Sultanate of Muscat

The Sultanate of Muscat was the Omani sea empire of the eighteenth century, holding today's Oman with emirates and Baluch ports besides, ruled from the harbour rock of Muscat. Inland Oman prayed under Ibadi imams at Nizwa and Rustaq while Muscat's sayyids fitted ships; Ahmad bin Said threw out the Persians in 1744 and his house learned the monsoon roads to Zanzibar, Mombasa, Bandar Abbas, Surabaya and beyond. Said bin Sultan's reign was the noon: cloves from Zanzibar plantations worked by enslaved Africans, customs from every dhow between Suez and Calcutta, treaties with Americans and Frenchmen, consuls exchanged and flags saluted, an empire of wind. In 1820 sultan and imam compounded into Muscat and Oman; Said's death in 1856 split Zanzibar away under his son Majid while Muscat kept Arabia under tightening British protection, and the old sultanate sailed on into Qaboos's 1970 dawn as tradition's hull under a new engine.