ABSTRACT
If the networks of connections established the intellectual parameters within which the nationalist discourse of the Omani intelligentsia emerged, British policies in Zanzibar, especially educational policies, fueled that discourse. One of the primary concerns continuously raised by al-Falaq from its creation in 1929 was the ineffectiveness of the government educational system and the marginalization of the Arabic language. Al-Falaq, and the Omani intelligentsia behind it, accused the government educational system of failing to provide Arabs as well as Swahilis with a good education, let alone good jobs, and of having a destructive impact on the identity of Arabs and that of the island. In order to preserve Zanzibar’s Arab identity and membership in the Arab-Islamic world, the Omani intelligentsia deemed it necessary to safeguard the Arabic language and the Islamic religion within Zanzibar. Its members related the public education offered in twentieth-century Zanzibar to British policies understood by Omanis to be detrimental to the role of Arabs on the island, aiming to disfigure their Arab-Muslim identity and uproot the Arab-Islamic heritage of Zanzibar. They sought to preserve that identity and that heritage by stressing the need for a vigorous curriculum that promoted Arabic and taught Islam and Islamic history. Those, they believed, were their demands and the demands of the Swahili community, with whom Omanis shared a wat.an.
