Zanzibar Was a Country traces the history of a Swahili-speaking Arab diaspora from East Africa to Oman. In Oman today, whole communities in Muscat speak Swahili, have recent East African roots, and practice forms of sociality associated with the urban culture of the Swahili coast. These "Omani Zanzibaris" offer the most significant contemporary example in the Gulf, as well as in the wider Indian Ocean region, of an Afro-Arab community that maintains a living connection to Africa in a diasporic setting. While they come from all over East Africa, a large number are postrevolution exiles and emigr
