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Postscript on the writings of Mtoro Bakari The riddles are already done, and the stories are finished, and the fables are completed. Don’t ask for more. […] You got the things through your tricks. You never met any objection. Every word was well discussed, and all the powers as well. […] Formerly we were fools. Our wisdom was superficial. But if people were not fools, We wouldn’t have been dehumanized. […] Wake up, those who have slept, and don’t sleep anymore! Poem for the Europeans, collected by Carl Velten from an unknown author before 1907 The works of Mtoro Bakari are widely seen as outstanding examples of nineteenth century Swahili literature reflecting important aspects of the culture and society of the East African littoral at the end of the precolonial period. This view will not be challenged here. However, it should be kept in mind that, in actual fact, they were produced at the very beginning of the twentieth century, not in East Africa, but within the social and intellectual environment of a European metropolis. Mtoro Bakari evidently worked on them while becoming acquainted with life in Berlin and improving his German language proficiency. At the same time he began to learn more about the views and interests of German scholars as well as the thinking of prospective readers of his texts. It seems that he composed them in connection with his teaching practice and, after writing them down, made use of existing Swahili stories and of his own accounts of Swahili society and culture in his courses and talks. In general, he frankly discussed both positive and negative aspects while, unsurprisingly in the context of colonialism, he was repeatedly put in a position where he had to defend his culture and religion. To date, Mtoro Bakari is mainly known as the compiler and author of the Desturi za Wasuaheli, a classic of Swahili prose first published in 1903, as well as of two articles included in the Safari za Wasuaheli, a collection of travel accounts edited by Carl Velten in 1901. These writings only became available to a broader readership after being translated into English. In 1965 Lyndon Harries, professor of the Swahili language and literature at the University of Wisconsin, published selected chapters of the Desturi plus two travel accounts from the Safari (the latter were not written by Mtoro Bakari) in a bilingual The writings of Mtoro Bakari 111 edition. According to the introduction of his book, these texts “are remarkably free of European influence, and provide a unique record of Swahili life in Mrima Country [i.e. on the East African coast] towards the end of the nineteenth century.” In reality, Lyndon Harries re-composed and summarized the Swahili original with the apparent intention of using them for teaching purposes. By reducing information concerning their respective production contexts, such as place names and personal names, and leaving out the autobiographical passages of Mtoro Bakari, he tended to separate the texts from their concrete history and indigenize them.1 An adequate translation of the Desturi with numerous comments appeared in 1981 in remembrance of John W.T. Allen, comprising the main text plus selected chapters from the original appendix dealing with Islamic law and related local practices. In the preface Noel King commended Mtoro Bakari’s literary contribution and Carl Velten’s pioneering work but was not afraid to criticize the latter for publishing these texts under his own name, although he only edited and translated them.2 In fact, however, the English edition itself is not consistent in respect to clarifying original authorship. Although Carl Velten clearly noted that the author of the appendix is Mbaraka bin Shomari, the English edition only mentions him in a footnote. The table of contents might well have assigned the main text to Mtoro Bakari who indeed wrote it – but partly made use of contributions of unknown Swahili authors reportedly provided by Carl Velten. Finally, the editors left out 3 of the 294 pages of the main text, on the grounds that more adequate summaries of Islamic divorce practices are already published elsewhere.3 As an example, this section includes a real or fictional letter of divorce to Masiti binti Mwinyi Bakari, apparently a sister of Mtoro Bakari. Noel King celebrated the Desturi “for being one of the earliest African works to become widely accessible in a European language” and having “a considerable influence in Africa, the Western world, and European empires in Asia and the Pacific”. Moreover, he asserted...

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