Nizwa Fort and the Dalla During the Imamate

Abstract

This chapter focuses on two forms of material heritage once integral to the governance of the twentieth-century Ibadi Imamate: Nizwa Fort and the dalla. These modes of governance were presided over by the hulking contours of the fort, in its role as sharīʿa adjudicator, and circulated by the form and function of the dalla as part of daily social interactions in the sabla. The past became a knowledge that was read, recited, and debated while being sedimented in an embodied disposition. Through daily readings and discussion, local affairs and conflicts were addressed by honing a relationship to the past that cultivated and amended disposition, thought, and action on the basis of exempla. It was a past that was primarily moral, oriented toward God, and grounded in tribal mores and Ibadi doctrine and practice. Both material forms facilitated a history that held that life's interactions and relationships could be sanctioned and critiqued based on past forms that also held templates for future action. This conception of history formed the foundation of religiosity, law, governance, and ethics.