Muscat and Oman

The Sultanate of Muscat and Oman was the Arabian half of the old Omani Empire, born in 1856 when the empire of Said bin Sultan split on his death into an African sultanate at Zanzibar and a homeland state ruled from Muscat by the Al Busaid dynasty. It held present-day Oman with parts of what are now the Emirates and Pakistan, but British influence swelled through the late nineteenth century until the sultanate stood as a de facto British protectorate. Its sultans kept the coastal capital Muscat while the interior answered to the Ibadi imams, a divide that flared into the Jebel Akhdar revolt of the 1950s. Isolation deepened under Said bin Taimur until British officers and his own son removed him in the palace coup of 23 July 1970. Qaboos bin Said then renamed and rebuilt the realm as the modern Sultanate of Oman, closing a century in which Muscat balanced empire, protectorate and theocracy.