Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations and maps
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The roots of a tradition, 800–1500
- 2 The emergence of a tradition, 900–1500
- 3 A northern metamorphosis, 1500–1800
- 4 Town Islam and the umma ideal
- 5 Wealth, piety, justice, and learning
- 6 The Zanzibar Sultanate, 1812–88
- 7 New secularism and bureaucratic centralization
- 8 A new literacy
- 9 The early colonial era, 1885–1914
- 10 Currents of popularism and eddies of reform
- Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - Currents of popularism and eddies of reform
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations and maps
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The roots of a tradition, 800–1500
- 2 The emergence of a tradition, 900–1500
- 3 A northern metamorphosis, 1500–1800
- 4 Town Islam and the umma ideal
- 5 Wealth, piety, justice, and learning
- 6 The Zanzibar Sultanate, 1812–88
- 7 New secularism and bureaucratic centralization
- 8 A new literacy
- 9 The early colonial era, 1885–1914
- 10 Currents of popularism and eddies of reform
- Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Through all the changes introduced after 1873, coastal townspeople and their religious leaders were not, of course, supine. Occasionally, one catches a brief glimpse of popular resistance to measures implemented by Europeans or their instruments, the Sultans. Such popular expressions of anger often were whipped up by the harangues of local qadis, walimu, and wazee. For example, at Zanzibar there was one case of an Ibadi qadi, Sh. Ali b. Msellum al-Khalassy, who dared to stand alone in open defiance against the ban on the status of slavery in 1909. In addition, the 1888–90 Abushiri resistance to German takeover of the Tanganyika coast received a great deal of popular support through the Qadiriyya tariqa. On the northern coast, Sh. Mbarak obtained varying degrees of assistance from Miji Kenda and Swahili elders.
Such open acts of defiance, however, were doomed to failure in the face of determined efforts by the Sultans and the European Powers. Resistance, especially after 1896, largely was passive. One Provincial Report, for instance, termed the general attitude of Lamu towards colonial rule as ‘not very satisfactory’. While apparently law-abiding and peaceful, Lamuans were ‘nevertheless experts in the art of passive resistance’. Offences for which many ‘Arabs and Bajuns who [were] more or less educated’ stood accused included leaving the district to avoid taxation and failure to give assistance to ‘improving the health and sanitation of the town’.
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- Information
- Horn and CrescentCultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast, 800–1900, pp. 191 - 208Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1987
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