Note on Terms, Translation, and Transliteration
Introduction. Temporizing across the Indian Ocean
Chapter 1. Drought and New Mobilities in the Omani Interior
Chapter 2. The Customs Master and Customs of Credit in Zanzibar
Chapter 3. Sultans at Sea: Mobility and the Omani States
Chapter 4. Halwa and Identity in the Western Indian Ocean World
Chapter 5. Tippu Tip’s Kin, from Oman to the Eastern Congo
Chapter 6. Freed Slaves: Manumission and Mobility before 1873
Chapter 7. Acts for Consuls and Consular Acts: Documents, Manumission, and Ocean Travel after 1873
Chapter 8. A Dhow on Lake Victoria
Illustrations
FIGURES
0.1. Juma bin Salim’s acknowledgment of ivory debt, 1869
0.2. Juma Merikani’s house in the Congo, 1870s
2.1. Zanzibar waterfront, 1847
4.1. Thani bin Amir’s house in Kazeh, late 1850s
4.2. Swahili man in Omani Arabic dress, 19th ce
4.3. Mwinyi Kidogo, 1850s
5.1. Muhammad bin Said al-Murjebi and Hamed bin Muhammad al-Murjebi at Stanley Falls, 1888
5.2. Women of Rumaliza’s houshold in Ujiji, 1890
7.1. Sultan Barghash bin Said al-Busaidi, 1875
7.2. Stopping a slave ship and examing her papers, 1880s
8.1. Building the first dhow on Lake Victoria, 1877
9.1. Approaching Muscat from the interior, 1890s
9.2. Transaction in Zanzibar that temporarily sold the rights to a property in Sharqiya, Oman, 1877
9.3. Inside the gates of Muscat, 1890s
10.1. The Barwani family tree, 2000
MAPS
0.1. The western Indian Ocean in the nineteenth century
1.1. Oman and its surrounding regions
5.1. Eastern and Central Africa in the age of Tippu Tip
6.1. Itineraries of manumission
8.1. Lake Victoria region
9.1. Salih bin Ali al-Harthi’s Arabia and Africa
Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK IS MY own portfolio of debts, and I would like to acknowledge the range of creditors and patrons who have made my own mobility and modest success possible. The financial support of a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, the Mathy Junior Faculty Fellowship from George Mason University (GMU), and small grants from the Department of History and Art History at GMU and the Department of History at Ohio State University made the research and writing of this book possible. A subvention grant from the Arts and Humanities division of OSU’s College of Arts and Sciences supported the publication. I am grateful to the librarians and archivists who maintain important collections in Tanzania, Oman, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Zanzibar National Archives are at the center of this book, and I am grateful to the staff and leadership there who maintain this wonderful collection. The magic of libraries—Thompson Library at Ohio State, Fenwick Library at GMU, and Sterling Library at Yale—and their assorted book-sharing consortia have made it possible to complete the research. Several people have provided me with research assistance at various stages of this project, and I am grateful for their aid: Mohamed Abdou, Sylvia Alexander, Pearl Harris-Scott, Steve Harris-Scott, Melvin C. S. Jenkins, Hamisi Ally Jumalhey, and Matthew Smith Miller. Likewise, Rob Squires was a patient cartographer.
An early version of chapter 6 was published as “Deeds of Freed Slaves: Manumission and Economic and Social Mobility in Pre-Abolition Zanzibar,” in Indian Ocean Slavery in the Age of Abolition, eds. Robert W. Harms, Bernard K. Freamon and David W. Blight, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013): 162–179. An earlier version of one section of chapter 4 originally appeared as “Being Baysar: (In)flexible Identities in East Africa” in The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 5 (Fall 2005): 34–42.
For the opportunity to present and refine my work I am grateful to Gwyn Campbell and his crew at the Indian Ocean World Centre in Montreal; to Kai Kresse and Edward Simpson at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin; to Pier Larson and the African Studies colloquium at Johns Hopkins; to Hans Gaube, Michaela Hoffmann-Ruf, and Abdulrahman Al-Salimi for inviting me to their Ibadi
