A rocky hill stands tall on a promontory jutting out to sea at the southernmost edge of the town; along with two other rocky atolls nearby, it is a recognisable landmark
In the 1950s, as anticolonial movements unravelled the empire and nationalist sentiments roiled the tricontinents, the British began to consider a programme of economic development as a bulwark against the possibility of revolution.
In his commissioned hagiography of Aramco, Wallace Stegner describes the momentary silence of the oil terminals:
It is a mistake to imagine these dhows as remnants or residues of ‘traditional’ trade; their business has flourished alongside, in the interstices of, and because of the more global, large-scale, and mechanised trade of container ships and modern bulk carriers.
Curzon arrived on a viceregal tour of the Persian Gulf so that he could claim the much-contested body of water and its littorals for Britain.
