Tanzania: Emergence of Swahili Culture (c1250-1500CE)

Updated September 2010

Archaeological work indicates that Swahili culture emerged as a package from about 1250CE as the result of the indigenous Iron Age cultures absorbing influences from the Kenyan coast (Chami 2002, 1). This was a cosmopolitan Bantu speaking network of trading settlements that was impacted on by traders from India, Persia and Arabia (Byrne undated). The exotic goods supplied by East Africa to the world of the Indian Ocean and, through the Red Sea, to the Mediterranean, attracted settlement by communities of traders from these areas and further afield in the 10th century. They exchanged clothes and fabrics, tools and metal products and jewellery from as far away as China for local products such as cinnamon, ivory, tortoise shell and other animal products (Byrne undated, Columbia Encyclopedia 2004).

Due to paucity of literary sources, and the lack of resources for archaeological effort, much less is known of the interior than of the littoral. It is clear that by the turn of the first millennium of the Common Era the migration of Bantu-speaking agriculturalists with iron working technology into the interior was well advanced. This proceeded from the west and the south simultaneously, and population levels expanded dramatically. By contrast with the polities that had emerged on the coast, state formation in the interior was less advanced and only small political units emerged initially (US State Department 2005). Prior to the migration of Bantu speaking people Tanzania seems to have been inhabited by groups of Stone Age hunter gatherers speaking click-tongue languages. The small remaining groups, speaking such languages in Tanzania today, are believed to be the descendent of the peoples gradually displaced and absorbed by influxes of Bantu and Nilotic speaking people (Columbia Encyclopedia 2004, State Department 2005).

A new element to the emerging, outward looking, Swahili culture on the coast was added by the arrival of Persians from Shiraz at the end of the 10th Century CE. Led by Ali ibn Sultan al Husayn ben Ali the Persian immigrants settled in Kilwa (c 975CE) in Southern Tanzania, while branches established themselves in Pemba, Zanzibar, Tumbatu and the Comoro islands. These settlements seem to have stimulated trade with and exploration of the interior, for Arab and Chinese sources are familiar with great swaths of the hinterland by the 1100s (Byrne undated). The Swahili people gradually became Muslims, as Islam spread slowly southwards from the coast of Kenya during the 10th to 12th Centuries. Trade in slaves played little or no role in this trade economy, for there is no mention of it in the texts from this period (Byrne undated). The ties of economic interest between the new Shirazi immigrants and the indigenous population were cemented by intermarriage, by the adoption of the Swahili language by the former and by the conversion of the latter to Islam. This initial influx was followed by an inflow of settlers and traders from as far afield as India (Columbia Encyclopedia 2004).

That the period that followed, especially from 1200-1500CE, was one of peaceful prosperity is suggested by the increase in both volumes and kinds of trade goods found at coastal digs. Kilwa increased in power and wealth in the 11th to the 13th century. This prosperity was built on trade in items such as animal hides, beeswax and ivory from the interior and gold and ivory from Sofala. The latter was engaged in trade with the gold producing states in what is now Zimbabwe and northern South Africa. By the 14th century Kilwa was the major entrepôt for trade on the East African coast, but by the time Portuguese arrived, at the end of the 15th century, its fortunes were on the wane (Byrne undated, Columbia Encyclopedia 2004). Other trading principalities flourished too, Kibaha (near Dar es Salaam), Zanzibar, Mafia and Pemba among these (Columbia Encyclopedia 2004).

References

BYRNE, P UNDATED "A Short History of Mafia Island", IN Nabataeans in Africa, Nabataea.net, [www] http://nabataea.net/mafia.html [opens new window] (accessed 23 Feb 2010).

CHAMI, FA 2002 "Kaole and the Swahili World" IN Chami, F and Pwiti, G (eds), Southern Africa and the Swahili World, Dar es Salaam University Press.

COLUMBIA ENCYCLOPEDIA 2004, Sixth Edition, "Tanzania", [www] http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=101273670 [opens new window] (accessed 23 Feb 2010).

US STATE DEPARTMENT 2005 "Background Note: Tanzania", Bureau of African Affairs [www] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2843.htm [opens new window] (accessed 23 Feb 2010).