Khamis the Sailor of Auqad (Awqad) – Salalah, Dhofar (Oman)

Ruins of Khamis's Palace, Salalah

In 1930, Bertram Thomas (Wazir to Sultan Taimur bin Faisal of Oman) visited Salalah and referred to a number of personalities of the day who had gathered in a large house in central Salalah in his honour. On one occasion I mentioned to a close friend from Salalah about the book by Thomas. He said he had read the Arabic translation of it but hadn’t seen the English version. I showed him my copy, especially the part where he referred to well-known men from Salalah Thomas had met. My friend was very interested in this piece of local history and asked me to photocopy the relevant pages so that he could go through them with his father. A few days later after he had showed them to his father, he excitedly phoned me and said he had some news. I couldn’t wait to meet him!

My friend was particularly interested in a person whom Thomas refers to as “A sailor, one Khamis of Auqad”.

“How many Khamises were there in Awqad in your father’s time?” he had asked his father.

“Only one. Why?”, his father replied.

“I’ve been reading a book about an Englishman who visited Salalah in 1930. He refers to a sailor called Khamis of Awqad.”

“That’s your grandfather,” his father said.

“What?” my friend exclaimed, “but I thought he was a trader.”

“Well, he was, but before that, he was a sailor. He visited India and some other countries.”

My friend was flabbergasted by this revelation. It confirmed that the Khamis mentioned by Bertram Thomas was, in fact, his grandfather. Reading on…

“Khamis, a free man, yet was the father of a slave-born child, for he had taken to wife another’s slave woman, so by local canons the child belonged to her owner. The three  hundred dollars he had paid for the woman was the price of her hand, not of her freedom, and he was now engaged in paying a further five hundred dollars to her master, to buy the freedom of his own offspring.” [from Thomas, B. S. (1932). Arabia Felix: Across the Empty Quarter of Arabia. Jonathan Cape: London. Page 19]

Again the facts were accurate. Exactly the same information, including the amount paid, had been handed down to my friend by his grandmother, confirming Thomas’ reliability as a biographer.

Arched Window (Dhofar, Oman)

This photo was taken in an abandoned villa in the picturesque coastal town of Mirbat.

An old prayer mat is hanging on a peg on the right, and a half coconut shell used for washing or drinking is up-ended on the shelf, both nostalgic reminders of the way things were.

Arched Window (Dhofar, Oman)

This photo was taken in an abandoned villa in the picturesque coastal town of Mirbat.

An old prayer mat is hanging on a peg on the right, and a half coconut shell used for washing or drinking is up-ended on the shelf, both nostalgic reminders of the way things were.