The Story of Swahili by John M. Mugane (review)

For a millennium, Swahili was a coastal language, spoken by a small population in a line of towns and villages reaching from Somalia to Mozambique. Starting in the eighteenth century and climaxing in the nineteenth, trade caravans spread Swahili west away from the Tanzanian coast to the Congo and Lake Victoria, and later up into Kenya. It is not surprising that until recently, histories of Swahili were written by coastal people, Tanzanians, and foreigners. Mugane breaks this mold by being from central Kenya, and this is a different kind of history, a social history, a fresh approach. Some of the chapters are what might be expected, while others are surprises.

After chapter one announces the inspirational theme, “Swahili, A Language Alive,” chapter two, “Swahili, the Complex Language of a Cosmopolitan People,” sets out the Bantu, historical, geographical, and ecological background of the earliest small and few Swahili settlements on the coast and their contact with and openness to the outside world, while simultaneously dealing with the thorny issue of the different interpretations of what it means to be a Swahili.

Chapter three, “A Grand Smorgasbord of Borrowings and Adaptation,” lays out the various lexical roots of Swahili, first by examining the origin of some forty items in a store on Mt. Kilimanjaro, and then by considering a wider lexicon. With its Bantu lexical stock, the early community crossed East Africa to the coast, first picking up material from neighboring African communities, later from Indian Ocean communities (Arabic, Persian, Indian), and lastly from European sources (Portuguese, English). Showing the link between vocabulary and contact is an entertaining approach to social history.

Chapter four, “A Classical Era, the Peak of Swahili (Coastal) Prosperity, 1000–1500,” continues where chapter two left off. Starting with the twin motifs of the coconut palm and the sambo vessel, we learn the maritime nature of Swahili society, the arrival and spread of Islam, the infusion of ideas, goods, and culture from across the Indian Ocean, the rise of larger towns (Pate, Manda, Shanga, Gedi, Mombasa, Kilwa) and the spread of population to hundreds of smaller coastal settlements.

Bartholomew Dias’ rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 led to two centuries of Portuguese presence and attempts at domination. This is often presented as a negative period, but as chapter five, “Consolidation of a Popular Language,” explains, it also had a strong positive effect. While towns and villages were razed and the economy declined, Swahili beliefs in themselves, their society, religion, culture, and language were fortified by adversity. Unable to control the coast and faced with an increased Omani presence, the Portuguese finally withdrew to Mozambique.

Chapter six, “The Women of Swahili,” the longest chapter, is one of the unexpected features, dealing in some detail with the artistic accomplishments of “the women of Swahili” over recent centuries and their contribution to Swahili spiritual life. It covers highborn women and those of humble origins, poets and singers, historical and contemporary women, and coastal women versus those from the interior, thus marking the pivot away from Swahili as coastal to national phenomenon.

Chapter seven presents a very readable overview of the several centuries of “The (Coastal) Swahili Literary Tradition.” It covers classical Swahili poetry, along with proverbs and songs, all forms of oral verbal art, and their role in coastal life. As those who have lived on the coast will recognize, the line between this art and regular speech/prose is often blurred. The only criticism I would make of this chapter is that it omits any discussion or even mention of the traditional randa and vave (some last up to ten hours) of the northern coast, forms that probably go back longer than any other forms mentioned, but which go ignored in all accounts of coastal songs.

Even better is chapter eight, “Writing Swahili in Arabic Characters.” From the earliest times until the advent of the Roman...