Bureau Development, Inc.

Excerpts from : Persian Gulf States, Countries of the World, 01-01-1991.

The Wahhabi Movement

As a result of its isolation, central Arabia became a backwater after the movement of the Islamic capital from Medina to Damascus. Coastal events hardly penetrated Najd (in which modern Riyadh is located) in central Arabia. Although the population was Muslim, pre-Islamic practices reappeared. People in the Arabian Peninsula, particularly in the interior, resumed veneration of trees and stones, though maintaining their identification with the Muslim community.

Various holy men, especially those who claimed descent from the prophet, achieved reputation for exceptional spiritual or magical powers. Pre-Islamic beliefs in the inheritance of special spiritual powers in certain family lines blended smoothly into popular Islam. Stories of holy men circulated, and people began visiting these individuals or their graves to seek cures, fulfillment of wishes, or other favors.

Such practices were viewed with particular abhorrence by a religious scholar born in 1703 in the town of Unaynah in Najd. A descendant of generations of Hanbali qadis (religious judges), Muhammad bin Abd al Wahhab followed the family tradition of religious studies and traveled to Medina, Basrah, and Damascus, among other places. Even as a young man he showed signs of unusually extreme orthodoxy. Having studied widely and having reportedly dabbled in Sufism, he returned to his native town, where his family was prominent. There he began to preach his own views based on the teachings of the controversial and extremely conservative Hanbali legal scholar Taki al Din Ahmad bin Taimiya, whose ideas went far beyond the Hanbali norm in strictness and literalness of interpretation. Like his spiritual mentor, Abd al Wahhab attracted unfavorable reaction because of the unusual severity of his teachings. He eventually left Unaynah with his considerable household and property and was received into the village of Dariyah, which was ruled by Muhammad bin Saud

Abd al Wahhab quickly put into effect Taimiya's teaching that the ulama should combine with the umara (powerholders; sing., amir) to create a true Muslim society. In 1744 he and Saud concluded a pact stating that the Al Saud (House of Saud) would adopt, fight for, and propagate the Wahhabi doctrines and that in all conquered territory the Al Saud would hold political power and the Al ash Shaykh would hold religious power. (In this usage Al means "house of" or "family of.") Thus came into being the partnership that harnessed Wahhabi religious fervor to Saudi dynastic expansionism and that resulted immediately in the creation of a kingdom in Najd and eventually in the development of the modern state of Saudi Arabia.

Abd al Wahhab took a literalist view of the Quran and, like Taimiya before him, believed that the absolute and incomparable unity of God was the core of true Islam. Thus, the worst sin was shirk, the association of anything with God or the worship of anything besides him; such practices and beliefs denied God's basic nature. An important cause of shirk, Abd al Wahhab believed, was the adoption of bida (innovations) - practices not sanctioned by the Prophet or his followers earlier than the third century of Islam. Some of these supposed innovations in fact predated Islam, but Abd al Wahhab denounced them as ungodly later accretions. Prominent among them were the customs of visiting saints and tombs and the veneration of trees and rocks. Forbidden bida also included rendering improper honor to the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the custom of celebrating his birthday. Particulary forbidden was the invocation of the names of the Prophet or of saints in prayer in the hope that they would intercede with God. The Wahhabis believed that, although Muhammad can intercede with God, he does so not in answer to specific requests but only in the case of an exemplary believer.

All special relationships with God are absolutely rejected, whether they involve Sufis, saints, or Shia imams, as are all ecstatic practices believed to foster such relationships. Access to God is provided only through prayer and obedience to duty, and that access is equal for all true believers. Abd al Wahhab accepted such Hanbali beliefs as the literal truth of the Quran, the ungodliness of knowledge not derived from it or the hadith, and the predestination of human events. He went beyond Hanbali teachings, however, in rejecting smoking, shaving, and strong language; requiring rather than merely encouraging attendance at public prayer; enforcing payment of zakat on so-called secret profits; demanding evidence of good character in addition to acceptance of beliefs for admission to the Muslim community; and forbidding minarets, embellishments of tombs, and such aids to prayer as the rosary. He also insisted on strict enforcement of the sumptuary laws established by the Prophet and banned activities he deemed godless frivolity, such as music and dancing.

Unity for Abd al Wahhab implied not only the absolute oneness of God but also the absolute singularity of the believer's devotion. The sole duty of human life is to serve and obey God with a resignation that accepts what comes as God's will. Service, furthermore, must be rendered strictly according to God's law. The believer's spiritual zeal thus combines with punctilious obedience to form total submission to God. In the words of Henri Laost, an authority on Hanbali law, Wahhabism implies "the most perfect sincerity placed at the service of the law."

For Abd al Wahhab any other approach to God constituted shirk. Worse even than non-Muslims were Muslims of other sects or schools; by claiming to follow the true religion of God while practicing polytheism, Abd al Wahhab believed, they practiced hypocrisy. The duty of the good Muslim was to stamp out such mockeries of true religion. As they gained power, therefore, the Wahhabis proved to be iconoclasts. In 1801 they shocked much of the Muslim world, for example, by defacing the tomb of the martyr Husayn at Karbala, a particularly holy shrine to the Shia.

A Wahhabi does not practice his religion as an isolated individual. Like other Muslims, Abd al Wallab viewed the community as the ideal vehicle for enforcement of God's law. Law is the acting out of faith; Islam is the fulfillment of law. Wahhabis interpret the concept of jihad to include the obligation of the community to enforce the law and the reciprocal obligation of the believer to obey the constituted authority of the Wahhabi imam except where such obedience would lead to straying from the law. The leader, therefore, has the right and duty to prevent sin, frivolity, and indecency and to enforce such ritual acts as fasting, attendance at prayer, and payments of zakat.

Within their communities Wahhabis believe in the social equality of believers. The only permissible social distinction is between "true" Muslims and others. A Wahhabi ideally strives for the perfection of the example of the Prophet and his contemporaries, who are viewed as the noblest and most perfect of human beings. The followers of Abd al Wahhab regard his teachings so highly that they refer to the period before him as jahaliyah (ignorance), the term generally used within the broader Muslim community to refer to the period before Islam.

This should not be taken to imply that Abd al Wahhab's followers in any way equate him with the Prophet. Rather than preaching anything new, he sought to return Muslims to the true religion and to the al salaf al salih (ways of the pious ancestors). No serious scholar of Islam has accused Abd al Wahhab of heresy. Like Muhammad, however, Abd al Wahhab provided religious justification for a political movement that sought to sweep away tribal distinctions and to bind all Arabia into a unity based on religion.

After the initial successes of Saud and his immediate successors, the Wahhabi movement went into political decline until the beginning of the twentieth century and the rise of Saud's descendant, Abd al Aziz, who was sometimes referred to as Ibn Saud. A gifted leader, he harnessed religious fervor to political ambition and forged the modern nation of Saudi Arabia under the banner of the Wahhabi cause.

Kuwait and Bahrain

An unusually long drought that began in 1722 and the accompanying famine in the Alflaj region of Najd in central Arabia precipitated a major migration of Arab tribes of the Adnani-Anayzah confederation, including the Utub (adjective, Utbi), to the north coastal lands of the Gulf. The area was under the domination of the Bani Khalid, whose suzerainty extended from Basrah in the north inland to the eastern part of Najd and south beyond Al Hasa to Qatar.

The Utub had for a long time been under the protection of the Bani Khalid and regularly grazed their flocks in Al Hasa. The Utub were well received, and they settled at a small town they began to call Kuwait, the diminutive of the Arabic kut, a fortress built near water. Kuwait did not have much to recommend it. It was almost entirely without agricultural resources and lacked a nearby source of potable water. In comparison with the rest of Bani Khalid territory, however, it had a mild climate. Further, Al Hasa, the destination of many of the migrating Anayzah tribes, was quickly becoming overcrowded.

The most influential tribe of the Utub were the Al Sabah, but they were not the only Utub to settle Kuwait. The Al Khalifa and Al Jalahima were the next in importance; at least seven other families or clans emigrated there, although not simultaneously. The town was divided into three sections, and the Al Sabah controlled all from the wasat, or central quarters. The exact date of the Utbi settlement is unknown. It was certainly early in the eighteenth century but probably later than 1716, a commonly given date, since neither the Al Sabah nor the Al Khalifa were clan chiefs at the time. Until 1752 the Al Sabah exerted mild internal leadership with the blessing of the shaykh of the Bani Khalid, Sulaiman al Hamud. At Sulaiman's death in 1756, Sabah bin Jabir, ancestor of the present-day ruling house, was elected as the first recorded Utbi shaykh. There is much discussion about the reason Sabah is remembered as the first of the Utbi shaykhs, since desert Arabs are particularly gifted at remembering genealogy and can usually trace a line for many generations. It is probable that the clans did not come to be called Utub until after their major migration; Utub derives from the Arabic root ataba, meaning to go from place to place.

In 1766 an Utbi settlement was established by the Al Khalifa at the short-lived city of Zubarah in Qatar. At the time of the Al Khalifa settlement on Qatar, nearby Bahrain was under the suzerainty of Shaykh Nasr al Madhkur, an Omani Arab who ruled from Bushire on the Iranian coast. Hostilities between Bushire and the Utbi-held areas led to attacks by Nasr on Zubarah in 1778 and 1782. In retaliation a joint attack by the Al Sabah and Al Khalifa netted them Bahrain in 1783, a capture that obliterated Iranian influence from the Utbi sphere of influence and gave the Utub access to the richest pearl beds of the Gulf while also providing a midway point for their increasing mercantile activities. The Al Sabah, particularly, were in an excellent mercantile position because they had access to land as well as sea trade routes. Caravans from Aleppo made regular stops there, and the proceeds enabled them to build a powerful fleet. Because of excellent relations with foreign powers, particularly the British, the Utub with one exception were not forced to engage in piracy. Further, the Utbi choice of settling in relatively unoccupied areas ensured unharassed and untaxed access to land and sea trade.

Kuwait's second ruler, Abdallah al Sabah, succeeded his father in 1762 (see fig. 7). Abdallah's long and prosperous reign, which lasted until his death in 1812, set patterns for Kuwait's future political and social development that prevailed until the exploitation of oil and in some cases after it. Abdallah continued the friendly relationship with the British begun by his father. In 1793 he invited the British to Kuwait, where they remained for two years until danger to their port at Basrah was eliminated. In return the British helped defend Abdallah against Wahhabi attacks in 1795. Neither the Ottomans in Iraq nor the Iranians were strong enough to interfere with Kuwait's rising mercantile power in the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries. Shaykh Abdallah Al Sabah (1866-92), however, recognized Ottoman suzerainty over Kuwait, although Ottoman influence was minimal. Shaykh Mubarak Al Sabah (1895-1915) had the prescience to realize that the Ottomans would soon be a substantial threat to his shaykhdom and so in 1899 signed an agreement with the British whereby Britain assumed responsibility for Kuwait's foreign affairs and for its protection from foreign powers, in exchange for which Mubarak agreed to have no direct relations with foreign powers nor to cede them any land by sale or lease. Until 1961 there were no changes of substance in the agreement. If any change occurred, it was that relations became more intimate as a result of mutual British-Kuwaiti interests.

Bahrain already had an extensive and turbulent history by the time it was captured by the Utub from Kuwait and Zubarah. The Al Khalifa initially ruled Bahrain from Zubarah but established themselves permanently in Bahrain between 1796 and 1798 as a result of devastating Wahhabi attacks directed particularly at Zubarah.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it appeared that every power in the Gulf was claiming Bahrain. It had been ruled first by the Bani Abd al Qais and then successively by the Umayyads, Abbasids, Iranians, Portuguese, and southern Omani Arabs. Thus, there were many to dispute Al Khalifa claims. Claims were confused because of changing nomenclature. Until early in the sixteenth century, Bahrain was a geographic entity that included not only the present-day archipelago but also the Gulf coast from Basrah to the Strait of Hormuz.

Because of the repeated acts of piracy by the Qawasim (adjective, Qasimi), which encouraged other Arab shaykhdoms to join the fray, the British made a concerted attack (their third) against Ras al Khaymah, the headquarters of the Qawasim, in 1819 (see The Trucial Coast: The Qawasim and the Bani Yas, this ch.). The Bahrainis had not entirely abstained from piratical activities but had suffered more from them than they had gained. Accordingly, in 1820 Bahrain signed the General Treaty of Peace with the British, agreeing not to engage in piracy unless they were in a declared state of war. The treaty set the precedent for other states to sign, states that were inclusively referred to as the Trucial Coast until their independence in 1971. Friendly Bahraini-British relations continued, and in 1861 the two parties signed the Perpetual Truce of Peace and Friendship, which included the issues of slavery, British trade with Bahrain, and maritime aggression.

Ottoman involvement in the Arabian Peninsula, usually nominal and concentrated in the Hijaz, became more intense when the Sublime Porte (the government of the Ottoman Empire), fearing the growing strength of the Wahhabi incursions, dispatched its vassal. Muhammad Ali Pasha of Egypt, to subdue the Wahhabis in the eastern part of the peninsula. As the Ottomans increased their activity in the area, they again put forth claims to Bahrain in 1870 and 1874. Ottoman suzerainty in the Gulf could only mean a diminution of British power there. For the benefit of both British and Bahraini interests, treaties were signed in 1880 and 1892. Shaykh Isa bin Ali Al Khalifa agreed, in a treaty similar to that which Britain had signed with Kuwait, neither to dispose of Bahraini holdings without British consent nor to establish relationships with foreign powers without British agreement. A British political agent was assigned to Bahrain in 1902. Acting for the Bahrainis, the British signed a convention with the Ottomans in 1913, ensuring Bahrain's independence as a sovereign state. In 1916 a British agreement with Abd al Aziz, future king of Saudi Arabia, ensured that he would not attempt to conquer Bahrain.

Qatar

The withdrawal of the Al Khalifa from Zubarah to Bahrain naturally decreased their power in Qatar, although the Al Khalifa returned for a short period in the nineteenth century and always kept close contact with Qatar. The most important clan in Qatar before the advent of the Al Khalifa were the Al Thani, descendants from Thani bin Muhammad bin Thamir bin Ali of the Bani Tamim, a large Adnani clan. Tradition holds that ancestors of the Al Thani migrated from Najd and settled chiefly in eastern Qatar at the Jibrin Oasis late in the seventeenth century. They eventually moved to Doha (Ad Dawhah), the present-day capital. Apparently the Al Thani were subject to the Al Khalifa until Muhammad bin Thani, shaykh of Doha, began to seek autonomy. The Al Thani were, however, powerless against the Al Khalifa until Ottoman influence increased in the eastern peninsula. The Ottomans were not concerned with direct rule of the states, realizing that such an attempt would net them little, but they did wish to establish a nominal suzerainty because of the strategic military position of states along the Gulf.

In 1872 the Al Thani became independent of the Al Khalifa when Shaykh Muhammad bin Thani became a qaim-maqam (Ottoman provincial ruler). Muhammad was succeeded by his son Qasim (1876-1913), who had a great vision for Qatar's future and who for a time became very influential in the peninsula. Qasim's son Abdallah (1913-49) attempted to continue the peninsular policies of his father and also remained under the tutelary direction of the Ottomans, but in 1916 he signed a treaty with Britain that was virtually identical with those signed by Kuwait and Bahrain.

The Trucial Coast: The Qawasim and the Bani Yas

The seven Trucial Coast shaykhdoms that became the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 1971 had for the most part separate histories until the discovery of oil (see fig. 13). Historically, the five lesser states, that is those without oil or much less oil than Abu Dhabi or Dubai, were ruled by groups that had had extensive power in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Their piratical activities were a major instigation for the British to control or at least pacify the Gulf by making truces with them and other states.

The Qawasim were the rulers of Ras al Khaymah and Sharjah. For centuries the Qawasim were settled on the Iranian coast of the Gulf and the coastal area a few kilometers due north of the Musandam Peninsula. Suzerains of Sir, a geographical area that can be thought of as running horizontally across the Gulf, the Qawasim were also lords of Lingeh, Qeshm, Junj, and Luft. Because of the geographic proximity of the Qawasim to Oman and Omani cities on the Iranian coast, their histories are intermingled. The Qawasim had made themselves so conspicuous, initially by their trade and later by the magnitude of their piratical activities, that the British in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries referred indiscriminately to all non-European pirates as the Qawasim, whom they called Joasmees-a misnomer presumably originating from hearing Gulf Arabs pronounce the Arabic letter qaf with a soft g.

It first became apparent that the Qawasim had other interests besides trade when the Qasimi shaykh of Ras al Khaymah assisted the imam of Oman,Sultan bin Saif II, in seizing Bahrain in 1720. A few years later the Qawasim founded a port at Basidu on the island of Qeshm. Because the East India Company's headquarters were at Bandar Abbas on the mainland behind Qeshm, the British were outraged at the loss of revenue caused by ships berthing at the closer port of Basidu. Accordingly, the company's agent directed a naval foray against Basidu to secure compensation from the Qawasim.

The Qawasim, however, were not long on the defensive. Because of the confusion that prevailed in Iran during most of the eighteenth century, governors were forced to defend their own interests; dependence on the central government usually was futile, and frequently the Iranian shah would exploit a governor.

Mulla Ali Shah, the Iranian admiral and governor of Hormuz, therefore sought help from the Qawasim to assist him in defending his governorship against the multitude of demands for tribute made by candidates for the Iranian throne. Marriage alliances, a traditional Gulf response to political problems, were arranged between the families of Mulla Ali Shah and the Qasimi shaykh, Rashid bin Mattar bin Qasim. The Qawasim gained great prestige among the Arabs from the various profits that accrued to them from this coalition. More important, when the Qawasim annoyed the British at Bandar Abbas, the Iranians were unable to defend British interests.

The growth of Qasimi power was threatening not only to the British but also to other Arab maritime powers, particularly the Utub of Kuwait and Bahrain and the Omanis. The Omanis and the Qawasim were engaged in almost perpetual warfare during the second half of the eighteenth century; their one truce occurred in 1773, when the Iranian shah appeared likely to be a threat to states on the Arabian coast. Conflict between the Qawasim and the Utub came about almost accidentally. Secure in their power, the Qawasim attempted in 1782 to play diplomat between the Al Khalifa and the shaykh of Bushire, who was making claims to Bahrain in the name of Iran. Unfortunately, an Utbi vessel captured and killed the crew of a Qasimi boat. The Qawasim, therefore, threw in their lot with Arabs of the Iranian coast and attacked the Utbi settlement at Zubarah.

Between 1797 and 1804 there were only three incidents between the Qawasim and the British, and the Qawasim incentive was usually to disrupt Omani trade. Situations in virtually the whole of the Arab coast changed abruptly, however, with the Wahhabis religious and military expansion from central Arabia to the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula in 1800. Since a majority of coastal Arabs were Sunni, with the one exception of Oman, there originally was some sympathy for the movement. At their zenith the Wahhabis controlled the whole of the coast from Basrah to Dibbah. Control of a territory by a religiously motivated force and permanent conversion to its tenets are entirely different matters, however, and only Qatar remained Wahhabi. At the time, however, the Qawasim responded more positively to Wahhabism than did most other Gulf Arabs. This was at least partially due to the Qawasim's rivalry with the Omanis for commercial supremacy. The Omanis, as members of the Ibadite branch of Islam, were regarded as infidels by the austere Wahhabi. Presumably the Qawasim hoped that, by aligning with the Wahhabis, they would eventually have access to the spoils that would accrue if Oman fell to the Wahhabis. Because Oman was embroiled in civil war, the Qawasim received help from one of the two Omani warring factions-the Ghafiri, who were Adnani and who, although they did not wish for a Wahhabi takeover in Oman, hoped that the Qawasim would support their cause against their internal enemies.

The Qasimi collaborations with the Wahhabi movement encouraged their wholesale piracies against the British and thus quickened the British desire to make as many firm truces along the coast as possible. Many scholars attribute the increased Qasimi piratical activities not so much to Wahhabi fervor as to British interference in the long-term war between the Qawasim and the Omanis, and particularly to the British support of the Omanis, because wholesale attacks on British vessels did not commence until after 1808, when the war began to acquire some substance. British protection of the Omanis was not owing to special allegiance to them or to a particular treaty arrangement. The chief British concern was that the Qawasim, through the Wahhabis, not monopolize Gulf trade. The Qawasim felt they had been meanly dealt with, for a British-Qasimi treaty of 1806 had ensured that the Qawasim would respect the East India Company's flag and that in return the Qawasim would not be harassed during their attempts to recoup part of their Indian trade, which they felt had been usurped by the Omanis.

Anti-British incidents in 1808 prompted a radical change in the British laissez-faire stand on the internal affairs of the Arabs. Lord Minto, the governor general of India, and Rear Admiral William Drury, the naval officer in command of the East India station, decided that the independence of Oman (threatened by Qasimi attacks) was vital to British interests. A British show of support for Oman was also necessary because Sayyid Said, the Omani shaykh, had previously shown sympathy with the French, and the British were still in a state of shock from Napoleon's incursions into Egypt in 1797 and 1798. Accordingly, in 1809 the British destroyed Ras al Khaymah as well as a few small Qasimi holdings elsewhere. The Qawasim recouped their losses, and in 1812 and 1813 they made further attacks on British vessels. Attacks on Ras al Khaymah in 1812 and 1814 were made by Sayyid Said, with assistance from the Bani Yas of Abu Dhabi. Qasimi attacks and British counterattacks continued. A particularly crushing foray was made by the British on Ras al Khaymah in 1820.

Five of the seven shaykhdoms are Qasimi, and the shaykhdoms of Ajman, Umm al Qaywayn, Sharjah, and Fujayrah were under the dominance of the shaykhdom of Ras al Khaymah for much of their history. The other two, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, were founded by the previously nomadic Bani Yas. Abu Dhabi, founded in approximately 1761, was originally valued by the Bani Yas for its fresh water and proximity to pearl-bearing oyster beds. The people of Abu Dhabi quickly learned the value of maritime pursuits, and in 1790 the shaykh of Abu Dhabi's most powerful clan, the Al Bu Falah, moved his settlement to Abu Dhabi town. Dubai, in the late eighteenth century, was also inhabited by the Bani Yas, although the port had probably been used by the Omanis for centuries. Initially, under the dominance of Abu Dhabi, Dubai-settled by the Al Bu Falasah branch of the Bani Yas-declared its independence in 1834 and soon was a serious rival to the newly mercantile clansmen in Abu Dhabi. The Bani Yas settlements, because of their late founding, did not figure importantly in the Gulf until the mid-nineteenth century, but they did ally themselves with the Omanis against the Qawasim. In 1820 the Bani Yas were among the signers of the General Treaty of Peace between Britain and the states of the Trucial Coast. Some of the towns whose shaykhs signed the treaty of 1820 have been absorbed by other powers or have undergone name changes, but the original signers were the shaykhs of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ajman, Umm al Qaywayn, Jazirat al Hamra, and Hatt and Falna.

The years between 1820 and 1852 continued to be stormy ones for the British and the other signers of the treaty. Abu Dhabi and Dubai began to rise in prominence; Sharjah, formerly second to Ras al Khaymah, became more affluent, and by 1820 Ajman and Umm al Qaywayn had come into existence. The Qawasim by no means ended their activities, but their potential to build a powerful, independent indigenous state was crushed forever by the British. In 1853 the Treaty of Maritime Peace in Perpetuity was signed by the Qawasim and Bani Yas states, and the name of the coast was changed in British records from "Pirate" to "Trucial." It also fossilized the ruling families of the states and the states themselves because they had agreed not to combat each other on the open seas. Intertribal and intratribal warfare continued, however, but the fighting was more on land than at sea. The British still refrained from interfering in internal affairs; the unusual result was a situation in which territory was not being taken, but deaths and devastation were common.

Although treaties ensured the existence of the states, they did not ensure the conditions under which they would exist, and the resolution of many tribal problems was carried into the twentieth century. In 1892 the Trucial Coast states signed an exclusive agreement stating that Britain would be their only foreign and diplomatic contact. The internal histories of the Trucial Coast states were of little interest except to those who lived there; the British were firmly in control of local events.

Developments in Oman

Oman, having a continuous history recorded from ancient times and permanent tribal residents recorded from the second century A.D., differed in religion, tribal origins, and world view from the other Arab states of the Gulf. While engaging in extensive trade and carrying out frequent forays against some rival states and making alliances with others, Omanis were also concerned with internal divisions caused by geography, tribal origins, and theological subtleties. Although some of the Gulf states have been able to overcome their differences within the virtually all-encompassing embrace of oil, internal Omani problems-particularly those that intensified during the eighteenth century-have consistently been a divisive factor.

Early in the eighteenth century the contest for the succession to the imamate became so violent that it not only solidified the divisions that already existed in Oman but also involved many of the tribes of the future Trucial Coast states. The ulama favored the election of Muhanna bin Sultan al Yaruba, who appeared to fulfill the stringent requirements for an Ibadite imam, whereas tribal leaders wished to elect a young son of the previous imam. Although Muhanna was eventually elected, the dispute acquired a life of its own. Two factions formed: the Hinawi, named for the Bani Hina tribe and its leader, Khalifa bin Mubarak Al Hinawi; and the Ghafiri, named for the Bani Ghafir and particularly for Muhammad bin Nasir Al Ghafiri, who led that faction.

The Hinawi supported the choice of the ulama, and the Ghafiri supported the choice of tribal leaders. Although the choice of imam was certainly an important one to Omanis, the question of who was rightful imam was really only the catalyst in a situation that had long been in the making.

The Hinawis were southerners, that is, Qahtanis; the Ghafiris and their supporters were Adnani. Although both groups were Ibadite, the Hinawis, descendants of original Ibadite tribes, considered themselves the preservers of orthodoxy. Oman was without an imam for various periods when a compromise could not be reached between the two groups.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, the imamate was bestowed on a member of the Al Bu Said, an ancestor of the ruler in 1984. A grandson of the first Said ruler and an imam, he made the political error (as far as the tribes were concerned) of moving his capital to Muscat. It was a wise decision, considering the commercial advantages and the fact that he could more effectively negotiate with foreign powers-both Arab and European-from a coastal town rather than from the interior. The more conservative religious leaders of the interior did not, however, see the justification for such a move and began to elect their own imams, who acquired tremendous political power and virtually ruled the imamate as a state separate from the one coalescing around Muscat. Gradually, the rulers of Oman, no longer elected as imams, assumed the secular title of Sultan.

The sultans of Muscat quickly developed an amicable relationship with the British that was advantageous to both parties. The first treaty, the Agreement of Friendship, was signed in 1800. The British felt it protected them from French influence in Oman, and the Omanis felt it greatly enhanced their international prestige and importance. The sultan of Muscat was also the suzerain of Zanzibar, a few other East African coastal towns, and Gwadar on the Makran coast of Baluchistan (in present-day Pakistan).

The British gave what aid they could to Oman during the Wahhabi incursion and, by forcibly subjugating the Qawasim, secured Oman's position. In 1822 the sultan signed the first of three treaties (the others were in 1839 and 1873) with the British to suppress the slave trade in Oman.

Although the British have always been the best Western friends of the Omanis, the United States also made overtures during this period. The Americans, by then able traders, wished to make some arrangement whereby their trade passing through Omani waters would not be so heavily taxed. In 1833 Edmund Roberts, a private merchant, arrived in Muscat, having been given the authority to make commercial treaties by the United States Department of State. He effectively negotiated the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, the first American treaty in the area. It remained in effect until 1958, when it was replaced by a similar but updated version. (In 1840 an Omani delegation arrived in New York, the first Arabs to do so officially.)

The outgoing Sultan Sayyid Said, ruler during the mid-1800s, had given many gifts to the British, among them the guano-rich Khuriya Muriya Islands. The British by that time were so closely involved in Omani affairs that the British viceroy in India, Lord Canning, adjudicated between the sultan's quarreling sons after the sultan's death in 1856. One son was given Muscat and the other Zanzibar; Zanzibar, however, was to pay an annual tribute of 400,000 Maria Theresa dollars to Muscat. Zanzibar soon stopped paying the tribute. But because the British had arranged the conditions and because they wished to maintain a stable rule in Oman, which translated into money enough to ensure the sultan's power, British India assumed responsibility for the payment, which it continued to pay until the British Foreign Office assumed the burden in 1947.

The second half of the nineteenth century saw the beginning of Oman's decline and the decline of the rest of the Gulf states. Locally built sailing ships wereer no competition for European steamship lines, and the Gulf for the first time in many centuries was becoming an economic backwater. In 1873 Sultan Turki bin Said Al Bu Said, who had come to power largely through British support, signed a major agreement aimed at the suppression of the slave trade. The end of slave trading and gunrunning, the last two lines of Omani economic power, dealt the coup de grace to Omani commercial independence. The sultan was hopelessly dependent on the British and had incurred the wrath of the more conservative Ibadites of the interior, because slavery under special conditions is sanctioned by the Quran and because the interior tribes relied on gunrunning.

The British apparently were aware of the difficulties they had caused the sultan. Between 1895 and 1897 Oman was granted two loans financed by the government of British India.