ABSTRACT
It was as early as 1624, at a time when the maritime outlets of the Indian Ocean were under Portuguese control, that Muscat came to the fore and started to feature in the commercial policies of the English East India Company.1 Since merchants from the coastal settlements of Oman have traded with ports on the Indian continent from time immemorial it is hardly surprising that the English Company, based in Surat on the western coast of India, should have soon come into contact with these ‘local’ merchants. Nor is it unusual that this company, with time, attempted to forge alliances with these local merchants and their rulers in its struggle to compete for the available trade with other European powers, mainly the Portuguese and the Dutch.2 Prominent among the local merchants, as already indicated, were Banyans from Gujarat who resided and traded at Muscat in the early seventeenth century. But there were also Omani merchants who lived in Surat and who were heavily involved in this early commercial activity.3
