cover next page > 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. cover next page > < previous page page_i next page > Page i The Swahili < previous page page_i next page > < previous page page_ii next page > 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 < previous page page_ii next page > < previous page page_iii next page > Page iii The Swahili Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 8001500 Derek Nurse and Thomas Spear University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia < previous page page_iii next page > < previous page page_iv next page > 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.) < previous page page_iv next page > < previous page page_v next page > 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 < previous page page_v next page > < previous page page_vi next page > 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 < previous page page_vi next page > < previous page page_vii next page > 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. < previous page page_vii next page > < previous page page_viii next page > Page viii 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. < previous page page_viii next page > < previous page page_ix next page > 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 < previous page page_ix next page >