"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎٤‎٣‎٦] (١٧٨٢/٥٧٩)

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showed every consideration for the interests of merchants, whether
natives or strangers. The import duties were not heavy, amounting to
6 or 6^ per cent, only, ad valorem, on merchandise of all kinds; and the
custom of buying and selling for cash, which prevailed at Masqat,
commended itself to European traders and was in agreeable contrast
with commercial usage at some other ports in the Gulf. In the last
decade of the 18th century the proportion of the trade of the Persian
Gulf that passed through Masqat was about five-eighths of the whole
or one crore of rupees per annum ; and almost every line of business there
was represented. The principal exports to India, as also to Batavia and
Mauritius, were specie, pearls, sulphur, rocksalt, copper, and arsenic;
those to the ports of the Red Sea were Basrah dates, pearls, Indian cloth
goods and spices ; and those to places in the Persian Gulf were Yaman
coffee and European and Indian stuffs. The imports by European
vessels from India and elsewhere were chiefly piece-goods, Indian cloth
goods, sugar, spices, rice, turmeric, indigo, iron, steel, tin, lead, red lead,
small cannon, cannon balls, and some coarse firearms, the last three of
these articles being mainly supplied by the French. The leading import
from the Red Sea was one of coffee, representing, it was supposed, half
the entire produce of Yaman, and fully providing the countries of the
Middle East as well as, to some extent, Russia, Germany and other
European States.
It is not perhaps wonderful that, in these circumstances, Saiyid Sultan
should have claimed an exclusive right to protect navigation in the
Persian Gulf, and should have wished for this purpose to make a preli-
minary visit to Masqat obligatory on all vessels proceeding up the Gulf:
the difficulties with the British Government and with the 'Atbi rulers
of Bahi ain to which these pretensions gave rise have been noticed above
in connection with political affairs. It was also the Saiyid's ambition
to make Masqat the sole distributing centre of goods from abroad
destined for sale on the western side of the Gulf; but the 'Utub, who
were the most enterprising merchants in the Gulf and who had no love for
Masqat, preferred after the first to begin and end their trading voyages
at Basrah,-a circumstance which secured to that port a good share of
the dhect wholesale trade with India and other foreign countries.
Eventually Saiyid Sultan found it to his advantage to enter into close
commercial relations with the Basrah authorities; and thereafter,
hy mutual arrangement, goods from either port were admitted into
the other on payment of a reduced import duty of 3 per cent, ad
valorem,