54

The Āl Bū Sa‘īd

c. 1167-/c. 1754-

Muscat and then Zanzibar, at present in Oman

1. The united sultanate

2. The line of sultans in Oman

3. The line of sultans in Zanzibar (see below, no. 65)

The Bū Sa‘īdīs succeeded to the heritage of the preceding line of Ya‘rubid Imāms (see above, no. 53) in both Oman and the East African coastlands. Aḥmad b. Sa‘īd began as governor of Ṣuḥār in coastal Oman when the last Ya‘rubids were embroiled in their family quarrels, and soon became de facto ruler of Oman. Hence the Ibāḍī ‘ulamā‘ formally elected him Imām in c. 1167/c. 1754. His son and successor Sa‘īd also had the title of Imām, but thereafter the Bū Sa‘īdī rulers styled themselves Sayyids, while being generally known to the outside world as Sultans.

Muscat, which eventually became the Bū Sa‘īdī capital, had long been a port of international significance and had played an important role in the struggles of the Portuguese and then the Dutch for the commercial control of the Persian Gulf. Sulṭān b. Aḥmad pursued an expansionist policy there as far as Bahrayn island and as far as Bandar ‘Abbās, Kishm and Hurmuz along the southern coasts of Fars. However, the Sayyids‘ position was menaced in the early nineteenth century by the aggressive Wahhābīs of Najd. They countered this by an alliance with Britain, which was concerned that Muscat, lying as it did near the route to India, should remain in friendly hands. In 1212/1798, the first treaty with the East India Company was made; later, in the nineteenth century, Britain used her influence at Muscat to control and then end the slave trade in the Gulf.

The Ya‘rubid possessions on the East African coast had been largely lost in the wars with Persia of the late eighteenth century, with virtually only Zanzibar, Pemba and Kilwa remaining to the Bū Sa‘īdīs. But Sa‘īd b. Sulṭān during his long reign extended his suzerainty over all the Arab and Swahili colonies from Mogadishu in the north to Cape Delgado in the south, effectively ruling in Zanzibar from 1242/1827 onwards. After his death in 1273/1856, the Bū Sa‘īdī dominions were divided into two separate sultanates, with Thuwaynī ruling over Oman from Muscat and his brother Mājid ruling over Zanzibar and the East African coastland respectively; for this last branch of the family, see below, no. 65.

Oman itself was then racked by family discord, and in the early twentieth century the rigorist Ibāḍī ‘ulama? of the interior dissociated themselves from what they regarded as the corrupt rule of the Bū Sa‘īdīs in the coastal regions. They restored the Imāmate in 1331/1913 and erupted into rebellion against the Sultan and what they regarded as his British protectors. But confined as it was to the interior, and with a totally backward-looking aspect which contrasted with the adaptability to new conditions of the Su‘ūdīs and their Wahhābī followers, the Imāmate represented a last stand of tribal elements. The armed insurrection of the 1950s, in which the Imām Ghālib b. ‘Alī had Su‘ūdī and Egyptian backing, was largely extinguished by the end of the decade; and the deposition of the reactionary and parsimonious Sa‘īd b. Taymūr by his son Qābūs in 1390/1970 at last opened up Oman to the world around it and, eventually, led to a reconciliation of elements within the country.

Zambaur, 129 and Table M.

EI²‘ Bū Sa‘īd (C. F. Beckingham), with a genealogical table which corrects Zambaur’s list in several places; ‘Maskat’ (J. C. Wilkinson).

J. C. Wilkinson, The Imāmate Tradition of Oman, with a genealogical table at p. 14.