Background
Said bin Sultan was born on June 5, 1791 in Sumail. He was the son of Sultan bin Ahmad, who ruled Oman from 1792 to 1804. Sultan bin Ahmad died in 1804 on an expedition to Basra. He appointed Mohammed bin Nasir bin Mohammed al-Jabry as the Regent and guardian of his two sons, Salim bin Sultan and Said bin Sultan. Sultan's brother Qais bin Ahmad, ruler of Sohar, decided to attempt to seize power. Early in 1805 Qais and his brother Mohammed marched south along the coast to Muttrah, which he easily captured. Qais then started to besiege Muscat. Mohammed bin Nasir tried to bribe Qais to leave, but did not succeed.
Mohammed bin Nasir called on Badr bin Saif for help. After a series of engagements, Qais was forced to retire to Sohar. Badr bin Saif became the effective ruler. Allied with the Wahhabis, Badr bin Saif became increasingly unpopular. To get his wards out of the way, Badr bin Saif made Salim bin Sultan governor of Al Maşna‘ah, on the Batinah coast and Said bin Sultan governor of Barka.
In 1806, Said bin Sultan lured Badr bin Saif to Barka and murdered him nearby. Said was proclaimed ruler of Oman. There are different accounts of what happened, but it seems clear that Said struck the first blow and his supporters finished the job. Said was acclaimed by the people as a liberator from the Wahhabis, who left the country. Qais bin Ahmad at once gave his support to Said. Nervous of the Wahhabi reaction, Said blamed Mohammed bin Nasir for the murder.
Career
Seyyid Said became sultan of the Persian Gulf state of Oman in 1806. Although the area was neither rich nor easy to govern, Omani fortunes rose during the Napoleonic Wars, when European merchants relied heavily on Arab shipping throughout the northern and western Indian Ocean. This prosperity proved short-lived after Britain gained control of Indian Ocean ports, thereby enabling British companies to monopolize shipping in that "English lake"; simultaneously the British navy worked to eliminate piracy in the Persian Gulf. Said's prolonged struggles with the fierce Wahhabis from the desert marshes of Oman finally convinced him of the futility of attempting any expansion of his power within the Arabian peninsula. Oman quickly descended to the depths of poverty as unemployment rose and discontent spread. A flexible and ambitious man, Said sought alternatives to improve the lot of his countrymen and agreed to a treaty with Britain in 1823 that forbade slave trading between his Moslem subjects and any Christian power, at least in the Persian Gulf. The British in return offered friendship and support for Said's commercial interests elsewhere, especially on the East African coast, where he tried to reassert dynastic claims to govern that region of long-standing Omani trading activity. Move to Zanzibar Devoting more energy to his African dominions in the 1830s, Said eventually relocated his capital from the city of Masqat to Zanzibar in 1840 and thus became an East African ruler with possessions in Arabia. Although Said never entirely abandoned Oman, it thereafter ranked as an unruly distant province rather than as the heart and soul of his realm. Said used military and naval expeditions, diplomatic scheming, and the personal appointment of governors to exploit local dynastic disputes among the East African Mazrui rulers; thus by 1841 the establishment of his authority over all main coastal towns made him the first ruler ever to control the coast from Mogadishu (Somalia) to southern Tanzania. A merchant prince rather than a soldier, Said depended on mercantile and maritime resources for his power in both Oman and Zanzibar. Recognizing the suitability of Zanzibar climate and soil, he initiated large-scale cultivation of cloves-an essential meat preservative in Europe prior to the advent of refrigeration-and soon after sought slaves as cheap labor to plant and harvest the biennial crop. In order to reach potential slaving areas in the African interior, it was necessary to finance and equip caravans for this egregious activity; resident Indians long active in Indian Ocean business ventures were attracted by possible high returns on labor investments and not only extended credit to Arab-led caravans but henceforth supplied most loans for slave purchases at Zanzibar. Said functioned as a skillful liaison, bringing together the available Indian capital for use by his Arab adventurers. He stood between these two disparate groups, preventing wasteful arguments and quarrels, protecting Arabs from arbitrary exactions by Indians, and requiring the moneylenders to make loans only to caravans and plantations controlled by men who had Said's personal approval. Despite Arab prestige and commercial power in the interior, Said never actually ruled over any sizable number of Africans there; and in fact, wherever Arabs offended powerful tribes such as the Nyamwezi and Shambaa of Tanzania, they were often expelled. Said's creation of the Zanzibar sultanate brought renewed prosperity to his Omani followers, and by 1850 he reported an annual income exceeding £100, 000. Zanzibar Town developed into an important international entrepôt exporting slaves and ivory from regions of present-day Mozambique and Tanzania, and the mainland north of the island witnessed the major development of grain and coconut plantations. This entire pattern of economic growth was continually underwritten by Indian capitalists at Zanzibar and coordinated largely by Said's government at the coast. Seyyid Said ruled the East African coast in this way until his death in 1856; afterward the Arab-Indian alliance slowly collapsed because of British interference, succession disputes, and political squabbles.
