Qualla: Khuriya Muriya Islands

Khuriya Muriya Islands: Introduction

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1854, the Sultan of Muscat gave five islands to Queen Victoria. It was not entirely clear he had the right to do so. The inhabitants of the Khuriya Muriya Islands, a scattered archipelago lying 40 kilometers off the southeastern coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea, considered themselves his subjects only loosely, and they had their own ideas about who owned what -- particularly the mountains of bird droppings that covered the rocks. This gift, equal parts diplomacy and farce, launched one of the stranger episodes in British imperial history and set in motion a jurisdictional tangle that would not be fully resolved for 138 years.

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Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0

Khuriya Muriya Islands: Known Since Antiquity

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thevet, André (1516-1590). Cartographe, Public domain. Long before any sultan or queen entered the picture, the islands had a place in the oldest navigational literature of the Indian Ocean. Ptolemy mentioned them in the second century AD, counting seven small islands lying in Khuriya Muriya Bay near the entrance to what he called th...

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Image: Thevet, André (1516-1590). Cartographe | Public domain

Khuriya Muriya Islands: The Guano Rush

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lubiesque, CC BY-SA 3.0. What the islands lacked in arable land, they made up for in bird excrement. Centuries of seabird colonies had deposited thick layers of guano, a substance prized as fertilizer in 19th-century agriculture. After the cession to Britain, a group of Liverpool entrepreneurs secured mo...

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Image: Lubiesque | CC BY-SA 3.0

Khuriya Muriya Islands: Administered by Nobody

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lubiesque, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1886, the islands were attached administratively to Aden, but the attachment was nominal at best. A British intelligence report from 1883 found fewer than 40 inhabitants on Al-Hallaniyah, the largest island. They lived in huts of unmortared stone with mat roofs, moving to cave...

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Image: Lubiesque | CC BY-SA 3.0

Khuriya Muriya Islands: Return and Recognition

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lubiesque, CC BY-SA 3.0. On November 30, 1967, Lord Caradon, Britain's Ambassador to the United Nations, announced that in accordance with the wishes of the local population, the Khuriya Muriya Islands would be returned to Muscat and Oman. The announcement drew objections from President Qahtan Muhammad a...

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Image: Lubiesque | CC BY-SA 3.0