The Southasian samosa has a transnational sibling from which it is said to have been derived: the West Asian sambusak. The sambusak has a similar golden-brown exterior. Once bitten into, its crumbly golden shell gives way to a riot of meaty juices in the centre. This samosa siblinghood is merely one of the numerous ways in which the lives of Southasians and West Asians have been generationally intertwined. Being of and from each other, we see traces of this shared heritage in our modern food habits, music, poetry and even the folk tales we tell our children. This is the parting thought one has upon finishing Seema Alavi's extensively researched Sovereigns of the Sea: Omani Ambition in the Age of Empire. Through the histories of five Omani sultans with varied legacies, the book speaks to the interconnectedness of Southasia, West Asia and East Africa via politics, economics, Anglo-French colonialism, the slave trade and myriad community linkages. Narrating these histories through the lens of the sultans and the Indian Ocean from 1791 to the 1880s, Alavi's book leaves readers pondering over the strict bounds of nation-states, and whether today's borders will ever adequately explain who we are now and whence we came. This book is also an important addition to the growing collection of scholarship on Indian Ocean history.
What makes Sovereigns of the Sea particularly compelling is that it fills historical gaps for those interested in a cohesive story of Oman, Zanzibar and Southasia. Modern Oman also remains synonymous with the sea. I grew up in Oman as one of many "Gulfie" kids of Southasian heritage. As a child flying into Muscat, Oman's capital, I would always request a window seat so I could survey from the aircraft that first view of the city: cerulean blue seas against the dramatic Hajar mountains. Growing up in Muscat, weekend visits to the fish market in Muttrah, next to Port Sultan Qaboos, were a rite of passage, with a pitstop at another bustling market in the same area, the Muttrah Souq. One of my earliest childhood memories from Muscat is the exciting melee of the fish market. My eyes would widen as I watched fishermen and vendors sell wares, building my anticipation for what we would soon eat for lunch. The Muttrah Souq brimmed with all sorts of knickknacks: dates and hookahs of a hundred sizes, silver pouring out of every spare inch of space in the shop rows. As interesting as the wares was the variety of people passing through. Aside from the habitual tourists, resident Southasians and Africans filled the market both as sellers and zealously haggling customers. One could spot Omani men and women in dishdashas and abayas, as well as Southasians in saris and Africans in Kanga-inspired prints. The souq has, of course, changed over the years, but it still possesses much of the same hubbub and soul as it did when I experienced it as a child almost thirty years ago.
Alavi's book hence rightly focuses on the sea in its telling of history, as the sea is part of Oman's heart. Although this is not a contemporary history of Oman and its formation, or of the post-oil-boom dynamics that followed the 1970s, Alavi's work firmly establishes that Southasia and West Asia have been inextricably linked for generations, just as one witnesses in present-day Muttrah Souq.
The five sultans whose reigns are described expansively in Alavi's book are, respectively, Sayyid Saïd, Sayyid Majid, Sayyid Thuwayni, Sayyid Turki and Sultan Barghash. Each of these sultans controlled the realms of either Oman or Zanzibar in varying measure during the period between 1806 and 1888. It was during this time that Zanzibar also separated from Muscat and Oman, becoming an independent sultanate in 1861. Alavi points to the woeful Eurocentricity of many historical narratives on the Indian Ocean, resulting in the "general invisibility of the Sultans". She takes a different tack. Rather than thinking of the Omani Sultans as gullible pawns on the chessboard of Anglo-French colonialism, Sovereigns of the Sea describes each sultan as an individual embracing his own agency to shape a unique political approach. Majid and Barghash, who were central to the burgeoning of the slave trade in Oman and Zanzibar, are described as "sea sovereigns". Meanwhile, Thuwayni and Turki leveraged their relationships with the dreaded Wahhabis, then perceived by the West as a menacing threat, to gain influence.