn. Even in this favoured position the heat in summer is almost unendurable, making Maskat one of the least coveted posts that the Indian Government has at its disposal. The cliffs immediately round the town are of a shiny schist, almost impossible to walk upon, and reflect the rays of the sun with great intensity.

On either side of the town stand two old Portuguese forts kept up and manned by the sultan's soldiers; in them are still to be seen old rusty pieces of ordnance, one of which bears a Portuguese inscription with the date 1606, and the name and arms of Philip III. of Spain; also the small Portuguese chapel in the fort is preserved and bears the date of 1588. These are the principal legacies left to posterity by those intrepid pioneers of civilisation in a spot which they occupied for nearly a century and a half. These forts testify to having been of great size and strength in former times, and show considerable architectural features, and the traces of a luxuriant and opulent population.

With regard to the ancient history of Oman, there is little known. The empire of the Himyarites, which filled Yemen and the Hadhramout valley with interesting remains, does not appear to have extended its sway so far eastward; no Sabæan remains have as yet been found in Oman, nor are there any that I have heard of further east than the frankincense country of Dhofar, over six hundred miles west of Maskat. Neither Ptolemy nor the author of the 'Periplus' gives us any definite information about the existence of a town in the harbour of Maskat, and consequently the first reliable information we have to go upon is from the early Arabian geographers.

From Torisi we learn that Sobar was the most ancient town of Oman; but that in his day Maskat was flourishing, and that 'in old times the China ships used to sail from there.'

Oman was included in Yemen by these earlier geographers, doubtless from the fact that Arabs from Yemen were its first colonisers; but all that is known with any certainty is that, from the ninth century a.d. a long line of imams ruled over Oman, with their capitals at Nezweh or Rostok, at the foot of Jebel Akhdar. This title, by which the Arab rulers were known, had been conferred on the Arab rulers of Oman for centuries, and signifies a sort of priest-king, like Melchisedek, to whom, curiously enough, is given the same title in the Koran. The election was always by popular acclamation, and inasmuch as the Omani do not recognise the two 'imams' who immediately succeeded Mohammed, but chose their own, they form a separate sect. In olden days the men of Oman were called 'outsiders' by their Mohammedan brethren, because they recognised their own chief solely as the head of their own religion, and are known otherwise as the Ibadiet or Ibadhuyah, followers of Abdullah-bin-Ibadh, as distinct from the Shiahi (Shiites) and Sunni, between which sects the rest of Islam is pretty equally divided. Internecine wars were always rife amongst them; but, at the same time, these early Omani had little or no intercourse with the outer world. Of the internal quarrels of the country, the Omani historian Salid-bin-Ragik has given a detailed account, but for the rest of the world they are of little interest. In those days Oman seems to have had two ports, Sur and Kalhat, on the Indian Ocean, which were more frequented than Maskat. Marco Polo, 1280 a.d., calls the second Calaiati in his 'Journal,' and describes it as 'a large city in a gulf called, also, Calatu,' and the Omani paid tribute to the melek or king of Hormuz for many generations, but with the rise of Maskat, Sur and Kalhat declined.

Oman first came into immediate contact with Europeans in the year 1506, when Albuquerque appeared in Maskat harbour bent on his conquest of the Persian Gulf, and with the object, not even yet accomplished, of making a route to India by way of the Euphrates valley. From Albuquerque's 'Commentaries' we get a graphic description of the condition of the country when he reached it.

At first the Arabs were inclined to receive the Portuguese without a struggle; but, taking courage from the presence of a large army of Bedouin in the vicinity, they soon showed treacherous intentions towards the invaders, so that the Portuguese admiral determined to attack the town and destroy it, and the commentator states that 'within were burned many provisions, thirty-four ships in all, large and small, many fishing barks, and an arsenal full of every requisite for ship-building.'

After effecting a landing, the Portuguese ordered 'three gunners with axes to cut the supports of the mosque, which was a large and very beautiful edifice, the greater part being built of timber finely carved, and the upper part of stucco,' and it was accounted a propitious miracle by the Portuguese that the men who performed this deed were not killed by the falling timber. Maskat was then burnt and utterly destroyed; and 'having cut off the ears and noses of the prisoners he liberated them.' The commentator concludes his remarks on Maskat as follows: 'Maskat is of old a market for carriage of horses and dates; it is a very elegant town, with very fine houses. It is the principal entrepôt of the kingdom of Ormuz, into which all the ships that navigate these parts must of necessity enter.'

The hundred and forty years during which the Portuguese occupied Maskat and the adjacent coast town was a period of perpetual trouble and insurrection. The factory and forts of Jellali and Merani were commenced in 1527, but the forts in their present condition were not erected till after the union of Portugal and Spain, in 1580; the order for their erection came from Madrid, and the inscription bears the date 1588. Not only were the Arabs constantly on the look-out to dislodge their unwelcome visitors, but the Turks attacked them likewise, with a navy from the side of the Persian Gulf, and the naval victory gained by the Portuguese off Maskat in 1554 is considered by Turkish historians to have been a greater blow to their power than the better known battle off Prevesa in 1538, when D'Oria defeated Barbarossa and obliged Solyman to relinquish his attempt on Vienna.

When, after the union of Portugal with Spain, the colonial activity of the former country declined, the colonies in the Persian Gulf fell one by one into the hand of the Persians and Arabs.

Out of the kingdom of Oman they were driven in 1620, and confined to the town of Maskat by the victorious imam, Nasir-bin-Murshid, during whose reign of twenty-six years the legend is told that no man in Oman died a natural death. Two years later they were also driven from Maskat itself, and those two forts Jellali and Merani which they had built, the last foothold of the Portuguese on the Omani territory, were taken from them.

The historian Salil tells the amusing story of the final fall of Maskat into the hands of the Arabs. The Portuguese governor, Pereira, was deeply enamoured of the daughter of a Banyan merchant of Maskat; the man at first refused to let him have his daughter, but at length consented, on condition that the wedding did not take place for some months. Pereira was now entirely in the hands of the Banyan and did everything he told him; so the crafty Indian communicated with the Arabs outside Portuguese territory, telling them to be ready when due notice was given to attack the town. He then proceeded to persuade Pereira to clean out the water tanks of the fort, and to clear out the old supplies of food preparatory to revictualling them; then, when the forts were without food and water, and finally having damped all the powder, he gave notice to the Arabs, who attacked and took the town on a Sunday evening, when the Portuguese were carousing.

Captain Hamilton gives another account in his travels, and tells us that the Arabs were exasperated by a piece of pork, wrapped up in paper, being sent as a present to the imam by the governor, Pereira, and he also adds that the Portuguese were all put to the sword, save eighteen, who embraced Mohammedanism; and that the Portuguese cathedral was made the imam's palace, where he took up his residence for a month or two every year.

Since those days these two forts have been regularly used by rival claimants to the sovereignty of Oman as convenient points of vantage from which to pepper one another, to the infinite discomfiture of the inhabitants beneath.

The departure of the Portuguese did not greatly benefit the Omani. Writing in 1624 to the East India Company, Thomas Kerridge speaks of Maskat as 'a beggarly, poor town,' and 'Ormusz,' he says, 'is become a heap of ruins.' At last, in 1737, owing to the jealousies of the rival imams, Seid and Ibn Murshad, Maskat was taken by the Persians. They were, however, soon driven out again by Ahmed-bin-Sayid, or Saoud, a man of humble origin but a successful general; as a reward for his services he was elected imam in 1741, and was the founder of the dynasty which still rules there.

The successors of Ahmed-bin-Sayid found the obligations of being imam, and the oath which it entailed to fight against the infidel, both awkward and irksome, so his grandson, Saoud, who succeeded in 1779, never assumed the title of imam, but was content with that of sultan, and consequently the imamate of Oman has, with one short exception, been in abeyance ever since.

Under the first rulers of this dynasty Oman became a state of considerable importance. During the reigns of Sultan Saoud and his son Sultan Saoud Sayid, a large part of the Arabian mainland was under the rule of Oman, as also Bahrein, Hormuz, Larij, Kishm, Bandar Abbas, many islands and their pearl fisheries, and Linga, also a good part of the coast of Africa; and it was they who established the alliances with England and the United States.

The first political relations between the East India Company and the ruler of Oman took place in 1798, the object being to secure the alliance of Oman against the Dutch and French. A second treaty was made two years later, and it was provided in it that 'an English gentleman of respectability on the part of the Honourable East India Company, should always reside at the port of Maskat.'

An English gentleman of respectability has consequently resided there ever since, and from the days of Sultan Sayid has become the chief factor in the government of the place.

Sultan Sayid-bin-Sayid stands out prominently as the great ruler of Oman, and under his rule Oman and its capital, Maskat, reached the greatest pitch of eminence to be found in all its annals. He ascended the throne in 1804, and reigned for fifty-two years.

He found his country in dire distress at the time of his accession, owing to the attacks of the fanatical Wahabi from Central Arabia, who had carried their victorious arms right down to Maskat, and had imposed their bigoted rules and religious regulations on the otherwise liberal-minded Mohammedans of Eastern Arabia. With Turkish aid on the one hand, and British support on the other, Sultan Sayid succeeded in relieving his country from these terrible scourges, and drove them back into the central province of Nejd, from which they had carried their bloodthirsty and fanatical wars over nearly the whole of the peninsula, and, when all fear from the Wahabi was over, Sultan Sayid extended his conquests in all directions. He occupied several points on the Persian Gulf and the opposite coast of Beluchistan, and materially assisted the Indian Government in putting down the piracy which had for long closed the Gulf to all trade; and finally, in 1856, he added the important Arab settlement of Mombasa and Zanzibar, on the African coast, to his dominion.

During this long reign Maskat prospered exceedingly. It was the great trade centre for the Persian Gulf, inasmuch as it was a safe depôt, where merchants could deposit their goods without fear of piracy; vessels going to and from India before the introduction of steam used frequently to stop at Maskat for water. As a trade centre in those days it was almost as important as Aden, and with the Indian Government Sultan Sayid was always on most friendly terms.

When Sultan Sayid died, the usual dispute took place between his successors. England promptly stepped in to settle this dispute, and, with the foresight she so admirably displays on such occasions, she advocated a division of Sayid's empire. Zanzibar was given to one claimant, Oman to the other, and for the future Oman and Sultan Tourki remained under British protection.

Since the death of Sultan Sayid the power of Oman has most lamentably gone down, partly owing to the very success of his attempts to put down piracy; this, followed by the introduction of steam, has diminished the importance of Maskat as a safe port for the merchants to deposit their wares. It is also partly due to the jealousies which prevail between the descendants of Sayid who rule in Zanzibar and in Maskat. Palgrave in 1863 describes Maskat as having 40,000 inhabitants; there are probably half that number now.

The Sultan of Zanzibar has to pay an annual tribute of 40,000 crowns to his relative of Maskat in order to equalise the inheritance, and this tribute being a constant source of trouble, of late years he has taken to urging the wild Bedouin tribes in Oman to revolt against the present, rather weak-minded sultan who reigns there. He supplies them with the sinews of war, namely money and ammunition, and the insurrection which occurred in February 1895 was chiefly due to this motive power.

One of his sisters married a German, the English conniving at her escape from Zanzibar in a gunboat. On her husband's death, her elder brother having in the meantime also died, she returned to Zanzibar thinking her next brother, the present sultan, to be of a milder disposition, but he refused to take any notice of her and her children.

The present ruler of Maskat, Sultan Feysul, is a grandson of Sultan Sayid and son of Sultan Tourki by an Abyssinian mother. Since his accession, in 1889, he has been vacillating in his policy; he has practically had but little authority outside the walls of Maskat, and were it not for the support of the British Government and the proximity of a gunboat, he would long ago have ceased to rule. When we first saw him, in 1889, he was but a beardless boy, timid and shy, and now he has reached man's estate he still retains the nervous manner of his youth. He lives in perpetual dread of his elder brother Mahmoud, who, being the son of a negress, was not considered a suitable person to inherit the throne. The two brothers, though living in adjacent houses, never meet without their own escorts to protect them from each other.

The way in which Feysul obtained possession of the Sultan's palace on his father's death, to the exclusion of his brother, is curious.

Feysul said his grief for his father was so great that his feelings would not admit of his attending the funeral, so he stayed at home while Mahmoud went, who on his return found the door locked in his face.

The palace is entered by a formidable-looking door, decorated with large spiked bosses of brass. This opens into a small court which contained at the time of our first visit the most imposing sight of the place, namely the lion in his cage to the left, into which Feysul was in the habit of introducing criminals of the deepest dye, to be devoured by this lordly executioner. Opposite to this cage of death is another, a low probationary cage, which, when we were there, contained a prisoner stretched out at full length, for the cage is too low to admit of a sitting posture. From this point he could view the horrors of the lion's cage, so that during his incarceration he might contemplate what might happen to him if he continued, on liberation, to pursue his evil ways. Another door leads into a vaulted passage full of guards, through which we passed and entered into an inner court with a pool in the centre and a wide cloister around it supporting a gallery.

Sultan Feysul was then a very young man, not much over twenty. He was greatly interested in seeing us, for we were the first English travellers who had visited him since his accession. We caught sight of him peeping at us over the balcony as we passed through the courtyard below, and we had to clamber up a ladder to the gallery, where we found him ready to welcome us. He seized our hands and shook them warmly, and then led us with much effusiveness to his khawah, a long room just overhanging the sea, which is his reception and throne-room. Here were high, cane-bottomed chairs around the walls, and at one end a red chair, which is the throne; just over it were hung two grotesque pictures of our Queen and the Prince Consort, such as one could buy for a penny at a fair. They are looked upon as objects of great value here, and act as befitting symbols of our protectorate.

The imam fed us with sweets and coffee, asked us innumerable questions, and seemed full of boyish fun. Certainly with his turban of blue and red checked cotton (which would have been a housemaid's duster at home), his faded, greenish yellow cloak, fastened round his slender frame by a red girdle, he looked anything but a king. As we were preparing to depart the young monarch grew apparently very uneasy, and impatiently shouted something to his attendants, and when the servant came in, Feysul hurried to him, seized four little gilt bottles of attar of roses, thrust two of them into each of our pockets, and with some compliments as to our Queen having eyes everywhere, and Feysul's certainty that she would look after him, the audience was at an end.

Sultan Feysul was a complete autocrat as far as his jurisdiction extended. At his command a criminal could be executed either in the lion's cage or in a little square by the sea, and his body cut up and thrown into the waves. The only check upon him was the British Resident. His father, Tourki, not long before sewed up a woman in a sack and drowned her, whereupon a polite message came from the Residency requesting him not to do such things again. Hence young Feysul dared not be very cruel—to offend the English would have been to lose his position.

His half brother, Mahmoud, whose mother was a Swahili, lives next door to his brother, Sultan Feysul, in the enjoyment of a pension of 600 dollars a mouth. The uncles, however, are not so amenable. The eldest of them, according to Arabian custom, claimed the throne and had collected an army amongst the Bedouin to assert his claims, and was then in possession of all the country, with the exception of Maskat and El Matra, for Feysul had no money, and hence he could not get his soldiers to fight. But then it had been intimated to Feysul that in all probability the English would support his claims if he conducted himself prudently and wisely. So there was every likelihood that in due course he would be thoroughly established in the dominions of his father.

When we visited the town for the second time an even more serious rebellion was impending, the Bedouin of the interior, under Sheikh Saleh, having attacked Maskat itself. The sultan and his brother, who hastily became friends, retired together to the castle, and the town was given up to plunder. There were dead bodies lying on the beach, and but for the kindness of Colonel Hayes Sadler, the British Resident, there would have been difficulties in the fort as regards water. They relied principally on H.M.S. Sphinx, which lay in the harbour to protect British interests, and to maintain Sultan Feysul in his position.

This state of terror lasted three weeks, when the rebels, having looted the bazaars and wrecked the town, were eventually persuaded to retire, free and unpunished, with a considerable cash payment; probably intending to return for more when the cooler weather should come, and the date harvest be over. With the consent of, and at the request of, the Indian Government, Sultan Feysul has imposed additional heavy duty on all the produce coming in from the rebel tribes, that he may have a fund from which to pay indemnities to foreigners who suffered loss during the invasion. A good many Banyan merchants, British subjects, suffered losses, and their claim alone amounted to 120,000 rupees. As a natural result of this disaster and its ignominious termination, Sultan Feysul's authority at the present moment is absolutely nil outside the walls of Maskat and El Matra, and he is still in a state of declared war with all the Bedouin chiefs in the mountains behind Maskat.

A few British subjects were scared, but not killed, and as all was over in a few weeks no one thought much more about it except those more immediately interested, and few paused to think what an important part Maskat has played in the opening up of the Persian Gulf and the suppression of piracy, and what an important part it may yet play should the lordship of the Persian Gulf ever become a casus belli.

Although Maskat has been under Indian influence for most of this century, it has latterly gone down much in the world; the trade of the place has well-nigh departed, and with a weak sultan at the head of affairs, confidence will be long in returning. Unquestionably our own Political Agent may be said to be the ruler in Maskat, and his authority is generally backed up by the presence of a gunboat. There is also an American Consul there, who chiefly occupies himself in trade and steamer agencies, and in 1895 the French also sent a Consul to inquire into the question of the slave trade, which is undoubtedly the burning question in Arabia.

Whilst England has been doing all she can to put slavery down, it is complained that much is carried on under cover of the French flag, obtained by Arab dhows under false pretexts from the French Consul resident in Zanzibar. Sultan Feysul remonstrated with France on this point, and the appointment of a Consul is the result.

The great reason for our unpopularity in Arabia is due without doubt to our suppression of this trade. Slavery is inherent in the Arab; he does as little work as he can himself, and if he is to have no slaves nothing will be done, and he must die. In other parts of South Arabia—Yemen, the Hadhramout, the Mahra country, and Dhofar—slavery is universal; and there is no doubt about it the slaves are treated very well and live happy lives; but here in Oman, under the very eye of India, slavery must be checked. Our gunboat, the Sphinx, goes the round of the coast to prevent this traffic in human flesh, and frequently slaves swim out to the British steamer and obtain their liberty. This naturally makes us very unpopular in Sur, where the Jenefa tribe have their head-quarters, the most inveterate slave-traders of Southern Arabia. The natural result is that whenever they get a chance the Jenefa tribe loot any foreign vessel wrecked on their shores and murder the crew. In the summer of 1894, however, a boat was wrecked near Ghubet-el-Hashish, containing some creoles from the Seychelle Islands, after being driven for forty-five days out of their course by south-east monsoons, during which time three or four of them had died. The survivors were much exhausted, but the Bedouin treated them kindly, for a wonder, and brought them safely to Maskat. For doing this they were handsomely rewarded by the Indian Government, though they had kept possession of the boat and its contents; nevertheless, they had saved the lives of the crew, and this, being a step in the right direction, was thought worthy of reward.

The jealousies, however, of other tribes were so great that the rescuers could not return to their own country by the land route, but had to be sent to Sur by sea.

Feysul has had copper coins of his own struck, of the value of a quarter anna. On the obverse is a picture of Maskat and its forts, around which in English runs the legend, 'Sultan Feysul-bin-Tourki Sultan and Imam of Maskat and Oman,' and on the reverse is the Arab equivalent. He has also introduced an ice-factory, which, however, is now closed, and he wished to have his own stamps, principally with a view to making money out of them; but our agent represented to him that it was beneath the dignity of so great a sultan to make money in so mean a way, and the stamps have never appeared. Sultan Feysul had done much in the last few years, since our first visit, to modernise his palace. British influence has abolished many horrors and cruelties, and the lion having died has not been replaced.

For the Indian Government the question of Maskat is by no means pleasant, for, should any other Power choose to interfere and establish an influence there, it would materially affect the influence which we have established in the Persian Gulf.

Chapter V

Maskat and the Outskirts

I never saw a place so void of architectural features as the town of Maskat itself. The mosques have neither domes nor minarets—a sign of the rigid Wahabi influence which swept over Arabia. This sect refuse to have any feature about their buildings, or ritual which was not actually enjoined by Mohammed in his Koran. There are a few carved lintels and doorways, and the bazaars are quaintly pretty, but beyond this the only architectural features are Portuguese.

All traces of the Portuguese rule are fast disappearing, and each new revolution adds a little more to their destruction. Three walls of the huge old cathedral still stand, a window or two with lattice-work carving after the fashion of the country are still left, but the interior is now a stable for the sultan's horses, and the walls are rapidly crumbling away.

The interior of Maskat is particularly gloomy: the bazaars are narrow and dirty, and roofed over with palm matting; they offer but little of interest, and if you are fond of the Arabian sweetmeat called halwa, it is just as well not to watch it being made there, for niggers' feet are usually employed to stir it, and the knowledge of this is apt to spoil the flavour. Most of the town is now in ruins. Fifty years ago the population must have been nearly three times greater than it is now. There is also wanting in the town the feature which makes most Moslem towns picturesque, namely the minaret; the mosques of the Ibadhuyah sect being squalid and uninteresting. At first it is difficult to distinguish them from the courtyard of an ordinary house, but by degrees the eye gets trained to identify a mosque by the tiny substitute for a minaret attached to each, a sort of bell-shaped cone about four feet high, which is placed above the corner of the enclosing wall. I have already mentioned the Ibadhuyah's views with regard to the imams. I believe they hold also certain heterodox opinions with regard to predestination and free will, which detach them from other Moslem communities; at any rate they are far more tolerant than other Arabian followers of the Prophet, and permit strangers to enter their mosques at will. Tobacco is freely used by them, and amongst the upper classes scepticism is rife. The devout followers of Mohammed look upon them much as Roman Catholics look on Protestants, and their position is similar in many respects.

As elsewhere in Arabia, coffee is largely consumed in Oman, and no business is ever transacted without it; it is always served in large, copper coffee-pots, of the quaint shape which they use in Bahrein. Some of these coffee-pots are very large. An important sheikh, or the mollah of a mosque, whose guests are many, will have coffee-pots two or three feet in height, whereas those for private use are quite tiny, but the bird-like form of the pot is always scrupulously preserved.

The bazaars of Oman do not offer much to the curio-hunter. He may perchance find a few of the curved Omani daggers with handsome sheaths adorned with filigree silver, to which is usually attached, by a leather thong, a thorn extractor, an earpick, and a spike. The belting, too, with which these daggers are attached to the body, is very pretty and quite a specialty of the place; formerly many gold daggers were manufactured at Maskat and sent to Zanzibar, but of late years the demand for these has considerably diminished.

The iron locks in the bazaars are very curious and old-fashioned, with huge iron keys which push out the wards, and are made like the teeth of a comb. These locks are exceedingly cumbersome, and seem to me to be a development of the wooden locks with wooden wards found in the interior of Arabia. Some of them are over a foot long. I have seen a householder after trying to hammer the key in with a stone, at last in despair climb over his own garden wall.

Perchance a shark-skin or wooden buckler may be picked up from a Bedou from the mountains, and there are chances of obtaining the products of many nationalities, for Maskat, like Aden, is one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the East. Here, as in El Matra, you find Banyans from India, Beluchi from the Mekran coast, negroes from Zanzibar, Bedouin, Persians from the Gulf, and the town itself is even less Arab than Aden.

The ex-prime minister's house, which occupies a prominent position in the principal street, is somewhat more Oriental in character than most, and possesses a charmingly carved, projecting window, which gladdens the eye; and here and there in the intricacies of the town one comes across a carved door or a carved window, but they are now few and far between.

The suburbs of Maskat are especially interesting. As soon as you issue out of either of the two gates which are constructed in the wall, shutting the town off from the outer world, you plunge at once into a new and varied life.

Here is the fish and provision market, built of bamboos, picturesque, but reeking with horrible smells and alive with flies; hard by is a stagnant pool into which is cast all the offal and filth of this disgusting market. The water in the pool looks quite putrid, and when the wind comes from this quarter no wonder it is laden with fever germs and mephitic vapours. Consequently, Maskat is a most unhealthy place, especially when the atmosphere is damp and rain has fallen to stir up the refuse.

The women with their mask-veils called buttra, not unlike the masks worn with a domino, pleased us immensely, so that we sought to possess a specimen. They brought us several, which, however, did not quite satisfy us, and afterwards we learnt that an enterprising German firm had made a lot of these buttra for sale amongst the Maskat women; but the shape being not exactly orthodox, the women will not buy them, so the owners of these unsaleable articles are anxious to sell them cheap to any unsuspecting traveller who may be passing through.

Outside the walls the sultan is in the habit of distributing two meals a day to the indigent poor; and inasmuch as the Omani are by nature prone to laziness, there is but little doubt that his highness's liberality is greatly imposed on.

In the market outside the walls we lingered until nearly driven wild by the flies and the stench, so we were glad enough to escape and pursue our walk to the Paradise valley and see the favourable side of Maskat. There the sleepy noise of the wells, the shade of the acacias and palms, and the bright green of the lucerne fields, refreshed us, and we felt it hard to realise that we were in arid Arabia.

As you emerge you come across a series of villages built of reeds and palm branches, and inhabited by members of the numerous nationalities who come to Maskat in search of a livelihood. Most of these are Beluchi from the Mekran coast, and Africans from the neighbourhood of Zanzibar. The general appearance of these villages is highly picturesque, but squalid. Here and there palm-trees, almond-trees, and the ubiquitous camelthorn are seen interspersed amongst the houses; women in red and yellow garments, with turquoise rings in their ears and noses, peep at you furtively from behind their flimsy doors, and as you proceed up the valley you find several towers constructed to protect the gardens from Bedouin incursions, and a few comfortable little villas built by Banyan merchants, where they can retire from the heat and dust of Maskat.

The gardens are all cultivated, with irrigation, and look surprisingly green and delicious in contrast with the barren, arid rocks which surround them; the wells are dug deep in the centre of the valley, in the bed of what elsewhere would be a river, and are worked by a running slope and bullocks who draw up and down skin buckets, which, like those in Bahrein, empty themselves automatically into tanks connected with the channels which convey the water to the gardens.

After walking for a mile or two up this valley all traces of life and cultivation cease, and amidst the volcanic rocks and boulders hardly a trace of vegetable life is to be seen. It is a veritable valley of desolation, and there are many such in waterless Arabia.

By ascending paths to the right or to the left of the valley, the pedestrian may reach some exquisite points of view; all the little cols or passes through which these paths lead are protected at the summit by walls and forts—not strong enough, however, as recent events have shown, to keep off the incursions of the Bedouin. The views over Maskat and the sea are charming, but one view to the south will be for ever impressed on my mind as one of the most striking panoramas I have ever seen. When the summit of a little pass on the south side of the valley is reached after a walk of about two miles, you look down through a gateway over the small valley and fishing village of Sedad, amongst the reed houses of which are many palm-trees and a thick palm garden belonging to Sayid Yussuf, which gives the one thing wanting to views about Maskat, namely, a mass of green to relieve the eye. A deep inlet of the sea runs up here with its blue waters, and beyond stretch into illimitable space the fantastic peaks of the Oman mountains, taking every form and shape imaginable; these are all rich purples and blues, and the colouring of this view is superb.

From Sedad one can take a boat and row round the headlands back to Maskat. The promontories to the open sea are very fine: beetling cliffs of black, red, and green volcanic rocks, and here and there stand up rocky islets, the home of the cormorant and the bittern. In a small cove, called Sheikh Jabar, half-way between Sedad and Maskat, and accessible only by boat (for none but the most active of the natives can scale the overhanging rocks), is a tiny strand which has been chosen as the Christian burial-place. There are not very many graves in this weird spot, and most of them are occupied by men from the gunboats which have been stationed at Maskat. Among them is the grave of Bishop French, who came to Maskat some years ago with the object of doing missionary work amongst the Omani, but he fell a sacrifice to the pernicious climate before he had been long at his post, and before he had succeeded in making any converts.

About three miles from Maskat lies the town of El Matra, the commercial centre of the kingdom of Oman. It would be the seat of government also were it not exposed to the southern winds. The journey is nearly always made by sea; it takes much longer to go by land, for a ridge of hills has to be crossed. In a canoe it is only half an hour's paddle, and when the weather is favourable the canoe owners drive a rattling trade. The canoes, which they call houris, are hollowed out of a tree trunk, double-prowed, and with matting at the bottom. They are not very stable and make one think unpleasantly of sharks.

You pass the Fahl, or Stallion Rock, in the harbour, a name constantly given by Arabs to anything large and uncanny looking, and turning sharp round a rocky corner you see before you El Matra.

The town is governed by a wali chosen by the imam, and in the bazaars may be seen, in hopeless confusion, Banyans from India, Omani, Bedouin, Persians and Jews. These nationalities have each their separate wards for living in, walled off to keep them from perpetual brawls, and they only meet one another in the bazaars, where the eye of the bazaar-master is upon them, ready to inflict condign punishment on disturbers of the peace, in which cases the innocent more frequently suffer than the guilty.

The Monday's market is filled with quaint countryfolk, bringing in baskets of fruit and wearing the upper garment of red cotton and the large white girdle and turban.

At El Matra live most of the richest merchants, and it is the point from which all the caravan roads into the interior start; it, too, has a Portuguese castle, and presents a much more alluring frontage than Maskat. In a nice-looking house by the shore dwelt Dr. Jayakar, an Indian doctor, who had lived for twenty-five years at Maskat, combining the post of British Vice-Consul with that of medical adviser to the few Europeans who dwell there. He said he preferred Maskat to any other place in the world, and hoped to end his days there; he was a great naturalist, and his house was filled with curious animals from the interior, and marvels from the deep. He showed us specimens of a rabbit-like animal which the Arabs call 'whabba,' and which he affirmed is the coney of the Bible, and of the oryx, which lives up on the Jebel Akhdar; it has two straight horns which for one instant and from one point of view when it is running sideways look like one, and some say the fact gave rise to the mythical unicorn.

It is, to say the least of it, a great disadvantage to have your medical man at El Matra when you are ill at Maskat; if the weather is stormy boats cannot go between the two places. There is a troublesome road across the headland by which the doctor can come, partly by water and partly on foot, in case of dire necessity, but the caravan road, entirely by land, goes a long way inland, and would take the medical man all day to traverse. Behind El Matra are pleasant gardens, watered by irrigation, which produce most of the fruit and vegetables consumed in these parts.

During our fortnight's stay at Maskat in 1895, we frequently in the evening coolness rowed about the harbour and examined its bays and promontories. The energetic crews of numerous gunboats of various nationalities stationed here at different times have beguiled their time by illuminating the bare cliffs with the names of their ships in large letters done in white paint. French, Russian, Italian, and German names are here to be read, but by far the largest number are in English. The rocks at the mouth of the harbour are literally covered with delicious oysters, and one of our entertainments was at low tide to land on these rocks and get our boatmen to detach as many of the shellfish as we could conveniently consume.

Such is Maskat as it exists to-day, a spot which has had a varied history in the past, and the future of which will be equally interesting to those who have any connection with the Persian Gulf.