Oman

E

Defense

Oman’s military forces number 41,700 and include about 2,000 foreign personnel. The army has a manpower total of 25,000, the navy 4,200, and the air force 4,100. There is also a royal household force. Military service is voluntary and Oman’s defense forces are among the best trained and most professional in the Persian Gulf region.

F

International Organizations

Oman is a member of the United Nations (UN) and a number of specialized UN agencies. It also belongs to the Nonaligned Movement, a group that sought to establish political and military cooperation outside of the traditional East and West blocs during the Cold War period; and to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, an organization that promotes solidarity among nations where Islam is an important religion. Its regional memberships include the Arab League and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf.

VI

History

Oman’s history begins in the early 3rd or late 4th millennium bc, with the rise of a society that had cultural and trade ties to ancient Mesopotamia. Between the 4th century bc and the 7th century ad the area was dominated by successive Persian empires (see Persia). In the 1st century ad Arab tribes began to migrate into Oman. When the new religion of Islam spread throughout the region in the 630s (see Spread of Islam), Persian rule ended and Oman’s Islamic Arab character was firmly established. In 751 Ibadi Muslims, a moderate branch of the Kharijites, established an imamate in Oman. Despite interruptions, the Ibadi imamate survived until the mid-20th century.

A

Omani Empire

Contact with the Western world began when Portugal seized Masqaţ and other coastal strongholds in the early 16th century. Portuguese power waned after 1624, when a strong line of imams asserted itself, and Masqa was recaptured in 1650. The imamate then flourished again under the Ya‘aribah dynasty, which extended Omani rule or influence to both sides of the Persian Gulf and the East African coast.

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A civil war ended Ya‘aribah rule in the mid-18th century and the current Al Bu Said dynasty emerged. The Al Bu Said rulers soon ceased to hold the title of imam and moved their capital from the traditional Ibadi seat at Nizwá to Masqaţ to concentrate on maritime commerce. At the beginning of the 19th century the rulers established a close relationship with the United Kingdom, granting the British exclusive trading rights in return for security from external threats.

Sayyid Sa‘īd ibn Sultan, sultan from 1806 to 1856, turned Oman’s attention to its East African coastal domains. In 1832 Sa‘īd moved the Omani capital to the African island of Zanzibar, which became the center of a thriving trade in slaves, ivory, and cloves. After Sa‘īd’s death in 1856, Zanzibar split away from Oman to become a separate sultanate. From 1856 on, what is now Oman was called the Sultanate of Masqaţ and Oman.

B

Domestic Strife

Preoccupation with maritime and overseas interests eventually lost the Al Bu Said the allegiance of the inland tribes, which in 1913 rebelled under the leadership of a newly elected imam. The 1920 Treaty of As Sīb gave formal recognition to the split that had developed between the sultanate in Masqaţ and the tribally based imamate in the interior. After years of uneasy relations, Omani sultan Said bin Taimur defeated the imamate in 1954 with British assistance. Said also thwarted a final effort to restore the imam in 1959.

Until 1970 Oman remained a medieval state harshly ruled by Said, who preferred to remain apart from the modern world and kept Oman totally isolated. In the 1960s Said’s failure to use new oil income for economic and social development created serious discontent throughout Oman. This led to a tribal rebellion in Dhofar that was absorbed and expanded by a radical leftist movement, called the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arab Gulf (PFLOAG), that was under the influence of the new Marxist state of South Yemen.

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