Search

, in some authors Siyu , is a small town 6 miles east-north-east of Pate [ q.v.] on Pate Island. Its date of foundation is unknown. The Swahili History of Pate ascribes it to 903/1497; finds of Sāsānid-Islamic pottery suggest earlier occupation. The inhabitants claim Bajun origin, Bantu settlers from southern Somalia. There is a town wall, ascribed to 1843, but possibly earlier, and some houses believed by Kirkman to the 19th century. The Friday mosque has a minaret, a rarity in East Africa; the minbar has the earliest known inscription on wood in the regio…

b. Aḥmad b. Saʿīd Āl Bū Saʿīdī, ruler of ʿUmān and Zanzibar (b. Muscat 1791, d. at sea on 19 Oct. 1856). He and his brother Sālim succeeded jointly in 1806, but shortly were usurped by their cousin Badr, whom Saʿīd assassinated. Sālim had the title Imām, but was a nonentity; the effective power was in Saʿīd’s hands. When Sālim d. Saʿīd was not elected to the imāmate, he preferred using the title Sayyid, used without distinction by all the princes of the family. Nevertheless, European sources frequently refer to Saʿīd as Imām. He never used the title Sulṭān. The fissiparous ʿUmānī tribal syste…

islands, a group of islands lying in lat. 12° S. off Musambiḳ (Mozambique) ¶ between the mouths of the Ruvuma and Lurio rivers, with administrative headquarters at St João de Ibo on Querimba Is. They were part of the sphere of influence of the mediaeval state of Kilwa, but with an independent ruler. They were islamised at an unknown period, possibly in the 12th century. They were seized by the Portuguese in 1522 because of their important ivory trade: many mosques and large houses were destroyed. João dos Sa…

, in full, Kizimkazi-Dimbani , a small hamlet in south-west Zanzibar situated in lat. 6° 26l S, which possesses the earliest datable mosque in East Africa. Its miḥrāb has a dedicatory Kūfic inscription recording its foundation by S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Abū ʿImrān Mūsā al-Ḥasan Muḥammad in 500/1106-7. This is flanked by Ḳurʾānic verses and two inscriptions in roundels, all of great elegance. The nearest analogy is with a grave cover found at Sīrāf: the ensemble was either imported from there or executed in Zanzibar by a Sīrāfī mason. This Persian connection…

, a town, island and archipelago, in lat. 2° S. off the Kenya coast, together with Pate and Manda islands [ q.vv.] and some smaller islands, probably to be identified with the Pyralaae Islands mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea of ca. A.D. 106 as an established resort of Arab and Egyptian sea traders. Nevertheless, the first archaeological evidence found on Manda does not antedate the 8th or 9th century A.D., nor on Lamu before the 13th century. The first reliable literary evidence is that of Ibn Tag̲h̲rībirdī (later 9th/15th century), but the Swahili traditional history Khabar …

(p.), New (Year’s) Day. 1. In the Islamic heartlands. The word is frequently represented in Arabic works in the form Nayrūz , which appears in Arabic literature as early as the verse of al-Ak̲h̲ṭal [ q.v.] (see al-D̲j̲awālīḳī, Muʿarrab , ed. A.M. S̲h̲ākir, Tehran 1966; al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿs̲h̲ā , ii, 408). It was the first day of the Persian solar year and is not represented in the Muslim lunar year (al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , iii, 416-17 = §§ 1301-2). In Achaemenid times, the official year began with Nawrūz, when the sun entered the Zodiac…

(a.), literally, an iron ploughshare, and an iron stamp or die used for stamping coins ¶ (see Lane, Lexicon , 1937). From the latter meaning, it came to denote the result of the stamping, i.e. the legends on the coins, and then, the whole operation of minting coins. 1. Legal and constitutional aspects. As in the Byzantine and Sāsānid empires to which the Arab caliphate was heir, the right of issuing gold and silver coinage was a royal prerogative. Hence in the caliphate, the operation of sikka , the right of the ruler to place his name on the coinage, eventua…

(Ar. pl. Mazārīʿ, Swa. Wamazrui), an Arab tribe found in the Gulf States and in East Africa, where for two centuries they have intermarried with the local population. In the Gulf States they are found in Abu Dhabi, where they are regarded as a section of the Banī Yās. Outside Abu Dhabi, it is uncertain whether they are regarded as a section of the Banī Yās. Some are found in Dubai, in Sharjah, and in various districts and villages of ʿUmān, their centre being the walled town of al-Alāya, where the ¶ s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ recognised as head of the family resides. In East Africa, in Kenya and on the island…

, the nisba of the Sultans of Kilwa [ q.v.], in frequent use by Africans and Europeans to perpetuate a myth of a “S̲h̲īrāzī” period of history and of “migration” into East Africa. The nisba is first recorded in Barros’ translation of a dynastic history of Kilwa of ca. 1506, and in the independent Arabic Kitāb al-Sulwa fī ak̲h̲bār Kulwa ( ca. 1550; B.L. Or. ms. 2666); and on two seals, in a treaty between the Sultan of Kilwa and a French slave-trader, 4 November 1776. Various Swahili histories collected in the 19th century and after, on the coast and as fa…

(a.), inscriptions. 1. Islamic epigraphy in general. The study of Arabic inscriptions today constitutes a science full of promise, an auxiliary science to be sure, but a science indispensable to the scholarly exploitation of a whole category of authentic texts capable of throwing light on the civilisation in the context of which they were written. From a very early period, seeing that the first dated Arabic inscription available to us goes back to the year 31/652 and that we are aware of previous inscr…

, the capital of the Somali Republic, independent since 1960, comprising the former Italian Somalia and British Somaliland, lies in lat. 2° N. on the East African shore of the Indian Ocean. Although it is not specifically mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea ( ca. A.D. 106), this Alexandrine report attests the presence of Arab and Egyptian traders on the coast. The principal exports were cinnamon, frankincense, tortoise-shell and “slaves of the better sort, which are brought to Egypt in increasing numbers.” Recent excavations at …

(in Arabic script Manbasa , Swa. Mvita), an island and town on the east coast of Africa, lying in lat. 4° S. and long. 39° E. The island ¶ is about 3 miles in length from north to south, and nearly the same from east to west. It is so placed in the deep inlet formed by the convergence of several creeks as to be almost wholly surrounded by mainland, only the southeastern angle being exposed to the Indian Ocean. This peculiarity of situation suggested to W.E. Taylor the derivation of the name Mvita “the curtained headland”, from Swa. n( ta) “point”. The more usual derivation from vita …

, the name of various localities and islands of the east coast of Africa, amongst which should be mentioned Kilwa Kivinye , on the mainland (8° 45′ S.) about 140 miles south of Dār al-Salam (Dar es Salam), and in particular, the Quiloa of the Portuguese (Kulwa in Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, ii, 191 ff., tr. Gibb, ii, 379 ff., and in the ms. B.M. Or. 2666, but Kilwa in Yāḳūt s.v.). This last is today called Kilwa Kisawāni , and is situated on an island near to the Tanzanian coast, 150 miles south of Dār al-Salām (8° 58′ S., 39° 34′ E.). It is the site, covering about one km.2, of the capital of a region ¶ which stretched fr…

, a settlement on the East African coast. It lies on the Tanzanian coast north of Dar es Salaam, and has a ruined Friday mosque of 14th or ¶ 15th century date divided into two aisles by three central pillars. There is an extensive cemetery, with tombs, some highly decorated with elaborate carvings, of the past five centuries. It includes a pillar tomb [see manāra. 3. In East Africa] decorated with green celadon plates, of date ante 1350. A small tomb has an inscription commemorating Masʿūd b. Sulṭān S̲h̲afīʿ ʿAlī b. Sulṭān Muḥammad al-Barāwī, who d…

, a town on the Kenya coast inlat 4° N. It is first mentioned in literature by al-Idrīsi ( ca. 1150); the Ma-in mentioned by Ou-yang Hsiu, Hsin T’ang-shu , ca. 1060, is more likely to have been situated in Somalia. Al-Idrīsi says that it was a town of hunters and fishermen, whose inhabitants owned and exploited iron mines. Iron was their greatest source of profit. The iron, however, as A. O. Thompson has shown, was not mined, but recoverable from seashore deposits. Al-Idrīsi also mentions Malindi as a centre of witchcraft, a…

, the largest tribal group in Mozambique [ q.v.], where they occupy the greatest part of the area north of the Zambezi River. A few also are found in Masasi, Kilosa and Tunduru districts in Tanzania. In 1980 they were approximately 30% of the total Mozambique population of some 12m. Almost all of them are Muslims. Their traditions assert that they reached Mozambique from the north during the 16th century, among other Bantuspeaking peoples then entering southern Africa. The Dominican missionary Fr Joâo d…

, in origin the name of a town, is the legal name of the People’s Republic of Moçambique in south-east Africa. It lies south of Tanzania, and borders on Malawi, Zimbabwe, the Republic of South Africa and Swaziland. The state became independent from Portugal in 1975, and is formally Marxist and atheist, but the constitution “guarantees the freedom of citizens to practise or not to practise a religion”. In 1980 the population was ca. 12.5 m., of whom 13.5%, or 1,685,000, were Muslims, 15 to 20% Roman Catholics, 5% Protestants, and the rest pagan. The Muslims are found …

, a name used for coins in a number of Islamic countries, derived from the silver real ( de plata), first issued by Pedro the Cruel of Castile (1350-9), followed by Ferdinand of Portugal (1367-83). In Spain it continued until 1870 and in Portugal until 1910. The relations of the Spanish and Portuguese currencies to those of the Near East belong to the monetary history of the Ottoman Empire and of Persia. From the early 16th century the eastern gold and silver currencies suffered frequent devaluation and debasement. Western merchants needed …

, an islet off Weti, Pemba Island, Tanzania, is in all probability mentioned twice by al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ, and is given as one of the two independent cities mentioned on the island by Yāḳūt, s.v. al-D̲j̲azīra al-K̲h̲aḍrāʾ , the ordinary name for Pemba in Arabic. He records the name as M.T.N.BY , and the second city as M.K.NB.LŪ , the Ḳanbalū mentioned by al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ, al-Masʿūdī and numerous others. Yāḳūt reports that the sultan was an Arab from al-Kūfa who had emigrated in order to settle there, which might suggest that the settlement w…

, capital of the British administered United Nations Trusteeship Territory of Tanganyika, formerly German East Africa, lies in Lat. 6° 49ʹ S. and Long. 39° 16ʹ E. The settlement of ¶ Mzizima (Swahili: the healthy town) was first made in the 17th century A.D. by Wabarawa, of mixed Arab-Swahili stock from Barawa, south of Mogadishu. The present name, a contraction of Bandar al-Salām (“haven of welfare”) at least dates from 1862, when Sayyid Mad̲j̲īd, Sultan of Zanzibar, built a palace and other buildings there, of which a few survive. So does his main street, “Barra-rasta” (Hind, baŕā rāstā …