Omani Empire

The Omani Empire was a maritime empire that vied with Portugal and Britain for trade and influence in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Muscat had been Portuguese from 1507 to 1650, and after the Omani tribes ended that presence the Ya'rubid dynasty of 1624 to 1719 built a powerful organised state: Saif bin Sultan improved agriculture, built schools, made Rustaq castle his residence, and gathered a fortune that included twenty-eight ships and seven hundred male slaves. In 1696 his fleet attacked Mombasa and besieged the Portuguese Fort Jesus for thirty-three months until the starved garrison surrendered. The Omanis moved into the Persian Gulf, taking Bahrain from the Persians, and southwards settled Zanzibar in strength. By 1783 the empire reached east to Gwadar in what is now Pakistan. Said bin Sultan of the Busaid dynasty carried it to its nineteenth-century peak, from Hormuz to Iran and Pakistan and south to Cape Delgado in Mozambique: his ship Al-Sultanah reached New York in 1840, the first Arab envoy to the New World. When he died in 1856 the empire was split between his sons, Majid taking the African section of Zanzibar and Thuwaini the Asian section of Muscat and Oman.