Buying Time. Thomas F. McDow
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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 circumstances.20 Elite men had much more mobility than women during this period, and stranded relatives became a common theme of the Busaidi sovereigns and mobile rule in general. From Lamu, Hilal made his way to Aden and then to Mecca to rejoin his family. Hilal died there in June 1851, after which his family moved to Muscat.21 By happenstance, Said bin Sultan and Hamerton were both in Muscat when Hilal’s family arrived. The British official lectured Su’ud, one of Hilal’s older sons, on the importance of complying with his grandfather’s wishes.22 Perhaps the better lesson for Su’ud was that mobility alone was not a path to power. When Hilal’s younger brothers had become governors—Thuwayni in Muscat and Majid in Zanzibar—they enjoyed their father’s financial support. Without an allowance or access to credit, certain positions were untenable. Hilal predeceased his father, but their failed negotiations presaged the infighting among Hilal’s brothers that marked the period that followed his death.
TURMOIL AND TRANSITION, 1856 TO 1861
When Barghash attempted to sneak Said bin Sultan’s body to shore on that dark October night in 1856 he was part of a plot. Barghash, in cooperation with the Harthi sheikh who had traveled as Said bin Sultan’s hostage, attempted to usurp control of Zanzibar from Majid. Their plans failed but set into motion a series of disputes that would lead to armed rebellion three years later, create an opening for British intervention, and inadvertently broaden the circuits of mobility to include the East African interior and Bombay.
After Said bin Sultan’s death, Thuwayni bin Said, who had ruled in Muscat during his father’s absences, believed that he should control the entire dominion, while his younger brother Majid bin Said, who had become the Zanzibar governor in 1854, thought that he should be the one to take over his father’s rule. They had to contend with each other and with their local rivals. Thus, each of them faced similar circumstances: they had a sibling rival at the other end of the former empire who was angling to control the whole realm, and they each had a nearby brother hoping to usurp local power. In Oman, there was Turki bin Said, a brother younger than Thuwayni, who served as the governor of the port city of Suhar. In Zanzibar, Barghash bin Said was only twenty years old but his allegiance with the Harthi gave him additional heft.
The three years following Said bin Sultan’s death saw an unsettled state of affairs as Thuwayni and Majid squabbled over dominion and over an estate marked by debt. During the same period, two prominent people, the customs master and the British agent, exited. In Zanzibar, Majid had laid claim to Said bin Sultan’s ships, and in Muscat, Thuwayni claimed landed property. Yet they were also faced with debt because during Said’s rule the line between state assets and personal assets did not exist. Said had depended heavily on Jairam Shivji, his customs master, for loans and liquidity to underwrite mobile governance. Both before and during Said’s last trip to Arabia, he had taken loans from the house of Jairam Shivji to engage in diplomacy with the Persians and to offer stipends to win the loyalty of the rebels. Thus one of Said’s legacies was a great debt to the firm of Jairam Shivji. Shivji had retired in 1853 from Zanzibar and returned to Kutch, his birthplace.23 Likewise, Hamerton died in Zanzibar shortly after Said bin Sultan, and was not replaced immediately, in part due to the northern Indian uprising in 1857. Thus when Colonel C. P. Rigby arrived in Zanzibar in 1858, he wanted to reassert British influence and tamp down the slave trade. This fit into the new increased control in India, with the Crown—in the form of the Raj—taking over the British East India Company’s rule in the subcontinent.24 The dispute between Thuwayni and Majid lasted for nearly three years, with accusations back and forth and property seizures in Zanzibar and Muscat.
By early 1859, Thuwayni, the senior brother, was frustrated by his penury and sought to break the impasse by coordinating with allies in Zanzibar and launching an invasion. Instead, he ran into British attempts to assert control in the western Indian Ocean. Thuwayni complained about the hierarchy and wealth of the status quo between Muscat and Zanzibar: “The man who is given a bone . . . can only suck it, but he who gets the flesh eats it. I am the elder brother and I have the bone in Muscat. Majid, my junior, has the flesh in Zanzibar.”25 Thuwayni outfitted an expedition to sail to Zanzibar in February, seize the island, and overthrow Majid.26 The previous year, he might have executed this plan without difficulty, but in 1859, post-uprising in India, British consular and naval officers intervened. In late February 1859, the Political Resident for the Persian Gulf sent a commodore from the British Navy to Muscat to use “friendly counsel and remonstrance” to persuade Thuwayni to cease hostilities against Majid. The commodore delivered a letter to Thuwayni and explained that he should discuss his claims against Majid with the British. The naval officer was to follow Thuwayni in his ship to assure that he returned to Muscat.27 This left Thuwayni’s allies in Zanzibar, led by Barghash, on their own. In short, the death of Seyyid Said had allowed the British to increase their role as arbiters in the region, and the unified Arab rule of this western Indian Ocean dominion was being dismantled.
Although the officer successfully intercepted Thuwayni bin Said and called back his ships, arbitration did not resolve the situation. The result was a breaking point with historiographical implications. Thuwayni sent a representative to Zanzibar to meet with Majid but after several months of negotiations, they remained at a stalemate. Historians have seen the moment in two ways: beset by internal dissent or a gallant move for unity. British officials, writing twenty-five years after the fact—at a time with Harthi activism in Oman was challenging the sitting sultan—claimed that Thuwayni’s 1859 representative had not come in good faith, but rather had come “to distribute money among the Harthi tribe & induce them to rise.” In this version, Thuwayni withdrew because he had been double-crossed by the Harthi, who held great sway over a young Barghash.28 The Omani historian al-Hashimy, following al-Salimi, has framed this as an Omani national issue: the 1859 negotiations were the last chance to preserve the supposed unity of the trans-Indian Ocean Omani empire.29
Either way, the breakdown of negotiations allowed the British to intervene in the succession dispute. As historian Rheda Bhacker explains, “From now on it was to be the paramount power, Britain, who assumed the role of kingmaker in Zanzibar as well as in Muscat.”30 In April of 1859, before the matter was formally settled, however, the government in Bombay had already split the African and Arabian realms bureaucratically, assigning Muscat to Persian Gulf officials. “I am desired in conclusion to observe that the Resident in the Persian Gulf should [ . . . ], now that Zanzibar and Muscat are disunited [ . . . ], be regarded as the officer in charge of Political relations as with the Imam of Muscat.”31 The bureaucratic wheels had begun to constrain the mobility of Arab rulers in the western Indian Ocean. Said’s sons would never move so freely or so frequently as he had. Events in Zanzibar