…the capital of the province of Germania…

Omanis are generally not allowed to leave the country and those who do are seldom allowed to return.

The sultan, his only contacts with the outside world British advisers and Muscat's merchant families, permits the latter to establish enormously lucrative monopolies for the import of goods that he sees as crucial to his country's survival.

In exchange, the merchants stay out of politics and import nothing that the sultan regards as progressive or Western, including radios, books, and eyeglasses.

Aside from the few wealthy merchants whose customs receipts provide the sultan with most of the country's income, the majority of the Omanis rely upon agriculture and fishing.

Meanwhile, the oil concession provides export income that the sultan refuses to spend.

Elsewhere, the Al Bu Sa'id rule over Zanzibar ends with independence in 1964.

The Omani sultan in 1965 calls home from England his twenty-five-year-old son, Qabus ibn Sa'id, who had received his education at Bury Saint Edmunds, Suffolk, and at Sandhurst, the Royal Military Academy, in Berkshire.

Apparently believing that his British-educated son would challenge his archconservative policies, the sultan immediately places Qabus under strict house arrest, while maintaining his subjects in a state of medieval backwardness despite the country's growing oil revenues.

The Ohotari tribesmen, mountain jibalis, begin to rebel openly against Sa'id's oppressive practices in the same year, forming the Dhofar Liberation Front.

Around the same time, the British define Oman's southern boundary with neighboring Aden as an “administrative line.”

Aden, which achieves independence from the British in late 1967 as the Marxist-orientated South Yemen (People's Democratic Republic of Yemen), supports the rebels with arms.

The Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arab Gulf (later called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman; PFLO), aided by the People's Republic of China, the Soviet Union, South Yemen, and Iraq, gains control of the growing rebellion in the Dhofar by the end of the 1960s.

The Dhofar rebellion obliges the sultan to seek foreign military assistance; therefore, British forces, particularly the air force, resume action in the country.

Viewing British involvement as an indication of the sultan's illegitimacy, the rebels bring their case to the UN, which eventually censures Britain for its continuing involvement in Oman.

Sa'id ibn Taimur's policies frustrate many, not only in Oman but also in Britain, whose citizens are heavily involved in the sultan's military and intelligence apparatus.

These elements decide by 1970 they can tolerate the situation no longer; a coalition of Omani military and civilian forces, as well as British forces, attacks the palace and forces Sa'id ibn Taimur to abdicate on July 23, 1970.

They replace him with his son, Qabus, who had played no role in Sa'id ibn Taimur's government, having been imprisoned by his father for nearly six years.

On his release, Qabus consolidates the sultanate's hold over the interior and then solicits regional rather than British help to put down the rebellion in Dhofar.

Other Arab leaders, as well as the shah of Iran, dispatch troops to Oman in response to the new sultan's requests.