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L’étude du blocus naval de Zanzibar, mis en place par les marines allemande et britannique entre décembre 1888 et septembre 1889, officiellement afin de mettre un terme aux trafics d’armes et d’esclaves ravageant la côte orientale de l’Afrique à cette période, permet d’observer les relations complexes entre discours humanitaire, droit international, et interventions coloniales en cette fin de xix e  siècle. Cette opération navale donne en effet l’occasion de mieux comprendre l’émergence du nouveau concept « d’intervention d’humanité » dans les relations et le droit international, alors que le fait colonial connait un nouvel élan historique. Enfin, le blocus de Zanzibar fut aussi, du fait de sa dimension et de ses conséquences globales, un jalon marquant de l’histoire du droit humanitaire dans les relations internationales.

This chapter considers silver and copper coins issued for Zanzibar in the l880s in the name of Sultan Barghash. Minted in Belgium by a syndicate led by the French merchant Henri Greffülhe, these coins became the subject of a legal dispute involving Great Britain which was settled by international arbitration. Eagleton argues that these coins are more than just a numismatic curiosity and that this case study can be a way of understanding changing and competing ideas of sovereignty, connected to legal and territorial disputes during this critical period in East African history. The chapter ends by showing that this symbolic power of money endures, since Zanzibaris still saw these coins symbols of the Sultan’s sovereignty in the 1930s, after the island had been under British rule for more than 40 years.

The M’Zab valley (Algeria) is known for its historic ksours which are of exceptional architectural and landscape character, a heritage that has maintained its integrity and homogeneity for centuries through the establishment of a construction ʻorf. A set of rules have been developped over time and accrued experience in the architectural design of Ksours. This ʻorf relies in its application on an institution termed the oumanas. This institution ensures its transmission, evolution and its application in the field. This paper presents this institution, its organization, its financing, and its role in the management of traditional building in the M’Zab area.

This study examines the syntax of sluicing in Omani Arabic to uncover its morpho-syntactic properties and underlying source. It also attempts to account for the apparent preposition stranding (p-stranding) effects displayed by Omani Arabic sluicing, which indicates that the language is a counterexample to the p-stranding generalisation (Merchant, 2001). The paper concludes that sluicing exists in the language and it is derived from regular wh-questions by wh-movement and TP ellipsis at PF. Furthermore, Omani Arabic displays pseudo-sluicing (i.e., an elliptical cleft wh-question), which can also be derived via wh-movement from spec-TP to spec-CP plus TP deletion at PF. Finally, the study argues that the apparent cases of sluicing under p-stranding are actually pseudo-sluicing. The drop of copular pronouns in the sluiced clause and omission of the preposition with the relative clause lead to the illusion that sluicing in Omani Arabic exhibits p-stranding effects.

First announced in 2013, China’s plan to revive the ancient Silk Road and ocean trade routes under the auspices of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been described as the “project of the century.” Due to its geographic position, stable governance, and diplomatic neutrality, Oman has come to play a key role in the BRI. Nevertheless, the Sultanate has often been overlooked by scholarship and has featured somewhat as an afterthought, especially compared to the studies of Chinese relationships with regional heavyweights, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. In this context, this article explores Oman’s role in the BRI initiative, and critically evaluates the potential impact of Chinese developments on Oman’s national sovereignty and socio-economic development. It argues that Oman stands to gain much from the transforming Sino-Omani friendship and potentially achieve a win-win outcome, largely due to Oman’s unique bargaining position in comparison to other countries involved in the BRI. The article begins by offering an introduction to the BRI and discussing the scope of the project. It then moves on to contextualize Chinese investments in Oman within a longer history of economic relationships between the Sultanate and China. Finally, it examines the pros and cons of Oman’s increasing entanglement with China and asks to what extent the BRI can be strategically leveraged by the Sultanate.

A new project on the pottery has begun since excavations resumed in 2016 at the site of al-Balīd (Ẓafār), Dhofar in southern Oman. The work concentrates on the Husn, a fortified palace, in this Islamic port. The paper presents the current project on the pottery, exploring methodology, objectives, and preliminary results. The study suggests a dating for the occupational phases of the palace identified so far (fourteenth–eighteenth century AD). The examination of the ceramic material is supported by archaeometric analysis and ethnoarchaeological work on the modern Dhofari production, the latter contributing to a better understanding of the ancient manufacturing process and the transfer of knowledge. This multidisciplinary study allows an exhaustive stylistic, technological, and archaeometric characterization of the pottery, with a special focus on local wares, also proposing or revising their chronological attribution. Moreover, a provenance study is conducted, particularly to establish the origin of the abundant and diverse imports, thus identifying the regions trading with al-Balīd during different periods. Despite previous work on al-Balīd, the study of the ceramic material has never been published properly — the project aims to fill this gap. Furthermore, it is one of the few ongoing research projects on Islamic ceramics of Dhofar and present-day Oman.

The second half of the eighteenth century, witnessed a boom in the trade in coffee in Mocha and Muscat. The Kachchhis traders of Mandvi and Surat based traders were central to this trade. The shifts and circumstances of the eighteenth century disturbed the control and Surat was forced to lose the premier position in coffee supply. The considerable coffee trade was diverted to Muscat in the eighteenth century. Concurrently, the Sultans were running into political expansion and risked considerable resources. Kachchhi merchants in Muscat were stressed to contribute. This necessitated the fortune making enterprise through the lucrative commodity trading. The opportunity to import Mocha coffee and re-export them to destinations in the neighbourhood of Oman was, thus, the outcome. This chapter takes us to the understanding that how the circulation of a single commodity empowered the transregional trade routes not only with the significant volume of trade but also facilitated the flow of specie and profit through various channels.

This chapter provides a case study of the career of Seth Ratansi Purshotam to demonstrate the role of Gujarati Banyans of Muscat, Oman in linking that port’s transregional commercial network of India, the Persian Gulf, and East Africa to the global market. Ratansi, a native of Mandvi, Kachhch, began his career as a clerk in his uncle’s shop in 1857, opened his own shop in 1867, and by the 1880s until his death in 1904 was one of the leading importers/exporters and money lenders of Muscat and a principal financier of the government of Oman as the customs farmer. During that period Ratansi joined with other Banyan, Khoja, and Arab merchants to expand and strengthen direct contacts with European and American commercial outlets for the export of Omani products, especially dates, and the import of Western manufactured consumer goods, most notably arms and ammunition.

Landlord villages dominated Iranian land tenure for hundreds of years, whereby one powerful landlord owned the village structures, surrounding farmland, and to all intents and purposes, the village occupants themselves, a system that in some cases remained in place up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In Oman, mud-brick oases were home to most of the rural population right up until Sultan Qaboos came to power in 1970, and required inhabitants of mud-brick houses to relocate into new concrete block buildings. Historical Archaeology and Heritage in the Middle East explores these everyday, rural communities in Iran and Oman in the 19th and 20th centuries, through a combination of building analysis, excavation, artefact analysis and ethnographic interviews. Drawing on the results of original field projects, the book considers new ways of exploring traditional lifeways, giving voice to hitherto largely ignored sections of the population, and offers new and different ways of thinking about how these people lived and what shaped their lives and the impact of major political and social changes on them. Place, memory and belonging are considered through the lens of material culture within these villages. The first of its kind, the book brings together methodologies, research questions, and themes that have never been used or addressed in the Middle East. Helping to establish historical archaeology in the Middle East and providing new ways in which the memorable, quotidian past can be exploited for its social and economic value in contemporary community and heritage developments, it is an ideal resource for students, scholars and practitioners of historical archaeology and heritage of and in the Middle East.