formerly enslaved people often gained property as part of the manumission process, and they either used it for cash or to finance trading ventures into the interior.
From the 1820s, Omani rule replaced or co-opted Swahili elites in Zanzibar on the East African coast, and two documents from this period help understand this process. Consider the two sales of shambas in the 1840s. One of the sellers was a member of the Swahili elite identified as Diwan Makambi (or Mwekambi) Juma bin Ahmad. Both Diwan and Makambi are honorifics here. In 1847, he sold a shamba that belonged to his wife Binti Bana (Bwana) Waziri al-Mufazii.27 Her nisba, al-Mufazii, marks her as a member of a patrician Swahili family, and it suggests origins in Faza, in the Lamu archipelago. Her father might have been Bwana Waziri, a ruler of Pate, also near Lamu, in the 1820s. During local disputes, Bwana Waziri made an alliance with Seyyid Said bin Sultan, the great Omani ruler, while his enemies called on the Mazruis in Mombasa. Bwana Waziri’s alliance with Seyyid Said was part of an elaborate contest with the Mazruis that gave Seyyid Said a foothold on the coast.28
Mwekambi Juma, Binti Bwana Waziri’s husband, represented her in the sale. He was born in Zanzibar, but he became the Diwan (ruler) of the coastal town of Saadani on the African mainland. He also led caravans to the interior.29 When Mwekambi Juma first reached Ugogo, several hundred miles from the coast, the local residents had never seen anyone as fat as he was, and they assumed he had extraordinary rainmaking powers. He denied this and refused to make rain for them. As the story goes, if it had not been for some opportune showers that fell, he would have faced certain death. Such conflicts were not uncommon for him. Around the time he sold his wife’s farm, Juma led an expedition against the Wadoe, a group of troublesome neighbors to the residents of Saadani.30 Whether the sale of his wife’s property to the Zanzibar customs master for $50 paid off a debt or helped to support a trading expedition, a military conquest, or his rule in Saadani, Mwekambi Juma’s activities were indicative of the changes in mobility and of the scale of trade that were taking place in East Africa.
A second aspect of this story also points to changes under Omani rule when newly arrived Omanis threatened the place of Swahili patricians. Bwana Heri bin Juma al-Mafazii, Mwekambi Juma’s son, was a trader and the Diwan of Saadani for at least twenty years. He maintained strong connections in the interior, and he was the only non-Omani governor on the Swahili coast during a late 1880s uprising that challenged the ruling Arabs and their German allies. This later event marked the onset of formal European colonialism in East Africa. Historian Jonathon Glassman has argued that Bwana Heri’s longevity and political savvy were the result of his “ability to straddle two worlds, the world of the hinterland, still dominated by values associated with village agriculture, and the world of the coastal towns, where new values were rapidly being forged in the context of expanding international commerce.”31 The interactions between these two worlds accelerated in the second half of the nineteenth century, but these processes had started more than a generation before. Bwana Heri’s parents had used connections to the Indian Ocean world through Zanzibar to convert property into cash.
The new presence of Omani rulers displaced indigenous people in Zanzibar. The second notable sale from the 1840s includes someone from among the WaTumbatu, one of Zanzibar’s indigenous groups. The identification on the sale of his shamba to Jairam Shivji in 1845 demonstrates both his rootedness and his mobility. His name was written Maqame bin Māsibu bin A‘ami of Tumbatu and his title was Serang.32 Tumbatu, a prominent island on Zanzibar’s northwest side, was one of the two most important trading towns and ports on Zanzibar before 1500.33 When Seyyid Said and his followers moved to Zanzibar, their demand for land put pressure on the indigenous inhabitants.
The WaTumbatu and the WaHadimu were the two groups who lived in Zanzibar and its outlying islets before the arrival of the Arabs. Through the middle of the nineteenth century, they had their own ruler, known as the Mwinyi Mkuu. When Burton visited Tumbatu in 1858, he said the people of Tumbatu were of a new race, and he was “now beyond Semítico-Abyssinian centres.” He noted that the Omani Arabs called the people of Tumbatu “Makhádim—helots or serviles,” and the name Hadimu shares a root with the Arabic word for servant.34 In 1841, Zanzibar’s British agent explained to his superiors in Bombay about the Omani Arab view of the indigenous inhabitants: “The whole of the Native inhabitants of the Islands of Zanzibar and Pemba are considered by the subjects of His Highness as slaves.” When new arrivals were given land by the sultan or bought land from other Arabs, the land’s inhabitants became slaves who were expected to work for the landowner and to provide their own subsistence. These slaves were expected to expand the clove production of the island.35 Although Hamerton’s account is likely exaggerated, the inhabitants of Zanzibar definitely faced difficulties as the island’s property regime changed. As historian C. S. Nicholls notes, the effects of the Arab arrival on the Hadimu and Tumbatu are difficult to measure. Some people may have altered their ways of life; some may have changed where they lived. One outcome was clear: by the second half of the nineteenth century, many Hadimu no longer lived in the parts of Zanzibar that had the best soil. Some had moved east and south.36
The example of Serang Maqame, however, suggests a different kind of mobility. Serangs have been alternately described as crew leaders, indigenous boatswains, petty officers, and “native bosses” in the Indian Ocean. The root of the word is from Malay. Serangs oversaw the maritime workers known as lascars, and serangs were vital to the functioning of the ship and the organization of the multiethnic crews of the Indian Ocean.37 The men of Tumbatu had reputations as skillful pilots and good seamen.38 With the advent of steamships, the work crews from the age of sail were incorporated into a highly regulated labor regime, controlled by a set of British laws called the Asiatic Articles. By 1855, as historian Janet Ewald notes, British merchant ships employed as many as twelve thousand lascars under the Asiatic Articles, 60 percent of whom were from India.39 Serangs oversaw all these men and kept a certain kind of rough order onboard. As a serang, Maqame would have been a skilled negotiator, an experienced traveler, and a comfortable visitor in many ports. Because of this, Maqame represents an unusual category—the indigenous cosmopolitan—and his land sale in 1845 implies a strategy of mobility in the face of increasing land pressure on the WaTumbatu and WaHadimu. His strategy may have been possible because of his relatively high status in the maritime world of the western Indian Ocean.
Sales of property and credit derived from mortgage-like arrangements were crucial to accessing mobility across the western Indian Ocean. Two more of Jairam Shivji’s financial deals in the 1840s illustrate this point. Both arrangements involve Ali Muhammad al-Busaidi, the man who sold the shamba with the slaves attached. In July 1845, a month after selling his shamba, Ali bin Muhammad al-Busaidi sold his house in Zanzibar and the adjoining property to Jairam Shivji for $400. On the day he sold his house, he agreed to rent it from Jairam Shivji for $40 per year. Ali bin Muhammad’s actions, written in two documents, demonstrate a business logic that challenged Islam ideals. They also provide an important window into Zanzibar society at that time.
The deed of transaction makes clear that this mud and mortar house and the adjacent land were surrounded by property owned by prominent individuals. Jairam Shivji already owned the house to the west. To the north was the house of Humud bin Sayf bin Msellem, a young clove grower who would later become a close advisor to two sultans. The Banyan Hari, presumably a merchant, owned the property to the east. In the south was empty land that belonged to Sulayman bin Hamed al-Busaidi, the long-standing governor of Zanzibar, a large landowner, and one of the most powerful men in East Africa.40 Other bordering properties belonged to the Indian Hima, whose son would become a prominent landlord.
Why would someone sell a house and rent it back? Such a maneuver allowed the property owner to receive cash (in this case, $400) and then pay a portion of this over time. In Ali bin Muhammad’s arrangement, he would have paid the value of the house in rent after ten years. Arrangements like this allowed those with fixed property to capitalize their assets. By completing two separate transactions with two different contracts, one also avoided the
