The First Sultan of Zanzibar

Since time immemorial, spice and aromatics formed the first and foremost items of commerce in the Indian Ocean. In Oman, Saiyid Sa’id bin Sultan Al Bu Sa’id (r. 1806-1856) – often described by the available historiography as a revolutionary merchant-prince of Muscat and Zanzibar – developed and expanded a great and powerful mercantile empire in the Indian Ocean. The main factors of the rise of a mighty maritime trade network were constituted by the expansion of the spice trade, especially by clove cultivation in Zanzibar and Pemba Islands (Unguja), by the slave trade, by the ivory exportation and by their implications with European Powers of the time. The figure of Saiyid Sa’id bin Sultan Al Bu Sa’id, Lord of the Seas, founder of a real maritime empire with its capital on the Island of Zanzibar, succeeded in imposing his laws also on the Great Powers of the time, France and Britain, who were fighting for mastery of those seas. The power of this Oriental prince was widely known as based on delicate balances of forces (and ethnic-social groups) deeply different among them. In fact, the elements that composed the Omani leadership were, and had always been perceived as divided amongst two different ethnic groups: the Baloch and the Asian merchant communities. The Sultans of Oman have for centuries systematically recruited soldiers from Balochistan from the Omani enclave of Gwadar; consequently, the military power was constituted by Baloch, not of Arab origin, mostly from the Rind and Nosherwani tribes known in the British literature of the time as jamadars (soldiers), emphasising the corporate role in the defence of their ‘Arab’ lords, and representing the military strength. At the same time, the Al Bu Sa’id were strongly supported by the financial power of the Asian merchant communities known by the same literature as Banyans - the most powerful elite in Oman, in Zanzibar and in the whole Indian Ocean trade markets - and, indeed, Omani protection and support to Asian merchants and bankers had been quite unique in the whole region. Due to a symbiotic relationship between the Ismaili Topan family and the Al Bu Sa’id, Omani-inspired trade created immense fortunes in Muscat as well as in Zanzibar, where commercial prosperity reached its zenith around 1870-80. The role played by European powers, particularly by the treaties signed between the Sultans of Oman and the East India Company for the banning of slavery, was crucial for the development of the Indian Ocean international networks, and highly contributed to the 'shifting' of the Omanis from the slave trade to clove and spice cultivation - the major economic source of Zanzibar Island - along the coastal area of Sub-Saharan East Africa.