Download or read book Swahili Culture and the Nature of East Coast Settlement written by J. de V. Allen and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Swahili Origins written by J. de V. Allen and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kiswahili has become the lingua franca of eastern Africa. Yet there can be few historic peoples whose identity is as elusive as that of the Swahili. Some have described themselves as Arabs, as Persians or even, in one place, as Portuguese. It is doubtful whether, even today, most of the people about whom this book is written would unhesitatingly and in all contexts accept the name Swahili. This book was central to the thought and lifework of the late James de Vere Allen. It is his major study of the origin of the Swahili and of their cultural identity. He focuses on how the African element in their cultural patrimony was first modified by Islam and later changed until many Swahili themselves lost sight of it. They share a language and they share a culture. Their territory stretches from the coast of southern Somalia to the Lamu archipelago in Kenya, to the Rovuma River in modern Mozambique and out into the islands of the Indian Ocean. But they lack a shared historical experience. James de Vere Allen, in this study of contentious originality, set out to give modern Swahili evidence of their shared history during a period of eight centuries.
Download or read book The Swahili written by Derek Nurse and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2017-06-10 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As an introduction to how the history of an African society can be reconstructed from largely nonliterate sources, and to the Swahili in particular, . . . a model work."—International Journal of African Historical Studies
Download or read book The Swahili World written by Stephanie Wynne-Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-16 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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’s 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’s 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’s most distinctive achievements.
Download or read book Swahili People and Their Language written by Dainess Mashiku Maganda and published by Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd. This book was released on 2014-03-22 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History is a testament to what happened to a people or a place. It shows how things were and their transformation while explaining why the changes happened. Not only does history allow human beings to trace their trajectory in dealing with specific issues they face in the affairs of making a living, it also highlights movements between people around the world while showing their role in creating systems still in place today. History reveals to us major contributors of the trading systems along the east coast of Africa, documenting the role of the Swahili people and their interactions with different people of the world.The Swahili People and Their Language discusses ways in which the Swahili people came to occupy a prominent position in the world's trading system and how they lost their wealth through their contact with the outside world. The book highlights the strategic position occupied by the Swahili people, their natural resources, their skills and their rich cultural mix and how the contact with the outside world played a major influence that is clearly noticeable to date. The book contributes to the on-going discussion about Africans and their participation in today's development and reminds readers that the creation of the current economic, social and political situation of the Swahili people mirrors the history and positioning of many other formerly independent societies that became colonized nation-states. The authors provide discussions that shade light on critical questions such as: Who are the Swahili people and why are they important? Is there such a thing as a Swahili Civilization? If so, what is it and how does it relate to modern civilization? What place does the Swahili language occupy both in its history and usage on the continent and in the rest of the world?
Download or read book Swahili Culture written by Jan Knappert and published by Edwin Mellen Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two-volume book is a series of essays on the culture of the people who live on the east coast of Africa between the border of Somalia in the north and the Mozambique border in the south. The term 'culture' is to be taken in the widest sense. It includes ways of earning a livelihood, pastimes, sailing and other occupations as well as religion. Obviously not all aspects of culture could be represented in this work, which is the fruit of a lifetime of study. Every chapter in this work is the fruit of the author's own investigation of the East African coastal culture. Students of African Studies and advanced anthropology who read these essays will benefit from this work
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Swahili States written by Chapurukha Makokha Kusimba and published by Altamira Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Swahili civilization was a fascinating and complex system_a group of advanced cultures with large economic networks, international maritime trade, and urban sophistication. This book documents the growth of Swahili civilization on the eastern coast of Africa, from 100 B.C. to the time of European colonialism in the sixteenth century. Using archaeological, anthropological, and historical information, Chapurukha M. Kusimba describes the origins of this unique and powerful culture, including its Islamic components, architecture, language, and trading systems. Incorporating the results of his own surveys and excavations, Kusimba provides us with a remarkable African-derived study of the rise and collapse of societies on the Swahili Coast.
Download or read book The Swahili Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast Arabs Shirazi and Swahili written by A. H. J. Prins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-02-10 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Routledge is proud to be re-issuing this landmark series in association with the International African Institute. The series, published between 1950 and 1977, brings together a wealth of previously un-co-ordinated material on the ethnic groupings and social conditions of African peoples. Concise, critical and (for its time) accurate, the Ethnographic Survey contains sections as follows: Physical Environment Linguistic Data Demography History & Traditions of Origin Nomenclature Grouping Cultural Features: Religion, Witchcraft, Birth, Initiation, Burial Social & Political Organization: Kinship, Marriage, Inheritance, Slavery, Land Tenure, Warfare & Justice Economy & Trade Domestic Architecture Each of the 50 volumes will be available to buy individually, and these are organized into regional sub-groups: East Central Africa, North-Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, West Central Africa, Western Africa, and Central Africa Belgian Congo. The volumes are supplemented with maps, available to view on routledge.com or available as a pdf from the publishers.
Download or read book Knowledge Renewal and Religion written by Kjersti Larsen and published by Nordic Africa Inst. This book was released on 2009 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Societies on the East African coast and of Swahili culture resist simplistic definition as well as the imposition of clear boundaries. Hence Swahili society and culture have a common mooring, and this book studies specificity in space and time within a broader comparative framework. This book examines how ongoing processes †ideological and material †affect relations within and between societies. The authors all provide ways to understand transformation in Swahili society, and how these are interlinked with ongoing political and economic processes, in East Africa as well as in the wider global context.
Download or read book African Merchants of the Indian Ocean written by John Middleton and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2003-11-07 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new monograph serves as an authoritative introduction to an unusual people of eastern Africa known as Swahili. Middleton, who has known these people for a half a century, describes their highly stratified, merchant society and civilization, documenting their importance both for anthropologists and for others interested in Africa. Swahili continue today their centuries-old role as merchants in long-distance international trade, a role that has led them to form a society very distinct from any other in Africa. Middletons brief, personal treatment discusses Swahili recorded history as an integral part of their rich tradition and civilization. He clears up past confusions and mistaken assumptions without trying to define a single Swahili identity. His lucid approach unravels contradictions about Swahili being merchants and yet fishermen, who live in both cities as well as small villages, and who reckon various kinds of kinship and marriage. Swahili are often considered by non-Swahili as being both Africans and Arabs, but Middleton shows that they remain African despite having long adopted Islam and many aspects of Arab and Asian cultures.
Download or read book Societies Religion and History written by Rhonda M. Gonzales and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars often equate a Swahili presence with the moment history began on the Tanzanian central coast. In this book, Rhonda M. Gonzales proposes an altogether different and more comprehensive narrative. Societies, Religion, and History is the first study to apply historical linguistic methods to the Bantu-speaking peoples of the coastal and interior regions of central east Tanzania, individuals and communities who later became part of the Swahili world. The Seuta and Ruvu Bantu societies were entrenched along the coast and interior of Tanzania for centuries before Swahili-speaking populations expanded their towns and settlements southward along the East African coastline. Making use of historical linguistics, the findings of cutting-edge archaeologists, ethnographic sources, and her own extensive field research, Gonzales unfolds a historical panorama of thriving societies engaged in vibrant cross-cultural exchange and prosperous regional and transoceanic networks. According to Gonzales, scholars need to integrate these communities into their stories if they are to compose a full and satisfying history of central eastern Tanzania. Recovering this history requires close attention to the happenings of the interior, often misleadingly referred to--and treated--as hinterland. Toward that end, Gonzales combines a challenging range of historical resources to build a long-term history of the social, cultural, and religious beliefs and practices of the region as they have developed over the past 2,000 years.
Download or read book Making Ancient Cities written by Andrew T. Creekmore, III and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-28 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume investigates how the structure and use of space developed and changed in cities, and examines the role of different societal groups in shaping urbanism. Culturally and chronologically diverse case studies provide a basis to examine recent theoretical and methodological shifts in the archaeology of ancient cities. The book's primary goal is to examine how ancient cities were made by the people who lived in them. The authors argue that there is a mutually constituting relationship between urban form and the actions and interactions of a plurality of individuals, groups, and institutions, each with their own motivations and identities. Space is therefore socially produced as these agents operate in multiple spheres.
Download or read book The Worlds of the Indian Ocean written by Philippe Beaujard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-24 with total page 946 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe's place in history is re-assessed in this first comprehensive history of the ancient world, centering on the Indian Ocean and its role in pre-modern globalization. Philippe Beaujard presents an ambitious and comprehensive global history of the Indian Ocean world, from the earliest state formations to 1500 CE. Supported by a wealth of empirical data, full color maps, plates, and figures, he shows how Asia and Africa dominated the economic and cultural landscape and the flow of ideas in the pre-modern world. This led to a trans-regional division of labor and an Afro-Eurasian world economy. Beaujard questions the origins of capitalism and hints at how this world-system may evolve in the future. The result is a reorienting of world history, taking the Indian Ocean, rather than Europe, as the point of departure. Volume I provides in-depth coverage of the period from the fourth millennium BCE to the sixth century CE.
Download or read book Making Identity on the Swahili Coast written by Steven Fabian and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-07 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A re-examination of the historical development of urban identity and community along the Swahili Coast.
Download or read book The Global Worlds of the Swahili written by Roman Loimeier and published by Lit Verlag. This book was released on 2006 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This multidisciplinary volume challenges established ideas about "the world of the Swahili," proposing a perspective that highlights the transitory, shifting, and plural character of East African coastal societies, worldviews, and identities. The contributors give inside accounts of the broad spectrum of local perceptions of the world in the wider Swahili context. They demonstrate how these perceptions have been shaped by the interconnections of the East African coast with other geographical spaces and cultural spheres (especially Arabia, the Indian Ocean, and Europe). Offering new insights into the interaction of local culture, Islam, colonialism, the postcolony, and globalization, the volume shows that the "Swahili" belong to many worlds and continue to cultivate the interfaces between these worlds. The book is the outcome of several years of collaborative research, academic meetings, and individual paper presentations coordinated by the editors under the umbrella of the Collaborativ
Download or read book Plundering Africa s Past written by Peter Ridgway Schmidt and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1996-08-22 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An important book at a time when the booming illicit trade in African antiquities and the despoiling of some of the continent's prime archeological sites generate little concern in the art world." --Foreign Affairs "This benchmark publication challenges all of us to be part of the solution. Plundering Africa's Past cannot help but raise the level of discourse and consciousness about the looting problem, what needs to be done to stop it and about the relationship between Africa and the West." --African Studies Review "Plundering Africa's Past should be required reading for all archaeologists, historians, art historians, museum curators, and government officials involved in the cultural heritages of Africa, as well as most countries and continents with a disappearing past." --H-Net Book Review African government and museum officials, members of international agencies, academics, and journalists examine why the African past is disappearing at a rate perhaps unmatched in any other part of the world. Each looks at the international network of looting and trafficking from a different perspective. Here, for the first time, is a frank indictment of African contributions to the problem--voiced by the distinguished African essayists. The book concludes with a discussion of specific steps that could halt the disappearance of Africa's art and antiquities.
Download or read book The World of the Swahili written by John Middleton and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Swahili of East Africa have a long and distinctive history as a literate, Muslim, urban, and mercantile society. This book presents an anthropological account of the Swahili and offers an original analysis of their little-understood and unusual culture.
