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Sultans at Sea

Mobility and the Omani States

ON THE NIGHT OF OCTOBER 25, 1856, a small band of Arab men rowed toward the flickering oil lights of Zanzibar town. They had waited at anchor behind a small island in the channel since late afternoon. During the day, Zanzibar’s shore buzzed with activity. Gangs of laborers unloaded cargo from the African mainland, animal hides, gum copal, and mangrove poles. Merchants supervised ivory shipments while their workers scraped and washed the tusks.¹ The Indian customs master and his assistants hovered around the port, eager to collect levies on the shipments arriving from Bombay, Manchester, and Salem. At night, however, the waterfront was quiet. Against a rising storm, the oarsmen pulled the travelers on the final leg of their journey from Arabia. Most likely, the passengers kept silent, due both to their cargo and their errand. Among them were three important men—including one who was anxious to prove his manhood and another who was six days dead.

The corpse was Seyyid Said bin Sultan al-Busaidi, the Omani merchant prince who had brought East Africa under his sway. Said bin Sultan was a contemporary of Napoleon Bonaparte and Mohammed Ali Pasha of Egypt, and, as a British official observed, he was “hardly inferior” to either man, “except in as far as the stage on which he acted was more restricted.”² This “restricted” stage touched all sides of the western Indian Ocean, and, as hard as it would be to calculate, Seyyid Said probably covered more lifetime miles than either of these other men. After nearly three decades of shuttling between Arabia and the East African coast, to establish himself in East Africa and then to maintain his rule in both places, Seyyid Said bin Sultan died at sea on a return trip to Zanzibar. A unified Omani realm did not survive him. The other men on the ship, including his young son Barghash and the leader of the Harthi confederation in Zanzibar, hoped to bury Seyyid Said quietly and then seize power.³ This proved impossible, and Seyyid Said’s death set off contests for control in Zanzibar and Muscat that lasted fifteen years and reverberated into the twentieth century.

Seyyid Said’s death has become a periodizing marker in the histories of both Oman and East Africa.⁴ This framing, however, ignores the continuities across the nineteenth century, including the mobility of Arab rulers in Muscat and Zanzibar. This mobility allowed them to buy time when faced with a reconfiguration of power in the Indian Ocean. This chapter examines the remarkable nineteenth-century itineraries of the Busaidi rulers and traces the correlation of mobility and debt to state power. In doing so, it also provides an overview of Oman’s and Zanzibar’s nineteenth-century political history. State power tended to be weak, and travel and mobility reinforced the tentative nature of central authority, especially in an era of encroaching British suzerainty. Mobility as a temporizing strategy allowed sultans and aspirants to make claims on new territories, escape confrontations, and wait out challenges. Mobility and indebtedness also posed challenges to state formation when distance weakened loyalties or credit dried up. Although the first half of the nineteenth century witnessed Omani territorial control at its zenith, this changed dramatically during the second half when circuits of mobility shifted, deracinated rulers became protégés of empire, and state political cultures became increasingly rooted. A formerly unified Indian Ocean realm became two territorial sultanates in 1861, one in Muscat and one in Zanzibar. Greater imperial hegemony and global economic integration produced a hardening of territorial boundaries in the Indian Ocean that challenged older practices of mobility in the region and ultimately undercut Busaidi authority.

This chapter begins with Seyyid Said bin Sultan’s travels on the Indian Ocean, when, in response to constrained opportunities in Arabia, he worked to expand and solidify his domain in Africa. He practiced a form of mobile governance to rule a vast dominion across the western Indian Ocean. As he moved between Arabia and Africa, he bought temporary loyalties with pensions and subsidies. These gave Said bin Sultan flexibility in the short term but did not provide lasting solutions to the unique challenges of a dispersed territory. To maintain mobile governance, Said used thinly veiled hostage-taking and depended increasingly on his own sons as governors. Fraternal rivalries among the younger generation led to exaltations for some and exile for others, ultimately undermining the unity of Said’s dominions. The movements and maneuvers of five of his sons—Hilal, Thuwayni, Turki, Majid, and Barghash—deserve special attention because they illuminate a new geography of power in the western Indian Ocean that included travels to London, and, more importantly, Bombay. Said’s firstborn, Hilal bin Said, traveled to London in the 1840s to appeal to British authorities and to improve his standing in his father’s realm, but he was unsuccessful and died in exile in Arabia. After Seyyid Said’s death in 1856, an unfolding succession dispute among Thuwayni, Turki, Majid and Barghash created an opportunity for British intervention that circumscribed the mobility of the winners and their territorial mobility. The losers—Barghash in Zanzibar, Turki in Muscat—faced temporary exile in Bombay, while Barghash’s allies in his failed 1859 rebellion escaped to the caravan trails of mainland Africa. British arbitration in 1861 led to the Canning Award that formalized the political separation of Muscat and Zanzibar. While the British officially framed the brothers’ rivalry as involving succession and sovereignty, the sons of Said bin Sultan used the language of debt. Between them, the seizure of property became the idiom of power, and their access to credit governed their standing with allies and in the region.

In the second half of the century, Barghash’s exile in Bombay and his partisans’ sojourns in the East Africa interior stretched the boundaries of the western Indian Ocean circuits, which had its poles in Muscat and Zanzibar. Yet the rulers in Zanzibar and Muscat had less space in which to operate. From Zanzibar, Majid (r. 1856–70) moderated his ambitions and reached for the coast of East Africa to found his own modern city at Dar es Salaam, was inspired by a trip to Bombay. Instabilities in Oman in the 1860s illuminated the degree to which three successive regimes were hemmed in territorially and by debt (Thuwayni, r. 1856–66; Salim, r. 1866–68; and a new imamate, 1868–71). Bombay provided refuge for Turki bin Said to wait out the political turmoil in Muscat, and credit from Zanzibar allowed him to choose when to reassert himself in Oman. His story also highlights an underappreciated aspect of mobility: some members of households, especially women and children, were not as mobile in Indian Ocean circuits and suffered for it. In the early 1870s, the more mobile younger brothers, losers of the early succession disputes who each endured exile in Bombay, succeeded at last. Barghash’s reign in Zanzibar (1870–88) and Turki’s in Muscat (1871–88) marked turning points in Arab sovereignty in the western Indian Ocean. While British intervention compromised their authority, their successors would claim even less independence, mobility, and territory.

SAID BIN SULTAN AND MOBILE GOVERNANCE, 1820S TO 1856

Said bin Sultan, whose shrouded corpse had been carried ashore in Zanzibar in 1856, was not an elected imam, but his territorial expansion and his legacy reflected principles of the Ibadi imamate ideal. For Ibadis in Oman, the imamate was the historical and religious ideal of government. Historically, male leaders and religious scholars sought to elect an imam who was righteous and fair. The imam would then make a contract with the electors, who pledged their support.⁵ Thus in its ideal form, imamate rule depended on personal qualities and on the imam as being first among equals. The Ibadi imamate did not have a fixed capital in Oman, and transferring the capital—between Nizwa, al-Rustaq, Bahla, and other places—became a key aspect of Omani political culture.⁶ In this way, the imamate’s approach to territoriality also influenced the later Busaidi state.

Said bin Sultan’s rule was also a legacy of contradictory forces within Ibadi politics. While the proscribed pattern of imamate election and rule worked in theory, in practice the imamate tended to revert from elected rule to a pattern of inherited, dynastic rule, at which point electors and religious leaders withdrew their backing. Dynastic rule depended on tribal confederations rather than religious legitimacy, so this imamate cycle, as Wilkinson details, also fed Omani tribal politics and rivalries. The first imam of the Busaidi line was Ahmad bin Said, who had helped rescue Oman from civil war and Persian invasion in the 1740s and was formally elected imam in 1753–54. From Ahmad bin Said’s election up to the present, his heirs have been the rulers of Oman, though two distinct familial lines emerged in the 1780s. At that time, one line eschewed the support of the interior ulema, moved its capital to Muscat, and staked their future on trade in the gulf and the Indian Ocean. These were Said bin Sultan’s direct ancestors, and he benefited from their dynastic rule. The other line maintained itself at al-Rustaq in the interior and enjoyed more support from Ibadi scholars.⁷

As in the imamate ideal, the Busaidi sultans were not all powerful rulers, but their personal qualities helped forge allegiances and loyalties. One way sultans demonstrated the power of their personalistic rule was in settling disputes—and enforcing settlements—between factions. For the rulers’ own rivals, however, coopting them by providing access to income from trade or to credit became a way to ensure fealty, although these allegiance were usually temporary. Indeed, one aspect of statecraft that was vital to the mobile governance of the nineteenth century was offering subsidies or pensions to rivals.

Said bin Sultan employed techniques of mobile governance throughout his reign to consolidate state power and unify dispersed territorial holdings in the gulf, Arabia, and East Africa. In order to take over the Swahili coast and subdue his rivals in Mombasa, he made three separate journeys to East Africa between 1828 and 1837. He relied on local allies, superior naval power, and some old-fashioned chicanery to defeat the Mazrui in Mombasa and to take the fort there in 1837. This victory allowed him to encourage trade on the East African coast and to move his court to Zanzibar. His absences from Oman, however, brought challenges to his rule from rivals and tribal coalitions.

He countered these challenges by offering trade perks and stipends. When these failed, he resorted to hostage taking, essentially making his rivals mobile, too. To the first case, the Yal Sa‘d tribe in Oman were frequent dissenters, and to win their favor Said bin Sultan granted them tax-free exportation privileges for their dates and other goods. Other tribal leaders received healthy annual payments to ensure their loyalty. In East Africa, Said bin Sultan faced recalcitrant governors and established Arab families. One solution to this problem was to insist that certain tribal leaders, such as Salim bin Abdullah, the senior al-Harthi man from Zanzibar, always traveled with him. He handled prominent Ibadi leaders in a similar way. Nasir b. Abi Nabhan al-Kharusi, a well-known Ibadi scholar feared and admired for his ability to make talismans, accompanied Said to Zanzibar.⁸ Said thus kept powerful rivals close at hand even while on the move.

At the center of the essentially weak state structures was a ruler who depended on personal politics. Maintaining a semblance of control over such a large realm required frequent movement back and forth, and this evolved into a form of mobile governance that held together a dominion that touched three coasts of the western Indian Ocean: eastern Arabia; the port of Bandar Abbas in the gulf; the port and area surrounding Gwadar on the Arabian Sea (in what is now western Pakistan); and Zanzibar and some important towns along the Swahili coast.

While Said bin Sultan’s move to Zanzibar in 1832 shared continuities with Omani patterns of rule, it became an essential shift in the history of the western Indian Ocean in the nineteenth century. This relocation precipitated the process of incorporating the East African interior into the Indian Ocean world. Fundamentally, the move to Zanzibar allowed Said to buy time when faced with a rapidly shifting set of regional relations and uncertain outcomes in the context of a renewed European presence. Arabs had for millennia gone to East Africa for trade, and Indian Ocean monsoon winds facilitated their travel. The Omanis had successfully expelled Portuguese interlopers during the seventeenth century and enjoyed hegemony in the western Indian Ocean. The situation changed in the nineteenth century when, in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, the British began to assert themselves into trade dealings in the Persian Gulf and in the Indian Ocean. These maneuvers were tied broadly to Britain’s growing interest in India, and led to an allegiance with Said bin Sultan to quash “piracy” in the gulf in the 1810s. Britain made truces with the sheikdoms of Abu Dhabi, Ras al-Khayma, and others on the southern coast of the gulf in 1820 and in so doing severely limited Said bin Sultan’s and his subjects’ activity in the region. At the same time, Omani traders faced stricter scrutiny in Bombay.⁹ In response to setbacks in the gulf and in Bombay, Said bin Sultan took an active approach to East Africa, using his naval power and allegiances with Omani Arab families in the region when he could. This set of moves established outposts of the Omani state astride the Swahili coast and regional maritime networks. The historian M. Reda Bhacker makes clear that the pull factors in Zanzibar—a secure island that promised economic growth and had close relations with Indian traders—were partial solutions to Said bin Sultan’s “need to survive” British moves in the Indian Ocean, and served to delay any confrontation.¹⁰ Said bin Sultan’s temporizing moves paid off with the early commercial success of Zanzibar, but maintaining his rule relied on his mobility.

Said bin Sultan traveled between East Africa and Arabia to settle disputes, to protect his interests, and to ensure his rule would continue. He initially relied on slave governors or appointed governors from prominent local families but eventually began to appoint his sons as governors in key port cities. His oldest son, Hilal bin Said, was the wali (governor) of Barka, on the Batinah coast, in the late 1830s, and another son, Thuwayni bin Said was the governor of Muscat from this period.¹¹ When Thuwayni bin Said captured the port city of Suhar in 1851 from the rival branch of the Busaidi, Said appointed another son, Turki bin Said, as its governor. The expelled governor, Qays bin Azzan bin Qays, and his followers moved to al-Rustaq, the interior stronghold of their line. Said bin Sultan needed loyal sons as governors while he moved back and forth to maintain control. Indeed, after Said had settled affairs at Suhar, he returned to Zanzibar in 1852 and then left once again for Muscat in 1854 to address Wahhabi encroachment and a dispute with the Persians at Bandar Abbas.

The characteristics of Said’s mobile governance are evident during the period when he concluded trade agreements with foreign powers. He signed a commercial treaty with the Americans in 1833, and they enjoyed great influence in Zanzibar. Said bin Sultan hoped that his relationship with them would led to a steam-powered ship for him. This cutting edge technology would allow him to defy the monsoon winds and move back and forth more easily. In December 1839, rumors flew that the US Government was going to give Said bin Sultan a steamship in exchange for access to one of the mainland trading towns.¹² This trade never came to pass, and Said would not acquire his first steamship for more than a decade.¹³ In 1840, shortly after Said bin Sultan concluded a similar commercial treaty with Britain, the British appointed a consul to oversee their interests. Fittingly, the new agent, Atkins Hamerton, was not assigned to a specific place, but to the ruler, so he, too, moved between Zanzibar and Oman in the 1840s and 1850s.

All told, Said bin Sultan ruled for nearly fifty years (1806–56) and was present in East Africa for nearly one-third of this. The proportion was much higher in the second half of his tenure. Between January 1828 and his death in October 1856, Said spent more than 80 percent of his time in East Africa (211 of 345 months).¹⁴ He had also spent many months at sea, and perhaps it is fitting that he died at sea in October 1856 en route from Muscat to Zanzibar. It was then that Barghash tried to bury his father surreptitiously and seize power from his brother Majid. Said bin Sultan’s reliance on his sons was an aspect of mobile governance that held his dominions together during his lifetime, but it also fostered a rivalry between his sons. These rivalries fractured their father’s carefully nurtured realm and delineated new circuits of mobility in the Indian Ocean.

MOBILITY TO SEEK NEW SUPPORT FOR POWER, 1844 TO 1851

While Said bin Sultan was still alive, his sons had already begun to jockey for position, and their actions demonstrated both the shortcomings of Said’s system of mobile governance and the importance of credit for Arab rulers. Said bin Sultan’s governors had been allies, near relatives, and trusted slaves earlier in his rule. As his own sons became old enough, however, he began appointing them as governors. His first son’s rise and dramatic fall from grace revealed the shifting contours of power emerging in the Indian Ocean during this period. Hilal bin Said had received foreign visitors in the palace in Muscat and served as the governor of Barka (c. 1838–41) in Oman before his father lost faith in him and recalled him to Zanzibar in 1841.¹⁵ In 1844, Atkins Hamerton called Hilal “the most shrewd and energetic of all the Imam’s sons,” and he noted that Hilal had “the sympathy and good view of all His Highness’s Arab subjects . . . ​and [was] loved by the tribes of Oman.”¹⁶ Said did not feel the same affection. Some attributed Hilal’s downfall to the fact that his mother, an Abyssinian, had died when he was a child so he had no advocate for him in household politics. In contrast, Khalid, Hilal’s main rival, had the active support and behind-the-scenes lobbying of his mother, a concubine from the Malabar coast of India.¹⁷ The real reason for Hilal’s fall may have been something darker. Said later referred to Hilal’s “wickedness and evil deeds—such as cannot in any way be tolerated or overlooked amongst Arabs.” Said felt “overwhelmed” that Hilal “might do things not approved of by either God or the Prophet.”¹⁸ As a result, Said bin Sultan exiled Hilal from Zanzibar in 1844.

Hilal’s subsequent movements suggest the new contours of power in the western Indian Ocean. Although he moved through the typical circuits of the region (Zanzibar, Muscat, Mecca), he also went to London to seek allies. From Zanzibar in 1844, he went first to Jeddah, perhaps on the way to Mecca where his wife and children remained, and the next year he sailed to London from Alexandria. He undertook this trip to win favor from the British by asking them to intercede, thus clearly acknowledging their growing role in the Indian Ocean. In London, Hilal procured a letter for his father that he believed would set things right. Following his return to Zanzibar, he sought a powerful governorship—Muscat, Zanzibar, or Lamu—with an annual allowance of MT$30,000. Instead, Said offered to appoint him governor of a lesser port like Pemba or Bandar Abbas. When their negotiations failed in 1849, Said stripped Hilal of his horses and slaves and exiled him again.

Hilal died destitute in exile, and his family’s ongoing hardships make clear the gendered nature of mobile governance and the limited possibilities for advancements without allowances or access to credit. Hilal went first to Lamu in a “state of destitution” because his father had not given him any financial support.¹⁹ Hilal’s wives and children were still in Mecca, also in distressed circumstances.²⁰ Elite men had much more mobility than women during this period, and stranded relatives became a common theme of the Busaidi sovereigns and mobile rule in general. From Lamu, Hilal made his way to Aden and then to Mecca to rejoin his family. Hilal died there in June 1851, after which his family moved to Muscat.²¹ By happenstance, Said bin Sultan and Hamerton were both in Muscat when Hilal’s family arrived. The British official lectured Su’ud, one of Hilal’s older sons, on the importance of complying with his grandfather’s wishes.²² Perhaps the better lesson for Su’ud was that mobility alone was not a path to power. When Hilal’s younger brothers had become governors—Thuwayni in Muscat and Majid in Zanzibar—they enjoyed their father’s financial support. Without an allowance or access to credit, certain positions were untenable. Hilal predeceased his father, but their failed negotiations presaged the infighting among Hilal’s brothers that marked the period that followed his death.

TURMOIL AND TRANSITION, 1856 TO 1861

When Barghash attempted to sneak Said bin Sultan’s body to shore on that dark October night in 1856 he was part of a plot. Barghash, in cooperation with the Harthi sheikh who had traveled as Said bin Sultan’s hostage, attempted to usurp control of Zanzibar from Majid. Their plans failed but set into motion a series of disputes that would lead to armed rebellion three years later, create an opening for British intervention, and inadvertently broaden the circuits of mobility to include the East African interior and Bombay.

After Said bin Sultan’s death, Thuwayni bin Said, who had ruled in Muscat during his father’s absences, believed that he should control the entire dominion, while his younger brother Majid bin Said, who had become the Zanzibar governor in 1854, thought that he should be the one to take over his father’s rule. They had to contend with each other and with their local rivals. Thus, each of them faced similar circumstances: they had a sibling rival at the other end of the former empire who was angling to control the whole realm, and they each had a nearby brother hoping to usurp local power. In Oman, there was Turki bin Said, a brother younger than Thuwayni, who served as the governor of the port city of Suhar. In Zanzibar, Barghash bin Said was only twenty years old but his allegiance with the Harthi gave him additional heft.

The three years following Said bin Sultan’s death saw an unsettled state of affairs as Thuwayni and Majid squabbled over dominion and over an estate marked by debt. During the same period, two prominent people, the customs master and the British agent, exited. In Zanzibar, Majid had laid claim to Said bin Sultan’s ships, and in Muscat, Thuwayni claimed landed property. Yet they were also faced with debt because during Said’s rule the line between state assets and personal assets did not exist. Said had depended heavily on Jairam Shivji, his customs master, for loans and liquidity to underwrite mobile governance. Both before and during Said’s last trip to Arabia, he had taken loans from the house of Jairam Shivji to engage in diplomacy with the Persians and to offer stipends to win the loyalty of the rebels. Thus one of Said’s legacies was a great debt to the firm of Jairam Shivji. Shivji had retired in 1853 from Zanzibar and returned to Kutch, his birthplace.²³ Likewise, Hamerton died in Zanzibar shortly after Said bin Sultan, and was not replaced immediately, in part due to the northern Indian uprising in 1857. Thus when Colonel C. P. Rigby arrived in Zanzibar in 1858, he wanted to reassert British influence and tamp down the slave trade. This fit into the new increased control in India, with the Crown—in the form of the Raj—taking over the British East India Company’s rule in the subcontinent.²⁴ The dispute between Thuwayni and Majid lasted for nearly three years, with accusations back and forth and property seizures in Zanzibar and Muscat.

By early 1859, Thuwayni, the senior brother, was frustrated by his penury and sought to break the impasse by coordinating with allies in Zanzibar and launching an invasion. Instead, he ran into British attempts to assert control in the western Indian Ocean. Thuwayni complained about the hierarchy and wealth of the status quo between Muscat and Zanzibar: “The man who is given a bone . . . can ​only suck it, but he who gets the flesh eats it. I am the elder brother and I have the bone in Muscat. Majid, my junior, has the flesh in Zanzibar.”²⁵ Thuwayni outfitted an expedition to sail to Zanzibar in February, seize the island, and overthrow Majid.²⁶ The previous year, he might have executed this plan without difficulty, but in 1859, post-uprising in India, British consular and naval officers intervened. In late February 1859, the Political Resident for the Persian Gulf sent a commodore from the British Navy to Muscat to use “friendly counsel and remonstrance” to persuade Thuwayni to cease hostilities against Majid. The commodore delivered a letter to Thuwayni and explained that he should discuss his claims against Majid with the British. The naval officer was to follow Thuwayni in his ship to assure that he returned to Muscat.²⁷ This left Thuwayni’s allies in Zanzibar, led by Barghash, on their own. In short, the death of Seyyid Said had allowed the British to increase their role as arbiters in the region, and the unified Arab rule of this western Indian Ocean dominion was being dismantled.

Although the officer successfully intercepted Thuwayni bin Said and called back his ships, arbitration did not resolve the situation. The result was a breaking point with historiographical implications. Thuwayni sent a representative to Zanzibar to meet with Majid but after several months of negotiations, they remained at a stalemate. Historians have seen the moment in two ways: beset by internal dissent or a gallant move for unity. British officials, writing twenty-five years after the fact—at a time with Harthi activism in Oman was challenging the sitting sultan—claimed that Thuwayni’s 1859 representative had not come in good faith, but rather had come “to distribute money among the Harthi tribe & induce them to rise.” In this version, Thuwayni withdrew because he had been double-crossed by the Harthi, who held great sway over a young Barghash.²⁸ The Omani historian al-Hashimy, following al-Salimi, has framed this as an Omani national issue: the 1859 negotiations were the last chance to preserve the supposed unity of the trans-Indian Ocean Omani empire.²⁹

Either way, the breakdown of negotiations allowed the British to intervene in the succession dispute. As historian Rheda Bhacker explains, “From now on it was to be the paramount power, Britain, who assumed the role of kingmaker in Zanzibar as well as in Muscat.”³⁰ In April of 1859, before the matter was formally settled, however, the government in Bombay had already split the African and Arabian realms bureaucratically, assigning Muscat to Persian Gulf officials. “I am desired in conclusion to observe that the Resident in the Persian Gulf should [ . . . ​], now that Zanzibar and Muscat are disunited [ . . . ​], be regarded as the officer in charge of Political relations as with the Imam of Muscat.”³¹ The bureaucratic wheels had begun to constrain the mobility of Arab rulers in the western Indian Ocean. Said’s sons would never move so freely or so frequently as he had. Events in Zanzibar would only compound this.

BARGHASH’S REBELLION AND EXILE, 1859 TO 1862

In early 1859, while Thuwayni schemed his invasion of Zanzibar, Barghash and the Harthi chiefs conspired to overthrown Majid. The cloak and dagger maneuvers, related in breathless detail by a surprising narrator, were not successful and resulted in a scattering of the conspirators into exile, from the ivory depots of central Africa to cosmopolitan, industrial Bombay. Barghash’s machination aligned with the plot in Muscat, attracted allies of questionable character, and split the royal family. In 1859, Barghash was only in his early twenties and aside from some loyal young relatives, did not have a natural base of support in Zanzibar. He was more client than patron. The British consul called him “a morose discontented man.”³² The consul noted in 1858 that, while Barghash had few followers in Zanzibar, his alliance with Thuwayni put him among the leaders of a group in Muscat that planned to dispossess Majid.³³ In these circumstances, with few funds of his own to attract allies, Barghash encouraged others to bet on the future, promising influential positions when his plot succeeded. He invited them to meetings, held in the darkest part of the night, based on when the moon was rising or setting.³⁴

These meetings, according to the memoirs of Salme bint Said, Barghash’s younger sister, were steeped in secrecy, and the conspiracy played out with delicious intrigues. Salme, who had a falling out with Barghash decades later, lends a suspenseful narration to the events of the rebellion. At fifteen years of age she was the youngest female member of the conspiracy and served as the “secretary-general” of the alliance, due, in part, to her literacy, unusual for this era.³⁵ She supervised correspondence with the chiefs and ordered the bullets, powder, and muskets that were to be used in the rebellion.³⁶

Given Barghash’s approach, it is not surprising that the brewing rebellion attracted diverse opportunists. People that Salme considered more reputable—including the majority of her half-siblings—distanced themselves from Barghash’s faction. The followers were “ambitious and important people who feel grieved and overlooked,” seeking revenge for perceived injustices. “Dozens of discontented saw themselves already as Barghash’s ministers or in other high places; hundreds reckoned undoubtedly with property and titles, of which they would not even have dreamed before.” These strivers came from far and wide to join the conspiracy, “apparently to serve Barghash, but in reality to serve themselves.” In hindsight, Salme noted that, when building the coalition of rebels, “the most miserable were also received with open arms.”³⁷

Yet, as the conspiracy grew, secrecy was more difficult to maintain. Hotheaded Barghash no longer feigned loyalty to his brother the sultan. He stopped attending Majid’s regular baraza (court and public reception), and his imprudent behavior raised suspicions across society. Majid took action to block the conspiracy in Oman and in Zanzibar. He sent MT$30,000, two large iron guns, and two hundred barrels of gunpowder to Turki in Suhar so that Turki could challenge Thuwayni in Oman.³⁸ In Zanzibar, before the conspirators could finalize their rebellion, Majid put Barghash under house arrest, essentially laying a siege against his house. Most houses in Zanzibar did not have wells, and a lack of fresh water would have forced concessions from Barghash. But the tempestuous young lord communicated with his sisters from the high balconies on the narrow lanes of Zanzibar, and one sister sewed a canvas hose to deliver freshwater surreptitiously.

Meanwhile, Salme corresponded with the Harthi leaders, key confederates of the plotters who had escaped house arrest. Salme does not name “the influential, energetic chief” of the al-Harthi with whom she cooperated, but she notes that he remained free to recruit soldiers to the rebellion.³⁹ While this possibly could have been Salih bin Ali, a young man of the sheikhly line of the Harthi, who was in Zanzibar at the time, it is more likely, that her correspondent was Abdullah bin Salim al-Harthi. Abdullah bin Salim was one of Zanzibar’s wealthiest men, with immense holdings of both land and ships and command of a retinue of 1,500 armed slaves. Majid had tried to win Abdullah bin Salim’s loyalty by paying him an annual allowance of $1,200 and permitting him to import his goods duty-free.⁴⁰ Abdullah bin Salim, however, chose Barghash over Majid, and brought most of the Harthi with him.

With Barghash and his close allies under house arrest, the conspirators altered and accelerated their plan. They hatched a scheme to spring Barghash from house arrest to rendezvous with the conspirators on a plantation in the countryside. The guards at Barghash’s house turned back the women when they arrived, but Salme and her sister Khole stepped forward and addressed the soldiers and their commanding officer directly. These elite women conversing with nonkin “conflicted with customs and usages,” and the men were, in their bewilderment, unable to formulate a reply. “When they regained their composure a little,” she reported, “they launched forth in so many excuses that I, conscious of our evil intentions, felt deeply ashamed.” The two women insisted, indignantly, that they should be able to visit their brothers. The guards—armed with muskets and fixed bayonets—relented.⁴¹

Inside the house, the women had to convince their proud brother of their plan: to dress him like a woman and to smuggle him out of the house. He initially resisted on grounds of masculinity.⁴² He agreed, however, armed himself, and was wrapped in a large, black silken shawl with a gold border. Only his eyes were uncovered. His twelve-year-old brother Abdulaziz bin Said did the same. The tallest women walked beside the men and they exited nonchalantly, engaging in idle chatter. To their surprise and relief, the guards moved aside respectfully.⁴³ The party of women moved carefully to the outskirts of the city, and then they ran as fast as they could through the countryside, “totally unconcerned” about their fine urban dress and gold embroidered slippers. At the meeting point, Barghash and Abdulaziz proceeded to the plantation headquarters, and Salme and the other women slipped back to town.

Despite the Harthi strength and supporters who flocked to Barghash’s side, Majid’s forces—reportedly numbering in the thousands—advanced on the semifortified plantation. They pummeled the rebels. Hundreds of people were killed, although Barghash and the other leaders escaped back to town. Barghash barricaded himself and his closest supporters in his house and refused to negotiate. In response, Majid and Rigby, the British Consul, summoned a troop of Royal Marines from the harbor. The British force launched an assault on Barghash’s house, briefly turning the neighborhood into an urban war zone. As bullets whizzed by, Salme’s household members ran for cover, some falling into prayer amid the confusion.⁴⁴ When Barghash surrendered, his sister Khole ran to Rigby’s house to report the news. He was not at home, but the people in Barghash’s house were calling out for peace, so the marines stopped firing. The rebellion had been defeated before Thuwayni’s forces could arrive from Muscat.

Although Majid agreed to Barghash’s exile, he did not treat him as harshly as their father had treated their brother Hilal. Barghash received a monthly allowance of 700 crowns after the rebellion, and Majid asked the customs master, Ladha Damji, to pay Barghash a total of 14,000 crowns, one part (4,000 crowns) as his inheritance and the balance (10,000) to support him in exile.⁴⁵ On his way into exile in Bombay aboard the steamer H.M.S. Assaye, Barghash stopped briefly in Muscat.⁴⁶ Whether he saw Thuwayni, whose naval support may have turned the battle against Majid, is unclear. Their father’s era of mobile governance had ended, but the ambit of the western Indian Ocean expanded. As a result of the uprising and British intervention, one son of Said who was not allowed to move (Thuwayni) and another who was forced across the Indian Ocean to Bombay (Barghash). Meanwhile, Barghash’s array of followers and Harthi allies fled to the African mainland and settled in the new towns of the caravan trails. The Harthi ringleaders were imprisoned in Lamu where they died under suspicious circumstances.⁴⁷ The defeat of Barghash’s rebellion further enhanced the separation of Muscat and Zanzibar and marked growing British influence. Majid retained control of Zanzibar, Thuwayni held Muscat, and Barghash, like his brother Hilal before him, was exiled.

Barghash lived in Bombay for two years. This modernizing, industrial city of the mid-nineteenth century was what historian Nile Green has called “the cosmopolis of the Indian Ocean.” ⁴⁸ With a population of more than five hundred thousand (about a fifth of whom were Muslim), the city was experiencing a second wave of urbanization. A professional class of city planners emerged who oversaw elaborate public works. In early 1860, Barghash wrote a beseeching letter to Lord Elphinstone, asking to return to Zanzibar: “I beg your lordship to send me to Zanzibar in one of your vessels.” Barghash asked for transport and a mediator who could help him with Majid. He vowed “that no objectionable act will ever be committed by me,” and he appealed to a notion of homeland and property, writing that he could not abandon Zanzibar because it was his birthplace and he had estates there.⁴⁹ Barghash returned to Zanzibar in 1861 and took up a life in seclusion; “resid[ing] in his old house, and attend[ing] durbar; ‘but is it is well understood throughout town that Syud Barghash is a marked man and that no person is to call on him or address him.’” Receiving no salary, in part because Majid was unable to afford it, Barghash was more of a state prisoner than a principal courtier.⁵⁰

In this situation, Barghash opted to bide his time in Zanzibar and wait out Majid. The new British agent, Pelly, had made arrangements to send Barghash abroad, but Barghash did not want to depart and arouse Majid’s suspicions.⁵¹ Having returned from exile, Barghash’s most direct path to power was not mobility but patience. In 1870, his stoicism was rewarded when Majid died, and almost a decade and half after he had tried to bury his father in secret, Barghash bin Said was the ruler of Zanzibar. In time, he became Zanzibar’s modernizing sultan, famous for his improvements in the technology and infrastructure on the island. For instance, he brought printing presses from Bombay, and as historian Anne Bang has argued, the Ibadi nahda (renaissance) took place in Zanzibar rather than Oman in part because of Barghash’s leadership. Barghash seems to have imbibed the lessons of Bombay’s modernization from his time in exile. Majid, constrained by his success in Zanzibar, had been less mobile and had no such exposure, so his British allies had contrived a trip to inspire him.

MAJID AND THE MODERN CITY, 1861 TO 1865

In aftermath of the 1859 rebellion and the 1861 Canning Award, Majid bin Said was the undisputed sultan of Zanzibar and his father’s African dominions. British forces had helped him protect his rule, and now they sought to influence it by refocusing his ambitions from Arabia to within the East African sphere. The key to this, however, was a trip to Bombay. The city had become a key point in the new geography of power in the Indian Ocean: a waypoint for mobile sultans.

The new British agent, Pelly, who arrived in 1862, contemplated the results of the Canning Award, which untethered Omani rule in East Africa from Muscat. Despite this political division, East Africa was not territorially distinct from long-standing Indian Ocean processes, including the movement of Indian merchants, slaves, and credit. How could the British coach their new client to adapt to changes and continuities? Pelly believed the biggest question the British had to answer was, “Is it the permanent intention of Government to accept an Arab State of Zanzibar?” And, if so, how should the British exert pressure upon it? Pelly understood credit as Zanzibar’s lifeblood and recognized three flaws with the sultanate. First, Indians—who he called British Indian subjects—were the center of the economy, and the wealth of Zanzibar depended on them.⁵² Second, Majid lacked modernizing impulses, while Pelly wanted him to build roads, clear jungles, clean up the towns, and drain swamps. Third, the place of slaves in both the economic and social order was distasteful and difficult to address. Pelly understood the role of credit in the economy as well as the emerging role of fixed property. He warned the British government to avoid any action “to shake credit in the Zanzibar market or to unsettle the value of landed property or to disturb society by any sudden or sweeping radicalism, such as the dictatorial abolition of slavery.”⁵³

Pelly made plans to turn Majid into a modern ruler by focusing on the African mainland and drawing inspiration from India. This transformation would require mobility, both within his realm and beyond it. Majid’s power on the mainland was “very slight and undefined” because, like the Portuguese of an earlier era, he held islands and forts along the coast. Majid held more authority among people along the coast—Pelly referred to them as “the softer & agricultural tribes & mixed breeds of the low shore”—than he did in the interior. Beyond the coast, the frontier of his realm was ill-defined and relationships were based only on commercial exchanges. The remedy to this situation necessitated both travel and force. Pelly suggested to the Indian government that for Majid to consolidate his hold on the mainland, he “should himself travel through it from time to time, at the head of a sufficient Force, requiring, en route, the salaams of the Chiefs in token of submission & if necessary taking Hostages there!”⁵⁴ Thus, Majid’s new territorially subscribed rule would require crossing the Zanzibar channel to the African mainland and crossing the Indian Ocean to Bombay.

To build a modern city, Majid had to see a modern city, and for the western Indian Ocean, this meant Bombay. Majid’s trip to Bombay in 1865 was the culmination of three years of planning. The two goals for the trip were to reconcile Majid with his younger brother Abdulaziz and to expose Majid to Bombay and its Public Works Department. Abdulaziz bin Said had initially departed Zanzibar with Barghash in 1859, but after their return in 1861 Abdulaziz offended Majid and was sent away again. A meeting in Bombay would set the stage for Abdulaziz’s return.

R. L. Playfair, Pelly’s successor, was even more enthusiastic about impressing Majid with the infrastructure of Bombay, but he realized some delicacy would be required in introducing a conservative Ibadi ruler to the region’s cosmopolis. The plan was to waive docking fees, borrow a private rail car from a wealthy Parsi businessman, and “show him everything of interest in Bombay & Poona.” Playfair was conscious that opulence and development of Bombay, not to mention habits of everyday living, might be out of step with the sultan’s practices. Playfair warned the officials that no one should smoke in Majid’s presence because it was “abhorrent” to Majid and “all belonging to his sect.” Playfair claimed that Majid had “never seen a road or a carriage” and believed that, in Bombay, the sultan of Zanzibar might hire a surveyor and builder from the Public Works Department to oversee road building efforts in Zanzibar.⁵⁵ Majid left Zanzibar on September 13, 1865, among a convoy of four ships.⁵⁶

In Bombay, Majid presented the governor with gifts, including diamond ornaments, and the governor gave Majid a screw steam yacht with a dubious history.⁵⁷ In the official account of this exchange, the yacht was valued at 45,000 rupees, while Majid’s gifts were only estimated to be worth 26,000. The disparity attracted official scrutiny, but the Indian government allowed the difference in light of “the extreme liberality of the Sultan in all his dealings with the British Government.”⁵⁸ Majid returned to Zanzibar after an absence of nearly three months..⁵⁹

Although the idea for a city on the mainland had been talked about since the 1862, building a trading port that would allow Majid to tap into the caravan trade did not begin until the year Majid returned from Bombay (1865) or the next year. He built this city near a fishing village on the mainland southwest of Zanzibar and called it Bandar al-Salaam, the haven of peace, generally shortened to Dar es Salaam. Historians James Brennan and Andrew Burton’s argument that Majid modeled the city on his experience in Zanzibar fails to account for the peregrinations of a mobile sultan and his Indian Ocean itinerary.⁶⁰ In the years that Majid was building a new city, however, his less mobile brother, Thuwayni in Muscat, was struggling with many forces that were nearly out of his control. He lacked a haven of peace.

THUWAYNI’S TROUBLES IN MUSCAT, 1856 TO 1866

The decade from 1856 to 1866 was a trying one for Thuwayni bin Said. He had aspired to be ruler of all his father’s dominions: in the Persian Gulf, along the Makran coast, in Oman, and also in Zanzibar and its opposite coasts where customs agents collected massive revenues. His aborted mission to invade Zanzibar, however, and his capitulation to the Canning Award hemmed him in Muscat, where he faced multiple threats and had few allies. As territorial boundaries became more rigid in the western Indian Ocean, Thuwayni in Arabia was highly circumscribed. His inability to maneuver makes clear the reasons that his father had moved his capital from Muscat in the 1830s. Thuwayni had begun as the wali (governor) of Muscat and learned the exigencies of the Arabian capital during his father’s frequent trips to Zanzibar. As governor, Thuwayni maintained his rule by negotiating with Arabs from both interior Oman and the coast. He tried to stave off incursions from the Sunni orthodox Wahhabi of central Arabia, sought conciliation with the Persian Shah over Muscat’s control of the gulf port of Bandar Abbas, and engaged with the British. After his father’s death these challenges were amplified.

The arbitration that led to the Canning Award severed Thuwayni’s claims of Zanzibar and entangled him more closely with the British, who proved to be fickle allies. In 1860, Thuwayni had agreed to arbitration over the succession dispute and felt certain that his position as the rightful ruler of his father’s entire domain would be vindicated.⁶¹ He was disappointed by the 1861 Canning Award. Thuwayni, who had once likened his position in Muscat to being thrown a bone while Majid in Zanzibar feasted on the flesh, was not content with the bone or with the hand that offered it. Thuwayni found the British were hard to please and slow to help. They made demands of him in the gulf, in his actions against Persia, and over the slave trade. Yet when his rule was in jeopardy they were reluctant to join a fight. This became clear in 1864 when their empty promises and his empty coffers exposed Thuwayni’s vulnerability.

Thuwayni’s highly circumscribed rule left him isolated when the rival Busaidi line allied with the Ibadi ulema in the interior in 1864. When he sought external support, sheikhs in the gulf declined, and the Wahhabi ruler in Nejd promised swift retribution if Thuwayni attacked the rebels. Thuwayni’s precarious balancing act between internal and external rivals was failing, and his lack of funds made it difficult to attract support. Four years earlier, Thuwayni had extinguished a rebellion on the Batinah coast and, in the process, killed Qays bin Azzan al-Busaidi, the scion of the rival line. Later, Qays’s son Azzan, however, allied himself with the Ibadi leaders of the interior, including Said bin Khalfan al-Khalili, and they headquartered themselves at al-Rustaq. Thuwayni moved against them in December 1864, but he lacked the funds to attract allies. The sheikhs of Abu Dhabi and Ras al-Khayma were reluctant to support Thwuayni. The British agent at Muscat noted cattily that the shaykhs “probably having learnt the embarrassed state of the latter’s finances (which unfortunately has become a common topic of conversation) they are loath to incur expense without some good prospect of repayment.”⁶² The Wahhabi contingent that controlled the strategic Buraimi oasis on Oman’s border supported the rebels. The Wahhabi naib promised to attack Muscat if Thuwayni assailed al-Rustaq, the latest indignity for the Omani ruler from his Saudi rivals. Wahhabi forces were both a fiscal and physical threat to Thuwayni’s rule, and their command of Buraimi oasis halfway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman allowed them to assert themselves into local allegiances and force the sultan to pay zakat as protection money.⁶³ Thus, Thuwayni was checked against al-Rustaq at the end of 1864, hemmed in by Omani rivals, a woeful treasury, and Wahhabi power.

Thuwayni’s fickle allies, the British, initially refused his request to attack the Wahhabis in the gulf. Escalating Wahhabi violence against Oman and British Indian subjects in 1865, however, spurred the British to half measures. They had rejected Thuwayni’s blockade of the Hasa coast to cut off the Wahhabis there. Unrestrained, a Wahhabi agent arrived in Muscat in August 1865 and demanded a threefold increase of Thuwayni’s zakat payment. The sultan refused, and the Wahhabis swept into Oman from Buraimi, teamed with Thuwayni’s rivals, and captured Sur, one of Oman’s principal ports of exchange with East Africa. In the fighting, the invaders killed one British Indian and captured others. This alerted the British to the Wahhabi ruler Faisal’s rising power, and they promised to send Thuwayni arms to attack Buraimi and to blockade the Hasa coast. All three plans were for naught. The naval action fizzled because the Wahhabis preemptively struck Oman’s Batinah coast, disrupting trade and driving Indian merchants into the sea, at least one of whom drowned. Meanwhile, the two eighteen-pound guns the British granted to Thuwayni were impossible to transport to Buraimi. Even if Thuwayni’s forces had moved the guns, no one knew how to fire them.⁶⁴ The arms, like the allies who supplied them, were more a burden than a help.

Thuwayni had no room to maneuver and no way to buy time. A serendipitous death in Nejd and unexpected British vigor created a short-lived windfall for Thuwayni in 1865 and early 1866. In the midst of the British demands for restitution from Faisal, the Wahhabi emir, for the attacks on British subjects, the Wahhabi leader died unexpectedly. The British agent Pelly, recently reassigned from Zanzibar, insisted on shelling the Wahhabi ports without waiting for a response from the new emir. Pelly then trained his sights on Wahhabi sympathizers in Thuwayni’s territory and demanded payment from the Janabah sheikhs near Sur who had assisted in the previous year’s attack. The sheikhs plead for more time to raise the money—their dhows were trading in the gulf—but Pelly opened fire upon arrival. His forces destroyed the Janabah forts and continued to Sur the next day and demolished all the boats in the creek.⁶⁵

The fortuitous news of his rival’s death and the meaningful assistance of a capricious ally likely had not yet reached Thuwayni in Suhar on February 13, 1866. He probably felt that his circumstances left much to be desired. His brother was still conniving against him in Zanzibar, Azzan bin Qays in al-Rustaq had allied with his Ibadi detractors, the Wahhabi supported his close enemies, and the British interventions had been bungled. And yet, there was another unsuspected threat. In the night, Thuwayni was killed by his son Salim. Salim bin Thuwayni murdered his father as part of a plot backed by the Wahhabi and endorsed by Thuwayni’s Omani rivals, the Ibadi leaders and Azzan bin Qays.⁶⁶ The post-Canning circumstances had pinned Thuwayni into an untenable position, and his murder inaugurated a period of greater political and economic fragility in Oman.

SALIM BIN THUWAYNI, 1866 TO 1868

In February 1866, Salim declared himself sultan. Thuwayni’s struggles had shown the challenges of ruling post-Canning Oman, and although Salim enjoyed short-lived support from Azzan bin Qays and his allies, the British regarded the young sultan with deep suspicion, and he faced a potent rival, his uncle Turki bin Said. Salim immediately imprisoned Turki in Suhar, but it was his own unsavory route to power and shaky legitimacy that most undermined his authority. He lacked too many things: access to wealth and the support of the commercial classes; wide acceptance from both the interior tribes and the Ibadi scholarly elite; and the acquiescence of British officials in the gulf. Turki also remained an active threat and was freed from prison six months later.

Salim’s ascension was another blow to the battered economy of Oman. Political machinations influenced trade and economy in Muscat and the Arabian interior. When news of the palace coup reached the Indian merchants in Muscat and in Muttrah, they boarded boats in the harbor to escape any threat of violence. Pelly ordered their property to be embarked for good measure.⁶⁷ Disturbances like this one in Muscat and the previous Wahhabi attacks in Sur and Saham undermined the local and regional economies in which Kutchi and Khoja merchants increasingly played an important role. Muscat’s economy unraveled in the five years following Salim’s ascent to power. This was a result of the dynamic political (and religious) order and dissent within the merchant communities. Indeed, while the sultan’s mobility was constrained by the Canning Award, the confluence of events after 1866 created favorable conditions for everyday Omanis to emigrate. The decline in commerce and the merchant population in Muscat contributed to the rise of Zanzibar as a commercial center.

Turki bin Said was also on the move. Having slipped his captors, he fled to the gulf in September 1866 to shore up support. His mobility was a strength. The threat of attack on Muscat made rumors fly, and the Bombay government authorized Pelly to take action in “an extraordinary crisis.”⁶⁸ In April 1867, Turki left Dubai, where he enjoyed the support of the sheikh but had failed to woo the new Wahhabi emir, and attacked Suhar. Pelly warned both Turki and the sheikh of Dubai that they were playing a dangerous game, and he sent warships to Dubai to back up his complaint. Turki lost his position there but, with Wahhabi assistance, he retreated to the Buraimi oasis.⁶⁹ Turki reorganized and successfully captured Muttrah, the commercial port that controlled access to Muscat.

When Salim bin Thuwayni was unable to dislodge Turki, he sought British intervention. Pelly steamed to Muttrah and took a page from Said bin Sultan’s mobile governance. He convinced Turki to retire to Bombay, where he would receive a monthly stipend of six hundred dollars, as long as he remained in British India. Bombay was once again a site of exile for one of Said bin Sultan’s sons. Turki’s exile bought Salim some time, though his days as a sultan were numbered.

THE IMAMATE, 1868 TO 1871

Salim’s reckoning with his erstwhile Ibadi allies occurred in 1868. They rallied tribal levies, expelled Salim from Muscat, and held the first imamate election of the nineteenth century. They elected Azzan bin Qays al-Busaidi, Thuwayni’s rival, as imam. This signaled a victory for the Ibadi activists of the interior over the branch of the Busaidi clan that had moved to Muscat in the 1780s and staked its future on the gulf and Indian Ocean trade. For Salim’s enemies, achieving the Ibadi ideal had been a rallying point, but their unity did not last. The disturbed economy was a major factor. With the already declining revenues that had begun with the diminution of trade in Salim’s reign, the imamate faced stark budget shortfalls. They chose to augment the state treasury by confiscating the property of those who were enemies of the state, especially the deposed Busaidis and their allies⁷⁰ They defended this with a slim legal justification under Ibadi ideals, but some supporters regarded it as immoral, and tribal leaders gradually withdrew their support from the regime.⁷¹

Salim bin Thuwayni also demonstrated, in defeat, the importance of mobility and access to capital in controlling Oman. After his overthrow, Salim fled to Bandar Abbas and tried to rally supporters in Suhar and the northern region of the country to challenge Muscat.⁷² He had very little money and very little success. Enlisting supporters required direct payments or at least the promise of financial reward. Salim had overborrowed from his creditors, and his few supporters incurred “extravagant expenses.” This limited his mobility within the gulf, and in early 1869 it seemed he would be stuck in Dubai.⁷³ He forged an allegiance with the Wahhabi state and backed their incursion into Suhar in the middle of 1869.⁷⁴ Lacking sufficient capital to assure the loyalty of supporters, however, Salim was ultimately unsuccessful. He spent the rest of his life in the Persian Gulf and the western Indian Ocean in fruitless attempts to reclaim power in Muscat.

With the defeat of Salim and the rise of the imamate, Turki’s retirement in India did not go as planned. When news reached Turki that the imamate had failed to consolidate its hold on the country, he saw his opening. In Bombay, however, he lacked the funds to mount an effective challenge. His only source of income was his subsidy of $600 per month, which he believed was meant to support his family and was predicated “on the condition that, and so long as, he [Turki] shall reside in British India, or such other place as the British Govent. may allot to him, without molestation of the Muscat territory.”⁷⁵ Such conditions echoed the Canning Award’s constraints on the sultans of Muscat and Zanzibar, and Turki faced a choice between his family and his future.

Turki and Exile in Bombay, 1867 to 1870

In August 1870, Venayek Wassoodew, the Oriental Translator to the Government of Bombay, reported on an unusual case. He had been asked to investigate a foreign family living in Bombay, and found two Abyssinian women living with four young children. One of the women was the children’s mother, and one was their paternal grandmother. The household also contained a retinue of fifteen servants. Although this number of dependents suggested a wealthy family, Mr. Wassoodew was asked to inquire because the government had heard for some months that this family was “in great pecuniary distress.”⁷⁶ This turned out to be true, and Wassoodew reported that the family members were in “an actual state of starvation.”⁷⁷

While there were many starving individuals in booming, industrial Bombay in 1870, one would not expect these to include the grandchildren of the illustrious Seyyid Said bin Sultan bin Imam Ahmad al-Busaidi. Yet, indeed, these were the family and followers of Turki bin Said. They were starving in Bombay while Turki was trying to reclaim Muscat and reestablish his father’s line as the rulers of the country. To take advantage of unfolding circumstances since 1866, Turki had moved between the coast and the interior of Oman, between Oman and the gulf, back to Oman, and into exile in Bombay. He later negotiated an exit from Bombay, and, with financing from Zanzibar, a return to Oman.

When Turki arrived in Bombay in 1867, he was an outsider. He noticed this most pointedly when he tried to raise funds or secure credit, the lifeblood of Indian Ocean mobility. He complained to the governor of Bombay that he was “a poor stranger,” untrusted and unable to secure a loan.⁷⁸ An Arabic promissory note in the Zanzibar archive shows that Turki secured a loan from the firm of Jairam Shivji for four thousand rupees in 1868, but other sources of credit were fleeting.⁷⁹ Indeed, based on his experience in his father’s administration as a governor in Suhar, he understood where he might find a creditor. In his few years in Bombay, Turki became quite knowledgeable about the customs department. On the one hand, he sought to import personal goods from the Persian Gulf duty-free.⁸⁰ On the other hand, he recognized the power of that office to control the flow of goods, and he asked that the customs office impound the Arabian horses that his main rival, Imam Azzan bin Qays, had exported from Oman.⁸¹

Lacking access to credit elsewhere, Turki beseeched the Bombay government to grant him $80,000 of the Zanzibar subsidy that was supposed to be given to the sultan of Oman. Thus, Turki asserted himself as the legitimate head of state in Muscat.⁸² While his letters proclaimed his legitimacy as a ruler, they also emphasized his fealty to and reliance on the government of Bombay. By early February 1870, Turki was eager to reenter the contest for Muscat. He explained that he would leave Bombay soon for Oman, but that he did so with the governor’s permission. He invoked the allegiance the British had with his father and stated explicitly that he was “a guest and someone who yields obedience to Government.”⁸³ As with his brothers, Turki’s mobility was compromised by entanglements with British officialdom.

As Turki made plans to invade Muscat, he had to balance his relationship with Bombay officials, his access to other forms of credit, and his ability to move across the Arabian Sea and in the gulf. In March 1870, Turki departed to challenge Azzan bin Qays in Oman, and mistakenly assumed that his allowance would continue to support his household in Bombay.⁸⁴ Turki made no other provisions to maintain his household.⁸⁵

Before he realized what had happened to his relatives, Turki’s two greatest challenges in his campaign were credit and mobility. Bombay officials undermined his efforts to return to the gulf. When he telegraphed to Gwadar, an Omani outpost between Persia and India, in March 1870 to try to raise his allies there, the Assistant Political Agent in Gwadar forbade Turki from embarking armed men from that port.⁸⁶ In the following months, Turki bounced around the gulf, trying to amass the human and financial resources to attack the imamate. On May 10, 1870, he wrote from Dubai to secure a loan from the Bombay government. He knew he would not persuade the sheikh of Abu Dhabi to support him, and he assumed incorrectly that the Wahhabi emir might back him.⁸⁷

By late June, Turki’s efforts flagged in Bandar Abbas, not because of military or political news from Oman, but because of personal news from Bombay. He learned that his stipend had been discontinued and that his household was destitute. He was deeply disappointed with the Bombay government because his family was under its protection. They lived in a government-owned residence. Turki’s distress made it impossible for him to conduct the business at hand. “I now labor under two anxieties. . . . ​One about myself personally and the other about my children.” Just as his brother Hilal’s wives and children had been stranded in Mecca some thirty years before, Turki’s family’s plight underscores the gendered nature of mobility in this period, especially within elite households. Turki had miscalculated. If he had known that the stipend would be discontinued, he said that he would have sent his family to Zanzibar before he left Bombay.⁸⁸ In these regrets, Turki sees clearly the new geography of power that had emerged in the western Indian Ocean in the nineteenth century for contesting authority in the Omani states. Muscat and Zanzibar were still the poles, but Bombay had become an essential meridian.

In the last months of 1870, Turki’s twin anxieties dissipated. Wassoodew’s desperate reports led to an emergency grant of one thousand rupees from the Bombay government for Turki’s dependents. Meanwhile, in the gulf, Turki gathered followers from Oman and financial resources from Zanzibar. He retook Muscat in 1871, overthrew the imamate, and gained British recognition. In defeating the imamate, however, Turki’s actions echoed Majid’s after the 1859 rebellion. Majid let his al-Harthi enemies be murdered in a Lamu prison, and Turki was party to the execution of a key figure in the imamate, Said bin Khalfan al-Khalili, and Khalili’s son. This earned him deep enmity from Ibadi leaders, a problem that would plague his seventeen-year rule.

* * *

Although Turki bin Said may be among the least heralded of the Busaidi rulers of Oman and Zanzibar, his accession and reign were key to the continuation of the Busaidi dynasty. When Turki bin Said reclaimed his father’s Arabian dominions in 1871, he reestablished the Said bin Sultan’s line in the wake of a patricide and the subsequent Ibadi-backed coup. He did not come to power as his father did, deftly negotiating the politics of Oman and its interior. Turki’s rise depended on his ability to move in the gulf and the western Indian Ocean and his use of the overlapping networks of wealth, clientship, and imperial power in this broader world. Specifically, Turki strategized his return and augmented his alliances with interior tribes through money raised in Zanzibar’s credit markets and through delicate negotiations for British support, both in Bombay and in the gulf.

SULTANS AT SEA

When Seyyid Said bin Sultan died at sea in 1856 he governed a dispersed realm in Africa and Arabia, with outposts in the Persian Gulf and the Makran Coast. His son Barghash’s ill-fated attempt to smuggle the body ashore in Zanzibar foretold a decade and a half of struggle among Said’s heirs. The politics of Oman were no longer disputes and alliances between port cities and oasis towns. Seyyid Said’s mobile form of governance had redrawn the map of state power. He did this at the same time that growing British influence and the industrialization of western India’s biggest port made London and Bombay new nodes in circuits of Omani power. From the 1840s, Seyyid Said’s sons visited these new junctions as they attempted to claim portions of their father’s realm for themselves. After Said’s death, British intervention made Oman and Zanzibar separate sultanates. Internal dissent and external threats challenged Thuwayni in Oman more than they did Majid in Zanzibar. In the 1860s, while Majid’s visit to Bombay helped launch a vision for his own new settlement, Dar es Salaam, on the Swahili coast, Thuwayni in Muscat was hemmed in by regional and intimate enemies. In the wake of his death, two short-lived regimes followed. By the early 1870s, however, Turki and Barghash, younger brothers initially shut out in succession disputes, had each returned from an exile in Bombay to rule in Muscat and Zanzibar, respectively. While nominal British power in the Indian Ocean mediated their exiles and their eventual accessions, subsequent Busaidi rulers were much less mobile, or perhaps, more aptly, they were much less able to chart their own course in establishing or disputing sovereignty.