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The Swahili people (, وَسوَحِيلِ) comprise mainly Bantu peoples, Afro-Arabs, and Comoros ethnic groups inhabiting the Swahili coast, an area encompassing the East African coast across southern Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and northern Mozambique, and various off the coast, such as Zanzibar, Lamu Archipelago, and the Comoro Islands.
The original Swahili distinguished themselves from other Bantu peoples by self-identifying as Waungwana (the civilised ones). In certain regions, such as Lamu Island, this differentiation is even more stratified in terms of societal grouping and dialect, hinting at the historical processes by which the Swahili have coalesced over time. More recently, through a process of Swahilization, this identity extends to any person of African descent who speaks Swahili language as their first language, is Muslim, and lives in a town of the main urban centres of most of modern-day Tanzania and coastal Kenya, northern Mozambique, or the Comoros.
The name Swahili originated as an exonym for the language derived from , with Waungwana as the endonym. Modern Standard Swahili is derived from the Kiunguja dialect of Zanzibar. Like many other world languages, Swahili has borrowed a large number of words from foreign languages, particularly administrative terms from Arabic but also words from Portuguese, Persian language, Hindi, English, and German. Other, older dialects like Kimrima and Kitumbatu have far fewer Arabic loanwords, indicative of the language's fundamental Bantu languages nature. Swahili served as coastal East Africa's lingua franca and trade language from the ninth century onward. Zanzibari traders' intensive push into the African interior from the late eighteenth century induced the adoption of Swahili as a common language throughout much of East Africa. Thus, Swahili is the most spoken African language, used by far more than just the Swahili people themselves.
A local 15th-century genealogy, the Kilwa Chronicle, identifies the rulers and founders of the costal cities as immigrants from the Persian city of Shiraz, in the 11th century. This forms the basis of the Shirazi era origin myth that proliferated along the coast at the turn of the millennium. A 2022 DNA study that obtained samples from 80 Muslim graves, from cities across the region, found the maternal ancestry of the studied population was primarily of East African lineages, principally Bantu and Pastoral Neolithic, while the majority of the male heritage was Asian. Some academics reject the authenticity of the primarily Persian origin claim,Bakari 2001: 70 pointing to the relative rarity of Persian customs and speech, lack of documentary evidence of Shia Islam in the Muslim literature on the Swahili coast, and instead a historic abundance of Sunni Arab-related evidence. The documentary evidence, like the archaeological, "for early Persian settlement is likewise completely lacking". The most likely origin for the stories about the Shirazi is from Muslim inhabitants of the Lamu archipelago who moved south in the 10th and 11th centuries. They brought with them a coinage tradition and a localized form of Islam. These African migrants seem to have developed a concept of Shirazi origin as they moved further southwards, near Malindi and Mombasa, along the Mrima coast; the longstanding trade connections with the Persian gulf gave credence to these myths. In addition, because most Muslim societies are Patrilineality, one can claim distant identities through paternal lines despite Phenotype evidence to the contrary. The so-called Shirazi tradition represents the arrival of Islam in these eras, one reason it has proven so long-lasting. Extant mosques and coins demonstrate that the "Shirazi" were not Middle Eastern immigrants but northern Swahili Muslims. They moved south, founding mosques and introducing coinage and elaborately carved inscriptions and ; they should be interpreted as indigenous African Muslims who played the politics of the Middle East to their advantage. Some still use this foundation myth a millennium later to assert their authority, even though the myth's context has long been forgotten. The Shirazi legend took on new importance in the 19th century, during the period of Omani domination. Claims of Shirazi ancestry were used to distance locals from Arab newcomers, since Persians are not viewed as Arabs but still have Islamic pedigree. The emphasis that the Shirazi came very long ago and intermarried with indigenous locals ties this claim to the creation of convincing indigenous narratives about Swahili heritage without divorcing it from the ideals of being a maritime culture.
There are two main theories about the origins of the Shirazi people subgroup of the Swahili people. One thesis, based on oral tradition, states that immigrants from the Shiraz region in southwestern Iran directly settled various mainland ports and islands on the eastern African seaboard beginning in the tenth century. By the time of Persian settlement in the area, the earlier occupants had been displaced by incoming Bantu and Nilotic peoples populations. More people from different parts of the Persian Gulf also continued to migrate to the Swahili coast over several centuries thereafter, and these formed the modern Shirazi. The second theory also posits that they came from Persia but first settled in the Horn of Africa. In the twelfth century, as the gold trade with the distant entrepot of Sofala on the Mozambique seaboard grew, the settlers are said to have moved southwards to various coastal towns in Kenya, Tanzania, northern Mozambique, and the Indian Ocean islands. By 1200 CE, they had established local sultanates and mercantile networks on the islands of Kilwa Kisiwani, Mafia Island, and Comoros, along the Swahili coast, and in northwestern Madagascar. More recent studies support the Swahili origin myth, indicating that "Asian ancestry includes components associated with Persia and India, with 80–90% of the Asian DNA originating from Persian men".
Modern Swahili people speak the Swahili language as a mother tongue, which belongs to the Bantu languages branch of the Niger-Congo family. The language contains loanwords from Arabic.
Large numbers of Swahili undertake the Hajj and Umrah from Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique. Traditional Islamic dress, such as the jilbab and thob, are also popular among the Swahili. The Swahili also are known for their use of divination, which has adopted some syncretic features from underlying traditional indigenous beliefs. For instance, they believe in djinn, and many men wear protective amulets featuring verses from the Qur'an.
Divination is practiced through Qur'anic readings. Often the diviner incorporates verses from the Qur'an into treatments for certain diseases. On occasion, he or she instructs a patient to soak a piece of paper containing Qur'anic verses in water. With this ink-infused water, literally containing the word of Allah, the patient will then wash his or her body or drink it to cure themselves of affliction. The only people permitted to become medicine givers in the culture are prophets and teachers of Islam.
Some Swahili people practice Christianity.
With its original speech community centred on Zanzibar and the coastal parts of Kenya and Tanzania, collectively a seaboard referred to as the Swahili Coast,Daniel Don Nanjira, African Foreign Policy and Diplomacy: From Antiquity to the 21st Century, ABC-CLIO, 2010, p. 114 Swahili became the tongue of the urban class in the African Great Lakes region and eventually went on to serve as a lingua franca during the post-colonial period.
Although most Swahili living standards are far below those in the wealthiest nations, the Swahili are generally considered a relatively economically powerful group due to their history of trade. For instance, the United Nations has stated that the island of Zanzibar has a 25% higher per-capita GDP than the rest of Tanzania. This economic influence has led to the continued spread of Swahili culture and language throughout East Africa.
(2025). 9780253019097, Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253019097
History
Religion
Islam established its presence on the southeast African coast around the 9th century, coincident to Bantu traders both settling on the coast and tapping into the Indian Ocean trade networks. The Swahili people follow the Sunni Islam denomination of Islam.
Language
The Swahili language is a member of the Bantu languages subgroup of the Niger-Congo family. Its closest relatives include Comorian, spoken on the Comoros Islands, and the Mijikenda language of the Mijikenda people in Kenya. (2025). 9780195139778 ISBN 9780195139778
Genetics
In 2022, DNA was extracted, analyzed, and compared in 80 samples taken from people buried between 1250 and 1800 CE in towns that were mostly along the Swahili Coast in modern Kenya and Tanzania. It is believed that these people were Swahili elites, because they were buried in cemeteries near the main mosques. Before 1500 CE, inhabitants of the region carried both African and Asian/Near Eastern ancestry, which was mainly Persian-related (with more than half of their DNA originating from African ancestors and another large portion from Asian ancestors). The male ancestors of elite Swahili people were a mix of approximately 83% Asian and 17% African; about 90% of the Asian DNA was Persian, and the rest was Indian. The female ancestors of Swahili elites were about 97% African and 3% Asian. This is consistent with the narrative of the Kilwa Chronicle. After this time, Arabian ancestry becomes more prevalent, which correlates with the archaeological and historical record of interactions with Southern Arabia (Oman).
Economy
For centuries, the Swahili depended greatly on trade from the Indian Ocean, and they played an important role as middlemen between southeast, central, and southern Africa as well as the outside world. Trade contacts have been noted as early as 100 CE by early Roman Empire writers who visited the southeast African coast in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. (2025). 9780190277734 ISBN 9780190277734 Trade routes extended from Kenya to Tanzania into modern-day Congo, along which goods were brought to the coasts and sold to Arab, Indian, and Portuguese traders. Historical and archaeological records attest to Swahilis being prolific maritime merchants and sailors who plied the southeast African coastline to lands as far away as Arabia,The East African Slave Trade BBC, BBC, accessed 15 February 2012. Persia, Madagascar, India, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Volume 3, Part 2. By Sir H. A. R. Gibb. pg. 206, (2001), accessed 15 February 2012. and China.Swahili-Chinese interaction The Cambridge History of Africa: From c. 1050 to c. 1600. By J. D. Fage. pg. 194, (1977), Cambridge Publications, accessed 15 February 2012. Chinese pottery and Arabian beads have been found in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe.Garlake (2002) 184–185 During the height of the Middle Ages, ivory and slaves became a substantial source of revenue. Captives sold via the Zanzibar slave trade by Arab slave traders ended up in Portuguese Brazil or via the Indian Ocean slave trade in the Arabian Peninsula.
Architecture
Thought by many early scholars to be essentially of Arab or Persian style and origin, some contemporary academics have suggested that archaeological, written, linguistic, and cultural evidence might suggest an African genesis to Swahili architecture, which would be accompanied only later by enduring Arabic and Islamic influences in the form of trade and an exchange of ideas. Upon visiting Kilwa Kisiwani in 1331, the Berber people explorer Ibn Battuta was impressed by what he witnessed there. He noted that "Kilwa is a very fine and substantially built town, and all its buildings are of wood" (his description of Mombasa was essentially the same). Local architecture included arches, courtyards, isolated women's quarters, mihrab, towers, and decorative elements on the buildings themselves. Many ruins can still be found near the southern Kenyan port of Malindi, in the ruins of Gedi.
See also
Sources
(2025). 9780631189190, Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 9780631189190
External links
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