Zanzibar in the context of "Massacre of Arabs during the Zanzibar Revolution"

Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country in the southeastern Arabian Peninsula in West Asia. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Oman's coastline faces the Arabian Sea to the southeast and the Gulf of Oman on the northeast. The exclaves of Madha and Musandam are surrounded by the UAE on their land borders, while Musandam's coastal boundaries are formed by the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. It has a population of approximately 5.46 million and an area of 309,960 km (119,680 sq mi). Muscat is the capital and largest city.

Oman is the oldest independent state in the Arab world, and has been continuously ruled by the Al Bu Said dynasty since 1744. Beginning in the 17th century, Oman became a regional power with an empire that competed with the Portuguese Empire and British Empire for influence in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. At its peak in the 19th century, Omani influence and control extended across the Strait of Hormuz to present-day Iran and Pakistan, and as far south as Zanzibar. In the 20th century, Oman had come under the influence of the British Empire while de jure remaining sovereign.

Muscat (/ˈmʌskæt, ˈmʌskət/ MUSK-at, -⁠ət, US also /ˈmʌskɑːt/ -⁠aht; Arabic: مَسْقَط, romanized: Masqaṭ, pronounced [ˈmasqatˤ] ) is the capital and most populous city in Oman. It is the seat of the Governorate of Muscat. According to the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), the population of the Muscat Governorate in 2022 was 1.72 million. The metropolitan area includes six provinces, called wilayat, and spans approximately 6,500 km (2,500 sq mi). Known since the early 1st century CE as a leading port for trade between the west and the east, Muscat was ruled successively by various indigenous tribes, as well as by foreign powers such as the Persians, the Portuguese Empire and the Ottoman Empire. In the 18th century, Muscat was a regional military power: its influence extended as far as East Africa and Zanzibar. As an important port town in the Gulf of Oman, Muscat attracted foreign traders and settlers such as the Persians, the Balochs and the Sindhis. Beginning in 1970, after the accession of Qaboos bin Said as the Sultan of Oman, Muscat experienced rapid infrastructural development; it developed a vibrant economy and became a multi-ethnic society. The Globalization and World Cities Research Network classifies Muscat as a Beta-level Global City.

The Hajar Mountains dominate the view from Muscat. The city lies on the Arabian Sea, along the Gulf of Oman, near the strategically important Straits of Hormuz. Low-lying white buildings are a typical feature of its architecture. The city's port district of Muttrah, with its corniche and harbour, are at the north-eastern edge of the city. Muscat's economy is dominated by trade, petroleum, liquified natural gas and porting.

The Swahili coast (Swahili: Pwani ya Waswahili) is a coastal area of East Africa, bordered by the Indian Ocean and inhabited by the Swahili people. It includes Sofala (located in Mozambique); Mombasa, Gede, Pate Island, Lamu, and Malindi (in Kenya); and Dar es Salaam and Kilwa (in Tanzania). In addition, several coastal islands are included in the Swahili coast, such as Zanzibar and Comoros.

Areas of what is today considered the Swahili coast were historically known as Azania or Zingion in the Greco-Roman era, and as Zanj or Zinj in Middle Eastern, Indian and Chinese literature from the 7th to the 14th century. The word "Swahili" means people of the coasts in Arabic and is derived from the word sawahil ("coasts").

Dhow (/daʊ/; Arabic: داو, romanized: dāw) is the generic name of a number of traditional sailing vessels with one or more masts with settee or sometimes lateen sails, used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region. Typically sporting long thin hulls, dhows are trading vessels primarily used to carry heavy items, such as fruit, fresh water, or other heavy merchandise, along the coasts of Eastern Arabia, Iran, East Africa, Yemen and coastal South Asia. Larger dhows have crews of approximately thirty and smaller ones typically around twelve.

A qanbūs (Arabic: قنبوس) is a short-necked lute that originated in Yemen and spread throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Sachs considered that it derived its name from the Turkic komuz, but it is more comparable to the oud. The instrument was related to or a descendant of the barbat, a (possibly) skin-topped lute from Central Asia. The qanbūs has 6 or 7 nylon strings that are plucked with a plectrum to generate sound. Unlike many other lute-family instruments, the gambus has no frets. Its popularity declined in Yemen during the early 20th century reign of Imam Yahya; by the beginning of the 21st century, the oud had replaced the qanbūs as the instrument of choice for Middle-Eastern lutenists.

Yemen migration saw the instrument spread to different parts of the Indian Ocean. In Muslim Southeast Asia (especially Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei), called the gambus, it sparked a whole musical genre of its own. Nowadays it is played in the traditional dance of Zapin and other genres, such as the Malay ghazal and an ensemble known as kumpulan gambus ("gambus group"). In the Comoros it is known as gabusi, and in Zanzibar as gabbus.

The tola (Hindi: तोला / Urdu: تولا, romanized: tolā; also transliterated as tolah or tole) is a traditional South Asian unit of mass, now standardised as 180 grains (11.6638038 grams) or exactly 3⁄8 troy ounce. It was the base unit of mass in the British Indian system of weights and measures introduced in 1833, although it had been in use for much longer. It was also used in Aden and Zanzibar: in the latter, one tola was equivalent to 175.90 troy grains (0.97722222 British tolas, or 11.33980925 grams).

The tola is a Vedic measure, with the name derived from the Sanskrit तोलः tolaḥ (from the root तुल् tul) meaning "weighing" or "weight". One tola was traditionally the weight of 100 Ratti (ruttee) seeds, and its exact weight varied according to locality. However, it is also a convenient mass for a coin: several pre-colonial coins, including the currency of Akbar the Great (1556–1605), had a mass of "one tola" within slight variation. The first rupee (Urdu: رپيا; rupayā), minted by Sher Shah Suri (1540–45), had a mass of 178 troy grains, or about 1% less than the British tola. The British East India Company issued a silver rupee coin of 180 troy grains, and this became the practical standard mass for the tola well into the 20th century.

The yellow-headed dwarf gecko or dwarf yellow-headed gecko (Lygodactylus luteopicturatus) is a small species of dwarf gecko found in the rocky areas of southern Kenya, Somalia (maybe as an introduced species), eastern Tanzania, and Zanzibar. It can grow up to 90 millimetres (3.5 in), but on average attains a length of 80 millimetres (3.1 in) with a snout-vent (body) length of 39 millimetres (1.5 in). The tail length can be equal to the length of the body from snout to the anus (SVL or Snout-Vent Length).

In 2004, the species was synonymized with Lygodactylus picturatus.

Sayyid Saïd bin Sultan al-Busaidi (Arabic: سعيد بن سلطان, Saʿīd bin Sulṭān, Swahili: Saïd bin Sultani) (5 June 1791 – 19 October 1856) was Sultan of Muscat and Oman, the fifth ruler of the Al Bu Said dynasty from 1804 to 4 June 1856. His rule began after a period of conflict and internecine rivalry of succession that followed the death of his father, Sultan bin Ahmad, in November 1804. He is often referred to as the Lion of Oman (أسد عمان), as one of the greatest Omani sultans.

Said's uncle Qais bin Ahmad finally agreed to Said's primacy after Said had killed his cousin, Badr bin Saif, a pretender to the throne. Said is noted for moving his capital to Zanzibar, where it remained during the time when the Omani Empire reached the zenith of its power and wealth.