Khalifa al Hina’i has very fond memories of his childhood growing up in Mombasa. “The town was pristine. It wasn’t very crowded and there was this cosmopolitan air about the place with Hindus, Arabs, Boras and Sulaimanis living together,” he recounted. The 62 year old could be anyone recalling childhood memories till he starts talking about times when the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, Aga Khan IV and the Sultan of Zanzibar visited their family home. “I still remember when my mother entertained Princess Margaret and all of us siblings welcomed her into the house by kissing her hand.”
Khalifa is the twelfth son of Sheikh-Sir Mbarak bin Ali al Hinawy (KBE), the former liwali (governor) of Mombasa, part of the erstwhile Sultanate of Zanzibar. He was part of the Arab Omani ruling elite working with the British colonial ruler to govern the territories. Descended from Arabs who travelled from Oman to Mombasa in the 19th century, Sheikh Mbarak was born in 1896 and went on to serve as the liwali till 1959, a few years before independence movements and revolutions precipitated the end of the sultanate in East Africa. He is the subject of a new book titled Between Empires – The life and times of an Omani gentleman by Dr Zulfikar Hirji, an associate professor at the University of York, Toronto, Canada.
via http://www.theweek.co.om/disCon.aspx?Cval=6713.
Earlier related: New Publication by author Zulfikar Hirji: Between Empires: Sheikh-Sir Mbarak al-Hinawy
Ismailimail 