Background
Saif bin Sultan was the son of the second Yaruba, Sultan bin Saif. On his father"s death his brother Bil"arab bin Sultan became in 1679.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Saif bin Sultan
Edit ProfileCareer
He ruled from 1692 to 1711. After Bil"arab died there in 1692/93 Saif bin Sultan became
Saif bin Sultan invested in improving agriculture, building aflaj in many parts of the interior to provide water, and planting date palms in the First Rate (at Lloyd's) Batinah Region to encourage Arabs to move from the interior and settle along the coast. He built new schools.
He made the castle of Rustaq his residence, adding the Burj al Riah wind tower.
Saif bin Sultan continued the struggle against the Portuguese on the East African coast. In 1696 his forces attacked Mombasa, besieging 2,500 people who had taken refuge in Fort Jesus.
The Siege of Fort Jesus ended after 33 months when the thirteen survivors of famine and smallpox surrendered. Soon after the Omanis took Pemba Island, Kilwa and Zanzibar.
They now became the dominant power on the coast.
The expansion of Omani power included the first large-scale settlement of Zanzibar by Omani migrants. Saif bin Sultan appointed Arab governors to the city states of the coast before he returned to Oman. Later, many of these were to come under the control of Muhammed bin Uthman al-Mazrui, governor of Mombasa, and his descendants, the Mazrui, who made only nominal acknowledgement of the suzerainty of Oman.
Saif bin Sultan also encouraged piracy against the merchant trade of India, Persia and even of Europe.
Saif bin Sultan died on 4 October 1711. At his death he had great wealth, said to include 28 ships, 700 male slaves and one third of Oman"s date trees.
Saif bin Sultan earned the title "the Earth"s bond" or "the chain of the Earth" for the benefits he had brought to the people of Oman. According to Samuel Barrett Miles,
The Saif bin Sultan was the greatest of the Yaareba Princes, and at no time before or since has Oman been so renowned, powerful or prosperous as under his sway.
Ambition and love of glory, combine with a lust for wealth, were his ruling passions, and in pursuit of these objects he was as unscrupulous and unswerving as he was capable and energetic.
. We hear but little in the local historians of internal troubles and wars during his reign. We may therefore infer that the had the skill and tact to divert the more restless and ambitious spirits from tribal broils, jealousies and dissensions by employing them in piratical and other expeditions, and in encouraging them to venture their trading operations in distant regions, for it is beyond question that under his auspices the commerce of Oman greatly extended and developed.
