This paper examines the remarkable itineraries of the al-Busaidi rulers of Muscat and Zanzibar during the nineteenth century to trace the correlation of mobility to state power. Narratives of travel and idioms of mobility underscored the tentative nature of central authority in an era of encroaching British suzerainty and posed challenges to state formation. Al-Busaidi sultans moved naturally within Indian Ocean circuits between Muscat and Zanzibar, the poles of their realm, and to centers of power both sacred (Mecca) and secular (Bombay). During the first half of the century mobility created state power and unified an empire. Sa'id bin Sultan al-Busaidi (r. 1804-1856) policed the Gulf and sailed to East Africa several times before moving his capital to Zanzibar in the 1830s. In attempting to establish his rule along East Africa's Swahili coast and maintain control in his Arabian possessions, he developed a form of mobile governance, shuttling between the distant nodes of his dominions. These peregrinations were not political theatre, but a literal enacting of the state. The empire did not survive his death. In the second half of the century, the movements of sultans and sultans-to-be exposed them to British power and left them vulnerable to British intervention. In the newly bifurcated domain, Sa’id’s sons’ contests for power constrained rulers’ mobility and constricted their territorial claims while perversely propelling competing aspirants into a thriving Indian Ocean arena. As exiles in Bombay, future al-Busaidi sultans lived in close proximity to British imperial power and Indian industrialization. When they eventually took power, these former “exiles in empire” modernized statecraft to varying degrees, but suffered humiliations under British demands to end the slave trade. Ironically, such concessions won mobility even as they circumscribed state power, and Barghash, who ruled Zanzibar from 1870-1888, was able to visit London and Mecca before dying near Muscat. The paper situates claims to power and the ability to rule in Muscat and Zanzibar within a larger Indian Ocean context. The paper argues that during the nineteenth century, deracinated rulers became protégés of empire, and found state political cultures increasingly rooted. Indeed, hardening lines of territoriality in the Indian Ocean contested older notions of mobility as power, ultimately limiting al-Busaidi authority. The methodology of the paper is documentary analysis of Arabic and English archival material from the India Office Records in the British Library (London); the Maharashtra State Archives (Mumbai); and the Zanzibar National Archives (Zanzibar)