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The Sultanate of Muscat and Zanzibar grew initially from Oman's struggle with Portugal in the 17th century for dominance over trade in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, and then from the desire to assert control over Omani settlements in East Africa. In 1832, Sayyid Sa‘id ibn Sulṭan transferred the capital of the Omani Empire from Muscat to Zanzibar. Although Sayyid Sa‘id and his successors in Zanzibar appointed governors along the coast and had agents as far inland as the Congo, actual territorial control was weak. In 1856 the empire was divided between two of Sa‘id's sons, one ruling in Oman and the other in Zanzibar, a division that was formalized in 1861, marking the effective end of the sultanate. European colonialism dramatically reduced the domains of the Zanzibar sultanate in the last quarter of the 19th century, though a member of the Bu Sa‘idi family remained on the throne in Zanzibar until January 1964. The Bu Sa‘idi dynasty continues to reign in the Sultanate of Oman.

The Byzantine province of “Africa” was conquered by Arab forces in the early wave of Islamic expansion from the east, and became the Umayyad province of Ifriqiya in 703 ce. Although united in Islam, the history of Ifriqiya is one of constant religious schism and rivalry as well as marked cultural and ethnic divisions between the immigrant Arab and indigenous Berber populations and others, as well as distinct differences between the population, outlook, and economy of the coastal cities and the interior. In the turbulent world of medieval Ifriqiya the Aghlabids, viceroys from 800, acted as sub-imperial agents of the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad. They were supplanted by the imperial-minded Shia Fatimids whose ambitions for the caliphate saw them rise to the domination of all Islamic lands, before the native Zirid dynasty of Sanhaja Berbers assumed power over Ifriqiya. Further fragmentation saw a temporary conquest by the Almohads of the western Maghreb before the Hafsids re-established a late flourishing of the empire of Ifriqiya which dissolved in the 16th century.

This paper explores how different natural resources figure in temporal imaginings. I ask: how do oil and water come to frame the relationships and chronologies of transformation and, more particularly, of causality? In order to understand visions of environmental futures, not only might we need to attend to the forms of planning, expectation, and prognosis that shape knowledge or senses of the future, but we may also consider how and why causality and significant events are associated with particular natural resources. Drawing on my previous work that explores the future orientation of oil-depletion talk in Oman as well as textual sources and ethnography, I argue that while water has been associated with pious rule and divine presence, oil has been considered to be much more transitory and the product of human interventions and policies, interventions and policies that emerge from a fraught political history. While water seems to motivate events and cause change, serving as an indication and vehicle of God's power, oil appears less a cause of national transformation, at least in its origins.

Our research originated from two family archive documents located in the Tunisian island of Djerba which relate to two notarial acts. The first act concerns a jâma’ (oratory) from the wahaby community while the second relates to a mastawâ community one. Both communities are factions of the ibadhy school of thought and the aforementioned documents date back to the second half of the 19th century ie nearly one century after the island’s status switched from a traditional cheikhat status to a caïdat one due to the rising influence of the malekits within the island. Being originally perceived as « foreigners », the Malekits fully acted from then on as local actors while showing objective alliance to the power in Tunis. Besides, other sources have revealed that some ibadhy families intentionally converted to malekism choosing to abandon irreversibly their original religious thought starting from the 18th century. Our research focuses on compromise as a way of resistance for natives’ forces against the Malekit surrounding environment as it became their established neighbour. We first study the corpus provided by our sources featuring the ibadhy traditions as well as malekit school fiqh. We try then to draw the relationship this corpus has with the local and locality establishments. Our aim was to follow the move from an established single mainstream local community (ibadhy) to a pluralist local landscape (ibadhy-malekit). Finally one power opposing the compromise shapes up on legal grounds. In fact, the agreement approved by both the malekit cadi and the mastâwâ ibadits went unnoticed without any objection. The one agreed with the wahbits has on the other hand raised many reservations. The fuqahâ-s of Tunis answering one question from an anonymous person signaled a mistake in the drafting of the notarial act in question and concluded it was invalid and thus could not be acceptable as evidence. As such, a frontier was being marked out between a pluralist local and a unitarian global.

In spite of a long-standing interest in the Ibadi community and its historical, social, religious and architectural legacy, its Ibadi scholarly literature remains largely unknown. The present research continues in the footsteps of the pioneering works of Joseph Schacht (Schacht, 1954) and Pierre Cuperly (Cuperly, 1988) on Ibadism. It aims to cast light on the Ibadi literature that represents an authentic source of information for the study of Ibadism past and present. This article analyzes an Ibadi manuscript from the twelfth century written by the scholar Abul’Abbas Ahmad. This document has been the primary reference for the most important sources of Ibadi legislation still in use by the community in its three main centers: M’zab, Djerba and Oman. The study of this document, along with other Ibadi scholarly literature on this topic, shows that this jurisprudence has regulated in detail the design, construction and management of mosques, and that this level of careful attention was due to the importance of the mosque for the instruction and organization of the community.

Ce mémoire étudie la rébellion de la province du Dhofar, soutenue par le Yémen du Sud, contre le sultan d'Oman

"The Dhufar rebellion in Oman (1965-1976) was the longest-running armed struggle in the history of the Arabian Peninsula, Britain's last classic colonial war in the region, and one of the highlights of the Cold War in the Middle East. ... [This book] revises the modern political history of Oman by revealing the centrality of popular movements in shaping events and outcomes. The ties that bound transnational anti-colonial networks are explored, and Dhufar is revealed to be an ideal vantage point from which to demonstrate the centrality of South-South connections in modern Arab history."

مثّلت السياسة الإسبانية تجاه بلاد المغرب الإسلامي حلقة مهمة من حلقات الحروب الصليبية المتأخرة، ورغم عودة جذور الأطماع الإسبانية في بلاد المغرب إلى عهود مبكرة من تاريخ الصراع الإسلامي المسيحي؛ إلا أنها قويت بعد ضعف الدولة الموحدية وانهيارها في كل من الأندلس والمغرب منذ القرن الثالث عشر الميلادي/السابع الهجري.وبلغت السياسة العدائية ذروتها؛ عندما تمكّن الإسبان من إنهاء الحكم الإسلامي في الأندلس بُعَيد سقوط غرناطة؛ آخر المعاقل الإسلامية عام 1492م، وحينها أصبح الطريق ممهّداً لنقل الصراع إلى بلاد المغرب، برعاية بابوية، وبتوجيه وتنفيذ مباشر من المؤسسة الدينية والسياسية الإسبانية على حد سواء، لتحقيق أهداف استعمارية وتنصيرية ، وسياسية ، واقتصادية، فسيطر الإسبان على بلدتي مليلة وغساسة، واتخذوا منهما موطئ قدم للسيطرة على باقي المناطق الساحلية، فمثلت السيطرة عليهما باكورة الإنجازات الاستعمارية الإسبانية في بلاد المغرب خلال القرن السادس عشر.