Buying Time. Thomas F. McDow
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documents acknowledge rights (as in the right to collect a debt). Legal scholars consider the people making these declarations to be doing so unilaterally. Hence, these acknowledgments, if properly witnessed, are irrevocable. Any person making an iqrār must have reached the age of puberty and be of sound mind. Slaves could theoretically make iqrār, although there were some exceptions to this. If the declaration had been properly witnessed, the person who made it could not repudiate it, and only in a few cases did grounds exist to invalidate them. An iqrār written under duress was considered invalid, for instance, and each school of Islamic law has its own strict rules to determine the acceptability of iqrār created when the declarer is near death. Recognition of rights granted in an iqrār can be extinguished if the beneficiary of the acknowledgment refuses to accept the recognition.
The generic formula for iqrār includes the name of the person acknowledging the obligation, the beneficiary, the object of acknowledgment, the terms of payment, the date, and the signature of witnesses.54 The formula demands a degree of specificity to ensure the validity of the document and to avoid ambiguity. After the initial verb expressing intention, a clause identifies the declarant (al-muqirr, the acknowledger) and the person to whom the rights are given (al-muqarr lahu; the “acknowledged,” or the one to whom something is acknowledged).
In the example above, Said bin ‘Umar bin Muhammad bin Salim al-Kharūsi acknowledged his debt to Wala bin Banji al-Hindi. Manuals of instruction make clear that the names of both the declarant and the person “acknowledged” should include their personal names (Said and Wala, respectively); the names of their fathers (‘Umar and Banji); the names of their grandfathers (Muhammad, for the former); and the nisba (clan name or descriptive adjective: al-Kharūsi—of the Kharūsi clan—and al-Banyani—the Banyan) or laqab (nickname), which are further means of identifying individuals. This degree of specificity makes the documents in Zanzibar especially useful, because connections among members of the same families and clans can be made.
To return to the exchange in the Introduction, Juma Merikani was identified by his whole name, Juma bin Salim bin Mubarak bin Abdullah, which traces not only his patrilineal genealogy to the name of his great-grandfather, but also includes his clan name, al-Bakri, and a nisba of origin, al-Nizwi. This information linked him to the interior Omani town of Nizwa, the site of the drought in the 1840s that had compelled many families to emigrate. Ladha Damji, the person to whom he owed the ivory, was identified in the document as Ladha bin Damha al-Baniani.55 After the naming clauses, the object of the acknowledgment (al-muqarr bihi) must be detailed in full. Because of the flexible nature of the iqrār, the object might be the price of something for sale, the sum of a debt, or the weight of ivory. For example, the document of Said bin ‘Umar al-Kharusi states the good (ivory); its quality (pure); its unit of measure (frasila, a unit of thirty-five pounds); the number of that unit (one hundred twenty); and the basis for the unit of measure (the Zanzibar frasila).
The document should include description of how payment is to be made. In the case of debt, the debtor should clarify his ability to pay in the future. Liabilities for someone pledging or guaranteeing on the behalf of the acknowledger should also be stated. The formula for marking calendar dates follows, and the witnessing statements come at the end. The witnesses are the key to making the document legitimate, and the witnessing formula should be free of ambiguity. The date of the testimony is included, and the witnesses must specify whether or not they wrote it in their own hand. Witnesses attest to the declarations and their names are included in the document. In our example, the attestation was given by the author of the document (Humūd bin Said bin Salim al-Fera’i) and it was endorsed by the sultan (Barghash bin Said al-Busaidi).
The Zanzibar archives contain hundreds of writings (waraqa), and these illustrate microeconomic transactions based on relationships, kinship, and small-scale commerce. These small interactions collectively permit us to assess the macroeconomic trade system that linked Oman and the Indian Ocean to Zanzibar and the East African interior. In East Africa, these deeds provided people in the 1840s with new ways to conduct financial relations over long distances.
MORTGAGES AND PLEDGES OF PROPERTY
More sophisticated iqrār functioned as mortgages, providing credit against fixed assets. Two types of credit-generating transactions are found in the Zanzibar archives. The first was a rahnan maqbudan (
For example, Muhammad bin Rashid bin Ahmed al-Riyami sold his farm in Pemba through a time sale for one year to Gopal Takarsi for MT$700. During that same year, he agreed to rent the farm from Gopal for MT$175 per annum.58 Muhammad bin Rashid was permitted to buy back the farm for the original price of MT$700. At the end of the year, he would also have to pay the rent, meaning he would have paid a total of MT$875 to redeem his property. Through arrangements like this, many Arabs in Zanzibar and elsewhere forfeited property.
Scholars have viewed this rent as a form of interest. Consequently, these sales have been condemned by legal purists for their “very questionable orthodoxy,” given the Islamic prohibitions of interest and speculation.59 Others accepted the practices out of necessity. Islamic judges (qadis) in Zanzibar ruled that these kinds of sales were legal “to enable persons needing money to obtain credit without incurring the possible guilt of dealing in transactions by way of interest.”60 Thus, these methods of conducting business allowed observant Muslims to stay (narrowly) within Islamic prohibition on interest and speculation.
Time sales gave anyone who had property the ability to raise cash. Although the creditors resided in Zanzibar and operated their businesses from there, they extended credit to property owners in many directions. In Oman, where many Arabs relied on date farming and attenuated irrigation channels for their income, this form of mortgage was already established. Arabs in Oman sold houses and date trees to secure loans to cover the lean period between harvests.61 This practice moved to Zanzibar with the Arab migrants who followed Said bin Sultan when he shifted the capital in 1832. Arabs who retained property in Oman were able to use it to capitalize their ventures in Zanzibar.
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While Jairam Shivji was the apex creditor, the relationships of debtors and creditors crossed social and ethnic boundaries, forming the basis of Zanzibar’s cosmopolitan culture. Arabic business contracts provide new insights into the temporal and spatial aspects of debt and credit and the tension between obligation and opportunity. Webs of indebtedness linked Zanzibar, the African interior, and Oman, creating the common commercial culture of the western Indian Ocean. Historian Philip Curtin has argued that the development of common commercial culture reduced the need for brokers to serve as intermediaries between groups.62 The mechanisms of credit and debt (especially Arabic-language contracts) allowed individuals to conduct business across racial, ethnic, and confessional lines and across the long distances of the Indian Ocean and its continental interiors. By the 1840s, Zanzibar was emerging as an important financial center, a place where deals were struck, credit advanced, and repayment, eventually, was due. These contracts derive from a long history of Islamic legal practice and provide an intimate view of the business and societal connections emanating from Zanzibar. They also provide unusual insight into the position of freed slaves and the microeconomics of the ivory trade.
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