>> Edward Miner:
I am Dr. Edward Miner,
head of
the African Section.
For more than 60 years, the
African Section has served as
the focal point for Africa
based research collections and
services at the library.
Within the division, it is one
of three sections, including the
Hebraic and Near East, that
provide access to collections of
unmatched depth and breadth,
documenting the literatures,
cultures and histories of
regions extending from the
southern tip of Africa to the
Mediterranean coast across the
Middle East and to Central Asia
and down to the Indian Ocean
Islands. The library holds rich
collections in major African
languages such as Hausa,
Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya,
Somali, Kiswahili, Malagasy and
Zulu, as well as hundreds of
lesser known sub-Saharan
African languages.
Today's program, "Islam in East
Africa" presents
Professor Kimberly Wortmann
of Wake Forest
University in conversation with
Professor Abdin Chande of
Adelphi University.
As a scholar trained in Islamic
and African studies, she is
interested in transregional
networks of knowledge exchange,
transmission and production
between East Africa
and the Persian Gulf.
Her current research focuses on
networks of Islamic schools and
charities in Zanzibar, Tanzania
and Oman, run by Ibadis, a
muslim minority community.
Wortmann's research relies
extensively on Swahili and
Arabic, and she has lived and
studied in Uganda, Yemen and
Kenya. Her research has been
supported by the Wake Forest
University Archie Fund,
Fulbright Weatherhead Center
for International Affairs, and
Harvard Frederick Sheldon
Traveling Fellowship, among
others.
Dr. Abdin Chande's academic
training is in African and
Islamic Studies.
He is currently an associate
professor in the Department of
History at Adelphi University
in Garden City, New York, where
he has been a faculty member
since 2004.
His research interests range
from Islam and Islamic
scholarship in East Africa,
Swahili and the Indian Ocean
world, African diaspora in the
Arab Muslim world and Islam in
America. He is currently
working on a research project
focusing on the Swahili
speaking people of the southern
coastal town of Barawa in
Somalia, most of whose
inhabitants have been
permanently dispersed and
displaced from their homes due
to the 1990s Somali inter-clan
fighting. This has created a
Barawan diaspora that extends
from East Africa all the way to
Western Europe and even North
America. This study will
contribute to the growing
studies on Swahili societies in
East Africa and their global
connections. Our speakers today
are presenting an overview of
the development of Swahili
society and its expanse into
the Tanganyika hinterland over
the last 1000 years.
First, we will hear from
Professor Wurtmann.
>> Kimberly Wortmann:
Hello, everyone.
I'd like to begin by thanking
the conveners of this really
exciting webinar on "Islam in
East Africa"
in particular, Dr. Miner, Dr.
[inaudible] at Boston University
[inaudible] at the 
Smithsonian, and
Dr. Elizabeth 
Schreiber-Byers, as
well as the other co-hosts for
this webinar. And of course, my
interlocutor and colleague, Dr.
AbdIn Chande. So I'm going to
focus my presentation on sort of
the early Muslim communities in
East Africa starting in the
seventh century, when we have
evidence from Muslim sources of
communities in Ethiopia or what
is now Ethiopia and Eritrea, and
then going up until the period
of the expulsion of Portuguese
from the East African coast in
the 17th century, or at least
from parts of the East African
coast.
So the objectives will be to
situate the study of Islam in
East Africa within a broader
history of maritime trade,
migration, learning and
intercultural exchange within
the Red Sea and Indian Ocean
worlds.
And then to appreciate the
complexity of East African
Muslim identities in coastal
societies and narrate the rise
and fall of Muslim city states
briefly, and the effects of
European colonialism on coastal
societies, and consider the
value of adopting
interdisciplinary approaches,
methods and sources to the
study of Islam and Muslim
communities in East Africa.
So I'm excited to be speaking
with, you know, many teachers in
the audience here.
And I think you'll see from my
presentation that I really enjoy
in my classroom to incorporate
primary sources, material
culture, poetry, etcetera, you
know, to kind of pique the
students interest in various
topics.
So here are some of the sources
that will be consulted.
So before I begin, like I said,
we're really going to focus on
maritime societies in this
presentation.
So the ocean and the sea play a
big role.
So I'd like to start with the
Swahili proverb that says,
"One who only looks at the 
sea is not a traveler."
So suggesting that this is a
society that has long been on
the move, you know, across the
Indian Ocean, you know,
engage in all 
kinds of trade and exchange
of ideas. And there's also
support in the Quran for the
importance of the sea in
humans interactions with the
sea. So there are two verses
that I have chosen for you here.
The first one, "He is the one
who has subjected the sea so
that you may eat fresh meat
from it and may take out from it
ornaments you wear and you see
the boats cleaving through it.
And so that you may seek his
bounty and that you may be
grateful." So, you know, humans
are encouraged to sort of take
advantage of what the sea has
to offer.
And then in the second verse,
you know, basically the sea is
among the creations of Allah or
God.
And so it's created there for
the benefit of humanity.
So historians of Africa and
East Africa have talked about
two sort of gateways through
which Islam entered the African
continent, you know, starting
in the seventh century, which
was the first century of Islam.
And so the Saharan trade routes,
you know, sort of
through North Africa and West
Africa.
But what we're going to focus
on is the second gateway or two
gateways, the Red Sea and the
Indian Ocean.
So as you probably know from
previous webinars, Prophet
Muhammad received the first
revelations of the Quran in 610
CE in Mecca.
So a city in southern Arabia
that you know, in the region
that borders the Red Sea.
And so it's very close to
Africa.
And then he began preaching the
message of the Quran, this idea
of sort of monotheism, belief
in one God, as opposed to the
many gods that pagan Arabs had
been worshiping.
And, you know, his message of
social justice.
And this had been very
attractive to, in particular,
people on the margins of
society in Mecca.
So people who were enslaved,
people who... women who were
widowed, orphans, those who
didn't have protections from
sort of the tribal
confederations. And so when he
began, you know, propagating
this message, it was very
attractive to many, but it also
threatened, you know, the
ruling elite in Mecca at the
time.
And so they pushed put a lot of
pressure on the early Muslim
community and eventually became
too much for the most vulnerable
members. So the Prophet
Muhammad decided to send them
across the Red Sea to the
region that is now known as
Eritrea and Ethiopia,
so Abyssinia, and this region
was ruled by a Christian king at
the time. So it's an ancient
Christian kingdom in Ethiopia,
and he sent them there because
they were monotheists, because
they, you know, had a, you
know, a different conception of
monotheism. But ultimately,
this idea, you know, of this one
God and also, you know, they
were in line with the Abrahamic
traditions. So indeed, when
they crossed the sea and
arrived in Axum and the Axumite
empire, they were received by
the king. And, you know, he was
skeptical at first, but he asked
them for proof from God,
essentially, you know, of this
message, you know, that
Prophet Muhammad, had
been propagating.
And so one of the members of
the group who were seeking
asylum started to recite a
chapter verse from the Quran,
from the chapter of Mary or
Maryam in the Quran.
And this chapter describes the
birth of Jesus and sort of the
role, of course, of his mother
in this, and also shows the
continuity of the Christian
tradition and the Islamic
tradition with the Christian
tradition, but also a break,
because it is very clear that
Jesus was not the son of God,
that he's a messenger and a
prophet, but not the son of God.
So there's continuity, but also
a break.
But it was so beautiful, the
recitation and this message that
according to the Islamic
tradition, the king of Ethiopia
at the time was brought to
tears.
He was very moved by this.
And then that was one of the
reasons he offered them asylum.
So this is sort of the story of
the earliest Muslim community on
the African continent during
the first century of Islam,
really just the first years of
the revelation.
And so their prophetic Hadith
that serve as sources of this,
so these are prophetic
traditions. And so this one
describes this event.
And so both men and women were
part of this community that did
the migration and they were
pursued by the leaders of Mecca,
but eventually they were
offered this safety and peace.
So this is sort of the coastal
story.
You know, the story from the
coast to the interior and
Ethiopia in the early period.
And over time, you know,
substantial Muslim communities
developed in various parts of
Ethiopia and Eritrea.
And so the famous fortified
city of Harar is one example of
this. And so this is a mosque
from that city on the interior.
So the second gateway that I
want to talk about is the Indian
Ocean. So it's, you know, this
vast expanse of water that's
bifurcated by the Indian
subcontinent, as you can see
from this map. So divide it
into two and we're going to
focus on the western Indian
Ocean.
So the part that includes, you
know, the Persian or Arab Gulf
region, the Arabian Peninsula
and also the East African coast,
the coastline that spans from
Mogadishu in modern day Somalia
to Sofala in Mozambique.
And so, as you can see from the
map, you know, the monsoon winds
play a really big role in sort
of trade and migration across
the Indian Ocean.
So sailors from all over the
ocean, you know, as far as the
South China Sea would, you
know, come to East Africa and,
you know, they would sail on
boats, which I'll show you some
pictures of. And, you know,
they were really at the mercy of
the winds and the rains.
And so sometimes they would
dock in a port for months on end
waiting for a favorable wind.
So from November to February,
they go to the south and then
from April to September going
north.
And so I just want to give you
a closer look at the particular
line of coast that we're going
to look at again, from Mogadishu
to Sofala in Mozambique.
And this is the coastline
that's known often as the
Swahili coast, because Swahili
was sort of a lingua franca and
a language of trade, you know,
during these early periods.
And so the word Swahili comes
from the Arabic word for coast
Sahil or coast, Sawahil.
And so the people who inhabited
the coast were called Waswahili,
the people of the coast.
And it includes, again, what is
modern day Somalia and its
coastlines, Mozambique, but
also in between Kenya and
Tanzania. And so Kenya and
Tanzania, the area is really the
coast I'm going to focus on
the coast.
And the Swahili language, or
Kiswahili, is a Bantu based
language based on a Bantu
African grammar structure
and vocabulary.
But then over time, more Arabic
vocabulary was incorporated into
it, as well as vocabulary from
European colonial languages.
One point that I really want to
make clear, though Islam sort
of intensified trade and
migration, you know, starting in
the seventh... 
well, really in the
eighth century, in the Indian
Ocean world. There had been
trade and exchange across the
Indian Ocean for two millennia,
you know, long before the coming
of Islam. And so Swahili
peoples and coastal peoples had,
you know, this cultural and
commercial relations with the
people from, you know, Persia,
from the Arabian Gulf, from the
Indian subcontinent, Indonesia,
China, etcetera.
And so here's an example of the
boats, you know, that are kind
of iconic. The dhow boats from
the Indian Ocean world that
transported people.
And so there were a number of
reasons why, you know, people
would travel to East Africa
from these different parts of
the world. There were push
factors, say, you know, they
were living in a desert region
in the Arabian Peninsula and
they were experiencing famine
or they weren't making ends meet
or there was infighting or like
warfare happening where they
were living, you know. So those
were sort of push factors.
They were looking for more
peaceful, prosperous
environments. But there were
also pull factors, people like
learn from travel logs and
stories of other sailors that,
you know, that these were lush
and fertile lands in Eastern
Africa, that it was relatively
peaceful.
And, you know, that there were
certain goods that one could
get, like ivory, for example.
So the tusks of elephants and
rhino horns and gum copal and,
you know, other luxury
items, also spices, you know,
especially starting in the 19th
century, which I think Dr. Abdin
Chande will talk more about.
There was a spice boom, you
know, that centered kind of on
the production of clove on the
Zanzibar Island.
These spices would be picked
and dried and packed and then
shipped off, you know, to
various parts of the world.
You know, there were huge
markets in Europe and Asia for
these goods. And then also,
unfortunately, people were also
transported by force.
So taken from the interior
regions of Eastern Africa and
Central Africa, brought to the
coast, you know, forced to work,
you know, in coastal societies,
but then also sometimes shipped
off to other parts of the
world.
And so this is sort of another
dimension of the global slave
trade. So coastal societies
came to be sort of identifiable
by their distinctive
architectures, these port city
architectures. And so these
were Islamic architectures and
that, you know, they were
heavily influenced by Islamic
beliefs and practices and ethos
and sort of Islamic societies
around the world, but also had
other influences from, you know,
different groups from, you
know, pagan African groups in
the region, from Hindu
communities, from Buddhist
communities, etcetera.
But when one kind of visited one
of these port cities, they
noticed these like huge stone
houses, you know, that were
built from, you know, coral
rock and from lime mortar
and they were whitewashed.
And these are still standing
today.
And this sort of, as [inaudible]
historian has said, marked the
shift from impermanent earthen
culture to permanent stone
culture that marked the shift
in Islamic time in port towns
and villages of the Swahili
coast.
And so, you know, the presence
of mosques was one of the big
sort of indicators that this is
a Muslim society.
Here's an example of one of the
stone houses in Zanzibar, a
really sort of iconic example.
And it was the house of Tippu
Tip, who was sort of a
famous or infamous trader.
Here's an example of, you know,
smaller houses, Swahili houses
that were built from coral rag,
you know, in stone.
And, you know, and these were
contrasted by the mud and wattle
buildings that were more sort
of indigenous to the coast
before some of these later
migrations.
And then here in the town of
Zanzibar, these stone towns were
built along the coast.
And so the famous one in
Zanzibar stone Town, was divided
by a creek. And so in the
peninsula part of it, you had
these like, you know, palaces
and stone houses and mosques.
And then on the other side of
it, you had more of sort of the
traditional mud and wattle
buildings.
And then, of course, you know,
you have these iconic mosques.
So this conical sort of minaret
was something that was, you
know, a very prominent feature
of Muslim architecture all in
the region. So who are the
Swahili?
So at least since the eighth
century, as I've said, Muslim
merchants, traders and scholars
are traveling to the coast from,
you know, all over that world.
And they interacted with
traded, married and settled
among African groups in East
Africa.
And so this, you know, led to
the development of a very
multicultural, multiracial
society influenced by an Islamic
worldview. So there's a long
standing debate in Western
scholarship about whether the
Swahili are an African people or
whether they are foreign to
Africa.
And so, you know, they're like
Arab or Asian or Persian.
And this debate is partly
fueled by or influenced by oral
histories from the region in
which inhabitants of the coast
claim foreign ancestry.
So they claim, for example, to
have originated in Shiraz in
Persia or from Southern Arabia.
So those claiming Persian
origin, you know, are often
called the Shirazis.
And these claims serve to
distinguish coastal
civilizations and urban life
and sort of posit them as more
sophisticated than non-coastal
African communities and to
legitimize the rule of sultans
and other elites in the early
Swahili city states.
So here's an example of sort of
one of the oldest mosques in
Zanzibar, which is actually
called the Shirazi Mosque.
It's on Kizimkazi on the coast.
And the Smithsonian has this
really wonderful sort of exhibit
of photographs and postcards
from the region.
And so here's a depiction of a
Swahili family based on their
clothing. They look like
they're more of an aristocratic
family. So Swahili city states
were at their height between the
1100s and the 1500s.
And so they were under the rule
of Muslim sultans, and these
sultans were made wealthy
through the extraction and trade
of goods from the African
interior.
Here are some examples,
gold, ivory, rhino horns,
etcetera.
And they also, through slavery,
but they also imported goods
from all over the Indian Ocean,
including Chinese porcelain,
silk and glassware.
So Ibn Battuta was a
famous 14th century North
African scholar who traveled
all around the region.
And so this is one of the
earliest accounts of one of
these Swahili city states at
Kilwa.
And he said, you know, described
their mosque as very strongly
constructed of wood.
He sort of talked about how
people performed ablutions, you
know, before they prayed, you
know, and he describes them in
other parts of the text as sort
of a very pious and chaste group
of people. And so Kilwa, as he
said, is one of the most
beautiful and well constructed
towns in the world.
And the whole of it is
elegantly built, and the roofs
are built from mangrove poles.
Unfortunately, now Kilwa is in
ruins.
And so here are some images
from the Great Mosque of the
Friday mosque at Kilwa, and
then also from the tombs of the
Muslim sultans.
So I wanted to share with you
quickly a poem that describes
the height of Kilwa
civilization and also its fall.
So this is a poem called
Al Inkishafi, which 
is a famous epic Swahili poem
that is... right. It's sort of 
set in a mystical manner.
And so the author writes,
"Their lit mansions 
glittered with
lanterns of crystal and brass.
Nights went by like day,
surrounded they were by fame
and honor. Grace
they were by select China-ware,
and every goblet was engraved.
In their midst, they placed
crystal pitchers among
enchanting ornaments."
And so this height of
civilization is sort of
contrasted by the moral
decline, at least according to
the worldview of the author, in
which he basically describes the
situation of the elites as
completely in decay, you know,
and he compares it to sort of
like the decay of the body in
the grave. So he says in the
second stanza,
"Their cheek-bones
are damaged. Pus and blood goes
out. From the nostrils creep
out worms. Changed is their
nobility and
countenance." And so 
he's sort of
attributing the decline to sort
of their moral ineptitude.
And so the author, as D.H. Lacy 
has said of Al Inkishafi, is in
fact, addressing his soul, his
moyo to resist the temptations
of power and wealth so that it
and hence, presumably himself
and his body may be saved from
disillusionment and damnation.
And so here is a manuscript
written in the Arabic script,
but it's actually Swahili,
it's not Arabic.
And so this practice of writing
local languages, African
languages in the Arabic script
is called Ajamii and Boston
University, as well as 
[inaudible] and
London have great collections of
Ajami manuscripts, if you're
interested in that, from all
over the continent.
So what led to the decline of
these city states?
So part of it was sort of
internal struggles.
You know, the Sultans were
competing over access to trade
routes, you know, and other
sort of sources of power.
But there were also external
factors.
And so beginning in the 15th
century, the Portuguese started
to kind of explore, you know,
the region around the Swahili
coast. And by the 16th century,
they had taken control of much
of the Western Indian Ocean
world.
And so they were Christian.
It was a Christian colonial
power that framed its invasion
in terms of a crusade against
Muslim leaders of the coast.
But they were also interested
in trade and commerce, and so
their invasion disrupted the
long standing gold and ivory
trade through sofala that was
key to sort of the wealth and
prestige of the Swahili city
states
and Kilwa itself was assaulted
in 1505.
And so at that time, the
colonists seized control of the
Zambezi trading route, which
was really critical for a lot of
these goods I described
earlier.
And in the 1560s, the
Portuguese began to actively
proselytize on the coast, but
they were met with much local
resistance. Mombasa in Kenya
was attacked at least three
times and the town was 
captured in 1593.
And in the 17th century,
the Portuguese were expelled
from the Persian Gulf region by
the Omanis.
And then they sailed south to
East Africa and helped with the
expulsion of the Portuguese
from much of the East African
coast, but not all of it.
So here is a text from a German
traveler and observer of the
sack of Kilwa. He says,
"The first to land was the grand
captain. They went straight to
the royal palace and on the way
only those Moors,
so Muslims is
essentially who they're talking
about, who did not fight, were
granted their lives. In Kilwa,
there were many strong houses,
several stories high.
They're built of stone and
mortar and plastered with
various designs.
Then he goes on to say,
"There are more black
 slaves than white
Moors. Here they are engaged on
farms.
The fortress of Kilwa was built
out of the best house there.
All the other houses around it
were pulled down.
There was fortified and guns
were set in place."
So it's not that local leaders
and the community in Kilwa
didn't resist this this
invasion.
They did, but they had much
less superior sort of weaponry.
So the Portuguese had gunpowder
in their cannons, whereas, you
know, the leaders of Kilwa
had cannons, but they didn't
have gunpowder. And mostly it
was like bows and arrows.
They didn't even have swords.
So there was no way really to
fend off this attack.
So wherever sort of they took
over power, the Portuguese were
known to have built forts.
So there Portuguese forts kind
of all along the coast.
And so here's an example of a
fort in Kilwa, which actually
this particular version of it
was built by the Omani sort of
powers once they had ousted the
Portuguese.
But it was built on the site of
an original Portuguese fort.
And so it's quite interesting
that a lot of Omani forts,
including this one, have this
particular verse of the Quran
inscribed on the door on the
entryway.
And so it's from a 
chapter of the Quran called the
Victory, Al-Fath. And it says,
"Indeed, we have given you (O
Muhammad) a clear victory."
And so you can see the
inscription in the middle of the
top band of the doorway there.
Here is another example of a
Portuguese fort in Stone
Town in Zanzibar, which
nowadays is actually used as a
museum. It's also used to hold
cultural events.
And this is sort of like what
how a lot of these forts have
been reappropriated.
So they tell sort of local
histories and they're also used
as spaces for events and things
like that, like the Zanzibar
Film Festival that happens
every summer.
So my final remarks just that
Muslim communities have existed
in East Africa since the first
century of Islam.
Islam in the region
spread through pre-existing
long distance trade routes on
the African continent and in
the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean
worlds. Islamic law, kin
networks and ethos created
networks of trust that enabled
commercial life to flourish on
the coast in the Middle Ages.
And over time, diverse Muslim
communities developed, you know,
as evidenced through the oral
histories and the material
culture that still exists.
The 19th century, which Dr.
Chande will describe more about,
marked a new period of migration
and commercial life on the
coast with the Sultan of Oman,
transfer of his capital from
Muscat to Zanzibar.
And with this transfer, we
start to see the formation of
new sort of communities of
learning, in particular the
appearance of Sufi scholars,
itinerant Sufi scholars from
Hadhramaut in Yemen, who kind
of traveled all along the coast
and set up centers of learning
that are still in use and
prominent today.
So that is all.
Thank you.
>> Abdin Chande:
Okay. Thank you so much for also
inviting me to this webinar and
I would like to thank all the
organizers and the conveners of
this important webinar that I
hope will be of some use to the
teachers. And my job is a bit
easier because of the breadth of
what my colleague has presented
in terms of the scope of East
African history from the Red
Sea area all the way down to the
Indian Ocean region. And at the
peak of I want so much to read,
I'm going to just be doing some
kind of reflection of some stuff
in front of me just to guide
me.
And one of the first thing I
would like to comment regarding
East Africa is the fact that
why is it that why Islam reached
East African coastal area,
something like over a
thousand years ago, yet Islam
did not penetrate into the
interior of much of East Africa
until the 19th century.
This is contrary to what
happened.
Unfortunately, you won't see it
down here on my map.
If you go further down here,
you see Kilwa and then you see
Lindi.
If you go further down, you'll
see Sofala in Mozambique.
In the case of Mozambique, it
was a very important area in the
East African trade,
specifically because the town of
Sofala in Mozambique, modern
day Mozambique, which was
controlled by Kilwa, which was
the most important Swahili town
in the southern part of this
region.
Whereas Mombasa was the most
important part in the middle
part of the East African
region. And Mogadishu in Somalia
was the most important part in
the northern area, except
Mogadishu was too far away from
Kilwa from all these other
areas. Therefore, it lost its
importance.
So in the case of Mozambique,
the Swahilis in Kula who were
trading with Sofala, they
managed to penetrate into
Zimbabwe, modern day Zimbabwe,
all the way from the roughly
believed, maybe the 15th
century or even earlier.
And there was even a Swahili
Arab community based in Zimbabwe
as far back as the 1500.
Unfortunately, that community
has not survived because later
on there were some civil war
within the area and many Muslims
were killed. And so Islam has
not survived except there were
some members of these
communities that still
remembered being Muslim because
they were influenced by Arabs.
And some of the names of the
clan, in fact, are Arabic names.
And so and it was in 1961 that
an Indian who was traveling in
the area, who had settled in
Zimbabwe, actually discovered
this community and then was
able to reintroduce Islam in
that community and they were
able to connect back to this
very long history.
Okay, back to East Africa.
We want to find out why didn't
Islam penetrate far beyond the
coastal region to go into the
hinterland?
And there are a number of
reasons. One of them is the fact
that if you look at the Swahili
coast from, say, north of Tonga,
Tanga is where Pangani is.
If you can see Pangani
which is over here. North of
Pangani is Tanga, so north of
Tanga from Vanga, all the way
to Lamu and all the way to
Pate, this area here, the
hinterland is only about 12 to
15 miles. Beyond that is 
what the Swahili called Nyika.
Nyika simply means a dry,
desolate land.
It's not quite good for
agriculture, and therefore the
Swahili were simply stuck in
this coastal area, so they were
depending on people from the
interior.
I'm talking about the immediate
interior here.
We are talking about the area
just immediately closer to the
coastal area who are called the
Mijikenda, which literally means
the seven communities of the
seven nations.
These are the various
ethnic groups, including the
Pokomo, the Giriama and the
others.
These were bringing the
products that my colleague was
just mentioning, such as ivory
and what do you call this?
Rhino horns, gum, copper and
other kinds of stuff.
They were bringing them right
to the coast, including also
bringing food. They were
bringing food such as fruits and
vegetables. One thing also that
we need to mention, that most of
the Swahili coastal town, they
were not based on the mainland
coast, they were actually based
on islands.
That's mostly for defensive
purposes.
If you look at Mombasa, the
oldest part is an island.
If you look at Tanga where 
I did my PhD research,
it's also based on an island,
the original town of Tanga.
Lamu is itself an island.
And they had small farms on
the mainland coast where they
used to go. It's when the
condition became quite difficult
that when the Portuguese
arrived that some of the Swahili
then moved on from the island,
which used to be the island
town, over to the mainland,
part of the coastal area
to build the cities there.
So it's the Nyika, that desolate
land that prevented them from
doing that. Whereas if you move
south of Tanga from here, which
would be somewhere here south
of Tanga, all the way down to
the Rufiji, this area has a
much more lush hinterland that
could go for much, much more
distance compared to that
in the case of this. But even
in that area as well, there was
not much penetration into the
interior as well.
And that has to do with the
fact that many of the products
were being brought to the
coast. Then there would be given
to the the Arabs and the
Indians and the Chinese, whoever
happens to be coming to the
coast to trade in the area and
buy. There is now evidence to
show that it's not only Swahilis
were waiting for people from
the outside to come to East
Africa. There's now evidence I
forget the name of the French
scholar who has actually shown
that there was Swahili boats or
ships that actually sailed to
India and that sailed to the
east themselves.
So we often think of Swahili
simply remaining there, waiting
for others to come to them.
They actually did sail out as
well.
And there is a much research
that is now being conducted
regarding this part.
Okay. Let me now go back to
the time of the Portuguese were
kicked out of Mombasa in 1698
by the Omanis.
And the Omanis were able then
to install themselves in
Mombasa. And the Omanis who
came at the time, they belonged
to the Yarubi dynasty.
And they installed the Mazrui
to be the governors of
Mombasa. And of course in
the Muscat [inaudible]
Oman, there was a
coup or there was a change
of dynasties
and the Busaid took over
later.
And it's the Busaid who
became the major players in some
of the affairs that I'm going
to discuss that relate to East
Africa. But by 1729 the
Portuguese had been kicked out
of East Africa, north
of Mozambique.
There were now in Mozambique
itself, they claimed Mozambique,
but they were mostly found in
the coastal areas all the way
down, all the way down, as if
you're going to South Africa.
And although they claimed much
of Mozambique, they never
penetrated into the interior
until later in the 19th century
when they were afraid that
other Europeans could claim
these areas. So they began to
occupy the inland areas of that
region. The Portuguese was
simply content in getting
products that they needed for
their price was on India,
India, China and other parts
of Asia.
So East Africa was simply a stop
point, a supply area where they
could get whatever products
they could find there and also
resupply their ships.
And so that was one of the
factors that led to that.
So now we move into the 19th
century.
Why did the Swahili decide to
penetrate into the interior?
That has to do with the Omanis
reasserting their control of
much of East Africa in areas
that you can see on the map here
like Mombasa and that you can
see in Lamu and Zanzibar, that
you can see right here, which
is highlighted, became their
main headquarters, the island
of Zanzibar, and also Pemba,
which are part of the same
island group.
And also they found themselves
in the areas of Eastern Africa.
There was far more control of
these areas because they were
directly opposite of Zanzibar,
whereas in this area here,
although they control the
bigger cities, some of the small
little settlements, they were
not controlled by the Omanis,
the Omanis left by themselves.
It was much more freedom there,
except if an area was considered
important, the Oman would make
sure that they would occupy
it. So the Omanis were able to
establish a commercial empire
that was based in Zanzibar.
And the presence of Omanis in
Zanzibar was the main reason why
there was a commercial revival
and a commercial expansion and a
commercial empire that was
created in Eastern Africa.
And this was based in Zanzibar,
which was where many of the
caravans started. And
especially we need to mention
Sayyid Saïd, who had moved his
capital from Muscat in Oman,
that is to say, in the Arabian
Peninsula to Zanzibar,
which became his capital.
And this was the area where
many of the caravans had much of
their preparation.
And he also invited Indians to
come and live. A lot of
Indians, Ismailis, Hindus and
other Muslim groups also came
to Zanzibar.
And this is where many of the
caravans were planned.
And then they began to venture
into the interior.
Now there are a number of
routes to go to the interior.
One of them, as is shown here,
is the Mombasa route,
and this is beginning of the
19th century.
The Mombasa people now begin to
move into the interior.
There are a number of factors
that led to that, partly because
Abu Saeed came and asserted
their authority over Mombasa.
And then the Mazrui who
belonged to the clan
that originally had taken over
the area were able to...
Oh, okay. We're able to move
out and move into this
hinterland interior.
So it was events that were
beyond their
control of these settlers of
these swahilis that began to
force them to
move away from the Abu Saeed.
They want to stay 
from the Abu Saeed.
The same thing happened in Lamu
and Pate.
Some of the community began to
move into the interior, into the
Tana River. The same thing
would happen in Bagamoyo.
So they began to move into the
interior and this movement into
the immediate interior was one
of the impetus for the
development of Islam in those
neighboring communities.
But even furthermore, it's the
caravan routes from Mombasa into
the Kilimanjaro area, which is
quite famous for the ivory.
This area here that you see in
Kilimanjaro area, and it was
from here eventually much
later, 1870s, 1880s, that these
people found their way right
through into the Kamba area.
These were Kamba here.
They went through here, through
here, the Wakamba area, and they
found themselves near the
eastern part of Lake Victoria or
Lake Nyanza, if you'd like to
call it by its African name.
And they found themselves in
Mumias.
This is how Islam traveled, in
this area here in this area
here. And this is how Islamic
communities began to be
established into the interior
following the caravan route to
get the ivory and to get other
kinds of products.
Why don't we find
any kind of caravan route in
this area here? Because of the
area in this area is mostly
semi-desert. This is where most
of the Somalis live in Kenya.
There was no caravan routes in
this area, which was much more
desolate. It's mostly
semi-desert, which is quite an
odd thing given that the fact
that this area is much more
closer to equator.
It's an odd area for those who
teach geography to find out that
this area here is near the
equator.
But there are other factors that
explain that that has to do with
the fact that much of this area
here, including southern
Ethiopia, they are in the rain
shadow of the Ethiopian
highlands. And that explains
the dryness of much 
of this area. Okay,
to go back to my map, let's
go back to my map that I was
explaining, that was one route.
The second route was from Tanga
Pangani in the area of many
of these groups that you'll
find the Zaramo... I'm sorry,
the Zigua, the Bondei, the
Segeju, the Digo, and they
began to move far. And as
they're moving to the interior,
they are skirting away from
mountain areas, which would be
difficult for them. And they
found themselves also 
into the Kilimanjaro area.
This was another route. And
then, of course, you
connect with the one that I was
mentioning before in Kenya.
The third route was coming
from Bagamoyo, Mbwamaji, Dar es
Salam. And this was the far
more important one and we should
keep an eye on is in the area
of where the Zaramo are.
Zaramo, the indigenous people
around Bagamoyo and around, of
course, Dar es Salaam. They
began to move into the interior,
began to move into the interior
scouting areas, for example,
like the Gogo area, because the
Gogo area is very, very dry.
It's not good for not much
lush vegetation, therefore
there's no ivory which they
were looking for.
So they scouted it and they
moved to Tabora.
And Tabora was of course like a
big bonanza.
There's so much ivory in the
area of Tabora became a major
Muslim center and later on, of
course, from there they would
make incursions in the
neighboring areas.
And today, areas
where this caravan goes is where
most of the Muslims are
concentrated.
The population were there is
around these areas.
They were scouting the areas
like the Sagara.
The Gogo area is not so many
Muslims because it's a dry area.
They scouted it and then Tabora
among the Nyamwezi became an
area that had a lot of Muslims.
There's also a muslim
community, of course, in
Mwanza, but far more in Tabora.
And finally, by the time we
enter the 1840s, 1850s, Muslims
had branched from here into
Ujiji Kigoma right here.
And this became a major Muslim
center of the region.
Another part of this caravan,
which branched into part one,
went to Gigi, the second went
north eastern part and ended up
into modern day Buganda
kingdom, which was the richest
kingdom and the most centrally
organized kingdom in much of
this area of the Great Lakes
area of eastern Africa.
And this is how Islam was
introduced in that area.
There is a third route, which is
somewhere starting from Kilwa.
And of course we'll go into the
interior,
we'll end up, of course, in the
southern part of Lake
Tanganyika, and that is used to
be the one that also connected
with Sofala and also connected
with the areas that we
take you inside, you know,
modern day Mozambique.
Okay, now let's look at
what happens in the interior.
Islam happens to be urban
phenomenon.
This has always been well known
by scholars.
Is a religion of the cities
because of the Sharia,
you have to establish courts,
you have to establish, you
know, mosques, madrassa
schools. These are kind of
phenomenon that you usually find
in cities. So it's an urban
phenomenon.
You find Muslim could not only
concentrated in the coastal
areas, but they also
concentrated in the
interior towns that were
established like Tabora, like
Ujiji Kigoma. It ended up in
Uganda somewhere in 1840s.
This was the time of
King Suna, S-U-N-A.
King Suna who was befriended by
the Arabs,
I think the first Arab was
Ahmad bin Ibrahim, who was an
Omani who came from Zanzibar.
They became quite good friends
and he was able to influence his
Kabaka who became a muslim.
And Islam in the Buganda
remained within the court and
the court religion, it did not
penetrate into the
countryside. And so it remained
much more exclusive
to the royal family.
When he died, they found copies
of the Quran in his house, in
the house of this king, his
son, who became his successor,
King Mutesa went on to become
the person who take Islam into
the countryside, who also
required members of his court to
first establish prayer.
He's even said to have
memorized some parts of the
Quran and even was able
to study enough Arabic to be
able to translate some of the
passage of the Quran from Arabic
into Luganda, into the local
language there.
Why were the Buganda is much
more attracted to the Swahili
and the Arabs who are coming
there? A number of reasons. One
of them because Buganda is a
centralized kingdom and it's
seeks to expand its boundaries.
It wanted firearms and so they
wanted firearms from
the Arabs and from the Swahili,
which, of course, they got. The
Swahili also brought other
kinds of stuff from the coast
that were not familiar to the
local people, such as wearing
the kanzu, the long flowing gown, which
has become a tradition to the
present day. Even non-Muslim
African chiefs, they wear the
kanzu. This is the Muslim
gown that stretches from
the neck all the way down. And
that became part of the dress
and other kinds of
paraphernalia that came from the
coastal areas. Such an extent
that in the late 19th century
one European mentioned that
when the... I don't remember the
exact I'm going to paraphrase.
When they play the flute in
Zanzibar, they dance on
the shores of Lake Victoria and
Lake Tanganyika.
That's how much of...
They were seen as people
 who are much more "Advanced."
They came with a
language, with a written
language. They came with with
literature.
They came with different kinds
of spices.
They brought with them
different kind of products that
came from India, different kind
of clothing, etcetera,
especially kikoi, the stuff that
you wear on the bottom part of
your clothes, which is
which is very, very common among
Ugandan women wearing this
kikoi, especially among Muslims.
King Mutesa towards the end of
his life, they say by 1870s,
Christian missionaries began to
arrive in Uganda.
And now he started,
shall we say, putting his eggs
in different baskets. So not
only did he welcome Muslim, but
he also welcomed Christians and
allowed them in his court,
etcetera. When he died, 
[inaudible]
began to get very difficult for
the Muslim because they
selected their own candidate
king, I think Kalemba 
or Kawemba and
the other groups wanted actually
another king, another person
to become the king.
And this also happens to be the
time when the agents of the
Imperial British East African
Company arrived, roughly, let's
say, in 1888, around 18...
And by 1890, Lord Lugard, who
plays a major role in the
affairs of Nigeria and the
conquest of the northern part of
Nigeria, who is famous for his
so-called indirect rule, which
is a cheap way of ruling
through African, you
know, civil servants at the
lower end of this
bureaucratic hierarchy.
So he entered into the fray.
And there are religious wars
that were fought in Uganda.
Religions became very, very
polarized.
And by 1890, Muslims had
been defeated.
And also the
Anglicans or the [inaudible] had
also defeated the Catholics.
And so you find that by 1900,
when the Uganda agreement was
signed, Muslims were the
biggest losers because Islam had
been on the verge of becoming a
state religion and becoming the
religion of all of Buganda
had it not been for the arrival
of the Europeans with their much
more weaponry and other kinds
of stuff, so they ended up
asserting themselves. But what
did they do?
Because they were afraid of the
potency of Islam,
they made sure of
the ten chieftainships in
Buganda, six of them were
given to the Protestants
and the Protestants by the
way, they are called Bangereza
which literally means the
English because they are
associated with the Anglicans or
the English and then the
Bafaransa, which 
means the French,
that's the Buganda were at
least at that time for
the Catholic, they were awarded
one chieftainship and then the
Muslims were given only two.
In a couple of years, Muslims
were of course stripped of
two of their three that they
were given chieftainship,
so ended up only with one.
And that has been the politics
of Uganda, that of marginalizing
Muslims because the British
were afraid of them that
they would end up creating
issues with them because of this
long fact of Muslims being
able to resist Europeans, having
their own ideas of what a
government is, having their own
Islamic universalism that they
brought just as Europeans
brought their own universalism,
and the two are competing
against each other.
So the last thing I want to
mention regarding the situation
in Uganda is that, initially in
Tanzania, it became Tanzania,
the situation of Muslims was
quite much more favourable
because the Germans established
there much of the school system
in the coastal areas and towns
of Dar es Salaam, which is not
shown on the map here in Dar es
Salaam and in Pangani and in
Tanga especially, which is not
shown
be somewhere here, Tanga and
then Lindi. And many of the
people who are trained in these
schools, though, are mostly
Muslims. So when the Germans
were sending administrators,
people who helped them in the
interior; clerks, interpreters,
they were all Muslims. And
that's how Islam managed to
penetrate into the interior.
And also the the administrative
and military headquarters was in
Tabora. And that becomes also a
sign of the fact that
Islam was seen by the Catholics
and the Protestants as 
being favoured by
the Germans. After the collapse
of the Germans during the first
end of First World War and
 the British took over the area,
the British gave free reign to
the Christian missionaries and
now the situation of Muslims
began to reverse.
Many of the schools that were
built in Tanzania were built in
the interior areas where
Muslims are not in the majority
areas, for example, around,
say, the Chaga area, the areas
for example where the
Wasukuma and the Nyakusa much
more to the areas.
And so these are the areas of
missionary activities.
And those also became the that
were producing the future civil
servants in the new era.
Many of the early politicians
in Tanzania came from the
coastal area. But in time,
because many of the educated
Tanzanian came from these
missionary schools, they took
over the reigns
of the TANU party.
And that, of course, would be
some kind of friction inside.
And to jump to to 
the present era,
it explains why to the present
day there's a lot of agitation
by some of the young Muslims
that they are not well
represented when it comes to
the institutions of government,
that when it comes to civil
servants, when it comes to jobs
that needs education. So they
want promotion of muslim
education and Nyerere 
responded to that
by taking over all the
elementary schools and
nationalizing them so that
Muslims would not feel
discriminated against.
Because as people are going to
these Western schools or
missionary schools, Muslim were
sending their kids to Quranic
schools, which did not prepare
you for this new colonial order.
You had to be able to speak
English and be able to read and
write in English. And so
Muslims were left out in all
three countries Uganda, Kenya
and Tanzania.
And that has been the basis for
Muslim political organization in
which they see themselves
marginalized. In the case of
Tanzania, they have worked out
a kind of unwritten rule, a kind
of, you know, rotation between
Muslim President, Christian
president, Muslim president.
That has happened throughout
the case of Tanzania.
In the case of Kenya, situation
hasn't been very kind to the
Muslims because of the fact
that situations tend to
favor the interior areas of
of Kenya, where
the Europeans established their
capital, not in Mombasa, because
Mombasa at the time was still
part of Zanzibar
and it was annexed or
given to Kenya during the
time of independence by the
British.
But they built in the interior
in where in Nairobi would be,
somewhere around there would be
Nairobi.
And so its interior area that
also produced many of the
politician. And so Islam was
left out in Kenya.
And in the case of Uganda, same
thing happened.
But one good thing that
happened in case of Uganda, as a
result of the British taking
over many of the Muslims,
migrants or exiles, they left
Buganda where they didn't feel
welcome anymore and they moved
to Bunyoro,
they moved to Ankole, they
moved to areas of southern part
of Uganda and they moved also
in this area.
And that's how Islam was spread
in this area due to this baganda
refugees. And they end up also
in eastern part of Uganda.
There's a second
element of Muslims who came to
Uganda from Sudan and they are
called Nubis and they are
mostly found in West Nile area.
And Nubi by the way is a
category which is not an ethnic.
It's just like saying Swahili.
You could be a Swahili and be
an Indian, could be Swahili and
be an Arab, you could be Swahili
and be an African
[inaudible] be all
sorts of stuff.
And so Nubi is more of
a social-ethnic or a social
club where if you're a Kakwa
and you're a muslim,
you're a Nubi. If you're Lugbara
and you're a muslim, you're a
Nubi. And so in the case of
Muslims, they were
discriminated against so at the
time of independence, there were
three parties. The DP Democratic
Party was the party of the
Catholics. The Kabaka Yekka
King Only was the party of the
Protestants and the UPC
Uganda People's Congress was the
party of the Protestants
outside of Buganda and also the
de facto became also
the party of the Muslims who
also ended up voting with that.
And so Muslims were very much
marginalised until Idi Amin, who
happened to be in the
army. And
the British when they entered
Uganda, they were looking for
recruits, so they use some of
the Baganda who had been trained
by the Arabs and the Swahilis
to send them to the northern
area. But also they recruited
Nubian mercenaries into the
army. And that explains why
Muslims were in large numbers in
the Ugandan army, and that
provided the platform for Idi
Amin to seize power in 1971.
And for the first time, Islam
took over in the case of Uganda.
But unfortunately, in the case
of Uganda, he was quite a... he
unleashed a reign of terror in
the case of Uganda, so that
there were a lot of
disadvantages that accrued to
them after his government fell.
Although Muslims were forced to
escape into Sudan as refugees,
many of the Nubis who came
back, they now dressed just like
any other group of Ugandans so
that they not
be singled out and be
persecuted, etcetera.
And so that was some of the
issues that were taking place
there and think I will end
and I hope that I've done
justice to the interior 
part of this region.
>> Edward Miner:
Thank you very much,
Professor Wortmann 
and Professor Chande,
you've delivered to us a lot of
information.
There are some interesting
questions posed by the audience.
One in particular, I can say,
speaks to a challenge that I
often encounter.
I encountered it in serving
undergraduates and graduates.
Well, undergraduates as a
university African studies
librarian and also now
members of the public who
come to our reading room to
learn more about Africa.
It's this kind of notion that
we grew up with in the West that
somehow a language equals a
people, equals a nation, you
know, equals a religion equals
an identity.
And yet we find not only are
these things...
Not only do these
sort of categories not line up
with each other more often than
not in sub-Saharan Africa, but
frequently you can even see
something called ethnogenesis.
It's the rise of a
kind of shared identity within a
particular socioeconomic or
sociohistorical milieu.
And that's a bit
of a challenge to
explain to many people who have
not studied African history in
depth. I wonder if each of you
could talk about your
experiences perhaps explaining
this kind of social and
historical complexity to your
students.
>> Kimberly Wortmann:
Yeah. Guess what I would say is
that identities are always
shifting and what they mean at
a particular point in time or in
a particular region, or when
one is talking to a particular
person or set of, you know, a
group of people, it shifts.
And what parts of one's
identity one wants to emphasize
at different points in time
really depends a lot on the
context. And so I think, you
know, I was talking about that
debate in the scholarship about
whether or not Waswahili are
African and indigenous to, you
know, the coastal regions and
islands of Africa and, you
know, the mainland, or they're
somehow foreign and therefore,
you know, apart from sort of a
broader African history, which
is something that, you
know, coastal peoples
themselves have emphasized their
foreignness at various points
of time.
But, you know, during sort of
the 1960s and 1970s with African
nationalist movements, there
was this, you know, emphasis on
Africanity and African identity
that was propagated by, you
know, the leaders of new
African states and political
elites, but also for those who,
you know, felt like, you know,
they were somehow excluded from
that narrative.
And so maybe historically
didn't identify as strongly as
African, you know, Swahilis.
But then, you know, in the, you
know, more contemporary period
really have embraced that
identity more.
So I think it's just important
to remember that identity is not
fixed, you know, in time, it's
not static and that it's fluid.
Identities are constantly
changing and can be influenced
by social, political and
historical circumstances.
>> Edward Miner: Dr. Chande,
would you like to respond?
>> Abdin Chande:
Oh, that's a big, big question.
I don't know where to start.
It depends where you are
to be a Swahili. Think for me
that's the ship has already
left the dock when it comes to
who is Swahili. It's now become
a kind of a redundant discussion
because Swahili is if for
example, listen to the late
President Nyerere when he was
addressing Tanzanians, he
called them, "Sisi Waswahili."
The word Swahili came to mean
to be synonymous with Tanzania.
Whereas in the case of Kenya,
it is only the people in the
coastal area and the Muslims
that you will find in Nairobi,
especially if you go to 
Eastleigh
and Majengo, if you go to areas,
for example Machakos where
Muslims are, wherever the
Muslims are, they tend to
become far more detribalized.
And this is why Europeans had a
lot of difficulties
with the so-called Swahilis
where they tend to become the
tribalized people.
If you be like my father, who
came from the town called Barawa
in Northern, they never call
themselves Swahili.
They call themselves Barawanis
after the town.
But a good example that I
can give you is in after
the coup in 1964, which
overthrew the Arab government in
Zanzibar, many of the people
who used to claim to be Arabs
suddenly in the statistics,
there are far more African than
Arabs, which means that there
was some kind of advantages to
being called an Arab
or being somebody who is not an
African. For example, in Kenya,
they had what they call the
[inaudible], for example,
in the trains, first class was
for white people, second class
was for brown people, third
class was for, of course, for
the Africans.
And so many Swahili people want
to pass off as being, 
"Non-Africans"
so they will get some certain
kind of advantages as a result
of that. But Swahili to me
is much more of a hybridity.
It's just like the way
 you speak of
somebody being an American who
is third generation, could be
an American, be a German, could
be an American, be this and be
that.
And so it depends where
you are.
I didn't speak about the
communities of Muslims that you
find, for example, in Eastern
Congo and especially in Rwanda
and Burundi. I've met some of
them and I've been to Bujumbura.
They identify completely as
Muslims, number one.
Number two, as Swahili
speakers, although they may
belong to the local ethnic
group, once they become Muslims,
the local ethnic group is left
behind, they become Swahilis.
Even among them, they speak
Swahili,
no other language. It's only
when they meet somebody who
doesn't speak Swahili, then
they speak to them in
Kinyarwanda or Kirundi.
So and then there's another 
issue that comes up.
The so-called standard Swahili
language was the creation of
Christian missionaries.
It was the spoken language of
Zanzibar, and the people called
it "Lugha ya kijinga jinga," the
language of the stupid, stupid
people. Roughly that's what it
meant, because it was not the
literary language that came
from example from Lamu or Pate.
So the number of people who are
brought from the interior, some
of them are slaves, some of
them are as migrants.
That was the language and that
was a deliberate effort by
Europeans to try and remove and
neutralize the effect of Islam.
So this new standard Swahili
is a spoken Swahili, is not
related to the literal
language. For example, the
poetry and the poems of, for
example, of Lamu or Pate
or the Kijomvi of Mombasa.
And so there are some people
who are still to the present
day, they are fighting a lost
cause to adopt another dialect
of Swahili as the standard
language, either the the dialect
of Mombasa, which is considered
to be a kind of the
central part, central Swahili
dialect, or the northern
dialect, which are considered
to be much more
difficult for other people to
understand, especially the one
that my father speaks on the
spoken in Lamu and Malindi, it's
much more difficult for people
to understand that.
But that also, I think, has
become a difficult because most
of the books that you read
today, the literature has been
produced in the standard
Swahili, and so it's very
difficult to... coming back to
Ungwana,
that is, by the way, the
Swahili that is spoken in
Congo is called Kingwana.
And that also goes back to the
fact whoever speaks Swahili was
considered to be "Civilized."
He's an urbanite.
He's a sophisticated person.
So Swahili means said a lot of
different things. In Kenya,
it means being a muslim.
It doesn't matter whether
you're from the coastal area,
from the interior. In Tanzania,
it means that at some level,
being a coastal person, but at a
more general level, every
Tanzanian is considered to be a
Swahili to such an extent that
today in some of the areas in
interior Tanzania, you find a
lot of young people from this
ethnic group, they don't speak
their local languages.
Just like, for example, second
generation Russians, second
generation Germans, they don't
speak German,
they don't speak Russian, they
speak Swahili.
So Swahili has actually taken
off in the case of Tanzania to
become a lingua franca.
And therefore, talking about
who is Swahili, who is not, has
become almost a kind of, you
know,
anachronistic kind of, you
know, discussion in I don't know
whether it is of any assistance
to the discussion.
>> Edward Miner:
Very good. And then I might also
just mention the case of Uganda,
which has always had a very
ambivalent relationship to
Kiswahili. It was the lingua
franca of the military and
people especially associated
with the maybe the King's
African Rifles, which morphed
into the, you know,
predominantly northern based
recruits into the Ugandan
military and to the
point that Baganda people in
particular from central region
regard Swahili as almost like a
linguistic mask.
It's something that a robber
puts on in order to mask his
true identity as true origins.
And so it's had a very bad
reputation, which
it's starting to rehabilitate.
But I think that my experience
is, is that whereas 20 years ago
there was some good use of
Swahili in the low rent
districts of Kampala. Luganda
has really risen, it seems like,
you know, although there
was been some ethnic tensions
within Uganda and
they're still there, but there
seems to be widespread
practical acceptance now of
Luganda as a lingua
franca across much of Uganda.
>> Abdin Chande:
I think it has to do
with the fact that the various
kinds of Ugandan government,
including the exile people like
Museveni, who took over the
reins of power, including
the previous Okello, who took
over power from Uganda. During
the time of exile,
the Ugandans were exiles in
Tanzania,
they upgraded their Swahili.
They are now very, very fluent.
So Museveni can go somewhere in
Uganda, either speaking English
or speak in Swahili. So that was
unknown before.
He speaks Swahili quite
fluently
and in fact, he got his
degree from University of Dar es
Salaam, Museveni, Teacher Okello
is the same way.
I think the reason is because
the Baganda are very proud of
their own language and they
do not want to accept
Swahili. But outside of Buganda
and lived in Jinja, which is a
area where the Basoga are, they
have absolutely no problem.
In fact, in many of the local
mosques in Jinja, they either
move from Swahili to Luganda.
Many of the some of the local
imams, they come from the
coastal area, including one of
my relatives who came from
Barawa, who was the imam of...
He didn't have to learn Luganda
or Lusoga.
All his preaching, all his
sermons they are in Swahili,
people understand it. There are
some northerners who will not
speak Luganda even if they
understand it, because they see
Luganda as a language of
domination for them.
They see it as being much more
neutral.
>> Edward Miner:
Very good.
So audience, please put your
questions in the "Q&A" box.
We have a few questions here,
but we would like to have
more of them. Here is one,
asking what was the role of
Somalis in the spread of Islam
in East Africa and across the
Indian Ocean region?
Either one of you can take
that or both.
>> Kimberly Wortmann:
Think this is more Dr. Chande's
expertise, so I'll let
him answer that one.
>> Abdin Chande:
Okay. As I was mentioning
before, the role of Somalis
in Islam is much more
relevant in the case of
Ethiopia. Because the
famous warrior, Ahmad Gragn, who
fought against the Ethiopian
armies and defeated them and
overran Ethiopia, had it not
been for the arrival of the
Portuguese who sided with their
fellow Christians and defeated
Ahmad gragn. But the process
of that fighting that took
place, they end up depopulating
much areas of central part of
Ethiopia and who moved into
those areas?
The Oromo, people that were
called Galla and the Gallas who
moved into the area, they came
into continuous contact with the
Somalis and the people of
Harari, who had been the
backbone of the army of...
they were mostly Somalis
that fought for him.
And that interaction between
the Somalis and the Oromo,
including displacing some of
the Oromo and the Oromo, some of
them ended up in the northern
part of Kenya, the area that
called Turkana. They also
entered into Islam via most of
the Somalis.
And by the way, when you go to
Mogadishu, Mogadishu did not
start as a Somali town.
The home of the Somali
is the Red Sea area
of Somalia. That area, which
overlooks, for example, Aden
overlooks Yemen. They began to
move further south and they took
all these areas from the Bantu
speakers, some of these Bantu
speakers, they are still found
there.
They're very small numbers in
the area of Juba and Shabelle
and southern parts of Somalia.
So Somalis are quite central in
the development of Islam,
especially among the Oromo
Ethiopians in particular. In East
Africa, it was mostly the
Swahilis and the Arabs who are
penetrating in the interior.
But the Somalis also played a
role, especially the people from
my father's hometown, Barawa,
who are living barawa to go to
Zanzibar and Sheikh Abdullah
Saleh Al-farsi, in his book on
the Big Scholars of Islam,
mentioned some of these scholars
who came to Zanzibar.
Some of them end up going to
the interior area.
So if you want to 
consider Barawa Somalis,
they don't usually like
to be called that because we
are Swahilis.
They were quite responsible for
bringing, for example, some
of the qadiriyya, some of the
forms of qadiriyya that you find
in Kenya, they came from
Somalia. They came from
Barawa, from where my father
comes.
So those were quite
significant.
But Sufism doesn't play
as much of a significant role in
conversion to Islam in Kenya as
it did in Tanzania.
In Tanzania, it was a game
changer, especially in places
like Bagamoyo and its interior,
where the... what do
you call it? Some of the
tariqa I forget in my mind.
Qadiriya. Qadiriya was quite central
for entrenching Islam in many
parts of Tanzania.
Somalis are now playing a major
role in the current situation in
Uganda in... especially in
Kenya because they become the
novel rich. In addition to the
interior, Africans 
Somalis who left
Somalia, they are moving into
Nairobi and buying the biggest
hotels, and they're buying land
and they're
doing a lot of missionary work
in areas of Nairobi.
And some of the preachers
you'll see in street corners
tend to be Somalis. And also
they're reaching all the way to
Uganda, where Somalis are now
debating with so-called
Christian preachers. They have
what they call Bible preachers.
These are Muslims debating
Christians on public platforms,
on the nature of Jesus.
Did Jesus... was Jesus God 
or not God?
These are debates that we find
all over East Africa that
attract a lot of attention and
have led to a lot of
conversion. Somalis are playing
a major role in
some of these debates. But in
Tanzania and Kenya, not as much
of a role outside of the
Qadiriyya order
and the Somali scholars who are
teaching future scholars who
then become the preachers.
>> Edward Miner:
Thank you so much, Dr. Chande.
I have a couple of
questions for Dr. Wortmann.
I think for the
information of our
listeners, you mentioned
the sort of Islamic
tradition that Omanis or the
Omani ruling dynasty followed,
which is Ibadi, which is
different than the main groups
that most Americans or
Westerners are familiar with,
that is the Sunni and the
Shiite.
I wonder if you might say a bit
about Ibadi Islam and, you know,
talk about how it fits in with
other groups that 
are well known.
>> Kimberly Wortmann:
Thank you for the questions.
I guess. Okay, I can start with
Ibadi Islam.
So in East Africa, Ibadism sort
of arrived through the Omani
connection, as you mentioned
Edward. And so for example, the
sultans of Oman Sayyid Saïd bin
Sultan, when he moved his
capital from Muscat to Zanzibar,
he himself was Ibadi, and
members of his court were mostly
Ibadi. He established, you
know, a court system, a legal
court system that had both
Ibadi and non-Ibadi scholars on
it. And so the majority of
Muslims in at least Kenya and
Tanzania today and also in
those regions historically were
Shafi'i Sunnis.
They belong to a Sunni school
of law, but the rulers in
Zanzibar were Ibadi.
So it's very interesting
because they were a minority
Muslim community, but they had
a lot of political power but,
you know, didn't have much
interest in imposing that on the
broader population because
they, you know, according to the
narratives, are more interested
in trade and commerce and
maintaining sort of this
cosmopolitan, harmonious sort of
society in that sense, although
one can question the limits of
that. So Ibadis are neither
Sunni nor Shia.
They're probably much
closer sort of in their law and
sort of theological beliefs to
most sort of mainstream Sunni
practices than Shia.
So historically, they
stemmed from a sort of radical
secessionist movement in the
first centuries of Islam called
the Kharijites.
And basically there was a
dispute over the caliphate in
the seventh century, and it was
fought between the cousin of
Prophet Muhammad Ali ibn Abi
Talib and the governor of Syria,
Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan.
And they fought this battle at a
place called Siffin.
And so, you know, many members
of the Prophet's family and his
supporters, you know, wanted
Ali to become the heir or
sort of or the successor of the
Prophet
and they thought he sort of
deserved that, partially because
he was so close to Prophet
Muhammad, but also because he
was from the, you know, the
bloodline of the Prophet.
So they fought this battle and
then it became obvious that the
governor of Syria was losing
the battle according to the
traditions. And so what he did
was he sent his soldiers out
onto the battlefield with
verses of the Quran on their
lances and called for
arbitration, to which Ali
agreed. So members of Ali's
ranks were, you know,
demoralized by this.
And so they broke rank with him
and became this secessionist
movement called the Kharijites.
So Ibadis are, you know, sort
of a moderate from their
perspective, offshoot of this
movement, you know, 
Kharijites were very
critical toward sort of the
Muslim powers of the time.
They excommunicated Muslims
that they believe weren't
practicing Islam according to
what they perceived 
to be the right way.
And so Ibadi said, you know,
we're much more sort of tolerant
than this group, even if we
sort of have our origins with
them. So it sort of stems from
these early disputes over
succession and these political
conflicts.
But over time, they developed
their own school of thought and
they were pretty persecuted
under the Abbasids, you know. So
the early community that of
sort of broke
away in that sense, sort of
were persecuted by the main
Muslim powers, but they created
their own learning circles, you
know, behind the scenes,
undercover and eventually sent
missionaries to the Arabian
Peninsula and so established an
imamate in Oman in the interior
of Oman.
And so Oman historically was
ruled by two powers; the Imamate,
the Ibadi Imamate on the
interior and the sultans on the
coast. And while both were
Ibadi, they didn't really get
along with each other, and
there was a lot of fighting
between sort of the coast and
the interior.
And so this is among the
reasons why the Ibadi Sultans
decided to move their capital
to Zanzibar, but also because
Zanzibar proved to be a really
great base for trade and sort of
node in the Indian Ocean trade.
You know, the islands were lush,
you know, they were good for
agriculture, but 
they also provided
access to the African interior.
And so, yeah, so this is sort
of a brief history, I guess, of
ibadism. On the surface,
Ibadism are not so different
than other Sunni groups.
They pray a little bit
differently
historically in East Africa,
they refrained from congregating
for Friday prayers because some
among them felt that because the
sultans were in power in
Zanzibar and not the imam, they
couldn't perform the Friday
prayers because this would be
disloyal to the imam in Oman.
And so that opinion has started
to change in the contemporary
period with sort of the Ibadi
revival in Zanzibar that is at
the center of my research.
There are some a few small
theological differences.
One, for example, that's a
cause of debate is, you know,
Ibadis don't believe in 
[inaudible]
or, you know, this idea
that Muslims in the afterlife
are going to come sort of face
to face with God or have a
vision of the divine.
So that's one point that
they're not generally on board
with and sometimes receive
criticism from other groups
because of that. But most of
these theological debates, yes,
in some ways the stakes are
high, but most people aren't
necessarily that aware of them.
And so Ibadis tended to kind of
blend in pretty well with other
Muslim groups in East Africa,
you know, for most of their
history and many became Sunni,
many became shafi'i.
So, for example, the Mazruis of
Oman, you know, who eventually
ruled parts of the Coast, you
know, presumably many of them
were Ibadi, but eventually
became Sunni in time.
Even during the Zanzibar
Sultanate, some scholars
converted from Ibadi Islam 
to Shafi'i Islam,
but that actually got them in
 trouble with the sultans.
So the sultans were generally
pretty tolerant, but they didn't
really necessarily like to see
those in their ranks kind of
changing sort of identity in
that sense.
>> Edward Miner: Great.
So here is one question I'd
like to put to you. A listener
says, I found it so interesting
that there was a Kanga cloth in
the beginning of the
presentation because to this day
it is used to communicate a
message.
When were they first
created by enslaved women?
How important were they in
spreading language throughout
the urban society?
>> Kimberly Wortmann:
Yeah. I don't know if they were
created by enslaved women per
se, although, you know, they
were worn widely by women who
were enslaved, but also women
who weren't enslaved.
I mean, elite women also wore
and continued to wear kangas.
But, you know, it came through
sort of the Indian textile
trade, which in, you know, the
19th century with the Industrial
Revolution, 18th, 19th
centuries in Europe and the
industrial Revolution,
eventually a lot of that textile
trade went through the UK, but
also some of these cloths,
cotton cloths came from
America, from, you know, what
is now the, you know, from the
United States.
And so what's called the Kanga
cloth was, you know, also
sometimes this cloth is called
merikani because it came from
American cotton mills.
And, you know, it's
called a leso because it's
said to have been sort of
constructed from, you know, the
Portuguese would bring these
handkerchiefs that were quite
big, but they weren't big
enough to wrap around oneself.
And so if you put together six
of those, you had basically the
length of a kanga.
And so these often had, you
know, beautiful designs and
patterns on them and some with
borders like a kanga cloth.
So there are a lot of different
influences that went into the
production of this cloth when
exactly it took on its current
form was sort of the jina
with the, you
know, the proverbs and the
messages, I'm not exactly sure.
I would say probably sometime
in the 19th century, but don't
quote me on that.
And a lot of the early kangas
had messages in Arabic script
and unfortunately, not many of
those survive today.
But in the House of Wonders
Museum, which is under
reconstruction right now in
Zanzibar, there are some
examples of that.
But just as the person who
asked the question said, they
tell a message and continue to
do so today.
So it might be a way of sliding
one's neighbor if they, you
know, did something that one
doesn't like, but also a way of
sort of showing that you love
your mother.
So there are some kangas that
say, you know, mother
is mama is a light that lights
up my life, you know.
And then there are others that
just, you know, contain broader
proverbs. So the one about the
sea, the one who only looks at
the sea is not a traveler.
So it's a rich sort of
repertoire of meanings that come
with the kangas.
And now, you know, it's the...
yeah, they continue to be really
popular all over East Africa,
you know, not just on the coast,
in the interior as well.
And there are certain varieties
and degrees of quality, you
know, of the kanga. And so
women in the region know very
well which ones are good.
And there are certain
distributors, a lot of the
makers of the kangas and
sellers of the kangas are
members of the Indian diasporas
in East Africa.
And, you know, they have their
company names on them.
So there are certain kangas
that are particularly valued,
similar to saris that women
receive in India and the Indian
subcontinent. You know, a
particular, you know, important
moments of their lives.
You know, women receive kangas
in East Africa and a similar
kind of way. And there are also
two pieces.
So a husband might give a wife
a kanga, for example, during
their wedding, kangas during
their wedding, you know, or
maybe an anniversary or on her
birthday or something like, or
when a child is born, things
like this.
Perhaps Dr. Chande has more to
say about it.
>> Abdin Chande: No, I think
you've done quite a good job.
The only thing I wanted to add
was the stuff you were
discussing regarding the Ibabis.
I think modern Ibabis would try
to dissociate themselves from
the Khawarij from many of my
friends.
They don't want to be
associated to Khawarij at all.
Regarding
the Ibadi of East Africa, I
think one of the reasons why
some of them end up becoming
Sunnis, the fact that they lost
any kind of religious
distinction from the Sunnis,
they live among the mostly
majority Sunnis.
And also, you'll find, for
example, in Uganda in Bugiri
where many of the Omanis, people
have descend from the Omani
regional group came, they
pray in the same mosques with
the Sunnis. And in fact, the
current imam of the mufti of
Oman was actually born in
Zanzibar.
And he was trained by the
famous scholar of East Africa,
Sheikh Abdullah Saleh Al-farsi,
who was himself a shafi'i and
who himself his ancestors were
Ibadi.
Just as the person who did
my field research for my PhD
thesis in Tonga, Ali Hamad
Al Bouri, they are all,
you know, Ibadi. They simply
converted to...
The other thing that I should
mention about the Ibadi is that
many of the Ibadis in North
Africa, place like Libya,
Algeria, they become Sunnis as
well.
It was they were mostly very,
very tiny group.
They end up being absorbed by
the majority Sunnis. I think
they are very, very close to
the Sunnis to such an extent
that Oman doesn't have a
Sunni or Shafi'i mufti.
If the same mufti
ask him a question, he'll give
you an answer.
If you're a Sunni, he'll give
you an answer 
from Sunni sources.
If you happen to be Ibadi, give
you from Ibadi sources.
And he's called our imam, our
our mufti by both Sunni as well
as Ibadi, I have no
issues with him.
The last thing I should
mention, going back to what Dr.
Miner was mentioning before, is
that the Swahili diaspora
includes people in Oman itself.
You go to the airport, you meet
some minister, and you start
speaking to them in English and
they say, "Watoka East Africa?"
They start speaking in Swahili
just automatically because there
are many, many Swahili
speakers. Some of my relatives
have actually married to
East African Omanis, and
they live in Oman because when
they want to marry in Oman, they
usually they are different
cultures.
They may be also tribal
discrimination.
So they usually Oman is from
East Africa,
they go back to Zanzibar or
Uganda or Kenya and they find a
bride there and then they go
back to Oman
with the... But but Swahili
is one of the languages that are
spoken in Oman is a very
important language.
>> Kimberly Wortmann: Part of 
the reason... I mean, Swahili
speaking communities have been
in the region of Oman for
centuries.
But part of the reason there's
such a rise in the 20th century
of sort of Swahili speakers is
because of the Zanzibar
revolution in 1964.
And so it's often framed as
sort of an anti-Arab,
anti-Indian revolution that
brought forth sort of the
African socialist regime
that's, you know, still
in power in Zanzibar today.
But essentially during this
period of persecution, many
Omanis or members of the Omani
diaspora in Zanzibar,
"Returned to
their ancestral homeland of
Oman." And so the then the --
>> Abdin Chande:
They came as Arabic speakers,
they went back as Swahili
speakers.
>> Kimberly Wortmann: Right.
Yeah. So they're called in Oman,
the Zanzibaris, you know, even
though some of them are not
actually from Zanzibar, some of
them are also from the
mainland, you know, but they're
Swahili speakers.
But at that time, East Africa
was, you know, Omanis in East
Africa were much better
educated than those in Oman.
And East African sort of
society was, you know, much more
modernized in a sense.
And so there were a lot of
teachers among them.
There were engineers, there
were, you know, people with all
kinds of different skills,
highly skilled individuals who
were much needed in Oman at
that time to build the modern
Omani nation state.
So many of them got jobs right
away in the government, like the
Grand Mufti himself of Oman.
Yeah, he was among those who
left during the revolution and
he was highly educated in the
Islamic sciences.
So he rose to, you know, to
prestige in Islamic studies
circles quite quickly because
of that.
But many of them also were
incorporated into the Petroleum
Development Organization, you
know, so they held high
positions as engineers, you
know, in that as well.
So they became quite well
established in Muscat anyway,
you know, and in the coastal
regions and sort of near sort of
the Sultan, yeah. So that
was among the reasons for
that. And so in the [inaudible]
just as Dr. Chande
says, it's very common in
Oman to hear Kiswahili, to hear
Urdu, to hear Hindi.
You know, it's a very sort of
Indian Ocean context.
>> Edward Miner:
Professors, thank you so much.
These are some of the resources
that the Library of Congress has
to offer to teachers or the
public or researchers that would
like to do some research on
East Africa.
We just put up 1300 historical
postcards from the late Colonial
and early... well, from
the early colonial
period, 1890 to 1930
that is in our website
at that link. We have a
collection of ephemera
pamphlets, political
manifestos, human rights
documents in the Swahili
language.
That's our Swahili pamphlet
collection.
We have a collection of
historical picture postcards
that have not yet been
digitized.
The Torrance Royer Collection
of Zanzibar Postcards,
you can come look at those on
site.
Plus, we have the world's
largest collection of historical
African newspapers and
microfilm and also in some
digital archives that we have.
So this is the end of the
program.
For any questions about this
program or about the ways
you can research East African
history or the issues
that were discussed today, just
point your browser to
ask.loc.gov and we'll get back to
you.
Thank you so much, Professor
Wortmann,
Professor Chande, that was a
brilliant conversation.