The politics of the coffee pot: Its changing role in history-making and the place of religion in the Sultanate of Oman

Abstract

ABSTRACTCentered on the dalla, the Omani coffee pot, this paper considers how the social practices and knowledges induced by its material form and function organize different forms of perceptual skills. These skills habituate ways of seeing that become a means towards examining the shift from the religio–ethical relationships that defined the shari'a society of the last Ibadi Islamic Imamate that ruled the interior of the region (1913–1955) to those that define ‘heritage’ as part of Omani modern nation state building today. As a coffee server in the Imamate era, the dalla facilitated a history that was primarily moral in nature, oriented towards God and divine salvation. From 1970 onwards, as a visual symbol, it became an integral part of a national linear chronicle of progressive historicity. Through a shift in authoritative time, rationales of temporality, ethics and history were reconfigured, displacing an Imamate while establishing a modern-day Sultanate in its place.