personal memories revolutionary states and indian ocean migrations

agony and struggle through the prism of the whole Arab-Muslim world and the
road to salvation was in the unity of that world. The concern of al-Falaq about Arab
unity was best expressed in its reaction to the death of King Ghāzī of Iraq:
The whole Arab nation is mourning. His death was devastating to the
hopes of Iraqis but also catastrophic for the dreams of seventy million
Arabs and Arabized between Basra to the East, Marrakech to the West,
Aleppo to the North and Zanzibar to the South. The hopes were for the
agreement and union of all Arab nations. 75
In reality, al-Falaq was not mourning Ghāzī himself but was rather
concerned about the hopes placed on Iraq as the beacon of Arabism and its
potential role in uniting the Arab world. Iraq at the time occupied a special place in
the minds and hearts of Arabs. “To many Arab nationalists in the 1920s and
1930s,” Adeed Dawisha has commented, “Iraq seemed best equipped to fill the
heroic role played by Prussia in uniting the German-speaking people into one
unified German nation-state.” 76 The indispensability of Arab unity was a recurrent
theme on the pages of al-Falaq, a theme discussed either by its editors and
contributors or by other pan-Arab newspapers such as al-Fatḥ, the articles of whose
editor, Muḥibb al-Dīn al-Khaṭīb, al-Falaq reprinted frequently.
CONCLUSION
The Omani elite in Zanzibar positioned itself, until World War II, within
the Arab world’s intellectual and political movements of Islamic reformism, pan-
Ibadism, pan-Islamism and Arabism. Its members were affiliated to a broad
spectrum of networks and communities debating and shaping a collective identity.
Islam and Arabism were its parameters; Oman, the Maghrib and the Mashriq with
their networks of ‘ulama, writers and thinkers were partners in outlining and
articulating those parameters. Through those ties and connections, and through the
prism of its Arab-Muslim identity, the Omani elite pulled Zanzibar into the orbit of
the Arab world and molded the history of the island with that of other Arab
communities. From that perspective, Zanzibar earned, in the eyes of many Omanis
as well as others, a reputation of another ‘Andalusia’ that Arabs had (re)created on
the East African coast. 77
By defining itself in relationship to movements that upheld religious revival
and Arab cultural renaissance, the Omani elite perceived its identity outside the
narrow scope of British classifications based on economic and social status. While
that status shaped much of Zanzibari politics before, during and after British rule, it
was neither the only marker of identities on the island nor one of exclusive concern
for the Omani elite. The religion and the language of that elite remained at the core
of its identity and the more those two elements were deemed vulnerable or under
attack, the more protective of them and assertive of their precedence Omanis
became.
ENDNOTES
Funding for research for this project was provided by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council Doctoral Fellowship, a University of Alberta Dissertation Fellowship and a Canadian
Federation of University Women Margaret Brine Scholarship.
http://web.mit.edu/cis/www/mitejmes/
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