The port of Gwadar and its relationships with Oman, A. Al Salimi, E. Staples (Eds.) The Ports of Oman. 2016. (STUDIES ON IBADISM AND OMAN vol 10). ISBN 978348753919

Along the shores of the Indian Ocean, trade relations between the people of the Asian, Arabian and East African coasts were innumerable and deeply interlinked for centuries. Such links and relationships of trade and power were in those elements that composed the close equilibrium of the Indian Ocean: the monsoons, the presence of commercial thalassocracies (the well known merchant-states), the predominance of mercantile laws, and the trade routes of numerous precious goods. Maritime coastal trades, as well as long distance trades, represented the expressions of an economy that was already highly sophisticated, developed and organized; therefore, the necessity of control of these sea trade routes was a crucial element: a political element. Starting from the eighteenth century onwards, groups from the interior gradually began to settle on the coastal new centres. Two clearly distinct political realities were destined to co-exist along the coasts of South West Asia and, in particular, in the desolate, desert region of Balōčistān , in ‘Omān and in Sub-Saharan East Africa: the complex, multi-ethnic mercantile societies of the coasts, and the tribal, pastoral societies of the interior where, from time to time, the former succeeded in prevailing and imposing its laws. In the ports of these maritime corridors, small city-states prospered, their gaze directed mainly seawards, while larger reigns turned towards the interior and the north. The city-states jealously preserved their independence and attempts to make inroads on their commercial predominance often ended in failure for their enemies. The Arab potentates of the coasts thus created flourishing markets between the ports of South Western Asia and the Arabian, Western Indian, and East African coast . And, from the nineteenth century on, it was the red flag of the ‘Omānis that formed numerous ties between the ‘Omāni enclave of the port of Gwādar in Makrān-Balōčistān, the principal ports of ‘Omān itself, the East African coast, and the Island of Zanzibar (Unguja in Kiswahili)