Page 26 - ISLAM Rock n Roll
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Omanis boarding a sailboat at
Ras Musandam, Governorate of the Sultanate of Oman (2003).
Malik Raihan Habshi (d. 1656), was a freed slave of Abyssinian descent who grew up in Bijapur’s court of Sultan Ibrahim ʿAdil Shah ii (r. 1580–1627) and became an important advisor in the court of ʿAdil Shah (r. 1627–1656). He eventually became governor
of a province on the border with Golconda, and, in 1635, he received the title ‘Ikhlas Khan’. His portraits, including this watercolour painting made in Bijapur, ca. 1650 attests to his high status.
Portrait of a ‘Bashi-Bazouk’ (irregular Turkish soldier of the Ottoman Empire) by Jean-Léon Gérôme (d. 1904) 1868–1869, Paris (France).
geographer, Ahmad Muhyi al-Din Piri (also known as Piri Raʾis, d. 1553), temporarily took back Muscat. To the south, in East Africa, which had been part of the Islamic world since the 8th–9th century, Portuguese incursions took place throughout the 16th century, but it was not until permanent Portuguese coastal trading posts were established, such as at Mombasa in 1593, that the Swahili Muslim communities sought help from Oman. The Omanis, then ruled by the Yarubi dynasty (1624–1742), were able to expel the settlers in 1698. Soon a er the fall of the Yarubi dynasty, their successors, the Busaidi dynasty (ca. 1749–present) established the Sultanate of Oman and Zanzibar, creating a solid imperial presence from the Makran coast, in present-day Pakistan, through Oman, parts of southern Yemen, Somalia and East Africa down to Kilwa.
Before this dynasty was able to incorporate southern Yemen, however, one of the communities there, the merchants of Hadramawt, began to expand their presence into East Africa and southern and Southeast Asia. These
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