nation-building and communities in oman since 1970: the swahili-speaking omani in search of identity

NATION-BUILDING AND COMMUNITIES INOMAN SINCE 1970: THE SWAHILI-SPEAKING

OMANI IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY

MARC VALERI

ABSTRACT

Since 1970, building a new national identity by reunifying Oman’sethno-linguistic groups has been at the heart of Sultan Qaboos’s politicalproject. This paper focuses on the place of Omani who returned fromthe former colonies of Zanzibar and East Africa, responding to SultanQaboos’s call to ‘nationals’ abroad. While they played a leading role inthe modernization process of the Sultanate, these Swahili-speakingOmani faced prejudices from the population who stayed at home andwere forced to give guarantees to the others of their full belonging to thenation. As a consequence, despite their internal differences, they haveprogressively developed a new collective identity, which has its raisond’etre within the framework of the modern Omani State, and can only beexplained by the necessity to find their place in it.

WHEN QABOOS BIN SA‘ID OVERTHREW HIS FATHER IN JULY 1970 and took

up the title of Sultan of Oman, the isolated state emerged from more than

15 years of civil war with many social and political divisions.1 In order to

maintain his authority and gain acceptance, the new ruler had to position

himself as the only person able to pull together all the ethno-linguistic

groups present on the Omani territory and create a new collective

Marc Valeri ([email protected]) received a PhD in political science from the Institutd’Etudes Politiques of Paris in 2005. He is now Lecturer in political science andconstitutional law at La Rochelle University (France). He is the author of Le sultanatd’Oman: une revolution en trompe-l’oeil (2007, forthcoming). His current work deals withauthoritarianism and political legitimacy in Oman and the Gulf. He would like to thankJean-Francois Bayart for his support and the confidence he placed in this research. He is alsograteful to four anonymous referees of African Affairs for their encouraging comments orinsightful critiques of earlier drafts of the paper. Responsibility remains exclusively with theauthor.

1. John Peterson, Oman in the Twentieth Century: Political foundations of an emerging state(Croom Helm, London, 1978).

African Affairs, 106/424, 479–496 doi:10.1093/afraf/adm020

# The Author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved

Advance Access Publication 13 June 2007

479

identity.2 In pursuing this objective, Qaboos used the homogenizing

power of the central state, drawing on the exploitation of newly significant

oil rents. First, the state-controlled oil subsidies made possible previously

unknown economic and social development, while the public sphere

became an inexhaustible bank of jobs open to all levels of skill. The new

civil servants in the national army, police and governmental adminis-

trations were less inclined to question the system because they directly

depended on it. Sultan Qaboos thus endeavoured to make the Omani

people dependant on the state for their daily life, rather than on kinship

or ‘group feeling’ (‘asabiyya).3

This trend went along with a symbolic process of national unification

via a new historiography, which reframed identities by being centred on

the person of the Sultan. Any reference to the pre-1970, 20th century

history has remained taboo until now. Presented as a ‘dark period’, it is

never mentioned other than in contrast with the ‘national awakening’ that

happened on the glorious 23 July 1970, the date of Qaboos’s accession to

the throne, renamed ‘Renaissance Day’ (‘aıd al-nahda). This ‘made to

measure’ historiography is embedded within a broader frame that rein-

vents the national heritage (al-turath al-watani).

In this way, Sultan Qaboos worked to establish his own legitimacy by

building both an Omani state and an Omani nation. Through a national

identity reshaped in connection with an omnipresent state apparatus, the

paternalist authority of Qaboos was legitimized. In order to benefit from

material (royal subsidies, economic contracts, etc.) and symbolic (civil

servant positions) rewards in the new political order, all Omanis had to

participate in this competition for allegiance to the nation and loyalty to

the chief.

Group solidarities, whether based on ‘primordial ties’4 (like tribes, clans

or ethnic groups) or not, are socio-political constructions; their structure

and relevance depend on the context in which they evolve and the multiple

actors they interact with. The most important factor is how the group

members view themselves or wish to be viewed. As Dale Eickelman has

observed, ‘there is no natural tie of obligation between men and groups,

but [. . .] these must be maintained. [. . .] The obligations that derive from

2. Marc Valeri, Le sultanat d’Oman: une revolution en trompe-l’oeil (Karthala, Paris, 2007forthcoming).3. Introduced by Ibn Khaldun, the notion of ‘asabiyya, usually translated by ‘group feeling’ or‘esprit de corps’, is understood as populations tied by blood links or behaviours, acting as a group ordefining themselves as such, and most of the time—but not necessarily—organized to achievecommon goals (like taking positions of power). See Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: Anintroduction to history, chapter 2 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1980).4. Clifford Geertz, ‘The integrative revolution. Primordial sentiments and civil politics inthe new states’, in Clifford Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New States: The quest for modernityin Asia and Africa (Free Press of Glencoe, London, 1963), pp. 105–57.

AFRICAN AFFAIRS480

identity are not necessarily binding in and of themselves. This is one of

the reasons that identities can be so flexible in practice’.5 Given that the

modern state provides a framework that shapes and constrains socio-

political strategies in post-colonial societies,6 group solidarities need to be

studied in relation to the state and the actors who control it.

In this perspective, the experience of the ‘back-from-Africa’7 Omani

brings a valuable contribution to the study of the modern state-led

process of Omani national identity building. These populations are the

descendants of Omani who migrated to the East African coast, mainly

within the framework of the colonization of Zanzibar (since the 17th

century), but also later for more socio-economic motivations (since the

end of the 19th century). They belong to the large expatriate Omani com-

munity whom Sultan Qaboos called upon in 1970 to join forces in order

to develop the country. Owing to the modern Omani Arab ancestry they

claim, they are clearly distinct from the populations descending from

former indigenous African slaves (sing. khadim; servants), now living in

Oman.

This article focuses on the identity-building process of these nationals

who moved back to Oman, and their position within the nation imagined

by Sultan Qaboos. Despite being foremen of the technical and industrial

modernization of the sultanate and key cogs of the new state, the Omani

of East Africa were immediately expected to justify their full belonging to

the nation, in a context of competition in which everyone endeavoured to

show greater loyalty to the Sultan than the other. While a deeply hetero-

geneous group, this population has developed a group feeling (‘asabiyya)

based on their shared vernacular language—Swahili. Far from challenging

the national unity, this solidarity extracts its raison d’etre from the more or

less conflicting confrontations with other collective actors in the modern

state, but has, in the end, contributed to the integration of the returnees

and anchored them within the Omani socio-political game.

5. Dale Eickelman, The Middle East and Central Asia: An anthropological approach, 4th edn.(Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, 2002), pp. 131–2.6. Frederick Bailey, Stratagems and Spoils: A social anthropology of politics (Blackwell,Oxford, 1969); Jean-Francois Medard, ‘L’Etat patrimonialise’, Politique africaine, 39(September 1990), pp. 25–36.7. For the whole paper, as the actors themselves do in the three languages (Arabic, Englishand French), the vocabulary of ‘return’ will be used to account for the settling process inOman, from the 1960s until now, of individuals and families who claim Omani ancestry andwho previously lived in East Africa. Yet, this lexique dealing with the ‘return to the nativecountry’ only partially covers the facts, as most of them had personally never set foot inOman before their ‘come back’. Nevertheless, we keep this explicit vocabulary whichwitnesses both their will to appear distinct from the African societies (especially their formerslaves) where they lived for decades and the complexity of their symbolic ties with Omansince their re-settlement on this territory.

NATION-BUILDING IN OMAN SINCE 1970 481

The Omani footprint in East Africa

The Swahili-speaking populations have formed a ‘middlemen mercan-

tile’8 Muslim society whose historical shaping is intimately linked to its

geographical position, at the interaction between mainland African civili-

zations on the one hand, and the continuous waves of migration among

the Arab world, Asia and the East African coast on the other.9 Over the

past two millennia, southern Arabia made an obvious contribution to the

formation of Swahili identity.10 In particular, it played a leading role in

Swahili historiography and narratives of origins. For instance, the Swahili

elite have long-claimed descent from Arabian ancestries—and indeed,

considered themselves as Arabs—to legitimize their social status and to

strengthen their differences with other Swahili populations—especially

those they viewed as ‘African’.11

The history of the exchanges between south-eastern Arabia and the

Swahili coast goes back to the first centuries of the Islamic era, but it was

given a new shape when the al-Ya‘rubi rulers supplanted the Portuguese

on the Oman coast in 1650. The Omani sultanate of Zanzibar was

erected in the middle of the 18th century, under the newly established

al-Busa‘idi dynasty. Nevertheless, the Swahili businessmen maintained

their economic pre-eminence on the coast. Until Sa‘id bin Sultan’s rule

(1806–1856), the Omani rulers did not succeed in implementing enough

political stability to effectively take profit from their African colonies and

to subdue local populations. The major disruption of the Swahili socio-

economic system can be traced back to the 1830s. Given the increasingly

tough British commercial and military competition in the Persian Gulf,

Sa‘id resolutely turned his mind to the growing commercial potential of

East Africa. He raised Zanzibar as his capital in 1832, then conquered

Mombasa, which had been ruled by the Omani-native Mazru’i dynasty,

five years later. Sa‘id tightened his grip on the Swahili coast both politi-

cally and economically, which turned the economic balance in favour of

8. John Middleton, The World of the Swahili: An African mercantile civilization (YaleUniversity Press, New Haven, 1992).9. Mark Horton and John Middleton, The Swahili: The social landscape of a mercantile society(Blackwell, Oxford, 2000); Derek Nurse and Thomas Spear, The Swahili: Reconstructing thehistory and language of an African society (University of Philadelphia Press, Philadelphia,1985); Thomas Spear, ‘Early Swahili history reconsidered’, The International Journal ofAfrican Historical Studies 33, 2 (2000), pp. 257–90.10. Bradford G. Martin, ‘Arab migrations to East Africa in medieval times’, TheInternational Journal of African Historical Studies 7, 3 (1974), pp. 367–90; John Middleton,‘The immigrant communities (3): The Arabs of the East African coast’, in Donald A. Lowand Alison Smith (eds), History of East Africa, vol. III (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1976),pp. 489–507.11. This phenomenon took a special dimension under the rule of the Omani Sultanate ofZanzibar: see Jonathon Glassman, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, rebellion, and popular consciousnesson the Swahili coast, 1856–1888 (James Currey, London, 1995).

AFRICAN AFFAIRS482

the Muscati Arab and Hindu merchant classes, whose interests were his-

torically linked to the al-Busa‘idi rulers.12 The prosperity of the 19th

century Sultanate of Zanzibar is mostly the prosperity of Sa‘id’s Omani

proteges who gained control over a great part of the commercial networks

between Africa (source of spices, slaves, precious stones, ivory), India

(manufactured articles and textiles) and Oman (dates and frankincense).

If the first modern wave of Omani settlements in East Africa had begun

under the al-Ya‘rubi dynasty, the hegemony of the Zanzibar Sultanate

came with a sharp rise in immigration from Oman, since the authorities

of the Sultanate firmly encouraged such settlers. This new political con-

figuration soon allowed many of the immigrants to reach top political

positions and to build economic supremacy on the Swahili coast, together

with the import of a huge number of people from the mainland to serve

as slaves in the plantations.13 Under the Omani sultans in the 19th

century, a new aristocracy based both on protection of and close relation-

ships with the authorities and on recent Omani lineage appeared. The

former Swahili elite, who considered them as parvenus, was constrained to

accept a new social order in which their positions were dramatically wea-

kened. At the same time the trade with the African mainland (western

Tanganyika, Buganda and the Congo basin) developed dramatically,

under the impulse of Omani-owned companies.14

After Sa‘id’s death, the inability of his sons Thuwainy and Majid to

regulate the succession led, under British pressure, to the dismember-

ment of the Omani possessions into two political entities of Muscat

and Zanzibar in 1861. If Barghash’s rule (1870–1888) marked the

apogee of trade for, as for trade matters, of the Sultanate of Zanzibar,

the Omani political power in Africa was already in decay. The growing

British influence in the region led to the establishment of a protectorate

in Zanzibar in 1890. Nevertheless, the waves of Omani migration to

Africa did not dry up, owing to the dreadful living conditions in unpro-

ductive Inner Oman. Flows of emigrants looking for attractive revenues

followed one another all through the first half of the 20th century, not

only to the Swahili coast, but still deeper and deeper into the mainland

as well. Yet this second wave of Omani-native settlers never enjoyed the

12. Frederick Cooper, Plantation slavery on the east coast of Africa (Yale University Press,New Haven, 1977); Glassman, Feasts and Riot; Mohammed Reda Bhacker, Trade and Empirein Muscat and Zanzibar: Roots of British domination (Routledge, London, 1992); AbdulSheriff and Ed Ferguson (eds), Zanzibar under colonial rule (James Currey, London, 1991).13. Edward A. Alpers, Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa: Changing patterns ofinternational trade to the late nineteenth century (Heinemann, London, 1975); Cooper,Plantation slavery on the east coast of Africa; Abdul Sheriff, Slaves, spices and ivory in Zanzibar(James Currey, London, 1987).14. Norman Bennett, A history of the Arab State of Zanzibar (Methuen, London, 1978),p. 85 et seq.; Cooper, Plantation slavery on the east coast of Africa.


same possibilities to upgrade their social and economic positions as

their predecessors had encountered: as Colette Le Cour Grandmaison

has shown, the later the immigrants arrived, the fewer opportunities

they had to access wealth and prosperity, which led to a hardly

acknowledged but nevertheless actual ‘stratification’ among the Omani

Arabs in East Africa.15 Given that they usually did not possess more

than a low level of education and a very poor knowledge of Islam, the

‘Manga Arabs’16 could not aspire to much more than filling low level

economic positions, like small land cultivators, plantation overseers,

caravan managers or small traders.

This dividing line among the Omani in Africa is well illustrated by the

disparity of the matrimonial strategies they adopted. As far as Manga

Arabs were concerned, men usually came alone to find jobs, which led to

polygamous marriages with African women,17 since a large proportion

were already married in Oman before migrating. With time passing, and

Omani women and families joining men in Africa, marriage networks of

the Manga Arabs stabilized among the ‘asabiyya members, whether the

latter were born within the Omani settlement in Africa or in Oman. At

the same time, the decision to choose partners from among the richest

families of the coast was not based on tribal affiliation or kinship, but

their position in the society18 and the purity of their Arab lineage.

A clanism of social class grouping families of equal social, cultural and

economic status thus served as a substitute for traditional ‘asabiyya.

Later British and German classifications of East African populations

into census categories such as ‘African’, ‘Arab’ or ‘Indian’ gave an overly

homogenized view of ‘Omani Arabs’ on the Swahili coast. Not only were

the social and economic cleavages among the different ‘Omani’ popu-

lations relegated into the background, given that all the Omani were ident-

ified with the generic term of ‘Arab’, together with Yemeni or Comorian,

but moreover these categories tended to overlook the varied stages

through which the Omani in East Africa had been integrated within the

Swahili society, or viewed themselves as ‘Swahili’.19 By the middle of the

15. Colette Le Cour Grandmaison, ‘Rich cousins, poor cousins: Hidden stratificationamong the Omani Arabs in eastern Africa’, Africa 59, 2 (1989), p. 178.16. If the loaded term ‘Manga’ has borne various meanings since the 17th century, in the20th century it referred to the most recent Arabic-speaking immigrants of Omani originswho enjoyed lower status than the Omani who had settled several generations before andwho considered themselves at the same time as an Arab aristocracy and as an integral part ofthe Swahili society.17. Marriages between Omani men and African women were so frequent that in Omannowadays the Arabic word khal (‘maternal uncle’), used in a derisive way, designates anOmani who lived in Africa. In that sense, khal indirectly refers to the notion of externality, asopposed to ‘amm, the paternal uncle.18. Le Cour Grandmaison, ‘Rich cousins, poor cousins’.

AFRICAN AFFAIRS484

20th century, all the Omani, whatever their social classes, including the

clans who belonged to the Zanzibar aristocracy, used Swahili language,

while only a few, except among the most educated circles or the traders

who maintained seasonal migrations between Africa and southern Arabia,

had a good command of Arabic. Indeed, many Omani Arabs in East

Africa were ‘swahilized’ to such a point that ‘it was frequently uncertain

as to whether individual men were “Arab” or “Swahili”’.20 But if the well-

established Omani in Zanzibar and the islands have usually been com-

pared with a creolized elite, who could enjoy the protection of the

Sultanate authorities, and later received rather good consideration from

the British administration, this parallel hardly works for Manga Arabs,

who migrated to Africa basically for socio-economic reasons. Contrary

to what happened to their predecessors, these migrants did not benefit

from a state-led colonization process, as they settled in territories under

European protectorates, which proved reluctant to welcome migrants

from southern Arabia after the 1920s.

Key allies of the new Omani ruler

In 1964, the revolution in Zanzibar put an end to the local al-Busa‘idi

dynasty.21 The Omani Arabs were summoned by the newly independent

state to ‘go back home’, because of their supposed foreignness. Yet no

collective repatriation process was organized by the sultan of Muscat.

It is alleged that around 17,000 Arabs died during the events.22 Oman

received 3,700 refugees only and many other families were forced to settle

in Dubai, Kuwait or Cairo.23

A second wave of return followed the call launched in 1970 by Sultan

Qaboos to the Omani elite abroad, inviting them to contribute to the

‘awakening’ of the country. Around 10,000 Omani from Zanzibar are

thought to have moved back to Oman by 1975. Despite the fact that most

of the expatriate Omani did not speak Arabic fluently, Qaboos had no

option but to grant them Omani citizenship, as soon as they returned,

without any consideration of the time their family had spent abroad.24

19. Different identity feelings usually coexisted. Many considered themselves at the sametime ‘Omani’, ‘Arab’, ‘Zanzibari’ and ‘Swahili’.20. Horton and Middleton, The Swahili, p. 186. See also Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters:Plantation labor and agriculture in Zanzibar and coastal Kenya, 1890–1925 (Yale UniversityPress, New Haven, 1980).21. Michael Lofchie, Zanzibar: Background to revolution (Oxford University Press, London,1965).22. John Peterson, ‘Oman’s diverse society: northern Oman’, Middle East Journal 58, 1(2004), p. 46.23. Ibid.24. The decree n.1/72 established that the child whose father was Omani wouldautomatically get Omani nationality, but also the child whose mother was Omani and the


First, the Omani abroad were relatively more educated than those at

home. Many of them spoke English fluently and had been trained in tech-

nical fields in Europe, East Africa or other Gulf countries, so they made a

significant workforce for the ruler’s planned modernization. Besides,

given his political isolation when he came to the throne, the Sultan under-

stood that since the Omani abroad had neither been involved in the

internal political and tribal issues in Oman nor on the best of terms with

his father’s regime, they could be an asset to him.

All these factors account for the fact that the returnees soon filled many

positions in key fields such as intelligence, police and security. Their

Arabic language handicap was outweighed by their skills in administrative

organization and political control. An example of the Sultan’s dependency

on these Omani during the first years of his rule is given by the Interim

Planning Council, established in March 1972 to shape development

achievements. Of its 10 members, six had been educated in eastern

European countries, while two had been born in Zanzibar and had never

been in Oman prior to the 1970 coup.25

Yet, in a society like Oman where personal relationships play such a

role, the fact that marriage patterns of most Manga Arabs had been

limited to their kin in Africa, and that they had been kept out of the politi-

cal affairs of the sultanate in Zanzibar, dramatically narrowed the net-

works on which they could rely when they returned. The cumulative

effect of this lack of social intermediation (wasta) with their lower level of

education was a tremendous handicap. If the ‘back-from-Africa’ Omani in

general were unquestionably advantaged compared with the nationals who

had stayed at home, nobody was better positioned to benefit from the

opportunities offered by the developing Oman than the descendents of

the aristocracy of Zanzibar.

Today, the ‘back-from-Africa’ Omani population is thought to number

about 100,000,26 out of a total of more than two million Omani citizens.

Locally they are called ‘Swahili’ (referring to their vernacular language) or

‘Zanzibari’ (Zinjibariyyin; ‘Umaniyyin min Zinjibar).27 Most of the tribes

father unknown, and the descendent of an Omani who had never had another nationality.The latter case applied directly to the Omani who lived in Africa before 1970, as, most ofthe time, the decolonized states did not bestow citizenship rights on them.25. John Townsend, Oman: The making of a modern state (Croom Helm, London, 1977),p. 127.26. These figures are estimates based on fieldwork in Oman, since the official documentsnever mention figures dealing with religion and tribal or ethnic groups.27. To give a comprehensive name to all the Omani who moved back from Africa is ratherproblematic, as there is no official or widely accepted term in the Sultanate at the moment.As a consequence, in the following pages, the neutral ‘Swahili-speaking Omani’ will be usedmost of the time, together with ‘back-from-Africa Omani’. Even if the term ‘Swahili’ isunambiguous in Oman, its use here might bring some confusion with the Swahili

AFRICAN AFFAIRS486

and ethno-linguistic groups contain within them so-called ‘Swahili’ indivi-

duals or clans—including among the royal tribe, the Shia communities and

the Omani groups native to Baluchistan28—but in varying proportions.

The greatest numbers are found within tribes from Inner Oman, like

Habus, Hirth, Bani Kharus, Kinud, Mahariq, Masakira, Bani Riyam or

Bani Ruwaha. Families, or even individuals, descended from the same clans

can be considered ‘Swahili’ (or not) whether they are tied (or not) to Africa.

The Omani who came back from East Africa thus constitute a highly

heterogeneous group, which cannot be defined solely on genealogical or

geographical criteria. The most important dividing line is the one inher-

ited from the hierarchization in East Africa. This combination of social,

cultural and economic divides was a determining factor of the position

these returnees found in Oman.

In addition, every member has remained closely linked to his native

tribe. Sheikhs who had stayed in Oman played a key role in validating the

genealogies of members who came back after three or four generations.

The vivacity of the tribal affiliation is highlighted by the huge amounts of

financial transfers made by expatriates both to their native villages in

Oman before 1970 and to the poorest clans of the tribe in Africa itself.

Another major dividing line is the African place of settlement. Here,

there is a division between the ‘anglophone Swahili-speaking Omani’ who

had lived in Zanzibar, Kenya or former Tanganyika on the one hand, and

the francophones who had travelled to Central Africa (Rwanda, Burundi

and eastern Congo) on the other. The latter, who are estimated to be

about 10 percent of the whole Swahili-speaking Omani population, were

usually Manga Arabs. Most of them only came back to Oman at the

beginning of the 1990s, when Rwanda and Burundi exploded into crisis.

Finally it is necessary to keep in mind that a strict and well-known distinc-

tion is established between the back-from-Africa Omani, who can lay claim

to a patriarchal genealogy in southeast Arabia and are the proper subject of

this paper, and the Omani citizens who are descended from slaves brought

forcibly from Africa (khadim) and who are considered not to be of Arab

blood. As Mandana Limbert has put it, ‘Through the paternalizing care of

the Arab-Omanis, [they] could become brothers, however, who would never

be allowed to forget that they had been slaves, that they had known nothing

and that they had had to be cultured’.29 Hence, many families with noble

populations of East Africa themselves. As for the word ‘Zanzibari’, it appears too restrictive,even though it is used widely in the Anglophone literature on Oman.28. Throughout the 19th century, Sultan Sa‘id had chosen Baluchi contingents in order toassert his control on the East African coast.29. Mandana Limbert, Of Ties and Time: Sociality, gender and modernity in an Omani town(University of Michigan, unpublished PhD dissertation, 2002), p. 263.


(qabıli) Arab lineages, who lived in Africa and are nowadays viewed as

‘Swahili’ in Oman, have always taken care to keep their Arab lineage ‘pure’.

Down to reality

For these expatriate families, Oman represented a mythical place. Very

few Omani who settled in Africa had been able to make the journey to

Oman and back to have a more realistic perception of the ‘native country’

than the one passed on by phantasms and dreams. Therefore, the trauma

they experienced upon finding a poor and desert territory is easily under-

stood, but it was nothing compared with the gap they felt between the

welcoming they expected to receive and the distrust they faced.

First of all, the infrastructure was not prepared for such an influx.

Many low and middle class returnees, unwilling to go back to the villages

in Inner Oman, were invited to stay in precarious accommodation in

remote Muscat suburbs (al-‘Amrat, wadi ‘Aday). While officially con-

sidered to be temporary, these conditions of life turned out to be perma-

nent, until the inhabitants, helped by their kin, found money to build

their own homes in better quality neighbourhoods. New waves of expatri-

ate Omani replaced them in a turnover that continues until now and in

which the newcomers encounter more and more difficulty in finding their

place in contemporary Omani society.

More broadly, mutual frustrations soon developed. The native Omani

complained about the sudden inflation, imputed to the arrival of a richer

population, thought to have ideas above their status. On the contrary, the

returnees reproached their co-nationals for their ingratitude, and for not

acknowledging the role they played in the social and economic ‘take-off ’

and improvement in living conditions, as this woman from low social

status who reached Oman from inland Tanzania in 1972 highlights:

People from [the town of] Ibra were not happy when we came back. They did not

help us, they said that we had gone away, that we had fled. . . But they forgot that, if

we had not sent them money, they would have all died! [. . .] My father had told my

brother: “If you come back to Oman, there will be nothing for you!” [. . .] When we

came back, we went to see the sheikh to know where were the family’s properties.

But the cousins said that henceforth all belonged to them, that we ought not to have

gone, that themselves had stayed to take care of the family’s assets and cultivate the

lands. They held that they had the right to keep it. My father was right: we got

nothing when we came back.30

As the years passed, the mutual prejudices intensified. The returnees

were accused of having brought sorcery (sahr) back from Africa,

30. Interview, Muscat, 23 May 2003.

AFRICAN AFFAIRS488

notwithstanding the fact that mystical forces (magical use of Koran,

spirits, evil powers. . .) have long played a key role in explaining and

solving many day-to-day social and behavioural phenomena in Oman.31

Nevertheless, such practices may have assumed a further dimension fol-

lowing the upheavals provoked by the ‘return’ of their African cousins,

concomitantly with a technical and material modernity, which has pene-

trated daily lives within the space of a generation. Hence, in May 2003,

more than 7,000 people gathered in Ibra to collect flasks of a remedy sup-

posed to treat pathologies as different as cancer, diabetes or asthma, and

prepared by an old Swahili-speaking Omani woman.32 This anecdote

throws light upon a widespread quest for ‘traditional’ values, which would

serve as socio-cultural ‘lubricants’ for the integration of symbolic and

material elements, which are perceived as ‘coming from abroad’.

The back-from-Africa Omani were also reproached about their allegedly

less formal mores, especially regarding the relations between males and

females, compared with families which had not migrated. Many young

Swahili-speaking Omani, whose ‘creolized’ way of life was the conse-

quence of the time their family spent abroad, have experienced difficulty

in complying with the strict rules governing relations between the sexes

observed in Oman. On the other hand, the home Omani commonly

attack what they view as a ‘lack of decency’ (haya’) showed by the

back-from-Africa Omani women. The more the Swahili-speaking Omani

benefited economically from the opportunities offered by the new Oman,

the more they were able to remove themselves from this kind of social

rejection; but it has not faded away completely.

As a consequence, marriage between Swahili-speaking Omani of low or

middle social class and other Omani is uncommon. Omani who did

not live in Africa will rarely agree to allow their son to marry a young

woman who is perceived to be ‘independent’ in her lifestyle and less

‘well-behaved’ from a religious point of view. As a single 30-year old

civil servant from khadim origin explains, this suspicion towards

back-from-Africa Omani about marriage is widespread:

My mother once told me: “You marry whoever you want, except a Swahili girl.

A Swahili girl is not responsible, she is a free-mannered girl”. [. . .] She has been

educated, she works and is very independent. She will tell me: “Do this, do that, don’t

go out at night, don’t see these people. . .” Moreover, my mother says that the Swahili

girls are not disturbed if they think the best solution for them is to divorce”.33

31. Most of the Ibadi scholars of the early 20th century were renowned for their knowledgein ‘secret sciences’ (‘ilm al-sirr): see Valerie Hoffman, ‘The articulation of Ibadi identity inmodern Oman and Zanzibar’, The Muslim World, 94, 2 (2004), pp. 201–216.32. Al-Shabiba (Muscat), 6 May 2003.33. Interview, Muscat, 8 January 2003.


The argument usually used by sheikhs in refusing to let their daughter

marry a non-Arab man lies in the absence of Arab-established genealogy.

While the Omani who came back from Africa usually originate from Inner

Oman Arab tribes, the criterion of their Arab lineage is nevertheless chal-

lenged by the fact that they are alleged not to speak Arabic fluently: a new

ethnic category has thus emerged, which is no longer based on genealogy

but on the place of birth and the vernacular language.

More broadly, for three decades now, Arabic language mastery as a

basic marker of contemporary ‘Omanity’ went hand-in-hand with the

state’s focus on the Arab identity of Oman. This linguistic criterion has

been all the more difficult to overcome for the majority of the families

who came back from Africa because they could not counterbalance it

with a good socio-economic position or with the ability to register their

children in English-language schools. A young Omani whose family

moved back from Rwanda in 1994 and who lives in al-‘Amrat explains his

linguistic difficulties:

When I arrived, they made me come down four school levels. Being 21, I sit for the

secondary school certificate only now. Compared with a French or an English text,

for which I need 30 min to understand it, in Arabic, it takes me 2 or 3 h. I know that

people who have been unemployed for seven or eight years stopped going to school

early as Arabic was too difficult and they did not understand anything. The only

solution for me to get the certificate is that the marabouts cast a spell on me!34

Even if the arabization of the young generations improved, thanks to

their education in Oman’s Arabic-speaking public schools, Swahili

remains the vernacular language for the Omani who lived in Africa,

including among the members of the royal family of Zanzibar. This

induces complex situations within families, as this 50-year-old entrepre-

neur who spent much of his life in Congo explains:

My daughter does not speak French at all; she came from Rwanda to Oman when

she was three, she is thirteen today. Personally, I am able to think in French only. On

the contrary, my daughter is the only member of the family to be really good at

Arabic, because she has been educated in the Arabic system. I am forced to speak

Swahili with her, or sometimes, English. With my wife, it is half French, half

Swahili.35

Thus, the Swahili-speaking Omani were reproached for their inability

to express themselves in Arabic and for their way of life which was not in

keeping with the social and religious conservatism which prevails in Inner

Oman. Whatever the social positions they held in East Africa, prejudices

34. Interview, Muscat, 29 January 2003.35. Interview, Nizwa, 27 May 2003.

AFRICAN AFFAIRS490

and social tensions towards Swahili-speaking Omani focused especially on

Arabness and Islamic observance. These two issues powerfully reinforced

the other social and economic grievances towards Swahili or Omani citi-

zens native to Baluchistan, since they were identified by Qaboos as key

elements of the identity of the new sultanate. Therefore, it directly con-

tributed to an oblique but active process of challenge to the migrants’

‘Omanity’ by the non-migrant community.

In addition, it can be noticed that the attendance at mosques in low

and middle class ‘Swahili’ areas of Muscat is on the rise, and increasing

numbers of young Omani of Manga origins show signs of ostentatious

religiousness like full beards or ankle-length dishdasha. Moreover, several

of the most prominent Omani religious personalities were born in Africa,

like the Mufti of Oman, Sheikh Ahmed al-Khalili, who came back in

1975 or Sheikh Khalfan al-‘Asry, a young and modern preacher who is

particularly popular among the younger generations. Perhaps this display

of religious practices is an external sign of a desire to see the other Omani

fully acknowledge their belonging to the nation.

The immigration policy implemented by the Omani authorities towards

the returnees from Africa following the call launched in 1970 by Sultan

Qaboos did not last. If the authorities relied heavily on them to take part in

the country’s development in the 1970s, they have never welcomed this

workforce with excessive enthusiasm. Indeed, they feared that the

back-from-Africa Omani’s cosmopolitism, their Western education and

even their possible politicization, could threaten the socio-political stability

in the near future.36 Since the 1980s, lots of them have had to settle in the

United Arab Emirates (UAE), as it was already impossible to get residence

permits in Oman. UAE authorities estimate the number of stateless resi-

dents in their country at 10,000, half of them being ‘Zanzibari’ Arabs.37

For 10 years now, the economic difficulties faced by the sultanate have

only increased these restrictions. With more than half of the national

population below the age of 15, a new generation is entering the job

market, which is not prepared to endure sacrifices from which their

parents were exempted. This sensitive conjuncture affected the immigra-

tion policies. At the moment, a de facto moratorium on the return of

Omani from Africa seems in force, in order to ‘avoid “unfair” competition

with locals’.38 The government limits the regularization of Omani who

live in Africa, as they are thought to be likely to compete with young

36. Muscat waited until 2005 to establish official diplomatic relations with Tanzania, sincethe latter’s ‘African socialism’ ideology served as a foil to Oman.37. ‘Nearly 1,300 stateless residents to get UAE citizenship’, Agence France-Presse, 28December 2006.38. ‘Back Cover: Letter from Muscat’ available at http://meionline.com/backcover/print256.shtml (11 February 2005).


home Omani job-seekers, just when the sultanate is implementing ambi-

tious policies of economic diversification and the nationalization of jobs.39

Indeed, young and unskilled Swahili-speaking Omani have taken advan-

tage of their language aptitudes combined with their lesser aversion

towards manual positions and gender mixing at work and seized the

opportunities offered. Many semi- or unskilled occupations, like taxi-

drivers or shopkeepers, but also jobs created in the tourism sector or in

the huge industrial projects (like Sohar Port), are filled by young—usually

female—Omani of Manga origin. Since they were not able to gain a good

diploma in the Omani Arabic school system or to pay for study abroad,

they choose to enter the job market early and bring an additional salary to

their family. One of our informants, of middle class status, who himself

endeavours to have his Tanzania-passport nephew come to Oman,

complains:

To get an Omani visa is like getting a visa for paradise; it is even more difficult than

for Europe! As for the paradise, I hope it looks like something else than here. . .40

Emergence of a modern ‘asabiyya

Before arriving in Oman, the returnees had no real esprit de corps. And

even after successive waves of return, perceptions of old cleavages inherited

from the ‘African’ period remain acute, both in the collective conscience

and in actual social practices. For instance, an old woman of Manga origin

who came back from Burundi at the beginning of the 1990s gives her per-

ception of the dividing lines among the Swahili-speaking Omani:

The main difference is connected to education: in Burundi, we have been brought

up like Belgians, while the Zanzibari have been like English. Our parents dealt in

commerce, we travelled all over East Africa and to Oman, and saw many things. The

Zanzibari travelled only after independence, but as refugees. When they came to

Oman, they behaved like parvenus. Moreover, we don’t speak the same Swahili as the

Zanzibari, theirs is more refined. Thus they laugh at us because of our accent. While

their Swahili is like English, slow and indolent, like when they eat coconuts! [. . .] We

laugh at them because we say that this makes them easy-going!41

On the contrary, a Zanzibari Omani top civil servant, after having

extensively emphasized Zanzibar’s social and political history, states:

People who are native of the islands are more educated, more intellectual, while we

are certainly more traditional and conservative regarding our way of life: we have

always been aware that we have the duty to preserve the heritage and the values of

39. Marc Valeri, ‘Le sultanat d’Oman en quete d’un second souffle’, Les etudes du CERI,122 (December 2005), pp. 1–35.40. Interview, Muscat, 30 May 2003.41. Interview, Muscat, 9 June 2003.

AFRICAN AFFAIRS492

the sultanate [of Zanzibar]. The people who are native of Rwanda and Congo are

more aggressive, they are more plain-spoken. They work hard, they are brave and

tough, sometimes a bit too much. . .42

Similarly, a sheikh who was born in Tanzania and belongs to a tribe

from Sharqiyya region, thinks that the word ‘Zanzibari’ had been intro-

duced by the Shia in the seventies in order to stigmatize these descen-

dants of Inner Oman who came back from Africa:

The Shia controlled the whole trade in Muscat, they were well-educated and many of

them came back from Zanzibar too. It is the reason why they were the first to desig-

nate us like that, because they wanted to make us appear unreliable in the eyes of the

whole society.43

Thus the gathering together of these different Omani populations, who

only shared the fact of having lived in East Africa and bringing back with

them ‘Swahili’ cultural referents, was certainly not voluntary or spon-

taneous, but the consequence of the post-1970 Omani socio-political

context. This led to the constitution of a new esprit de corps, the criteria of

which are established by the others—the home Omani. The old woman

quoted above bewails this assimilation:

We were all called ‘Zanzibari’ (with a contemptuous motion of the hand) and could

not do anything about it. It hurts, it is difficult to accept. But the Omani say that we

are all Black people, so. . . What can we do?44

Here, the interviewee has brought up an underlying but fundamental

issue in the debate over the place occupied by the Swahili-speaking

Omani in the nation. Sometimes categorized as ‘Black’, these Omani,

especially when they belong to low social classes and find difficulties in

integrating in modern Oman, are suspected by the other Omani popu-

lations of having adopted patterns and behaviours which are traditionally

viewed in Southern Arabia as slave-like, or at least un-Arab. This helps

explain why intermarriages of Omani who came back from Africa remain

by far predominant. Yet the allegation of being even partially assimilated

to indigenous African populations is all the more difficult to accept for

these low and middle class Omani since they took care to maintain a strict

social and symbolic hierarchization while in Africa.

It is thus as a consequence of their—peaceful—confrontations with the

other Omani populations that a particular group feeling emerged among

those who were collectively called, in the common discourse, ‘Zanzibari’

or ‘Swahili’—in reference to the language the others could not

42. Interview, Ibra, 2 June 2003.43. Interview, Muscat, 9 June 2003.44. Interview, Muscat, 9 June 2003.


understand. This new group identity, which has taken care to exclude the

descendants of slaves without Arab ancestry, crosses over the cultural and

economic dividing lines and encapsulates the descendents of the Omani

elite in East Africa together with the more recent immigrants of lower cul-

tural and social status.

Since 1970, this new group has adopted survival strategies which are

comparable to those used by other Omani ‘asabiyya’. From a social point

of view, the Swahili-speaking Omani consolidated their positions thanks

to nepotism, which is prevalent in much of the Omani public sector.

Through their client networks, people in charge of a bureaucratic depart-

ment have been inclined to favour the recruitment of relations from their

group. As a lasting consequence of the conjunction of both these

factors—skills acquired before 1970, on the one hand, and socio-

professional clientelism on the other—the Swahili-speaking Omani

occupy key positions in the national oil company Petrol Development

Oman (PDO), where for lower positions they favour the recruitment of

poorer, Swahili-speaking Omani youth. In 2004, a majority of PDO

young employees and trainees spoke Swahili.

Moreover, Swahili-speaking Omani weddings are not only ‘community’

gatherings but also occasions for the assertion of a ‘Swahili cultural parti-

cularism’, regarding music and festivities. The ceremonies, mixing

families from various social classes, most of the time take place in presti-

gious Muscat hotels and are entertained by musical groups invited from

Tanzania or Congo especially for the occasion. In addition, the customs

that regulate contact between the young couple, until the wedding night,

differ from that of the other Omani. Another strong beat of males’ life is

that many back-from-Africa Omani enjoy gathering on Thursday night in

places like ‘Swahili bars’, which remind them of the ‘good old days’ and

are devoted to ‘African’ food, music and dances.

Finally, this ‘Swahili’ solidarity extends to the political sector, as the

first universal suffrage polls organized in October 2003 gave an illus-

tration. In the Muscat-outskirts wilaya of Bawshar, the territory of which

includes the most important quarters of the capital with Swahili

majorities, a female candidate whose family lived in Zanzibar succeeded

in capitalizing upon two characteristics in order to attract votes. The first

was her vernacular language and the second, her exemplarity as a woman

who found her place in modern Oman and embodied the expectations of

a population in an awkward social situation.

Through their economic role, but also their political harmlessness for

Qaboos, in a society deeply divided among multiple local allegiances, the

Omani who came back from Africa soon imposed themselves as allies

the new ruler could not do without. In the 1970s and the 1980s they

filled many civil service and state-dependent positions linked to the

AFRICAN AFFAIRS494

tremendous development of the country. They thus have been a key wheel

of the nation-state building process. But at the same time, they had to

face an Omani national identity very different from that which they

expected. Confronted with the questioning of their own ‘Omanity’,

the Swahili-speaking Omani were asked by the other groups to give guar-

antees of their full and sincere belonging to the Omani nation. The cold

reception they met when returning and the need to prove their ‘Omanity’

were all the more difficult to accept in that they had never ceased to view

themselves as fully ‘Omani’ (even if they had emigrated for several gener-

ations), and as the worthy heirs of the glorious Omani empire.

As Olivier Roy has observed in a comparative study based on Algeria

and Tajikistan, the fact that the competition for resources takes place

within the modern state, and not at a regional or local level, leads the

actors to organize themselves in solidarity groups which go beyond the

tribe or the clan, in order to become more visible on the national

scene.45 The study of the ‘return’ process of the Africa-expatriated

Omani populations borrows from this model. This article highlights the

formation of an ‘asabiyya which is independent from genealogy or

region, but relies instead on a single criterion, which is easily mobilized

at a national level: the practice of a vernacular language. The ‘Swahili

Omani’ group feeling has been shaped within the historical context of

Oman under Qaboos, in which the establishment of both a modern

national identity and the allegiance to the ruler were intimately linked in

the authorities’ minds. This ‘Swahili Omani identity’ extracts its raison

d’etre from this particular conjuncture and can be fully understood

within it. Even if the emergence of a ‘Swahili’ social classification cat-

egory is not the consequence of a voluntary process, even if this category

was shaped in confrontation with the Oman society to help these people

be accepted as Omani like the others on the territory, even if it has not

removed the social and cultural fault lines inherited from the East

African period, it is not possible to deny that it perfectly works as an

identity reference in the contemporary Sultanate of Oman, as much as a

pole of attraction for the Omani who speak Swahili as a foil for other

socio-political actors.

From this perspective, neither the Swahili-speaking Omani nor the

other nationals from Baluchistan or from Inner Oman question in any

way the validity of the nation as the political reference point. On the

contrary, while the enrichment opportunities that the State makes avail-

able have started to be scaled back, everyone seeks to consolidate their

45. Olivier Roy, ‘Patronage and solidarity groups: survival or reformation?’ in GhassanSalame (ed.), Democracy Without Democrats? The renewal of politics in the Muslim world(I. B. Tauris, London, 1994), pp. 270–81.


own anchorage into the Omani nation. At the heart of this strategy lies

the shared purpose of strengthening the political or economic positions of

power within the State apparatus and then, benefiting from the material

and symbolic dividends (administrative posts, financial advantages, public

contracts, etc.) these positions entitle them to. Yet the economic difficul-

ties experienced by the sultanate over the past 10 years, following the

diminution of oil production and the delays in economic diversification

and employment nationalization, are likely to do nothing but increase this

trend in the years to come.

AFRICAN AFFAIRS496

nation-building and communities in oman since 1970: the swahili-speaking omani in search of identity

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