ABSTRACT
The institution of a central government, whether the secularised Sultanate or the Ibāḍī Imamate, has earlier been shown to be at odds with the development and maintenance of the tribal system of politics in Oman. The proposal of the Political Agent that the Sultan should be the temporal and the Imam the spiritual head of a united Oman was however immediately negative by the Omani chiefs. In a somewhat different and more recent sense, the Sultanate has also been faced with the threat of disintegration under the pressure of social and economic change. The characteristic roots of the challenges to the Sultanate have evolved over the course of the twentieth century in a more or less linear movement of ideology from right to left. With the election of an Imām, an army was raised and Nizwā was chosen as the first objective. It fell on 5 June 1913 after the Sulṭān's wālī committed suicide.
