Haitham bin Tariq

His father was Tariq bin Taimur, an uncle of Sultan Qaboos who served as Oman's first prime minister under him in 1970–1972, and his mother was Shawana bint Hamud Al Busaidi. He took his primary education at the Al Saidiya School in Muscat and his secondary and university education in the United Kingdom, graduating from the Foreign Service Programme at the University of Oxford in 1979 and pursuing postgraduate studies at Pembroke College, Oxford. In the early 1980s he was the first president of the Oman Football Association.{cite:source/wikipedia-haitham-bin-tariq-en}

He spent his career in the Foreign Ministry and in cultural office: undersecretary for political affairs from 1986 to 1994, then secretary general of the ministry from 1994 to 2002, and Minister of Heritage and Culture from March 2002 until 1 March 2020. Alongside those posts he chaired the main committee charged with preparing Oman Vision 2040.{cite:source/wikipedia-haitham-bin-tariq-en}

Qaboos died on 10 January 2020. The royal family named Haitham as his successor the next day, acting on the sealed letter Qaboos had left for such an eventuality, and he was sworn in on 11 January 2020 before the Council of Oman at Al-Bustan. In his first speech he promised to continue his predecessor's peacemaking foreign policy and to press economic development. He at first also held the defence, finance and foreign-affairs portfolios himself, handing foreign affairs to Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi and finance to Sultan bin Salem al-Habsi on 18 August 2020.{cite:source/wikipedia-haitham-bin-tariq-en}{cite:source/wikipedia-haitham-bin-tariq-ar}

The English article's infobox gives his religion as Ibadi Islam, and the Urdu article's infobox carries the same value; the Arabic article makes no statement of his religion at all, and Wikidata's religion value for him is Islam only. No text in any of the three articles states his personal affiliation. This entry's data record sets out the attestation in full and explains why his school is not classified here: an infobox value, its echo and category filings are not two independent texts naming his own affiliation.{cite:source/wikipedia-haitham-bin-tariq-en}{cite:source/wikipedia-haitham-bin-tariq-ar}{cite:source/wikipedia-haitham-bin-tariq-ur}{cite:source/wikidata-haitham-bin-tariq}

He married Ahad bint Abdullah in 1989. They have two sons — Theyazin, the heir apparent, and Bilarab — and two daughters; unlike his predecessor, who had no children, Haitham's succession within his own family is not in question.{cite:source/wikipedia-haitham-bin-tariq-en}

The dated entity facts in this entry rest on the sources cited in the data record for this person: the English, Arabic and Urdu Wikipedia articles on Haitham bin Tariq, each read at a recorded revision, and his Wikidata item. Wikipedia is used here as a source for entity facts only, never for prose.