Oman

The state of Oman, on the south-eastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, facing both the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, represents an interesting and individual parallel to Saudi Arabia.

The modem history of Oman illustrates with unusual clarity the nature of the tensions facing conventional Islamic societies confronting the challenges of life in a changing world. The Omani case is particularly instructive in that it presents an unparalleled and paradoxical combination of a sequestered, backward-looking sector on the one hand and a moderate, liberalising sector in close contact with the world at large on the other—the two groups separated as much by geographical factors as by intellectual differences.

Until the seventeenth century, Oman had generally been dominated by the forces of Ibadi conservatism, but since then a number of related developments have allowed more liberal elements to come to the fore. In 1648, the ruling Ibadi imam threw the Portuguese out of Masqat (Muscat), a port they had occupied since 1508. This enabled the imam to unify the country for the first time in centuries and to lay the basis for the expansion of Omani economic and political influence throughout the Gulf and along much of the East African coastline. In so doing, however, a tension was created between the imam’s traditional role (in so far as he was a religio-political leader) as a preserver of the status quo and a growing need to adapt to the changes wrought in Omani society by the access of new power and wealth.

Following a brief interval of Persian rule, a new imamate was established by the Al Bu Sa‘id clan in 1749, but in 1783 the religious leadership deposed the second member of the dynasty on the grounds that he had introduced heretical innovations. As a result, the Al Bu Sa'id became secular rulers with their territorial control centred on the coastal region, while the interior of Oman remained in the hands of the conserva­tives, who sought a return to the rule of a properly constituted imamate. Ibadi conservatism was, if anything, strengthened by the emergence of militant Wahhabism on the inland borders of the country in the late eight­eenth and early nineteenth centuries.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, maritime trade between coastal Oman and ports in Africa, Iran and India expanded considerably, increasing the power of the moderates and isolating the conservative hinterland even further. But from the 1860s a rapid decline in Oman’s economic fortunes began, triggered in part by the entry of advanced European shipping into the Gulf. In 1868, a coalition of religious conservatives under Sa'id ibn Khalfan al-Khalili and tribal leaders from the interior launched a successful fundamentalist revolution that aimed to reverse the trend of secular rule and to re-establish an orthodox imamate along traditional fines—a forerunner, in many respects, of the more recent Iranian revolution.

Although it lasted only three years until 1871, the fundamentalist regime established by al-Khalili and his followers represented in stark terms the escalating tensions between traditional and modernising values. The head of state was an elected imam, but real power resided in the hands of al-Khalili, who held the official posts of Governor of Muscat and chief religious judge (qadi) of Oman.

A moderate regime was re-established by Turki ibn Sa’id in 1871 and with the help of the British (who were now the strongest power in the Gulf) he succeeded in putting down two further conservative rebellions. During the later nineteenth century, following the death of al- Khalili in 1871, new elements emerged within the conservative party dedi­cated to the restoration of the imamate in the interior. By the early twentieth century, some of the tribes in al-Sharqiyya and Uman provinces had begun to shut themselves off entirely from outsiders, and in 1913 a new conservative coalition was formed under the religious leadership of Shaykh Abd Allah ibn Humayd al-Salimi. British policy remained opposed to the idea of conserva­tive rule on the coast, and between 1913 and 1920 Anglo-Indian forces aided the Sultan of Muscat to defend his territory against conservative arms, while the latter consolidated their power in the interior, establishing a new imamate with its capital at Nizwa. The result was the effective partition of Oman into two autonomous regions—the Sultan-controlled coastal strip and the imam-controlled hinterland. Unfortunately, Sa'id ibn Taymur (who became Sultan of Muscat in 1932) was himself as reactionary as his conservative rivals in the interior, and during his reign (which lasted until 1973), Oman followed an official policy of almost total isolation. Very few foreigners were ever permitted to visit the country, there were restrictions on travel abroad by Omanis, and there was a ban on virtually anything Western, from medicine and books to radios, spectacles, cigarettes, music and even trousers.

Following the death of the reigning Ibadi imam in 1954, Sa'id ibn Taymur was able (with the inevitable British help) to capture Nizwa and begin the reunification of the country. Dissatisfaction with his rule led, however, to growing unrest, culminating in a palace coup in 1973 and the accession of his son Qabus to the sultanate. Since then, Oman has witnessed frenzied and probably irreversible change, a process much acceler­ated by the discovery of major oil deposits in the country in the 1960s and the consequent influx of enormous wealth.

Although its Ibadi allegiance renders it in many ways atypical, Omani experience in the past two centuries illustrates with remark­able clarity several of the main dilemmas facing traditional Muslim states in the modern world. The clash between conservative and moderate wings of the faith, the polarisation of forward-looking secular rule and backward­looking religious traditionalism and, above all, the central role of a Western power in tilting the balance in favour of the former, are all problems that have affected Muslim countries to a greater or lesser degree.