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This paper depicts social and cultural life in Zanzibar early 20th century, with special emphasis on the important role played by the Shāfiʿī Qāḍīs Aḥmad b. Abī Bakr b. Sumayṭ (1861-1925), Burhān b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Amawī (1861-1935) and Ṭāhir b. Abī Bakr al-Amawī (1877-1938), and the Ibāḍī Qāḍī ʿAlī b. Muḥ. al-Mundhirī (1866-1925). A description of the Zanzibar legal system at the time is given, and questions like Waqf regulations, religious instruction and the language question (Swahili-Arabic) are treated.

In this article three cases before the Sultan’s Court for Zanzibar and Pemba are presented over inheritance involving the possession of shambas, farms and farmhouses in the agricultural areas (from the Zanzibar National Archive, files HC8/1-140). For the Ibāḍiyya, the main legal text was K. al-Nīl wa-Shifā’ al-ʿAlīl of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Ibr. al-Muṣʿabī al-Thamīnī (1130-1223/1718-1808). To this, the most frequently used commentary was Sharḥ al-Nīl by Muḥ. b. Yūsuf Iṭfayyish (1260-1332/1820-1914). Another much used work on Ibāḍī inheritance law was the Mukhtaṣar by the Omani author Abū ‘l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥ. al-Bisyawī. Pp. 8-9: information on the Ibāḍī Qāḍī ʿAlī b. Muḥ. al-Mundhirī (1866-1925).

In the old “stone town” of Zanzibar west of the former creek there are about fifty mosques, mostly built during the 19th century. By studying these mosques, this paper reconstructs the growth and economic and social history of the town. It demonstrates that merchants as well as landowners supported the construction of mosques and that the construction of mosques was an important aspect of urban development. An examiniation of the growth of Zanzibar town shows that, from the latter part of the 18th century, Zanzibar began to develop as the centre of a commercial empire based on the twin foundations of transit trade and plantation agriculture. The history of the mosques can be divided into several phases, of course with some overlap. First the Sunnī mercantile tradition and the mosques built during this phase are described. By the 1840s, a new phase is discernible in mosque construction, a phase dominated by the Ibāḍī tradition with its unique architectural features reflecting Ibāḍī dogmas and practices. Finally, attention is paid to Ibāḍī-Sunnī interaction (Catalogue African Studies Centre, Leiden). At Zanzibar, the Ibāḍīs were a minority sect that tended to be gradually absorbed by the Shāfiʿī denomination. Generally the two denominations lived together in perfect harmony. Only under Sultan Barghash b. Saʿīd (Sultan 1870-1888), who was under the influence of the Ibāḍī Imamate movement in Oman, an Ibāḍī Nahḍa occurred which lead to some tension between Ibāḍīs and Sunnīs (pp. 17-19).

Examination of the biographies of some ʿUlamā’ reveals their tendency to isolate themselves in networks that are very much closed to the original coastal Swahilis, and sometimes without taking into consideration the traditional clivages between Sunnites and Ibadites. Most scholars identify themselves as Arabs and keep the autochtons culturally at a distance. Analysis of the formation of a series of chains of ʿUlamā’ (from the beginning of the 19th century) suggests that the process of education of the ʿUlamā’ is accompanied with great mobility between the centres of religious learning in East Africa (Anjouan, Grand Comores, Lamu, Mombasa, Zanzibar) and in Arabia or Ḥaḍramawt. A great master can claim a long chain of ʿUlamā’ and a great diversity in education. Also kinship relationships play a very important role (Catalogue of the African Studies Centre, Leiden).

P. 525: this short paper is an attempt to draw a profile, to describe some of the features of the ʿUlamā’ class of Zanzibar and East Africa, based on the biographies of seven prominent members of this class who lived in the 19th century. These men show a wide range of interests, from poetry to juridprudence, from commerce to mysticism. Two of them might be described as “radicals”; the others were fairly conventional. In passing I have made a few comments on some significant points: the history of the “old Arabs” in East Africa, the role of the ʿUlamā’ class in the Muslim society of this time and place, the relations of the “learned” to trade and government, the interconnections of the two Muslim sects, Ibāḍīs and Shāfiʿīs, the literary and educational accomplishments of the ʿUlamā’, the participation of some of the ʿUlamā’ in the Qādirī and Shādhilī revivals of the 1880s and 1890s, the extent of Pan-Islamic influence in Zanzibar and East Africa. I would like to suggest a few priorities for further research in this field. The seven scholars who are treated are the Sunnī ʿUlamā’: Muḥyī ‘l-Dīn b. ʿAbdl. al-Qaḥṭānī al-Wā’ilī (c. 1790-1869), Manṣab b. ʿAlī (1863-1927), ʿAlī b. ʿAbdl. b. Nāfiʿ al-Mazrūʿī (1825-1894), ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Amawī (1832-1896), ʿAbdl. b. Muḥ. Bā Kathīr al-Kindī (b. 1864), Aḥm. b. Sumayṭ (1861-1925), and the Ibāḍī scholar ʿAlī b. Khamīs b. Sālim al-Barwānī (1852-1886) (pp. 534-535), who became a Sunnī and was imprisoned for that by Sayyid Barghash. He had studied under the leading Ibāḍī Qāḍīs of Zanzibar in Barghash’s time and before, Yaḥyà b. Khalfān al-Kharūṣī and Muḥ. b. Sul. al-Mundhirī, and a visiting scholar from Oman, Khamīs b. Sālim al-Khaṣībī (Khuṣaybī). Martin cites frequently from Farsy 1944 and 1942. According to Kagabo 1991, 63, Barwānī was a Sunnī and was converted to Ibāḍism by the Ibāḍī sheikh Khamīs b. ʿAlī, and became a Sunnī again.

Pp. 20-24: I Somali nella regione di Merca; p. 24: I Galla nella regione di Merca; pp. 24-26: I Persiani nella regione di Merca; p. 26: L’occupazione di Merca da parte del’Oman; pp. 27-28: Tre iscrizioni arabe di Merca.

Based on chapters 27, 29 and 40 of Sirḥān b. Saʿīd al-Izkawī’s Kashf al-Ghumma.

The Arabic text and translation of an answer by Yaḥyà b. Khalfān b. Abī Nabhān al-Kharūṣī, Qāḍī of Zanzibar, to questions asked him about the relationship between Shāfiʿī and Ibāḍī jurisprudence in East Africa, and about the most important Ibāḍī and Shāfiʿī Fiqh books. Imbert 1903b, 19-21: an abstract of Sachau’s article. Yaḥyà b. Khalfān al-Kharūṣī was Qāḍī of Zanzibar and he answered to questions posed by Sachau [via Mr. Rössler].

Sachau indicates the parts in Ibn Ruzayq’s al-Fatḥ al-Mubīn that are (almost) copied from Kashf al-Ghumma.

Critical analysis and translation of the chapters on the law of succession (ch. 61-77) and testament (ch. 58) in Abū ‘l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥ. b.ʿAlī al-Basyāwī’s Mukhtaṣar al-Basyawī (Zanzibar 1886). See Guidi, Ignazio 1906 for an Italian translation. Imbert 1903b: an abstract of Sachau’s translation (9-12) and a comparison with chapter 21 of Thamīnī’s K. al-Nīl, translated by Zeys 1895 (12-19).

The nineteenth-century rise of Zanzibar under the ruling Albusaidi Dynasty of Oman owed its origins primarily to the solid foundations of commercial activity laid down in Muscat in the preceding century. In the subsequent development of the Omani economy, in Omani territories in both Arabia and Africa where the dictates of the Omani political/tribal system did not allow for any centralization of authority, local communities and tribal groups resisted the domination of the Albusaidi rulers as they strove to bring under their own control the benefits of burgeoning trade. The opposition of the major Omani groups in East Africa, the Mazāri‘a of Mombasa and the Banū Nabhān of Pate, to the Albusaidis and the eventual success of the Omani rulers in dismantling and neutralizing this opposition are fairly well documented. However, the sustained challenge of Hilāl b. Sa‘īd to the reign of his father Sa‘īd b. Sulṭān, the Albusaidi ruler of Oman and Zanzibar and their dependencies from 1806 to 1856, has hitherto been neglected, despite the fact that Hilāl's resistance in East Africa was the greatest internal threat to Sa‘īd after that posed by the Mazāri'a and had dire consequences for the subsequent course of Oman's history. The conflict between father and son set in train a course of events that led inexorably to the 1861 British-sponsored dismemberment of Oman into two Sultanates, one in Arabia and the other in East Africa.