The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800-1500

148 Pages·1985·1.19 MB·English

by  Derek Nurse and Thomas Spear

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title: The Swahili : Reconstructing the History and Language of
an African Society, 800-1500 Ethnohistory (University of
Pennsylvania Press)
author: Nurse, Derek.; Spear, Thomas T.
publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
isbn10 | asin: 081221207X
print isbn13: 9780812212075
ebook isbn13: 9780585277769
language: English
subject Swahili-speaking peoples--History, Swahili language--
History.
publication date: 1985
lcc: DT365.45.S93N87 1985eb
ddc: 306/.089963
subject: Swahili-speaking peoples--History, Swahili language--
History.
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Page i
The Swahili

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Page ii
Ethnohistory Series
Series Editors
Lee V. Cassanelli
Juan A. Villamarin
Judith E. Villarmarin
A complete list of the books in the series is available from the publisher

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Page iii
The Swahili
Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 8001500
Derek Nurse and Thomas Spear
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia

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Page iv
Copyright © 1985 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-
free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5
Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nurse, Derek.
The Swahili: reconstructing the history and language
of an African society, 8001500.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Swahili-speaking peoplesHistory. 2. Swahili
languageHistory. I. Spear, Thomas T. II. Title
DT365.45.S93N87 1984 306'.0899632 84-3659
ISBN 0-8122-1207-X (pbk.)

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Page v
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
1. Swahili and Their History 1
2. The African Background of Swahili 32
3. The Emergence of the Swahili-Speaking Peoples 52
4. Early Swahili Society, 8001100 68
5. Rise of the Swahili Town-States, 11001500 80
Appendixes 99
Abbreviations 111
Notes 113
Bibliography 123
Index 131
Maps
1. Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean 2
2. The East African Coast 18
3. Khoisan and Southern Cushitic 35
4. Bantu Expansion 38
5. Bantu Languages of Eastern Africa 42
6. Northeast Coast Bantu Languages 44
7. Swahili Dialects in the Nineteenth Century 56
8. The Swahili Diaspora 60

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Page vi
Figures
1. Sample Language Tree 10
2. Language Tree with Sound Changes 12
3. Variant of Figure 2 12
4. Southern Cushitic Languages 34
5. Eastern Cushitic Languages 37
6. Northeastern Bantu Languages 41
7. Sabaki Languages 54
8. Dialects of Swahili 55
9. Northern Dialects of Swahili 58
10. Southern Dialects of Swahili 63
11. Rulers of Kilwa 90

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Page vii
Preface
The history of the Swahili has long been tangled in the web of their own and other people's perceptions and
misperceptions of them. At its most extreme, they have been seen as cultural aliens, Caucasian Arabs who brought
civilization to a primitive continent. Just as state formation across the continent was seen as the product of Hamitic
(Caucasian) invaders from the north, so the Muslim trading towns of the eastern coast were seen as cultural transplants
from the Arabian peninsula. This view is not simply racist; it also implies an understanding of history that sees all
cultural innovation in Africa as the result of diffusion of peoples and ideas from elsewhere, thus denying African
historical actors roles in their own histories.
Our intention is to cut through this web by combining modern techniques of African historians with recent discoveries
relating to the Swahili to portray their history. For all the interest in the Swahili language, few have attempted to
reconstruct its historical development. Only recently have archaeologists turned their attention to the indigenous
peoples of the coast and started to reconstruct the ways in which coastal towns and societies developed. Historians have
tended to accept Swahili traditions pointing to Arabian origins at face value without seeking to discover what the
traditions mean to the people who relate them. Finally, anthropologists have only recently started mapping the full
dimensions of Swahili society and culture and the ways these relate to those of their neighbors.

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This book has a message. We hope that it is argued convincingly and supported carefully, but lest it be misunderstood,
let us briefly outline our argument here. Our basic point is that the Swahili are an African people, born of that continent
and raised on it. This is not to say that they are the same as other African peoples, however, for in moving to the coast,
participating in Indian Ocean trade, and living in towns their culture has developed historically in directions different
from those of their immediate neighbors. It is also not to say that they have not borrowed freely from others. Arabs
have been trading along the coast for a long time, and many have remained to settle and to become Swahili. They have
influenced the development of coastal culture. But the influence has gone both ways, and the result has been a dynamic
synthesis of African and Arabian ideas within an African historical and cultural context. The result has been neither
African nor Arab but distinctly Swahili. It is this process we seek to trace.
The Swahili provide a laboratory unique in African history in the detail and the time depth over which we are able to
use documentary, linguistic, archaeological, and traditional data, both to test the validity of each and to explore ways of
combining them into a meaningful historical synthesis. We hope our attempt will be useful for other historians
struggling with the implications of oral traditions, ethnographic data, or comparative linguistics in the more usual
absence of supporting documentary or archaeological data and of absolute chronologies. Within the immense historical
diversity and complexity of African societies, we all share the problems of method and of understanding.

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Page ix
Acknowledgments
Our work has been made easier by and has benefited greatly from a number of recent and some not so recent studies
that encourage one to view the history of the Swahili-speaking peoples in new ways. We trust our debt to them is made
clear in the notes and bibliography. We would like to thank the following for facilitating our research, offering their
ideas freely, and challenging ours: James de Vere Allen, Lee Cassanelli, Neville Chittick, Christopher Ehret, Mark
Horton, Gillian Feeley-Harnik, Thomas Hinnebusch, Gerard Philippson, Randall Packard, Gill Shepherd, John Sutton,
and Thomas Wilson. We would also like to thank the Institute of Swahili Research of the University of Dar es Salaam,
the National Museums of Kenya, the British Institute in Eastern Africa, and the W. H. Whiteley Memorial Fund for
supporting Nurse's research, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned
Societies, and Williams College for grants supporting Spear's research and writing. Publication has been made possible
by a generous grant from the President and Trustees of Williams College. The responsibility for what follows is, of
course, ours.
DEREK NURSE
THOMAS SPEAR

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