Al Said - Rise To Power

Rise To Power

Ahmad bin Said Al Busaidi, a shrewd military tactician was the governor of Sohar when a Persian fleet attacked the town, he held out for nine months, finally forcing the Persian commander of Nader Shah's army to come to terms and leave the country altogether within a few years; he was elected imam in 1744, marking the last time Oman was occupied by foreign parties and the beginning of a new unified state. It was also the start of a dynasty that has lasted to the present day consequently making it one of the oldest surviving royal dynasties in Arabia and the first to gain independence. His descendants took the title not of Imam with its connotations of religious leadership, but that of Sayyid, a honorific title held by members of the royal family to this day; thus relinquising all pretense of spiritual authority while fostering Muslim scholars and promoting Islamic scholarship.

Trade flourished during Ahmed's thirty-nine-year 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, Indian Ocean and the Pirate Coast of Trucial Oman. When he died in 1778, the ulema replaced Ahmed with his son, Said bin Ahmed, who was very religious but shrank from administrative duties and since the tenants of Ibadhism allowed for the division of duties between leaders along religious, administrative and military lines, he removed himself to Rustaq until his death in 1811 and turned over the hands of government to his son Hamad bin Said, who in 1783 changed the capital from Rustaq in the interior to the coastal city of Muscat and took the title of Sultan, implying purely coercive power. He was a capable leader for eight years, who facilitated reform policy in the initial stages of the transition but died suddenly in 1792 of smallpox.