,
1940 in
Salalah ) is the current
Sultan of
Oman . He rose to power after overthrowing his father,
Sa’id Ibn Taimur , in
1970 .
The first immediate problem that Qaboos faced was an armed
Communist insurgency from
South Yemen , the
Dhofar War . The Sultan quickly defeated the incursion with help from several other countries.
In the last few years, Oman has taken some steps towards
Democracy . Free and fair parliamentary elections (in which women have voted and stood as candidates) have been held and the Sultan has pledged greater openness and participation in government.
Much of the country's decision-making is carried out by consensus with federal, provincial, local and tribal representatives.
In 1992 Sultan Qaboos ordered the construction of a
Mosque in the
Wilayat of Bausher in Muscat
Governorate . When the Sultan came to the throne in 1970 he had built a more modest mosque in Muscat but in 1992 he called for plans to be drawn up for the largest mosque in the world. This mosque was to draw from the best of the broad range of Islamic art and architecture and not from a single country or tradition of Islam. Typical of his governing style the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque as well as over 2000 other mosques have been built entirely from the Sultan's own purse. On May 5, 2001, after four years, 600 workers, 12 million man hours of work on the main carpet alone, Qaboos bowed to pray in the largest mosque in the world on the largest hand-woven rug in the world.
