What is it about?
This paper presents a study of the memoirs and letters of Princess Sālima bt. Saʿīd (d.1922), whose father, Saʿīd b. Sulṭān (d. 1856), was the ruler of Oman and Zanzibar from 1832 to 1856. One hundred and fifty years ago, the princess entered into a relationship with a young German man, Rudolph Ruete. After the princess fell pregnant, putting her in conflict with the stipulations of her Islamic religion, she decided to elope with her lover and to bet on him.
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Why is it important?
The paper argues that the princess was a revolutionary woman in opposition to traditional Zanzibari culture, and that her story highlights clearly the issue of women and the crisis of freedom in Arab and Islamic culture during that time. In addition to the elements of revolutionariness, adventure, persistence, rebelliousness, perseverance, and faithfulness attributed to her, the princess acquired a deep sense of history. In documenting her life in her memoirs and letters to her homeland, the princess manages to bridge the gulf between the present and the future. She introduces affluent life and fertile experiment, where the researcher can find many topics to be studied. Among these topics are her impressions of German life, the question of her people in the halls of German and British diplomacy, the role of international powers in the Zanzibari arena, South-North relations, and many other topics that are beyond the scope of this study. Furthermore, the researcher who deals with the princess’s memoirs and letters cannot help but notice her yearning for humanitarian values, as she repeatedly references humanitarianism and expresses her opinions about it—for example, in describing the people of Rudolstadt, she writes, “I have found out that people are generally humane … when this agrees with their interests.” She describes humanitarianism as a noble quality, “but to perform it in accordance with the understanding of each individual is always a difficult matter.”
Perspectives
Exploring Princess Sālima’s memoirs and letters and reflecting on her life, the researcher finds it hard not to befriend her and sympathize with her story and the stages of her life. According to St. Augustine’s splendid formula, cited by the French historian Henri Marrou (d. 1977), “We cannot know anyone except through friendship” (Marrou 1966, 104–5). In writing her memoirs and letters, the princess has left an impact that traverses time, space, and cultures, reinforcing the feeling that we are in the presence of a human whose life deserves to be understood and to be given further reflection. Her story reflects the yearnings for liberation and passage, experienced both by men and by women, to traverse their own cultural and geographical frameworks in search of shared humanitarian values and principles of global citizenship. She is a human who deserves to be respected and appreciated and, above all, she should be loved and treasured. May her memory remain as an immortal light of hope and space of living!
Dr. Abdalla Elfakki Elbashir
University of Khartoum
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Fading of Yearnings for Liberation and Passage When the Bet on Love Is Lost, Hawwa, January 2020, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/15692086-12341366.
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