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In 1840 the Sultan of Oman and Zanzibar’s flagship, the Sultana, sailed for New York City. Sayyid Sa‘īd bin Sultān Āl Busa‘īdī sought to capitalize on new commercial networks beyond the Indian Ocean and so dispatched a trusted agent, Ahmad bin Na’aman al Kaabi, to the United States with iconic regional products: Zanzibari cloves, East African ivory, Muscati dates, Yemeni coffee, and Persian carpets. From the proceeds of their sale Na’aman purchased a cargo of American cotton cloth, already a commercial staple in East Africa. Na’aman was fêted in New York, and the Sultana’s African, Persian, and Indian crew captured headlines across the nation. The Sultana’s sojourn was of such great interest to New Yorkers that the city council commissioned a lush portrait of Na’aman for City Hall. This essay offers context to the Na’aman painting through a reconsideration of the Sultana’s voyage, a journey that encapsulated the ambitions of the Omani-Zanzibari state. More precisely, the Sultana was a richly symbolic vessel that represented the new material and political interests binding Zanzibar to distant world regions. Indeed, the ship, its mission, cargo, and crew were each emblematic of the emergent cultural economy of the Swahili Coast as well as the wider economic trends that were remaking the nineteenth century world. The portrait of Ahmad bin Na’aman thus offers an extraordinary window on the interface of the Indian Ocean and Atlantic basins, and it stands as a testament to the role of Zanzibaris in shaping emergent global relationships.

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Pesek, M. (2002). Sulayman b. Nasr al-Lamki and German colonial politics towards Muslim communities in German East Africa. In T. Bierschenk & G. Stauth (Eds.), Islam in Africa (pp. 211–229). Lit Verlag. Fonds Martin Custers.

this paper reconstructs the ambiguous and often problematical relationship between the German colonisers and African Muslims in the context of the event labelled by the colonial administration as the “Mecca letter affair”. The author’s main focus is the production of colonial knowledge about the Muslim societies. Muslim elites were substantially involved in this production. Aware of the German colonisers’ insufficient knowledge of the Muslim societies, members of the Muslim elites like Sulaymān b. Nāṣir used the “Mecca letter affair” to manipulate German politics for their own aimes, which at the time concerned the weakening of the influence of the brotherhoods, which threatened the elites’ monopoly of religious knowledge and hegemony.

Reese, S. S. (2004). The adventures of Abū Ḥārith: Muslim travel writing and navigating the modern in colonial East Africa. In S. S. Reese (Ed.), The transmission of learning in Islamic Africa (pp. 244–256). Brill. Fonds Martin Custers.

Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P. (2000). Habari za Pate: the history of Pate of Muhammad bin Bwana Mkuu al‑Nabhani revised and enlarged by Muhammad bin Fumo Omari al‑Nabhani (Bwana Kitini). In Studies in Honour of Clifford Edmund Bosworth (Vol. 1, pp. 188–208). Brill. Fonds Martin Custers.

Purpura, A. (2000). Portrait of Seyyid Silima from Zanzibar: piety and subversion in Islamic prayer. In D. Parkin & S. C. Headley (Eds.), Islamic prayer across the Indian Ocean: inside and outside the mosque (pp. 117–136). Curzon. Fonds Martin Custers.

Bang, A. K. (2008). Textual sources on an Islamic African past: Arabic material in Zanzibar’s National Archive. In S. Jeppie & S. B. Diagne (Eds.), The meanings of Timbuktu (pp. 349–359). HSRC Press. Fonds Martin Custers.

Ruphin, S.-M. (1993). Présence étrangère et exercice du pouvoir politique à Zanzibar, 1840-1873. In C. Coquery-Vidrovitch (Ed.), Histoire africaine du XXe siècle: sociétés, villes, cultures (pp. 45–66). L’Harmattan. Fonds Martin Custers.

Kagabo, J. (1991). Réseaux d’ulama “swahili” et liens de parenté: une piste de recherche. In F. Le Guennec-Coppens & P. Caplan (Eds.), Les swahili entre Afrique et Arabie (pp. 59–72). Karthala. Fonds Martin Custers.

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).

Sheriff, A. M. H. (1991). Mosques, merchants and landowners in Zanzibar old stone town. In Histoire sociale de l’Afrique de l’Est, XIXe-XXe siècle: actes du colloque de Bujumbura, 17-24 octobre 1989 (pp. 383–402). Karthala.

Ferrand, G. (1928). Les Sultans de Kilwa. In Institut des hautes études marocaines (Ed.), Mémorial Henri Basset: nouvelles études nord-africaines et orientales (Vols. 1–2, pp. 239–260). Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner. Fonds Martin Custers.

Sadgrove, P. C. (2004). From Wadi Mizab to Unguja: Zanzibar’s Scholarly Links. In S. S. Reese (Ed.), The transmission of learning in Islamic Africa. Brill. Fonds Martin Custers.

Nicolini, B. (2008). The Makran-Baluch-African Network In Zanzibar And East Africa During The XIXth Century. In S. de Silva Jayasuriya & J.-P. Angenot (Eds.), Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia (pp. 81–106). Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004162914.i-196.48

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