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 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 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 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 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 Political Culture of Language written by Ali AlʼAmin Mazrui and published by Global Academic Publishing. This book was released on 1999 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 Decoding Swahili Culture written by Sarah Sadian and published by . This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Little has so far been written to explain the cultural differences existing between outsiders and African societies. In "Decoding Swahili Culture" the authors attempt to bridge this gap and by providing give a deeper insight and appreciation of into the fascinating civilization located on the of the African East Coast. "Decoding Swahili Culture" offers the knowledge needed to foster understanding and mutual respect between distinct cultures which enables the reader to properly function within African society. This book, therefore, endeavors to foster understanding and the respect which equally important and valuable cultures should have for one another.
Download or read book Decoding Swahili Culture written by Sarah Sadian and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Gender Performance Identity written by Mwenda Ntarangwi and published by Africa Research and Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Performing the Nation written by Kelly Askew and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2002-07-28 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its founding in 1964, the United Republic of Tanzania has used music, dance, and other cultural productions as ways of imagining and legitimizing the new nation. Focusing on the politics surrounding Swahili musical performance, Kelly Askew demonstrates the crucial role of popular culture in Tanzania's colonial and postcolonial history. As Askew shows, the genres of ngoma (traditional dance), dansi (urban jazz), and taarab (sung Swahili poetry) have played prominent parts in official articulations of "Tanzanian National Culture" over the years. Drawing on over a decade of research, including extensive experience as a taarab and dansi performer, Askew explores the intimate relations among musical practice, political ideology, and economic change. She reveals the processes and agents involved in the creation of Tanzania's national culture, from government elites to local musicians, poets, wedding participants, and traffic police. Throughout, Askew focuses on performance itself—musical and otherwise—as key to understanding both nation-building and interpersonal power dynamics.
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.
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 Oriental Influences in Swahili written by Abdulaziz Lodhi and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 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: