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
