The Making of Swahili - An Approach to East African Maritime Culture -

Much has been said about the origin and development of the unique Arabo-African hybrid creations of East African coastal areas, i.e. the culture and language of the so-called Swahili peoples. But who are the Waswahili (Swahili peoples)? How did the Waswahili and Kiswahili (Swahili language) come into existence? It has always been difficult to give convincing and persuasive images for these basic questions. We could safely say that there are as many images and interpretations as scholars. Misconceptions and arbitrary proposals have always been in current even among scholarly circles all over the world. And this is not without reasons. There are no written materials by the local peoples themselves before 18th century, though the maritime community itself was first mentioned in a book, written probably in the 1st century by an Alexandrian anonymous Greek, Periplus Maris Erythrae. But after this, we can only get access to the sparse materials of the Arab historians or geographers of middle age (from 10th century onward). Written materials in European languages appeared only after the arrival of the first Portuguese to the East African littoral in 1498. The author tried once to draw a tentative but broad sketching of the Swahili culture more than 30 years ago, focusing on the origin of the language and peoples with special concerns on literary development up to the time of the late Shaaban bin Robert of the 20th century. Present article tries to reconsider Swahili classical culture against the whole background of maritime activities, remarking on the creative drifts, with special interests in language and literature, as well as on the formative elements of women and slaves in the social innovation of the traditional community. New materials of the Swahili dialectic studies of the author, from Pate island to the north and Kilwa (Kilwa Kisiwani, Kilwa Kivinje and Kilwa Masoko) to the south as well as the results of folkloric studies of the author for these 30 years are tentatively incorporated. Some parts of classic verses including Al-Inkishafi, Utendi wa Ayubu, Utendi wa Mwana Kupona, Utendi wa Tabaraka are cited with Japanese translations in order to grasp the intellectual feelings of the community. The author inclines to believe that Swahili language and peoples originated around Kilwa first and urbanized Zanzibar took later the leading role of disseminating the language, especially in oral forms. It seems that northern areas, including Lamu or Pate, influenced little linguistically to the south of Mombasa, though it started and established the written tradition. Various evidences show that Bajuni people on the Somali coast seems quite distinctive in terms of language (Kitikuu) and self identity (Bajuni, i.e. non-Swahili). They might possibly be the influential factors in the making of northern sociolinguistic cultures