Linguistic Meaning and Temporal Dimension

Linguistic meaning and the temporal dimension

Mohammed bin Mubarak Eid Al Oraimi (researcher and translator from the Sultanate of Oman)

The dictionaries mention that the word Sur means "the horn" (qarn), citing the noble verse "and the Trumpet (Sur) shall be blown"; some attribute the name to the word "Sur" which means "rock" in the Phoenician language. Perhaps the name also goes back to the Arabic word "Sir", meaning a sandy island.

Whatever the source of the name or its meaning, the geographical form of the city and its sea frontage confirm the soundness of all that the three attempts to interpret the meaning of the word "Sur" went to. If it means "horn", then it lies on a crescent-shaped coast with two rocky promontories extending into the sea, called Ras Al Mil and Ras Al Qaad; the two words "ras" (head) and "qarn" (horn) are commonly used along the Omani coasts and deserts to describe every rocky extension into the sea, or a mountain promontory in the middle of a flat desert plain.

As for if it is derived from the Phoenician word "Sur", this reinforces what was reported by the Greek historian Herodotus (484–425 BC), known as the Father of History, who mentioned in his book "The Histories" that the Phoenicians migrated from the Omani city of Sur to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea 3,500 years ago, and that some of them settled in Lebanon, where on its coast they founded a city to which they gave the same name. It is mentioned that its inhabitants told him that their forefathers had migrated from the Gulf, where they had settlements along its coasts and islands, and carried with them the arts of navigation in which they excelled in the Arabian seas, so they were able to extend their commercial influence and spread their great civilisation along the Mediterranean coast and the African shore. (1)

This is an acceptable interpretation if one takes into account the geographical form and the sea frontage of the two cities, for coincidence alone cannot create all this similarity in name and location together.

What lends credibility to this view is the way the name Sur is written in Latin letters, for in the old geographical maps it comes in the following form: "SUR". The sound of this word in the Latin languages does not give the sound written in Arabic letters "Sur"; it, that is SUR, is pronounced on the pattern of "SUN" or "RUN", and therefore the Omani Sur was perhaps one day called "Sur". The word "SUR" also appeared in the historians' explanations to denote the name "Sur" which they found on the tablets and obelisks of the Phoenician and Assyrian writings, and it is the old name of the Lebanese city of Sur. And if the name is derived from the Arabic word "Sir" to denote its sea frontage, it is indeed a sandy peninsula that expanded in recent historical ages around a rocky outcrop (now located in the middle of the city) which still reveals, to this day — despite its being several kilometres from the shore — its belonging to the sea through the shells and fossilised mollusks among its strata. This also reinforces the belief that old Sur lay on the landward side of the khor (a sea tongue inland), where now lies the village of Nasma, formerly known as "Makhrawan" — a situation the two cities, the Lebanese and the Omani, also share.

A few miles away lies its twin, the legendary city of Qalhat: the first political capital of Oman in the second century BC. There, Malik bin Fahm Al Azdi alighted and took it as a stopping-station during his migration from Yemen, where he regrouped his forces and left the women and the elders in it before setting off to raid the Persians in their bases in the city of Sohar in northern Oman, because of their refusal of the coming of a tribe to Oman. Perhaps the Persians had known Qalhat before, and perhaps they were expelled from it, for they returned to it during the Hormuzi invasion in the year 1300 CE and developed it so that it occupied a prominent place as the largest port along the Omani coast and as a second capital of the Hormuz empire, whose influence extended at that time between Iraq, India and East Africa. Another possibility is that Qalhat recovered its former glory as a commercial centre for the re-export of goods as a result of the prosperity of its neighbour Sur, especially in the field of commercial navigation and shipbuilding.

Qalhat, like its sister Sur, remained a perplexing puzzle even among historians and archaeologists. Marco Polo (1254–1323) mentioned in the accounts of his travels a description of its great port, frequented heavily by merchant ships coming from India because of the importance of its location for the re-export of spices and goods to the interior of Oman and the cities of the region, but he did not point to its history deep in antiquity.

The Arab traveller Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) pointed, in his book "A Gift to the Observers concerning the Curiosities of the Cities and the Wonders of the Journeys" — which came fifty years after Marco Polo's visit — to his visit to Qalhat after visiting the city of Sur, and praised the beauty of the city, especially its mosque, which was built in the Spanish style, saying: "In Qalhat there are excellent markets and a beautiful mosque adorned with tiles, located atop a hill overlooking the city and its harbour. Its people are merchants who depend entirely on dealing with the ships coming from India." As with the two cities and Marco Polo, the Arab traveller also neglected to mention the history of either of them.

Sur, whether the homeland of the ancient Phoenicians or not, is without ambiguity an ancient city that contributed, over centuries, an active contribution to Oman's maritime fame, and played a prominent role in the history of the whole region. The skills of its sons in the arts of navigation and their broad knowledge of the secrets of the sea were a bridge over which the civilisations of most of the peoples overlooking the Arabian Sea and the western Indian Ocean crossed. Their ships had a pioneering role in transporting the Omanis in particular, and the sons of the southern regions of the Arabian Peninsula in general, to explore and open the eastern coast of Africa and spread the Islamic religion and Arab culture in many parts of Africa and Asia.

The contact of its people with the Gulf, southern Arabia, East Africa and the south of the Indian subcontinent preceded the maritime expansion of the Yaariba, who set off to Africa to chase the remnants of the Portuguese from their naval bases in Muscat. The ports of the Gulf, Persia and India knew them, and they sailed eastwards, aided by the monsoon (trade) winds, to Malabar in India, or southwards to the African coast as far as Cape Delgado and Madagascar. Their role was reinforced more and more with the Omanis' control of the trade in spices, silk, frankincense and horses, and Sur became one of the main sea ports like Sohar, Qalhat and Muscat. The coffee trade between Yemen and Basra is among the most prominent marks of that phase: in 1765 the "coffee fleet" consisted of 15 Omani ships, most of them from the city of Sur. (2)

During the expansion of the Omani empires under the leadership of Sayyid Said bin Sultan in the nineteenth century, Sur possessed a fleet comprising more than 250 large ships crossing the world's seas, transporting Mokha coffee, dates, lemons, fabrics, rice and fish to the East African coast and returning to Oman with ghee, cloves and mangrove (jandal) timber, which was used to build the roofs of houses in the Arabian Gulf; then sailing northwards to Bahrain, Kuwait and Basra, and eastwards to India.

The city became famous for the "transit" trade, being a commercial centre and an intermediary market between India and the eastern and southern regions of Oman for a long time, even before the prosperity of its neighbour, the historic city of Qalhat. It is believed that it continued to play that role after Qalhat's expansion, but — perhaps — in a lesser capacity. And after the destruction that befell Qalhat at the hands of the Portuguese at the beginning of the sixteenth century, it flourished and became one of the most important commercial markets in Oman.

The omission: the harbours hindered it, and the historians made it so

Despite Sur's wide fame, before the nineteenth century, in the Gulf, East Africa and India, there are only specific brief notices about it in the writings of the European and Arab travellers and historians alike. This is a cause for astonishment, especially since Sur is the city now associated in minds with the traditions of Omani navigation. However, some contemporaries interested in the city's history give reasons for this neglect. Dr Mohammed Reda Baqer believes that the relative abundance of fresh water — whether from the wells of Muscat, the aflaj of Sohar or the wadi waters in the plain of Qalhat — is the common factor among all the ports that rose after the appearance of Islam, which is what Sur lacks, for its water resources are limited and insufficient to supply the foreign ships with their water needs. (3)

As for Dr Ahmed Darwish, he attributes that omission to what he calls "the narrowing of the circle of the concept of science and literature in Arab civilisation", where he mentions that some cities received a greater share of attention because of their inclination to care more for the theoretical sciences, while other cities remained less fortunate in treatment and attention because of the direction of their activities towards the applied and practical aspects. Consequently, the theoretical sciences and the arts of discourse gained greater attention and more precise recording, while the practical aspect was neglected, until the names of many great skilled craftsmen and persevering inventors disappeared, while the names of many who wrote poetry, penned letters or authored books remained. If this is the fortune of the scholars and craftsmen of practical inclinations in the history of Arab civilisation, then we can discern the fortune of the cities whose civilisational activity was directed to the practical side, so that less was written about their scholars and craftsmen, as is the case with the city of Sur and other Arab cities preoccupied with practical activity. (4)

Perhaps the two reasons together helped the absence of any mention of Sur from the references and works of the travellers and historians, but there is another belief that may dispel some of the ambiguity surrounding the city's history. Sur's fame in the cities and coastal harbours of southern India and East Africa goes back, as I believe, to the human being more than to the place. These regions knew the Sur merchants and sailors known for their navigational skills and their broad knowledge of the secrets and mysteries of the sea, where the Sur ships played a prominent role in connecting the civilisations of those peoples and contributed to the commercial exchange and the navigational economy between the cities of East Africa, southern India and the Arabian Peninsula. Thus the connections of those regions arose with the human being and not with the place, so the people of Sur were known and their city was unknown.

This explains why the city did not gain mention in the historical references like the other Omani ports, despite its strategic location on the navigation lines and the nature of its geography, for its long, calm khor forms a safe haven for ships from the winds and the mighty ocean waves, in addition to its location at the mouth of the Wadi Al Khalij, which is an easy route to the interior regions. But it seems that the city's isolation was a mercy for it, for it largely escaped the successive destruction that befell the other Omani ports during the Persian and Portuguese invasions of the country.

Sur in the Court of The Hague

During the peak of its maritime activity with Africa, Sur knew the forbidden trade in slaves and arms, at least during the early phase of its commercial prosperity. The flourishing of this kind of activity was natural because of Sur's distance from the centre of the State and its direct connection with the slave markets.

The slave trade was, without doubt, a hideous act in which most of those who visited or settled Africa, Arabs and Europeans, took part, and in which many people were implicated, including the Africans themselves; but the fingers of accusation were always pointed at the Arab merchants. Some European countries exploited that and sent military campaigns disguised under the cover of combating the slave trade, while their real motives were political. Sur, at the height of the Victorian age, became pursued by the British government, which justified its colonial intervention in the region by observing and eliminating the illegal slave and arms trade. (5)

To that end, the British obtained in 1822 from Sayyid Said bin Sultan, Sultan of Muscat and Oman, a permit by which the British warships were granted the right to seize the Omani ships transporting slaves from the African coasts, thereby placing additional restrictions on maritime trade and curbing the maritime commercial activity under the pretext of tracking the slave ships. Despite the severe blockade the Omani ships faced from the British as a result of this agreement, the flourishing of this trade between Sur and the coast of Africa continued because the owners of the Sur ships raised the French flag, encouraged by the French Resident in Muscat, Monsieur Ottavi. (6)

French protection

The history of the commercial navigation of the people of Sur in East Africa goes back to the seventeenth century, that is, after the expulsion of the Portuguese from Oman and the Arabian Sea, and it flourished in the middle of the nineteenth century when France occupied the island of "Nosy Be" in the north of Madagascar and the island of "Mayotte", one of the Comoros islands, in 1841, where the Omanis owned a number of sugar-cane and coffee plantations. In order to organise the situation of the Arab ships that frequented those islands and to monitor their movement, the French authorities issued, in 1845, navigation licences and permitted the raising of the French flag on the stern of the Omani ships, among them many Sur ships (see Document No. 1: the undertakings of the owners of the Sur ships and their adherence to the French protection given to them when their fathers resided in these islands).

Despite the British pursuit, the Omani ships continued, throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, to transport the exports of East Africa to Muscat and Sur, consisting of the traditional goods of "slaves", ivory, timber, maize, hides and wax, benefiting from the French protection.

But the British opposition took another turn in 1891 when the British ambassador in Paris protested against the granting of navigation licences to the Omani ships from Sur by the French consulate in Aden. The French and the English entered, in the period between 1893 and 1896, into negotiations regarding the British demand to search the Omani ships — most of them from Sur — that carried the French flag, but they did not produce any notable results. At the end of 1896, the British consul in Muscat demanded the removal of the French flags from the Sur ships, their tearing up, and the flogging of their nakhodas. But Sayyid Faisal, Sultan of Muscat and Oman, did not accept that intervention, so he began to handle the problem in his own way, and wrote to the British consul in Muscat a letter in which he explained that it was not wise to escalate the matter, lest it be a cause of dispute between his state and the French. (See Document No. 2: the text of the letter).

In June 1897, the French consul in Muscat visited Sur to inspect the Sur ships that raised the French flag, and it became clear to him that there was no violation of the French laws — which angered the British consul in Muscat. (7)

During the period between 1897 and 1900, the British government brandished the exercise of economic pressure on the government of Oman, so Sayyid Faisal, Sultan of Muscat and Oman, found himself compelled to harden his position towards France, where he visited Sur in June 1900 aboard the British destroyer "Sphinx" in the company of the English consul "Major Cox" to obtain a collective undertaking from the shipowners to return the navigation permits granted to them by the French authorities. Only three of the owners of those ships complied with this matter, but they returned and gave an undertaking to the French vice-consul of their adherence to the French protection. (8) (See Document No. 1: the undertaking letters from the owners of the Sur ships to the French consul in Muscat, in which they affirm their adherence to the French protection, and show that their fathers resided in Bukin and Anjarija in Madagascar, and Mayotte and Nosy Be in the Comoros during the French presence there).

The worsening of the crisis of the Sur ships and the resulting dispute between Britain and France led to the raising of the case of the French protection of the Arab ships to the International Court at "The Hague" in the Netherlands, which issued a ruling on 8 August 1905 preventing France from granting new licences to raise its flag on the ships owned by the subjects of the Sultan of Muscat, except for whoever could prove that he enjoyed its protection before the year 1863, and the French were thereupon compelled to abandon the support of the local ships in the Arabian Sea. (See Document No. 3: the text of the declaration of Sayyid Faisal bin Turki, Sultan of Oman, of the ruling of the International Court at "The Hague" issued on 8 August 1905).

The Portuguese also launched in 1902 an intensive campaign on the coasts of Africa, following which they discovered a secret market in the bay of Samoco about 200 miles from Cape Delgado off the Comoros islands, and its merchants — most of them from Sur — were arrested and sent to Angola for trial, and a sentence of 25 years' imprisonment was issued against them. (9)

The British intervention in Sur met with strong rejection, so they tried to avoid direct involvement in it: sometimes resorting to exploiting the right granted to them under the 1822 agreement to seize the ships while they were on the open sea, and at other times to pressuring the French to lift their protection from the Sur ships, exploiting the Hague court ruling. The raising of the French flag on the Sur ships and the demand of the tribes in Sur for French protection from its consulate in Muscat constituted a permanent source of dispute that involved a violent conflict of interests between the two colonial powers, which the people of Sur knew how to exploit, and when.

Notes:

1. Skeet, Muscat and Oman, The End of an Era, Faber: London 1974. p.78
2. Sir D. Hawley, Oman and its Renaissance, Stacey Int. 1973. p.187.
3. Dr Mohammed Reda Baqer, "Sur and the Sea", Akhbar Sharikatuna magazine, Issue 1, 1996, p.23.
4. Dr Ahmed Darwish, "The Scientific Climate in the History of Sur", Nizwa magazine, "Issue 7", July 96, p.10.
5. Ahmed Hamoud Al Maamari, Oman and East Africa, Ministry of National Heritage and Culture — Sultanate of Oman 1980.
6. Source 1, p.86.
7. Dr Sultan bin Al Qasimi, Omani-French Relations 1715–1905, 1st ed. 1993 — Dar Al Ghurair for Printing and Publishing, p.163.
8. Source 7, p.165.
9. Source 1, p.86.

Documents:

Source: The Omani-French Documents. Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Dar Al Ghurair for Printing and Publishing 1993, from the archive of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs — Paris. The French consular correspondence in Muscat, new series.

Document No. 1 — the undertaking letters from the owners of the Sur ships to the French consul in Muscat, in which they affirm their adherence to the French protection, and show that their fathers resided in Bukin and Anjarija in Madagascar, and Mayotte and Nosy Be in the Comoros during the French presence there.

Document No. 2 — the letter of Sayyid Faisal to the British consul in Muscat, in which he explains that it is not wise to escalate the matter, lest it be a cause of dispute between his state and the French.

Document No. 3 — the text of the declaration of Sayyid Faisal bin Turki, Sultan of Oman, of the ruling of the International Court at "The Hague" issued on 8 August 1905; the ruling shows the names of the owners of the Sur ships who obtained licences to raise the French flag and registered them with the French government before the year 1863, and who are therefore entitled, under this ruling, to continue raising the flag.