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.
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 World on the Horizon written by Prita Meier and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The multiauthored book accompanying the World on the Horizon exhibition organized by Krannert Art Museum is the first interdisciplinary study of Swahili visual arts and their historically deep and enduring connections to eastern and central Africa, the port towns of the western Indian Ocean, Europe, and the United States. At once exhibition catalogue and scholarly inquiry, the publication features eighteen essays in a mix of formats - personal reflections, object biographies, as well as more in-depth critical treatments - and includes never before published images of works from the National Museums of Kenya and Bait Al Zubair Museum in Oman. By approaching the east African coast as a vibrant arena of global cultural convergence, these essays offer compelling new perspectives on the situated yet mobile and deeply networked social lives of Swahili objects. Moving between the broader structural relations of political economic change to more intimate narratives through which such change is experienced, the essays throw light on the ways in which the material fabric of the arts structure Swahili people's sense of self and community in an ever-changing world of oceanic and terrestrial movement.
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 The Story of Swahili written by John M. Mugane and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swahili was once an obscure dialect of an East African Bantu language. Today more than one hundred million people use it: Swahili is to eastern and central Africa what English is to the world. From its embrace in the 1960s by the black freedom movement in the United States to its adoption in 2004 as the African Union’s official language, Swahili has become a truly international language. How this came about and why, of all African languages, it happened only to Swahili is the story that John M. Mugane sets out to explore. The remarkable adaptability of Swahili has allowed Africans and others to tailor the language to their needs, extending its influence far beyond its place of origin. Its symbolic as well as its practical power has evolved from its status as a language of contact among diverse cultures, even as it embodies the history of communities in eastern and central Africa and throughout the Indian Ocean world. The Story of Swahili calls for a reevaluation of the widespread assumption that cultural superiority, military conquest, and economic dominance determine a language’s prosperity. This sweeping history gives a vibrant, living language its due, highlighting its nimbleness from its beginnings to its place today in the fast-changing world of global communication.
Download or read book The Swahili written by Mark Horton and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2001-03-05 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wide-ranging volume integrates documentary sources and contemporary archaeological evidence to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date account of Swahili history, anthropology, language and culture.
Download or read book Unaitwaje written by Sharifa Zawawi and published by Africa Research and Publications. This book was released on 1993 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal names used by the Waswahili people and their meaning
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 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 Swahili Chic written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this illustrated book, world traveller and style expert Bibi Jordan introduces Swahili style, a school of design, architecture and graceful living that instils a sense of simplicity, sensuality and spirituality into any interior.
Download or read book Contemporary Issues in Swahili Ethnography written by Iain Walker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-11 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term ‘Swahili’ describes the Muslim peoples of the East African coast, speakers of Kiswahili or closely related languages, who have historically filled roles as middlemen and merchants, the cosmopolitan products of a trading economy between Africa and the Indian Ocean world. This collection brings together anthropologists working on the greater Swahili world and the issues it confronts, dealing with societies from southern Somalia, northern Mozambique and the Comoro Islands, to Zanzibar and Mafia. The authors discuss a range of contemporary issues such as the shifting roles of Islam on the mainland coast; consumerism, conservation, memory and belonging in Zanzibar; how a Muslim society deals with HIV/AIDS; social change, development and political strategies in the Comoros; and Swahili women in London. The diversity of these themes reflects the diversity of the Swahili world itself: despite a cohesive cultural identity built upon shared practices, religious beliefs and language, the challenges facing Swahili people are multiple and complex. This book comprises articles originally published in the Journal of Eastern African Studies along with some new chapters.
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 Novel written by Xavier Garnier and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2013 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than fifty years a dynamic modern literature has been developing in the Kiswahili language. The political weight that Kiswahili carries as the emerging national and pan-national language of many East African countries places this literature, much of it in the form of novels, at the centre of heated literary debates on the social function of literature in the context of rapid global social change. Garnier provides new insights into the Swahili novel form with all its vibrancy and capacity for experimentation. Its obsession with social issues relates to larger, all-pervasive political debates running through East Africa: in its press, its streets, its public and private places. The novels both record and provoke these debates. Based on the study of more than 175 Swahili novels by almost 100 authors, Garnier brings to light a body of work much neglected by African literary critics, but which looks outwards to the wider world. Xavier Garnier teaches African Literature at the Universit Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle and is former director of the Centre d'Etudes des Nouveaux Espaces Litt raires, Universit Paris 13.
Download or read book Swahili State and Society written by Ali AlʼAmin Mazrui and published by East African Publishers. This book was released on 1995 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text examines the social and political impact of the Swahili language.
Download or read book Jambo Means Hello written by Muriel L. Feelings and published by . This book was released on 2011-05 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces the reader to words in Swahili, the language spoken across more of Africa than any other language. Author Muriel Feelings states in her introduction: żThere is a Swahili proverb that says: 'Haba na haba hujaza kibabaż: Little by little fills the measure. It is hoped that through this introduction to Swahili, children of African ancestry will seek to learn more little by littleż, through available books, people, and travel.ż In fact, children of any ancestry will also enjoy learning the Swahili words presented here. Tom Feelingsż sepia-toned illustrations of life in Africa are subtle yet luminous. Includes a map of the continent of Africa, showing countries where Swahili is spoken. żA lyrical song of Swahili life.ż żSuperbly beautiful.ż A Caldecott Honor Book.
Download or read book Swahili Muslim Publics and Postcolonial Experience written by Kai Kresse and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swahili Muslim Publics and Postcolonial Experience is an exploration of the ideas and public discussions that have shaped and defined the experience of Kenyan coastal Muslims. Focusing on Kenyan postcolonial history, Kai Kresse isolates the ideas that coastal Muslims have used to separate themselves from their "upcountry Christian" countrymen. Kresse looks back to key moments and key texts—pamphlets, newspapers, lectures, speeches, radio discussions—as a way to map out the postcolonial experience and how it is negotiated in the coastal Muslim community. On one level, this is a historical ethnography of how and why the content of public discussion matters so much to communities at particular points in time. Kresse shows how intellectual practices can lead to a regional understanding of the world and society. On another level, this ethnography of the postcolonial experience also reveals dimensions of intellectual practice in religious communities and thus provides an alternative model that offers a non-Western way to understand regional conceptual frameworks and intellectual practice.
Download or read book The Way the World Is written by Marc J. Swartz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-09-23 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marc Swartz takes us for the first time into the homes and neighborhoods of the Swahili in the East African port of Mombasa. At the same time he develops a new model for the operation and transmission of culture. In asking how cultural elements influence the social behavior of those who do not share them as well as of those who do, Swartz points to the mediation of status. The many types of status available to individuals provide guidelines that help explain, for example, why the broadly shared elements of Swahili culture (Islamic religion or the nuclear family) do not alone translate into behavior. The Way the World Is demonstrates in a highly original way how culture "works." This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.
