On both shores of a single maritime memory

Today, His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik begins state visits to China and Brunei Darussalam. The Brunei leg carries particular significance: it brings together the only two sultanates among today's independent states, Oman on the western edge of the Indian Ocean and Brunei on the northern coast of Borneo.
Diplomatic relations date from March 24, 1984, weeks after Brunei's independence, and His Majesty visited the country in March 2014 as Minister of Heritage and Culture. Behind these milestones lies a far older memory, shaped by the sea, by trade and by Islam.
Both nations were shaped by the sea. Oman's history was made in ports such as Sohar, Muscat and Qalhat, while Brunei's historic capital stood on the water itself. Between them ran the Maritime Silk Road, sailed by Omani merchants on the monsoon winds. Omani sources record that the scholar Abu Ubaidah Abdullah bin al Qasim reached China in the eighth century CE, and Chinese records note that an embassy from Boni, which Bruneian historians identify with Brunei, reached the Song court in 977 CE with an envoy bearing the Arabic name Abu Ali.
The wreck of a ninth-century Arab vessel, discovered in 1998 off Indonesia's Belitung Island with a cargo of Chinese ceramics, confirms that Arab ships were trading in these waters.
The Omanis embraced Islam in the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In Brunei, a tombstone dated 1264 CE shows that the faith was known before the Sultanate arose; the ruler Awang Alak Betatar later embraced it as Sultan Muhammad Shah, and in the fifteenth century the throne passed to Sharif Ali of Taif, 'the Blessed Sultan', credited with building Brunei's first mosque. At independence, Brunei enshrined Melayu Islam Beraja (Malay Islamic Monarchy) as the foundation of its national identity, and in 1996 the two countries signed a memorandum on cooperation in Islamic affairs.
Kampong Ayer, Brunei's water village of houses and mosques on stilts above the Brunei River, was described by Antonio Pigafetta in 1521 as a city built entirely over salt water, and later became known as the 'Venice of the East'. On the Omani coast, towns grew around harbours protected by forts. Both peoples share a heritage of shipbuilding, fishing and navigation.
Brunei struck tin pitis coins in 1285 AH (1868 CE), and its 1967 coinage carried the Arabic motto Al Da'imun Al Muhsinun bil-Huda. Oman replaced the Gulf rupee with the Saidi rial on May 7, 1970, which gave way to the Omani rial in 1972. Malay is also written in Jawi, an Arabic-based script, in which the Batu Tarsilah, the genealogical tablet of Brunei's sultans, was inscribed in 1807; Oman holds a rich manuscript heritage in jurisprudence, history and navigation.
Oman opened its embassy in Bandar Seri Begawan in 1986, and Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah paid state visits to Oman in 1984, 1985 and 2009. Agreements followed in air transport, education, health, culture and information, and in 2009 the two countries founded the Oman Brunei Investment Company, whose capital reached $200 million in 2019. In August 2024, the two countries marked forty years of diplomatic relations. Chinese chronicles, Brunei's royal genealogies and Oman's navigational manuscripts still await a joint reading.
Thousands of miles of ocean separate Muscat from Bandar Seri Begawan, yet what unites them is greater than the distance: a sea that shaped their history, a faith that formed their identity, an Arabic script that preserved their memory, and a sultanic tradition that has endured for centuries. His Majesty's visit carries this shared heritage from the pages of history to new horizons of cooperation, where memory meets the future.