A century later, Ibadhism was being practised widely in the country, a form separate from the main two branches of Islam – Sunni and Shia – having been established in Nizwa. Oman is still the only country in the world in which Ibadhism is the majority denomination. The lives of the people living in the area now known as Oman went relatively unchanged until foreigners began to discover the area as they headed east towards the Indian Ocean and beyond in the 15th century. By 1508, the Portuguese had taken over the area and used the north of the country to protect shipping routes. At the beginning of the 19th century, Oman began to prosper, ruling the seas around Pakistan and Iran as well as those off eastern Africa. Parts of Zanzibar and Kenya were colonised as Omani trading influence grew. It was another foreign power that ended this period of regional dominance fairly swiftly, the British this time, as they began to suffocate Oman’s stranglehold on the region at the end of the 1800s without any fighting. Economic and political pressure was enough. Oil exports had already begun four years earlier, meaning that the new sultan had inherited a country with huge energy reserves that sparked a massive transformation. From a country ruled by a colonial power and prone to tribal desert feuding, Oman quickly prospered and the development was attributed to the planning and vision of Sultan Qaboos. The country has during the same period managed to forge close ties with the rest of the Arabic world, so too the West and particularly the USA, which used Oman as a base from which to fly its aircraft into Iraq during both wars in the Gulf and during the invasion of Afghanistan following 9/11. | 
