Oman

The Sultanate of Oman is a land of oases, deserts, rolling sands, shifting dunes and mountains upon which ancient cities have been carved from stone. A land that boasts the Queen of Sheba, Sinbad the sailor and the Lost City of Ubar buried for Millenia under the Arabian Sands. A country that was heralded for its wealth in Frankincense and from here the ancient Frankincense trail began. Oman is a country where the Bedouin still wander the deserts as they have since time immemorial. A mystical land where eagles soar over the mountain that is home to the Prophet Job, a prophet in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In the mountains nearby live an ancient people whose language predates Aramaic. The age of the language remains a mystery. It is a spoken language with no written form. In these mountains one finds caves decorated with pre-historic art. Mines and distinctive cone like-tombs dating from the Bronze Age feature all over the country. It is a country that has tales of wizardry, magic, jinns,exorcisms and stronge pagan superstitions still abound. Embark on a magical and mystical Arabian Odyssey to the ancient land of Oman

Details the story of how a private British vigilance committee eliminated a group of contract killers who were targeting British soldiers for death. By the author of To the Ends of the Earth. 30,000 first printing.

OPERATION STORM is the inside story - told by those who took part - of the greatest secret war in SAS history. The tipping point, Mirbat, South Oman, 19 July 1972 is one of the least-known yet most crucial battles of modern times. If the SAS had been defeated at Mirbat, the Russian and Chinese plan for a communist foothold in the Middle East would have succeeded, with catastrophic consequences for the oil-hungry West. OPERATION STORM is a page-turning account of courage and resilience. Mirbat was a battle fought and won by nine SAS soldiers and a similar number of brave local people - some as young as ten years old - outnumbered by at least twenty-five to one. Roger Cole, one of the SAS soldiers who took part, and writer Richard Belfield have interviewed every SAS survivor who fought in the battle from the beginning to the end - the first time every single one of them has revealed their experience. OPERATION STORM is a classic story of bravery against impossible odds, minute by minute, bullet by bullet.

The thrilling new military history title from the bestselling author of Vulcan 607 and Phoenix Squadron.
 
In early 1970, the Commanding Officer of 22 SAS flew into the strategically critical Sultanate of Oman on a covert intelligence mission. A Communist rebellion in the South threatened not only the stability of the Arabian Peninsula but more importantly the vital oil routes through the Persian Gulf. Within six months, the Regiment arrived in theatre to lead a fierce, secret war against the rebels. While from a remote RAF airbase in the desert, an elite band of British pilots, flying difficult, dangerous missions in Strikemaster jets and Vietnam-era Huey helicopters, were scrambled alongside them.
 
For the British soldiers and airmen, it was to be no easy victory. The enemy were well supplied with weaponry and training from China and the Soviet Union, and despite confronting the largest assault force ever deployed by the SAS, many months later the rebels were still fighting back.
 
And at dawn on July 19th, 1972, a force of nearly 300 heavily armed, well-trained guerillas attacked the little fishing port of Mirbat without warning. Between them and glory stood a team of just nine SAS men. And the skill of the British fighter pilots. The scene was set for an epic encounter; a modern day Rorke's Drift. Their heroism would become SAS legend.
 
Drawing on extensive interviews with participants from the SAS, the RAF and the Sultan's Armed Forces, most of whom have never spoken about their involvement before, as well as previously classified documents from both the UK and Oman, Storm Front weaves an unputdownable tale of intrigue, action, daring and astonishing bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.

First published in 1955 and never out of print, this wonderfully written text by one of the great historians of the twentieth century has guided generations of students through the turbulent history of Tudor England.

Now in its third edition, England Under the Tudors charts a historical period that saw some monumental changes in religion, monarchy, government and the arts. Elton's classic and highly readable introduction to the Tudor period offers an essential source of information from the start of Henry VII's reign to the death of Elizabeth I.

A story virtually unknown in the West, about two of the Middle East’s most remarkable figures—Oman’s Sultan Said and his rebellious daughter Princess Salme—comes to life in this narrative. From their capital on the sultry African island of Zanzibar, Sultan Said and his descendants were shadowed and all but shattered by the rise and fall of the nineteenth-century East African slave trade.

“As shrewd, liberal, and enlightened a prince as Arabia has ever produced.” That’s how explorer Richard Burton described Seyyid Said Al bin Sultan Busaid, who came to power in Oman in 1804 when he was fifteen years old. During his half-century reign, Said ruled with uncanny contradiction: as a believer in a tolerant Islam who gained power through bloodshed and perfidy, and as an open-minded, intellectually curious man who established relations with the West while building a vast commercial empire on the backs of tens of thousands of slaves. His daughter Salme, born to a concubine in a Zanzibar harem, scandalized her family and people by eloping to Europe with a German businessman in 1866, converting to Christianity, and writing the first-known autobiography of an Arab woman.

Christiane Bird paints a stunning portrait of violent family feuds, international intrigues, and charismatic characters—from Sultan Said and Princess Salme to the wildly wealthy slave trader Tippu Tip and the indefatigable British antislavery crusader Dr. David Livingstone. The Sultan’s Shadow is a brilliantly researched and irresistibly readable foray into the stark brutality and decadent beauty of a vanished world.

Before the discovery of oil in the late 1960s, Oman was one of the poorest countries in the world, with only six kilometers of paved roads and one hospital. By the late 1970s, all that had changed as Oman used its new oil wealth to build a modern infrastructure. In the Time of Oil describes how people in Bahla, an oasis town in the interior of Oman, experienced this dramatic transformation following the discovery of oil, and how they now grapple with the prospect of this resource's future depletion. Focusing on shifting structures of governance and new forms of sociality as well as on the changes brought by mass schooling, piped water, and the fracturing of close ties with East Africa, Mandana Limbert shows how personal memories and local histories produce divergent notions about proper social conduct, piety, and gendered religiosity. With close attention to the subtleties of everyday life and the details of archival documents, poetry, and local histories, Limbert provides a rich historical ethnography of oil development, piety, and social life on the Arabian Peninsula.

When Sultan Qaboos bin Said deposed his father in 1970, he inherited a neglected country with a modest oil income, but virtually no one qualified to advocate for his interests to the executives of Shell Oil until he found James Critchfield. A decorated combat officer in World War II, Critchfield joined the CIA in 1948 and retired 26 years later as the first man to hold the position of national intelligence officer for energy. He was a specialist in the geopolitics of energy who was eminently suited to begin his third career. Originally contracted to advise the Sultanate on oil policy, Critchfield s company Tetra Tech International gradually expanded its role to include the development of the nation s water and maritime resources as well as major infrastructure projects in the vital Musandam Peninsula and the Buraimi oasis. Lois Critchfield s history of Tetra Tech is a behind-the-scenes view of just exactly how such development programs are conceived and implemented on a national scale. She details the technical, financial and political considerations involved in these projects and reflects upon their implications thirty-five years later. Oman Emerges is a case study in international commerce and industry that is most valuable for its insight into the age-old conflict between corporate and national interests.