Buying Time. Thomas F. McDow

Thuwayni’s claims of Zanzibar and entangled him more closely with the British, who proved to be fickle allies. In 1860, Thuwayni had agreed to arbitration over the succession dispute and felt certain that his position as the rightful ruler of his father’s entire domain would be vindicated.⁶¹ He was disappointed by the 1861 Canning Award. Thuwayni, who had once likened his position in Muscat to being thrown a bone while Majid in Zanzibar feasted on the flesh, was not content with the bone or with the hand that offered it. Thuwayni found the British were hard to please and slow to help. They made demands of him in the gulf, in his actions against Persia, and over the slave trade. Yet when his rule was in jeopardy they were reluctant to join a fight. This became clear in 1864 when their empty promises and his empty coffers exposed Thuwayni’s vulnerability.

      Thuwayni’s highly circumscribed rule left him isolated when the rival Busaidi line allied with the Ibadi ulema in the interior in 1864. When he sought external support, sheikhs in the gulf declined, and the Wahhabi ruler in Nejd promised swift retribution if Thuwayni attacked the rebels. Thuwayni’s precarious balancing act between internal and external rivals was failing, and his lack of funds made it difficult to attract support. Four years earlier, Thuwayni had extinguished a rebellion on the Batinah coast and, in the process, killed Qays bin Azzan al-Busaidi, the scion of the rival line. Later, Qays’s son Azzan, however, allied himself with the Ibadi leaders of the interior, including Said bin Khalfan al-Khalili, and they headquartered themselves at al-Rustaq. Thuwayni moved against them in December 1864, but he lacked the funds to attract allies. The sheikhs of Abu Dhabi and Ras al-Khayma were reluctant to support Thwuayni. The British agent at Muscat noted cattily that the shaykhs “probably having learnt the embarrassed state of the latter’s finances (which unfortunately has become a common topic of conversation) they are loath to incur expense without some good prospect of repayment.”⁶² The Wahhabi contingent that controlled the strategic Buraimi oasis on Oman’s border supported the rebels. The Wahhabi naib promised to attack Muscat if Thuwayni assailed al-Rustaq, the latest indignity for the Omani ruler from his Saudi rivals. Wahhabi forces were both a fiscal and physical threat to Thuwayni’s rule, and their command of Buraimi oasis halfway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman allowed them to assert themselves into local allegiances and force the sultan to pay zakat as protection money.⁶³ Thus, Thuwayni was checked against al-Rustaq at the end of 1864, hemmed in by Omani rivals, a woeful treasury, and Wahhabi power.

      Thuwayni’s fickle allies, the British, initially refused his request to attack the Wahhabis in the gulf. Escalating Wahhabi violence against Oman and British Indian subjects in 1865, however, spurred the British to half measures. They had rejected Thuwayni’s blockade of the Hasa coast to cut off the Wahhabis there. Unrestrained, a Wahhabi agent arrived in Muscat in August 1865 and demanded a threefold increase of Thuwayni’s zakat payment. The sultan refused, and the Wahhabis swept into Oman from Buraimi, teamed with Thuwayni’s rivals, and captured Sur, one of Oman’s principal ports of exchange with East Africa. In the fighting, the invaders killed one British Indian and captured others. This alerted the British to the Wahhabi ruler Faisal’s rising power, and they promised to send Thuwayni arms to attack Buraimi and to blockade the Hasa coast. All three plans were for naught. The naval action fizzled because the Wahhabis preemptively struck Oman’s Batinah coast, disrupting trade and driving Indian merchants into the sea, at least one of whom drowned. Meanwhile, the two eighteen-pound guns the British granted to Thuwayni were impossible to transport to Buraimi. Even if Thuwayni’s forces had moved the guns, no one knew how to fire them.⁶⁴ The arms, like the allies who supplied them, were more a burden than a help.

      Thuwayni had no room to maneuver and no way to buy time. A serendipitous death in Nejd and unexpected British vigor created a short-lived windfall for Thuwayni in 1865 and early 1866. In the midst of the British demands for restitution from Faisal, the Wahhabi emir, for the attacks on British subjects, the Wahhabi leader died unexpectedly. The British agent Pelly, recently reassigned from Zanzibar, insisted on shelling the Wahhabi ports without waiting for a response from the new emir. Pelly then trained his sights on Wahhabi sympathizers in Thuwayni’s territory and demanded payment from the Janabah sheikhs near Sur who had assisted in the previous year’s attack. The sheikhs plead for more time to raise the money—their dhows were trading in the gulf—but Pelly opened fire upon arrival. His forces destroyed the Janabah forts and continued to Sur the next day and demolished all the boats in the creek.⁶⁵

      The fortuitous news of his rival’s death and the meaningful assistance of a capricious ally likely had not yet reached Thuwayni in Suhar on February 13, 1866. He probably felt that his circumstances left much to be desired. His brother was still conniving against him in Zanzibar, Azzan bin Qays in al-Rustaq had allied with his Ibadi detractors, the Wahhabi supported his close enemies, and the British interventions had been bungled. And yet, there was another unsuspected threat. In the night, Thuwayni was killed by his son Salim. Salim bin Thuwayni murdered his father as part of a plot backed by the Wahhabi and endorsed by Thuwayni’s Omani rivals, the Ibadi leaders and Azzan bin Qays.⁶⁶ The post-Canning circumstances had pinned Thuwayni into an untenable position, and his murder inaugurated a period of greater political and economic fragility in Oman.

      SALIM BIN THUWAYNI, 1866 TO 1868

      In February 1866, Salim declared himself sultan. Thuwayni’s struggles had shown the challenges of ruling post-Canning Oman, and although Salim enjoyed short-lived support from Azzan bin Qays and his allies, the British regarded the young sultan with deep suspicion, and he faced a potent rival, his uncle Turki bin Said. Salim immediately imprisoned Turki in Suhar, but it was his own unsavory route to power and shaky legitimacy that most undermined his authority. He lacked too many things: access to wealth and the support of the commercial classes; wide acceptance from both the interior tribes and the Ibadi scholarly elite; and the acquiescence of British officials in the gulf. Turki also remained an active threat and was freed from prison six months later.

      Salim’s ascension was another blow to the battered economy of Oman. Political machinations influenced trade and economy in Muscat and the Arabian interior. When news of the palace coup reached the Indian merchants in Muscat and in Muttrah, they boarded boats in the harbor to escape any threat of violence. Pelly ordered their property to be embarked for good measure.⁶⁷ Disturbances like this one in Muscat and the previous Wahhabi attacks in Sur and Saham undermined the local and regional economies in which Kutchi and Khoja merchants increasingly played an important role. Muscat’s economy unraveled in the five years following Salim’s ascent to power. This was a result of the dynamic political (and religious) order and dissent within the merchant communities. Indeed, while the sultan’s mobility was constrained by the Canning Award, the confluence of events after 1866 created favorable conditions for everyday Omanis to emigrate. The decline in commerce and the merchant population in Muscat contributed to the rise of Zanzibar as a commercial center.

      Turki bin Said was also on the move. Having slipped his captors, he fled to the gulf in September 1866 to shore up support. His mobility was a strength. The threat of attack on Muscat made rumors fly, and the Bombay government authorized Pelly to take action in “an extraordinary crisis.”⁶⁸ In April 1867, Turki left Dubai, where he enjoyed the support of the sheikh but had failed to woo the new Wahhabi emir, and attacked Suhar. Pelly warned both Turki and the sheikh of Dubai that they were playing a dangerous game, and he sent warships to Dubai to back up his complaint. Turki lost his position there but, with Wahhabi assistance, he retreated to the Buraimi oasis.⁶⁹ Turki reorganized and successfully captured Muttrah, the commercial port that controlled access to Muscat.

      When Salim bin Thuwayni was unable to dislodge Turki, he sought British intervention. Pelly steamed to Muttrah and took a page from Said bin Sultan’s mobile governance. He convinced Turki to retire to Bombay, where he would receive a monthly stipend of six hundred dollars, as long as he remained in British India. Bombay was once again a site of exile for one of Said bin Sultan’s sons. Turki’s exile bought Salim some time, though his days as a sultan were numbered.

      THE IMAMATE, 1868 TO 1871

      Salim’s reckoning with his erstwhile Ibadi allies occurred in 1868. They rallied tribal levies, expelled Salim from Muscat, and held the first imamate election of the nineteenth century. They elected Azzan bin Qays al-Busaidi, Thuwayni’s rival,