Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T23:22:00.897Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Biography Writing in Swahili

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Farouk Topan
Farouk Topan*
Affiliation:
SOAS, University of London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Any meaningful assessment of biography and autobiography writing among the Swahili as a historical source needs to take at least three factors into consideration. The first is the influence of Arab literary traditions on the emergence of the genre on the East African coast; the second is the relationship between literacy and orality, and its implication for writing and narration in an African context. The role of colonialism, and the introduction of the Western “mode” of biography and autobiography writing, forms the third factor. The aim of the paper is to survey these factors, not chronologically, but as part of a general discussion on the notion and status of the genre in the Swahili context.

Swahili interface with Arabic as an essential ingredient of Islamic practice laid the foundation for the development of literate genres on the East African coast, among them the biographical and the historical. In the process, Swahili adopted styles of narrative expression which are reflected in the terms employed for them. The most common are habari (from the Arabic khabar) and wasifu (from wasf). In its original usage, khabar denoted a description of an event or events that were connected in a single narrative by means of a phrase such as “in that year.” It lacked a genealogy of narrators, and the form was stylistically flexible to include verses of poetry relevant to the events. In Swahili the current meaning of the word habari is “information” and “news” (and, hence, also a greeting) but, as a historical genre, it has been used in two ways. The first is in relation to the history of the city-states recounted through documents whose titles include the word, khabari/habari, (or the plural, akhbar in Arabic), usually translated as “chronicle(s).”

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 24 , January 1997 , pp. 299 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Rollins, Jack D., A history of Swahili Prose (Leiden, 1983), 34.Google Scholar

2. Edited and translated by Hichens, William, Bantu Studies, 12 (1938), 3–33.Google Scholar

3. Rollins, , History, 45.Google Scholar

4. Werner, Alice, “A History of Pate,” Journal of the African Society, 14 (1915)148-61, 278-97, 392–413.Google Scholar One may also consult C.H. Stigand's version in Freeman-Grenville, G.S.P., The East African Coast (London, 1975), 241–96.Google Scholar

5. These are, respectively, Habari za Abaluyia, by Otiende, J.D. (Nairobi, 1949)Google Scholar; Habari rut Desturi za Waribe, by Frank, William (London, 1953)Google Scholar; and Habari za Wazigua by Mochiwa, Anthony (London, 1954)Google Scholar; Khabari za Kale za Wajomvu by Mwidad, Midani bin, edited and translated by Harries, Lyndon, Swahili, 31 (1960), 141–49Google Scholar; and Habari za Wakilindi by Ajjemy, Abdallah b.Hemedi'l, edited by Allen, and Kimweri, (Nairobi, 1962 [1978]).Google Scholar

6. Maddox, Gregory H., introduction to Mnyampala, Mathias E., The Gogo: History, customs and traditions (Armonk, New York, 1995), 1–2Google Scholar; the volume is a translation of the Swahili, Historic mila na desturi za Wagogo (Nairobi, 1954).Google Scholar

7. The book was published at Gottingen in 1903; selections have been edited and translated into English by Harries, Lyndon in Swahili Prose Texts (London, 1965), 1–86.Google Scholar The collection has also been edited and translated into English by J.W.T Allen and published under Bakari's name as The Customs of the Swahili People (Berkeley, 1981)Google Scholar, with appendices by James de Vere Allen.

8. Robert, Shaaban, Wasifu wa Siti binti Saad. (Dar es Salaam, 1967 [1958]).Google Scholar A recent Ph.D. thesis examines the role of Siti in taarab, an orchestral entertainment on the coast and the islands: Topp, Janet, “Women and the Africanisation of taarab in Zanzibar” (London, 1992).Google Scholar

9. Dumila, Faraj, Wasifu wa Kenyatta (Nairobi, 1971)Google Scholar and idem., Wasifu wa Moi (Nairobi, 1978). The volume on Kenyatta has an introduction in Swahili by Mohamed Hyder, and the contributors of the poems are from both Kenya and Tanzania. The volume on Moi is introduced in English by Mohamed Abdulaziz, dealing mainly with the craft of poetry. One assumes that the contributors are all from Kenya, as Abdulaziz speaks of the poems as having been “written by people from various parts of the country.” Their towns of residence are not named.

10. Steere, Edward, Swahili Tales. (London, 1869), vi.Google Scholar

11. See Sheriff, Ibrahim Noor, “The Liyongo Conundrum: Re-examining the Historicity of Swahili's National Poet-Hero,” Research in African Literatures, 22 (1991), 153–67Google Scholar, for a review of Liongo's origins and status. See as well, Mbele, Joseph, “The Identity of the Hero in the Liongo Epic,” Research in African Literatures, 17 (1986), 464–73.Google Scholar

12. The prose translation is in Knappert, Jan, Swahili Islamic Poetry, (Leiden, 1971), 48–60Google Scholar; ibid. 278- 339, for two versions of poetic translation. A recent poetic translation of Barzanji in the Swahili utenzi form is by Musa, Sheikh Saidi, Tafsiri ya maulidi ya Barzanji kwa tenzi, (Moshi, 1982) with a foreward by Abdulla Saleh Farsy.Google Scholar

13. A popular version is by al-Bakary, Muhammad Kijumwa b.Abubakar, Utenzi wa Fumo Liongo, (ed.) Abdalla, Abdillatif (Dar es Salaam, 1973).Google Scholar

14. Some may be found in Allen, J.W.T., Tendi (Nairobi, 1971).Google Scholar

15. E.g., Barwani, Ali Muhsin, Ruwaza Njema. Utenzi wa Maisha ya Mtume Muhammad. (Nairobi, 1981)Google Scholar, on Muhammad; Abdallah, Hemed, Utenzi wa Seyyidna Huseni bin Ali (Dar es Salaam, 1965)Google Scholar on the grandson of Muhammad; the same poet's Utenzi wa Abdirrahmani na Sufiyani (Nairobi, 1961)Google Scholar on a companion of Muhammad; and poems in Knappert, Jan, Four Swahili Epics. (Leiden, 1964) on the earlier figures of Islam.Google Scholar

16. Respectively, Mwaruka, Ramadhani, Utenzi wa Jamhuri ya Tanzania. (Dar es Salaam, 1968)Google Scholar and Kibao, Salim, Utenzi wa Uhuru wa Kenya, ed. Nassir, A., (Nairobi, 1972).Google Scholar

17. Mahimbi, E.M., Utenzi wa Chama cha Mapinduzi (Dar es Salaam, 1981)Google Scholar and Khatib, Muhammed S., Utenzi wa Ukombozi wa Zanzibar (Nairobi, 1975).Google Scholar

18. Selections are reproduced in Harries, Lyndon, ed. and trans., Swahili Prose Texts. A selection from the material collected by Carl Velten from 1893 to 1896 (London, 1965).Google Scholar

19. Allen, James de Vere in Bakari, , The Customs of the Swahili People (Berkeley, 1981), 212.Google Scholar

20. el-Murjebi, Hemed b. Muhammed, “Tippu Tip” in Maisha ya Hemed b.Muhammed el-Murjebi yaani Tippu Tip, ed. and trans. Whiteley, W.H. (Nairobi, 1958).Google Scholar

21. Ibid., 10.

22. Rollins, Jack, A history of Swahili prose (Leiden, 1983), 49.Google Scholar

23. Dale, Godfrey, Maisha ya Muhammad. (London, 1909)Google Scholar; Farsy, Abdallah Saleh, Maisha ya Nabii Muhammad (Mombasa, 1942).Google Scholar

24. Mohamed, H.B., Maisha ya Winston S. Churchill. (London, 1952).Google Scholar

25. Kabeya, J.B., Mtemi Mirambo. (Nairobi, 1966)Google Scholar; Musso, Michael, Mukwava na kabila lake. (Nairobi, 1968).Google Scholar

26. Mbotela, James, Uhuru wa Watumwa (Nairobi 1951 [1934])Google Scholar

27. Allen, James de Vere, Swahili origins. (London, 1993), 259.Google Scholar

28. Mazrui, Alamin M. and Shariff, Ibrahim Noor, The Swahili. Idiom and Identity of an African People (Trenton, 1994), 35.Google Scholar

29. Farsy, Abdalla Saleh, Tarehe ya Imam Shaft na wanavyuoni wakubwa wa Afrika ya mashariki (Zanzibar, 1945).Google Scholar

30. Musa, Sheikh Saidi, Maisha ya al-Imam Sheikh Abdulla Saleh Farsy katika Ulimwengu wa Kiislamu (Dar es Salaam, 1986).Google Scholar

31. Hussein, Ebrahim, Kinjeketile (Dar es Salaam, 1969)Google Scholar; Hussein drew on Gwassa, G.C.K. and Iliffe, John, Records of the Maji Maji Rising (Nairobi, 1969).Google Scholar

32. Mulokozi, M.M., Mukwava wa Uhehe. (Dar es Salaam, 1988).Google Scholar

33. Robert, Shaaban, Maisha Yangu na Baada ya Miaka Hamsini (Dar es Salaam, 1966 [1949]).Google Scholar

34. Maddox, Gregory H. in Mnyampala, . Gogo, 4.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., S. This thrust was taken much further in the 1971 edition, published after independence (and actually posthumously): the term kabila (tribe) is changed to taifa (nation) in descriptions of the Gogo people.

36. Kindy, Hyder, Life and Politics in Mombasa. (Nairobi, 1972)Google Scholar; for a forthright assessment of the plight of the Swahili today see Mazrui, /Shariff, , Swahili, 131–49.Google Scholar