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Back to Asia? South Asia and the Arabian Peninsula

Oman’s Transregional Connections to Sindh and Gujarat: Mobility and Material Heritage of the Lawatiya

Les connexions transrégionales d’Oman au Sindh et au Gujarat : mobilité et patrimoine matériel de Lawatiya
Zahir Bhalloo

Résumés

Les études portant sur les liens transrégionaux entre la péninsule Arabique et l’Asie du Sud se sont jusqu’à présent concentrées principalement sur les liens entre le Yémen et l’Asie du Sud (Bonnenfant  2000; Akkerman 2022). Oman, qui occupe une place stratégique sur la côte sud-est de la péninsule Arabique, n’a pas encore reçu une attention scientifique significative. S’appuyant sur le travail de terrain à Oman, cet article explore ses liens avec l’Asie du Sud, en particulier avec les régions de Sindh ( Pakistan) et du Gujarat (Inde), en étudiant l’exemple de la mobilité et du peuplement de la communauté marchande musulmane Lawatiya Shiʿite à Oman et de son patrimoine matériel sous forme d’architecture funéraire (tombes) et d’objets écrits en écriture Khojki Sindhi (pierres tombales, textes de dévotion, registres commerciaux et documents).

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Texte intégral

Research for this paper was generously funded by the Sultan Qaboos Higher Centre for Culture and Science (SQCCS) through an Oman Research Grant visiting fellowship at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin. An earlier version of the paper was presented online on 8 July 2021. I am grateful to all the participants for their valuable comments. I would also like to warmly thank J. E. Peterson and R. Mawani for their kind permission to use their photos. I dedicate this study to the memory of Mohammad b. al-Hajj Baqer b. Sulaiman (d.2022), who paraphrasing the Iraqi poet, Maʿrūf al-Ruṣāfī (d.1945), would remind me, that the tragedy of history is its narrators (āfatu l-taʾrīkh al-ruwāt).

Introduction

  • 1 GOSWAMI, 2011.
  • 2 BONNENFANT, 2000.
  • 3 AKKERMAN, 2022.

1The complex mobility and settlement of communities from South Asia in the Arabian Peninsula before the discovery of oil in the twentieth century is often studied from the perspective of the administrative paperwork produced by former colonial powers preserved today in state archives.1 While the insight provided by such archival sources is significant, recent research has sought to decenter the state perspective by studying the material (architecture, written artefacts) and non-material (linguistic, ritual) heritage of the mobile actors themselves, or, more accurately, their descendants. In an ideal situation, such research should be multi-sited considering both the point of departure of the mobile actors in South Asia and their place of arrival and settlement in the Arabian Peninsula. In most cases, however, including in this article, the focus is on studying the mobile communities either at their point of departure or arrival. Paul Bonnenfant, for example, focusing on the point of arrival, suggests that the Indic elements in the vernacular architecture of the town of Zabid on Yemen’s western coastal plain can be explained by the historic settlement in Zabid of Indians from Sindh, today a province of southeastern Pakistan, and the neighboring western state of Gujarat in India. 2Olly Akkerman’s recent study, focusing on the point of departure, has shown that the Arabic manuscript culture of the ʿAlawi Bohra Ismaʿili Shiʿi community in Vadodara (Baroda), Gujarat, was shaped by the mobility of Bohra traders, scholars and students between Gujarat and Yemen and their settlement in these places.3

2In the present article, focusing on the point of arrival, I examine how the funerary architecture (graves) and written artefacts (gravestones, commercial registers, and documents) of the Lawatiya Shiʿi merchant community sheds light on their mobility and settlement in Oman from Sindh and Gujarat. Before examining the material heritage of the Lawatiya, however, in what follows, I provide an overview of how the Lawatiya presence in Oman is understood today from three different perspectives. The first perspective is from nineteenth and twentieth century British colonial sources, the second has emerged from within the Lawatiya community itself, and the third is from two closely related groups from Sindh and Gujarat which formed diasporic mercantile communities across the Western Indian Ocean during the nineteenth century, the Nizari Ismaʿili or Aga Khani Khojas and the Twelver or Ithna ʿAshari Khojas.

1. Lawatiya, Khoja, Hyderabadi

  • 4 VALERI, 2010, p.254.

3The Lawatiya community is today one of the most powerful socioeconomic groups in Oman and in the wider Gulf region. The exact numbers of individuals belonging to the community is unknown but is estimated at between fifteen to twenty thousand.4 Unlike most of the Omani population, which is either Ibadhi or Sunni, the Lawatiya are Twelver or Imami Shiʿis. The precise origins and settlement of the Lawatiya community in Oman is difficult to reconstruct today. The fact that the community is known by three different names, Lawatiya, Khoja and Hyderabadi, is an indication of its entangled past.

  • 5 IOR/R/15/1/406, “XL-The Louwatia”, p. 35-36 in “Muscat Dhows Arbitration. In the Permanent Court of (...)
  • 6 IOR/L/PS/10/25, P. 1 733/1904. Muscat Arbitration. (1904-08). Parts of Sur al-Lawatiya in Matrah su (...)
  • 7 See BHACKER, 1994.
  • 8 LORIMER, 1908, p. 322

4In British colonial sources from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Lawatiya, also referred to as Hyderabadi, are seen as identical to the Khoja merchant caste found in Sindh, Gujarat, Bombay, and elsewhere across the Western Indian Ocean littoral. The Lawatiya are conceived of in these sources as a South Asian Khoja diaspora that settled in Oman from Sindh, Kutch, and Kathiawar.5 The walled quarter that the Lawatiya occupied in Matrah, today a suburb of Muscat, known locally as Sur al-Lawatiya, is referred to in British sources as the “Khoja Fort”.6 This emphasis on a Khoja identification in the colonial sources for the Lawatiya was not accidental. The British consular authorities were keen to establish their protection over all Lawatiya traders who had migrated to Oman after the British conquest of Sindh in 1843 as British Khoja subjects. This protection, as in the case of Sindhi and Gujarati Hindu merchants, gave the British strategic influence not only across the Omani coastal zone, but also in the Trucial states, in Baluchistan and southern Iran where Lawatiya merchants had also settled.7 Not surprisingly, after mentioning how the Khojas of the region were known locally as Lawatiya and Hyderabadi, Lorimer’s Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman, and Central Arabia (1908), meticulously records their geographic distribution, including their ownership of land and property.8 Most British protected Lawatiya subjects in turn, chose to explicitly identify themselves as Khojas in their communication with the British colonial authorities.

  • 9 BHALLOO, 2016.
  • 10 AL-KHABURI, 2001.
  • 11 SACHEDINA, 2021, p.198-221.

5The British colonial understanding of the Lawatiya as a South Asian Khoja trading diaspora in Oman and the Gulf has been challenged more recently by some of the Lawatiya. In the 1970s, a member of the Lawatiya community, Jawad al-Khaburi (1912-1984), also known as Jawad Muscati, traced the origins of the Lawatiya to the Arab Ismaili emirate of Multan (tenth-eleventh centuries).9 This emirate was founded by descendants of a certain Sama b. Luʾayy who had settled from the Hijaz in Oman. His descendants were known in Multan as the Banu Munabbih and the Banu Sama. According to this construction, the Lawatiya were descended from the Banu Sama in Multan who later settled in Sindh where they adopted Sindhi names, language, and customs before ultimately returning to their homeland, Oman, in separate waves of migration, the most recent being via the city of Hyderabad, Sindh.10 The Lawatiya or Hyderabadis as they came to be known are thus conceived of by al-Khaburi as an Omani Arab diaspora in South Asia which later returned to Oman. This construction of the trajectory of the mobility of the Lawatiya provides a remarkably similar South Asian equivalent to the return to Oman of an Omani Arab diaspora from Zanzibar and East Africa. This was perhaps not accidental and can be seen as part of the nation building efforts following the arrival of Sultan Qaboos to power in 1970.11

  • 12 HAFIZ, 2017.

6Al-Khaburi, however, also added a new layer of complexity by suggesting that the Arab origin Lawatiya lineages that returned to Oman initially lived in the Sur al-Lawatiya alongside a few Khoja lineages of Indian origin that had also migrated to Oman from Sindh and Gujarat. The latter, however, were expelled from Sur al-Lawatiya after they recognized the religious authority of Hasan ʿAli Shah Mahallati (1804-1881), Aga Khan I, as a Nizari Ismaili Imam in the mid-nineteenth century. In brief, therefore, the Lawatiya or Khojas of Arab origin, were not the same as the Khojas of Indian origin as reflected in the way the term Khoja was used in British colonial sources. According to al-Khaburi, the Arab origin Lawatiya lineages from Sindh rejected the authority of Aga Khan I and identified themselves as Twelver or Imami Shiʿis. While the quest for a patrilineal Arab descent within the Lawatiya community can be traced at least as far back as the 1940s, al-Khaburi’s Banu Sama construction of Arab origins for the Lawatiya is the first to have received, at least outwardly, wider acceptance within some sections of the Lawatiya community today. This process has gained pace following the publication of a recension of al-Khaburi’s text and its dissemination within the community. More recently a doctoral thesis written by an Egyptian author based on al-Khaburi’s construction and several popular works all of which reaffirm al-Khaburi’s Banu Sama hypothesis have also been published.12

  • 13 A notable exception, however, is within the Aga Khani Khoja community of Gawadar, Baluchistan. The (...)
  • 14 From Mahallat, Iran, she is said to have travelled with Aga Khan I’s agent Mirza Abu l-Qasim (d. 18 (...)
  • 15 Jawad al-Khaburi, also known as Prof. Jawad Muscati, was related to Baledina Asani through his wife (...)
  • 16 SADIK ALI, 1999, p.18-27.
  • 17 ALLARAKHIA, 1960.
  • 18 See for example a recent Twelver Shii Khoja account, H. Walji, “The Lavatia of Oman: Arabs or Khoja (...)

7In addition to the representation of the Lawatiya in British colonial archival sources and Jawad al-Khaburi’s construction of their origins, the Nizari Ismaili or Aga Khani Khojas and the Ithna Ashari or Twelver Khojas of South Asia also preserve their own oral traditions regarding the Khojas that settled in Oman and the Gulf. The term Lawatiya and Hyderabadi is hardly known among the Aga Khani Khoja and Twelver Khoja communities.13 The Lawatiya are generally referred to within these communities as “Muscati” or “Muscat” Khojas. In both the Aga Khani Khoja and Twelver Khoja oral tradition, Muscat mainly appears as an important site of dissidence against Aga Khan I in the nineteenth century. As early as 1829, while Aga Khan I was still in Iran, his mother, Bibi Maryam Khatun (1157-1248/1744-1832), is said to have visited the Khoja community in Muscat to quell Khoja dissent related to the collection and transference of various religious dues to her son and attempts to centralize the ownership of all Khoja caste property under his name.14 Later when Aga Khan I arrives in Sindh from Iran in 1843, he is said to have appointed, in 1844, a certain Baledina Asani as his “estate agent” in Muscat.15 Baledina Asani was responsible for collecting religious dues from the Khojas residing in southern Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf and transferring them to Aga Khan I in Bombay via bills of exchange (hoondis).16 In the Twelver Shiʿi Khoja oral tradition, Muscat only appears briefly in connection to the formal excommunication in Bombay in 1877 by Aga Khan I of prominent Khojas of Zanzibar such as Dewji Jamal, and of Muscat, such as Suleiman Khalfan.17 Recently, both the Aga Khani Khoja and Twelver Khoja communities have become interested in emergence of the Muscat Khojas as a successful socioeconomic elite in Oman and the Gulf and there have been attempts to re-establish connections and document their shared Khoja heritage.18

8In the analysis that follows, I suggest that the formation of the present day Lawatiya community and its social equivalence to other Khoja groups cannot be reduced to the three perspectives outlined above. The present day Lawatiya group in Oman is descended from individuals that were part of multiple mobile transregional trajectories. The evidence of the material heritage of the Lawatiya as we shall see below, along with the community’s spoken Sindhi sociolect, and its Shiʿi devotional ritual practice and repertoire of religious texts, have all been shaped and transformed by these mobile transregional trajectories. It is these mobilities of the Lawatiya, I suggest, that sets them apart from other Khoja groups which have had a different set of mobile trajectories and, therefore, acculturation, both in the past and present.

2. Mobility and Material Heritage

  • 19 The ancestors of one of the members of this lineage is as follows: Muhammad (d.2022) b. Baqir b. Su (...)
  • 20 Personal communication with Mustafa b. Mukhtar al-Lawati, Muscat.
  • 21 The ancestors of one of the members of the Faydalani lineage for example is as follows: Irshad b. M (...)

9Most Lawatiya have no living memory or record of when the founders of the lineages to which they belong to settled in Oman from Sindh and Gujarat. Almost without exception, however, the Lawatiya belong to different related lineages. Each lineage is descended from a common male ancestor, the founder of the lineage, to whose name the Sindhi suffix -ani is added to denote descent. In some cases, the -ani lineage name is derived from a founder-ancestor who bears a typical Muslim name such as Faydalani (from Faydullah), Khalfanani (Khalfan), Jamalani (Jamal), Muradani (Murad), etc. Most other lineage names, however, are not derived from founder-ancestors with Muslim sounding names, for example Badwani (from Badu),19 Sajwani (Saju), Shalwani (Shalu), Najwani (Naju), etc. It has been suggested that these latter names are nevertheless corrupted from original Arabic names. The lineage name Salyani, for example, is thought to derive from Salih.20 What is clearly missing among the Lawatiya are the distinctive names which end with a -ji or -si suffix (such as Ramji, Dewji, Kanji, Walji or Champsi, Rattansi, etc.) commonly found among Khoja groups that settled elsewhere across the Western Indian Ocean littoral. Instead, the Lawatiya lineages tend to have a far higher prevalence of Muslim names going back to the earliest known founders of each lineage. This suggests that at least some of the Lawatiya may have emerged from a Sindhi Muslim background as opposed to more recently converted Hindu castes from Gujarat (see below). 21

  • 22 SALMAN and KHARUSI 2012.

10In addition to the -ani Sindhi suffix lineage name, the Lawatiya were also known locally as Hyderabadi. The Arabic nisba al-Hyderabadi is used in Arabic deeds and by the Lawatiya themselves throughout the nineteenth century in reference to the origins of some of the lineages of the group from the town of Hyderabad, Sindh, founded in 1768. The precise nature, however, of this connection of the Lawatiya lineages to Hyderabad, Sindh is, however, obscure. There appear to be no traces of the original Lawatiya settlement in Hyderabad, Sindh. The spoken Sindhi sociolect of the Lawatiya , known as Khojki among the Lawatiya, also appears to be closer to Kutchi today than to the central Sindhi dialect (vicholi) spoken in Hyderabad, Sindh.22 This linguistic shift is sometimes credited to the arrival and dominance of a second wave of Kutchi speaking Khojas that migrated to Oman directly from Kutch and merged with the original Sindhi speaking Lawatiya group that came from Hyderabad, Sindh.

  • 23 The most detailed account of this movement from Sindh to Kutch appears in KABA, 1919. Kaba reproduc (...)
  • 24 SADIK ALI 1999, p.18-27. Another example of Khojas moving from Kutch to Sindh is Lakho and his fath (...)

11The evidence of the oral traditions preserved by the Aga Khani Khojas suggests a long history of transregional mobility of Khojas between the neighboring regions of Sindh, Kutch, and Kathiawar. The earliest attested example of movement appears to be from Sindh to Kutch. It is linked to the mobility of a spiritual master (pīr) known as Pir Dadu (d. 1005/1596?). Pir Dadu is credited with converting locals in Sindh to the satpanth religious tradition that is associated today with the Khojas. Pir Dadu is said to have fled persecution in Sindh and settled in Bhuj, Kutch, taking with him converted Sindhi satpanthi families from Sindh to Kutch.23 The examples of movement in the opposite direction, from Kutch to Sindh, are more recent. They are either connected to the Rann of Kutch earthquake of 1819 or to famines that devastated Kutch and other parts of Gujarat in the first decades of the nineteenth century. An example is the trajectory of a certain Assa son of Danidina. Danidina is said to have been a native of Okhamandal, situated on the northern most tip of Kathiawar. In the late eighteenth century, he settled in Bhuj, Kutch. He is the earliest known individual responsible for collecting religious dues from the Khojas of Kutch and transferring them to the grandfather and later to the father of Aga Khan I in Iran. In 1819, following the Rann of Kutch earthquake, Danidina’s son Assa left Bhuj, Kutch, and trekked via Lakhpat, Kutch, to a small port on the Kutch-Sindh border known as Ramki Bazar (Rahimki Bazar) situated today in Tharparkar, Sindh. From Ramki Bazar, Assa is said to have trekked to Hyderabad where he was granted a fief by the local ruler near the Fulailee river, about a mile from the fort of Hyderabad.24

  • 25 BOIVIN, 2013, p. 33-89.
  • 26 On the role of the pīr in presiding over the invocatory prayer (duʿa) and ritual of communion (piya (...)
  • 27 Traces of the earlier cult of pīrs and sayyids descended from Pir Shams still survive today among t (...)

12The story of Assa is the earliest known fragment preserved in the Aga Khani Khoja oral tradition which attests to the presence in the early nineteenth century of Khojas from Kutch in Hyderabad, Sindh. Not much more is known about this early Kutchi Khoja presence in Hyderabad, Sindh, and its subsequent evolution. Are the present day Lawatiya descended from this historic Kutchi Khoja presence in Hyderabad, Sindh? Michel Boivin has shown that the Khoja community in Karachi emerged out of individuals with diverse caste backgrounds from Sindh and Gujarat.25 What united these individuals and made them “Khoja” was their conversion by a pīr to a specific religious tradition known as satpanth. The invocatory prayer (duʿa) of this religious tradition and its ritual of communion (ghat-pāt) affirmed the adherence of the Khojas to a specific chain (silsila) of Sufi masters (pīrs).26 Most of the pirs of the Khoja silsila in Sindh and Gujarat traced their lineage as sayyids (descendants of the Prophet) to a fourteenth century Sufi buried in Multan, Pir Shams Sabazawari Multani (d.757/1356). In the nineteenth century, however, following the arrival of Aga Khan I in Sindh from Iran in 1843, the charismatic authority of local pīrs claiming descent from Pir Shams declined among most Khojas who recognized Aga Khan I as their pīr and later as a Nizari Ismaʿili imam.27 Khojas, who chose not to recognize the Aga Khan I as a Nizari Ismaʿili imam, identified themselves as Sunni or Twelver Shiʿi, and, in so doing, also abandoned the old Khoja silsila of pīrs and ritual of communion.

  • 28 In Arabic deeds the form used is al-lūtiyā. Precisely which caste the lotia/lutiyah belonged to is (...)
  • 29 According to C. Markovits, at some point in the eighteenth century the Sindhi Bhatias of Thatta wer (...)

13It is likely that a similar integrative process occurred in Hyderabad, Sindh, prior to the arrival of the Aga Khan I. Recognition of the spiritual authority of a specific chain of pīrs through the invocatory prayer (duʿa) and ritual of communion allowed a diverse group of individuals to become Khoja. It meant that individuals such as Assa arriving in Sindh from Kutch and local Sindhis known as lotias/lutiyah could come together to form the basis of the Khoja community in Hyderabad, Sindh.28 It is this new Hyderabadi Khoja group that would later become significant in Oman and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf and use the Arabic nisba al-Hyderabadi.29 Further linguistic research on the Lawatiya spoken sociolect might be able to shed light on the complex Sindhi-Kutchi confluence that led to the emergence of the Lawatiya community. This confluence probably occurred both in Hyderabad, Sindh itself and in Matrah, Oman where the Lawatiya or Lutiyah, who by now were also known as Khojas and Hyderabadis, had already settled. The example of the formation of Khoja communities elsewhere in the Western Indian Ocean offers comparable examples of a Kutchi-Kathiawari convergence. In the latter case Kutchis and Kathiawaris from diverse agricultural and artisanal caste backgrounds also come together in an integrative process that occurred after the conversion of such individuals to satpanth and their adherence to a silsila of pīrs. It is only in the nineteenth century that such diverse Khoja groups, including the Lawatiya, would become associated mainly with trade.

  • 30 An example of an arrival from Bombay is Muhammad Fadil (1858-1916) who bought W.J. Towell & Co. LLC (...)
  • 31 On the Khojas of Chabahar see Lorimer, 1908, p. 353.
  • 32 Personal communication with Hassan ʿAbdullatif, Muscat.

14Tracing the movement of the individual founders of the Lawatiya lineages from Sindh and Kutch to Oman is also made more difficult because in some cases arrival in Oman was preceded by initial settlement in the ports of Makran (coastal zone of Iranian and Pakistani Baluchistan), the Persian Gulf, the Trucial States or even further afield in Bombay.30 Lawatiya lineages founded by individuals that had initially settled in Chabahhar in Iranian Baluchistan are known as “Chobari”, while those that had settled in Bandar Lingeh (Hurmuzgan province, Iran) in the Persian Gulf are called “Lingewari”.31 There are also examples of arrival and settlement in Oman that occurred via the Trucial States. For example, one of the early leaders of the Lawatiya community in Matrah, Oman, Hajj Sulyman Qurbun (Qurban ʿAli), is said to have received Hajj ʿAbdullatif b. Fadil (1851-1931) in Matrah after he arrived, accompanied by others, from Raʾs al-Khayma (United Arab Emirates) following his father’s death in 1857.32 These multiple transregional mobilities of the Lawatiya ancestors as we shall see, is reflected in their material heritage.

2.1. Lawatiya Graves

  • 33 According to the Lawatiya, the term Jibroo itself derives from qabru (Ar. qabr) in the Lawatiya soc (...)

15The funerary architecture of the Lawatiya reaffirms the connections of the group to Sindh and Kutch. The oldest extant Lawatiya graves are found in the Lawatiya cemetery in Jibroo, a suburb of Matrah33 (see for example fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Fig. 1

A “qalamdān-step” grave in the Lawatiya cemetery in Jibroo, Matrah.

Photo: Z. Bhalloo.

  • 34 On qalamdan, see Hasan, 1996, p. 25.

16The dead body was buried inside a grave pit which was sealed by a rectangular slab. Above this slab a series of additional rectangular slabs were added. The length and width of the additional slabs decreases progressively from the lowest slab to the top slab creating a series of steps in the form of a pyramid. Above the topmost rectangular slab, a qalamdān was added.34 This Persian term literally means a box or case for storing a pen. The ends of the qalamdān in the grave example in fig.1 are in the shape of a pointed arch with two centers. In other cases, the shape of the two ends appears to be closer to an equilateral arch. In most of the surviving examples of such graves from the Lawatiya cemetery in Jibroo, however, the qalamdān is no longer extant above the rectangular slabs. It is impossible to confirm its exact shape or whether the qalamdān had any inscriptions. We know, however, from a surviving example of similar qalamdān-step” graves in the Khoja Miyan Shah cemetery in the Lyari district of Karachi, that an inscription in the Sindhi script associated with the Khojas (on this script see 2.2. below) was usually recorded onto one of the ends of the qalamdān (fig.2).

Fig. 2

Fig. 2

An inscription in Khojki Sindhi script on a “qalamdān-step” grave in the Miyan Shah Khoja cemetery in Lyari, Karachi

Photo: R. Mawani

17The practice of adding an inscription onto the qalamdān is also attested in the graves of the Twelver Shiʿi Khoja cemetery in Kera, Kutch. The Twelver Shiʿi Khoja graveyard in Kera has many “qalamdān-step” graves built with a above a series of rectangular stone slabs. These graves resemble the form of the Lawatiya “qalamdān-step” graves in Jibroo. In Kera, however, the inscriptions at the end of the qalamdān are in Gujarati script (fig. 3).

Fig. 3

Fig. 3

Qalamdān-step graves with inscriptions in Gujarati in the Twelver Shiʿi Khoja cemetery in Kera, Kutch

Photo: R. Mawani

  • 35 On Lughan see PETERSON, 2006, p.84.

18In both the Karachi example and in Kera, it is not clear if the qalamdān inscriptions were part of the original graves or added during subsequent renovations. Besides the Lawatiya cemetery in Jibroo, in Oman, “qalamdān-step” graves have also been found in the district of Rustaq, in the Al-Batinah region of northern Oman, and in Lughan, a quarter of Muscat outside the walls, beyond Tuyan and al-Rawiyah Fort, west of Hillat al-Shaykh, on the way to al-Wadi al-Kabir35 (see fig.4)

Fig. 4

Fig. 4

Qalamdān-step” graves in Lughan, Muscat, resembling those in the Lawatiya cemetery in Jibroo, Matrah

Photo: J.E. Peterson

  • 36 For images of the “qalamdān-step” graves in Rustaq, see AL-KHARUSI and AL-KHARUSI, 2012.
  • 37 On Chaukhandi tombs, see for example HASTENRATH 1978 and HASAN 1996.
  • 38 Ms. 7862, Ministry of Culture and Heritage, Muscat, Oman.
  • 39 Besides the qalamdān-step graves, the Lawatiya cemetery in Jibroo also has an old mosque/mausoleu (...)

19According to the local inhabitants in Rustaq today, these graves belong to the Lawatiya.36 This is by no means certain. In the case of Lughan, Lorimer notes at the beginning of the twentieth century, that the quarter was inhabited by Baluchis, which suggests that these graves belong to Baluchis. In Sindh and Baluchistan, however, Baluchi tribes are known to have used a far more elaborate style of the qalamdan-step form known as “Chaukhandi” which flourished between the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries.37 Large numbers of such Chaukhandi graves are found in graveyards in Baluchistan and in Sindh, the most spectacular examples are in the UNESCO world heritage Makli necropolis in Thatta, lower Sindh. Unlike the simple qalamdan-step graves, Chaukhandi graves involved the use of multiple intricately carved stone slabs. It is therefore possible that the Lughan graves did not belong to Baluchis but to Sindhi Muslims. A colophon of a Quran copied in 1179/1765-1766 by a certain al-Sayyid Muhammad b. Fadil al-Sindhi in Muscat, suggests there was a Sindhi Muslim presence in Muscat.38 It is likely that the Lughan and Rustaq graves are related to this Sindhi Muslim presence. It is difficult, however, to determine any relationship, other than similar grave architecture, between this Sindhi Muslim presence in Lughan (Muscat) and Rustaq and the Lawatiya lineages who are known to have historically settled in Matrah and were buried in the cemetery in Jibroo.39

2.2 Written Artefacts in "Khojki Sindhi" Script

  • 40 See ASANI 1987, BHALLOO and AKHTAR 2018.
  • 41 Personal communication with Mustafa b. Mukhtar al-Lawati.
  • 42 VIRANI 2022

20Besides Lawatiya graves, surviving written artefacts in "Khojki Sindhi" script among the Lawatiya also point to the historic connections of this group to Sindh and Kutch. Khojki Sindhi script is one of numerous mercantile scripts derived from Brahmi used to record Sindhi.40 The script is simply referred to by the Lawatiya as "Sindhi" not "Khojki Sindhi".41 The term Khojki is used by the Lawatiya to refer to their spoken sociolect. This confirms Shafique Virani's recent suggestion that the use of "Khojki" and "Khojki Sindhi" in reference to the Sindhi script associated with the Khojas is a neologism.42 In order, however, to distinguish this script from comparable Sindhi scripts associated with other communities, I have chosen to retain the use of Khojki Sindhi.

  • 43 See for example KASSAM 1995, MOMIN 2022.

21So far, Khojki Sindhi script has mainly been studied in relation to its usage to record the ginan genre of devotional hymns of the Khojas of South Asia.43 The Lawatiya, however, preserve several manuscripts in the script which record elegiac poetry in Sindhi (marsiyo) relating to the martyrdom of al-Husayn. In addition, the Lawatiya have also preserved examples of how Khojki Sindhi script was used for funerary inscriptions on gravestones and for different types of accounting records, business letters and commercial registers.

2.2.1. Gravestones

22Besides the qalamdān-step” graves, the Lawatiya cemetery in Jibroo also contains at least five gravestones made in the late nineteenth century. These gravestones contain bilingual Sindhi and Persian inscriptions. The Sindhi element is written in Khojki Sindhi script, while the Persian part is written in nastaʿliq script. Two gravestones appear to be related to a single family. The first records the death of Rubab wife of Hajji Muhammad ʿAli Hyderabadi on 23 Rabiʿ I 1315/22 August 1897 (fig. 5) and the second records the death of his daughter Shahi in the following year on 19 Shaʿban 1315/13 January 1898. A third gravestone records the death of Fatima bt. Hajji ʿAbd al-Rasul Qasim Hyderabadi on 26 Shaʿban 1317/30 December 1899. These three gravestones are simple in style and are smaller in size than the remaining two gravestones.

Fig. 5

Fig. 5

Gravestone of Rubab wife of Hajji Muhammad Ali Hyderabadi dated 23 Rabi I 1315/22 August 1897 in the Lawatiya cemetry in Jibroo

Photo: R. Mawani

23The remaining two gravestones are far more elaborate. They were probably commissioned by wealthy Lawatiya merchants. The Persian element consisting of honorifics in these gravestones is longer. The Persian is also inscribed in Arabic naskh script not Persian nastaʿliq used for the simpler gravestones. There is also an additional Arabic element in these gravestones, mainly pious Arabic formulas such as huwa l-ḥayy al-ladhī lā yamūt (He God is the Everlasting who does not die) or verses from the Qurʾan relating to the inevitability of death such as Q: 28:88: kullu shayʾin hālikun illā wajhahu (everything is perishable except his (God’s) Face). The first gravestone records the death of Safura daughter of Hajji Fadil Hyderabadi on 25 Shawwal 1298/20 September 1881 (fig.6). The artisan who produced the gravestone (ʿAbd al-Khan Shuma? Birdi?) has recorded his name at the top. The second gravestone is dated the beginning of Dhu l-Hijja 1312/May 1895. It records the death of Aqa ʿAbdulu Muḥammad Mukiya Ghulam ʿAli Hyderabadi described as the Hyderabadi merchant (tājir-i ḥaydarābādī) (fig. 7). It is not clear where these gravestones were produced. Given the usage of Persian, it is likely they were produced for individuals belonging to Lawatiya lineages that had initially settled in Iranian ports along the Persian Gulf coast such as Bandar Lingeh or the port of Chabhar in Iranian Baluchistan, before eventually settling in Matrah, Oman.

Fig. 6

Fig. 6

Gravestone of Safura daughter of Hajji Fadil Hyderabadi dated 25 Shawwal 1298/20 September 1881 in the Lawatiya cemetry in Jibroo

Photo: R. Mawani.

Fig. 7

Fig. 7

Gravestone of Aqa ʿAbdulu Muḥammad Mukiya Ghulam ʿAli Hyderabadi dated the beginning of Dhu l-Hijja 1312/May 1895 in the Lawatiya cemetry in Jibroo

Photo: R. Mawani.

2.2.2. Devotional Texts

  • 44 On Sabit ʿAli Shah’s Sindhi marsiyo, see BOIVIN, 2019b.
  • 45 BHALLOO 2023, forthcoming.

24In their ritual performance, the Lawatiya rely on a corpus of Shiʿi devotional poetry in Arabic, Persian and Sindhi relating to the martyrdom of the grand-son of the Prophet, al-Husayn in Kerbala in 680 A.D. The Sindhi poetry recorded in Khojki Sindhi script consists of elegies known as marsiyo. These elegies were recorded into long vertical pothi manuscripts, which resemble the registers used to record accounts (see fig. 10 below). The exact number of such surviving manuscripts among the group is not known. These manuscripts are sometimes even used in actual recitations of the marsiyo by the Lawatiya today. The only manuscript I have examined so far is dated 1326/1908-1909 and belonged to ʿAbd al-Ghafur al-Hyderabadi. Some of the elegies recorded in Khojki Sindhi script in this manuscript can be traced to the work of the Sindhi poet of Sehwan Sharif, Sabit ʿAli Shah Kerbalai (1740-1810).44 There is some evidence to suggest that the Khojas in Kutch also preserved similar manuscripts containing the marsiyo of Sabit ʿAli Shah.45

2.2.3.Accounting Records, Letters and Registers

  • 46 I am indebted to Mustafa b. Mukhtar al-Lawati for allowing me access to this archive.
  • 47 More recently at least two pieces of scrap paper with accounting notes in Sindhi script (Docs.E05-3 (...)

25Besides gravestones and devotional texts, the third type of written artefact among the Lawatiya in Khojki Sindhi script are commercial accounting records, letters, and registers. Khojki Sindhi was used as a mercantile script among the Lawatiya well into the 1980s before falling into disuse. The Lawatiya appear to be the only known Khoja group that preserved the usage of the script in its mercantile variant into the twentieth century. During fieldwork in Muscat, I came across the archive (fig. 8) of a textile broker active in the Matrah suq, ʿAli Mukhtar b. ʿAli Muhammad Salih al-Lawati (al-Hyderabadi) (d. 1988) in the attic of his brother.46 Bundles of documents and twenty-two registers in Khojki Sindhi script were crammed into an old suitcase and a wooden chest (fig. 9). Many of the registers (fig. 10) and documents (fig. 11) were wrapped in cotton cloth. Given the fact that there is almost no research on the usage of the Khojki Sindhi script in its mercantile form, this corpus of material is of outstanding historical significance. It is likely that many of the other Lawatiya lineages in Oman also preserve similar commercial documentary corpora in Khojki Sindhi script. This includes Arabic deeds known as waraqa with witness clauses in Khojki Sindhi script.47

Fig. 8

Fig. 8

Archive of Ali Mukhtar b. Ali Muhammad Salih al-Lawati (al-Hyderabadi)

Photo: Z. Bhalloo

Fig. 9

Fig. 9

Wooden chest containing part of the archive of Ali Mukhtar b. Ali Muhammad Salih al-Lawati (al-Hyderabadi)

Photo: Z. Bhalloo

Fig. 10

Fig. 10

A folio from one of the accounting registers in the archive of ʿAli Mukhtar b. ʿAli Muhammad Salih al-Lawati (al-Hyderabadi) using the mercantile variant of Khojki Sindhi script

Photo: Z. Bhalloo

Fig. 11

Fig. 11

A commercial document in the mercantile variant of Khojki Sindhi Script from the archive of ʿAli Mukhtar b. ʿAli Muhammad Salih al-Lawati (al-Hyderabadi)

Photo: Z. Bhalloo

Conclusion

  • 48 See for example MERY et al. 2017.
  • 49 On the Sindhi and Gujarati Hindu presence in Oman, see for example ALLEN, 1981, PETERSON, 2004, and (...)
  • 50 For a recent study on the Zadjali spoken sociolect and its lexical similarities with Sindhi and Bal (...)
  • 51 Many of the older generation of Lawatiya are fluent Baluchi speakers.

26The main objective of this study has been to shed light on Oman’s transregional connections to Sindh and Gujarat through the example of the mobility of the Lawatiya Shiʿi Muslim presence and its material heritage. Oman has ancient historic ties to Sindh and Gujarat. The mobility and settlement of the Lawatiya is only one recent episode of a longue durée history of movement and settlement between these regions.48 The Lawatiya are, moreover, not the only diasporic group that settled in Oman from Sindh and Gujarat. The Hindu merchant communities of Oman also moved to Oman from Sindh and Gujarat,49 while the Sunni Muslim Zadjali community is also known to have ties to Sindh.50 The material heritage of the Lawatiya points to different transregional mobilities which resulted in the formation of this social group. These mobilities involved movement between Sindh and Kutch itself, and across the coastal zones of Baluchistan, southern Iran, the Trucial States (today the United Arab Emirates), and Oman. Not surprisingly, culturally, and linguistically, the Lawatiya have been shaped through their mobilities by Sindhi, Kutchi, Baluchi, Persian and Arabic.51 This is also reflected in their material heritage in terms of their distinctive funerary architecture and written artefacts.

27The Lawatiya example is significant as it demonstrates that the historic emergence of Khoja groups brought together individuals with different caste backgrounds through a complex integrative process that occurred from the late eighteenth century onwards. This integrative process took place within the context of transregional mobility and involved repeated shifts in adherence of the newly formed group to rival spiritual genealogies. The Lawatiya of Oman are the only known Khoja group who have retained the name of the original caste, lotia/lutiyah, to which some of the founders of the Lawatiya lineages belonged. In all other Khoja groups the pre-Khoja caste or group names have not been preserved.

28Besides the integrative process that led to the emergence of the Lawatiya Khoja group, it should be noted that the Lawatiya have also integrated over time, through marriage, individuals from the Baharina Arab and Iranian Shiʿi communities with whom the Lawatiya share the same Twelver Shiʿi religious identity. What is less clear are social links, if any, past or present, between the Lawatiya lineages and the Sunni Muslim Zadjali or Baluchi communities in Oman. More recently, there are also examples of intermarriage between the Lawatiya and Omani Ibadhis. These new integrative processes have taken place alongside new transregional mobilities of the Lawatiya within the Middle East, as Lawatiya migrate and return to Oman after work or study in places such as Iraq, Kuwait, and other parts of the Gulf. The result is the emergence of an entirely new generation of Lawatiya, many of whom have lost the ability to speak the Sindhi sociolect of the group. For these Lawatiya, there is little memory of a shared Khoja past. Their connection to South Asia, is understood, if at all, through the Banu Sama b. Luʾayy narrative of their tribe’s origins in Oman and its subsequent return to Oman from Sindh. Only among older Lawatiya, is there still some consciousness of links with other Khoja groups, and a desire to interpret Lawatiya difference, while, transmitting at the same time, the few material, ritual, or linguistic remains of a transregional heritage that separates the Lawatiya of Oman, both from other Khojas, and from Arab and Iranian Shiʿis of the Gulf region.

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Bibliographie

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Notes

1 GOSWAMI, 2011.

2 BONNENFANT, 2000.

3 AKKERMAN, 2022.

4 VALERI, 2010, p.254.

5 IOR/R/15/1/406, “XL-The Louwatia”, p. 35-36 in “Muscat Dhows Arbitration. In the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague. Grant of the French Flag to Muscat Dhows. The case on behalf of the Government of His Britannic Majesty.”

6 IOR/L/PS/10/25, P. 1 733/1904. Muscat Arbitration. (1904-08). Parts of Sur al-Lawatiya in Matrah such as its towers were built during the seventeenth century. In a letter dated 1873 to his wife, Sir Bartle Frere describes visiting the Sur in the company of the head of the Lawatiya at the time, Suliman Khoja (this is possibly Hajj Sulayman Qurban/Qurboon Ali). Frere notes that the year 1633 was visible over the door leading into the interior of the Sur, see MARTINEAU, 1895, p.106.

7 See BHACKER, 1994.

8 LORIMER, 1908, p. 322

9 BHALLOO, 2016.

10 AL-KHABURI, 2001.

11 SACHEDINA, 2021, p.198-221.

12 HAFIZ, 2017.

13 A notable exception, however, is within the Aga Khani Khoja community of Gawadar, Baluchistan. The Khojas of Gawadar were known as lotia by the Baluchis. Personal communication with Shihabuddin Gawadari, Karachi. This is also confirmed in LORIMER, 1908, p.587.

14 From Mahallat, Iran, she is said to have travelled with Aga Khan I’s agent Mirza Abu l-Qasim (d. 1880) via Muscat to Karachi. From Karachi, she visited Jerruk in Sindh, before reaching Kera in Kutch via Lakhpat in 1246/1830. She lived in Kera until her death in 1248/1832. There is a memorial in her name in the Twelver Shiʿi Khoja cemetery in Kera. Her remains were transferred, probably via Muscat, to Najaf where she is buried.

15 Jawad al-Khaburi, also known as Prof. Jawad Muscati, was related to Baledina Asani through his wife, see BHALLOO, 2016, p.225.

16 SADIK ALI, 1999, p.18-27.

17 ALLARAKHIA, 1960.

18 See for example a recent Twelver Shii Khoja account, H. Walji, “The Lavatia of Oman: Arabs or Khojas – An Intriguing Paradigm of Binary Identity”. URL: https://khojanews.org/the-lavatia-of-oman-arabs-or-khojas-an-intriguing-paradigm-of-binary-identity/. Accessed 30 July 2022.

19 The ancestors of one of the members of this lineage is as follows: Muhammad (d.2022) b. Baqir b. Sulaiman b. Habib b. Khalfan b. Salih b. Badu (Badwani). The names are based on the endowment deed of Khalfan b. Salih dated 1878. Personal communication with Mohammad b. al-Hajj Baqer Sulaiman, Muscat.

20 Personal communication with Mustafa b. Mukhtar al-Lawati, Muscat.

21 The ancestors of one of the members of the Faydalani lineage for example is as follows: Irshad b. Moosa b. Khamis (d. 1972) b. ʿAli b. Faydullah b. Abdulrahim b. Khalfan b. Jamal b. Yaʿqub al-Haydarabadi. The ancestors before Faydullah from whom the lineage name Faydalani is derived were Sunni. Personal communication with Irshad b. Moosa al-Lawati, Muscat. The conversion of the ancestors of the Hyderabadi Lawatiya lineages to Shiism from a Sunni Muslim background is also mentioned by the Omani historian al-Siyabi based on an interview he had in Matrah on 22 August 1965 with Jaʿfar b. al-Hajj Baqir b. ʿAbdullatif, see AL-SIYABI, 2015 p. 360. According to Jaʿfar b. al-Hajj Baqir b. ʿAbdullatif the Lawatiya were initially Aga Khani and then became Sunni before converting to Twelver Shiism under the spiritual direction of Shaykh ʿAli b. Muhammad al-Bahrani (d. c. 1898 in Bandar Lingeh).

22 SALMAN and KHARUSI 2012.

23 The most detailed account of this movement from Sindh to Kutch appears in KABA, 1919. Kaba reproduces an account written by Jaffer Dhalani (d. 1915, Bhuj, Kutch) of the conversion by Pir Dadu of his Hindu Lohana ancestors belonging to the Ibhlani lineage.

24 SADIK ALI 1999, p.18-27. Another example of Khojas moving from Kutch to Sindh is Lakho and his father who after a famine in Kutch in 1847 are said to have migrated from Lakhpat, Kutch and settled in a village called Nindo near Badin, Sindh, SADIK ALI, 2003, p. 168

25 BOIVIN, 2013, p. 33-89.

26 On the role of the pīr in presiding over the invocatory prayer (duʿa) and ritual of communion (piyalo) in relation to the cult of Pithoro Pir among Sindhi Hindus, see BOIVIN 2019a, p. 178.

27 Traces of the earlier cult of pīrs and sayyids descended from Pir Shams still survive today among the Khoja Nizari Ismailis in Pakistan, see for example BHALLOO, 2016/2017.

28 In Arabic deeds the form used is al-lūtiyā. Precisely which caste the lotia/lutiyah belonged to is not clear. Landen notes that the occupations of the Lawatiya in the nineteenth century were shopkeepers, carpenters, shipbuilders, artisans, and small merchant, see LANDEN, 1967, p.140. Based on this, I have suggested that some of the Lawatiya might have belonged to the artisanal caste of carpenters from the Sunni Muslim Sumra tribe of Sindh, see BHALLOO, 2016, p. 226, footnote 74. An alternative hypothesis is the caste of potters. This is based on the premise that lutiyah derives the word lotko, lotiyo or lutio, a type of pot or urn made from terracotta or brass used for storing milk, water, or buttermilk. According to al-Khaburi (see BHALLOO, 2016, p. 221), however, the lutiyah had nothing to do with the potter caste. Al-Khaburi also rejects the hypothesis that origins of the term lutiyah is from the Sindhi Hindu Bhatia clan known as panch lutiyah, see BHALLOO, 2016, p.222.

29 According to C. Markovits, at some point in the eighteenth century the Sindhi Bhatias of Thatta were supplanted by Lawatiya from Hyderabad, Sindh, and Kutchi Bhatias from Kutch as the most significant mercantile groups in the region, MARKOVITS 2000, 11.

30 An example of an arrival from Bombay is Muhammad Fadil (1858-1916) who bought W.J. Towell & Co. LLC in 1914.

31 On the Khojas of Chabahar see Lorimer, 1908, p. 353.

32 Personal communication with Hassan ʿAbdullatif, Muscat.

33 According to the Lawatiya, the term Jibroo itself derives from qabru (Ar. qabr) in the Lawatiya sociolect meaning graves. Precisely when the plot of land for the Lawatiya cemetery in Jibroo was acquired is not known. The land is said to have belonged to an unmarried woman who constituted it as a waqf for the Lawatiya, personal communication with Mohammad b. al-Hajj Baqer b. Sulaiman.

34 On qalamdan, see Hasan, 1996, p. 25.

35 On Lughan see PETERSON, 2006, p.84.

36 For images of the “qalamdān-step” graves in Rustaq, see AL-KHARUSI and AL-KHARUSI, 2012.

37 On Chaukhandi tombs, see for example HASTENRATH 1978 and HASAN 1996.

38 Ms. 7862, Ministry of Culture and Heritage, Muscat, Oman.

39 Besides the qalamdān-step graves, the Lawatiya cemetery in Jibroo also has an old mosque/mausoleum structure which the Lawatiya call gonbaz (gonbad), which means dome or vault in Persian. It is not clear if this mosque/mausoleum already existed on the site prior to the purchase and endowment of the land as a cemetry by the Lawatiya. Today the mausoleum contains the graves of two descendants of the Prophet (sayyids) built with rectangular slabs in the step formation but without the addition of a qalamdān. According to P. Costa, however, the interior of the mausoleum originally had three graves. The mausoleum also has a prayer niche (mihrāb). For images of the interior of gonbaz prior to its recent restoration see COSTA, 2001, p.149-153. Some Lawatiya believe the gonbaz was used in the past (presumably before the burial of the sayyids) as a site for embalming dead Khoja merchants before their bodies (naʿshu in the Lawatiya sociolect) were taken via steamboat to Basra and transferred onwards for burial in the Wadi al-Salam necropolis near the shrine of Imam ʿAli in Najaf. This practice might explain why they are relatively few “qalamdān-step” graves in the Lawatiya Jibroo cemetery, between ten to twenty, compared to around fifty to a hundred in Lughan. Both the “qalamdān-step” graves and the gonbaz in the Lawatiya cemetery in Jibroo were restored by the Italian architect Enrico d’Errico between 2003-2004.

40 See ASANI 1987, BHALLOO and AKHTAR 2018.

41 Personal communication with Mustafa b. Mukhtar al-Lawati.

42 VIRANI 2022

43 See for example KASSAM 1995, MOMIN 2022.

44 On Sabit ʿAli Shah’s Sindhi marsiyo, see BOIVIN, 2019b.

45 BHALLOO 2023, forthcoming.

46 I am indebted to Mustafa b. Mukhtar al-Lawati for allowing me access to this archive.

47 More recently at least two pieces of scrap paper with accounting notes in Sindhi script (Docs.E05-36 and D129-18) probably in Khojki Sindhi script, were found among the documents in the archive of the ʿAbriyin sheikhs of al-Hamraʾ oasis. On this archive see HOFFMANN-RUF 2009.

48 See for example MERY et al. 2017.

49 On the Sindhi and Gujarati Hindu presence in Oman, see for example ALLEN, 1981, PETERSON, 2004, and MEHTA and ONLEY, 2015.

50 For a recent study on the Zadjali spoken sociolect and its lexical similarities with Sindhi and Baluchi, see AL-JAHDHAMI, 2017.

51 Many of the older generation of Lawatiya are fluent Baluchi speakers.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Fig. 1
Légende A “qalamdān-step” grave in the Lawatiya cemetery in Jibroo, Matrah.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cy/docannexe/image/10129/img-1.png
Fichier image/png, 1,3M
Titre Fig. 2
Légende An inscription in Khojki Sindhi script on a “qalamdān-step” grave in the Miyan Shah Khoja cemetery in Lyari, Karachi
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cy/docannexe/image/10129/img-2.png
Fichier image/png, 2,4M
Titre Fig. 3
Légende Qalamdān-step graves with inscriptions in Gujarati in the Twelver Shiʿi Khoja cemetery in Kera, Kutch
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cy/docannexe/image/10129/img-3.jpg
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Titre Fig. 4
Légende Qalamdān-step” graves in Lughan, Muscat, resembling those in the Lawatiya cemetery in Jibroo, Matrah
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cy/docannexe/image/10129/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 846k
Titre Fig. 5
Légende Gravestone of Rubab wife of Hajji Muhammad Ali Hyderabadi dated 23 Rabi I 1315/22 August 1897 in the Lawatiya cemetry in Jibroo
Crédits Photo: R. Mawani
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cy/docannexe/image/10129/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 681k
Titre Fig. 6
Légende Gravestone of Safura daughter of Hajji Fadil Hyderabadi dated 25 Shawwal 1298/20 September 1881 in the Lawatiya cemetry in Jibroo
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cy/docannexe/image/10129/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,1M
Titre Fig. 7
Légende Gravestone of Aqa ʿAbdulu Muḥammad Mukiya Ghulam ʿAli Hyderabadi dated the beginning of Dhu l-Hijja 1312/May 1895 in the Lawatiya cemetry in Jibroo
Crédits Photo: R. Mawani.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cy/docannexe/image/10129/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 853k
Titre Fig. 8
Légende Archive of Ali Mukhtar b. Ali Muhammad Salih al-Lawati (al-Hyderabadi)
Crédits Photo: Z. Bhalloo
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cy/docannexe/image/10129/img-8.png
Fichier image/png, 1,5M
Titre Fig. 9
Légende Wooden chest containing part of the archive of Ali Mukhtar b. Ali Muhammad Salih al-Lawati (al-Hyderabadi)
Crédits Photo: Z. Bhalloo
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cy/docannexe/image/10129/img-9.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 123k
Titre Fig. 10
Légende A folio from one of the accounting registers in the archive of ʿAli Mukhtar b. ʿAli Muhammad Salih al-Lawati (al-Hyderabadi) using the mercantile variant of Khojki Sindhi script
Crédits Photo: Z. Bhalloo
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cy/docannexe/image/10129/img-10.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 561k
Titre Fig. 11
Légende A commercial document in the mercantile variant of Khojki Sindhi Script from the archive of ʿAli Mukhtar b. ʿAli Muhammad Salih al-Lawati (al-Hyderabadi)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cy/docannexe/image/10129/img-11.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 150k
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Référence électronique

Zahir Bhalloo, « Oman’s Transregional Connections to Sindh and Gujarat: Mobility and Material Heritage of the Lawatiya », Arabian Humanities [En ligne], 17 | 2023, mis en ligne le 01 juillet 2023, consulté le 29 septembre 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/cy/10129 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/cy.10129

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Auteur

Zahir Bhalloo

Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC), Universität Hamburg

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