The King's speech at the Omani State Visit

Your Majesty, Your Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, 

It is always a treasured moment to receive such dear and old friends on a special Visit such as this. And whilst I know just how familiar you are with these shores, Your Majesty, my wife and I take the utmost pleasure in welcoming you back to Windsor Castle this evening. And let me say, [Welcome to a visitor of whom one never tires]. 

Oman is one of Britain's oldest allies and, after all these years, I pray, one of your closest friends. And from this privileged position we recognize that a thousand years before our countrymen first met – a millennium before there was even a United Kingdom – Omani mariners were already trading across the Indian Ocean to extend Oman’s great frankincense trails, which had already stretched across Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean for a thousand years before that – and, indeed, a thousand years before that! This does, I must say, put some of our own claims to seafaring prowess into true perspective!

So, from Britain’s very first meetings with these renowned Omani merchants, our friendship grew from the sea: as maritime partners in the seventeenth century; treaty partners in the eighteenth; strategic partners in the nineteenth; brothers-in-arms in the twentieth; and today, in the twenty-first century, we are bonded by diplomacy, defence, trade and trust.

For my own part, I have been immensely fortunate – and blessed – to come to know Oman over many years and many visits, including spending precious moments, escorted from time to time by Your Majesty, I seem to remember, trying to paint the breathtaking landscape of Oman; a landscape which was well-described by the great fourteenth century explorer Ibn Battuta as being “most striking in beauty”. 

As the great Omani poet Abu Muslim al-Bahlani described so wonderfully, [May those gardens remain ever green, their breezes fragrant with peace].

 Over these decades, I was privileged to know your distinguished predecessor and my dear friend and brother, His late Majesty Sultan Qaboos, who so successfully transformed Oman whilst preserving your ancient culture, and who pursued, with remarkable wisdom, a foreign policy founded on openness and dialogue. We, in Britain, owe so much to his inspired leadership, and I hold in great affection the memories of the many meetings I had with him ever since my first visit to your country forty-six years ago.

Within Oman, Your Majesty has strengthened the institutions of the State and started the important journey of diversifying and decarbonizing Oman’s economy through your Vision 2040. Thanks to your energetic and far-sighted leadership, this national renewal, pursued with quiet determination, has put the importance of skills and education at the very heart of your development. In doing so you have most thoughtfully placed Oman’s young people as the central driving force of your nation’s future innovation, growth and progress. 

If I may, Your Majesty, I would especially like to recognize, at a time when conflict has returned so painfully to the region, Oman’s enduring commitment as a trusted interlocutor to all parties. Oman’s noble efforts in trying to keep open one of the world’s most important shipping routes have been of great service to the whole international community, and particularly to the most vulnerable of those affected.

Alongside others from the region, we stood with you in conflict over fifty years ago. This experience, and the years since, have helped us understand the depth of relationships in the region and the complexity of issues, and, through your eyes, an insight into where common ground might be found. Oman’s role across the Gulf and her “constructive neutrality”, as you put it, matters far beyond Hormuz, and is worthy of our utmost respect. 

As the Prophet Muhammad said of the character of the people of Oman: [Had you gone to the people of Oman, they would neither have insulted nor struck you].

The unique and special relationship we share helps to make the world and our peoples safe. We are all exceptionally proud of the Loan Service Officers who serve in both our Nations, and we are deeply grateful for the hospitality offered by Oman to our Armed Forces, including that which Your Majesty’s Armed Forces Association extends to British veterans whose own contribution to Oman is so important to us all. 

In your future, too, Britain is deeply invested – as you are so actively in ours. 

Our connections matter deeply and, in this regard, I have been especially delighted to see our sons, The Prince of Wales and His Highness Sayyid Theyazin, become joint patrons of the Jewel of Arabia expedition. Your Majesty, there can be few happier symbols of success than a living relationship being passed from one generation to the next.

Ladies and gentlemen, the rich variety of the cultural organizations which connect our countries, are evidence that our students and sons, scientists and soldiers, investors and sailors, merchants and authors, walk in the footsteps of Bertram Thomas and Salim bin Kalut in binding together Britain and Oman as we continue to explore together the vast Empty Quarters of our modern world. 

Your Majesty, neither of us can know precisely what challenges our successors will face. Despite our constant efforts, climate change will regrettably alter the lands and seas 4 they inherit. Artificial Intelligence holds both promise and peril – unless managed with great wisdom and foresight. Competition for resources will test the international order in ways we cannot yet foresee.

But this much we do know: our successors will rely on trusted friends. They will need allies prepared to work together across difference; to defend peace and international law; to marry innovation with stewardship; and to think not merely about the next year, but about generations to come. 

For centuries, Oman and Britain have done precisely that. In the Treaty we signed in 1800, our predecessors hoped that the friendship between our two states would remain "unshook till the end of time".

It was an ambitious promise but, more than two hundred years later, it has proved to be a promise fulfilled by the living connections between Britain and Oman, embodied in the generations of relationships that have forged an unshakable friendship between us. 

Your Majesty, I hope this State Visit shows the importance the United Kingdom attaches to Oman, to its Monarchy and institutions, and to our friendship with you personally.

May I perhaps convey upon you the blessing written by the great Omani poet Shaykh al-Baiyaan, [May you live in fulfilment, sustained by blessings without end from your Lord, the Giver]. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I ask you to rise and drink a toast: 

To His Majesty the Sultan, and to the enduring friendship between the Sultanate of Oman and the United Kingdom.