Bibliographic Review. Historiography of the Swahili

Essay , 2022 , 10 Pages , Grade: A

History - Africa

The development of Swahili maritime trade culture and their place in the old world web has been the topic of debate and discussion for centuries. In the most recent decades of the study of their history, emphasis has been placed on the Swahili's African origins over their Islamic origins, and how this position is more fundamental in understanding their culture and individual societies. The composition of the Swahili’s African origins with their Islamic, Arab, Indian, and Austronesian roots and influences, as well as their impact on community building and economic development have been the subject of monographs by Derek Nurse and Thomas Spear, Michael Pearson, and Mark Horton and John Middleton.

The development of Swahili maritime trade culture and their place in the old world web has been the topic of debate and discussion for centuries. In the most recent decades of the study of their history, emphasis has been placed on the Swahili's African origins over their Islamic origins, and how this position is more fundamental in understanding their culture and individual societies. The composition of the Swahili’s African origins with their Islamic, Arab, Indian, and Austronesian roots and influences, as well as their impact on community building and economic development have been the subject of monographs by Derek Nurse and Thomas Spear, Michael Pearson, and Mark Horton and John Middleton.

By their own oral traditions, the Swahili placed their origins with the Shiraz people of Persia, distancing themselves in history from their African neighbors. Europeans perpetuated this tradition during colonization, due to the distinctly Arab appearance of Swahili communities and towns. Arabic words in their language and previous archeological evidence also appeared to support this conclusion, but by the mid-1980s new archeological discoveries showed more indigenous African lineage in Swahili communities long before the arrival of the Islamic and Arab trade networks, and new studies in linguistics have shown clear Bantu origins to the Swahili language.¹ Anthropology had concluded that the Swahili shared the same basic culture as their neighbors, with similarities and regional patterns emerging, forcing historians to reevaluate Swahili oral tradition and perceived history.² This is the position that Derek Nurse and Thomas Spear took in 1985 when they wrote The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800–1500.

They initiate their research by declaring Swahili history to be a tangled web based on internal misconceptions and the perceptions of other peoples, who believed their culture to derive from Caucasian, alien, origins like ancient Egyptians. They announce that this idea is racist in origin and it denies Africans their rightful place in history to conclude that their society came from elsewhere. They wanted to cut through that web using modern techniques and discoveries to support recent developments and positions on the subject, helping initiate the new movement toward the Africanization of Swahili history and culture.³ The basic point they make is that the Swahili are an African people, born and raised in Africa, although separate and distinct from their neighbors. They intermingled with Arab settlers and exchanged ideas and culture both ways to create a synthesis of African and Arab ideas. Nurse and Spear undo this idea of an Arab and Persian legacy by placing the Swahili as Bantu in language and indigenous origins, adding a synthesis of alien ideas and putting it into African context.⁴ Simply put, the Swahili aren’t African or Arab, but Swahili.⁵ While they were not the first to theorize this, they helped propagate a trend to reassess primary sources and oral tradition.

Arab seafarers came to the east coast of Africa to trade with the coastal locals and go inland. Around the 9th century, these Arabs began settling on the coast, prompting the coastal Africans to began moving up and down the coast to trade ivory, gold, and slaves with them.⁶

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¹ Derek Nurse and Thomas Spear, The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800–1500 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 4-5.

² Nurse and Spear, The Swahili, 6.

³ Nurse and Spear, The Swahili, vii.

⁴ Marguerite Ylvisaker, “The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800-1500 by Derek Nurse, Thomas Spear,” in The American Historical Review, Vol. 91, No. 3. ed. American Historical Association (Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1986), 717.

⁵ Nurse and Spear, The Swahili, viii.

⁶ Nurse and Spear, The Swahili, 3.

• College: Arizona State University
• Grade: A
• Author: M.A. Michael Gorman (Author)
• Publication Year: 2022
• Pages: 10
• Catalog Number: V1246981
• ISBN (PDF): 9783346669988
• Language: English
• Tags: history, africa, swahili, african history, historiography, bibliographic review