(and circulation) from Arabia to East Africa, despite the political division of the territories in 1861. Salih bin Ali was preceded in death by his former ally Barghash, the sultan of Zanzibar (r. 1870–88), and by his bête noir Turki, the sultan of Muscat (r. 1871–88). The death of these two sultans marked a turning point in the western Indian Ocean: European hegemony resulted in the partition of East Africa and an unofficial protectorate in Oman. An epilogue connects these nineteenth-century events to the present, including twentieth-century Omani migration; the violent revolution in Zanzibar in 1964, which killed and expelled thousands of Arabs; the 1970 palace coup in Oman, which paved the way for East African Arabs to “return” to the homeland of the predecessors; and the place of these so-called Zanzibaris in modern Oman.
* * *
When Juma bin Salim wrote his two-year ivory contract with Ladha Damji in Zanzibar in 1869, he identified himself by genealogy and origin. He included his tribal name, al-Bakri, and appended a signifier of his place of origin, Nizwa, one of the most important cities in the eastern Arabian interior. The circumstances in Oman and Nizwa that thrust Juma bin Salim out into the Indian Ocean, into debt, and into the heart of Africa begin our story.
1
Drought and New Mobilities in the Omani Interior
“He who eats her halwa must [also]
patiently endure her misfortune”
“If fortune does not obey you, follow it so
that you may become its companion.”
—Nineteenth-Century Omani Proverbs
IN THE 1840S, Nizwa, one of the largest and most important towns in the Omani interior, and its environs were struck by a severe drought. This drought lasted for more than five years, disrupted the normal patterns of life, and resulted in mass emigration. The festival (’eid al-adha) marking the culmination of the Hajj in 1845 reflected the impact of this environmental crisis. Because of the drought, Nizwans were unable to celebrate in their normal manner. The eighty-foot-tall fort at the center of Nizwa commanded a view of what had been, in more prosperous times, extensive date groves. As a meeting place of four streams, Nizwa was generally well watered, and, consequently, its citizens were well off. Writing forty years after the drought, S. B. Miles noted that Nizwa surpassed “all the towns of Oman in its supply of water, natural wealth, and the industry of its inhabitants.”1 Before the drought in the 1840s, the area’s agriculture supported a population whose size was second only to Muscat, and its industry included “famous and extensive” textile and embroidery works. Nizwa grew cotton and indigo, and women spun and men worked looms to produce blue cotton goods.2 Nizwa was also a religious capital, known as bayḍat al-Islam, the core—literally, “egg”—of Islam, for its historical role in maintaining the Ibadi Imamate.3 The people of Nizwa prayed and studied in three hundred mosques.
During the December 1845 festival (’eid), however, something was amiss. A procession of drummers and horn players led cheering men to the central square for mock fighting with swords, spears, and matchlocks. Women watched the festivities from the rooftops. But the normal celebrations lacked something important. The ’eid al-Adha celebrations of the Hejira year 1261 went on for a typical three days, but the circumstances—namely, the five years of drought—meant that anxiety plagued people from every social class. With the central market closed and commerce suspended, adults worried about rain. Would this be the year? More immediately, those who anticipated the delectable sweetmeats for which Nizwa was famous felt the sting of the drought. There was no halwa. None of the sweet delicacies were procurable. And it was not simply a question of obtaining the ingredients. Many families had left Nizwa because of the drought and mysteriously, the departed included all of the confectioners.4 The out-migration of confectioners, who were people of humble status, offers new clues on the mobility and circulation of people within Arabia and beyond.
FIGURE 1.1. Nizwa fort, silent witness to the 1840s drought. Percy Cox took this photograph in 1901. “Some Excursions in Oman,” Geographical Journal 66, no. 3 (September 1925).
The long drought and the loss of viable agricultural lands around Nizwa caused people to flee. While some moved to places in the interior or to the coastal towns of Oman, others went farther afield. One Nizwan became an important property broker in Zanzibar. Juma bin Salim al-Bakri, whose story was introduced earlier, amassed huge ivory holdings at his headquarters in the eastern Congo. And, fifteen years after the halwa-free Hajj festivities, a confectioner who had traveled through Muscat to East Africa became a trade agent and “big man” in the most important trading depot in central Africa. Thus, in that drought-stricken festival in 1845, while the men of Nizwa sipped coffee in the evening and listened to a poet sing his verses, they were likely worrying about the ruin of the whole province. They probably could not have imagined how far the drought would compel their neighbors and countrymen to travel.
* * *
This chapter examines eastern Arabia in the early nineteenth century to explain the environmental, social, and political conditions that prompted Arab migration to East Africa. The Omani ruler Seyyid Said bin Sultan al-Busaidi’s reasons for shifting his capital to Zanzibar in 1832 were financial and geostrategic, but what motivated others?5 Despite the important connections, many histories focused on East Africa have taken Arab migration for granted and overlooked push factors.6 Surprisingly, many of the Arab migrants who traveled to Africa in the nineteenth century were people of modest means from interior towns, not wealthy traders from port cities. Rather than neglect the Omani interior, this chapter focuses on the patterns of circulation that connected Arabian oasis towns like Nizwa to far-off Zanzibar and new settlements in eastern and central Africa.
This story necessarily begins with the underlying geographical and environmental factors that shaped human settlements in interior Oman and ends with threats that periodically upset these settlements. The management of water shaped Omani settlement patterns, and this chapter takes up the technological adaptations and religious traditions that addressed environmental limitations. Scholarly approaches that have presupposed a false dichotomy between static interior societies and enterprising coastal peoples have misread Omani history and misunderstood the processes that linked the interior regions of Arabia and Africa. Seyyid Said bin Sultan’s activity in the Indian Ocean, and his outposts in Africa in particular, renewed circuits of travel and created new opportunities. Thus, when Arabs in Oman were faced with progressively more difficult choices about how to handle constricting droughts or devastating floods, a new temporizing strategy—decamping to Africa—was open to them.
MAP 1.1. Oman and its surrounding regions
GEOGRAPHY
Oman’s peculiar geography has made it both relatively isolated from the Arabian Peninsula and well connected to maritime networks. The region’s geography has created unusual patterns of rainfall and runoff, and humans have built irrigated settlements that are well adapted to these arid, rugged conditions. Oman’s seemingly contradictory forces of isolation and integration have
