Swahili civilization from 700 to 1500 was made up of a string of city-states along the coast of East Africa, from what is now Somalia in the north to Mozambique in the south. Arabs called its people the Zanj. Among their cities and islands were Mogadishu, Lamu, Malindi, Mombasa, Zanzibar, Kilwa and Sofala.
- Language: Swahili, written in a form of the Arabic alphabet. It is a Bantu language with many Arabic words (just as English is a Germanic language with many Latin words).
- Religion: Islam, but with elements of ancestor worship, witchcraft, spirit possession and so on from older religions. Islam spread slowly from merchants to notables to commoners. By the 1300s, Mogadishu was thoroughly Muslim.
- Economy: farming, fishing and trade:
- Exports: ivory, gold, slaves, iron, fish, cloth, cotton, pearls, myrrh, balsam, incense, ambergris, perfume, spices, dragon’s blood (resins of Dracanea schizantha and D. cinnabari), ebony, tortoiseshell, leopard skins and rhinoceros horns. Also: necklaces, spoons and plates made of shell. Slaves and gold were not big till after 1200. Exports reached as far as China.
- Imports: silk and porcelain from China, Arab and Persian pottery, cloth, spices, jewels, beads, bottles, glass, soapstone vessels, weapons.
- Money: cowrie shells, glass beads, coins of copper and silver – but not gold (not rare enough).
- Food: sorghum millet, rice, fish, yams, bananas, coconuts, tamarind. In some places, grapes and sugar cane. By the late 1400s, oranges, lemons, peas and maybe beef.
- Buildings: made of coral blocks by the 1100s, of stone by the 1300s, built in a Swahili style. Houses of commoners were built with mud walls and palm roofs.
- Clothing: made of silk or cotton embroidered with gold. Women wore earrings, bracelets and anklets made of gold, silver and precious stones.
- Furniture: mats, carpets, stools. Beds inlaid with ivory, mother of pearl, silver and gold.
- Written records: The chronicles of Lamu, Pate and Kilwa, the geography of al-Idrisi and the writings of visitors like:
- Notable visitors:
- 916: al-Masudi (Iraq)
- 1331: Ibn Battuta (Morocco)
- 1417: Zheng He (China)
- 1498: Vasco da Gama (Portugal)
Swahili civilization was created when three things came together on the east coast:
1. By 400: Indian Ocean trade, carried from the north-east by the monsoon winds from November to March (blowing back the other way from May to September).
2. By 500: The Bantu Expansion from the west.
3. After 700: The spread of Islam from the north.
Swahili civilization started in the north in what is now Somalia and northern Kenya and spread south. It was affected by Persian and Arab culture through trade, marriage and religion. It reached its height between 1300 and 1500, when Kilwa was its most powerful city, having taken over Sofala and its gold trade with Zimbabwe. By the late 1400s, Kilwa was starting to weaken from political infighting just when:
In 1498, the Portuguese arrived from the south. They came not as peaceful traders or curious travellers, but as pirates who sunk ships, robbed and burned cities, tortured helpless fishermen and killed men, women and children without mercy. The sea trade that had grown for over a thousand years was destroyed.
– Abagond, 2015.
See also:
- Kilwa
- Swahili
- Arabic
- Islam
- Ibn Battuta
- The Portuguese Empire
- Meanwhile in West Africa:
- Africa: the last 13,000 years
530
Nice overview. Swahili city-states also exported worked iron to India, an example of how the coast exported ‘raw’ and ‘manufactured goods.’
A follow up post is needed to explain what happened after 1500. The Portuguese presence on the Coast changed things but trade didn’t die. Swahili elites and the Omanis kicked the Portuguese out and there was a resurgence of trade in ivory, slaves, and Swahili poetry written down. The coast remained cosmopolitan and groups from Arabia, India, and a Europe were present. Unfortunately, European gradual dominance of the Indian Ocean did occur…
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Sorry, you did mention iron.
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Great. Keep up the good work!
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The Maa ethnic groups terrified Omani slave traders that came to the interior. The Nandi ( Nilotic speakers) never allowed foreigners on their land too. That’s why slavery on the East African coast was not as pronounced as the one on the Atlantic.
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..I am so lovin’ this, more plz!
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“Africa, as a continent, was so rich and vibrant…too bad Europeans came and screwed Africa…”
– was so rich?
Last time I looked or heard, Africa is STILL very rich on so many levels!
The only impoverishment I’m aware of is a diminishing mental (colonized thinking) nature in African peoples, everywhere.
That is Africans in the Motherland are hopefully moving toward disallowing outsiders (Europeans, Americans, Asians and others) access, manipulation and control of their natural resources/wealth.
Villagewriter? Do you have any specific thoughts you’d like to share with us about this?
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@Fan
I agree most Africans have colonized minds but we are waking up. Abagond is waking us up; the internet is opening our eyes to how the world actually views us. I am excited for the future.
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@ Fan
For all the struggles, at least of my knowledge of available information, it’s time Africa took back its reigns as a continent. All the oil and gemstones (particularly blood diamonds) taken for less than $20 USD or for a 1000s of rounds of AK rebel ammunition just to kill other… It’s beyond sad.
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Abagond, thank you for this rich summary of the Swahili culture and history.
I first became aware of the predations of the Portuguese on Africa’s eastern shores when I came across a video series called Africa narrated by historian,
Basil Davidson.
In one episode, Davidson described an attack on a East African coastal trading city by Henry the Navigator’s navy. The Portuguese marauders landed on the docks of the city in broad daylight, slashing, hacking and impaling every city resident visible on the streets and later in their homes. They later swept through the city to loot and burn and gather the survivors to sell as slaves.
Two things struck me about Davidson’s telling of the attack:
1. The city residents possessed an urban culture so sophisticated that they had indoor plumbing with flushing toilets and showers.
2. Henry the Navigator had washed ashore in that city years earlier, sick and wounded. The people of the city had taken him in tended his wounds and treated him as a guest.
That 8 or 10 part series is now out of print. Awful recordings can be found on Youtube, in no particular order. The first episode can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po1RGmzfnNY
The entire series is quite an eye opener. My first viewing of the series was the first time I’d seen the people of the African continent presented as full human beings with genius, science, medicine and history. I then understood why African history is “disappeared” in Western curriculums and why current affairs in Africa are shrouded in simplistic (and false) narratives.
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@ talibmensah
I hope to do posts on the Bantu Expansion and Swahili civilization after 1500.
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@Afrofem :Appreciate your post that gives me something to study and learn.
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@Afrofem: I did a google search and i saw i could see the dvd at my public library
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@ Afrofem
I have Davidson’s book on the lost cities of Africa. The last paragraph of the post comes mainly from that book.
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@Abagond which Basil Davidson book i see that he has three The Lost Cities of Africa, The African Slave Trade.
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The third book Africa in History Basil Davidson and Cheik Anta Diop: The African Origin of Civilization
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I am also interested in Reclaiming African History Jacques Depelchin.
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How crazy i have African Kingdoms Great Ages of Man right here in my lap. I purchased this last year. By Basil Davidson what a coincidence.
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@Mary Burrell
If you are lucky enough to find the entire series, you will find them fascinating.
It was through that series that I learned about the Great Zimbabwe fortress, cataract surgery in Timbuktu (in the 1300’s) and the Eastern Africans trading with the Chinese. Very educational.
@Abagond
I will have to read Davidson’s books. I found the Africa video series in the travel section (of all places) of Block Busters Video in the mid-1990’s.
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Learning who the Portuguese were and how brutal they were to the Africans. Evil and destructive and murderers.
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@Mary Burrell
Our friends talibmensah and Kartoffel would say don’t waste your time on that “Afrocentrist rubbish.” Those books are not “reputable” or “trustworthy” because they aren’t “university published” or “peer-reviewed.”
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My ancestress was brought to the States on a Portuguese slave ship in the 1790s’.
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@Mary Burrell
All of the European invaders behaved in the same way toward the people they encountered in their travels. Brutality, theft, rape and murder were standard operating procedure. I believe that is why Europeans describe other people as “primitive, “savage” and “uncivilized”. They are engaging in classic psychological projection—projecting onto others what they don’t want to acknowledge in themselves.
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@Herneith
How far back were you able to track your ancestress? Do you know what ethnic group/tribe she belonged to?
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@ Mary
“The Lost Cities of Africa” (1987), Revised Edition, by Basil Davidson.
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Hi Afrofem. Every two years the Canadian and American sides of the family, have reunions, alternating between the States and Canada(next year it is in Toronto). Heris an extract from an article from a family reunion which took place in Hamilton, Ontario. Some family members had thewir DNA tested:
DNA is an interesting thing; it can provide a lot of information that makes you smile, and some that might make you uncomfortable. For Michelle Kourouma, one of the Holland “cousins,” DNA testing led to some surprising results.
Paternal and maternal testing was done by African Ancestry Inc., which has one of the largest African lineage databases in the world.
“Eagerly looking forward to African ancestry results, we were more than a bit disappointed when the Holland genetic ancestry came back European, matching 100 per cent with people living in Portugal and Spain,” she writes in an email.
According to the paternal testing, the Hollands inherited a segment of European DNA that was passed on consistently from father to son.
However, Kourouma writes, African results are move prevalent among female family members because the test is done on the X chromosome, which contains mitochondria, as opposed to testing the male Y chromosome.
Those maternal tests results came back matching those from Guinea-Bissau (on the far east coast of Africa), and Bioko Island, off the coast of Equatorial Guinea.
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2012/07/13/from_slavery_in_maryland_to_freedom_in_canada.html
I am also descended fro Black veterans of the War of 1812, who were given land in Oro County, Ontario. My grandmother was born on her grandparents farm.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/in-1812-black-canadians-fought-for-their-freedom/article8982937/
Anyways, this is off topic.
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@resw77: LoL, I thought they are thinking that as well. ☺️
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@Herneith
Off topic or not, thanks for the info. Perhaps I should consider testing with African Ancestry, Inc.
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Ok. I didn’t know Somalia was part of the Swahili civilisation. Good to know.
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And according to my Portuguese friends (both ‘black’), Portuguese are still rowdy and criminal-minded. Don’t think I’ll be going there.
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Really pisses me off every (or what it seems to be) civilisation was somewhere destroyed by European INVADERS its ridiculous how so many civilisations they have ruined.
And then they impose their ideology on all of us.
http://uncoveringwhitesupremacyideology.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/introduction-of-white-supremacy-ideology.html
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North of Swahili civilization was Somali civilization. I just read how they managed to sail the Indian ocean, trade with Asia at profit for over a thousand years with no written language. They even managed to destroy a Portuguese fleet with the help of the Ottomans during the Ajuran Sultanate, which lasted from the 13th to the 17th century. This civilization merits a post of its own.
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