An Omani sultan moved his capital from Arabia to the island of Zanzibar
At its peak the Omani Empire reached from the coasts of modern Iran and Pakistan to northern Mozambique. In 1832 Said bin Sultan shifted his seat of power across the Indian Ocean to Zanzibar, and in 1840 an Omani ship docked in New York, carrying the first Arab envoy ever to visit the Americas.
Oman's rise began with pushing out the Portuguese, who had held the strategic port of Muscat from 1507 until Omani tribes expelled them in the mid-17th century. The Ya'rubid dynasty then rebuilt Arab seaborne trade. In 1696 an Omani fleet laid siege to the Portuguese stronghold of Fort Jesus at Mombasa, which fell after 33 months. By 1783 Omani power stretched east to Gwadar in present-day Pakistan, and Omanis briefly took Bahrain from Persia. Southward expansion brought the first large-scale Omani settlement of Zanzibar.
Prosperity at home rested on water. Saif bin Sultan extended irrigation channels called falaj into the interior, coaxed people to plant date palms along the Batinah coast and built new schools. When he died on 4 October 1711 he reportedly owned 28 ships and a third of the country's date trees, a fortune that also included enslaved people.
Geopolitics drew Oman towards Britain. Fearing Napoleon would march through Persia to seize Muscat en route to India, Britain signed a commerce treaty with Oman in 1798. The sultan closed his lands to the French and let the East India Company open its first trading station in the Gulf. Britain also pressed Oman to end slavery, while Zanzibar grew rich as ivory traders rerouted shipments to dodge heavy Portuguese duties in Mozambique. On 21 September 1833 Oman signed a friendship and trade treaty with the United States, only the second such pact between the US and an Arab state.
The visit of the ship Al-Sultanah to New York on 13 April 1840 lasted nearly four months. Its envoy, Ahmad bin Na'aman Al Kaabi, brought ivory, rugs, spices and gifts for President Martin Van Buren and was hosted by Cornelius Vanderbilt. Meanwhile Omani rule in Africa ran along the Swahili coast, though in the Banadir region of Somalia Zanzibari authority was largely ceremonial beside the Geledi sultans. After Said bin Sultan died in 1856, his sons split the empire into the Sultanate of Zanzibar and the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, the latter becoming a British protectorate in 1891.
Source: Omani Empire
