Abstract
Muscat, boasting one of the best natural harbors in the region, flourished as an important port for a comparatively short time, from approximately the fifteenth until the early nineteenth century. Its historical role rested only in small measure on serving the Omani hinterland. Instead, its importance rested on such strategic criteria as its position controlling access to the Strait of Hormuz, its location as one of the few protected harbors between the Gulf and Aden, and its utility as the last place for ships to take on water and food before venturing into the Indian Ocean.
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Notes
W. G. Grey, “Trades and Races of Oman,” Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society, vol. 2, no. 2 (January 1911): 4.
S. B. Miles, The Countries and Tribes of the Persian Gulf (London: Harrison and Sons, 1919; 2nd ed., London: Frank Cass, 1966), 462
G. Rex Smith, “Masqat in the Arab Lexicographers and Geographers,” Journal of Oman Studies, vol. 6, pt. 1 (1983), 146–47. The Arab navigator Ahmad b. Majid noted that “There is a rock at the head of the port, which the traveller to and from any place sees, whether he aims for India and Sind or Hormuz or the West, and Northwest by West of it is a high red island called al-Fahl and these are landmarks sufficient for even the ignorant man when he comes across them, night and day.”
G. R. Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the Coming of the Portuguese Being a Translation of Kitab al-Fawa’id fi usul al-bahr wa’l-qawaid of Ahmad b. Majid al-Najdi (London: Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1971), 213. But Muscat served as Ahmad’s home port and he wrote in the 15th century, well after Muscat’s port use had become established.
Description of harbor details is drawn from the US Hydrographic Office, Persian Gulf Pilot, Comprising the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the Makran Coast, 1st ed. (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1923; H.O. 158), 68–76.
See also the description in Arthur W. Stiffe, “Ancient Trading Centres of the Persian Gulf, IV: Maskat,” Geographical Journal, vol. 10, no. 6 (1897): 608–9.
Al-Muqaddasi, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions, trans. Basil Collins (Reading, UK: Garnet, 2001), 80.
J. C. Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition of Oman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 44.
Arnold T. Wilson, The Persian Gulf: An Historical Sketch from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1928, repr. 1959), 114–15; citing Albuquerque’s Commentaries.
Albuquerque’s description is also mentioned in J. Theodore Bent and Mabel V. A. Bent, Southern Arabia (London: Smith, Elder, 1900; repr. Reading: Garnet, 1994), 51.
For a fuller account of the Portuguese capture of Muscat, see Frederick Charles Danvers, The Portuguese in India: Being a History of the Rise and Decline of their Eastern Empire, 2 vols. (London, 1894; repr. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1992), vol. 1, 159–61.
On the later period of Portuguese occupation (1622–1650), see Willem Floor, The Persian Gulf: A Political and Economic History of Five Port Cities, 1500–1730 (Washington, DC: Mage, 2006), 323–427.
Duarte Barbosa, The Book of Duarte Barbosa; An Account of the Countries Bordering on the Indian Ocean and Their Inhabitants, Written by Duarte Barbosa, and Completed about the Year 1518 A.D., 2 vols., trans. from the Portuguese by Mansel Longworth Dames (London: Hakluyt Society, 1918; repr. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1989), vol. I, 71.
Muscat was also well suited to carry out Portuguese strategy in the Indian Ocean. As has been pointed out, “Europeans brought to the balance of trade at world level the skills of the arms dealer and the military expert.” C. A. Bayly and Leila Tarazi Fawaz, “Introduction: The Connected World of Empires,” in Fawaz and Bayly, eds., Modernity and Culture: From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 18
citing André G. Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)
and Frank, Asian Age: ReOrient Historiography and Social Theory (Amsterdam: Centre for Asian Studies, 1998).
M. Reda Bhacker, Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar: The Roots of British Domination (London: Routledge, 1992), 33.
Robert G. Landen, Oman since 1856: Disruptive Modernization in a Traditional Arab Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 195.
G. Weisgerber, “Muscat in 1688: Engelbert Kaempfer’s Report and Engravings,” Journal of Oman Studies vol. 5 (1979): 97
and Carsten Niebuhr, Travels through Arabia, and Other Countries in the East (n.p., 1792; reprinted Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1968), 115.
See also Robin Bidwell, “Bibliographical Notes on European Accounts of Muscat 1500–1900,” Arabian Studies, vol. 4 (1978): 123–59.
One map was issued by a bank in the 1960s and reproduced in several publications subsequently, including W. D. Peyton, Old Oman (London: Stacey International, 1983).
A newer map based on the same photograph was published in J. E. Peterson, Historical Muscat: An Illustrated Guide and Gazetteer (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
See J. E. Peterson, “The Baluch Presence in the Persian Gulf,” in Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf, ed. Lawrence G. Potter (London: Hurst, 2013), 229–44.
For more details on the population mix of Oman, including Muscat, see J. E. Peterson, “Oman’s Diverse Society: Northern Oman,” Middle East Journal, vol. 58, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 32–51.
Calvin H. Allen Jr., “The Indian Merchant Community of Masqat,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 44, pt. 1 (1981): 40
citing William Foster, The English Factories in India, 1634–1636 (Oxford, 1911), 127–34.
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Peterson, J.E. (2014). Muscat as a Port City. In: Potter, L.G. (eds) The Persian Gulf in Modern Times. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137485779_7
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