CHAPTER VII.
A CHRONICLE OF ZANZIBAR.—THE CAREER OF THE LATE ‘IMAM,’ SAYYID SAID.
‘Mais, comme le livre n’est point une œuvre de fantaisie, comme il traite de questions sérieuses, et qu’il s’addresse à des intérêts durables, je me résigne, pour lui, à l’inattention du moment, et j’attendrai patiemment pour que l’avenir lui ramène son heure, lui refasse, pour ainsi dire, une nouvelle opportunité.’—M. GUILLAIN.
There is little of interest in the annals of Oman and of her colonies. Fond of genealogy, the modern Arabs are perhaps the most incurious of Orientals in the matter of history: they ignore the past, they disregard the present, and they have a superstitious aversion to speak of the future. Lawless and fanatical, treacherous, blood-thirsty and eternally restless, the Omani races, whose hand is still against every man, have converted their chronicles into a kind of Newgate Calendar, whilst the multitude of personages that appear upon the scene, and the perpetual rising and falling of Imams, princes, and grandees, offer to the reader a mere string of proper names. Ample details concerning Maskat will be found in the pages of Capt. Hamilton, Carsten Niebuhr, Wellsted, and Salíl ibn Razík,[72] to mention no others. Zanzibar has ever been, since historic times, connected with Oman, whose fortunes she has reflected; the account of the distant dependency given by travellers is, therefore, as might be expected, scanty and obscure.
At an early period the merchants and traders of Yemen frequented the Island, and exchanged, as we read in the Periplus and Ptolemy, their homes of barren rock and sand for the luxuriant wastes of Eastern Africa. If tradition be credible, their primitive settlements were Patta (Bette), Lamu, and the Mrima fronting these islets; and here to the present day the dialect of their descendants has remained the purest. Themselves pagans, they lived amongst the heathenry, borrowed their language, as the Arabs and the Baloch still do, intermarried with them, and begot the half-caste Wasawahili, or coast population. In proof that these were the lords of the land, the late Sultan Ahmad, chief of the Shirazi, or free tribe of the mulattoes, received annual presents from the Arab Sayyid of Zanzibar. When the former died Muigni Mku, his wazir, or brother—here all fellow-countrymen are brothers—succeeded, in default of other heirs, to the position of monarch retired from business. He is a common-looking negroid, who lives upon the proceeds of a plantation and periodical presents: he is not permitted to appear as an equal at the Sayyid’s Darbar, and it is highly improbable that he will ever come to his own again.
The Sawáhil or Azania continued to acknowledge Arab and Persian supremacy till the appearance of the Portuguese upon the coast. D. Vasco da Gama passed Zanzibar Island without sighting it when first bound Indiawards, and authors differ upon the subject of his return voyage. The historian Toão de Barros (i. 4, 11) relates that the expedition made its land-fall from India below Magadoxo (Makdishu or Maka’ad el Shaat, ‘the sitting-place of the sheep’),[73] beat off a boat attack from ‘Pató’ (Patta), visited Melinde, Mozambique, and the Aguada de S. Braz, and doubled the Cape of Storms on March 20, 1499. Goes[74] declares that da Gama, after touching at Makdishu and Melinde, arrived at Zanzibar on February 28, and was supplied by its ruler with provisions, presents, and specimens of country produce. The island is described as large and fertile, with groves of fine trees, producing good fruit, two others, ‘Pomba’ (Pemba) and ‘Mofia’ (our Monfia and the Arab Mafiyah), lying in its vicinity. These settlements were governed by Moorish princes ‘of the same caste as the King of Melinde’—doubtless hereditary Moslem Shaykhs and Sayyids. The population is represented as being in ‘no great force, but carrying on a good trade with Mombassa for Guzerat calicoes and with Sofala for gold.’ The ‘King of Melinde’ made a name in Europe. Rabelais commemorates Hans Carvel, the King of Melinda’s jeweller, and (in Book I. chap. v.) we read, ‘thus did Bacchus conquer Ind; thus philosophy, Melinde,’—meaning that the Portuguese taught their African friends more drinking than wisdom. João de Barros (ii. 4. 2) informs us that the Chief of Zanzibar was ‘da linhagem dos Reys de Mombaça, nossos imigos.’ The inhabitants were ‘white Moors’ (Arabs from Arabia) and black Moors or Wasawahili; the former are portrayed as a slight people, scantily armed, but clothed in fine cottons bought at Mombasah from merchants of Cambaya. Their women were adorned with jewels, with Sofalan gold, and with silver obtained in exchange for provisions, from the people of St Lawrence’s Island (Madagascar). And here we may remark that the Arab settlements in East Africa, visited by the Portuguese at the end of the 15th century, showed generally a civilization and a refinement fully equal to, if not higher than, the social state of the European voyagers. The latter, expecting to find savages like the naked Kafirs of the South, must not have been a little surprised to receive visits from the chiefs of Mozambique and Melinde, men clad in gold, embroidered silks, velvets, and ‘crimson damask, lined with green satin;’ armed with rich daggers and swords sheathed in silver scabbards, seated on arm-chairs, and attended by a suite of some 20 richly-dressed Arabs. The modest presents offered by the Europeans to these wealthy princelets, whose women adorned themselves with pearls and other precious stones, must have given a mean idea of Portuguese civilization. And even in the present day the dominions of the ‘barbarous Arab’ are superior in every way to the miserable colonies on the West African coast, which represent Christian and civilized Europe.
Four years afterwards (1503) Ruy Lourenço Ravasco, a Cavalleiro da Casa d’ El Rey, sailing with D. Antonio de Saldanha, cruized off ‘Zemzibar,’ as his countrymen called Zanzibar, and in two months captured twenty rich ships, laden with ambergris, ivory, tortoiseshell, wax, honey, rice, coir, and silk and cotton stuffs. This captain appears, like most of his fellows, to have been a manner of pirate: he did not restore them till ransom was paid. ‘El Rey,’ still friendly to the Portuguese, sent a spirited remonstrance, when the insolence of the reply forced him to take hostile measures. The Arabs manned their canoes with some 4000 men; but two launches, well-armed with cannon, killed at the first discharge 34 men and put the rest to flight. Thus the Malik or Regulus was compelled by Ravasco to pay an annual tribute of 100 gold miskals in token of submission to the greedy and unprincipled Dom Manuel. ‘The conquered pays the conquest!’ exclaims with Christian emphasis the venerable Osorio. Portugal now began to gather gold from Sofala to Makdishu; ‘Wagerage,’ the chief of Melinde, contributed every year 1500 wedges (ingots) of the precious metal, and the insolence of the victors must have made the good old man deeply regret the welcome and the Godspeed which he had bestowed upon the exploratory expedition.
The Portuguese having wrested Kilwa and Mombasah from its Arab chiefs, D. Duarte de Lemos, appointed (A.D. 1508) by the King Governor of the ‘Provinces of Æthiopia and Arabia,’ attacked successively Mafiyah, Zanzibar, and Pemba, for failing in the paramount duty of paying tribute. Mafiyah submitted, the people of Pemba escaped to Mombasah, leaving nothing in their houses, and Zanzibar resisted, but the town was taken and plundered. The Shaykh retired northwards, and his subjects fled to the bush, ‘depois de bem esfarrapados na carne con a ponta da lança, e espada dos nossos’—after being well pierced in the flesh by the lance-points and the sword-blades of our men—says the chronicler. From this time probably we may date the pointed arches that still remain upon the Island, and the foundation of the fort, which is popularly attributed to the ‘Faranj.’ Mombasah and Pemba were presently occupied by the Portuguese; and the ruins of their extensive barracoons, citadels, and churches still argue ancient splendour. In other places upon the seaboard I found deep and carefully sunk wells, stone enclosures, and coralline temples, whilst vestiges of European buildings may be traced, it is said, contrary to popular opinion, many days’ journey inland.
We read little about Lusitanianized Zanzibar, where the insalubrity of the climate must have defended the interior, and even parts of the coast, from the spoiler. In _A.D._ 1519 the Moors massacred certain shipwrecked sailors belonging to the expedition of D. Jorje de Albuquerque. Three years afterwards the Shaykh, or, as he styled himself, the Sultan[75] of Zanzibar, who, after submitting to Ravasco, had acknowledged himself a vassal of D. Manuel, fitted out, with the aid of the factors João de Mata and Pedro de Castro, a small expedition against the Quirimba islandry, who had allied themselves with the hostile tribes about Mombasah. The attack was successful, the chief town was pillaged and burnt, and terror of the invader brought all the neighbouring islets to terms. In 1528-9 the Viceroy of India, Nuno da Cunha, being about to attack Mombasah, was supplied with provisions by the Chief, and the Portuguese presently reduced the coast to a single rule whose centres were successively Kilwa, Sofala, and Mozambique. East Africa then became one of the four great governments depending upon the vice-royalty of India; the three others being Malacca, Hormuz, and Ceylon.
In this state Zanzibar remained till the close of the next century. When, however, Pedro Barrato de Rezende, Secretary to the Viceroy, Count of Linhares, wrote his ‘Breve Tratado’ on the Portuguese colonies of India and East Africa (1635), the Island had ceased to be vassal and tributary, but the Sultan remained friendly to Europeans. Many of the latter occupied with their families rich plantations; Catholic worship was protected, and there was a church in which officiated a brother of the order of St Austin. There was the usual massacre of the Portuguese, and expulsion of the survivors in imitation of Mombasah, about 1660; and the Islanders, doubting their power to procure independence, applied for assistance to the Arabs.
The reign of the Yu’rabi of Oman, a clan of the great Ghafiri tribe, began as follows. The Imam, Sultan bin Sayf bin Malik el Yu’rabi, the second of the family, having recovered Maskat (April 23, 1659), and Matrah, created a navy which added Kang, Khishm, Hormuz, Bahrayn, and Mombasah (1660) to the Arabian possessions left by his ancestors. After investing Bombay this doughty chief died in A.D. 1668 or in 1669. His son, Sayf bin Sultan, after defeating an elder brother, Belárab, became the third Imam of the house of Yu’rabi, and summoned to submission the petty chiefs on the eastern mainland of Africa. Between A.D. 1680 and 1698, the powerful squadron of the warlike Moor drove the Portuguese from Zanzibar, Kilwa, Pemba, and Mombasah, where he established as Governor Nasir bin Abdillah el Mazru’i, the first of the great family of that name. He failed only at Mozambique. Arabs still relate the legend how having closely invested the fort they were undermining the wall, when a Banyan gave traitorous warning to the besieged. Pans of water ranged upon the ground showed by the trembling fluid the direction of the tunnel; a countermine was sprung with fatal effect, and the assailants, retreating in confusion to their shipping, raised the siege.[76] The squadron, however, pursued its course as far south as the Comoros and Bukini (Madagascar, or rather the northern portion of the Island), whence, hearing of the ruler’s death, it returned home. When the Island became Arab property the Wasawahili fled to the ‘bush’: they presently consented to render personal service, or to purchase exemption by annually paying $2 per head.
Sayf bin Sultan was succeeded, in A.D. 1711, by his eldest son, Sultan bin Sayf, who defeated with his fleet of 24 to 28 ships, carrying 80 guns, the soldiers of Abbas III. and of Nadir Shah. After his decease the chieftainship of Oman was seized by a distant relative, Mohammed bin Nasir, Lord of Jabrin, who according to some, first assumed, according to others, resumed, the title of ‘Imam,’ making himself priest as well as prince, like him of Sana’a in Yemen. It has ever been a Kháriji, and especially a Bayází tenet, that any pious man, not only those belonging to the Kuraysh or the Prophet’s tribe, might rise to the rank of Pontiff. In A.D. 751 they were powerful enough to elect Julandah ben Mas’úd, but the succeeding dynasty rejected the term. The usurped rule was recovered after his decease (A.D. 1728) by Sayf el Asdi, a younger son of Sultan bin Sayf: this indolent debauchee being shut up in Maskat by a cousin, Sultan bin Murshid—some corrupt his father’s name to Khurshid—applied for assistance to that Nadir Shah, whom his more patriotic father had successfully resisted. In 1746 the Persians, aided by intestine Arab divisions, soon conquered Oman: Sultan bin Murshid slew himself in despair, and Sayf el Asdi, duped by his allies, died of grief in his dungeon at Rustak. The latter city was in those days the ordinary residence of the Imams; in fact, a kind of cathedral town as well as capital.
The power now fell from the hands of the Yu’rabis (Ghafiris) into the grasp of their rivals, the Bu Saidi (Hinawis). These ancient lords of Oman claim direct descent from Kahtan (Joetan), great-grandfather of Himyar, founder of the Southern Arabs, and brother to Saba, who built in Yemen the city that bore his name: the stock is held to be noble as any in the Peninsula. Oman remained under foreign dominion, paying tribute to, and owning the rule of, Nadir Shah, till the Chief of Sohar, Said bin Ahmad el Bu Saídí, struck the blow for freedom. Five years afterwards (A.D. 1744) his son, Ahmad bin Saíd, artfully recovering Maskat from Mirza Taky Khan, the Governor of Fars, who had revolted against Nadir Shah, expelled the Persians from Oman. When laying the foundation of the present dynasty he assumed the title of ‘Sayyid’ (temporal ruler); persuaded the Mufti to elect him ‘Imam’ (prince- priest), and was confirmed in his dignities by the Sherif of Meccah. Colonel Pelly (p. 184, Journal Royal Geographical Society, 1865) gives a somewhat different account—‘It appears that the family of the Imams of Muskat were originally Sayeds of a village, named Rowtheh, in the Sedair immediately below the Towaij hills. The founder of the family was Saeed. His son’s name was Ahmed. They came to Oman, and took service under the dominant tribe called Yarebeh. Subsequently they obtained possession of the strong hill-fort called Ilazm, in the neighbourhood of Rostak. Eventually they became the rulers of Oman, and changed their sect from that of Sunnee to Beyãthee.’ Ahmad allied himself with the ex-royal Yu’rabis, by marrying a daughter of Sayf el Asdi. After crushing sundry rebellions, he plundered Diu (A.D. 1760), and massacred the population, a disaster from which the great port and fort never recovered. He then sent an army of 12,000 men against the Ghafiri of Ra’as el Khaymah, who had assisted the Persians to attack the Kawasim, and against the Nuaymi, a powerful clan dwelling south of Sharjah on the Pirate Coast. His success was complete; Khurfakan, Khasab, Ramsah, Ra’as el Khaymah, Jezirat el Hamrah, Sharjah, and Fasht, all in turn submitted to him. In A.D. 1785 he personally visited Mombasah, and by his lion-like demeanour he secured its submission.
Dying shortly afterwards, Ahmad bin Said left the government to his son, Said bin Ahmad, who was declared Imam, but was confined till the date of his death, in 1802, to Rustak and its territory by his younger brother, the ambitious and warlike Sultan bin Ahmad. This prince occupied the islands of Khishm, Hormuz, and Bahrayn; he attempted to protect his commerce from the pirates of Julfar and Ra’as el Khaymah, especially the Kawasim, in our hooks called Jowasmee:[77] these Algerines of the East had now become Wahhabis, and were hacked by all the influence of Saúd, Lord of Daraiyyah. After vainly attempting to obtain aid from the Pasha of Baghdad, Sultan bin Ahmad was attacked whilst sailing to Bandar Abbas by five ships of the Kawasim, and was shot in the mêlée on Nov. 18, 1804.
This decease brought to power the late Sayyid Said,[78] the second son born to Sayyid Sultan bin Ahmad in A.D. 1790. His maternal uncle, Sayyid Bedr bin Sayf, and the Wahhabi Chief, Saúd, enabled him to defeat Sultan Kays bin Ahmad of Sohar, another uncle who aimed at usurpation; but the danger was shifted, not destroyed. At length, in A.D. 1806, Sayyid Said’s aunt, the Bihi Mauza, daughter of the Imam Ahmad, and popularly known as the Bint el Imam, determined that Sayyid Bedr must be slain at a Darbar. Sayyid Said, a youth of 16, was unwilling, but the strong- minded woman—in every noble Arab family there is at least one—prevailed, and on July 31 the dangerous protector whilst descending the stairs, was struck in the back by his nephew’s dagger. Sayyid Bedr sprang from the window, and mounted a stirrupless horse which stood below, when he was wounded with a spear; the ‘Imam’s daughter,’ with a blood-thirstiness truly feminine, cheering on the assassins, till after riding half a mile on the highway from Birkat to Sohar, he fell from his animal and was speedily despatched. The young prince was, they say, so strongly affected by the scene, that through life he could hardly be persuaded to order a death.[79]
Thus Saíd became, with the consent of his elder brother, Sayyid Salim, an independent ruler, and the fourth of his dynasty, the Bú Saídí. His proper title was ‘Sayyid,’ which in Oman and amongst the Eastern Arabs means a chief or temporal ruler, whereas ‘Sherif’ is a descendant of the Prophet. Many Anglo-Indian writers ignore this distinction. ‘Imam’ is an ecclesiastical title, signifying properly the man who takes the lead in public prayer, and it demands both study and confirmation: in sectarian theology it is the hereditary head of El Islam. The ‘Imam of Mascat,’[80] therefore, never followed the practice of his predecessors. His acclamation took place on Sept. 14, 1806. He was immediately involved in troubles with Mombasah, Makdishu, and the unruly Arab settlements of the East African Coast. His possessions in Oman also were invaded and overrun by the Wahhabis, under Saúd who died in 1814, and afterwards under his son Abdullah: these energetic Puritans converted, by much fighting and more intrigue, several tribes to ‘Unitarianism’; the land was at once fettered with a five per cent. Zakát (annual tribute), of which Maskat paid 12,000 German crowns, and Sohar $8000. Yet his valour and conduct gradually raised Sayyid Saíd to wealth and importance, and the warlike operations of Mohammed Ali Pasha against the Wahhabis gave him power to throw off the yoke. His personal gallantry in the disastrous affair with the Benu Bú ’Ali (1820-21), won him the praise of India, and the gift of a sword of honour from the Governor- General. His tolerance, so unusual in Arabia, the patriarchal character of his rule, and his love of progress, as shown by his concessions to European and Hindu traders, and by a squadron of three frigates, four corvettes, two sloops, seven brigs, and twenty armed merchant vessels, entitled him to a place amongst civilized powers. With England he became an especial favourite, after he had entered into the Palmerstonian views upon the subject of slave exportation. He began by sacrificing, it is said, 100,000 crowns annually, and he declined the various equivalents, £2000 for three years, and other paltry sums offered in A.D. 1822, as a compensation by Captain Moresby, R.N. His friendship with us, indeed, cost him dear: more than once he threatened that if other concessions were demanded by the unconscionable abolitionist he would escape the incessant worry by abdicating and retiring to Meccah.
Sayyid Saíd first left Maskat for Zanzibar in 1828, and finally in 1832, justly offended by our refusing to assist him, according to treaty, against Sayyid Hamud bin Azran bin Kays, the rebel chief of Sohar. Our policy on this occasion is generally supposed to have been prompted by Captain, afterwards Colonel, Sam. Hennell, British Resident at Bushire. This official, acting doubtless under orders, and living in constant dread of ‘breaking the peace of the Gulf,’ preserved it by yielding every point to every man; and the ignoble attitude which, amongst a warlike race, provoked only contempt, laid the foundation of the last Persian war. It was on a par with the orders which, under pain of dismissal, bound the officers commanding the Honourable East India Company’s cruisers in the Persian Gulf not to open fire upon a squadron of pirates unless they began the cannonade; and which caused the capture by boarding of more than one man-of-war.
Zanzibar had, since its conquest by Oman, been governed by an officer appointed from Arabia. Sayyid Saíd found the town a line of cajan huts, with the fort commanding the harbour, which served only for an occasional pirate or slaver. Till A. D. 1822 some 15 or 16 Spaniards and Portuguese ranged these seas, committing every kind of atrocity: they were dangerous outside the port, and when at anchor they were guilty of every crime; as many as three and four have been killed in a single night, and a priest was kept for the purpose of shriving the stabbed and burying the slain. These, however, were the days of large profits. The share of one Arab merchant in a single adventure was worth $218,000—he now (1857) begs his bread.
Sayyid Saíd at Once began to encourage foreign residents. With a remarkable liberality he at once broke up the monopoly of trade which the Wasawahili had preserved for eight centuries, including the 200 years when it was perpetuated by the avidity and the fanaticism of the Portuguese. The United States, who being first in the market for ivory, copal, and hides, had dispersed their cottons and hardwares throughout Eastern Africa, concluded with him, in Sept. 1835, an advantageous treaty, and established, about the end of 1837, a trading consulate at his court. Four years afterwards (December, 1841) Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton was directed to make Zanzibar his head-quarters as ‘H. B. Majesty’s Consul, and H. E. I. Company’s Agent in the dominions of H. H. the Imaum.’ Captain Romain Desfossés, the Mentor of the Prince de Joinville, and commanding the naval division of Bourbon and Madagascar, escorted by a squadron, signed a treaty on November, 1844. He was accompanied by a consul without a chancellier, and the former at once receiving his exequatur, began residence.
The Sayyid was unfortunate in sundry attempts to subjugate the Zanzibar Coast: his conduct of war argued scant skill as a general, but he never forfeited his well-earned favour for personal gallantry. With the true Arab mania for territorial conquest, he eventually succeeded in flying his flag at all the ports that belonged to the Yu’rabi Imams, and which had descended, by the irregular right of succession, to his ancestor, Ahmad bin Saíd the Hinawi. The Mazara’ (Mazrui) clan, alias the Arabo- Mombasah princes, a turbulent and hot-tempered feudality, who, after the massacre of the Portuguese, had been allowed, by Sayf bin Sultan, to retain the city on condition of sending occasional presents and of doing certain baronial services, refused (A.D. 1822) allegiance to the Ayyal Bú Saíd. Captain Vidal, R.N., finding this important place threatened by Zanzibar, accepted an application from the citizens, who had hoisted the British flag; advised that they should be received as protégés, and persuaded the claimant to withdraw. The Sayyid remonstrated against these measures with the Bombay Government; and the ministers of the Crown to whom the question was referred, eventually removed our establishment.
Sayyid Saíd, early in 1828, sailed with a squadron carrying 1200 men, to attack the town, but after taking and garrisoning the fort, he was compelled to make Zanzibar, and eventually Maskat. The retreat was in consequence of the troubles excited by Saúd bin Ali bin Sayf, the nephew of Sayyid Bedr, supported by the sister of Sayyid Hilal, chief of Suwayk, who had been treacherously imprisoned. He was enabled, by the aid of Isá bin Tarif and his dependents, to invest, with a squadron carrying a force of 4000 to 5000 men, about the end of December, 1829, Mombasah Fort, from which his garrison had been repulsed. The Mazru’is, numbering a total of some 1500, gallantly held their ground: the Sayyid’s soldiers, suffering severely from fever, refused to fight: briefly two campaigns had little effect upon the besieged, and the Sayyid was obliged to accept the semblance of submission, in order to return triumphant to Zanzibar. After visiting Maskat, and putting down Hamud bin Azran, who had taken Rustak, and was threatening the capital, he broke the treaty with Mombasah, and blockaded it throughout the N. East monsoon from November, 1831, to April, 1832. During the next year he attacked the place for the third time; but, after a week’s campaign, he returned once more with Oriental triumph to Zanzibar in February, 1833. Then treachery was called in to do the perfect work. Ráshid bin Salim bin Ahmad, the Mazru’i Wali or governor, and twenty-six of his kinsmen, enticed by the most solemn oaths, which were accompanied by a sealed Koran—it is wonderful how liar trusts liar!—embarked on one of the Sayyid’s ships, which carried his son Sayyid Khalid and Sulayman bin Ahmad. The vessel instantly weighed anchor, stood for Zanzibar, and consigned its cargo to life-long banishment and prison, at Mina and Bandar Abbas. The Mazara’ at once sank into utter obscurity.
Sayyid Saíd was persuaded (Jan. 6, 1843) to attack that notorious plunderer, Bana M’takha, chief of Sewi, a small territory near Lamu, who had persuaded one Mfumo Bakkari, and afterwards his brother Mohammed bin Shaykh, to declare himself Lord of Patta, and independent of the Arab prince. The ruler of Zanzibar here failed to repeat his success at Mombasah, the wily African shutting his ear to the charmer’s voice. The second son, Sayyid Khalid, then disembarked his 1200 to 1300 troops, Maskatis and Wasawahili, ‘cowardly as Maskatis,’ who with the Súri are the proverbial dastards of the race. He served out with Semitic economy five cartridges per head, and he marched them inland without a day’s rest, after a ‘buggalow’-voyage from Arabia. Short of ammunition, and worn out by fatigue, they soon yielded to the violent onslaught of the enemy. The Wágunya, or as some write the word Bajúní, warriors, described to be a fierce race of savages, descended from the Wasawahili, the Somal, and the Arab colonists, charged in firm line, brandishing spear-heads like those of the Wamasai, a cubit long, and shouting as they waved their standards, wooden hoops hung round with the dried and stuffed spoils of men.[81] The Arabs fled with such precipitation, that some 300 were drowned, an indiscriminate massacre and mutilation took place, the ‘England’ and the ‘Prince of Wales’ opened an effectual fire upon their own boats and friends; the guns which had been landed were all captured, and the Sayyid Khalid saved himself only by the speed of his horse. The operation was repeated with equal unsuccess next year, Sayyid Said himself embarking on board the ‘Victoria:’ the general, Hammad bin Ahmad, fell into an ambuscade, and again the artillery was lost. After a blockade of the Coast, which lasted till the end of 1866, the Kazi of Zanzibar, Muhiyy el Din of Lamu, landing upon his native island, talked over the insurgents. Bana M’takha afterwards sent back the Arab cannon, saying that he could not afford to keep weapons which ate such vast meals of powder, and acknowledged for a consideration the supremacy of Zanzibar, retaining his power, and promising but never intending to pay an annual tribute of $5000. Hence the Baloch mercenaries speak of their late employer as a king who bought and sold, and who was more distinguished for the arts of peace than for the nice conduct of war. Even his own subjects complained on this occasion of his folly in commencing, and of his want of energy in carrying on, the campaign.
The Sayyid’s matrimonial engagements were numerous. In 1827 he married the daughter of the Farmán-farmá (Governor) of Fars, and a grand- daughter of Fath ’Ali Shah, under an agreement in the marriage contract that the bride might spend every summer with her own family at Bandar Abbas or Shiraz. Disgusted with Arab homeliness, and with six years of monotonously hot life at Maskat, she obtained leave, and once in a place of safety she wrote back a strong epistle. It began, ‘Yá Dayyus! yá Mal’ún’, alluding to the report that Sayyid Khalid had violated the harem of his father, as the latter was also said to have done in his younger days. The Arab prince had lowered himself in the eyes of his subjects by representing himself to be a Shiah. She called him a dog- Sunni, and upon this ground she demanded instant divorce. The Sayyid despatched two confidential elders with orders to represent that his spouse could not legally claim such indulgence: a singular bastinado upon the soles of their feet soon made the venerable learned discover that divine right was upon the lady’s side. Her next exploit was to bowstring, in jealousy, a Katirchi (muleteer) with whom she had intrigued; and, driven from Shiraz by the fame of this exploit, she died at Kazimayn, in child-bed, her lover being this time a Hammamchi, or bath-servant.
In A.D. 1833, four years after the death of Radama I., the Sayyid formed matrimonial designs upon the person of Ranavola Manjaka, Queen of the Hovas, and a personage somewhat more redoubtable than our good Queen Bess. Amongst his envoys on this occasion was one Khamisi wa Tání, who, under the Arabized name Khamis bin Osman, presently played some notable tricks upon the credulous ‘comparative geographer,’ Mr W. D. Cooley. The envoys were kept upon the frontier till the ‘Tangi-man’ arrived, bringing the Tangina. This nut, scraped in water, is administered as an ordeal, like the bitter water of the ancient Israelites and the poison nut of modern Calabar. The patient is ordered to walk about; after some 20 minutes he feels atrocious bowel-pains, prolapsus takes place, and he dies; if wealthy enough to pay the priest, another kind of nut is at once administered, and it may cure by emesis. As soon as this potion, which always destroys traitors with frightful torments, in fact, with the worst symptoms of Asiatic cholera, was proposed to the ambassadors, in order to prove the purity of their intentions, and their affection for the royal family, all fled precipitately, as may be imagined, from the ‘Great Britain’ of Africa. Sayyid Said was also unlucky in the choice of another Persian bride, the daughter of Irich Mirza, a supposititious son of Mohammed Shah, and hardly a second-class noble. She came to Zanzibar in A.D. 1849, accompanied by a train of attendants, including her Farráshas (carpet-spreaders), her Jilaudár (groom), and her private Jellád (executioner). She astonished the Arabs by her free use of the dagger, whilst her intense relish of seeing her people ride men down in the bazar, and of superintending bastinadoes administered with Persian apparatus, made the Banyans crouch in their shops with veiled faces, and the Arabs thank Allah that their women were not like those of the A’ajám. In a short time the lady made herself so disagreeable, that her husband sent her back divorced to her own country.
The Sayyid kept a company of 60 or 70 concubines, and he always avoided those that bore him children. Though a man of strong frame and vigorous constitution, he exhausted his powers by excesses in the harem, he suffered from Sarcocele (sinistral) during later life, and an alarming emaciation argued consumption. The heat of Maskat, which he last visited when hostilities between England and Persia were reported, brought him to his grave. In October, 1856, he died at sea off the Seychelles Islands, on board his own frigate, the ‘Victoria.’ Aged 67, the ‘Second Omar,’ as his subjects were fond of calling him before his face, seems to have had a presentiment of death; before embarking he prepared, contrary to Arab custom, a ‘Sandúk el Mayyit,’ or coffin, and when dying he gave orders that his remains should be thrown overboard. The corpse, however, was carried to Zanzibar and interred in the city.
Sayyid Said was probably as shrewd, liberal, and enlightened a prince as Arabia ever produced, yet Europe overrated his powers. Like Orientals generally, he was ever surrounded by an odious entourage, whom he consulted, trusted, and apparently preferred to his friends and well- wishers. He firmly believed in the African Fetish and in the Arab Sahir’s power of metamorphosis;[82] he would never flog a Mganga (medicine-man), nor cut down a ‘devil’s tree.’ He sent for a Shaykh whose characts were famous, and with a silver nail he attached the paper to the doorway of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton’s sick-room, thereby excluding evil spirits and the ghost of Mr Napier, who had died at the Consulate. He refused to sit for his portrait—even Colonel Smyth’s History of Knight-errantry and Chivalrous Characters failed to tempt him, for the European peasants’ reason,—it would take away part of his life. When ‘chivalry’ was explained to him, he pithily remarked that only the ‘Siflah’ (low fellows) interfere between man and wife, master and man. His pet axiom—a fair test of mental bias—was ‘Mullahs, women, and horses never can be called good till death,’ in this resembling Pulci—
Cascan le rose, e restan poi le spine; Non giudicate nulla innanzi al fine.
The Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord sent him their diploma: he declared that he would not belong to a body of grave-robbers and corpse- snatchers. The census of Zanzibar having been proposed to him, unlike King David, he took refuge with Allah from the sin of numbering his people. When tide-gauges were supplied by the Geographical Society of Bombay, he observed that the Creator had bidden the ocean to ebb and to flow—‘what else did man want to know about it?’ Such was his incapacity for understanding European affairs, that until death’s-day he believed Louis Philippe to have carried into exile, as he himself would have done, all the fleet and the public treasure of the realm. And he never could comprehend a Republic—‘who administers the stick?’
Of this enterprising man, the Mohammed Ali Pasha of the further East, I may say, Extinctus amabitur idem. Shrewd and sensible, highly religious though untainted by fanaticism; affable and courteous, he was as dignified in sentiments as distinguished in presence and demeanour. He is accused of grasping covetousness and treachery—but what Arab ruler is not covetous and treacherous? He was a prince after the heart of his subjects; prouder of his lineage than fond of ostentation or display, an amateur conqueror on a small scale, mild in punishment, and principally remarkable as the chief merchant, cultivator, and ship-builder in his dominions. An epitaph may be borrowed for him from a man of very different character—first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen. Peace be to his manes!
Sayyid Said’s territory at the time of his death extended in Oman from the Ra’as el Jebel (Cape Musseldom) to Sohar. In Mekran the seaboard between Ra’as Jask and Guadel belonged to him: in the Persian Gulf he had Khishm, Larak, and Hormuz, and he farmed from the Shah, Bandar Abbas and its dependency, Mina. His African possessions were far the most extensive and important. He ruled, to speak roughly, the whole Eastern Coast from N. lat. 5°, and even from Cape Guardafui, where the maritime Somal were to a certain extent his dependents, to Cape Delgado (S. lat. 11°), where the Arab met the Portuguese rule—an extent of 16° = 960 geographical miles. The small republics of Makdishu (Magadoxo, in N. lat. 2° 1′ 4″), of Brava (N. lat. 1° 6′ 48″), of Patta or Bette (S. lat. 2° 9′ 12″), and of Lamu (S. lat. 2° 15′ 42″), owned his protectorate, and in April, 1865, Marka received from him a garrison. The whole Zanzibarian Archipelago was his, and he claimed Bahrayn, Zayla, Aden, and Berberah, the first-mentioned with, the last three without, a shadow of right. His Arab subjects declared that they, and not the Portuguese, ceded Bombay to the British: the foundation of the story is a mosque built in ancient times by the Omanis, somewhat near the present Boree Bandar.
Sayyid Said left a single widow, the lady Azzá bint Musa, of the Bú Kharibán, a grand-daughter of the Imam Ahmad, and consequently a cousin. She is now (1857) in years, but her ancient lineage and her noble manners retain for her the public respect. She had but one child, which died young: all the male issue of the Prince are by slave-girls, a degradation in the eyes of free-born Omani Arabs. As usual amongst the wealthy and noble of the polygamous East, the daughters are the more numerous,[83] and many are old maids, the pride of birth not allowing them, like the Sherifehs of the Hejaz, to wed with any but equals. The eldest of the fourteen sons, Sayyid Hilal, who, in 1845, had visited England, it is said, after an escapade, died at Aden en route to Meccah in 1851. He was followed, after an interval of a few months, by his next brother, Sayyid Khalid, called the Banyan. The eldest surviving heir (Sayyid Suwayni), the son of a Georgian or Circassian slave, born about 1822, became by his father’s will, successor to and lord of the northern provinces. To Sayyid Majid, the fourth son, now (1857) aged 22, a prince of mild disposition and amiable manners, contrasting strongly with the vigorous ruffianism of his elder brother, was left the Government of Zanzibar and of the East African Coast. There is, as usual amongst Arabs, a turbulent tribe of cousins: of these the most influential is Sayyid Mohammed, a son of Sayyid Salim bin Sultan, younger brother to the late Prince, who some years ago died of consumption. Hitherto he has used his powers loyally—ruling, but not openly ruling. Sayyid Said’s valuable property, including his plantations, was sold, as his will directed, and the money was divided according to a fixed scale, even the youngest princes claiming shares. No better inducement to permanent dissension could have been devised. But Eastern monarchs apparently desire that their dynasties should die with them. Fath Ali Shah of Persia, when asked upon his death-bed to name a successor, drew a sword and showed what made and unmade monarchs: scarcely had the breath left his body than the chamber was dyed with the blood of his sons, each hastening to stab some hated rival brother.
These lines were penned in 1857. Since 1859 the hapless and turbulent family has been in a state of fratricidal strife, and the province of Oman has reverted to its normal state of intrigue, treachery, and assassination. Sayyid Suwayni, a negligent and wasteful though not an unpopular man, to whom the English were especially obnoxious, threatened in 1859 an attack upon Sayyid Majid, and was prevented by British cruisers; in due time he was murdered by his son, Sayyid Salim, who usurped the Government. This Sayyid Salim was dethroned by his uncle, Sayyid Turki, who surprised Maskat, and made himself master of the situation. The European would imagine that the stakes were hardly worth such reckless play: Arabs, however, judge otherwise.
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Footnote 72:
History of the Imams and Sayyids of Oman, from A.D. 661 to 1856, by Salil ibn Razík. Translated, &c., by the Rev. G. P. Badger. Printed for the Hakluyt Society.
Footnote 73:
So called from some silly vision of an illuminated sheep appearing to one of the Shaykhs. The city is supposed to have been founded in A.D. 295, about 70 years before Kilwa.
Footnote 74:
The three voyages of Vasco da Gama, &c., as from the Lendas da India of Gaspar Correa, translated by the Hon. Henry C. J. Stanley, London, Hakluyt Society, 1869, chap. xxi., note to page 261. M. Guillain (i. 319) makes the expedition reach Zanzibar on April 29, 1499.
Footnote 75:
The only Shaykhs who took the name of Sultan were those of Kilwa and Zanzibar: he of Mombasah was tributary to the latter.
Footnote 76:
M. Guillain (i. 522) had vaguely heard of this tradition.
Footnote 77:
The Western as well as the Eastern Arabs turn the hard Káf into a Jím, e. g. Jibleh for Kibleh. The Kawásim derive their name from a local Wali, or Santon, the Shaykh Kásim.
Footnote 78:
A detailed account of this Prince’s early life is given in the ‘History of Syed Said, Sultan of Muscat’ ... translated from the Italian. London, 1819 (written by his physician, Shaykh Mansur, alias Vincenzo). Buckingham, Fraser, and Sir John Malcolm have also supplied notices of his eventful career.
Footnote 79:
I give this account as it was told to me by Lieut.-Col. Hamerton. M. Guillain (part II. chap. iii.) may be consulted for another and a more diplomatic version.
Footnote 80:
I cannot but express my astonishment to see a geographer like Ritter, and a veteran from the East like Colonel Sykes (loco cit.), confound ‘Imam’ with ‘Imaun’ (Imán), which signifies faith or creed.
Footnote 81:
The trophies are drawn out with a lanyard, and cut off when the patient is still alive—after death they are not so much valued; finally they are dried so as to resemble isinglass.
Footnote 82:
I have alluded to this subject in my exploration of Harar (chap. ii.), and a few more details may not be uninteresting. Strong-headed Pliny (viii. 32) believes metamorphosis to be a ‘fabulous opinion,’ and remarks, ‘there is no falsehood, however impudent, that wants its testimony among them’ (the Greeks), yet at Tusdrita he saw L. Coisilius, who had been changed from a woman into a man. Curious to say, the learned Anatomist of Melancholy (Part I. sect. 1) charges him with believing in the versipellis, and explains the belief by lycanthropy, cucubuth or Lupina Insania. Petronius gives an account of the ‘fact.’ Pomponius Mela accuses the Druidesses of assuming bestial shapes. Suidas mentions a city where men changed their forms. Simon Magus could produce a double of himself. Saxo Grammaticus declared that the priests of Odin took various appearances. John of Salisbury asserts that Mercury taught mankind the damnable art of fascinating the eyes. Joseph Acosta instances fellow-country men in the West Indies who were shot during transformation. Our ancestry had their were-wolf (homo-lupus), and the Britons their Bisclavaret. Coffin, the Abyssinian traveller, all but saw his Buda change himself into a hyena. Mr Mansfield Parkyns heard of a human horse. In Shoa and Bornou men become leopards; in Persia, bears; in Somali-land Cyn-hyenas; in West African Kru-land elephants and sharks; in Namaqua-land, according to the late Mr Andersson, lions. At Maskat transformation is fearfully frequent; and illiterate Shiahs believe the good Caliph Abubekr, whom they call Pir i Kaftar (old hyena), to be trotting about the deserts of Oman in the semblance of a she-hyena, pursued by many amorous males. At Bushire the strange tale of Haji Ismail, popularly called ‘Shuturi,’ the ‘Camel’d,’ is believed by every one, and was attested with oaths by his friends and relations: this respectable merchant whilst engaged in pilgrimage was transformed by an Arab into a she- camel, and became the mother of several foals, till restored to human shape by another enchanter. Even in Europe, after an age of scepticism, the old natural superstition is returning, despite the pitch-fork, under another shape. The learned authoress of the Night- side of Nature objects to ‘illusionists,’ argues lycanthropy to be the effect of magico-magnetic influence, and instances certain hysterical and nervous phenomena of eyes paralyzed by their own weakness.
For many years I have carefully sifted every case reported to me in Asia and Africa, and I have come to the conclusion with which most men commence. No amount of evidence can justify belief in impossibilities, in bonâ fide miracles. Moreover, such evidence mostly comes from the duper and the dupe. Finally, all objective marvels diminish in inverse ratio to the increase of knowledge, whilst preternaturalisms and supernaturalisms gradually dwindle down to the natural badly understood.
Of course this disclaimer of belief in the vulgar miracle does not imply that human nature has no mysterious powers which, if highly developed and displayed in a dark age, would be treated as a miracle or as an act of magic. It has lately been proved that the will exercises positive and measurable force upon inert matter; such ‘glimpses of natural actions, not yet reduced to law,’—as Mr Faraday said—open up a wonderful vista in the days to come.
Footnote 83:
In the Journal of Anthropology (No. ii. Oct. 1870, Art. ix.), James Campbell, Surgeon, R.N., produces a paper upon ‘Polygamy; its influence on Sex and Population,’ showing, by 17 cases drawn from Siam, exceptions to the common theory that in the patriarchal family more female than male children are born. But the evidence is too superficial to shake the belief of men who have passed their lives in polygamous countries; moreover, in the families cited the male- producing powers may either have been unusual, or they may have been peculiarly stimulated.