Abstract
As one of the world’s great seafaring nations, with a maritime history stretching back to the Bronze Age and a maritime empire that lasted into the mid-20th century, Oman deserves a full treatment of its ports. This handsome volume, 368 pages, large format, full colour, and packed with content is the first comprehensive account, largely with a historical perspective but with some consideration of the present day.
Previous work has addressed aspects of trade, seafaring, naval architecture and history with a range of archaeological and historical approaches and subject matter. None have had such a disciplinarily comprehensive yet thematically specific remit. There have been no book-length academic treatments of any of Omani port towns, except Barth’s anthropological work on 1970s Sohar (Society and Culture in an Omani Town, 1983). Various publications address Oman’s seafaring tradition, starting with Oman: A Seafaring Nation, a publication dating back to 1979 (written by Will Facey but credited to The Oman Ministry of Information and Culture), and concluding with Agius’ trilogy, most notably his sections on port towns in Classic Ships of Islam (2008), which includes short sections on Julfar, Hormuz, Sohar and Qalhat; and his treatment of Muscat, Sur, Qalhat and Dhofar in Seafaring in the Arabian Gulf and Oman (2005). These all primarily concern boats and seafaring, notwithstanding their sections on the best known ports. A slew of specialist archaeological articles and excavation reports exist, many dealing with towns featuring in this volume (e.g. Sohar, Sumhuram, Al-Baleed, among others), along with numerous short accounts by medieval geographers and historians, and travellers accounts of different periods. These are too numerous to mention in this short review, and were well used as primary source material by the authors of this volume.
The book is large, consisting of twelve numbered chapters (one consisting of three large chapter-length subsections) plus conclusions, effectively amounting to fifteen chapters of significant length. It takes a laudable multidisciplinary approach, with contributions from historians, archaeologists and maritime archaeologists. It is organised geographically, with authors taking responsibility for a specific port and region. The chronological range mainly falls into the Islamic period, up to the 20th century, but there is a whole chapter by Avanzini on the pre-Islamic trading port of Sumhuram, Dhofar (3rd c. BC–5th c. AD), as well as detailed sections on pre-Islamic trade in Newton & Zarins’s chapter on Northern Indian Ocean Seaports and the Interior of the Arabian Peninsula (which focuses on Dhofar and its routes leading inland from southern Arabia); and a lengthy section on pre-Islamic trade and relations with Sasanian Persia in Averbuch’s chapter on Sohar. Newton & Zarins provide an additional chapter on Socotra, Masirah and other island groups (the Hallaniyat, i.e. Kuria Muria, and Mahut Islands). Also present are chapters on Qalhat and Sur by Tom Vosmer, Muscat and Mutrah by Heinz Gaube, and the lesser southern ports of the Batinah coast by Nasser Al-Jahwari, who along with Abdulrahman Al-Salimi provides essential Omani authorial and editorial input into the volume.
Appropriately, the book’s geographical scope is wider than modern Oman, extending to include far-flung regions of its zone of influence, specifically east Africa (a detailed and cohesive contribution by Mark Horton on the Swahili Coast from the late pre-Islamic period to the 20th c. AD); Gwadar (a historical account by Beatrice Nicolini); and Julfar (now UAE) with a contribution by Timothy Power. There is also a book-length historical contribution by Valeria Piacentini on Hormuz, whose realm included the major Omani port of Qalhat. The volume is topped and tailed with an opening theoretical introduction by Michael Pearson; a brief concluding overview and look to the present and future of the Omani ports by Eric Staples.
Regarding the disciplinary balance, there are real historical riches dealing with the medieval Omani ports (Muqaddasi, Istakhri, Mas’udi, Ibn Battuta, Ibn Majid and others, particularly for Sohar, Dhofar/Al-Baleed, Qalhat, Muscat and, more distantly, Hormuz). These are brought out by most authors, particularly Averbuch on Sohar, Newton & Zarins on Dhofar, Vosmer on Qalhat, Horton on the Swahili towns and of course Piacentini on Hormuz. Later sources are most notably used by Vosmer for Sur, by Gaube for Muscat and Mutrah, and by Al-Jahwari for the Batinah ports, both of the latter putting Lorimer’s Gazetteer (1908) to good use. Frequent use of extended quotations of primary historical sources is a particularly strong aspect of the book, used by many of the authors.
Regarding the archaeological data, this is patchily available due to limited excavation in the port towns and sites of Oman, being almost absent for Muscat, Hormuz, Gwadar, Sur and several others of the case studies, and very partial for Sohar. The best use of archaeology is made by Avanzini on her chapter on Sumhuram, and by Horton in his section on the Swahili towns, who combines detailed accounts of the physical remains of the medieval Swahili towns with the historical sources, from the origins of the towns through to the climax of the Omani empire in 18th–19th century Zanzibar. Others, including some of the archaeologists, leaned more towards history, including Power on Julfar who discussed the extensive archaeological coverage of Julfar Al-Mataf (roughly 14th–16th c., when the port town was at its peak) for four pages, yet devoted eleven pages to the early Islamic history and scanty archaeological remains of earlier Julfar. Notwithstanding unsustainable comments which downplay Julfar’s role as a centre of the Gulf pearl industry, and as a trading port (both assertions directly contradicted by both historical and archaeological data), this chapter nonetheless presents an excellent marriage of history and archaeology, and is well-informed and up-to-date in its research. The archaeology of Qalhat could have received fuller treatment, with greater attention to Rougeulle’s excavations (e.g. Rougeulle, 2010, and subsequent publications in 2012 and 2014), while as noted above, the remarkable site of Al-Baleed, Dhofar, received scant treatment. This major medieval port site has been partially excavated by Zarins as well as by a team led by Avanzini, and is a significant component of Oman’s Land of Frankincense UNESCO World Heritage site. The lack of a detailed and extended treatment of its archaeology, urban form and historical geography is one of the few omissions of this book, and the reviewer speculates that an intended chapter on this town never materialised.
Maritime archaeology is well considered, as might be expected of a book edited by a maritime specialist (Staples). For example, Avanzini’s chapter presents a graffito showing a double-masted ship apparently engaged in whaling, an image guaranteed to lift the heart of any maritime archaeologist (though it is not the earliest depiction of a ship known from Arabia, as stated). Both contributions by Newton & Zarins, and Vosmer, mention finds of buoy anchors, the major archaeological correlates of roadstead ports, recovered from underwater investigations. The lack of quays, breakwaters and harbour facilities, and reliance on offshore mooring (hence the anchors) is a characteristic of ports of the Arabian coast. Vosmer also gives a useful consideration of shipbuilding at Sur, while maritime ethnography is represented in Al-Jahwari’s work, who combines oral histories from living seafarers with historical accounts, and archaeological data from his own survey work. Jahwari’s approach is a powerful three-fold combination for examining recent historical economies and lifestyles in the region.
Several themes prevail across the volume. Some are explicitly set out by Pearson in his introduction, and it appears that the authors were set a theoretical remit which most contributors faithfully addressed. According to Pearson the relationships and connectivity of ports can be understood according to variable reliance on their Forelands (those parts of the outside world to which they are connected by trade and shipping), their Umlands (the local supply zone of the port, for example surrounding agricultural areas which provide foodstuffs and water), and their Hinterlands (which radiate inland, outwards from the Umland).
Of all the authors, Newton & Zarins take Pearson’s exhortation to consider connections with inland regions most seriously, explicitly setting out to explore ‘the connection between seaports and the adjoining landmass’ (p. 18) in their ‘Northern Indian Ocean Seaports’ chapter. Their account of inland trading routes is therefore lengthy and detailed (perhaps too much so), and includes extensive discussion of the surprising route across the Arabian landmass joining Dhofar with eastern Arabia (‘Bahrain’, including both modern Bahrain and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia), and thence to Basra. Unfortunately this focus, born out of Zarins’s history of research on Shisr/Wubar, comes at the expense of the archaeology of Al-Baleed, the seaport of Medieval Dhofar (see below).
Averbuch also takes this consideration of Umland and Hinterland very seriously, as he tackles the daunting task of Sohar. Other authors mention inland trade as appropriate, for example Vosmer’s reference to the trade of dates from Buraimi to Sur. In his initial remarks Pearson briefly notes that some of the chapters challenge the ‘received wisdom’ that the coastal zone of Oman had no hinterland to speak of, due to a supposed strong coastal-inland fission (a model derived largely from historical political divisions between Muscat and interior Oman). He also correctly notes the effective lack of Umland in some cases, for example Hormuz. It would have been fruitful to revisit these aspects more systematically at the conclusion to obtain an overview of the inland connectivity of the various ports through time.
There is an obvious interest in most contributions on the nature of the goods (and regrettably humans) exchanged in the ports (a prominent feature of the historical data), as well as the direct correlates of trade indicated by archaeological ceramics, when such data is available. Horses, frankincense, spices and slaves are probably the most frequently mentioned, with gold, ivory and rock crystal also playing prominent roles in the Africa trade. A major focus naturally falls on commercial networks. Pearson and Piacentini refer to the role of Islam in creating mercantile networks, an argument reminiscent of Seland’s (2014) work on earlier ethnic and faith-based networks in the Western Indian Ocean, and indeed in shaping the whole Indian Ocean world. The centrality of the bazaar or suq is key to understanding this world, as stressed by Piacentini, who explains how merchants were given latitude to take on de facto governmental roles. Students of more recent history are keenly aware of the social roles and responsibilities of Arabia’s merchant families, and these contributions emphasise the very deep roots of this phenomenon. To Barth in Sohar, even in the 1970s, centuries past Sohar’s trading heyday, its merchants were the town’s ‘prototypical citizens’ (Barth 1983: 148).
Merchant networks of other faiths are also given due consideration, leading to another major theme emerging from this study of Omani ports and coastal society: cosmopolitanism and tolerance, and their direct relationship with maritime trade and wealth. Several contributors cite historical sources from the 10th to the 19th centuries which emphasise the diversity of Oman’s port town populations, and the degree to which foreign merchant communities were welcomed and protected. Pearson unpicks Omani cosmopolitanism and envisages diverse but atomised populations who learned to rub along together for mutual benefit. This tolerance did not appear to extend beyond the town, however: Gaube quotes Miles to note how Mutrah’s Lawati (Khoja) community had to wall off their district as protection from raids from the interior. Nonetheless, within the bounds of the port it was recognised that the merchants’ interests had to be protected, regardless of background, from the earliest days. For example, Pearson refers to Buzurg’s tale of merchants closing ranks to protect a Jewish merchant in Oman, presumably in the 10th century. Pearson also quotes Ibn Battuta to explain how foreign merchants were welcomed in Dhofar (Al-Baleed).
Piacentini gives interesting insights into religious diversity and heterodoxy tolerated by the Buyids, and also notes later cosmopolitanism and plurality in Hormuz, including toleration of ‘idolatry’ under Turanshah II (mid 15th c. AD). Three centuries later, according to Gaube, Niebuhr’s account of Muscat not only stresses the lack of ostentation among Muscat’s elites (a point also made by the British visitor Hamilton), but also their tolerance of the presence of Jewish and Indian communities and their practices. As a related point, Newton & Zarins, in their second chapter on Socotra and the islands, include an interesting digression on Christian communities in Socotra and Dhofar (particularly at Ain Humran and Baleed, 12th–13th c.). To complement the data on Christian communities they could have added more detail from their published work on a possible Indian enclave at Al-Baleed, apparently with religious paraphernalia (Newton & Zarins, 2014). The ports of Oman truly reflected the ethnic and religious diversity of the western Indian Ocean.
This diversity includes an intimate but sometimes antagonistic historical relationship with Persia, beginning at least as early as the Sasanian period. This is another key theme in the study of many historical Omani ports. Piacentini refers to a balance between the Arabic and Persian languages in the Omani ports, with Persian enclaves known from the names of officials and communities during the 15th century. Both she and Vosmer underline the Persian connection with Qalhat, a key possession of Hormuz and frequent residence of its rulers, in terms of language, architecture and people. Persia also looms large at Sohar, as detailed by Averbuch, not only under the Sasanians but also under the Buyids. Many Sirafi merchants relocated to Sohar, and according to Muqaddasi Persian was the language of the town. In later centuries populations of Persian origin are still important in the Omani coastal towns, as are the Baluch, originally mainly brought in as soldiers and guards.
Another prominent theme is the politics of maritime empires, particularly those of the Buyids, Hormuz, and the Omani maritime empire of the 18th–20th c. Perhaps too much political history is provided in Piacentini’s contributions, which obscures the value of her work. In their introduction the editors describe her three-part section on Hormuz as a magnus opus, and so it is. However, its size is disproportionate and its content is frequently tangential: it mainly does not concern Oman and its ports, but rather a prolonged account of Hormuz’s political history on the Iranian side of the Gulf. For reasons of word count and readability alone, this section would have been better compressed into a focussed account of Hormuz’s control over Qalhat, the structure and activities of its maritime empire and the status of ports under the Hormuzi-Portuguese condominium, all of which are well treated but lost in a fug of Iranian and Baluchi personalities, peoples and political intrigues. More brutal editing would have been of significant benefit in other historical contributions. For example, the level of repetition in the chapter by Nicolini on Gwadar is very high, often including word-for-word replication of whole series of sentences, and in one case a whole paragraph. This chapter gives no clear idea of the relative financial or strategic importance of Gwadar to Oman in the late 18th–mid 20th c. AD, though its role in the provision of slaves and soldiers is well covered.
Other than some aspects of maritime archaeology (for example the buoy anchors) technical matters of seafaring and port functions are rarely mentioned, and technological change is not a focus of any chapter. Nonetheless, Pearson, and some others, note the changes wrought by the opening of the Suez Canal, harbour engineering and the development of steam-ship transport, all allowing faster journeys, liberation from the monsoon, and the possibility to locate major ports in new areas. However, some contributors draw attention to continuity through time, and not always when one would expect it. Most notably, Pearson and others argue that the arrival of the Portuguese did not create a dramatic rupture, but stress continuity. This is despite the brutal nature of their conquest (well illustrated by Gaube, who reproduces Albuquerque’s own account of his sack of Muscat and the massacre of its inhabitants). This is true to the extent that the Hormuzis were allowed to persist as local client rulers, and their capital on Jarun endured. Piacentini makes the same point, that the arrival of Portuguese ‘did not lead to a breakdown of the system’ (p. 352) and that Hormuz remained one of the most important ports of call linking Europe, Asia and Africa. Similarly, Horton notes that some Swahili towns thrived under the Portuguese, for Pate and its cloth trade, and draws attention to a second heyday of the Swahili towns in the 18th c., based on slaves and ivory and spice. Nonetheless, on the level of a few individual ports, most notably Qalhat, the reviewer notes that their intervention was catastrophic and terminal.
Continuity at this time and in later periods is also evident in the continuation of coastal trading at smaller port sites throughout the region. Pearson notes that after the Portuguese ‘the great mass of the trade remained coastal trade in humble port markets strung all along the littoral of the Indian Ocean’ (p. 25). This continued in later centuries, a reality brought out strongly in Al-Jahwari’s account of the lesser known minor ports of the southern Batinah (Saham, Al-Khaburah, Al-Suwaiq, Al-Musna’ah, Sawadi Islands, Barka, Dimanyat Islands, and Seeb). Small-scale coasting trade is frequently left out of the historical narrative, but it is an activity upon which the majority of the coastal populations depended, both as sources of essential foodstuffs and hardware and also as practitioners of trade. Al-Jahwari’s chapter therefore gives a picture of the most widespread mode of maritime trade, which was perhaps also the most significant in terms of volume of trade goods. Moreover, their range of the petty traders from small ports was sometimes extensive, according to the invaluable testimony of his informants. For example, traders from Suwaiq travelled in large boats trading dates and other goods between Basrah, East Africa and India. Zarins & Newton’s contribution on the island ports is also valuable in telling us more about the trade of the smaller ports.
The reviewer would have appreciated a more synthetic discussion at the close, perhaps exploring how the configuration of western Indian Ocean trade has changed over the centuries, and how this has influenced and been influenced by Oman’s ports. Fluctuations in complexity, intensity and scale have characterised the development of maritime trade through time. This book has amply demonstrated how the ports of Oman have changed from dependencies of Iranian empires, and simultaneously sister ports of trading entities in the Gulf with mercantile relations stretching as far as China; to nodes within a Hormuzi-Omani-Baluchi imperial mercantile triangle; to trading and military outposts of the Portuguese maritime empire; to ports and political centres of an independent Omani polity with trading and imperial ambitions of its own. This broad sweep of history could have been brought out more clearly, along with deeper consideration of Oman’s incorporation into global trading networks at various times. An analytical discussion of what makes a successful port would also have been fruitful, for example a consideration of the trading conditions under which the presence or absence of any kind of umland becomes irrelevant. For some ports good supplies of water and produce are cited as significant (e.g. Muscat), while for others it seems irrelevant that there is no limited provision of foodstuffs or even water (in the case of Hormuz, albeit this is not Omani). The same could be said of the presence or absence of natural shelter or harbours. A consideration of tax and customs policies might also have been apposite here; taxes are barely mentioned, though historical data on tax certainly exists.
Ultimately, the data is presented so richly in this timely volume that the readers have ample opportunity to formulate their own theories and opinions.