'File 8/62 IV PRINCIPAL SHAIKHS & TRIBES OF OMAN.' [‎91r] (181/282)

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A list of the majority of tribes to be found
in the Sultanate has been compiled from Colonel Miles*
list included in his administration report of 1880 and
from such meagre and often unreliable information as is
available* Some notes have also been compiled on those
tribes which are more frequently met with or upon which
attention is from time to time focused owing to their de
predations or other activities directed against the
Sultan’s authority or one another* Some of the tribes
listed by Miles have been omitted either as too depleted
for inclusion ? or as having been' found to be sub-sections
of another tribe. A few tribes, notably those of the
Dhofar district, have been added.
This information should be treated only as
supplementary to the much more extensive and ably
compiled notes contained in Lorimer’s Gazetteer (190^,
and the latter should invariably be consulted when more
detailed information is required. These notes are in
fact merely an attempt to bring the information more up
to date. They are neither exhaustive nor, as indicated,
can their accuracy be vouched for, though where there is
a sharp difference from previous accounts, such steps as
are possible have been taken to check up on the informa
tion, Figures of population and rifles must necessarily
be estimates of the crudest kind, and the stated tenden
cies of the^tribes may be no more than the hopes of the
informants. It will be noted that for the most part the
population has considerably decreased. This is scarcely
surprising since, apart from epidemics, which, though
cholera and plague have taken severe toll, have been
mercifully few, there has been a constant exodus in
recent times to the oil fields,and the Muscat Consulate
has for some years issued visas on Omani passports at
the rate of some three thousand a year. From these
revised estimates it will be seen that the tribal popu
lation of the Sultanate may be less than two hundred
thousand, and, with the cosmopolitan population of the
coastal towns, including Muscat, Mutrah and Gwadurj the
whole population of the Sultanate is probably not in
excess of three hundred thousand, and former estimates
of half a million are very likely excessive. The Sultan
himself, though frequently approached, either through
genuine ignorance or an unexplained desire for secrecy,
has supplied no information of value, though few persons
can have had better opportunity for accumulating
knowledge through actual contact than his present
Minister for the Interior, Saiyid Ahmed bin Ibrahim,
His officials are no more helpful in this matter and
information must be gleaned despite them rather than
with their assistance.
For a better Tinders tending of these notes a
brief enumeration of the provinces or districts of the
Sultanate may be helpful here, to the north covering
the whole tip of the Oman promontory is the Ruus al
Jibal. Southward (omitting Shamailiyah which is not
Sultanate territory) is the Batinah - the coastal plain
reaching down almost to Muscat. West of the Batinah
is Western Hajar, which includes the Jibal Akhdar
mountain range. Further inland is DHAHIRAH and* some
what north, the Jau and Mahadhah tracts, both of -
doubtful ownership. South and East lie/Eastern Hajar*/£o®%
and Sharqiyah, fend then following the coast southward^
Jala*an, Batain and, finally, at the southernmost
extremity, adjoining the Hadramaut of the Aden Protec
torate, Dhofar.
The present