East African Coastal History

Abstract

Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History. By DEREK NURSE and THOMAS J. HINNEBUSCH. Edited by THOMAS J. HINNEBUSCH, with a special addendum by GERARD PHILIPPSON. (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 121). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1993. Pp. xxxii+780. $80 (ISBN 0-520-09775-0).Shanga. The Archaeology of a Muslim Trading Community on the Coast of East Africa. By MARK HORTON. (Memoirs of the British Institute of East Africa, 14). London: The British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1996. Pp. xvi+458. £75 (ISBN 1-872-56609-x).Nurse's and Hinnebusch's Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History is the most comprehensive study yet done of Swahili history through linguistic analysis. It is an encyclopedic work representing many years of research by the authors and other scholars, and it focuses particularly on the emergence and evolution of the Swahili language. The massive and diverse evidence they marshal is, of course, almost entirely linguistic: as such they discuss four basal parameters of language relationship and change, namely lexis, morphology, phonology and tone. (The last two are treated together, and G. Philippson reviews the latter.)

When Did the Swahili Become Maritime?: A Reply to Fleisher et al. (2015), and to the Resurgence of Maritime Myopia in the Archaeology of the East African Coast

“…The paradigmatic pendulum thus swings away from the more balanced assertion that we hold of the Swahili people as largely African in origin but influenced in their development by the continent and ocean (cf. Pearson 1998;Pouwels 1999, Spear 2000Owens 2006). In short, the Swahili would not be Swahili without input, interactions, and exchanges with the people and environments of the hinterland and the sea.…”

The Geographical Extent of Azania

“…It was after 1994, when I discovered many sites of the Early Iron Age on the coast of Central Tanzania and to the islands of the Indian Ocean, that the Cushitic myth fell asunder (Chami and Msemwa1997). Many scholars, including the advocates of the Cushitic myth, changed their mind to accept that Azanians were Bantu speakers (Haaland and Msuya 2000;Horton and Middleton 2000;Pouwels 1999;Spear 2000;Sutton 1998; see also Horton and Chami 2018).…”

Violence and Vulnerability in East Africa before 1800 CE: An Agenda for Research

“…53 This long, rich, and often underutilized record of written sources -some of which have been translated and annotated as editions of Arabic and Portuguese documentary sources (and many of which contain versions of oral traditions and descriptions of violence, vulnerability, and political culture) -promises discursive texture for researchers. 54 These sources have been read into and through archaeological evidence from the coastal regions and their immediate hinterlands. 55 For the interior of the region, a similarly rich and complex body of oral tradition exists that could be reread through the grids developed from these other sources.…”