ザンジバル、オマーンにおけるアラブ性の意味 : アフリカ系オマーン人のエスニシティをめぐる一考察

概要

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This article aims to explore the ethnicity of African Omanis, comprising Swahili-speaking people with mixed African origins who returned to Oman after 1970 from East Africa, mainly Zanzibar, in relation to Arabness. Arabs are defined as Arabic speakers. However, various different levels of Arabness were revealed by examining who are/were known as Arabs in Zanzibar and Oman. In nineteenth-century Zanzibar, Arab was mainly used to refer to the old Swahili-speaking Omani immigrants who belonged to the affluent and politically privileged class, not the Hadrami Arabs or the new Omani immigrants who spoke Arabic. However, the ability to speak Arabic cannot serve as a determining factor of Arabness in contemporary Oman. Even the younger generations of African Omanis who were born in Oman and can speak fluent Arabic are not called Arabs, but Zanzibaris, even though they claim Arabness by referring to their genealogy, which is traced patrilineally. For native Omanis, Arabness is recognized based on language, blood, which cannot be traced in genealogy, and behavior. I demonstrate that a hierarchy and discrimination based on economic and political status existed within the Arabs in both areas and that, in contemporary Oman, the monolithic narrative of "Swahili-speaking, with mixed African blood" by the native Omanis obscures such hierarchy that existed within African Omanis in Africa.
2008-09-25