Reflections on Historiography and Pre-Nineteenth-Century History from the Pate “Chronicles”

1993 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 263-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall L. Pouwels
Keyword(s):  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Coastal City ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
Demographic Shifts ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town

The period from 1500 to 1800 was a particularly busy phase in the history of the East African coast. It was a time which witnessed massive demographic shifts in the interior regions, as well as heavy southern Arab immigration and external meddling from Portuguese and Umani interlopers. It saw the destruction of the medieval entrepot of Kilwa Kisiwani and a decline, followed by a slow resurgence, in the fortunes of another medieval powerhouse, Mombasa. Throughout this phase, the ancient northern coastal city of Pate enjoyed a pivotal, even at times a paramount, role in the affairs of the coast. Before the middle 1500s the town seems to have been of insufficient consequence to attract much attention. Thereafter, however, the city-state capitalized on mainland alliances with powerful Orma confederations like the “Garzeda” to become a major center for regional trade, as well as a crucial strategic location in the competing religious and political ambitions of Portugal and various Arab states. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Pate clearly was the most important state in the Lamu archipelago. Arguably, too, it was the most powerful Swahili sultanate on the entire coast.Given the significance of Pate in the affairs of the East African coast from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries, scholars long have realized that a history of the sultanate is exigent to an understanding of the entire coast during this time. What would seem to be fortunate to this end is that historians have the Pate chronicles as a research aid. Taken together, these constitute the most detailed indigenous history of any coastal city-state up to the onset of the colonial era. However, as attested by the difficulties Chittick encountered in his attempts to work with them, these documents present the historian with a superabundance of (often confusing) information. Confronted with this, Chittick concluded that the only possible value of these chronicles was as a source of/for children's fables. Thus surmised, a historian of this important Swahili sultanate would seem to be left with very little indeed.

Biography Writing in Swahili

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 299-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farouk Topan
Keyword(s):  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
African Context ◽  
City States ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

Any meaningful assessment of biography and autobiography writing among the Swahili as a historical source needs to take at least three factors into consideration. The first is the influence of Arab literary traditions on the emergence of the genre on the East African coast; the second is the relationship between literacy and orality, and its implication for writing and narration in an African context. The role of colonialism, and the introduction of the Western “mode” of biography and autobiography writing, forms the third factor. The aim of the paper is to survey these factors, not chronologically, but as part of a general discussion on the notion and status of the genre in the Swahili context.Swahili interface with Arabic as an essential ingredient of Islamic practice laid the foundation for the development of literate genres on the East African coast, among them the biographical and the historical. In the process, Swahili adopted styles of narrative expression which are reflected in the terms employed for them. The most common are habari (from the Arabic khabar) and wasifu (from wasf). In its original usage, khabar denoted a description of an event or events that were connected in a single narrative by means of a phrase such as “in that year.” It lacked a genealogy of narrators, and the form was stylistically flexible to include verses of poetry relevant to the events. In Swahili the current meaning of the word habari is “information” and “news” (and, hence, also a greeting) but, as a historical genre, it has been used in two ways. The first is in relation to the history of the city-states recounted through documents whose titles include the word, khabari/habari, (or the plural, akhbar in Arabic), usually translated as “chronicle(s).”

The early history of West African highlife music

Popular Music ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 221-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Collins
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Early History ◽  
Dance Music ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of

Highlife is one of the myriad varieties of acculturated popular dance-music styles that have been emerging from Africa this century and which fuse African with Western (i.e. European and American) and islamic influences. Besides highlife, other examples include kwela, township jive and mbaqanga from South Africa, chimurenga from Zimbabwe, the benga beat from Kenya, taraab music from the East African coast, Congo jazz (soukous) from Central Africa, rai music from North Africa, juju and apala music from western Nigeria, makossa from the Cameroons and mbalax from Senegal.

Heritage, Tourism, and Slavery at Shimoni: Narrative and Metanarrative on the East African Coast

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 247-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Wynne-Jones ◽  
Martin Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Deep Sea ◽  
National Park ◽  
Heritage Tourism ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
The Past ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Village ◽  
Important Site

There's a hole in the side of Africa, where the walls will speak if you only listen Walls that tell a tale so sad, that the tears on the cheeks of Africa glisten Stand and hear a million slaves, tell you how they walked so far That many died in misery, while the rest were sold in Zanzibar Shimoni, oh Shimoni, You have to find the answer and the answer has been written down in ShimoniWhen Kenya-born singer-songwriter Roger Whittaker sang these doleful words in 1983, the village of Shimoni was a relatively quiet backwater on the southern Kenya coast, known primarily for its deep-sea fishing club. It is now a much larger and busier place, where tourists come to see the ‘slave cave’ that gives Shimoni its name (Swahili shimo-ni, “at the cave”), and embark on boat trips to Wasini Island and the nearby Kisite-Mpunguti Marine National Park (see Figure 1). Whittaker's song played a significant role in this development, by bringing Shimoni and its caves to wider attention, and focusing on one of a number of narratives about the caves' past usage. The lyrics of ‘Shimoni’ did not simply embellish a local tale, but (re)created it in the image of metanarratives about the history of slavery on the East African coast. As we will argue in this paper, these metarratives now dominate reconstructions of the past in Shimoni, and are reinforced by the activities and institutions that constitute and promote the caves as an important site of cultural heritage.

The Pate Chronicles Revisited: Nineteenth-Century History and Historiography

1996 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 301-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall L. Pouwels
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

A few years ago I offered an assessment of the Pate “Chronicles” as a tradition-based source for the history of the East African coast. That paper drew on recensions and versions that were readily available at that time to researchers interested in their historiography. Reasons of length and scope, cited at the end of the paper, restricted discussion to Sultan Fumo Madi b. Abu Bakr and his predecessors (Sultan nos. 1-24), that is to say, up to the time of the Battle of Shela,ca. 1807-13. To reiterate, in that paper I established the following points:(1) All recorded versions appear to have been based on an oral tradition that was extant in the mid- to late nineteenth century among Nabahani family members. The existence of a “Book of the Kings of Pate,” mentioned by Werner and Prins, is problematic (see 3 below).(2) Despite the number of versions of the Pate “Chronicles,” they appear to have actually come from only two informants, Bwana Kitini and Mshamu bin Kombo, who was a relative or possibly, as Tolmacheva claims, Bw. Kitini's brother.(3) Except for minor, though discernible, differences between the lists of the sultans given by both informants, most versions are consistent to a surprising degree. This seems attributable to the fact that there wereonlytwo informants, Kitini and Mshamu, who also were related, and who therefore themselves probably shared the same source(s). Given the differences of detail beyond the kinglists, if one of those earlier sources was a written one, such as an actual “Book of the Kings of Pate,” that source seems to have afforded the informants little beyond names and regnal dates.

Early Muslim Trading Settlements on the East African Coast: New Evidence from Shanga

1987 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. C. Horton
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Period ◽  
East African ◽  
Rock Crystal ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Trading Systems ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Indian Ocean

Much archaeological and historical research has recently been devoted to the study of the early Swahili communities inhabiting the East African coast during the late first millennium a.d. The practice of Islam can be shown to date back to perhaps the beginning of the ninth century from when the first mosques have been excavated. The economic importance of East Africa for the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean world is apparent from the wealth of imports and exports found in a large number of these coastal sites. African trading systems brought to medieval society high-value commodities ranging from gold, rock crystal and ivory, to slaves and timber. The items were carried across large distances sea by traders following the seasonal monsoon system around the coasts and across the Indian Ocean. is argued that the trading settlements were African in culture and origin, but then attracted Muslims who were responsible for occasional local converts from a very early period in the history of Islam.

The Peculiarities of Capitalism: Frederick Cooper on Africa and the World Economy

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 83-93
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Traugh
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
Labor Process ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
The World ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
Class Struggles

Abstract:This essay explores Frederick Cooper’s work on the history of capitalism, bringing together his histories of class struggles on the East African coast and his conceptual interventions into debates on Africa and the world economy. It argues that Cooper’s notion of the “peculiarities of capitalism” illuminates how conflicts over work, rights, and the labor process have shaped where capital went and what it did in Africa. The essay also considers how Cooper’s work might inform the emerging literature on race and capitalism in Africa, exploring in particular the history of tobacco capitalism in postcolonial Malawi.

BECOMING A CHILD OF THE HOUSE: INCORPORATION, AUTHORITY AND RESISTANCE IN GIRYAMA SOCIETY

1997 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUSTIN WILLIS ◽  
SUZANNE MIERS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Basic Trend ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
General Theme ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
Labour Time

The last twenty years have seen a series of studies dealing, at least in part, with the nineteenth-century history of slavery at the East African coast. Each has, in its own way, focused on transformations associated with changing patterns of accumulation in the nineteenth century. If there has been a general theme it is of the increasing constraints placed upon slaves and the increasing demands made on them, as owners sought to reorganize labour time and processes to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by the rapid expansion of commerce from the 1830s. While Morton has attacked Cooper's ‘hegemonic’ perspective and accused him of presenting slavery as benign and static, both are agreed on a basic trend: the increasingly commercial orientation of slave-based agriculture considerably diminished slave autonomy between 1820 and 1890. Recently, Glassman has offered a study which is decidedly non-hegemonic in perspective, and has revealed the ways in which marginal members of society appropriated and sought to reinterpret the ideology through which they were subordinated. Yet he too describes the increasing circumscription of slave autonomy in response to the demands of new kinds of production – in his case, the sugar plantations of the Pangani valley.

Settlement, development and conservation of Aldabra

1971 ◽  
Vol 260 (836) ◽  
pp. 611-628 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Seafarers

The early history of human settlement at Aldabra is obscure. Voeltzkow (1897) summarizes early knowledge, mainly from the charts in A. Grandidier’s Histoire physique, naturelle et politique de Madagascar (1885) from the sixteenth century onwards. It is possible that the atoll was visited by Arab or even Chinese seafarers before this time, for there was a flourishing trade on the East African coast, and the Arabs knew the Comoros, Madagascar and probably the Mascarenes (Hourani 1951; Freeman-Grenville 1962; Toussaint 1961). Apart from a single, probably Islamic, sherd on lie Picard, however, no archaeological remains of such visits have been found, and the only fragment of Chinese pottery, found in Passe du Bois, is nineteenth century (Chittick 1968). Low drystone walled enclosures (figure 10, plate 33) are found in several places round Aldabra (Voeltzkow 1897, p. 52), together with water-holes protected by rock slabs and blocks of imported rock far from the coast. All of these may be of some antiquity, but the enclosures have certainly been used and repaired in recent years, both to keep captured tortoises in before export, as at Anse Cedres, and to keep tortoises away from growing vegetables, as at Dune Jean-Louis. Because of the lack of water and distance from trade routes it is likely that pre-European visitors were castaways and not settlers: even the far more attractive Seychelles were apparently not settled in pre-European times (Sauer 1967).

Asiatic colonization of the East African coast: the Manda evidence

1986 ◽  
Vol 118 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Horton
Keyword(s):  
Raw Materials ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
Building Stone ◽  
African Women ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Early Settlement ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of

The history of early settlement of the East African coast is currently interpreted in widely differing ways. One view takes as its premise the idea that the coast was first colonized from Asia. This hypothesis, which has its roots in the work of XlXth century historians suggests that there was substantial settlement by non-Africans who established trading and religious communities. These colonies formed the basis of what has come to be known as the Swahili Culture. At first defensible peninsulas and offshore islands were chosen as safe refuges from the African tribes of the interior. Eventually contact was established between these new communities and the African coastal peoples, to the benefit of both parties. Raw materials were obtained from the hinterland of these trading outposts, which were traded and taken across the Western Indian Ocean on the seasonal monsoons. The foreign merchants married local African women and an Afro-Arab culture developed, building stone towns, mosques, and tombs, that still remain today along the coastline from Somalia to Mozambique.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document