ISLAMABAD – Oman’s Sultan Qaboos, who diedlink onFriday aged 79, transformed the former Arabian Peninsula backwater into amodern state and sought-after mediator while shielding the sultanate from aregion in turmoil.

The intensely private sultan — the longest-reigning ruler in the modernArab world — left no apparent heir. It is not clear who will succeedQaboos, whose country has a distinct method of choosing the next ruler.

According to the Omani constitution, the royal family shall, within threedays of the throne falling vacant, determine the successor. If the familydoes not agree on a name, the person chosen by Qaboos in a letter addressedto the royal family will be the successor.

Qaboos was born on November 18, 1940, into the centuries-old Al-Saiddynasty in the southern provincial capital of Salalah, in an isolatedcountry on the margins of the modern world.

Older Omanis recall the capital Muscat had no electricity or running waterand the gates of the medieval city were locked at dusk.

The young Qaboos was sent abroad for his education to Britain, attendingthe elite Sandhurst Royal Military Academy from where he graduated in 1962.

He went on to join a British infantry battalion in Germany, returning hometo bide his time under the close watch of his father, Sultan Said binTaymur.

On July 23, 1970, Qaboos deposed his father in a palace coup, pledging “anew era” for the nation.Guardian of the Strait

Oman is strategically located on the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow seawaythrough which much of the world’s oil supply passes — and between regionalrivals Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Qaboos maintained good ties with both Tehran and Riyadh, a balancing actthat made his capital a must-stop for Western and Arab diplomats as well asmilitary chiefs alike.

The sultan’s first foreign trip was to Iran, whose shah — along with theBritish — helped him quell a Marxist insurgency he inherited from hisfather in the restive Dhofar region.

Those ties endured through Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution that ushered in aShia theocracy.

Muscat would serve as the back channel for talks between the United Statesand Iran in the lead-up to a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.

Qaboos also worked to preserve ties with Saudi Arabia and the rest of thewealthy six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council to which Oman belongs, butstuck to his principle of non-interference.

In March 2015, Oman was the only GCC country not to join a Saudi-ledmilitary coalition against Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels in Yemen.

It leveraged this neutrality to mediate the release of multiple foreignhostages captured by Yemen’s warring factions.

Muscat also maintained close military and economic ties with Britain andthe US.

Unlike other Arab states, Qaboos did not contest Egypt’s 1979 peace treatywith Israel, opening a trade office in Tel Aviv in the mid-1990s -—shuttered in 2000 during a Palestinian uprising.

In October 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held surprisetalks with Qaboos in Muscat — a move that raised Palestinian fears of anormalisation of ties.

Qaboos faced rare protests at the height of the Arab Spring in 2011 andresponded by sacking ministers accused of corruption.

But his government left no space for opposition, shuttering the independentAzzaman newspaper and jailing its editor as well as the writer of acritical article.All the top posts

Qaboos assumed power as an unknown and spent his first years cultivatingthe respect of his countrymen, from the mountainous interior to the coast.

“In the early years, he went village to village and he had a weekly radioaddress — that was the only way to reach the entire population at thetime,” said Muscat-based public policy analyst Ahmed al-Mukhaini.

Qaboos channelled revenues from fledgling oil exports into infrastructure,taking the country from having just a handful of primary schools and someeight kilometres (six miles) of paved roads to a modern state with wellover 1,000 schools and a massive highway network.

The sultan also commissioned an opera house for Muscat, its packed calendara testament to his support for the arts.

But Qaboos was no ceremonial monarch. He held every top post, fromcommander of the armed forces to finance minister.

In 1991, he offered a modicum of democracy, creating a Consultative Council— with elected members — to complement the State Council — whose members heappointed.

During nearly five decades in power, Qaboos chose never to remarry after abrief union in 1976.

In his final years, Qaboos was believed to be suffering from colon cancerand rarely appeared in public following medical treatment in Germany inMarch 2015. When he did, the gaunt, bronzed sultan cut a refined figure insumptuous robes and colourful turbans. -APP/AFP