Credit, Debt and the Omani Community in Zanzibar in the late nineteenth century.

Abstract

Despite the expanded literature of Omani history in Zanzibar in the nineteenth century, few studies have been focused on the patterns of credit and debt of them. This thesis examines the nature of Omani community in living with others and how people made decisions about what sort of business to do, whom to borrow from or lend to, and whom to do business with. Using a sample of one thousand transactions to illustrate the idea of credit and debt patterns between Omanis and other groups that lived in Zanzibar. This study offers a problematic argument of nisba and raising a question of who was giving nisbas to these people. This study presents the active roles of women as moneylenders and borrowers, and how the social rank is reflected in dress and clothing styles. Through an analysis of these transactions, this thesis explores the different approaches of cosmopolitan Zanzibar and how these various meanings can be seen through the credit and debt process of a diverse people living in Zanzibar. Also, we conclude that there are two distinct ways of understanding cosmopolitanism in Zanzibar through transactions. Firstly, Zanzibar society in the nineteenth century involved people from various ethnicities and backgrounds, which might be seen as a kind of cosmopolitanism involving ‘modernity’ and ‘openness’ to different cultures. Secondly, the society that included multi-ethnic people, could be seen as divided and categorised by their status and ethnicity.