Caliphate The Islamic form of government representing the political unity and leadership of the Muslim world. city-state A region controlled exclusively by a city, usually having sovereignty.
Colonialism The extension of a nation’s sovereignty over
Territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. urbanism The study of cities - their economic, political, social and cultural environment, and the imprint of all these forces on the built environment.
The many towns and hinterland communities of the Eastern African coast share broad cultural commonalities that emerged in the first millennium AD, in what came to be called Swahili civilization. The Swahili coast extended along some 2500 km, from modern Somalia to Mozambique and incorporating Kenya’s Lamu archipelago, Tanzania’s Pemba, Unguja (Zanzibar), and Mafia Islands, the Comoros Archipelago, and northwestern Madagascar. This expanse corresponds with the western edge of the monsoonal wind system, facilitating travel and communication on the coast itself and among ports along the Indian Ocean rim. The pre-Swahili history of the coast is known largely through archaeological research, augmented by rare documents and interpretations drawn from historical linguistics. In the centuries prior to the founding of Swahili settlements, the coast was home to an array of smaller-scale societies subsisting on pastoralism and mixed farming and fishing, and who shared archaeological and linguistic connections with interior peoples. The use of Urewe and Kwale ceramics in both areas exemplifies shared lifeways of coastal and interior regions in the Late Stone and Early Iron Ages.
Archaeological work at pre-/proto-Swahili sites dating to the first centuries AD, such as Unguja Ukuu in Tanzania, provides evidence of relatively small mixed farming settlements, some with impressive trade ties beyond the coast. The first written document pertaining to the coast is a merchants’ guide, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. The Periplus was written in AD 40 by a Greek sailor, who wrote of trade along the Red Sea, Eastern African, and Indian shores while on a Roman ship. He references places such as Rhapta, the Romans’ southernmost port of trade, thought to have been on the central Tanzanian coast. Rhapta is described as under the authority of the governor of Muza in the southwestern Arabian Peninsula, but subsequent historical and archaeological evidence have not confirmed this depiction. Exported goods listed included ivory and rhino horn from the interior and nautilus and turtle shell from the coast, while imports included metal implements, glass, and some foods. Another, second-century source is Ptolemy’s Geography, a Graeco-Roman compendium containing sailing coordinates for coastal locations. Both documents are consistent with archaeological evidence that some coastal Early Iron Age populations were engaged in trade and social relations with Mediterranean and Indian Ocean societies. The documentary record is then largely silent until the late first millennium, when Arab and other accounts begin.
By the sixth to tenth centuries AD, archaeological evidence reveals a distinct coastal Swahili lifeway. Its characteristics included: (1) use of Tana Tradition or Triangular Incised Ware ceramics; (2) technologies such as iron smelting and boat construction; (3) the building of mostly rectangular earth-and-thatch houses; (4) household economy based on millet agriculture, husbandry, and fishing; (5) obtaining imported goods including glazed ceramics, glassware, metal jewelry, and stone and glass beads from the Persian Gulf and beyond; and (6) conversion to Islam from the eighth century onward. Few of these traits are exclusive to the coast but the combination emerged as characteristically coastal, and ultimately Swahili. The settlement of the coast by people with this archaeological signature marks a transition from the previous mosaic of coast and interior groups, although the early Swahili maintained many cultural practices of the pastoral and farming/fishing peoples on the coast and hinterland from whom they were derived. Nearly all known Swahili settlements were on or within 20 km of the coast.
Islam grew to great importance in Swahili life. The earliest evidence to date for its practice is from the excavation of an eighth-century timber mosque at Shanga in the Lamu Archipelago. A series of mosques of increasing size and formality were subsequently superimposed. This sequence attests to contacts between proto - or early Swahili with Muslim traders or missionaries. Earlier understandings of the formation of Swahili society presumed that Arab and Persian immigrants colonized and converted coastal people for the purpose of developing trading opportunities. However, archaeological and linguistic evidence now points convincingly to the African origins of Swahili culture, while still acknowledging that some immigration and an openness to select foreign influences was fundamental to Swahili life.
By the ninth century, economic connections between Eastern Africa and the Middle East had grown in scale to include the export of thousands of slaves from the interior. The slaves were transported through coastal centers including Unguja and Pemba to destinations in modern-day Iraq where they labored on drainage projects at the head of the Gulf of Basra. In AD 868, a massive uprising, the Zanj Revolt, weakened the Caliphate based in Basra and led to a downturn in interest in slaves from Swahili sources. The revolt indicates the presence and influence of Africans in Asia at that time, but more research is needed to understand the full texture of this influence.
The spiritual transformation of the Swahili coast had sweeping effects, but these were neither uniform nor rapid. Representatives of several Islamic sects gained influence in different areas. Conversion did not eliminate but rather incorporated local spiritual practices. By c. AD 1200, however, all large Swahili settlements and many smaller ones featured stone-built mosques as centerpieces of Islamic practice and community organization.
The wealth and power of Swahili towns waxed in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, as measured by the scale and number of settlements, material culture, and expanding trade relationships to the interior and along distant Indian Ocean shores. Building in stone became the hallmark of the most elite dwellings and public and ritual structures. In the ninth century, Swahili elites adopted a method of mortared and plastered limestone construction that originated on the Red Sea shores. The resulting architecture - elaborated, multistoried, more permanent than earth and thatch - may have been critical to anchoring relationships of certain Swahili lineages with foreign traders, a practice seen ethnohistorically and which contributed to the prosperity of towns and regions at large. However, earth-and-thatch houses continued to characterize villages, and were even common within the new larger settlements marked by elite stone buildings, called ‘stonetowns’. While stone architecture became the basis of initial reconstructions of Swahili society, contemporary archaeological research is investigating the full range of Swahili houses and public buildings in town and countryside.
Many Swahili settlements have been described as urban (even ‘city-states’ or ‘states’) (see Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Urban Archaeology) marked by complex relations between centers and their surrounding regions. These centers differed in their internal class structures and political styles. Coastal regions became more distinct from one another with localized historical trajectories. The shared visual icons of Swahili stonetowns are compelling, but should not overshadow these important differences between regions along the coast.
Major stonetowns that have been investigated archaeologically include Shanga, Manda, and Gede in Kenya; Chwaka, Ras Mkumbuu, Tumbatu, and Kilwa in Tanzania; and Mahilaka in Madagascar. Certain towns created epic histories, passed down orally and ultimately formalized as written chronicles, such as those known from Pate and Kilwa. The chronicles, as well as other sources, often discuss sociopolitical relationships: the ties between Swahili and interior peoples, marriage alliances with Indian Ocean families, acts of generosity by local leaders to their populations. Life in the stonetown polities continued but with intensified farming, fishing, craft production, Islamic practice, and long-distance trade. Gold obtained from Zimbabwe Plateau (see Africa, Central: Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas) societies became a leading export from the coast, along with ivory, iron, animal products, and mangrove poles. Imports featured glazed ceramics from East, Southeast, and Southwest Asia; a range of personal items such as beads and other jewelry; cloth; and religious texts. Coins were minted in some of the largest centers. Rock crystal and other stone was worked into beads and traded, and iron and copper alloys were produced locally.
From the sixteenth century onward, the effects of European and Arab colonizers became increasingly felt. The Portuguese reached the Swahili coast for the first time in 1498. Their presence in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is known from documentary sources, and architectural remains in Mombasa, Malindi, Kilwa, and on Pemba and Unguja. The construction of Fort Jesus in Mombasa in 1593 was the most striking presence the Portuguese achieved in this period. They were defeated there in 1697 after a long siege, ending the first phase of their colonialism on the Swahili coast. Portuguese settlement and cultural impact is not well understood at present and future study is warranted. At a regional level, their aggressive intrusions in the Indian Ocean contributed to the long-term decline of Swahili autonomy and power. Sections of the Swahili coast came under attack from Omani Arabs immediately after the Portuguese were defeated, such that from 1498 onward the Swahili struggled against colonialist incursions of various scales and levels of success. Swahili urban and rural life prevailed, although disruptions in long-distance trade and losses of regional autonomy weakened the strength of the entire coast and its ties to the interior and the Indian Ocean. The Swahili coast was not united under a single political authority until the Omani Sultanate colonized it in the early nineteenth century.
See also: Africa, Central: Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Urban Archaeology.
World History
