Le poète swahili et sa légende. Le cas de Hemed Abdallah el-Buhry dit «Mzee Kibao»

Hemed Abdallah el-Buhry (1850-1928), known as Mzee Kibao and coming from a prestigious family of poets from Tanga, can be considered as the inventor of a new relation between poetry and reputation in the context of the German conquest of Tanganyika. The aim of this paper is to analyse how the ap¬parently anti-epic attitude of ‘reputation through non-action’ is the main narrative device of Hemed’s tenzi. This poetry of ‘prevented actions’ can be considered as an important turn in Swahili poetry in the new historical context of colonisation