Oman Stays Out of Saudi Coalition, Days after Sultan Returns Following 8-Month Absence

The GCC countries are all reportedly backing the Saudi intervention in Yemen with the sole exception of Oman. Oman has long had the best relations with Iran of any GCC country, and was the intermediary that originally brokered the nuclear talks; it has also been aloof from GCC plans for a joint military force, so its absence from the Saudi coalition is not a surprise.

Besides, Oman is preoccupied. On Monday Sultan Qaboos returned to his country after eight months in Germany for medical treatment of an undisclosed ailment. For the first time in his 45 years on the throne, he missed the country's National Day (his birthday) in November and addressed the country from Germany.

Qaboos is now the longest-serving Arab leader; he has no children or siblings, and no designated heir apparent; and at 74 he appears frail and much thinner in recent photos (below). Official statements have claimed his medical treatment was a success, but the nature of his illness and the reasons for the eight-month absence remain unclear.

Sultan Qaboos Tells Omanis He Will Not Be Home for National Day

Sultan  Qaboos of Oman, who has been in Germany since July. has broadcast a message to Omanis expressing regret that he will not be able to join them for this month's celebration of the Sultan's birthday/Oman's National Day November 18. There has been considerable speculation and rumor about the almost 74-year-old Sultan's health, but little official comment or information available about the nature of his medical treatment. His gaunt appearance and generalized reassurance may or may not alleviate concern (video below):

The divine will has dictated that the occasion this year falls while we are outside the dear homeland for reasons you know. But, by God’s grace, He prepared the good results that

The Sultan, who is now the longest-serving Arab leader, has no children or siblings and no designated heir apparent, though he did institute a procedure under which the Royal Family might choose an heir.

The Endangered South Arabian Languages of Oman and Yemen

This may be my only post today, but it's a very long one on a complex subject, and with a lot of links.

In March, the irregular Exploring Oman's Linguistic Treasures blog had a post, "The Harsusi Language in Oman: Another Treasure Slipping Away?" This is as good a reason as any to do a major post on the surviving pockets of Modern South Arabian languages, spoken in Oman and Yemen and in some Gulf diasporas of their peoples.

I realize the vast majority of my readers have never heard of Harsusi, or probably of Hobyot or Bat'hari either, but they are real, living, if endangered languages of Oman (with Hobyot extending into Yemen). Along with the Soqotri and the much healthier and widely spoken Mehri (or Mahri) and Shehri (or Shahri or Jebali/Jibbali/Jibali) in Oman, these are the surviving Modern South Arabian languages, . They are quite distinct from Arabic, and are usually classed as part of the Southern Semitic subgroup of Afro-Asiatic, while Arabic is more closely related to Northwest Semitic. Even if you've never heard of these six languages, this post will not only make sure you hear of them, but will give you a chance to actually hear three of them.

A seventh language may deserve inclusion. Razihi, spoken in the Jabal Razih in the extreme north of Yemen, is sometimes classified as the only direct survivor of Old South Arabian, rather than as Modern South Arabian. UNESCO lists it as an endangered language, but others consider it an Arabic variant; Ethnologue doesn't list it.

The Modern South Arabian languages have many affinities with the Ethiopic languages, including Classical Ge'ez and Amharic, but they are also distinct. Though it was long assumed the Modern South Arabian languages were descended from Old South Arabian, some linguists say they are distinct even there; I'm not qualified to judge.

Let's start with some maps from Wikipedia and the language reference site Ethnologue.com:

Wikipedia

Ethnologue

Ethnologue

Endangered languages are a key issue in the 21st century. This may be, for example, the fatal century for Native North American languages. Of 3000 or more languages spoken when Columbus landed, only about 175-200 survived at the turn of the 21st century, mostly in Canada, Alaska, and Hawaii. In the "lower 48" US states, the scene is bleak, except for Navajo, Cherokee, and Cree. In 1997 it was estimated that 55 languages in North America had between one and six native speakers. That was 17 years ago, and many of those are likely now extinct.

Linguists around the world are racing to record endangered languages before the last native speaker dies. Today we usually know even their names. Ned Mandrel, the last native speaker of Manx, died December 27, 1974. Wikipedia lists close to a dozen languages that have only one living native speaker. 

And UNESCO says that one half of some 6000 languages in the world today will be extinct by the end of the century.
 
When any language dies, a part of its culture is lost; not everything translates. When a written language dies, it doesn't die forever; there are still web pages published in Latin, and we have learned to read Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Ugaritic and even Linear B Mycenean Greek again, awakening long silenced voices. Even Mayan is now re-emerging. There are efforts to revive Manx and Cornish, and many on the Isle of Man and in Cornwall are learning them, but they are not native speakers and it will never be their first language.

The Middle East, of course has seen what is as far as I know the only example of a language that once had no native speakers not just revive but become a language which is the only language of many: Hebrew. But it's a unique case: it was always the liturgical language of Jews everywhere,a nd Israel was created from immigrants whose first languages were as different as Yiddish, Ladino, Arabic and many others. Israeli Hebrew is not just an exception; so far it's the only exception.

Some languages that once seemed moribund like Irish, Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Provencal etc. have had a new lease on life, while others that once were endangered by a dominant language have strongly rebounded (notably Catalan and at least up to now, Ukrainian). In the Middle East, Amazigh (Berber)  has been one of the big winners in the Libyan and Tunisian revolutions; if "Arab Spring" has withered, "Berber Spring" survives. Kurdish has always held on, and Aramaic continues to survive. But (with asterisks on Amazigh) those are all written languages.

But when an unwritten language dies, its words are gone forever, except what anthropologists or explorers may have written down. All of the Modern South Arabian languages (unlike Old South Arabian), lacked a writing system, though Arabic, English transliteration systems, and the International Phonetic Alphabet have been used to record them. This is a disadvantage.

Though the largest of the surviving South Arabian languages, Mehri, has over 100,000 speakers, all of them are endangered. As with Native American and other minority indigenous languages, as rural, mountain, or nomadic peoples move to the cities, or as central governments provide schooling, there is great pressure to adopt the dominant language to succeed. The younger generation are likely to prefer Arabic, and literacy is only possible in Arabic. All the languages are already heavily influenced by Arabic vocabulary.

Before providing some comments and examples of the six Modern South Arabian languages, here are some resources dealing with them as a group:

• Miranda Morris at the British-Yemeni Society:The Pre-Literate, Non-Arabic Languages of Oman and Yemen
• From CNRS: Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle,  Les Langues Sudarabiques Modernes,des Langues Semitiques Menacees?  In French.
• Susan Al Shahri, "The Language Crisis," A blogpost by a blogger from Dhofar. Though her name suggests an affiliation with the tribal group speaking Shahri/Jibali, she admits that "Although I have lived in Dhofar my entire life, I have never had the privilege of hearing Hobyot or Batthari being spoken."
• From SOAS' Endangered Languages Archive: Links to "The documentation and ethnolinguistic analysis of Modern South Arabian" pages for five of the six languages, though these are pages describing the holdings rather than linking to them.

Except for Soqotri, separated by sea from the others, there is reportedly some mutual comprehensibility among these languages.

For the individual languages themselves  many of the published grammars and such are published by E.J. Brill or other high-end publishers and are only found in specialist libraries. Leaving aside the uncertain case of Razihi, mentioned above, here are brief descriptions for he other six, along with estimates of the number of speakers from 1) UNESCO, 2) Ethnologue, the language reference work by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (a Christian missionary endeavor),  3) the SOAS Endangered Languages Archive cited earlier, and 4) Wikipedia. I also include related links,  and videos where I found them. I am taking the languages alphabetically.

Bat'hari

One of the most endangered is Bat'hari, spoken by a few hundred fishermen along the Bay of Khuriya Muria on the coast of Oman. UNESCO  estimates 300 speakers, Ethnologue 200, and Wikipedia "about 200." SOAS gives no estimate.

• Bat'hari numerals. 

Harsusi

Spoken in the Jiddat al-Harasis area of Central Oman. Estimates of speakers vary dramatically: UNESCO says 3000 in 1996, 3500-4000 today, both based on fieldwork by Dawn Chatty; Ethnologue says 600; SOAS says between 600-1000; Wikipedia says 1000-2000.


Some further reading on Harsusi:

•   The Linguistic Treasures of Oman blogpost cited at the beginning: "The Harsusi Language in Oman: Another Treasure Slipping Away?"
• Lameen Souag at Jabal al-Lughat: "Destroying Harsusi."
• A post about numbers in Harsusi. Clearly all but a few of those from 1-10 differ significantly from Arabic; 11 upwards resemble Arabic.

Hobyot (or Hobyót)

Hobyot is spoken on either side of the Yemen-Oman border. It may have fewer than 100 speakers today. UNESCO puts it at 400; Ethnologue says 100 in Oman, not citing Yemeni figures; SOAS says under 1000; Wikipedia says 100 in Oman.


Jibbali/Jibali/Jebali or Shehri/Shahri

The two sets of names are respectively from the Arabic and Shehri words meaning "of the mountains." The second largest of the Omani South Arabian languages, Jibbali or Shehri is spoken in several areas off Dhofar, including the capital Salalah, and on the Khuria Muria islands. UNESCO, Ethnologue, and Wikipedia all put the number of speakers at 25,000, based on the 1993 (21 years ago!) Omani census, while SOAS puts it at 30,000, and the previously cited blogger Susan Al Shahri, a Dhofari whose name is the same as the language, says

Contrary to what our ever-so-useful Wikipedia says, general consensus seems to be that Shahri (Jebbali) is spoken by approximately 50,000 or more Dhofaris from mountain tribes as well as a large number of individuals from town tribes. Mahri is also spoken by a decent percentage of the Bedouin population of Dhofar.

Other materials on Jibaali/Shehri: Lameen Souag, "Plural-Breaking in the Mountains of Oman."
  
The two videos below show general scenes of Oman (not just Dhofar, but the background audio is recordings of Jibbali speakers, including a recitation of numbers.
   
 

Mehri

Mehri, or Mahri, is by far the most widely spoken of the surviving South Arabian languages, and by dar the most studied. Though unwritten historically, it has a rich poetic tradition (see songs below). It is spoke on the coast and inland in the Mahra Province of eastern Yemen and in Dhofar in Oman. UNESCO puts its speakers at 100,000; Ethnologue at 115,200, of whom 50,000 are in Yemen and the rest in Oman; SOAS estimates 180,000; and Wikipedia gives 120,000.

Lameen Souag has noted in "Why They Thought Berbers Came From Yemen" a tradition in Arabic that Berber and Mehri were linked due to some common features not shared by Arabic. Though both part of the Afro-Asiatic family of languages, Mehri belongs to  the Semitic group, not the Berber.

Some Mehri songs:


Soqotri

Last alphabetically but no means least is Soqotri.  It is spoken on the Yemeni island of Soqotra in the Yemeni island of Soqotra, and while is second only to Mehri in number of speakers, being hundreds of miles from the others and insular, there is said to be no mutual comprehensibility with the other languages.

UNESCO says 50,000 speakers; http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/en/atlasmap/language-id-1949; Ethnologue 64,000 overall, 57,000 in Yemen; and Wikipedia 64,500. SOAS does not appear to have an entry for it.


Soqotri Poems:

The GCC Fracture Lines Deepen

I've been busy most of today but I do feel the latest escalation in the feud between Qatar and its neighbors, in which Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain have withdrawn their ambassadors from Doha over alleged Qatari "interference" in their internal affairs, underscores the growing splits within the GCC over a range of issues involving Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian situation, and more. The KSA/UAE/Bahrain bloc also want a greater political union, which Qatar (and for somewhat different reasons, Oman) oppose, while Kuwait is somewhere in the middle.

This is part of the far deeper polarization we are seeing throughout the region, of course.

The Man Who Isn't There: Oman and the GCC Summit

He sent his cousin to Kuwait ...

As the GCC Summit meets in Kuwait, more attention is being paid than in most years. For one thing, at least two of the Heads of State of the six member states are absent. King ‘Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. who is 90 and ailing, sent his Crown Prince. But I want to talk about the absence of Sultan Qaboos of Oman, who sent his Deputy Prime Minister His Highness Sayyid Fahd bin Mahmud Al Sa‘id, shown above with Kuwait's Amir. (Sayyid Fahd is a member of the Royal Family who often represents the Sultan and is sometimes mentioned as a potential successor, so it is not exactly a snub of the Summit.

...but he went to Tehran

But many have noticed that in August, the Sultan visited Iran and was welcomed by President Rouhani, but has chosen to skip the GCC. And we now know, of course, that Oman hosted the secret backchannel through which US Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns negotiated the Iran nuclear deal. A deal, of course, which is not that popular with most of the GCC states, particularly the Saudis.

And we also know that Oman has been the main nay-sayer to the Saudi project for turning the GCC into a true union; recently, it openly threatened to reconsider its GCC membership if the union plan goes through. Oman has also, along with the UAE, opposed projects for a joint GCC currency.

I don't want to overemphasize this as it isn't totally new. Oman, which has far more coastline on the Indian Ocean than on the Gulf, and once ruled an empire ranging from Zanzibar to India, has always marched to a somewhat different drummer than the other GCC states. It has always sought to keep lines open to Iran, even in the worst days of the Iran-Iraq war, which helped spur the birth of the GCC in 1981.

But at a time when Saudi Arabia is feuding with its US ally and dismayed by events in many parts of the region, it also finds the GCC disunited. (Qatar's new ruler may be a little less the maverick his father was, but it's still early.) In a time of major realignments, add Oman's recent assertiveness to the list.

"The Google Translate Plague" and an Omani Linguistics Blog

The blog "Exploring Oman's Linguistic Treasures" (yes,there is one) has a piece some of you may find interesting: "The Google Translate Plague."

Apparently the blogger's English students are doing translation exercises from Arabic into English by simply cutting and pasting from Google Translate, with predictably awkward results:

I started my post with a rather strange appreciation of the skills needed to plagiarise. The reason is because a lot of students do not even bother about all skills mentioned. So if they don't use those skills and they don't produce their authentic work, then what do they do? They simply go to this tool which was created for great purposes, none of which I am sure is to help students cheat: www.translate.google.com . They simply paste their Arabic text in there and get a ready made piece of writing in English.

The messily-translated chunks of language submitted can be outrageous but hilarious at the same time. And I say it's messy because as a machine translator it translates things literally in terms of meaning and discards any grammatical rules of the second language most of the time; it simply follows the word order of the translated language. The effect, my respected readers, can be speechless, as you realise. One student for instance, typed all the Arabic he wanted to express and clicked to translate it into English. Apparently the student wanted to translate the word 'feather' (singular) to English. Note that the Arabic word for feather and badminton (the sport) is the same. The student ended up submitting something that is along the lines of 'the badminton of the bird'...which is interesting if you think about it; but maybe in a fictional text rather than non-fictional prose?

The blogger doesn't post much but there are a few interesting posts on such minority languages as Jabbali, and on a subject we've discussed here a time or two, Cypriot Maronite Arabic. (Earlier posts by me on this curious dialect here and here.)

Easy Lies the Head That Wears a Crown: Why Are the Monarchs Surviving as the Republics Fall?

I'm on vacation. As I did last year, I've prepared a series of posts ahead of time on historical, cultural, and linguistic topics that are not time-constrained. If events warrant, I will add current posts, but at least one new post will appear daily in my absence. Enjoy.

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Henry IV, Part II


For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there thE antic sits,

Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2

Shakespeare's troubled kings do not find models among the crowned heads of the Middle East (though in an earlier era the late King Hussein of Jordan, or his ghostwriters, wrote a book entitled Uneasy Lies the Head). In the last decade, the heads of almost every mainstream Arab republic has been toppled or is on the verge of it:

Iraq: Saddam Hussein, toppled 2003, subsequently executed
Tunisia: Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, toppled 2011, in exile
Egypt: Husni Mubarak, toppled  2011, imprisoned
Libya: Mu‘ammar Qadhafi, toppled 2011, killed while fleeing
Yemen: ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Salih, negotiated out of office
Syria: Bashar al-Asad, fighting a civil war he appears to be losing
Sudan: ‘Umar al-Bashir, engaged in the early stages of an Arab Spring-type revolt

With the exception of Lebanon, the debatable "Algerian exception," and rather marginal states like Mauritania and Djibouti, Arab republics have either undergone dramatic transitions or are in the process of them.

The Kings, Amirs and Sultan are another matter. One might edit Shakespeare: in the Middle East, Easy Lies the Head That Wears a Crown. Not one monarch has fallen, at least not since the overthrows of the Libyan monarchy in 1969 and the Iranian Shah in 1979. Only Bahrain's throne has truly been in jeopardy, saved by Saudi intervention. Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Iran have faced some demonstrations and challenges, but of these only Jordan, and the aforementioned Bahrain, seem to have even had much worry. A fair amount has been written about a "Moroccan exception," but it's true of the other monarchies, again Bahrain excepted, as well.

Of course everyone knows that some of the richer states, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, have all used their oil revenues to provide lavish welfare states for their people, and have increased the flow whenever protest reared its head. But not all the Gulf states, and certainly not Jordan or Morocco, can turn on the oil largesse at will. So is the common ground really monarchy? Does the Divine Right of Kings (and Amirs and a Sultan) trump popular will?

If you're reading this expecting a clear cut answer, I don't have one. The monarchies are enormously different from each other. Morocco has had a unified state since the Middle Ages, was never under Ottoman rule, had only a brief colonial period (1911-56 ), and the present Alaouite dynasty has ruled since the 1600s. The first two statements and to some extent the third are also true of Oman, and the ruling Al Bu Said dynasty has ruled since 1749. Both have historical depth, national identity, and dynastic legitimacy working for them. Moroccan Sultans and, more recently, Kings have long been called "amir al-mu'minin" (commander of the faithful), a traditional title of Muslim caliphs, and have historical religious leadership claims.

The other monarchies have differing claims on legitimacy. Most of the rulers of the Arabian Peninsula, other than Oman, emerged from local ruling families (in the Saudi case, local rulers in the Najd, but with alliance with the Wahhabi religious establishment). Many of the families have roots in the 1700s, often under British protection during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Jordan's Hashemites have an impeccable descent from the Prophet and were hereditary Sharifs of Mecca, but only achieved political rule in the 20th century, under British patronage, in the Hijaz, (briefly) Syria, Iraq and Jordan. Today they cling only to Jordan.

It is no coincidence that Bahrain, where a Sunni family rules a Shi‘ite majority, has been most unstable during the present upheavals, dependent on Saudi intervention. Other states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai) have Shi‘ite citizens but in the minority. Moroccan Kings have long finessed the Arab-Berber split in Morocco by at various times portraying both identities (many Kings, including Hassan II, took both Arab and Berber wives). The Sultan of Oman is an Ibadi so the country's historic majority, though increasingly eclipsed by Sunnis, share some identification with the ruler.

So legitimacy is a factor. So is the ability of the oil states to buy off their populace. And so to some extent is the fact that in Jordan and Morocco at least, there are enough of the trappings of a constitutional monarchy to allow the King to deflect blame to a Prime Minister (as Jordan tends to do) or to allow the opposition a role (as in the creation of an Islamist PJD-dominated ministry in Morocco). Of course these may prove to be temporary solutions, but they've worked so far.

If you were expecting profound answers or theoretical ones, ask some political scientist. I'm a historian and I examine the context without trying to fit the facts to some Procrustean theoretical bed. (Sorry, political scientists, forgive the zinger.) But I thought I'd leave you with my ruminations on the matter, though with no answers.

South Arabian Languages and Mehri: Lameen Souag Posts YouTube Videos

Lameen Souag, the Algerian linguist at the Jabal al-Lughat blog, posts fairly rarely these days since he finished his doctorate at SOAS, got married, etc. And when he does, he often posts on African languages of the Sahara and Sahel. But when he posts on Arabic or Berber, he's usually worth referencing or outright pirating. His latest deals with the little-known but fascinating surviving languages of South Arabia. In Yemen (and Oman, where Jon Peterson did a piece on these minority languages for MEJ some years back [link coming soon]), several remnant languages descended from Old South Arabian and (if my understanding is correct) more closely related to Amharic and other Ethiopian languages than Arabic, still linger, though of course much influenced by Arabic. He cites two interesting YouTube videos, though these will only be useful if you already know Arabic. He notes both an attempt on YouTube to record all the dialects of Arabic and separate languages of Yemen:




and another which introduces some basics of the most widely spoken of the surviving South Arabian languages, Mehri, to Arabic speakers.

Good Review of SQCC Indian Ocean Site

My colleagues at the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, which is affiliated with MEI, maintain a great website on The Indian Ocean in History. If I haven't pointed you there before, I now have an incentive for doing so.

They've just received a very complimentary review of their Indian Ocean site — calling it "easily the most comprehensive website for studying and teaching Indian Ocean history currently available" — from the World History Sources site of the George Mason University Center for History and New Media. The review, by Kristin Lehner of Johns Hopkins University, opens with the following:

The Indian Ocean has been a zone of human interaction for several millennia, boasting a 1,500-year history of active high-seas trade before the arrival of Europeans in 1498. This website seeks to enhance the profile of Indian Ocean history, long neglected relative to the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean in both academic study and world history courses. To do so, it provides more than 800 primary sources, as well as ample contextual information and lesson plans, as a teaching tool for Indian Ocean history in upper elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. It is easily the most comprehensive website for studying and teaching Indian Ocean history currently available.

Primary sources, including maps, objects, and excerpts from travelers’ accounts and official documents, are accessible through seven chronological maps ranging from the Prehistoric Era (90,000 BCE to 7000 BCE) to the present. These primary sources, along with contextual information on commodities, peoples and cultures, trade and migratory routes, and the environment, are embedded into the maps through eight icon classes: documents, technologies, places, goods, geography, routes, travelers, and objects. These icons, numbering more than 50 for each map, are distributed in relevant geographic locations. Clicking on an icon calls up a short primary source excerpt and/or between one and three images, as well as some contextual information.

Read the entire review, and by all means visit the website itself.

Summertime Arab Coups of the 50s, 60s and 70s: Was it the Weather?

I'm working on a post for tomorrow which will note the 52nd anniversary of the overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq (the July 14 revolution), and last July 23 I reflected on Egypt's comparable moment; which raises another issue: why have so many Middle Eastern coups occurred in the summertime? Is it the heat, or what? Admittedly, coups are mostly a thing of the past in the Arab world today. Syria, which had something like 20-plus coups and attempts between 1949 and 1970, has settled down to being run by Asads for the past 40 years. Other than Mauritania, which keeps the tradition alive, the last successful Arab coup was Sudan's in 1989, 21 years ago. But in the golden age of coups, a lot were in summertime.

This is not as frivolous as it sounds. Last year the North African blogger who calls himself The Moor Next Door took the time and trouble to actually do spreadsheets and graphs of all Arab coups and attempted coups, and sure enough, he found a lot in the summertime: in fact, he found seven in July and five in August. These were by far the most except for the outlier November, which also had seven. (See his post here; a spreadsheet of coups here; and graphs of the data here.)

It does make you wonder. The Free Officers' coups in Egypt and Iraq are not alone: the Ba‘athist coup of July 17, 1968 was the key to the long rule of Saddam Hussein; in Syria, Husni Za‘im was overthrown in August 1949; in July 1963 a Nasserite counter-coup was put down bloodily; in Iraq Bakr Sidqi, who launched the first modern Arab coup in 1936, was assassinated in August 1937; a July 1971 coup in Sudan succeeded until Egyptian troops intervened to restore Ja‘far Numeiri; Sultan Qaboos of Oman deposed his father in July 1970; and so on. Mauritania, the only Arab country that still has coups these days, has had them (among others in other months) in July 1978, August 2005, and August 2008.

So is it the heat, or is all this coincidence?

Update on the Arabian Sand Shortage

You may recall that the new Gulf financial blog Suq al-Mal has been on the critical issue of Saudi Arabia's shortage of sand — which was hurting Bahrain's construction industry — from the start. Oman is now coming to the rescue, and Bahrain is importing Omani sand.

While about half of "Abu ‘Arqala"'s postings sare beyond me (if I can keep track of my debit card purchases, I'm happy), he's got a good eye for the absurd, including this current posting, in which he notes the recent discovery of a managing director of a Kuwaiti holding company that the company he has taken control of, well, let him tell it:

Nayef AlEnizi who recently acquired a majority of Shabka's shares and is MD and Board Member described the company to AlQabas using the phrase "la wujud laha nihaiyan". "No existence to it in the final analysis".

If that wasn't enough:

1. The company has no office.
2. The new board can't locate records or financial statements.
3. The company doesn't have a finance director.
4. The new board isn't sure what the assets or liabilities are. (See #2 above)
   
5. The Ministry of Commerce is delaying issuing certificates to the new board members,
   

And if that weren't enough, he expects that the company will lose the suit brought against it by International Leasing.

Of course, Suq al-Mal uses a photo of Kuwait's infamous Suq al-Manakh informal stock market, which imploded in 1982, as its banner, so a certain ironic appreciation of Kuwaiti business, uh, laissez-faire is perhaps already present.