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The Sacred Meadows: A Case Study of “Anthropologyland” vs. “Historyland”*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Patrica Romero Curtin
Patrica Romero Curtin*
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
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Extract

In 1974 Abdul Hamid M. el Zein published The Sacred Meadows: A Structural Analysis of Religious Symbolism in an East African Town. The town in question was Lamu on an island of the same name off the northern coast of Kenya. The population of Lamu, holding steady at about 5,000 during this century, is mostly Muslim and mostly of mixed Arab and African descent. Arabs began to visit Lamu centuries ago and over time Arab traders settled on the tiny island, married local women, and created what we know today in the larger context along the East African coast as Swahili language and culture. Dhows came each year with the northeast monsoon bringing Arab sailors and a trickle of new immigrants from Arabia. (Not only Arabia, however, as dhows came from many parts of the Indian Ocean to Lamu and the east coast of Africa). As sailors, Lamu people continued to revisit Arabia, among many ports, for commerce as well as for pilgrimage to Mecca. The Arab strain in Lamu culture was therefore reinforced; that culture has therefore tended to sway toward the Indian Ocean in recent centuries and to Arabia in the past one hundred and fifty years.

Until the last decade or so the town had a tight social hierarchy with the old Arab (as they identified themselves) families at the top, followed by Indian traders and merchants (who often worked in partnership with the old families), and then other merchants, such as late nineteenth century arrivals from the Hadramawt, free Africans and Bajuni (the Swahili people from nearby islands), and finally, slaves (or ex-slaves after 1907).

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 9 , 1982 , pp. 337 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1982

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Footnotes

*

A portion of the title of this paper was taken from Bernard S. Cohn, “History and Anthropology: The State of Play,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22(1980), 198-221. I am grateful to an anonymous outside reader for comments and suggestions.

References

NOTES

1. el Zein, Abdul Hamid M., The Sacred Meadows: A Structural Analysis of Religious Symbolism in an East African Town (Evanston, 1974).Google Scholar

2. It is not my wish to enter at this time into the controversy among scholars studying the East African coast as to whether the culture owes more to Africa than to outside sources. I believe that Lamu has been more recently influenced by its contact with the Arabian world, although there is definitely a mixture of many cultural contacts over time. I plan to deal in detail with Arabic influences on Lamu as part of my larger study which deals with the social and cultural history of Lamu from 1873 until Kenyan independence. J. de V. Allen has written extensively on Lamu and his views are that the Lamu culture is largely an African one. For instance see his “Swahili Culture Reconsidered” Azania, 9(1974), 105–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Another view is that of Randall Pouwels, who traces early contacts from the Indian Ocean world with the East African coast. See his “Tenth Century Settlement of the East African Coast: The Case of Qarmatian/Ismaʿili Connections” Azania, 9(1974), 65–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Cohn, , “History and Anthropology,” 216.Google Scholar

4. Ibid, 200.

5. Journal of Religion in Africa, 3(1975), 224–28.Google Scholar

6. I have taken the spelling Riyadah from Lienhardt, Peter, “The Mosque College of Lamu and Its Social Background,” Tanganyika motes and Records, 53(1959), 228–42.Google Scholar

7. el Zein, , Sacred Meadows, 336.Google Scholar

8. Ranger, 225, with emphasis added.

9 el Zein incorrectly translated from Arabic, or misread Peter Lienhardt, in saying that Riyadah meant the Sacred Meadow. Lienhardt quoted from an engraving outside the mosque: “There is a meadow of learning, These are streams flowing that dwellers here may drink their sweetness…” But the word Riyadah, Lienhardt says, “has more than one meaning,” including “the well known type of Muslim magic drawing upon the numerical values of the letters of the Arabic alphabet.” Lienhardt, , “Mosque College,” 228, 230.Google Scholar

10. Personal interviews Sheikh Ahmed Mohammed Jahadhmy, Sharif Hassan Badawy, Mzee Ali Abdalla Skanda, Sharif Swalee Hassan, Sharif Ahmed Badawy, Lamu, January-June, 1980.

11. el Zein, , Sacred Meadows, 268, 261Google Scholar, et passim.

12. Sharif Swalee Hassan Badawy, Sharif Hassan Badawy, Sharif Ahmed Badawy, personal interviews, Lamu. Sharif Muhdhur Kinamte, personal interview, Mombasa, June 8, 1980. Sharif Muhdhur confirmed his Lamu cousins' explanation.

13. Gibb, H.A.R., Mohammedanism: An Historical Survey (London, 1969), 85.Google Scholar

14. Sheikh Ahmed Jahadhmy not only showed me his genealogical chart, but allowed me to photograph it. His youngest son has now resettled his branch of the family in Oman, on land provided by the Omani government to recognized families who wish to return to their homeland. Another son, Mohammed, lives in Lamu. He was also helpful in explaining to me the importance of genealogies to old Lamu families. The Maayi family, which claims to be among the oldest, does not have a genealogy covering the eight hundred years they believe they have been in Lamu, but Mohammed Ali Maayi does have a genealogical chart which covers over three hundred years. Personal interview, Mohammed Maawyi, Nairobi, July 16, 1980; personal interview, Lamu, February 1981. Another old family, the Hussein sharifina, can name some ancestors going back to the 1600s in Pate. Personal interview Sharif Abdalla Salim Hussein, Mombasa, June, 1980, February 1981.

15. Cohn, , “History and Anthropology,” 208.Google Scholar

16. Lienhardt, who claimed to have conducted fieldwork in Lamu, disagreed as to where it began. Lienhardt, , “Mosque College,” 232.Google Scholar

17. el Zein, , Sacred Meadows, 302.Google Scholar

18. Lienhardt, , “Mosque College,” 232Google Scholar, thought the ritual was associated with the rainy season. Sharif Abdalla Salim Hussein also believes the ritual has the same significance when carried out each year in Mombasa.

19. Chelhod, Joseph, Le sacrifice chez les Arabes: Recherches sur l'évolution, la nature et la fonction des rites sacrificiels en Arabie occidentable (Paris, 1955).Google Scholar See also Fahd, Toufic, La divination Arabe (Leiden, 1966).Google Scholar

20. el Zein, , Sacred Meadows, 282.Google Scholar

21. Ibid, 282-93, passim.

22. Lamu female informants, personal interviews, February-June, 1980.

23. el Zein, , Sacred Meadows, 19.Google Scholar

24. E.g., Ylvisaker, Marguerite, IJAHS, 9(1976), 503–06.Google Scholar

25. el Zein, , Sacred Meadows, 30.Google Scholar

26. Ylvisaker, 504; Bwana Ahmed Khatib Maawyi, personal interview, Lamu, June 5, 1980.

27. el Zein, , Sacred Meadows, 208.Google Scholar

28. Ibid, 208, with emphasis added.

29. Cohn, , “History and Anthropology,” 217.Google Scholar

30. Vann Woodward, C. quoted in “Some Historians Dismiss Change,” New York Times, 19 April 1977.Google Scholar

31. el Zein's work is briefly discussed in an obituary notice in American Anthropologist, 82(1980), 847–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Eickelman, Dale F., “A Search for the Anthropology of Islam: Abdul Hamid El-Zein,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 13(1981), 361–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar