Word: sultanate
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When Said bin Taimur, Sultan of Muscat and Oman, appealed to Britain for help in subduing the rebellious and elusive Imam of Oman, no one thought that the affair would require much more than a few passes by R.A.F. fighter planes to scare the rebels into pledging loyalty to the red flag of the Sultan. In the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd was the very model of long-distance assurance. "It would be an example of military futility," he intoned, "to seek to employ ground forces in those temperatures in desert areas...
This left Nizwa, still flying the white flag of the Imam, for the British and the Sultan's troops to conquer. But no one was sure that the Imam was really in Nizwa. Perhaps he was at Izz. But no, when the British got there, he was not to be found. In fact, no one knew positively where...
...sight of a line-up of Muscati infantrymen, supported by Trucial Oman Scouts and British regulars. The Muscatis, wearing plaid skirts and checkered headcloths, were flanked by British armored cars and machine-guns. Down came the white flag of the Imam, up went the red flag of the Sultan. But holed up in the Oman mountains other rebel forces were still hiding and the Imam himself was yet to be found-or even heard from...
Under Turkish rule, Constantinople's famed Christian shrines, like the great basilica of Saint Sophia, were restored and refurbished to the glory of Allah. Slim minarets rose skyward alongside rounded Byzantine domes. New architectural jewels, like the Blue Mosque of Sultan Ahmed I, sprang up to rival the old, and the hiving humanity drawn by commerce to this natural crossroads of land and sea began to fill every available crevice with the insignificant architecture of its daily life...
...sultans decided to choose among themselves by considering each in the order of his precedence, and crossing out the words "suitable" or "unsuitable." Their most senior, His Highness the Sultan of Johore, the world's longest-reigning monarch (since 1895) had declined the post because of his age (83). First up was the fun-loving Sultan of Pahang, who was rejected by his colleagues by a 3-to-6 vote, perhaps because his most recent romantic excursion wound up in a Moslem wedding to a Kuala Lumpur cabaret girl (TIME...