The Magan of which he was king need have been no further afield than the Oman peninsula.
Notwithstanding this, the French republic had issued to certain native dhows, owned by subjects of the sultan, papers authorizing them to fly the French flag, not only on the Oman littoral but in the Red Sea.
This province, which skirts the Persian Gulf from the mouth of the Euphrates to the frontiers of Oman, is low and hot; its shores are flat, and with the exception of Kuwet at the north-west corner of the gulf, it possesses no deep water port.
Khalil ibn Ahmad (718-791), an Arab from Oman, of the school of Basra, was the first to enunciate the laws of Arabic metre and the first to write a dictionary.
Nevertheless his descendants were left in possession of their ancestor's dominions; and till 1170 Kerman, to which belonged also the opposite coast of Oman, enjoyed a well-ordered government, except for a short interruption caused by the deposition of Iran Shah, who had embraced the tenets of the Ismailites, and was put to death (IIoi) in accordance with a fatwa of the ulema.
