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2.2  Persians in Oman

Although Oman had once been a province of the Yemenite kingdom under Ya‘rub-bin Kahtán it was occupied by the Persians when Málik-bin Fahm, the first of the el-Azd, emigrated from the Yemen on account of the bursting of the M<reb dam c. ad 2nd century. M<lik-bin Fahm initially requested permission from the Persians to settle in the Oman. However the Persians refused and a battle ensued in which M<lik-bin Fahm defeated the Persians. The Persians sued for a truce to evacuate which was agreed but in the meantime another Persian force was despatched and again defeated by M<lik-bin Fahm. This time the remnant of the Persian army embarked across the sea to Persia. The tribes of the el-Azd continued for some time to emigrate from Yemen and settle in the Oman eventually extending their occupation as far as Bahrain.^[1] However the Persians returned to Oman after the death of M<lik-bin Fahm and Oman was included in the conquests of the Persian king Khosru Parwiz at the end of the 6th century.^[2]

The expulsion of the Persians from Oman by M<lik-bin Fahm in c. 2nd century, and which only lasted during his lifetime, was not to be repeated till the 7th century. Although the e-Azd continued to reside in Oman, they remained in the interior whilst the coast was occupied by the Persians and the rulers of Hormuz. Apart from the incursions of the Portuguese in the 16th century who fought both the Arabs and the Persians this was a pattern that continued till about the 18th century when it was reversed and Oman obtained coastal towns on the Persian side of the Strait of Hormuz and the Makran coast. The Turkish were unsuccessful in the Persian Gulf being repulsed by the Portuguese and later the English confined their military actions to matters of political expediency. By 900 the ¢Abbasids who had replaced the Umayyad dynasty in 750 had extended the Islamic empire through the Mediterranean to Spain and were in control of all routes from Europe to the Persian Gulf.^[3]

There are not many references to the area in the sixth and seventh centuries but there is one Gabriel who is mentioned as being the (Nestorian) Bishop of Hormuz c. ad 540 which at that time would have been on the mainland. There is also a Syriac letter c. ad 655 that states the following:

 

Nobis … visum est nihilominus velut ad sepulchra mortuorum, quales vos esse video, geminos hosce Dei Sacerdotes ad vos allegare: Theodorum videlicet Episcopum Hormuzdadschir et Georgium Episcopum Susatrae.^[4]

 

There are no European references to Hormuz or the Persian Gulf during the eighth and ninth centuries and this may very be well be due to the rapid spread of Islam that occurred after the death of the Prophet in 632.^[5]