The Baluch role in the Persian Gulf during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 384-396

  Nicolini, Beatrice ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÀ CATTOLICA DEL SACRO CUORE   (Italy)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ETHNIC GROUP; NINETEENTH CENTURY; SOCIAL HISTORY; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

ARABIAN SEA; INDIAN OCEAN; PERSIAN GULF;

EID: 35148845959     PISSN: 1089201X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/1089201X-2007-012     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. S. B. Miles, The Countries and Tribes of the Persian Gulf, 2 vols. (Glasgow: Garnet, 1994), 201-63;
2. W. Floor, The Persian Gulf: A Political and Economic History of Five Port Cities, 1500-1730 (Washington, DC: Mage, 2006), 347-51.
3. Much of the content of my essay is the result of several seasons of fieldwork in Pakistani Baluchistan. The term jam'dar seems to correspond to "master of the gate" or "head constable"; it has been transliterated in various ways by British sources mainly on a phonetic basis as jamadari or jemadari.
4. Joshua Project: Pakistan, www.joshuaproject.net/countries.php?rog3=PK (accessed 18 April 2007).
5. On this subject, see, e.g., V. F. Piacentini, "Notes on the Definition of the Western Borders of British India in Sistan and Baluchistan in the Nineteenth Century," in Yad-Nama: In memoria di Alessandro Bausani (Yad-Nama: In Memory of Alessandro Bausani), 2 vols., ed. Scarcia Amoretti and B. Rostagno (Rome: Bardi, 1991), 189-203;
6. F. Goldsmid, "Exploration from Kurràchi to Gwadur, along the Mekran Coast," Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London 7, no. 3 (1872): 91-95;
7. and P. J. Brobst, "Sir Frederick Goldsmid and the Containment of Persia, 1863-73," Middle Eastern Studies 33, no. 2 (1997): 197-215.
8. T. M. Breseeg, Baloch Nationalism: Its Origin and Development (Karachi: Royal Book, 2004).
9. Its main towns are Zahedan, Zabol, Iranshahr, Sarawan, and Chahbahar.
10. Its area equals 273,661 square kilometers and sustains a population of about 2,388,000. It is bounded on the north to Sistan and Kerman provinces, on the south to the Gulf of Oman, on the east to Kalat, and on the west to Roudbar-e-Bashagard.
11. B. Nicolini, Makran, Oman, and Zanzibar: Three-Terminal Cultural Corridor in the Western Indian Ocean (1799-1856) (Leiden: Brill Academic, 2004).
12. See the extensive collection by J. G. Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman, and Central Arabia, 8 vols. (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1908-15).
13. The most important tribes, variously transliterated by British explorers during the nineteenth century, were the Baveri, Balideh, Bozorgzadeh, Riggi, Sardaar, Zaie, Shahbakhsh, Lashari, Mobaraki, Mir Morad Zaie, Narroi, Nousherwani, Brohi, Baram-Zehi, and Shir-Khanzai.
14. The notable Persian dialects were Sarbandi, Shahraki, Sargazi, Zamir-Farsyoon, Mir-Arab, and Sanjarani.
15. R. Redaelli, The Father's Bow: The Khanate of Kalat and British India (Nineteenth-Twentieth Century) (Firenze: Manent, 1997).
16. A British explorer of the nineteenth century described the date palms and their abundance in Baluchistan. See R. Leech, "Notes Taken on a Tour through Part of Baloochistan in 1838 and 1839 by Haji Abdun Nubee of Kabul, Arranged and Translated by Major Robert Leech," Journal of the Asiatic Society 69 (1844): 667-706.
17. Gwadar was an enclave of the Sultanate of Oman from the second half of the nineteenth century up to 8 September 1958, when West Pakistan bought it back from Oman for £3 million. Gwadar is today a town of 80,000 people. The building of the first five-star hotel, the Pearl Continental, is almost complete, but just 20 percent of people in Baluchistan have access to safe drinking water. Pakistan and China had signed a comprehensive agreement on 16 March 2002 in Beijing undertaking the task of constructing Gwadar's deep sea port according to universal standards. Islamabad expects that a fully functioning port at Gwadar will create thousands of jobs and improve peoples' livelihoods and thus erode tribal bonds and make the sardars (local chiefs) obsolete. Of the $250 million needed for the first phase of construction, Beijing provided $200 million. Six hundred engineers moved to Gwadar. The construction labor force is totally Chinese, and the exclusion of Baluchis led to a massive car-bombing in Gwadar in May 2004 that killed three Chinese engineers. The Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean and the access to the Middle East markets are obviously only a part of the geostrategic relations between China and the United States in the Gulf. B. Nicolini, "Historical and Political Links between Gwadar and Muscat from Nineteenth-Century Testimonies," in Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, vol. 32 (London: Brepols, 2002), 281-86;
18. Nicolini, "Gwadar: A Place to Live or a Place to Hunt?" Ouaderni Asiatici 50 (1999): 5-13.
19. See also Gwardar News, www.gwadarnews.com/gwadar.asp.
20. D. Bivar, "Gli Achemenidi e i Macedoni: Stabilità e turbolenza" ("The Achaemenids and the Macedonians: Stability and Turbulence in Central Asia"), in Asia Centrale, ed. G. Hambly (Milan: Storia Universale Feltrinelli, 1970), 30 (originally published in Zentralasien, no. 16 [Frankfurt: Fisher, 1966]);
21. M. Sordi, Alessandro Magno tra Storia e Mito (Alexander the Great between History and Myth) (Milan: Jaca Book, 1984);
22. J. A. Saldanha, Précis of Makran Affairs (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1905).
23. B. Nicolini and R. Readelli, "Ouetta: History and Archives; Notes of a Survey of the Archives of Quetta," Nuova Rivista Storica 78, no. 2 (1994): 401-14.
24. See the report of the British commissioner for the joint Anglo-Persian Boundary Commission: F. Goldsmid, Eastern Persia: An Account of the Journey of the Persian Boundary Commission, 1870-1890 (London: Royal Geographical Society, 1876).
25. J. During, "African Winds and Muslim Djinns: Trance, Healing, and Devotion in Baluchistan," Yearbook for Traditional Music 29 (1997): 39-56.
26. V. F. Piacentini, "Traces of Early Muslim Presence in Makran," Islamic Studies 35 (1996): 122-34.
27. See P. Titus and C. Jahani, "Knights, Not Pawns: Ethno-Nationalism and Regional Dynamics in Postcolonial Balochistan," International Journal of Middle East Studies 32 (2000): 47-69.
28. F. Van Steenbergen, "Water Rights as Social Contracts," in Baluchistan: Terra Incognita; A New Methodological Approach Combining Archaeological, Historical, Anthropological, and Architectural Studies, ed. V. Piacentini and R. Redaelli (London: British Archaeological Reports, 2003), 49-59.
29. R. Redaelli, The Father's Bow, 30-32.
30. S. M. al Ameeri, "The Baloch in the Arabian Gulf States," in The Baloch and Their Neighbours: Ethnic and Linguistic Contact in Balochistan in Historical and Modern Times, ed. Carina Jahani and Agnes Korn (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2003), 237-45.
31. R. Hughes-Buller, Imperial Gazetteer of India: Provincial Series, Baluchistan (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 1984), 51-53.
32. H. Pottinger, Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde (London: Langman, Reese, Orte, and Brown, 1816);
33. C. Masson, Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, the Panjab, and Kalat, 4 vols. (1844; Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1977), 4:349.
34. Within the so-called diaspora studies, see, for example, W. G. Clarence-Smith, The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1989);
35. Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery (London: C. Hurst, 2006);
36. G. Campbell, Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (London: Routledge, 2003);
37. E. Alpers, Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa: Changing Patterns of International Trade to the Late Nineteenth Century (London: Heinemann, 1975);
38. R. L. Powells, Horn and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast, 800-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987);
39. J. Glassman, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856-1888 (London: James Currey, 1995);
40. Glassman, "The Bondsman's New Clothes: The Contradictory Consciousness of Slave Resistance on the Swahili Coast," Journal of African History 32 (1991): 277-312;
41. J. Middleton, The World of the Swahili: An African Mercantile Civilization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992);
42. M. Horton and J. Middleton, The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000);
43. and P. Caplan and F. Topan, eds., Swahili Modernities: Culture, Politics and Identity on the East Coast of Africa (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004).
44. See also the collection of essays dedicated to these complex issues in "The African Diaspora in Asia - Historical Gleanings," special issue, African and Asian Studies 5, nos. 3-4 (2006).
45. J. B. Edlefsen, K. Shah, and M. Farooq, "Makranis, the Negroes of West Pakistan," Phylon 21 (1960): 124-30.
46. Titus and Jahani, "Knights, Not Pawns," 47-69.
47. F. Barth, Sohar: Culture and Society in Omani Town (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 107;
48. A. Melamid, "Batinah Coast of Oman," Geographical Review 80 (1990): 431-33.
49. S. B. Nasser Al Ismaily and P. McKiernan, Inside the Omani Corporate Culture: A Research in Management Styles (Muscat: Oman Economic Review, 2007), 35-36.