AL BU SAID

At the Zale Club & Lounge, an elegant bar overlooking the beach of the Kempinski Hotel, the sun is setting: the air is warm and sweet with the scents of the frangipani trees. In the background, the sandy coast in the distance, you can glimpse Muscat. The international hotel is among the most refined in the Omani capital, in the new Al Mouj area, built around a marina dotted with luxury sea-view apartments and European boutiques.

The urban development is also the expat neighbourhood: a brand-new area, where all the buildings are modern, far from the historic centre of Muscat, where you can still breathe the authentic atmosphere of the Middle East and the Arab culture, that which is disappearing from the other Gulf countries, submerged by the Burj Khalifa, shopping malls and galloping Westernization. Oman is the most authentic country in the region: the capital is still encircled by the ancient city walls, built to defend themselves from invaders. In the harbour of Muscat the towering relics of the short-lived Portuguese domination serve as a proud landmark for the locals. In the 1980s, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, the pater patriae who founded modern Oman, decided that the country should exploit the thousand-year- old tradition of incense.

He wanted there to be a local perfume, but obviously the kings of perfumes were the French. And so, he tried to copy Paris, starting from his name: he founded Amouage, which sounds very French. After 40 years, Amouage perfumes are among the most expensive in the world. Modern-day Oman is a mix of deep sense of history, which dates back far before the Islam, with modernisation stance: this has been made possible by the vision of Al Bu Said dynasty, the royal house ruling the country for over three centuries.

Geography always comes before history and geography wanted the tectonic plate to create mountains right on the south coast of the Arabic peninsula, in front of the Indian Ocean. So, the monsoons, the humid and rainy winds coming from the sea, stop just there: in the north of the peninsula, without the beneficial downpours, the immense Arabian desert, the so-called “Empty Quarter”, was born, geologically speaking. Under the mountains, instead, it is green like the Amazon forest. The tropical microclimate has grown a unique shrub in the world. Then came history, which is civilization: the primitive indigenous tribes discovered that that shrub produced a resin with an enveloping aroma which crystalized into many pieces of “rock”.

Then, centuries later, botanists arrived and called the bush-tree Boswellia Sacra: for everyone it is simply frankincense. The hard and colourful “nuggets” were the first ever commercialized “precious gem”, even before the discovery of gold. For a millennium, in the Bronze Age, the Magan Civilization which developed in the south coast of the peninsula, long before Islam and the name Oman itself, thrived by trading frankincense: the first ever-known human boats, made by the Magans from palm trees fabric, sailed from the Indian Ocean to the Strait of Hormuz; and from there, going up the entire gulf, they reached the mainland in Basra, where the Assyrians and Babylonians bought the essence. The Mesopotamians people then resold frankincense in the Mediterranean, to the Phoenicians, Lydians and Mycenaeans.

The perfumed stone was highly sought after for religious purposes (it is still used today in Christian masses) and, above all, for a practical purpose: covering the stench of decomposing dead bodies at funerals.

After the Magan state collapsed, for many centuries the land was inhabited by local tribes, often at war with each other. There was no sign of civilization anymore: those tribes were nomadic people, living under tents and searching for water and dates, the main resources to sustain themselves.

The Al Said dynasty, which is the current ruling royal house of Oman, is one of the only two remaining sultanates in the world: the other one is Brunei, in Indonesia. The sultan is the equivalent of king in the Islamic world, the highest noble ranking. “The Crown” of Oman was established by Ahmad bin Said al-Bu Said, ruler of Oman and its east African territories at the time. The dynasty traces back its roots to the Arabic tribes of Azd through a patrilineal ancestor: al-Asad Imran, who lived in the 3rd century of Christian Era, under the Roman Empire when the peninsula was called Arabia Felix (Happy Saudi), settled in modern-day Dibba, which is today a UAE territory north of Omna. Hence, the tribe was also known as the “Azd of Daba”: they originally came from Yemen and migrated north after the destruction of the Marib dam, in North Yemen, which happened in the past and it’s also reported by the Quran as a punishment of God. With the rise of Islam, the Azd established themselves into a leading force in the ensuing Muslim conquests and later in the realms of the Umayyad Caliphate through the celebrated general Al Muhallab ibn Abi Suffrah (Abu Said), the progenitor of the Busaid tribe, whose family name is derived from the military commander.

History of modern Oman is deeply interwoven with its struggle against Portuguese occupation, beginning in 1507 when the European travellers and merchants seized Muscat, a strategic place in between Europe and the far east colonies Portugal founded. This period was marked by the construction of formidable forts, such as Al-Jalali and Al-Mirani, turned into museums, which served as bastions of the Portuguese protectorate. The occupation lasted until 1650: it ended with the Ya’arubi revolution: the local tribe managed to reclaim their land. This era of resistance was pivotal, setting the stage for Oman’s unity and subsequent rise under the Al Bu Said dynasty.

In the 18th century a Persian fleet attacked the town of Sohar: the governor of the city was Ahmad bin Said Al Bu Said, a shrewd military tactician. He held out for nine months, finally forcing the Persian’s army to leave the country. For that success, Ahmad was elected Imam in 1744, marking the last time Oman was occupied by foreigners. It was also the start of a dynasty that lasted to the present day, making it one of the oldest surviving royal dynasties in Arabia and the first to gain independence. His descendants did not take the religious title of Imam, but that of Sayyid, an honorific title.

Trade flourished during Ahmed’s reign and the Omani navy developed into a formidable force in the Indian Ocean second only to Great Britain and capable of purging Persians forces from the entire region and protecting Ottoman vessels in the Gulf of Oman and in th Indian Ocean. When he died in 1778, his nephew Hamad bin Said stepped in and moved the capital from the interior city of Rustaq to the coastal Muscat in 1783. He also took the title of Sultan, implying purely coercive power. He was a capable leader for eight years and facilitated reform policy in the initial stages of the transition but died suddenly in 1792 of smallpox.

During the reign of the renowned Sultan Said bin Sultan, in the 19th century, Oman reached its zenith as a maritime power: he created an empire, stretching to Mombasa and parts of the east African coast, to Zanzibar (northern border of the current Mozambique), and north up to Bandar-Abbas in the southern Iranian coast; and, for a short time, even Bahrain. He was counted among the best leaders in Arabic peninsula and became known as Said the Great. The famous British explorer Richard Francis Burton, credited to speak 29 languages, called him “as shrewd, liberal and enlightened a prince as Arabia has ever produced”. In 1832, he made the island of Zanzibar his second capital and set about establishing what is present-day Stone Town. He was a proto industrialist in Africa also: realizing the advantage of Zanzibar climate, Said initiated large scale cultivation of cloves (an essential meat preservative in Europe prior to the advent of refrigeration) and soon after sought slaves as cheap labour. He even introduced a copper coinage to amplify the existing silver coinage of Maria Theresa thalers, the most circulated money in Africa at the time.

The year after the Zanzibar foundation, Said built another milestone in the history of the dynasty: he signed a historical trade treaty with the young and ascending United States of America. It was the second ever deal by the U.S. and an Arab state (Morocco being the first in 1820). As a result, in 1840, the ship Al-Sultanah docked at New York, making it the first Arab envoy to ever visit the New World. Her crew of fifty-six Arab sailors caused a flurry of excitement among the 300.000 residents of Manhattan.

The visit lasted nearly four months, in which time the emissary, Ahmed Bin Na’aman Al-Kaabi (whose portrait can still be seen in the Peabody Museum in Massachusetts) brought to the US hitherto unseen items and artifacts, including spices and oriental clothing. Among Omani’s hosts was Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad magnate who made New York great. In September 1856,

Said sailed for Zanzibar on his ship Kitorie, where he began to suffer severe pains followed by dysentery. He died on board on 19 October at the age of sixty-five. He had reigned for more than 40 years.

As always happens after the passing of a great sovereign, schisms occurred as his sons who had their own rivalries and ambitions for controlling the throne quarrelled over the empire. On 28 October 1856, only ten days after the death of his father, the son Majid proclaimed himself Sultan of Zanzibar. A ship was sent to Oman with the news, but Said’s elder son Thuwaini, who was appointed heir apparent, refused it and tried to regain Zanzibar by force of arms. As a direct result of this struggle, the government of British India, concerned with the stability in the area, acted as arbitrator in the dispute. Lord Canning ruled in his arbitration that the empire was to be divided into two separate sultanates: the Sultanate of Zanzibar under Majid bin Said, and the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman to his brother Thuwaini bin Said. Because of the economic damage caused to Oman by the loss of the rich “colony” of Zanzibar, Thuwaini got a 40.000 Maria Theresa thalers annually as compensation, but the payment fell into arrears and ceased a year later.

After the reign of Said the Great, Oman underwent another long era of decline, turning back to be a poor Islamic country, dominated by religion. Economy also shrinked, despite a long-established and running relationship with the British empire.

Destiny, though, had another great ruler in store for the country. On July 23, 1970, Sultan Qaboos ascended the throne. He would become the father of the present-day Oman: he embarked on a comprehensive modernization programme, revolutionizing the state without compromising with past and history. Under his reign, Oman witnessed unprecedented advancements in urbanization, health, education, and infrastructure, while maintaining a neutral stance in foreign affairs. Today Oman, is described as the “Switzerland of the Arabian Peninsula”. When Qaboss died in 2020, the nation mourned a father figure. It’s thanks to him if the majority of people escaped poverty and had a taste of wellbeing.

Sultan Haitham, the son of Qaboos’s brother, succeeded on January 11, 2020: he continues to steer Oman towards modernization with an emphasis on economic diversification and sustainable development. Legacy of Qaboos is too big to be discontinued.