CHAPTER VI.
VISIT TO THE PRINCE SAYYID MAJID.—THE GOVERNMENT OF ZANZIBAR.
‘Zanzibar is an island of Africa, on the coast of Zanzibar, governed by a king who is a tributary to the Portuguese.’ REECE’S CYCLOPÆDIA.
We now proceed to wait upon H. H. the ‘Sayyid of Zanzibar and the Sawahil,’ who would be somewhat surprised to hear that he is ‘tributary to the Portuguese.’
The palace lies east of, and close to, the fort. It is fronted by a wharf, and defended by a stuccoed platform mounting eight or nine brass guns en barbette, intended more for show than use. The building is a kind of double-storied, white-washed barrack, about 140 feet long, roofed with dingy green-red tiles, and pierced with a few windows jealously raised high from the ground; shutters painted tender-green temper the sun-glare, and a few stunted, wind-wrung trees beautify the base. Seaward there is a verandah, in which levees are held, and behind it are stables and sundry outhouses, an oratory and a graveyard, where runaway slaves, chained together by the neck, lie in the shade. In this oratory, as in other mosques, are performed the prayers of the two Great Festivals which, during the late prince’s life, were recited at the Mto- ni ‘Cascine.’ Here, too, is the large, gable-ended house commenced in his elder age by the enterprising Sayyid Said, and built, it is said, after the model of the Dutch factory at Bander Abbas. It was intended for levees, and for a hall of pleasure. Unhappily, a large chandelier dropped from the ceiling, seventy masons were crushed by a falling wall; and other inauspicious omens made men predict that the prince would never enter the ‘Akhir el Zaman’ (End of Time). It has since been shut up, like one of our ghost-haunted houses, which it not a little resembles.
In the centre of the square, opposite the palace, stands the Sayyid’s flag-staff, where the ‘Bákúr’ is administered, where executions take place, and where, according to an American traveller,[66] distinguished criminals are fastened to a pole, and are tied from the ankles to the throat, ‘till the soul of the dying man is literally squeezed out of its earthly tenement.’ The author, who visited Zanzibar in ‘the mercanteel,’ was grievously hoaxed by some kind friend. Under Sayyid Said torture was unknown, death was inflicted according to Koranic law, and only one mutilation is recorded. I may remark, en passant, that in this part of the world the two master romancers, Ignorance and Interest, have been busily at work; and that many a slander rests upon the slenderest foundation of fact. Adventurers have circulated the most ridiculous tales. We hear, or rather we have heard, of 300,000 Arab cavalry, and hordes of steel-clad negroes, possibly a tradition of the ‘Zeng’ (Zanzibarians), who, in the days of the Caliphs, plundered Basrah. We read of brilliant troops of horse artillery, whose only existence was in the brain of some unprincipled speculator; and yet this report sent a battery from Woolwich as a present for the late Sayyid. To the same category belong the Amazons bestriding war-bul locks, doubtless a revival of El Masudi, who in our tenth century reported that the ‘King of Zeng’ commanded, Dahoman-like, an army of soldieresses, mounted, as are the Kafirs, upon oxen—the Portuguese ‘boi-cavallos.’ Some travellers have asserted that the Cape tribes learned cattle-riding from Europeans: but Camoens, making his hero land at the Aguada de S. Braz, after sailing from the Angra de Santa Elena, expressly states—
‘Embrown’d the women by the burning clime, On slow-paced oxen riding came along.’—Canto V. 63.
Durbars, or levees, are held three times a day, after dawn-prayers, in the afternoon, and at night. The ceremonial is simple. The lieges, passing the two Sepoys on guard at the gate, enter with the usual Moslem salutation, and after kissing hands take their appointed places. There is no lord of the basin, lord of the towel, or lord of the pelisse, deemed indispensable by every petty Persian governor. The ruler is addressed, Yá Sídí, my lord, and is spoken of by his subjects as Sayyidna, our prince. Coffee is served, but only at night; and all forms of intoxicants are jealously banished. The long, bare reception-hall, ceilinged with heavy polished beams, and paved with alternate slabs of white and black marble brought from Marseille, boasts only a few dingy chandeliers, and three rows of common wooden-bottomed chairs. It is, however, unencumbered with the usual mean knicknacks, French clocks and bureaux, cheap prints, gaudy china, and pots of neglected artificial flowers, supposed to adorn the window-sills; nor, after the fashion of Zanzibarian grandees, are the sides lined with seamen’s chests, stuffed full of arms, watches, trinkets, cashmere shawls, medicines, and other such ‘chow chow.’
The Prince received us at the Sadr, or top of the room, with the usual courtesy. He was then a young man, whose pleasing features and very light complexion generally resembled those of his father. This is said to have been the case with the whole family. We found the ‘divan’ of Egypt and Turkey unaccountably absent, banished by the comfortless black-wood ‘Kursi’ of Bombay. After a few minutes’ conversation two chairs were placed before us, bearing a tray of sweetmeats, biscuits, and glasses of sherbet; of these we ate and drank a mouthful in acceptance of hospitality, and we were duly pressed to eat. Lemonade and confitures take the place of strong waters amongst Europeans, and of the cocoa-nut milk, the mangoes, and the oranges of humbler establishments. Pipes, however, though offered by the late Sayyid to distinguished European guests, are never introduced, in deference to Wahhabi prejudice; nor did we suffer from the rose-water ablutions of which M. Guillain complains. Feminine eyes did not peep at us from the inner apartments; but we were fronted by well-dressed slaves who, as we pass through the crowded outer hall, will steal, if they can, the gilt tassels from our sword-knots, and who have picked the pockets of guests, even when dining with their Prince. H. H. the Sayyid Majid took considerable interest in our projected journey, and suggested that a field-piece might be useful to frighten the Washenzi (wild men). We left the palace much pleased with the kindness and cordiality of its owner, into whose ear, moreover, evil tongues had whispered the very worst reports.
The Government of Zanzibar is a royal magistracy, the only form of rule to which the primitive and undisciplinable Eastern Arab will submit. Whenever a new measure is brought forward by the Sayyid it is invariably opposed by the chiefs of clans, who assemble and address him more like an equal than a superior. One of the princes of Maskat corrected this turbulent feudality after the fashion of Mohammed Ali Pasha and his Mamlúk Beys; even now a few summary examples might be made to good purpose. In the days of the late Sayyid’s highest fortunes the most tattered of Súris would address him, ‘O Saíd!’ and proceed to sit unbidden in his presence. Similarly, Ibn Batutah, when describing the Sultan of Oman, Abu Mohammed bin Nebhan, tells us, ‘he has the habit of sitting, when he would give audience, in a place outside his palace; he has neither chamberlain nor wazir, and every man, stranger or subject, is free to approach him.’ Sometimes a noble, when ordered into arrest at Zanzibar, has collected his friends, armed his slaves, and fortified his house. One Salim bin Abdallah, who had a gang of 2000 musketeer negroes, used to wage a petty war with the Sayyid’s servile hosts. It is, perhaps, the result of climate that these disturbances have never developed into revolutions.
The ‘ministers’ spoken of by strangers are the Nakhodás of the fleet: by virtue of a few French or English sentences, they are summoned when business is to be transacted with Europeans who are not linguists. The late Sayyid’s only secretary and chief interpreter was Ahmad bin Aman of Basrah (Bussorah), a half-cast Arab, popularly called by the lieges ‘Wajhayn’ or ‘two faces.’ According to some he was a Sabi or Sabæan, commonly known as a Christian of Saint John; and men declare that he began life as a cabin-boy and rose by his unusual astuteness. When any question of unusual gravity occurs the Sayyid summons the Ulema, the Shaykhs, and especially the two Kazis, Shaykh Muhiyy el Din, a Lamu doctor of the Sunni school, and Shaykh Mohammed, an Abázi. Causes tried by ecclesiastics generally depend upon the extent of bribery; but there is always an appeal to the Prince, or in his absence to the Governor. The Kazis punish by imprisonment more or less severe. The stocks are set up in every plantation; the fetters are heavy, and there is, if wanted, a ponderous iron ring with long spikes, significantly termed in Persian the ‘Tauk i Ta’at,’ collar of obedience. Instant justice is the order of the day, and the crooked stick (bákúr) plays a goodly and necessary part; how necessary we see in the present state of Syria, whence the ‘Tanzimat’ constitution has banished the only penalty that ruffians fear. From ten to fifty blows are usually inflicted: in the Gulf, when the bastinado is to be administered with the Niháyet el Azáb (extreme rigour), half-a-dozen men work upon the culprit’s back, belly, and sides, and a hundred strokes suffice to kill him. Severe examples are sometimes necessary, though chastisement is on the whole wild and unfrequent. Zanzibar town is subject to fires, originating with the slaves, often in drunkenness, more often for plunder; and this induced the late Sayyid to forbid the building of cajan ‘tabernacles’ (Makuti or Banda-ni) upon the house-tops. His orders were obeyed for four months, an unusually long time; and at last Europeans, in consequence of the danger which threatened them, were compelled personally to interfere with the severest preventive treatment. The Prince alone has the power of pronouncing a capital sentence; and, as usual in Moslem countries, where murder is a private, not a public, offence, the criminal is despatched by the relatives of the slain. Death may be inflicted by the master of the house upon a violator of domicile, gallant, or thief; the sword is drawn, and the intruder is at once cut down. Fines and confiscations, which have taken the place of the Koranic mutilation, are somewhat common, especially when impudent frauds are practised upon the Prince’s property. Confinement in the fort, I have said, is severe, but not so much feared as at Maskat, whose rock dungeon is an Aceldama; I saw something of the kind at Fernando Po. Criminals have a wholesome horror of being the ruler’s guest, yet they sometimes escape by the silver key, and, once upon the mainland, they may laugh at justice. I heard of a Banyan who, despite being double-ironed, managed to ‘make tracks.’
The military force of Zanzibar is not imposing. In 1846, throughout the African possessions of the Sayyid, the permanent force was only 400 men, namely, about 80 at Zanzibar, 250 at Mombasah, 30 at Lamu, 25 at Patta, 6 to 10 at Kilwa, and sundry pairs at Makdishu and other places; after that time they were doubled and even trebled. The ‘regulars’ consist of a guard of honour, a ‘guardia nobile’ of a dozen serviles habited in cast-off Sepoy uniforms, collected from different corps of the Bombay army: one musket carries a bayonet, the other a stick. The cost of new equipments was once asked by the late Sayyid; after glancing at the total, he exclaimed that the guard itself would not fetch half that sum. The irregular force is more considerable, and represents the Hayduques of old Eastern Turkey, the Arnauts or Albanians of Egypt, the Bashi- Buzuks of El Hejaz, and the Sayyáreh and Zabtiyyeh of modern Syria. The so-called Baloch are vagrants and freebooters collected from Northern Arabia and from the southern seaboard of Persia, Mekran, and Kilat: when the Prince required extra levies he rigged out a vessel and recruited at Guadel or at Makallah. He preferred the Aryan,[67] as being more amenable to discipline than the Semite: moreover, the Arab clansman, like the Highlander of old, though feudally bound to follow his suzerain, requires the order of his immediate chief, and the latter, when most wanted, is uncommonly likely to rat or to revolt. The mercenaries of Zanzibar nominally receive $2 to $3 per mensem, with rations: practically, the money finds its way more or less into the pocket of the Jemadar or C. O. The fort is here garrisoned by some 80 of these men and their negro slaves: the former are equal to double the number of Arabs in the field, and behind walls they are a match for a nation of savages. Police by day and night patrols are much wanted at Zanzibar, where every man must be his own ‘Robert.’ The slaves are unruly subjects; even those of the fort will commit an occasional murder, and the suburbs are still far from safe during the dark hours. The garrison is securely locked up, and in case of most urgent need no aid is procurable before morning.
[Illustration: WASIN TOWN.]
I may now offer a catalogue raisonné of the late Sayyid’s fleet, which was intended to keep up the maritime prestige of his predecessors, the Yu’rabi Imams. The Shah Alam, a double-banked frigate of 1100 tons, carrying 50 guns (45, says M. Guillain, i. 584), was built at Mazagon in 1820, and now acts guardship, moored off Mto-ni. The ‘Caroline’ (40 guns), the best of the squadron, and built at Bombay, was degraded to be a merchantman, in which category she visited Marseille (1849): she has, however, again opened her ports after returning from Maskat. The strong and handsome ‘Sultana’ was wrecked near Wasin when returning from India. The ‘Salihi’ was lost in the Persian Gulf; the ‘Sulayman Shah’ and the ‘Humayun Shah,’ in the Gulf of Bengal. The ‘Piedmontese,’ 36 guns, built at Cochin in 1836, might be repaired at an expense of £10,000. The ‘Victoria’ frigate (40), teak-built in the Mazagon dockyard, is still sea-worthy. The ‘Rahmani’ corvette (24 guns), is a fast-sailing craft with great breadth of beam, hailing from Cochin: she was lately fitted out for a recruiting vessel to Hazramaut. The ‘Artemise’ corvette, formerly of 18 guns, now a jackass frigate with 10 guns _en barbette_, was built at Bombay of fine Daman teak, and was lately repaired there, at an expense of 22,000 Co.’s Rs. Called Colonel Hamerton’s yacht, because always placed at his disposal by the late Sayyid, she will carry him on his last voyage, accompanying us to Bagamoyo upon the mainland. She is commanded by the sailing-master of the fleet, Mohammed bin Khamis, who has studied navigation and modern languages in London—of him more anon. The lighter craft are the ‘Salihi’ barque (300 tons), built in America about 1840, condemned and repaired in Bombay; and the ‘Taj’ brig (125 tons), launched at Cochin in 1829, and originally intended for a yacht. Besides there is a mosquito squadron composed of some 20 ‘batelas,’ each armed with 2 to 6 guns, which serve equally for cabotage and for campaigning.
The useless, tawdry ‘Prince Regent,’ presented by H. B. Majesty’s Government to the late Sayyid, was by him passed over in 1840 to the Governor-General of India. It was sold at Calcutta, and for many years it was, as a transport, the terror of the eastern soldier. The Sayyid could not pray amongst the ‘idols’ of gilding and carving; he saw pollution in every picture, and his Arabs supposed the royal berth to be the Tábút Hazrat Isa—Our Lord’s coffin. Instead of this article he wished to receive the present of a steamer, but political and other objections prevented.[68] Eastern rulers also will not pay high and regular salaries; and without European engineers every trip would have cost a boiler. Repairs were impossible at Zanzibar; and, as actually happened to Mohammed Ali’s expensive machinery in Egypt, the finest work would have been destroyed by mere neglect. A beautiful model of a steam- engine was once sent out from England: it was allowed to rust unopened in the Sayyid’s ‘godowns.’ Still the main want of the Island was rapid communication. Sometimes nine months elapsed before an answer came from Bombay: letters and parcels—including my manuscript—were often lost; and occasionally, after a long cruise, they returned to their starting- point, much damaged by time and hard usage. The Bombay Post-office clerks thinking, I presume, that Zanzibar is in Arabia, shipped their bags to Bushire and Maskat, some thousand miles N. West instead of S. West of Bombay, and viâ Halifax—half round the world—was often the speediest way of communication with London. No wonder that letters were delayed from 7 to 9 months, causing great loss to the trade, and inconvenience to the authorities. Her Majesty’s proclamation was published in India on November 1, 1858; the Prince of Zanzibar was obliged with a copy only in March, 1859. A line of steamers from the Cape and other places was much talked of; it would certainly obviate many difficulties, but the Zanzibar merchants who had a snug monopoly were dead against free-trade and similar appliances of modern civilization. The French Company then running vessels from Mauritius to Aden, proposed to touch at Zanzibar if permitted to engage on their own terms ‘ouvriers libres.’ The liberal offer was declined with thanks.
The Royal Treasury is managed with an extreme simplicity. When the Prince wants goods or cash he writes an order upon his collector of customs; the draft is kept as an authority, and the paper is produced at the general balancing of accounts, which takes place every third or fourth year. I found it impossible to obtain certain information concerning the gross amount of customs, and inquiry seemed only to lead further from the truth. The ruler, the officers under him, and the traders all have several interests in keeping the secret.
The Custom House is in an inchoate condition; it makes no returns, and exports being free, it requires neither manifest nor port clearings from ships about to sail. The customs are farmed out by the Sayyid, and 10 years ago their value was $142,000, or 38 per cent. less than is now paid. The last contractor was a Cutch Banyan named Jayaram Sewji. The ‘ijáreh’ or lease was generally for five years, and the annual amount was variously stated at $70,000 to $150,000, in 1859 it had risen to $196,000 to $220,000.[69] He had left the Island before Sayyid Said’s death, and though summoned by the Prince Majid, there was little chance of his committing the folly of obedience. His successor was one Ladha Damha, also a Bhattia Hindu, and a man of the highest respectability. These renters declared that they did not collect the amount which they paid for the privilege: on the other hand, they could privately direct their caste fellows, do what they pleased with all unprotected by treaty, and having a monopoly as tradesmen between the wholesale white merchants and the petty dealers of the coast, they soon became wealthy.
Land cess and port dues were unknown at Zanzibar. The principal source of revenue was the Custom House, where American and European goods, bullion excepted, paid the 5 per cent. ad valorem provided by commercial treaties. Cargo from India paid 5·25, the fractions serving to salary Custom House officials. The import was levied on all articles transshipped in any ports of the Zanzibar dominions, unless the cargo was landed only till the vessel could be repaired. Of course the tariff was complicated in the extreme, ‘custom’ amongst orientals being the ‘rule of thumb’ further west. The farmers appointed all subordinate officials, and as these received insufficient salaries, smuggling, especially in the matters of ivory and slaves, came to their assistance. The Wasawahili Makhadim, or serviles, contributed an annual poll-tax of $1 per head, and this may have amounted to 10,000 to 14,000 crowns per annum. The maximum total of the late Sayyid’s revenue was generally stated as follows—
Maskat (customs) German crowns $180,000
Mattra (Matrah) 60,000
Maskat and Mattra (octroi from the interior) 20,000
Average receipts from other parts of Africa 20,000 and Arabia
Zanzibar (customs and poll-tax) 160,000 —-—-— Total in German crowns $440,000
In 1811 Captain Smee computes the revenue of Zanzibar at $60,000 per annum, adding, however, that he considers it to be much more. In 1846 M. Guillain gives the revenue arising from customs on coffee and cloves, Indian rice and melted butter, and divers taxes on shops, indigo, dyes, thread-makers, silk-spinners, and so forth, as follows—
Total of Oman $136,600 ” African dominions 349,000 —-—— Grand total $485,600 = 2,500,000 francs.
The author, who appears to have been ably assisted in his inquiries by M. Loarer, also states that in the days of Sayyid Said’s father the farming of the customs at Zanzibar represented $25,000, from which it gradually rose to $50,000; $60,000; $80,000; $100,000; $105,000; $120,000; $147,000; $157,000; and $175,000 in 1846. We may safely fix the revenue in 1857 at a maximum of £90,000 per annum. The expenses of navy, army, and ‘civil service,’ and the personal expenditure of the Prince were easily defrayed out of this sum, whilst the surplus must have been considerable. The income might easily have been increased, and the outlay have been diminished by improving the administration; but the Sayyid had ‘some time before his death reached that epoch of life when age and weariness determine men to consider the status quo as the supreme wisdom.’
Under the new régime affairs did not improve. An Indian firm farmed the customs throughout the Zanzibar dominions for the annual sum of $190,000, and the following is the official statement of the revenues derived by ‘His Highness the Sultan,’[70] in 1863-4.
Customs dues $190,000 Pemba dues 6,000 Poll-tax of Makhádim 10,000 Private clove plantations 15,000 —-—-— Total $221,000 Deduct subsidy paid to Maskat 40,000 —-—-— Balance $181,000
The income, thus sadly fallen off, was hardly enough for the necessaries of the ruler, and left no margin available for improvements or public works. At last the government, which by treaty is unjustly debarred from imposing export or harbour dues, or even from increasing the import duties, devised a modified system of land-tax, charging 5 per cent. per annum on cloves, and 2 pice (= 3/4_d._) on mature cocoa-trees whose estimated average value is $1. This, if levied, would produce about $40,000 per annum.
Since that time prosperity has returned to the Island. The return of imports by the Custom House rose from £245,981 in 1861-2 to £433,693 in 1867-8.[71] One half of the trade was in the hands of English subjects, and the Committee remarks that Zanzibar is the chief market of the world for ivory and copal; that the trade in hides, oils, seeds, and dyes is on the increase, whilst cotton, sugar, and indigo, to which may be added cocoa, loom in the distance.
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Footnote 66:
Recollections of Majunga, Zanzibar, Muscat, Aden, Mokha, Aden, and other Eastern Ports. Salem: George Creamer, 1854.
Footnote 67:
It is hardly necessary to correct in these days the error of Carsten Niebuhr, who made the ‘Belludges’ (Baloch) a tribe of Arabs. The Baloch mercenaries will be found further noticed in Part II. chap. vi.
Footnote 68:
Wellsted’s Travels in Arabia, vol. ii. p. 403. This author exposes, without seeming to know that he was doing so, the selfish and short- sighted policy of the H. E. I. Company which wanted a squadron subsidiary to its own.
Footnote 69:
The consular report of 1860 gives an aggregate value of the port trade at £1,667,577, viz.: imports £908,911, and exports (information furnished by the mercantile community, and evidently much understated) £758,666.
Footnote 70:
Commercial Reports, received at the Foreign Office from H. M.’s Consuls, between July 1, 1863, and June 30, 1864. London, Harrison and Co. In 1862 the revenue of Maskat was computed to reach the very respectable cipher of £1,065,640 per annum.
Footnote 71:
Report of Select Committee appointed to inquire into the whole question of the slave trade on the East coast of Africa.