This is an interesting read on Oman from Horizon Magazine's 1976 edition:

"This ancient seafaring nation entered the twentieth century by way of the fourteenth. The old life was harsh and limiting. The new has brought the usual morden trappings, including guerrilla war"

This page was quite a read on the role slave trading played in Oman's fortunes

And then there is the virulent racism among the slave trading rulers of Oman
"Negros are very lazy... nothing remains but the lash."
- Saiyidah Bibi Salme daughter of Said bin Sultan

This was something to read. The author of the article describing meeting the deposed Sultan's African slaves in 1970:

"I met some of them when they were at length released, after their master's deposition in 1970, and discovered that one or two had been so cut off from...

normal human contacts that they had almost lost the power of speech. "
Racism and slavery weren't only brutal in the Americas. Some regions just haven't addressed how pervasive and virulent they were and still are in certain places. This was in 1970. Not 1870.

I found the read quite balanced and lovely in the philosophical way the author looks at life and employs language especially in describing the advent of modernity to Oman and what it wrought .

"Greed replaces Oman's traditional generosity, the security of ritual surrenders...

to the confusions of freedom, and much that is worst in the modern world is eagerly sought as the best by people who are making their first experiments in choice...
Oman's transformation deserves few regrets. The old life there was harsh and deeply limiting. Far better today's..

open and comparatively affluent horizons, with all their risks and corruptions, than yesterday's drab, imprisoning certainties. "

Now that's a man who has a way with words. Amen

As with most of the articles I read on Horizon Magazine, I looked up the author, David Holden. Found out that he was murdered in Egypt a year after the Horizon article was published. https://bylinetimes.com/2019/07/29/who-killed-david-holden-how-the-murder-of-a-sunday-times-reporter-has-lessons-for-journalists-today/

No one knows exactly who did it. The Mossad have been mentioned, and so has Egyptian intelligence on order of the CIA. One of those mysteries that remain unsolved. He worked for The Sunday Times.