[7] Pinkerton, vol. viii.
CHAPTER V
MASKAT AND THE OUTSKIRTS
I never saw a place so void of architectural features as the town of Maskat itself. The mosques have neither domes nor minarets—a sign of the rigid Wahabi influence which swept over Arabia. This sect refuse to have any feature about their buildings, or ritual which was not actually enjoined by Mohammed in his Koran. There are a few carved lintels and doorways, and the bazaars are quaintly pretty, but beyond this the only architectural features are Portuguese.
All traces of the Portuguese rule are fast disappearing, and each new revolution adds a little more to their destruction. Three walls of the huge old cathedral still stand, a window or two with lattice-work carving after the fashion of the country are still left, but the interior is now a stable for the sultan's horses, and the walls are rapidly crumbling away.
The interior of Maskat is particularly gloomy: the bazaars are narrow and dirty, and roofed over with palm matting; they offer but little of interest, and if you are fond of the Arabian sweetmeat called halwa, it is just as well not to watch it being made there, for niggers' feet are usually employed to stir it, and the knowledge of this is apt to spoil the flavour. Most of the town is now in ruins. Fifty years ago the population must have been nearly three times greater than it is now. There is also wanting in the town the feature which makes most Moslem towns picturesque, namely the minaret; the mosques of the Ibadhuyah sect being squalid and uninteresting. At first it is difficult to distinguish them from the courtyard of an ordinary house, but by degrees the eye gets trained to identify a mosque by the tiny substitute for a minaret attached to each, a sort of bell-shaped cone about four feet high, which is placed above the corner of the enclosing wall. I have already mentioned the Ibadhuyah's views with regard to the imams. I believe they hold also certain heterodox opinions with regard to predestination and free will, which detach them from other Moslem communities; at any rate they are far more tolerant than other Arabian followers of the Prophet, and permit strangers to enter their mosques at will. Tobacco is freely used by them, and amongst the upper classes scepticism is rife. The devout followers of Mohammed look upon them much as Roman Catholics look on Protestants, and their position is similar in many respects.
As elsewhere in Arabia, coffee is largely consumed in Oman, and no business is ever transacted without it; it is always served in large, copper coffee-pots, of the quaint shape which they use in Bahrein. Some of these coffee-pots are very large. An important sheikh, or the mollah of a mosque, whose guests are many, will have coffee-pots two or three feet in height, whereas those for private use are quite tiny, but the bird-like form of the pot is always scrupulously preserved.
The bazaars of Oman do not offer much to the curio-hunter. He may perchance find a few of the curved Omani daggers with handsome sheaths adorned with filigree silver, to which is usually attached, by a leather thong, a thorn extractor, an earpick, and a spike. The belting, too, with which these daggers are attached to the body, is very pretty and quite a specialty of the place; formerly many gold daggers were manufactured at Maskat and sent to Zanzibar, but of late years the demand for these has considerably diminished.
