The Sultan's Shadow: One Family's Rule at the Crossroads of East and West

Bird brilliantly tells of the 19th-century rise and fall of an Omani ruling family, its role in the enormous Indian Ocean slave trade and, unwittingly, through the Princess Salme, the Christianization and colonization of east Africa by Germany. Oman's Sultan Seyyid Said Al Busaidi was generous with his own people but cruel and ruthless with his enemies, He built alliances with the British as he built a lucrative slave trade in his capital of Zanzibar. After Said's death, his favorite daughter, Salme, “an independent woman who flatly refused to obey the mores of her day,” eloped with a German businessman who soon died in a fluke accident. Bismarck used Salme and her family to gain a foothold in the slave trade; by the time of Salme's death in 1924, her Omani ruling family's fortunes had declined, German power had risen, and the slave trade in Zanzibar had been abolished. Drawing on Salme's autobiography and letters, journalist Bird (Neither East nor West: One Woman's Journey Through the Islamic Republic of Iran ) presents a first-rate cultural and political history that opens a window onto this little-known corner of modern history. Maps. (June)