Читать книгу Southern Arabia - J. Theodore Bent - Страница 17

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,[7] 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.