East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean: Swahili Ships, Swahili Mobilities ca. 1500–1800

Vernet, Thomas

doi:10.1007/978-1-137-56624-9_9

Cited by 14 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Interconnected through a network of distinctive yet probably largely independent urban towns (Sinclair and Håkansson 2000), the various Swahili polities reached a climax of wealth and intensive building activity in stone between the 13th and 16th centuries AD, after which many towns declined (Kusimba 1999a) and were abandoned partly as a consequence of the Portuguese and other foreign powers entering the Indian Ocean and disrupting pre-existing trade and cultural dynamics (Pearson 1998;Beaujard 2012). Other towns fared rather better, however, and may have even benefitted materially from the presence of European trading partners (Vernet 2015).…”

Section: The Urban Dead and Tombs In The Swahili Urban Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pillar Tombs and the City: Creating a Sense of Shared Identity in Swahili Urban Space

Baumanová

2018

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This paper reviews published research on Swahili pillar tombs, as a specific type of tombs built of stone, by summarising records on almost fifty sites on the east coast of Africa. Dated to the 13th-16th centuries AD, the pillar tombs represented a core component of Swahili urban space. By considering their spatial setting, characteristics and comparative case studies from Africa and the Indian Ocean world, the paper reconsiders how pillar tombs might have functioned as a type of material infrastructure for creating social ties and notions of shared identity in a society that has never formally united. ________________________________________________________________ Résumé: Le présent article revoit des données de recherche publiées sur les tombes à pilier swahili, un type de tombes en pierre précis, en dressant un résumé des registres portant sur près de 50 sites de la cô te Est de l'Afrique. Datant du 13 e au 16 e siècle de notre ère, les tombes à pilier représentaient un élément fondamental de l'espace urbain de la culture swahili. En tenant compte de leur environnement spatial, leurs caractéristiques et d'études de cas comparatives provenant d'Afrique et de l'Océan Indien, l'article revoit comment ces tombes auraient pu jouer le rô le d'infrastructure matérielle permettant de créer des liens sociaux et des notions d'identité commune dans une société jamais formellement unifiée. ________________________________________________________________ Resumen: Este artículo revisa investigaciones publicadas sobre las tumbas suajili en forma de pilar, como un tipo específico de tumbas construidas de piedra, resumiendo los registros de casi cincuenta sitios de la costa oriental de Á frica. Fechadas de los siglos XIII al XVI, las tumbas en forma de pilar representaban un componente central del espacio urbano suajili. Al considerar su arreglo espacial, sus características y estudios comparativos de casos de Á frica y del mundo del Océano I´ndico, el artículo reconsidera có mo las tumbas en forma de pilar podrían haber funcionado como un tipo RESEARCH

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Section: The Urban Dead and Tombs In The Swahili Urban Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pillar Tombs and the City: Creating a Sense of Shared Identity in Swahili Urban Space

Baumanová

2018

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“…11 e East African coast is populated by Swahili-speaking people. As Vernet has explained, Swahili was the product of a fusion of cultures, a uid and porous identity in which multiple in uences converged: African, Persian, Omani, Hadhrami, South Asian and Portuguese (Vernet 2015). 12 e term 'Swahili' though is not easy to de ne; rather, it was an umbrella term to describe the people of the East African coast.…”

Section: E Governor's Palace At Ilha De Moçambiquementioning

confidence: 99%

(u)Mzantsi Classics

2022

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and Parker (2017), there are new projects in the making, such as a 'Classics in Africa: e ways forward' , a panel organised by Michael K Okyere Asante with support from the ' Ancient world, modern communities' initiative of the Society for Classical Studies; and the inauguration of a network for African Classics in 2022 hosted by Stellenbosch University's Department of Ancient Studies, which is partnering with African Minds and Liverpool University Press in publications related to African classics. To use the subtitle of Simon Goldhill's Love, Sex and Tragedy: Why Classics Matters (2005). https://classics.princeton.edu/department/news/statement-community-undergraduateconcentration. e topic ignited discussion on the Liverpool Classics list, for example.ese are racial and linguistic categories typical of apartheid classi cations. Important work is being published on diminishing linguistic diversity and its potential negative consequences in the name of science. See Cámara-Leret & Bascompte (2021) and on decolonisation see Shahjahan and Edwards (2021). For more in this regard, see Shahjahan and Edwards (2021). Katrak's article, entitled, 'Decolonizing culture: Toward a theory for postcolonial women's texts' , features this poem. ' e poem moves on to take up that sad refrain with variations: " ere was nothing le of ourselves … Feeling nothing about ourselves/ ere was nothing about us at all". Senior testi es to the denials of the histories, traditions, feelings, and culture[s] of a whole race of people' (Katrak 1989: 171). In South Africa there are 12 o cial languages, for example, making the linguistic landscape complicated.In the Luescher et al. chapter dedicated to Jerome September's university experience as a student and two-term member of the Student Representative Ccouncil at the University of Cape Town (UCT), he describes his initial experience of institutional culture at the university: 'It was a very foreign world, a very alien world. It was that stu [streaking traditions and drinking in residence during rst-year orientation], but it was also more subtle things: behaviours in the dining halls; what is appropriate and what is expected of you' (2020: 62-63). South Africa is also only just starting to get a glimpse into the adverse e ects on student mental health with the advent of the exacerbated isolation related to shelter-in-place ordinances and remote learning conditions necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In her reporting in the Daily Maverick, Victoria O'Regan o ers a link to the following PowerPoint presentation of the Higher Health and Human Sciences Research Council co-authored study: Social impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on youth in the Post School Education and Training (PSET) Sector in South Africa. e survey indicated that more than 65% of students had reported su ering some form of mild to severe psychological distress during South Africa's rst wave of coronavirus infections in 2020. Mbembe's original 'apartheid' has been substituted here as 'colonial' to make for broader application to accomm...

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“…This has been the case especially in liminal areas, such as the coasts, regions along major rivers and lakes, and on the edges of the main ecological zones that were positioned on major trade routes, such as in West Africa and the trade on the Niger, with the tropical forest zone or across the Sahara [13,14], or in the well-known state of Great Zimbabwe in southern Africa [15]. Compared with other types of urbanism with different economies, merchant towns were characterised by a greater population density and sustained an increased flow of people, offering multiple opportunities for social and material transactions [16]. The coast of East Africa is an example of such a region, encompassing the present-day countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique as well as parts of Somalia and Madagascar (Figure 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transitory Courtyards as a Feature of Sustainable Urbanism on the East African Coast

Baumanová

2022

Sustainability

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The tropical urbanism of coastal East Africa has a thousand-year-long history, making it a recognized example of sustainable urbanism. Although economically dependent on trade, the precolonial Islamic towns of the so-called Swahili coast did not feature markets or other public buildings dedicated to mercantile activities before the European colonial involvement. In this regard, Swahili urban tradition differed from other tropical Islamic cities, such as in Morocco, Mali, Egypt or the Middle East, where markets fulfilled the role of social and economic hubs and, in terms of movement, major transitory/meeting spaces in the trading towns. Yet, the Swahili urban tradition thrived for centuries as a well-connected cosmopolitan type of tropical urbanism. As research has suggested, the public role of spaces associated with trade might have been fulfilled by houses. Using approaches of space syntax and network analysis, this article studies the morphology of the houses considering whether it could have been the courtyards that simulated the role of markets thanks to their transitory spatial configuration. The results are discussed reflecting on other models of houses with courtyards, especially the modern Swahili house appearing later in the colonial era when markets began to be established, and Islamic houses known from elsewhere.

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East African Travelers and Traders in the Indian Ocean: Swahili Ships, Swahili Mobilities ca. 1500–1800

Cited by 14 publications

References 12 publications

Pillar Tombs and the City: Creating a Sense of Shared Identity in Swahili Urban Space

Pillar Tombs and the City: Creating a Sense of Shared Identity in Swahili Urban Space

(u)Mzantsi Classics

Transitory Courtyards as a Feature of Sustainable Urbanism on the East African Coast

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