Trading Plates in Colonial Oman

by Dina Macki

After an arduous but successful and swift campaign against the Portuguese, the Omanis established a permanent and official settlement in Zanzibar for what ended up being a 200-year rule, and even saw the Sultanate move its capital to Stone Town, Zanzibar, in 1832. There, the Old Fort’s foundation was laid by the Portuguese in early 1710s but the building was finalized in a Omani style in 1780.  Photo by Erasmus Kamugisha, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Who would we be without Swahili food? 

“Food choices are influenced and constrained by cultural values and are an important part of the construction and maintenance of social identity. In that sense, food has never merely been about the simple act of pleasurable consumption—food is history, it is culturally transmitted, it is identity. Food is power ” —Dr. Linda Alvarez for Food Empowerment Project

Over the years, while discovering Omani cuisine, I’ve become accustomed to teaching others about our culture and identity. Like every cuisine, history is at the soul of its dishes. Oman especially would have nothing to share round the table if it weren’t for its maritime travels. 

The Sultanate of Oman is on the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula, separated by a sand sea from Saudi Arabia. It recognizes the cuisines of its neighbors, but food from the Swahili coast is at the center of its table. 

The relationship between Oman and Zanzibar was somewhat culturally symbiotic, with varying traditions across the Indian Ocean organically embraced and melded. While parts of the history were solemn and regretful, this uncouth reign nonetheless created a harmonious bridging of two countries that molded into what I would say (I’m biased) is one of the most beautiful identities I have come across. 

Oman—the Sail to an Empire

Around 1498, Portugal started its colonial rule of Mozambique and spread across the Swahili coast, including Zanzibar, at the start of the 16th century. The Portuguese then continued further eastward on their voyage to India. 

Before ruling Oman, the Portuguese were the first Europeans to cross the Indian Ocean, thanks to the explorer Vasco Da Gama, who leveraged the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, to finally reach India, greatly shortening the distance Europeans had to navigate to the East Indies, and Southeast Asia. Although da Gama’s intention was to reach India and discover a clear route that connected Western Europe to the East, the Portuguese came to recognize the significance of Oman’s geographical location and in particular the capital, Muscat. 

In addition to Oman’s general strategic positioning in the Indian Ocean, Muscat also has a natural harbor in the Gulf of Oman; the bay’s narrow entrance and great depth made the location both secure and excellent for the mooring of heavy ships. UNESCO’s Silk Road Programme discusses how, alongside Oman’s natural attributes, its location in terms of trade routes made it an intersection for Southeast Asia, East and North Africa and West Asia, as well as being the gateway to the Persian Gulf due to its long coastline stretching Northwards up to the Strait of Hormuz. 

All of those features aided Oman as it began to rise in the mid-17th century, after overthrowing its Portuguese rulers.

Zanzibar—the Spice Island

Similar to Oman, the island of Zanzibar’s strategic location made it a key trading post for ivory, spices and enslaved people between European, African and Arab countries. 

Once Oman had taken back control of Muscat and its Northern Coast from the Portuguese, it worked its way down along the East African coast, as far as Mozambique, ensuring Portugal lost its firmly held footing in very important trade routes, while advocating for the return of Islam, after seeing a shift toward Christianity in the wake of Da Gama’s conquests. After an arduous but successful and swift campaign against the Portuguese, the Omanis established a permanent and official settlement in Zanzibar for what ended up being a 200-year rule, and even saw the Sultanate move its capital to Stone Town, Zanzibar, in 1832. 

Before Oman included Zanzibar as part of its Sultanate, it was not a very significant trader of foods and spices. Oman was nonetheless a major exporter, from biblical times, of frankincense. During the Bronze Age, Oman had been used for sourcing and trading copper; Mesopotamians, Assyrians and Sumerians had all come for trade and left their influences, largely along the Northern Coast. The cuisine of Omanis from the interior, mainly dispersed Bedouin and mountain-dwelling tribes, reflected this limited trade at the time, where simpler, modest foods were the norm.

Zanzibar boasted the perfect entrepôt within the Indian Ocean, which would allow Oman to expand the bounds of its maritime heritage while cementing its leadership in trade. 

As Oman’s culture, with its traditions and religion, started to seep into Zanzibar, Omani settlers—backed by the Omani Sultan of Zanzibar’s rule and government—discovered new resources, ingredients, flavors and foods that only the Zanzibari climate and geography could provide. This developing community in Zanzibar did not only consist of Omanis, but also included Indians, Persians, Yemenis and, of course, Africans from the mainland.

As this community developed, it prompted a galvanized exchange of traditions and a unique cultural identity dubbed “Swahili,” an Arabic term meaning “those of the coast.” These communities, developing in Zanzibar, its tiny sister island of Pemba and all along the East African coast, would later engrain their culture, language and cuisine strongly onto Omanis in Oman, thus developing today, an Omani-Zanzibari diaspora. 

The Revolution

My grandmother, Bibi, often speaks of the day her family had to flee Zanzibar. 

“I remember that night like it was yesterday,” she says. “We had no choice, we had to leave right then, we told our neighbors and friends we were going on holiday to Kenya. Your mother was only four, your grandfather was in America studying, I was scared trying to protect my five children, I heard women screaming from houses down the road as the mainlanders raped them in front of their families and then killed their husbands. I couldn’t let that happen to me, I had to risk our lives getting on the boat rather than wait for them to bang down my front door.” 

As she tears a piece of her magole bread (Zanzibari onion pancake) from one hand and slathers it in fresh Omani Sidr honey, she continues:

“Each of our journeys went different ways,” she says. “We didn’t know if England or Oman would be the safer route to take; Oman felt familiar. Although I didn’t speak the language, England at the time appeared as the land of opportunities. Salha, my sister, decided to take her family to Muscat, Oman’s capital. I pleaded and begged your grandfather to let us move with them, but instead he insisted I leave my family and come to England with the rest of the Sultan’s close community.” 

As the British Empire was pulling back from its colonies and protectorates, after World War II, it also left Zanzibar, a protectorate at the time, in 1963. That vacuum prompted the formation of political and national groups looking for control and power. Other global forces were also at play, such as the Soviets, who indirectly supported the Marxist-Leninist African Nationalist Afro-Shirazi Party. That support resulted in the party taking over the island by force in a bloody revolution, causing the senseless and indiscriminate deaths of thousands of Zanzibaris.

The chaos of the revolution is still very much alive in the minds of the native Zanzibaris and the diaspora it displaced. Luckily, Bibi and my family were able to escape, although reluctantly, just in time. 

January 12, 1964, marked the end of an era. The Sultanate of Zanzibar became part of the Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. The island did not receive independence but became part of another country, one that saw the same value Oman had seen 200 years ago. However, this new ruler had not noticed nor appreciated the rise of the cultural force of Omani-Zanzibaris. 

While Tanzania strongly adopted Soviet era communist policies, Zanzibar had created its own separate cultural identity. Today, this clash of cultural identities still persists, with calls for secession of Zanzibar from the mainland growing louder every election cycle.

Zanzibar became a melting pot of rich flavors and dishes. For example, the Gujarati-Indian tribes introduced spices such as cardamom that heavily impacted both Zanzibari and Omani cooking till today. Photo by Jaspreet Kalsi on Unsplash.

Trading Plates

Before Oman, Zanzibar was inhabited by African people; the name translates to “land of black people” from the medieval Persian word Zanjibar—zanj (black) and bar (coast, sea). Therefore, when Omanis migrated over, the then-Sultan Said traded enslaved people for a period of time, which ignited the trade between seas. 

However, the Omanis quickly began procreating a new generation of Afro-Arabs, known as Omani-Zanzibaris, such as my mother’s family. My maternal great-grandfather was one of the newer generations; he, in fact, was born to a Persian father and African mother and married my great-grandmother, who had been born in Muscat and moved to Zanzibar when she was nine years old for a better life on the island with her family. 

When slavery was abolished by the British in 1873, the island began to flourish with a society of Zanzibaris who came from all walks of life and heritages. Zanzibar developed tribes and communities of mostly Indian, Iranian, Bahraini and Omani Africans.

My grandmother speaks of how people from all walks of life lived in Stone Town happily together, most speaking Swahili with twangs of Arabic, Urdu and Farsi, predominantly practicing Islam and most of all sharing their food while creating new dishes that amalgamated the essence of their mixed Zanzibari identities. Their homeland dishes were a means of communication at first, for those that only spoke their mother tongue, introducing others to their recipes was their way of socializing, creating harmony within the community. 

The island became a melting pot of rich flavors and dishes. For example, the Gujarati-Indian tribes introduced spices such as cardamom that heavily impacted both Zanzibari and Omani cooking till today. I don’t think there is one Zanzibari sweet dish that doesn’t incorporate it; to say it’s our holy grail is almost an understatement. Gujaratis also introduced dhal curries, but made with coconut milk, a popular Zanzibari replacement for water. 

Persians introduced saffron to the island, which was not as prevalent to the rest of the Swahili coast. Still today saffron is grown on the Zanzibari island of Pemba. 

The Iranian community was rather small. Oman had adopted Ibadism, a sect of Islam, and Iranians were Shia Muslims, yet they lived peacefully together. 

My grandmother recalls recipes she learnt from her in-laws such as fesenjoon, but due to the island not producing walnuts, they created new versions using cashew nuts. The core ingredient within any dish is improvisation, and that’s what the islanders did. Their creativity of working with what they had, being self-sufficient while diversifying through these new traditions was admirable. Food infiltrates our lives, and Zanzibaris used that as their tool to form connections and create their own tribe, a new generation. 

Post-1964, with the divide and new political lines being drawn, Omani-Zanzibaris were displaced. Staying on the island as an Arab or South Asian wasn’t safe, leaving many with no choice but to flee. 

My family were one of many who saw some relatives move to Oman, in the hope that Oman would become the Zanzibar they once loved. Others, like my grandfather, followed the then-Sultan of Zanzibar, Sayyid Jamshid, to the U.K., where the one thing they were guaranteed was a passport to what seemed like freedom. The U.K. cohort were in some sense, lucky, they lived in a small town in the south of England known as Portsmouth. At the time there were no other immigrants, so they settled comfortably with their community and didn’t have to worry about fitting into Oman’s postcolonial world.

Both migrations were unknown. Whichever way people chose to go, they would have to rebuild, yet the unity and power that the Omani-Zanzibaris carried ensured that they would be able to engrain their mark on wherever their next home might be. 

An element that kept members of the community in the U.K. feeling safe was being surrounded by their food. Even as a child, I remember watching my grandmother sweating away as she cooked large pots of Zanzibari biryanis, rolled and fried hundreds of cardamom, saffron Swahili sablés, known as “visheti,” for our community weekend gatherings and Eid celebrations. The aromas that filled those four walls, no matter where we all got together, would transport the whole community back to the island. 

The Zanzibari Effect—a Diaspora 60 Years On

In 1964, Oman welcomed 3,700 refugees. According to assistant anthropology professor Franziska Fay, as of 2009 the population of Omanis back-from-Africa was around 200,000, when at the time, the population of the whole country was at 2 million. The majority, if not all, of the Zanzibari-Omanis settled in Muscat. 

According to Associate Professor Mark Valeri “Swahili-speaking Omanis faced prejudices from the population in Oman. My family and friends talk of how the first-generation Swahili-speaking community were looked down on, to speak the language in public was frowned upon and for those who had physical features associated with Blackness, life was unbearable amongst Arab Omanis. I’d watch some of my darker-toned cousins bleach their skin, allow their curls to fry under a scalding hot iron and pretend they knew nothing of their mother tongue. In essence, Oman’s colonial power had ruled and dictated how their people should look. While Omanis have chosen, over the years, to distance themselves from their connection with an African country, many aspects of their day-to-day life are ruled by Omani-Zanzibari culture. 

Three of the most prominent and consistent aspects of the colonial relationship that Omanis embrace as part of their everyday lives is the food, the male traditional dress headpiece known as the kuma and the notable, exquisitely designed doors. 

According to art historian Janet Purdy, one of the first parts of colonial culture to be introduced into Oman in 1840 were the doors. The then-Sultan Bargash had collaborated with local artisans to design his own version of these incredible hand-carved wooden doors that were seen throughout East Africa and India. Purdy mentions that Bargash brought together Indian and Zanzibari woodcarvers to work together in creating a unique door that symbolized Oman and Zanzibar. They were first used across the whole of Beit El Ajaib (House of Wonders), the ceremonial palace, before spreading throughout the island and Oman. Motifs and designs varied between households, but the Sultan’s ones also paid homage to the influences of Europeans and the Indian Ocean trade route’s history. 

Like the doors, the kuma originated in East Africa in various styles, but the Zanzibari version ended up becoming the official traditional dress code for Omani men. 

Despite these two aspects of the culture being ingrained into society by leaders, the people of Oman have had the choice to part ways with the food. Yet Zanzibari dishes are found at every Omani household’s table. 

The diaspora led the culinary revolution within the capital, where people such as the famous Bi Mascati (translating from Swahili to grandma of Muscat) opened up the first bakery that sold fresh sesame coconut bread, crispy chicken samosas, buttery layered chapati made with coconut and deep-fried tangy spicy potato balls known as kachori, similar in name to the South Asian variety. 

Even high up in the sultry green mountains, in the region of Dakhliya, you will see and hear locals speak of the food. I’ve witnessed it myself in the depths of the south, hidden in the silent golden sands of Thumrait, a town in the region of Dhofar, where a local Bedouin lives, surrounded by the only sign of water and life; I saw him sitting idyllically under a date palm eating a mandazi, a typical Swahili cardamom and coconut beignet, with his Omani qahwa (coffee). 

“Colonization is defined as control by one power over an area or people; when one nation subjugates another, conquering its population and exploiting it, often while forcing its own language and cultural values,” writes Dr. Linda Alvarez, the cofounder of Vegan Advocacy, writes for the Food Empowerment Project. 

And although our dishes were born out of colonialism, through my lens and when speaking with family who lived through it, they were not created through violence but by strengthening ties between seas. In essence, the Omani colonization worked in reverse, the culture formed between Zanzibaris and Omanis were so united and powerful, that upon the deconstruction of it, the diaspora opened up their houses, shared their dinner tables and allowed the Arabs to dine with them, experience the life they had on the island, by sharing the food they created together. Food acts as a resistance to colonizers and the Zanzibaris used it to cement their place within the community. While Arab Omanis felt superior and reluctant, the dishes disarmed and forced them to recontextualise their feelings towards them.  

As mentioned at the beginning by Alvarez, food is part of our identity and values.

We have the choice to remove the foods of colonialism from our lives. When we simply keep making it for the enjoyment of consumption, we are actively choosing to hold onto a history and culture. I believe that one can’t despise a culture and love the food for they are built from the same foundations and people. Some Omanis may be in denial of their past, but their homes are closed by doors built by us and their plates are filled with food by us, and as an Omani, who would we be without Swahili food?