Buying Time. Thomas F. McDow
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over the branch of the Busaidi clan that had moved to Muscat in the 1780s and staked its future on the gulf and Indian Ocean trade. For Salim’s enemies, achieving the Ibadi ideal had been a rallying point, but their unity did not last. The disturbed economy was a major factor. With the already declining revenues that had begun with the diminution of trade in Salim’s reign, the imamate faced stark budget shortfalls. They chose to augment the state treasury by confiscating the property of those who were enemies of the state, especially the deposed Busaidis and their allies70 They defended this with a slim legal justification under Ibadi ideals, but some supporters regarded it as immoral, and tribal leaders gradually withdrew their support from the regime.71
Salim bin Thuwayni also demonstrated, in defeat, the importance of mobility and access to capital in controlling Oman. After his overthrow, Salim fled to Bandar Abbas and tried to rally supporters in Suhar and the northern region of the country to challenge Muscat.72 He had very little money and very little success. Enlisting supporters required direct payments or at least the promise of financial reward. Salim had overborrowed from his creditors, and his few supporters incurred “extravagant expenses.” This limited his mobility within the gulf, and in early 1869 it seemed he would be stuck in Dubai.73 He forged an allegiance with the Wahhabi state and backed their incursion into Suhar in the middle of 1869.74 Lacking sufficient capital to assure the loyalty of supporters, however, Salim was ultimately unsuccessful. He spent the rest of his life in the Persian Gulf and the western Indian Ocean in fruitless attempts to reclaim power in Muscat.
With the defeat of Salim and the rise of the imamate, Turki’s retirement in India did not go as planned. When news reached Turki that the imamate had failed to consolidate its hold on the country, he saw his opening. In Bombay, however, he lacked the funds to mount an effective challenge. His only source of income was his subsidy of $600 per month, which he believed was meant to support his family and was predicated “on the condition that, and so long as, he [Turki] shall reside in British India, or such other place as the British Govent. may allot to him, without molestation of the Muscat territory.”75 Such conditions echoed the Canning Award’s constraints on the sultans of Muscat and Zanzibar, and Turki faced a choice between his family and his future.
Turki and Exile in Bombay, 1867 to 1870
In August 1870, Venayek Wassoodew, the Oriental Translator to the Government of Bombay, reported on an unusual case. He had been asked to investigate a foreign family living in Bombay, and found two Abyssinian women living with four young children. One of the women was the children’s mother, and one was their paternal grandmother. The household also contained a retinue of fifteen servants. Although this number of dependents suggested a wealthy family, Mr. Wassoodew was asked to inquire because the government had heard for some months that this family was “in great pecuniary distress.”76 This turned out to be true, and Wassoodew reported that the family members were in “an actual state of starvation.”77
While there were many starving individuals in booming, industrial Bombay in 1870, one would not expect these to include the grandchildren of the illustrious Seyyid Said bin Sultan bin Imam Ahmad al-Busaidi. Yet, indeed, these were the family and followers of Turki bin Said. They were starving in Bombay while Turki was trying to reclaim Muscat and reestablish his father’s line as the rulers of the country. To take advantage of unfolding circumstances since 1866, Turki had moved between the coast and the interior of Oman, between Oman and the gulf, back to Oman, and into exile in Bombay. He later negotiated an exit from Bombay, and, with financing from Zanzibar, a return to Oman.
When Turki arrived in Bombay in 1867, he was an outsider. He noticed this most pointedly when he tried to raise funds or secure credit, the lifeblood of Indian Ocean mobility. He complained to the governor of Bombay that he was “a poor stranger,” untrusted and unable to secure a loan.78 An Arabic promissory note in the Zanzibar archive shows that Turki secured a loan from the firm of Jairam Shivji for four thousand rupees in 1868, but other sources of credit were fleeting.79 Indeed, based on his experience in his father’s administration as a governor in Suhar, he understood where he might find a creditor. In his few years in Bombay, Turki became quite knowledgeable about the customs department. On the one hand, he sought to import personal goods from the Persian Gulf duty-free.80 On the other hand, he recognized the power of that office to control the flow of goods, and he asked that the customs office impound the Arabian horses that his main rival, Imam Azzan bin Qays, had exported from Oman.81
Lacking access to credit elsewhere, Turki beseeched the Bombay government to grant him $80,000 of the Zanzibar subsidy that was supposed to be given to the sultan of Oman. Thus, Turki asserted himself as the legitimate head of state in Muscat.82 While his letters proclaimed his legitimacy as a ruler, they also emphasized his fealty to and reliance on the government of Bombay. By early February 1870, Turki was eager to reenter the contest for Muscat. He explained that he would leave Bombay soon for Oman, but that he did so with the governor’s permission. He invoked the allegiance the British had with his father and stated explicitly that he was “a guest and someone who yields obedience to Government.”83 As with his brothers, Turki’s mobility was compromised by entanglements with British officialdom.
As Turki made plans to invade Muscat, he had to balance his relationship with Bombay officials, his access to other forms of credit, and his ability to move across the Arabian Sea and in the gulf. In March 1870, Turki departed to challenge Azzan bin Qays in Oman, and mistakenly assumed that his allowance would continue to support his household in Bombay.84 Turki made no other provisions to maintain his household.85
Before he realized what had happened to his relatives, Turki’s two greatest challenges in his campaign were credit and mobility. Bombay officials undermined his efforts to return to the gulf. When he telegraphed to Gwadar, an Omani outpost between Persia and India, in March 1870 to try to raise his allies there, the Assistant Political Agent in Gwadar forbade Turki from embarking armed men from that port.86 In the following months, Turki bounced around the gulf, trying to amass the human and financial resources to attack the imamate. On May 10, 1870, he wrote from Dubai to secure a loan from the Bombay government. He knew he would not persuade the sheikh of Abu Dhabi to support him, and he assumed incorrectly that the Wahhabi emir might back him.87
By late June, Turki’s efforts flagged in Bandar Abbas, not because of military or political news from Oman, but because of personal news from Bombay. He learned that his stipend had been discontinued and that his household was destitute. He was deeply disappointed with the Bombay government because his family was under its protection. They lived in a government-owned residence. Turki’s distress made it impossible for him to conduct the business at hand. “I now labor under two anxieties. . . . One about myself personally and the other about my children.” Just as his brother Hilal’s wives and children had been stranded in Mecca some thirty years before, Turki’s family’s plight underscores the gendered nature of mobility in this period, especially within elite households. Turki had miscalculated. If he had known that the stipend would be discontinued, he said that he would have sent his family to Zanzibar before he left Bombay.88 In these regrets, Turki sees clearly the new geography of power that had emerged in the western Indian Ocean in the nineteenth century for contesting authority in the Omani states. Muscat and Zanzibar were still the poles, but Bombay had become an essential meridian.
In the last months of 1870, Turki’s twin anxieties dissipated. Wassoodew’s desperate reports led to an emergency grant of one thousand rupees from the Bombay government for Turki’s dependents. Meanwhile, in the gulf, Turki gathered followers from Oman and financial resources from Zanzibar. He retook Muscat in 1871, overthrew the imamate, and gained British recognition. In defeating the imamate, however, Turki’s actions echoed Majid’s after the 1859 rebellion. Majid let his al-Harthi enemies be murdered in a Lamu prison, and Turki was party to the execution of a key figure in the imamate, Said bin Khalfan al-Khalili, and Khalili’s son. This earned him deep enmity from Ibadi leaders, a problem that would plague his seventeen-year rule.
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Although Turki bin Said may be among the least heralded of the Busaidi rulers of Oman and Zanzibar, his accession and reign were