About “The Violet War” novel

About “The Violet War” novel by Bahraini novelist  … Ahmed Juma

“The Violet War”, an epic story that took three and a half years in the making and set in 592 middle-sized pages. From among thousands of British, Bahraini and Gulf documents that dealt with the period spanning from the eighteenth century until the end of the nineteenth century. The novel happened to be completed in a critical political and social period wiping throughout the Arabian Gulf region today that is witnessing a struggle on influence, wealth and control between the centers of power which brings back the memory to the colonialism era that witnessed the struggle of powers between the British Empire, the Portuguese expansion and the attempt of Ottoman dominance, these are the features of the novel that summarizes the conflict of local and international forces for the region.

The subject of the novel: From the Omani Governorate of Sur in 1868, a British campaign was launched, led by an English naval officer called “Dawood Ling” to free slaves from the slave trade which reached the height of prosperity in the region on the hands of sea bandits, a number of local rulers of the time and some influential officials of the British crown who have ties to the region and found slave trade as a means of enrichment. The British officer’s plan collides with a war led by local pirates with huge ships and local armies supporting them in their wars on one side, and local rulers on the other, to control the Gulf state belonging to the British Crown.

“The Violet War” A novel published by “Dar Al-Farabi” publishing house in Beirut in 2018, tells the details of the wars of slavery, colonialism, power and influence between the axes of power in the eighteenth century, where the conflict between the colonial war, the slave trade and piracy in the Gulf region escalated during that dark period, in addition to the Qatari-Turkish-Omani alliance’s attempt to invade the State of Bahrain at that time.

The novel tells of a ruthlessly growing drama over successive chapters of the epic human and bloody ordeal that was formed amidst the colonial and tribal conflict in the Arabian Gulf at the height of the European, Persian and Turkish expansion for influence, and in conjunction with the spread of the slave trade, which despite the British claims of combating, remained hidden under the coat of these countries as they seek to exploit it.

The fierce events erupt from the coast of Sur in Oman, as they accumulate and spread throughout the region through wars and confrontations between the various parties including slave traders, pirates, the Turkish-Persian presence, and the British occupation forces, which all accumulate to form a turning point to guide events.

The details of the novel accurately tell the story of a pirate from the Gulf named Boss Sheikh “Suleiman bin Ahmed Al-Slait Al-Hilali” who came from behind the underworld, mobilized masses and led five giant ships in wars and bloody conflicts where fantasy and reality mix to form the axis of events led by the foreign invasion of the region. It involves complex social relations including love, hate, death and life with poverty within the stratagems of survival. The novel tells the story of a slave girl called “Violet” who descended from the dark bedrock of slavery. With her, a young slave boy called “Moayad”, who also came from the abyss of human exploitation such as sexual harassment by those human traffickers, this would form a mysterious relationship between them that would quickly break up as the nearing war which will be fueled by the poor, the destitute and the marginalized, as it escalates and witnesses the attempts of the Turkish alliance since that time to invade Bahrain where the invasion breaks on the shores of the quiet island that rises from its sleep to radical transformations.

The slave girl descending from the depths of slavery “Violet” emerges to command warships, assigned to her by Boss Suleiman Al-Slait, in a mythical battle fueled by ships and humans that evolves into a global power struggle for the region between life and death, where the strongest survive.

Dr. Mark Hobbs, a specialist in Gulf history at the British Library, says:

“In the Arabian Peninsula and the Arabian Gulf, the British faced a kind of slavery that was more socially rooted than it was commercially. Although the slaves were brought from as far away as North Africa and the Asian subcontinent, they were generally integrated into society, and were most of the time converted by force to Islam and lived alongside the families they served, and many slaves at the time got there freedom. Women formed a higher percentage of slaves compared to the slaves on American farms, most of whom worked as housemaids, as for the slave men, most of them worked in the main economic industries in the region, pearl fishing and palm cultivation”

In this harsh climate of war, death, love, hate, and struggle for survival, the story revolves around the war of piracy, slavery, colonization, and attempts by the Portuguese, British, Turkish, and Persian empires to conquer the region, in which colonial interests, slave trade and piracy were intertwined, in addition to a raging war led by nature on the region which caused the death of thousands due to famine and epidemics, and the fleeing of hundreds from nature towards their deaths.

An exciting novel that tells the details of the wars of the young and old for the thrones.