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RITUALS OF ROYALTY AND THE ELABORATION OF CEREMONY IN OMAN: VIEW FROM THE EDGE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2009

Dawn Chatty
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Extract

Ceremony and elaborate protocols are commonly associated with kingship, authority, and power. The pageantry associated with the British monarchy in its public ceremonials, for example, is imbued with a sense of an ancient past. Yet, these traditions are recent inventions derived from the late Victorian period. Traditions, particularly Western practices, are often made up, choreographed, and then formally instituted in a matter of a few years, rapidly gaining a sense of permanence. Sometimes entirely new symbols and devices are invented to confirm gravitas and substance and to serve as rallying points for the new entity (e.g., Marianne, John Bull, or Uncle Sam).

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , February 2009 , pp. 39 - 58
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

NOTES

1 Excerpt from Field Notebook I, May 1980, at the commencement of my anthropological research to support a United Nations Development Programme project in the Jiddat al-Harasiis, Oman, between 1981 and 1985. I continued a longitudinal study of the Harasiis tribe until 1994.

2 Cannadine, David, “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the ‘Invention of Tradition,’ c. 1820–1977,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Hobsbawn, Eric and Ranger, Terence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 101–64Google Scholar.

3 Elaborated rituals are generally taken to mean a “set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition which automatically implies continuity with the past.” Hobsbawn and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, 1.

4 Ibid., 9.

5 Ibid., 211–62.

6 Bernard Cohen, “Representing Authority in Victorian India,” in Hobsbawn and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, 165–210.

7 Combs-Schilling, M. Elaine, Sacred Performances: Islam, Sexuality and Sacrifices (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Geertz, Clifford, Islam Observed (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Gellner, Ernest, Saints of the Atlas (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969)Google Scholar; Hammoudi, Abdellah, “Sainteté, pouvoir, et société: Tamgroutx aux XVII and XVIII siècles,” Annales économies, sociétés, civilisation 35 (1980): 615–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Eickelman, Dale and Salvatore, Armando, “The Public Sphere and Muslim Identities,” Archives of European Sociology XLIII (2002): 92–115Google Scholar.

9 Layne, Linda, Home and Homeland: The Dialogics of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Massad, Joseph, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Shryock, Andrew, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

10 In her study of Kuwait and Qatar, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), Jill Crystal details the way the rulers transformed their families into core institutions of the state by investing them with powerful executive positions.

11 Dale Eickelman, in his study of Oman's first modern state consultative council, only touches upon the developing “absolutist view that the monarch is the state.” “Kings and People: Oman's State Consultative Council,” Middle East Journal 38 (1984): 51.

12 A full ethnography of the Harasiis tribe can be found in Chatty's, DawnMobile Pastoralists: Development Planning and Social Change in Oman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

13 The Ibadi sect of Islam had its origins in Basra at the end of the 7th century, when opposition emerged to the transfer of leadership from ʿAli, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, to the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus.

14 Until late in the 18th century, Oman was ruled by an Ibadi imam, and the state was called an imamate. In 1792, however, Sultan bin Ahmad was recognized as the secular ruler of Muscat (and the coastal areas) while his brother, Said, was allowed to keep the office of imam in the interior of the country. See Wilkinson, John, “The Origins of the Omani State,” in The Arabian Peninsula: Society and Politics, ed. Hopwood, Derek (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972), 73–74Google Scholar.

15 Wilkinson, John, Water and Tribal Settlement in South-East Arabia: A Study of the Aflaj of Oman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

16 Wilkinson, John, The Imamate Tradition of Oman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 296–97Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., 297.

18 They withdrew in 1955.

19 Many Omanis came to believe that the sultan had died in an assassination attempt and that the British only claimed that he was alive so as to keep control over the promising oil revenues. Eickelman, “Kings and People,” 54.

20 Peterson, Oman's Insurgencies, 102.

21 Ibid., 161–62.

22 Peterson, Oman in the Twentieth Century, 200–2.

23 Ibid., 214.

24 Educated and skilled Omanis who had migrated to Zanzibar and East Africa to escape the oppression of the former sultan's reign returned in large numbers. By 1975, between 8,000 and 10,000 Zanzibari Omanis had entered the country. Al-Rasheed, Madawi, “Transnational Connections and National Identity: Zanzibari Omanis in Muscat,” in Monarchies and Nations: Globalisation and Identity in the Arab States of the Gulf, ed. Dresch, Paul and Piscatori, James (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 101Google Scholar.

25 Fred Halliday, for example, describes Said as “one of the nastiest rulers the world has seen for a long time . . . Under the guise of respecting Ibadhism a savage regime was upheld. Said's rule prevented Omanis from leaving the country, discouraged education and health services, and kept from the population a whole series of objects, including medicines, radios, spectacles, trousers, cigarettes and books.” Arabia without Sultans (London: Saqi Books, 1974), 275. Such analyses permitted the advisers of the new sultan to present Qaboos as the champion of his people “come to rescue them from the tyranny of his father.” Ibid., 289. Such perceptions, however, ignored the skills Said displayed in reintegrating the northern Omani interior into the sultanate in planning development he had already approved for the country. See Barbara Wace, “Master Plan for Muscat and Oman,” Geographical Magazine (September 1969).

26 Peterson, Oman in the Twentieth Century, 85.

27 Charles Kendall and Partners was founded in 1946 and three years later negotiated a contract with the sultan to take on professional buying and recruitment.

28 Reginald Brett was responsible for the overall planning of every great state pageant from the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria to the funeral of Edward VII. Cannadine, “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual,” 135.

29 Interview by the author with John Kendall, London, 23 July 2001.

30 A few British expatriates who had served Sultan Said were kept in positions of power as “advisers” to the new sultan on matters related to information, the environment, and national security.

31 In Oman, these included al-ʿAlam Palace, Seeb Palace, Bayt al-Barka, Sayq House, ʿIzz House, and Sur House in the north, with al-Husn Palace, Rabat Palace, and Maʾmura Compound in the south. His overseas residences included numerous properties in the United Kingdom as well as in Garmish Partenkirchen in Bavaria, Germany.

32 Eickelman, “Kings and People,” 51. For similar measures in Qatar, also see Crystal, Oil and Politics, 162.

33 Wedeen, Lisa, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999), 2Google Scholar.

34 What we know as the Sultanate of Oman was until the late 1960s referred to as Muscat and Oman. Only on acceptance into the United Nations in 1970 was the country consolidated into the Sultanate of Oman.

35 After the failed attempt to secede in the 1950s, the last Ibadi imam went into exile, and the spiritual leadership of the community was left in limbo.

36 These projects were strikingly similar to the 1920s efforts of the Trans-Jordanian Emir Abdullah to impose his presence on his new capital, Amman, through two major construction projects: the main ʿUmari mosque (later al-Husayni al-Kabir) and the Raghdan Palace. Rogan, Eugene, “The Making of a Capital: Amman 1918–1928,” in Amman: The City and Its Society, ed. Hannoyer, Jean and Shami, Seteney (Beirut: Centre d'études et de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient Contemporain, 1996), 102Google Scholar.

37 The date of 23 July was not completely discarded; it came to be recognized as a minor holiday and is known as Renaissance Day (ʿīd al-nahḍa), a further testimony to the contribution of Qaboos to his country.

38 The twentieth-year National Day celebrations were magnificent by any standard—and undoubtedly expensive to mount. Succeeding National Day celebrations were less theatrical, suggesting that the country was entering either a more mature stage in its political development or a period of austerity related to oil prices.

39 Chatty, Dawn, From Camel to Truck: The Bedouin in the Modern World (New York: Vantage Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

40 Khalaf, Sulayman, “Camel Racing in the Gulf: Notes on the Evolution of a Traditional Cultural Sport,” Anthropos 94 (1999): 85–106Google Scholar.

41 The Royal Guard had its origins in the Oman gendarmerie. It then became His Majesty's Body Guard, then the Royal Guard Squadron, and in 1975, the Royal Guard Regiment responsible for the security of His Majesty, security of His Majesty's guests, and the protection of the royal property. Tinson, Ashley R., Orders and Medals of the Sultanate of Oman (London: Spinks and Son, Limited, 1995), 11Google Scholar. In the 1990s it became known as the Royal Guard of Oman.

42 In 1974 the Royal Guard officer ʿAbdul ʿAlim was sent to the United Kingdom. During this visit he watched the Household Cavalry and the London Scottish Regiment Household Division take part in the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. These units' combination of protection and public duties had a significant impact on him, which he translated into created, borrowed, and reworked Royal Guard staging of public ceremonial activities associated with the sultan and the royal court.

43 In 1985 Sultan Qaboos asked the commander of the Royal Guard to create a national symphony orchestra made up entirely of Omani youth. The Oman Symphony Orchestra made its first public performance in the Oman Auditorium on 1 July 1987.

44 This emblem of crossed khanjars predates Qaboos's reign. It may have dated back to the reign of Taymur bin Faysal, if not Faysal bin Turki. Personal communication with the author from John Peterson, 21 August 2006.

45 From 1975 on, Roger Linford, in close collaboration with Spinks and Sons, Limited, was regularly commissioned to create cap and rank badges and medals. The latter included the Accession Medal and Order of Oman, the Order of Renaissance, the Order of Al Said, the Unity Medal, the As-Sumood [Endurance] Medal, the General Service Medal, and the Qaboos Police Medal, as well as the Oman Peace Medal. See Tinson, Orders and Medals, for more detail. Interview by the author with Roger Linford, 26 June 2001.

46 Ibid., 21.

47 There was an earlier Order of Oman dating back to about 1900. It was a family order, the Order of Al Said. This was reintroduced by Sultan Qaboos in time for his state visit to the United Kingdom in 1982. This order was worn by Queen Elizabeth during the visit. Ibid., 22.

48 Ibid., 26. There are also thirtieth and thirty-fifth anniversary medals.

49 The tradition of kingship or monarchy does not have a long history in the Middle East. It was first introduced in 1921 in the British Mandated territory of Iraq and later that decade in Saudi Arabia. The emirate of Trans-Jordan (1921–46) was transformed into the Kingdom of Trans-Jordan in 1946 and then became the Kingdom of Jordan in 1949. The Saudi monarchy does not use a crown as a symbol of the state. Only the Jordanian monarchy does, and it, too, is based on the St. Edward's Crown.

50 Interview with John Kendall.

51 King Abdullah of Jordan was reported to have made similar kinds of inspections of government offices, hospitals, and clinics throughout Jordan in the first few years after coming to office.

52 During these years, the sultan's convoy visited just about all parts of the country, including the Sharqiyya, Buraymi, and the Musandam, which he reached by royal yacht.

53 Sultan Qaboos generally spends one month each year on convoy and interior encampment during the Muslim ʿīd al-fiṭr holiday and a second month during the ʿīd al-āḍḥā holiday marking the end of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Another two months are spent moving between the north and south of the country each year.

54 See Çinar, Alev, Modernity, Islam and Secularism in Turkey: Bodies, Places and Time (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 33–52Google Scholar.

55 Geertz, Clifford, Negara: The Theatre State in 19th Century Bali (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 120Google Scholar.

56 Nearly forty years after the introduction of mass education, 80 percent of Oman's population has basic literacy skills; the young generation has nearly universal literacy and is able to communicate in Modern Standard Arabic. One outcome of this laudable achievement is that state-sanctioned and directed discussion (generally on sectarian issues and politics) is now frequently subverted by the use of text, mobile phones, and Internet communication. Although the monarchy is certainly not endangered, mass education and modern media have combined to create among the younger generation new knowledge and awareness of alternatives to state dogma and doctrine. See Eickelman, Dale, “Kings and People: Information and Authority,” in Oman, Qatar and the Persian Gulf, ed. Kechichian, Joseph (London: Palgrave, 2001), 193–209Google Scholar. For further discussion on education, youth, and reinvented political tradition, see Valeri, Marc, Le sultanat d'Oman: Une revolution en trompe-l'oeil (Paris: Karthala, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 For many, the new grand mosque commissioned and paid for by the sultan no longer has the spirit of Ibadi asceticism and simplicity. It is more like a showpiece in keeping with the new baroque traditions of contemporary Oman.

58 The Harasiis tribe, numbering about 4,000 people, speaks Harsuusi, one of six southern Arabian languages still spoken in Oman. The other languages are Shehri, Jebali, Batahiri, Mahri, and Socotri. See Johnstone, T. M., Harsusi Lexicon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar. The reference to the Harsuusi language in this interview is a reflection of the tribally heterogeneous and thus Arabic-speaking base of these new towns. For further discussion of Harasiis concerns over the transmission of the Harsuusi language, see my chapter, “Boarding Schools for Mobile People: the Harasiis in the Sultanate of Oman,” in The Education of Nomadic Peoples: Current Issues, Future Prospects, ed. Caroline Dyer (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002), 212–30.

59 During my interviews on 9 February 2006 with tribal families living in Wogan, United Arab Emirates, I was constantly interrupted by individual Harasiis and asked to comment on the scandal surrounding the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, which had just broken in the international press a few days earlier.

60 In the past decade, some 200 households from a number of pastoral tribes in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman have moved to the United Arab Emirates. It was reported that Sultan Qaboos sent his minister of the royal court to the emirates to demand that these people be returned to Oman. To date, none of them have. Author interview with tribal family heads, February 2006.