History of Africa

...

Historians argue that Shanga is where the origins of the Swahili people came from in that they had occupied the area for generations before any civilization came about. According to Shanga informants there were three mosques built in the area which faced Mecca from the tenth to the fourteenth century. The Swahili people had existed during that time and also followed Islam as a religion which indicated that they were their own civilization which had similarities to the Arab population who came about after that. Historians had discovered hut settlements which indicated that the Swahili had lived there before the Arabs came which also showed that they existed and were not due to Arab civilization. The brotherhood formed by the mixing of blood between the Arabs and Africans to ensure peace was a way in which Arabs took over certain areas of Shanga to be superior and this meant that people lived in a divided society. The Swahili people were divided during such times due to some having distant Arab ancestry while majority had merely African ancestry. Most of the Swahili roots were African in that they showed how Swahili people were a result of native local people intermarrying. The Swahili could have also been a recent graft of Arab culture in that Swahili the language itself is a Bantu African language which has some words from Arabic which came with the Arabs when they came to the coast as stated by Falola when he said that “the Swahili language was essentially African (Bantu), with some borrowing from Arabic” (Falola 205).The Swahili language evolution suggests that Arabic culture was adopted recently into the Swahili but they had existed even before that. Also, the recent development of Arab women and African men marrying shows how Arabic culture had now started to manifest itself onto the Swahili people in recent centuries.

Mombasa is the third town where Arab merchants from Oman and Saudi Arabia settled to live with the Swahili people and form concubines. This was mainly due to the fact that Mombasa had been one of Kenya’s main Indian Ocean ports and these Arabs had moved there for economic exploitation. However, it is important to note that the Swahili could have been formed as a result of the Arabic graft leaning on their culture and forming a civilization. There are essentially three groups of the Swahili which are; Swahili people from both parents being Swahili, intermarrying of Arab men and African women to form Swahili people and people who migrate to Mombasa and copy the culture and religion could be considered Swahili. This may be due to Arab influence on the African coast which indicates that Arab influence did exist but not very clear as to when.

Lamu, Mombasa and Shanga have provided great insight into when the Swahili people came about and as a result of what. The Swahili as we have established came about before the arrival of Arab merchants because they had existed as the people of the coast and developed with the emergence of the Arabs who formed concubines. So, Arabic material was not a recent graft onto an old Bantu tree as a way to describe the Swahili because these people had been the natives of Kenya before any trade took place with the Middle East. Lastly, the cultural mixing of Africans and Arabs did form a group of people but these people not merely Swahili but they were a mix of African and Arab people who didn’t have a distinct name for their civilization.