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Belonging Across the Omani Sea: De-Soldiering Baloch History in the Arabian Peninsula
Abstract
Periodizing Arabian Peninsular Baloch history is one of the unresolved challenges in understanding and analyzing the Arabian Peninsula’s belonging dynamics, citizenship formations, and the role of historiography in these processes. The Baloch, one of the significant transnational ethnic groups in the Arabian Peninsula, has arguably contributed significantly in various political, socioeconomic, and cultural capacities to the societies that they have constituted over the past centuries. Yet, they remain marginalized or misrepresented in the historiography of the Arab Gulf states. In this paper, I aim to historically recontextualize the Baloch people beyond what is depicted in the existing scholarship—portrayed merely as ‘mercenary soldiers’ serving in the armed forces of the Arab Gulf monarchies. The current historiography has resulted in reducing the Baloch to a monolithic category as a ‘warrior race’ that was integrated under the patronage of consecutive ruling dynasties. In my research, I advocate for a revision of this misplaced historical conceptualization that has been articulated in most of the academic publications. Drawing upon recent fieldwork as well as primary documentations and archives, particularly a medieval Arabic/Persian source from the 10th century, I argue that the current scholarship misplaces the periodization of Baloch migration to the Arabian Peninsula and the subsequent migratory waves which resulted in distorting the nature of their identity development and sense of belonging across the Sea of Oman and the Arab Gulf States. By contrast, my presentation reestablishes the periodization of the Peninsular Baloch diasporic history and delinks it from the dynastic periods that essentialize them as simply ‘paid fighters’ departing from Balochistan and crossing the Sea of Oman in the 17th century. I thus ask: how the existing narratives are constructing historical discourses and shaping temporal perceptions of the migratory movements around and across (post)colonial borders of Balochistan and the Arab Gulf states? By recontextualizing the Baloch history in the light of their earliest documented contact with the Southern Arabian littoral societies, I demonstrate the importance of theorizing their history within the longue durée of the region that extends beyond that of the ruling dynasties and modern military markets.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Indian Ocean Region
Sub Area
Diaspora/Refugee Studies