262 



the 'ministers: , 



the days of the late Say y id's highest fortunes the 

 most tattered of Siiris would address him, c O 

 Said ! ' and proceed to sit unbidden in his pre- 

 sence. Similarly, Ibn Batutah, when describing 

 the Sultan of Oman, Abu Mohammed bin Neb- 

 han, tells us, ' he has the habit of sitting, w T hen 

 he would give audience, in a place outside his 

 palace ; he has neither chamberlain nor wazir, 

 and every man, stranger or subject, is free to ap- 

 proach him.' Sometimes a noble, when ordered 

 into arrest at Zanzibar, has collected his friends, 

 armed his slaves, and fortified his house. One 

 Salim bin Abdallah, who had a gang of 2000 mus- 

 keteer negroes, used to wage a petty war with 

 the Sayyid's servile hosts. It is, perhaps, the 

 result of climate that these disturbances have 

 never developed into revolutions. 



The ' ministers ' spoken of by strangers are 

 the Nakhodas of the fleet : by virtue of a few 

 French or English sentences, they are summoned 

 when business is to be transacted with Euro- 

 peans who are not linguists. The late Sayyid's 

 only secretary and chief interpreter was Ahmad 

 bin Aman of Basrah (Bussorah), a half-cast Arab, 

 popularly called by the lieges 6 Wajhayn ' or 

 £ two faces.' According to some he was a 

 Sabi or Sabsean, commonly known as a Christian 



