Transitions of the Modern World System: Resistance in Oman and the restoration of the mudharabah system through the Sultanate of Oman (1650-1790s)
One of the outcomes of the defeat of the Portuguese fort system in the Arabian Seas and the Gulf was the rise of indigenous resistance in Oman, particularly in port towns like Sohar which with the combination of Persian military alliances with Dutch and British fleets had begun forcing the Portuguese out from about 1621 on. Beginning with the defeat and expulsion of the Portuguese at Hormuz, we find a new internal resistance emerge in Oman that leads to internal resistance and the defeat and forced removal of the last Portuguese fort town in Oman in 1651. This ushers in a period of relative independence for the Sultanate of Oman that allows it regain some dominance of the trade system along the African coast and Red Sea routes, and unfortunately with it, the resumption of slave trade. It is revealing that the new powers, the Dutch and the British have to make alliances with and tolerate the Sultanate of Oman's maritime presence although we'll see how eventually this revival came to threaten Dutch and British interests further east and the Omani resurgence would be checked.
A number of historians have shown how the interior of Arabia was
not isolated but grew and expanded its agriculture and towns through direct
trade and movement of its population into the coastal towns and trading port
centers in Iraq, Kuwait, the Eastern Gulf and the Southern Gulf communities (Fattah, 1997). We now know that the Najdi towns of Central
Arabia, even in the pre-Wahhabi period (the mid 18th century Islamic
missionary movement that spread outward from central Arabia) were not isolated communities, but connected
through trade routes, gained some surplus or profit from their agriculture and
increased their ties to the coasts. They
also began to support an educated ‘ulama or base for scholars in these towns (Al-Juhany,
2002). From the 1600s and into the 1700s townsmen
and tribes from these Central Arabian towns began moving toward the coastal
port towns. The free ports of Kuwait and
Bahrain began to offer free trade, without customs fees as occurred in the
Ottoman port of Basra in Iraq. This
encouraged and allowed merchants to offer incentives and establish a trade base
in these towns that benefited from connections with long distance trade towns
in India, Oman and the Arabian interior.
The longer effects of Portuguese,
Dutch and British interference extended into the late 18th century
as each empire and its system of mercantilist-factory companies attempted to
limit indigenous development and ultimately sought to disrupt this freely and
improvised system of trade, commerce and link with market towns of the Arabian
Peninsula and the Gulf. As shown in research by Lionovich, and Fattah merchants
and seamen by the late 18th century were learning how to adapt to
these conditions and to resume their system of trade and exchange albeit in
shorter trips and with a degree of financial risk. The muḍhārabah system of speculative
exchange survived or was extended in different forms by local merchants and
seamen and their crews. From Dutch consular records at Basra we have details of
the pay afforded to local Arab seamen and their nakhudas and merchant agents
and captains in the Gulf.
Estimates of the trade from the
Arabian Seas ports vary considerably.
Barendse estimates that the trade from Khisn on the Hadrawmawt Yemen
coast to Surat dropped from four ships in the 1690s to just one ship by 1730 (Barendse R.
J., 2014).
From the Hadrawmawt coffee was the chief commodity and was traded primarily to
Egypt.
After 1745 and the rise of the
Wahhābī movement a new type of moral ideology or philosophy and practice was
revived around the da`wa or call for a stricter observance of tawhid,
a call for conservative unity in religious doctrine and practice. The Wahhābīs also began to label enemies or
opponents, such as those aligned with the Ottoman rulers in the Hejaz as kāfir
(pl. kuffār) or unbelievers. Given
this strict interpretation it privileged the ‘ulama and religious clergy of
Central Arabia and gave the Central Arabian military forces a political
standing for expansion throughout much of Arabia (Fattah, 1999, pp. 41-43). The Wahhabist mission was in part
economically motivated by the expansion of agricultural market towns in the interior
that reached out to the Arabian coastal port towns. This brought them into competition with the
interests of the expansive interests of the Ottoman provincial administrators
as well as the newly arrived trading empire and trading companies of the
British.
During the Dutch period of trading
in the Gulf to about 1760, the Arabian Gulf had favored conditions for Arabian
Gulf based merchants and shipping to trade long distance across the Indian
Ocean. From the Russian historian Lionovich’s
study of the Dutch period records, we find evidence of substantial trading
profit along the Southern Arabian Gulf coast.
Arab trade ships of various size made regular voyages between Basra,
Bahrain, Ras al-Khaimah, Muscat, and to the Indian trade ports of Cochin. From the Dutch residency documents in Basra,
we have limited but insightful evidence of relative rates of profit and amounts
paid, distributed to ordinary seamen on these voyages (Lionovich). The end of the Dutch period in the 1760s also
seemed to be a high water mark for Arab commercial seamen, for from the 1780s
onward, increased rivalry between the growing and more aggressive British
presence and internal developments in Arabia that responded to these changed conditions.
The
Russian historian Lionovich used the records of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde
Oostindische Compagnie, VOC), to cite a report from 1702, by the Dutch resident agent in
Gumrun (Dutch name for Bandar Abbas) to the Dutch East India Company
(VOC). In it we find mention of the ship
“De Witt Peace” which came from India to Julfar (Ras al-Khaimah). Ismail, one of the mariners on board,
reported that:
For a year and three months we looked around here from Cochin (the
Malabar coast of India) to Muscat (Oman).
And during this passage our ship found strong winds and
thunderstorms. And because of that it
was decided to anchor in Basido (on Qishm island in the Gulf) to unload the
ship and pile up the merchandise in the warehouse of the Dutch East India
Company and to await the favorable seasonal winds (Lionovich, p. 108).
Afterward
the goods were reloaded back onto the ship and divided between Arab and
residents of Kunora in Julfar. Although
a short trip across the Gulf, Ismail reported they stayed on for another two
months when they left Basido. This
passage offers evidence of the risk of weather and delays and the need to harbor
and put up seamen in ports for extended periods (Lionovich, p. 108).[1]
The ruling dynasty of Julfar was the
Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah, to whom one
paid a tax in order to engage in commerce, including the local agricultural
fields of dates. Pearl diving and trade
was also lucrative. Ships from Ras
al-Khaimah returned yearly with approximately 80,000 rupees from selling the
dates. A tenth of this amount went to
their sheikhs as a local tax or customs fee.
By the late 18th century
the Qawasim had a fleet of large ships that frequented the ports of India,
Yemen, Sind, Cochin and Basra. Each
sailor’s share or pay on the voyage varied.
For the trip to India it was from 50 to 80 rupees; to Yemen 70 rupees; to Africa 40 rupees; to Sind and Cochin 25 – 30 rupees; and
finally back to Muscat 12 rupees. The
Qawasim sailors did not earn any money from their trips to Basra, because their
ships were loading up both fresh and dried dates which they then sold at the
other ports.
Whereas seamen on Dutch merchant
vessels of the VOC were paid monthly wages (Bruijin, J. R.; Gaastra, F. S.;
Schoffer, I., 1987, p. 210), the indigenous
seamen of the Arabian Seas were paid at the end of voyages or at various stops depending
on gains made from the sale of goods at individual ports.
