Zanzibar: the Historical Setting 11

Zanzibar: the historical setting 11 CHAPTER TWO ZANZIBAR: THE HISTORICAL SETTING 2.1. The Sultanate of Zanzibar The history of the East African coast and Zanzibar in particular has been the topic of many authoritative texts. Zanzibar’s historical development will therefore be presented here only in as far as it has been important for the development of Islamic education in Zanzibar since the late 19th century. Indeed, Islamic education cannot be understood in isolation from its historical setting and the social, political and economic structures of a specific period of time. The historical context of Zanzibar’s development from the late 19th century to the early 21st century will thus form the focus of this chapter: after a short introduction to the history of Zanzibar under the Sultanate of Oman in the 19th century, a more extensive analysis of the colonial framework of Zanzibar’s political development under the British Protectorate (1890-1963) will be presented, to be followed by a discussion of the role played in the colonial period by the major ‘racial’ and communitarian groups and associations, namely ‘Arabs’, ‘Indians’ and ‘Africans’. These groups dominated late colonial politics in Zanzibar during the ‘time of politics’ (zama za siasa) in the 1950s, which is discussed in a next step, before concluding this chapter with an account of the history of Zanzibar after the revolution of 1964. Three periods of political development (sultanate, protectorate and revolution) thus informed the destinies of both Muslim scholars and religious institutions and were decisive for the development of Islamic education in this period of time. When looking at the East African coast in general, and Zanzibar in particular, established wisdom attributes major importance to the emergence as a regional power of the seaborne Sultanate of Muscat- Oman in the late 17th century. In an alliance with a number of East African coastal settlements, Oman was able to oust the Portuguese from most parts of the northern and central coast. Internal troubles in Oman, however, prevented effective Omani domination of the coast for the time being. As a consequence, in the 18th century, most 12 chapter two coastal settlements were able to maintain a fairly independent role, until Oman, led by the Bū Sa īdī family, was able to reassert her dominant position on the coast in the early 19th century. In the 1820s and 1830s, most coastal settlements came under effective Omani control. In his policy of expansion, Sultan Sa īd b. Sulān (r. 1806-1856) was supported by some local allies, such as Lamu, who managed to decisively defeat a coalition of Mombasa and Pate forces in 1812 (Fuglesang 1994: 47). In 1822, the Omani fleet also con- quered Brawa and Pate, in 1823 Pemba and in 1824 the rest of the Lamu archipelago. Finally, Mombasa, which had been ruled by the Mazrū ī family since 1730, was forced to accept Omani overrule in 1837. With her fleet of 70-80 warships, the Sultanate was not only able to effectively protect her trading connections in the Indian Ocean but also to exert effective control over the East African coast north of Mozambique. As a consequence, Oman was never forced to occupy the coastal strip and to maintain costly fortresses and bases there: the Sultanate was capable of cutting off the seaborne com- munication and trade of any coastal settlement at any time (Bennett 1978: 44). The armed (territorial) forces of the Sultanate re mained, by contrast, rather small: in the 1840s, they comprised about 400 soldiers, 200 of them based in Mombasa, often mercenaries recruited in Baluchistan or Hadramaut (Bennett 1978: 45). While Zanzibar’s development to become the paramount political and economical centre on the East African coast had started under Sultan Sa īd b. Sulān, and was reinforced by the shift of Oman’s seat of government from Muscat to Zanzibar in 1840,1 the emergence of Zanzibar as an African trading empire took place only after the division of the Bū Sa īdī empire into two halves: before he died in 1856, Sultan Sa īd b. Sulān split his realm among his sons Mājid and Thwaynī, who now effectively ruled two separate states, the Sultanates of Muscat and Zanzibar. Zanzibar thus became an ‘African’ empire ruled by Omani elites (Bennett 1978: 63). Sultan Mājid (r. 1856-1870), the first ruler of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, continued the policy of modernization started by his father, although he had to overcome a number of problems, such as a rebellion by his brother Barghash, as well as Thwaynī’s attempt to invade Zanzibar in 1859. With British 1 Sultan Sa īd had visited Zanzibar in 1829 for the first time, and stayed first at Mtoni, north of the ‘Old Town’, later, from 1832, at the Bait al-Sāil in the ‘Old Town’ (Hoffman 2006: 251; Ziddy 2006: 6)..

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