Makran, Oman, and Zanzibar

Since time immemorial, spice and aromatics formed the first and foremost items of commerce in the western Indian Ocean. In Oman, Saiyid Sa’id bin Sultan Al Bu Sa’id (r. 1806-1856) – often described by the available historiography as a revolutionary merchant-prince of Muscat and Zanzibar – developed and expanded a great and powerful mercantile empire in the Indian Ocean. The main factors of the rise of a mighty maritime trade network were constituted by the expansion of the spice trade, especially by clove cultivation in Zanzibar and Pemba Islands (*Unguja*), by the slave trade, by the ivory exportation and by their implications with European Powers of the time. The figure of Saiyid Sa’id bin Sultan Al Bu Sa’id, Lord of the Seas, founder of a real maritime empire with its capital on the Island of Zanzibar, succeeded in imposing his laws also on the Great Powers of the time, France and Great Britain, who were fighting for mastery of those seas. The power of this Oriental prince was widely known as based on delicate balances of forces (and ethnic-social groups) deeply different among them.