Majid bin Said

Sayyid Majid bin Said al-Busaidi (c. 1834 – 7 October 1870) was the first Sultan of Zanzibar, ruling it from 19 October 1856 until his death. ¹ He succeeded his father Said bin Sultan in Zanzibar and East Africa, and in his reign the Sultanate of Zanzibar was finally separated from Oman, after his succession dispute with his brother Thuwaini and the Canning Award of 1861. ¹

Majid was born in 1834 in Zanzibar, a son of Said bin Sultan by Sarah, a Circassian consort, and was the second eldest of Said's children born in Zanzibar, after Khalid bin Said (died 1854). ¹ His father made him governor and regent of Zanzibar and its dependencies after his elder brother's death on 7 November 1854, so he was already administering Zanzibar when his father died. ¹

Majid became Sultan of the Omani Empire, based at its capital Zanzibar, on his father's death on 19 October 1856, but his accession was contested: his older brother Thuwaini took Muscat and Oman and claimed the whole inheritance. ¹ The struggle ended with the British arbitration known as the Canning Award of 2 April 1861, which divided the dominions into two separate sultanates — Zanzibar and East Africa to Majid, Muscat and Oman to Thuwaini, with Zanzibar paying an annual subsidy to Muscat — and Zanzibar was recognised as an independent realm. ¹

Majid faced a serious rebellion by his younger brother Barghash, whose attempt to usurp the throne in 1859 failed; Barghash was exiled to Bombay for two years. ¹ The region's wealth soared in his reign, particularly with the controversial Zanzibar slave trade — recorded here as the sources record it, as part of the sultanate's economy and not in praise of it. ¹ He founded a summer capital on the mainland coast at Dar es Salaam, later the capital of Tanzania, founded the Order of the Brilliant Star of Zanzibar in 1865, and in 1866 purchased the former Confederate commerce raider CSS Shenandoah and renamed her El Majidi after himself. ¹ His marriage produced only one daughter, Sayyida Khanfora bint Majid, who married her cousin Hamoud bin Mohammed, a later Sultan of Zanzibar; Majid's grandson Ali bin Hamud later became the eighth Sultan of Zanzibar. ¹

Majid's own article's infobox names his religion personally as Ibadi Islam, and two further attestations support it at the level of the house and of the sultanate he founded and headed: the Al Bu Said dynasty article records the house's traditions as Ibadi Islam and counts the Sultanate of Zanzibar (1856–1964) among its realms, and the Ibadism article lists the Al Bu Said dynasty, with its Zanzibari branch (1856–1964), among the Ibadi dynasties. ^{1 2 3} The entity data therefore records his faith as documented ibadi on the basis stated in full in the faith note, following the pattern of his brother Ali bin Said's record.

Majid died at Zanzibar on 7 October 1870, aged 35 or 36, and was buried in the Makusurani Cemetery; having no son, he was succeeded as Sultan by his brother Barghash. ¹ A genus of Central African flowering plants, Majidea, was published in 1871 and named in his honour. ¹

The kinship and succession edges are carried on Majid's own record: majid-bin-said —child_of→ said-bin-sultan, and majid-bin-said —successor_of→ said-bin-sultan; Said's record carries no reverse edge, because inverses are computed at build. ¹

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.