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This article explores how women of means in nineteenth-century Zanzibar used their built legacies to convey their piety and authority even though they were not active in public religious life. The focus of the study is an old Ibāḍī mosque named after its founder, ‘Aisha bint Jumʻa al-Mughayri, and the tombstone of her younger female relative Muhayra bint Jumʻa al-Mughayri. While the details of the two women’s lives, works and property do not appear prominently in the written record of Zanzibar, this article asks what we can glean about their religious and economic commitments from the built legacies and religious endowments they left behind, as well as from the writings of their male contemporaries, British colonial officials and their descendants. The article also demonstrates how the conservation and upkeep of historic religious institutions in Zanzibar today depends greatly on collaborations between local family members, state institutions and transnational faith-based organizations (fbos).

Stone Town’s busy streets in the 1950s became a set for photographer Ranchhod Oza, proprietor of Capital Art Studio (1930–83). I was aesthetically drawn to the numerous bicycles portrayed in these Zanzibari images, just as Oza had been at an earlier time and place. I am less interested in reading the subject of bicycles as simply a sign of Zanzibari modernity, an accoutrement that projects a fantasy of advancement via technological things. Instead, I focus on their ability to reflect various material aspects of daily life in Stone Town. Some bicycles carry people, others transport things, while still others appear as stage props, leaning up against walls while waiting (im)patiently for their owners to return. Yet in all these Oza images, they are moving still, ready to reach another chosen destination. What does the content of bicycles say about Oza’s photographic style? Can these bicycles potentially speak to Zanzibar’s placeness as a cosmopolitan Indian Ocean port city?

This article explores the problem of reading architecture as archive, with specific reference to the built environment on the island of Zanzibar. The architecture of Stone Town – Zanzibar's urban centre – is often marshalled by scholars as clear evidence of the island's complex and layered histories. This reading, however, tends to lament an erstwhile Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism at odds with both the Zanzibari past and present. In this article, I trace the contours of the island's divergent political and architectural histories and demonstrate how an archival view of architecture can obscure the very past it seeks to recover. I illustrate this tension through one particular case study: the Khoja Jamatkhana in the heart of Stone Town. I then consider the possible futures of archival readings by exploring the limits of both formal analysis and historical context through the work of contemporary artist Zarina Bhimji. If the Jamatkhana points to the restrictive capacity of archival readings of architecture, Bhimji's work opens up the archive itself as a site of abstraction, bringing into sharp relief the intricate relationship between space and history.

"This handbook brings together a mix of established and emerging international scholars to provide valuable analytical insights as to how China's growing Middle East presence affects intra-regional development, trade, security, and diplomacy. As the largest extra-regional economic actor in the Middle East, China is the biggest source of foreign direct investment into the region and the largest trading partner for most Middle Eastern states. This portends a larger role in political and security affairs, as the value of Chinese assets combined with a growing expatriate population in the region demand a more proactive role in contributing to regional order. Exploring the effect of these developments, the expert contributors also consider the reverberations in great power politics, as the U.S.A., Russia, India, Japan, and the European Union also have considerable interests in the region. The book is divided into four sections: historical and policy context state and regional case studies trade and development international relations, security and diplomacy"--

Starting from a consideration of Tomé Pires’ 1515 Suma Oriental, this article considers the feasibility, nature, and relevance of a summa orientalis in the form of a Portuguese Early Maritime Corpus. When this corpus is compared with Arabic nautical literature, primarily Ibn Mājid and Sulaymān al-Mahrī, and especially with attention to the technical aspects of their writings, then the desirability of an Indian Ocean Maritime Corpus is envisaged. The centrality and the mediating role of Arab pilots and Arabic nautical literature indicate that the first step is the delimitation of an Arabic Early Maritime Corpus.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the dynamics related to the pottery production in Sumhuram, the easternmost port of call between the Red Sea and the Indian continent along the southern coast of Arabia (second century BC–fifth century AD). Being a rich hub of international trade, receiving and redistributing local products and goods from many different areas, Sumhuram was able to provide for its needs through its own agriculture and a number of local activities, as attested by the presence of kilns and furnaces. Previous studies on the topic have suggested a possible connection between local pottery manufacturing in Sumhuram, and the Hadrami tradition, although kilns have not been found until recently. In 2015 archaeological investigations unveiled the first evidence of such a connection with the discovery of a pottery kiln and some production waste inside the city wall, along with the identification of pottery sherds in the area of the kiln. In order to identify their mineralogical and petrographic composition, thin-section analyses were made on a number of selected sherds. The preliminary results demonstrate that the raw materials used are compatible with a local production. This allows us to describe the different phases of the pottery cycle in Sumhuram as well as the structure of the pottery kiln, which represents an uncommon find in the pre-Islamic archaeology of southern Arabia.

Aḥmad b. Mājid is the most renowned author of Arabic navigational literature. Although he is reported to have come from the southern Gulf port of Julfar, the vast majority of his work focuses on navigating the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, and his compositions contain few details relating to Gulf navigation. The one exception is a short, undated poem describing sailing routes in the Gulf. This paper analyses this unique poem and compares the navigational practices it describes with those in his other navigational works in order better to understand the specific characteristics of Gulf and Indian Ocean navigation in the fifteenth century.

Extensive trade networks in the Indian Ocean generated contact among cultures and spheres of maritime technology across a huge geographical area. Inevitably, these networks resulted not only in exchange of foodstuffs, raw materials, luxury goods, spices, and manufactured goods, but also in cultural and religious concepts and technological knowledge and practices. With the intensity of maritime trade these exchanges engendered the borrowing of shipbuilding designs, materials, and methodologies and generated a certain hybridization of technology, design, and the ways in which ships were conceived. This hybridization is particularly evident in the Belitung and Phanom-Surin ships discovered in Indonesia and Thailand respectively (Flecker 2001; 2008; Jumpron 2019; Wongnai, Jumpron & Premjai 2016). While echoing shipbuilding practices from outside South-East Asia, they also incorporated materials and concepts from South-East Asia, and yet remain distinct from the dominant lashed-lug construction of the region. Using archaeological material from Oman and South-East Asia as well as ethnographic data from the western Indian Ocean, East Africa, India, Oman, Iran, and South-East Asia, this paper explores current archaeological and ethnographic shipbuilding information and raises some questions about the place of Belitung and Phanom-Surin in first-millennium shipbuilding practice.

The Sultanate of Oman has been consistently able to maintain its stability of security and stay away from the claws of terrorism, increasing the efficiency of its national counterterrorism strategy. This article explores local and international reports that measure Oman’s current terrorism’s status, and the reasons behind Oman’s ability to stay terrorism-free, particularly in light of the ever-increasing number of terrorist attacks and incidents in the Arabian Gulf region and the appearance of terrorist groups in nearby states. This research endeavors to analyze the existing knowledge to clearly understand the Omani approach and strategy in counterterrorism. The data collected for this research are extracted from semi-structured interviews and from policy analyses achieved through observing procedures, reviewing related legislation, and a detailed review of all previously associated policies. This research is exploring how the Sultanate of Oman defines terrorism, examining the elements of the Omani national counterterrorism strategy, and understanding the different phases of the Omani counterterrorism strategy. It recommends that the Sultanate of Oman should maintain a defensive approach to its national counterterrorism strategy to face terrorism and ensure its stability of security.

In 1852, Centaur, a British ship laden with indigo from Bengal, wrecked at Al Khobar off the coast of Muscat in the Persian Gulf. The essay offers the micro-history of the shipwreck to understand the working of law in the Persian Gulf. The many different experiences of individuals impacted by the same mishap but located in different geographical, social and political contexts offers a thick connectedness of things on scales both small and large. The essay brings this more textured optic of micro-history in conversation with the embracive and flexible frame of analysis of Indian Ocean studies to understand the Gulf’s flexible legal terrain and its political implications.

The gradual armed takeover of Yemen, beginning with the capture of Sanaa, in September 2014 by Houthi rebels and supporters of ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh overthrew the internationally recognized government of President Hadi. On March 26, 2015 a Saudi-led coalition, including several regional countries, intervened militarily in “Operation Decisive Storm” to thwart the Iranian-backed Houthi expansion and restore Hadi to power. The coalition included all GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) states except Oman, which stayed out of the conflict for both domestic and foreign policy reasons, calling for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Qatar took part in the coalition until it was excluded following the eruption of a diplomatic dispute with its immediate neighbors on June 5, 2017. Qatar joined Oman in seeking a peaceful settlement of the Yemeni dispute while extending diplomatic and humanitarian assistance, which was perceived by the Saudi-led coalition as interference in the conflict.

This article aims to study whether the increase of agricultural settlements in the Sultanate of Oman during the Late Islamic period (c. 1500-1950) was related to pre-oil globalization, as attested in the wider Gulf region. This is done by analysing the archaeological dataset of the agricultural village of Sahlat, with a focus on the ceramic material, located in the Suhar region. The assemblages collected by the Wadi al-Jizzi Archaeological Project, point to its occupation from c. 1750 to 1930. During this time period, the coastal towns of southeastern Arabia were heavily influenced by globalization processes, but the effects and reach of trade on rural communities remains poorly known. In this paper, Sahlat is compared to two contemporary sites connected to the same falaj system, and two other sites in the Gulf region. The results indicate that pre-oil globalization did not only impact coastal towns, but that rural settlements such as Sahlat experienced similar transformations. It is suggested that pre-oil globalization was not only linked to the pearling trade, but that the export of dates should also be taken into consideration when studying this topic.

This chapter analyses ivory consumption and trade in the context of shifting political power in nineteenth-century East Africa. It firstly describes how increased demand for ivory and ivory products in the wider Indian Ocean World, Europe, and North America contributed to a decline in ivory’s ownership, usage, and display in East Africa. It then examines the nature and construction of Omani and coastal East African communities in East Africa’s interior to show how political power became increasingly tied to access and control the ivory trade. In nineteenth-century East Africa, ivory was transformed from a product with significant symbolic capital to one whose history was increasingly shaped by capitalistic forces.

The article deals with the two legends from the main traditional work on the history of Oman (18 c.). The first of the two legends relates the story of appearance of idolatry among human beings, while the second one is dedicated to the adoption of Islam by the people of Oman. The first legend is strongly bound to the written tradition, while the second one is obviously related to the Omanian folklore. The textual fragments that contain the legends are combined by passages belonging to different genres. Among them are to be noticed the remarks made by the Author of the work, which is the evidence of the transformation of the essential tradition, carried out by the Author.