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Updated: June 21, 2025
We could not procure any information about our journey to the Jebel Akhdar, as it does not appear to be the fashion at Maskat to go inland. However, both our old friend the Sultan Feysul and Colonel Sadler took infinite trouble to arrange for our journey; camels were hired and a horse for me, and the sheikhs of the tribes through whose country we should have to pass were summoned to escort us.
From Torisi we learn that Sobar was the most ancient town of Oman; but that in his day Maskat was flourishing, and that 'in old times the China ships used to sail from there.
It is, to say the least of it, a great disadvantage to have your medical man at El Matra when you are ill at Maskat; if the weather is stormy boats cannot go between the two places.
He was a man of fifty, with a handsome but somewhat sinister face; he was girt as to his head with a many-coloured kefieh, and as to his waist with a girdle supporting a finely inlaid Maskat dagger and a sword. His body was enveloped in a clean white robe, and his feet were bare.
Ibn Batuta gives an account of a certain Sheikh Said of Maskat being seized by Sokotran pirates, who sent him off empty-handed to Aden. Marco Polo describes the catching of whales for ambergris.
But my own inquiries have led me to a very different opinion. There certainly exists a great variety of dialects in Arabic; more perhaps than in other languages: but notwithstanding the vast extent of country in which Arabic prevails, from Mogador to Maskat, whoever has learned one dialect will easily understand all the others.
Our starting-point for the interior was Makalla, which is 230 miles from Aden, and is the only spot between Aden and Maskat which has any pretensions to the name of port. The name itself means 'harbour. It is first mentioned by Ibn Modjawir; Hamdani calls it El Asa-Lasa, and Masudi gives the name as Lahsa.
The Portuguese governor, Pereira, was deeply enamoured of the daughter of a Banyan merchant of Maskat; the man at first refused to let him have his daughter, but at length consented, on condition that the wedding did not take place for some months.
On her husband's death, her elder brother having in the meantime also died, she returned to Zanzibar thinking her next brother, the present sultan, to be of a milder disposition, but he refused to take any notice of her and her children. The present ruler of Maskat, Sultan Feysul, is a grandson of Sultan Sayid and son of Sultan Tourki by an Abyssinian mother.
Of course we did not mind, but there was much laughter at the expense of the others, in which indeed they joined, for they bore their adversity amiably when it brought strange cooking-fellows. On reaching Aden we still desired to penetrate into the Jebel Akhdar, so looked out for a ship going to Maskat. We could find none, therefore we embarked for India with all our company.
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