[Oman-L] RE: Sultan Said

[J.E. Peterson]

Regarding Britan Kettell's posting:

First, thank you for your kind words about my book.  At the time it was
published, British archival material was not open and there was very little
hard data on the economy.  I was fortunate to see the rudimentary state
budgets prepared for Sultan Sa`id, which he suspended in the late 1960s when
there was no requirement for him to continue them.  Nevertheless, he had an
intimate knowledge of his finances and a very clear idea of what he could
afford to do and what not.  It is not true that he refused any development
of the country after oil revenues began (as Brian Pridham makes very clear)
but his basic rule of thumb was not to embark on a project until he had all
the money in hand to pay for it.  The alternative in his eyes was
indebtedness and loss of sovereignty to Britain, which was how he found the
state when he inherited the throne.  Nevertheless, he did begin a modest
development program that was well under way when he was overthrown in 1970.
This included a small number of boys and girls schools in north and south,
several government buildings in Muscat, the road along the Batinah to Suhar,
planning for the Greater Matrah scheme, and the port in Matrah that now
bears his son's name.

As an individual extremely scrupulous about finances, Sultan Sa`id made a
clear distinction between state property and personal property (although the
lines were a bit blurred in Dhufar).  When the British pressed him to
develop the country in the early 1960s, he replied that he didn't have the
funds and what little surplus income he received over normal expenditures
was needed to build up his reserves.  This included the three million pounds
he received from Pakistan in 1958 for turning over the Gwadur enclave.  Only
his bankers knew where he kept this money and presumably it was handed over
to the new Sultan, who worked with the same bankers.  After the coup, Sultan
Sa`id sent word from London that there were certain items of personal
property, mostly inherited from his mother, that he wished returned to him.

I am not certain what all Sultan Sa`id did in his enforced exile.  He
visited former British advisers who remained loyal to him on occasion and
enjoyed trips to the cinema (which had always been one of his passions).  He
also undertook a voyage to New York and suffered the second of his heart
attacks en route.

Incidentally, his decision to introduce the riyal Sa`idi in May 1970 was on
pragmatic grounds.  British withdrawal from the Gulf had long been announced
and Kuwait and Qatar/Dubai had already introduced their own currency.  With
the devaluation of the pound sterling and, consequently, the Indian rupee in
1966, special arrangements had to be made for an "external rupee" to
circulate only in the Gulf in the absence of national currencies.  With
imminent independence of all the Gulf states in 1971, reliance on the rupee
would no longer be viable.  In addition, the Omani economy suffered from a
multitude of currencies in use:  the rupee in Muscat and the coast, the
Maria Theresa thaler in the interior, and the riyal Dhufari (which Sultan
Sa`id had introduced earlier) in Dhufar.  It was high time to rationalize.

Regarding Joachim Duester's posting:

The time may well be right to hold a small symposium on Sultan Sa`id and his
reign and impact on modern Oman, especially as he notes there are still some
left who knew him well.   Most Foreign Office material written during his
reign is open, as are MoD and other documents, although hard information
tends to be sparse.  For example, Sultan Sa`id refused to provide HMG with
detailed information on his finances after he paid off his debts in the late
1940s, despite considerable pressure.  There also exists voluminous material
on the elements of his armed forces that were funded by HMG or the oil
company but virtually nothing on other elements that the Sultan established
out of his own pocket (e.g. Batinah Force and Dhufar Force).  I have also
collected other archival and interview material.  Joachim Duester is correct
to mention "autobiographies of British soldiers and diplomats" but these are
extremely varied in reliability and, unfortunately, the best storytellers
were those closest to the old Sultan who therefore were too discreet to
reminisce  publicly.

J.E. Peterson