Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said, who has died aged 79, lived to be the Middle East’s longest-ruling monarch after seizing power in a 1970 palace coup and pulled his Arabian sultanate into modernity while balancing diplomatic ties between adversaries Iran and the US.

The sultan was previously diagnosed with colon cancer. He was believed to have been in poor health in recent months and travelled to Belgium for a medical checkup in December.

The British-educated sultan reformed a nation that was home to only three schools and harsh laws banning electricity, radios, eyeglasses and even umbrellas when he took the throne. Under his reign Oman became known as a welcoming tourist destination and a key Middle East interlocutor, helping the US free captives in Iran and Yemen and even hosting visits by Israeli officials while pushing back on their occupation of land Palestinians want for a future state.

Unmarried when he died, Qaboos had no children and did not publicly name an heir, a tradition among the ruling al-Said dynasty whose history is replete with bloody takeovers.

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The sultan had been believed to be ill for some time, though authorities never disclosed his illness. A December 2019 report by the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy described him as suffering from “diabetes and a history of colon cancer”. He spent eight months in a hospital in Germany, returning to Oman in 2015, with the royal court saying only that the treatment he received was successful.

Qaboos cut a fashionable figure in a region whose leaders are known for a more austere attire. His colourful turbans stood out, as did his form-fitting robes with a traditional curved khanjar knife stuck inside, the symbol of Oman. He occasionally wore a white turban out of his belief that he spiritually led Oman’s Ibadi Muslims, a more liberal offshoot of Islam predating the Sunni-Shia split.

His outward-looking worldview could not have contrasted more sharply with that of his father, Sultan Said bin Taimur, under whose rule the sultanate more resembled a medieval state. Slavery was legal, no one could travel abroad and music was banned. At the time Oman, nearly the size of Poland, had only six miles of paved roads.

Sultan Said let Qaboos, born in Salalah on 18 November 1940, travelled to study in England. The time abroad included schooling at Britain’s Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and training with the Scottish Rifles Regiment in what was then West Germany.

Qaboos returned to Salalah in 1964 but found himself instead locked away in a palace. Music cassettes sent to him from friends abroad included secret messages from the British. London was frustrated with Sultan Said, who had grown increasingly eccentric after surviving an assassination attempt and as Communist rebels kept up their offensive in the sultanate’s Dhofar region.

A palace coup on 23 July 1970 ended up with Sultan Said shooting himself in the foot before going into exile in London. Qaboos took power. “Yesterday, Oman was in darkness,” Qaboos said after the coup. “But tomorrow, a new dawn will rise for Oman and its people.”

Qaboos quickly moved toward modernising the country, building the schools, hospitals and roads his father didn’t. With the help of Iranian forces under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the British and Jordan, the sultan beat back the Dhofar rebellion.

Over time Qaboos introduced what amounted to a written constitution, created a parliament and granted citizens limited political freedoms – while retaining the final say. In a sign of his strong grip he also served as prime minister and minister of defence, finance and foreign affairs, as well as governor of the sultanate’s central bank.

Small protests broke out as part of the wider Arab Spring unrest in 2011, revealing discontent over corruption, unemployment and rising prices within the sultanate.

As he grew older, Qaboos also grew increasingly reclusive. He is known to have had three major passions – reading, music and yachting. He was said to “read voraciously”, as well as playing the organ and lute. He created a symphony orchestra and opened a royal opera house in Muscat in 2011. His yacht “Al Said” is among the world’s largest and was frequently seen anchored in Muscat’s mountain-ringed harbour.

Qaboos was briefly married to a first cousin. They had no children and divorced in 1979.