Description
The Swahili World presents the fascinating story of a major world civilization, exploring the archaeology, history, linguistics, and anthropology of the Indian Ocean coast of Africa. It covers a 1,500-year sweep of history, from the first settlement of the coast to the complex urban tradition found there today. Swahili towns contain monumental palaces, tombs, and mosques, set among more humble houses; they were home to fishers, farmers, traders, and specialists of many kinds. The towns have been Muslim since perhaps the eighth century CE, participating in international networks connecting people around the Indian Ocean rim and beyond. Successive colonial regimes have helped shape modern Swahili society, which has incorporated such influences into the region窶冱 long-standing cosmopolitan tradition.
This is the first volume to explore the Swahili in chronological perspective. Each chapter offers a unique wealth of detail on an aspect of the region窶冱 past, written by the leading scholars on the subject. The result is a book that allows both specialist and non-specialist readers to explore the diversity of the Swahili tradition, how Swahili society has changed over time, as well as how our understandings of the region have shifted since Swahili studies first began.
Scholars of the African continent will find the most nuanced and detailed consideration of Swahili culture, language and history ever produced. For readers unfamiliar with the region or the people involved, the chapters here provide an ideal introduction to a new and wonderful geography, at the interface of Africa and the Indian Ocean world, and among a people whose culture remains one of Africa窶冱 most distinctive achievements.
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Maps
Preface
Note on Terminology
Contributors
1. The Swahili world
Section I: Environment, background, and Swahili historiography
2. The eastern African coastal landscape
3. Resources of the ocean fringe and the archaeology of the medieval Swahili
4. The eastern African coast: researching its history and archaeology
5. Defining the Swahili
6. Decoding Swahili genetic ancestry
7. Early connections
8. The Swahili language and its early history
9. Swahili origins
10. Swahili oral traditions and chronicles
11. Manda
12. Tumbe, Kimimba and Bandari Kuu
13. Unguja Ukuu
14. Chibuene
15. Urbanism
16. Town and village
17. Mambrui and Malindi
18. Shanga
19. Gede
20. Mtwapa
21. Pemba
22. Zanzibar
23. Mafia
24. Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara
25. Mikindani and the southern coast
26. The Comoros and their early history
27. The Comoros 1000 - 1350 CE
28. Mahilaka
29. The social composition of Swahili society
30. Metalworking on Swahili sites
31. Craft and industry
32. Animals in the Swahili world
33. Plant use and the creation of anthropogenic landscapes: coastal forestry and farming
34. The progressive integration of eastern Africa into an Afro-Eurasian world-system, first-fifteenth centuries CE
35. Eastern Africa and the dhow trade
36. Early inland entanglement in the Swahili world, c. 750-1550 CE
37. Mosaics and interconnectivity
38. Links with India
39.Links with China
40. Currencies of the Swahili world
41. Glass beads and Indian Ocean trade
42. Quantitative evidence for early long-distance exchange in eastern Africa: the consumption volume of ceramic imports
43. Islamic architecture of the Swahili coast
44. Swahili houses
45. Navigating the early modern world: Swahili polities and the continental-oceanic interface
46. Zanzibar old town
47. The Kilwa 窶� Nyasa caravan route: the long-neglected trading corridor in southern Tanzania
48. Islam in the Swahili world: Connected authorities
49. The legacy of slavery on the Swahili coast
50. Life in Swahili villages
51. The modern life of Swahili stonetowns
52. Identity and belonging on the contemporary Swahili coast: the case of Lamu
53. Pate
54. Mombasa
55. The Swahili house: a historical ethnography of modernity
56. The future of Swahili monuments
