personal memories revolutionary states and indian ocean migrations

University Press, 1995), especially 90-96 and Amal N. Ghazal, “Power, Arabism and Islam in the
Writings of Muhib al-Din al-Khatib in al-Fath,” Past Imperfect 6 (1997): 133-150.
13 Hourani, for example, chronicles the history of Arabs from the rise of Islam until modern time but
completely dismisses the history of Arabs beyond the Maghrib-Mashriq paradigm. See Hourani, A
History of the Arab Peoples. Moreover, the discussion of marginality in Middle Eastern studies, for
example, has not taken into account marginality of geography but rather social marginality in
Foucauldian terms. See Eugene Rogan, ed. Outside In: On the Margins of the Modern Middle East (London
& New York: I. B. Tauris, 2002).
14 For example, Ali Merad, in his seminal work on the Islamic reform movement in Algeria between
1925 and 1940, devotes no more than three pages on the role Ibadis played in that movement. See
idem, Le reformisme musulman en Algèrie de 1925 à 1940: essai d’histoire religieuse et sociale (Paris: Mouton et
Co., 1967), 222-225. Muḥammad ‘Alī Dabbūz, however, makes the case for a more significant role of
Ibadis in the modern history of Algeria, especially their role in the reformist anti-colonial movement.
See Muḥammad ‘Alī Dabbūz, Nahḍat al-jazā‘ir al-ḥadītha wa thawratuhā al-mubāraka (Algeria: al-Maṭba‘a
al-Ta‘āwuniyya, 1965).
15 A similar notion of the conformity between Arab and African history is expressed by Alamin M.
Mazrui and Ibrahim Noor Shariff, The Swahili: Idiom and Identity of an African People (Trenton: Africa
World Press, 1994). In discussing the Swahili identity, for example, they consider its Arabocentric
paradigm as “merely a subset of the Afrocentric paradigm.” Ibid., 9.
16 Not every Africanist, of course, shares this view. Ali al-Mazrui for example, in his documentary and
book The Triple Heritage of Africa, highlights the integral role of Islam and Arabs in African history and
argues for their essential part in the African ‘heritage’. See idem, The Triple Heritage of Africa. His views,
however, are not adopted by other Africanists whose definition of African history is not as inclusive as
Mazrui’s. A different view and a different definition are implicitly invoked by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in
idem, Wonders of the African World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).
17 This abbreviated definition of African history and African geography is even reflected in a recent
study of Islam in Africa. While Egypt and North Africa are presented as ‘gateways’ to Africa, Africa
itself is divided into West Africa and the Sudan, and Eastern and Southern Africa. See Nehemia
Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels, eds., The History of Islam in Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press,
2000).
18 The same applies to the group identified as ‘Swahili’ who, for long, remained ‘unrecognized’ by
academics as a category of Africans and were deemed unworthy of their attention. See the
introduction to James de Vere Allen, Swahili Origins: Swahili Culture and the Shungwaya Phenomenon
(London: James Currey, 1993). The notion that the ‘Swahili’ is not pure ‘African’ on account of the
different color, language, and intermixing with Arabs still persists today and has reappeared in the
statement of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in his controversial documentary Wonders of the African World,
when he said the following: “It has taken my people 50 years to move from being Negro to being
black, to being Afro-American. How long is it going to take the Swahili to become African?” Gates, Jr.
Wonders of the African World, 152. Ali A. Mazrui criticized Gates for practicing a form of Orientalism,
that the former called “Black Orientalism”. Mazrui’s initial response can be found at Ali A. Mazrui, A
“Preliminary Critique of the TV Series by Henry Louis Gates, JR,” West Africa Review, 1(2000). His
second reply can be found at Ali A. Mazrui, “Black Orientalism: Further Reflections on ‘Wonders of
the African World,’ ” West Africa Review 1 (2000).
19 Francis B. Pearce, Zanzibar: The Island Metropolis of Eastern of Eastern Africa, 1 st. ed, 1920 (New York:
Barnes & Noble, 1967), 214. Pearce’s racial categorization and definition, as outlined in his book,
reflected the British mind at the time. His account became a reference to researchers who took that
categorization for granted.
20 Ibid., 215.
21 Mazrui and Shariff, The Swahili, 28.
22 Ibid., 29.
23 Pearce, Zanzibar, 221.
24 William H. Ingrams, Zanzibar: Its History and Its People, new imp., (London: Frank Cass, 1967), 204.
25 Comorians gained that status in 1939. See Fair, Pastimes and Politics, 45-46. Pearce included Mshihiri
or Shihiris (Arabs from Hadramaut) and Comorians in the category of ‘Arabs’ but made a clear
distinction between them and “the most numerous and important section of the Arab race in the
Sultanate,” in reference to Arab Omanis. Pearce, Zanzibar, 216.
26 Ingrams, Zanzibar, 194-5.
27 Institutionalizing privileges was neither exclusive to British colonialism nor confined to a hierarchy
of races. The French in Syria and Lebanon adopted a similar pattern that allocated more privileges to
men than to women, to Lebanese than to Syrians, to Christians than to Muslims. See Elizabeth
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