Folklore & the Origins of the Swahili: Discourse and Developments in the Study of Swahili Ancestry

by Tarik A. Richardson, Ph.D.Department of African American and Diaspora StudiesXavier University of Louisiana

In March of 2023, Chapurukha M. Kusimba led a team of more than forty researchers, including geneticists, evolutionary biologists, archeologists, and anthropologists from North American, European, and East African universities, to publish the results of a survey on late-medieval and early-modern DNA from Swahili burial sites in East Africa. Their study, “Entwined African and Asian Genetic Roots of Medieval Peoples of the Swahili Coast,” published in the weekly international journal Nature, was the largest of its kind and analyzed the centuries-old remains of eighty Swahili people (Brielle et. al., 2023). For the scholars, many of whom dedicated years to this endeavor, the publication of their research was a momentous accomplishment. Their research was widely celebrated and distributed, being featured in several major media outlets including the New York Times.

Their findings, which include a significant presence of Asiatic DNA originating from Persian men, weren’t too surprising to students of East African history and complement many current theories on the social realities of the Swahili economic elite during this relatively early period of coastal society. What was surprising was how journalists chose to frame the significance of this research.

I initially intended to analyzing the data published by the research team from an Africological perspective. After poring over their work and commentary, I found their analysis largely well grounded and sound. What deserves closer attention, though, is the sensationalist headlines used by many media outlets reporting this research, who introduced a perspective that would alienate the peoples of the eastern African coast from the larger understanding of Africanity. Specifically, the New York Times said

Over the past 40 years, archaeologists, linguists, and historians have come to see Swahili society as predominantly homegrown with outside elements adopted over time that had only a marginal impact. That African-centric version of Swahili roots never sat well with the Swahili people themselves, though. (Dolgin, 2023)

To be clear, the researchers did not dispute the current consensus on the origin of the Swahili people and culture. Journalists’ eagerness to discredit this so-called “African-centric” version of Swahili roots exposes a contempt for Afrocentric scholarship, which seeks to explore and highlight indigenous ingenuity on the African continent, and an adherence to colonial-era perspectives on the possibilities of African agency. What’s worse, these media outlets hidden their Afrophobic and reductionist sentiments behind a veil of support for the often-maligned oral traditions of African people.

The oral traditions of the Swahili people, like those of all peoples, reflect their worldview and their cultural location. No single story represents the entirety of these Bantu-speaking people of the coast. The research team’s paper illuminated the complexity of race relations in medieval East Africa, discourses on African identity, and the pervasive implicit bias against African ingenuity and agency.

Swahili Historical Background

The Swahili are a Bantu people who have come to inhabit much of the eastern coastline of the African continent from southern Somalia southward to Mozambique. They are a people with a rich history and culture, often celebrated for developing maritime city-states, and who played an important role in international trade across the Indian Ocean throughout the medieval period and into the early modern period. The Swahili are also a diverse people even categorizing Swahili speakers as “a people” could be considered inaccurate. Though they are supposedly unified in language and culture, the Swahili language varies between regions along the coast. The Swahili are not a singular people. Swahili peoples are also not unified through common ancestry, with many groups considered Swahili having their own histories of how they came to occupy their coastal regions. On the island of Zanzibar, one of the supposed places of origin of the Swahili language, there are at least three separate sub-ethnicities: the Wahadimu, the Watumbatu, and the Shirazi. These identities are often politized and influence the perspectives these groups have on their cultural history.

The Swahili language is a lingua franca that developed out of an older Bantu language through the incorporation of terms and concepts from Arabic, and to a lesser extent Persian, and later German and English. The history of the Swahili as a maritime people, and their eventual conversation to the Islamic religion, is what led to their close interactions with Asiatic peoples from the Middle East. Jeremy Prestholdt, a historian from the University of California San Diego, introduced a concept of similitude into the discussion of Swahili history and culture.

Similitude, here, is cultural performance, or conscientious acculturation. Prestholdt, in Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalizations, describes this activity as a means to “achieve commercial ends, attracting customers by evidencing cultural similarity” (2008, p. 28). This relationship between Middle Eastern cultures and the mercantile elites of the Swahili coast came to dictate Swahili politics and perceptions of culture in East Africa. Evidence of foreign interaction in East Africa has been documented as far back as the pre-Islamic era, in the first century of the common era. The debate has always been centered around the question of just how influential these visitors to the African continent were in the development of Swahili culture and society.

Highlighting Kusimba

Chapurukha M. Kusimba, an anthropology professor at the University of South Florida who has worked in the Department of Archeology of the National Museum of Kenya and the Institute of African Studies at the University of Nairobi was one of the leading supervisors of this project, together with Harvard geneticist David Reich. According to Rice University’s News and Media Relations, Kusimba was the scholar who initiated this research into medieval Swahili DNA (McCaig, 2023). Before this publication, Kusimba had published widely on archeology and anthropology in East Africa. His book The Rise and Fall of Swahili States, published in 1999, offers a detailed overview Swahili history that engages with oral traditions as well as the archeological record. Regarding his most recent achievement, Kusimba said,

This research has been my life’s work this journey to recover the past of the Swahili and restore them to rightful citizenship. These findings bring out the African contributions, and indeed, the Africanness of the Swahili, without marginalizing the Persian and Indian connection. (Delamarter, 2023)

Kusimba’s contribution to our evolving understanding of Swahili history deserves to be celebrated. Furthermore, Kusimba’s seasoned insights into the complexities of East African societies clarifies many misconceptions that have been regurgitated by the media.

Recent Study on Swahili DNA

As noted above, this research initiative examined eighty skeletal remains from medieval and early-modern Swahili peoples. These remains were collected respectfully, with permission and collaboration from local leaders, from the burial sites of six coastal towns in Tanzania and Kenya dating to 1250–1800 CE, and from one site further from the coast in Kenya that dates to sometime after 1650. The research team estimated that the introduction of Persian DNA into the Swahili population probably began in the 11th century.

This finding aligns closely with the historical consensus on when interaction between Persian merchants and Swahili traders began. It also aligns closely with the oral traditions of the Swahili people of Kilwa and of the Shirazi of the Zanzibar archipelago and Comoros. What was surprising, as noted by Rice University archaeologist Jeffrey Fleisher, who assisted in the excavation of the Tanzanian sites, was that the Persian genetic signature traced through the Y chromosome, which is passed from father to son, was so “strong” (Dolgin, 2023). However, when mitochondrial gene sequences, which are passed from mothers to their children, were analyzed, the results were overwhelmingly African. This result, which is based on remains from all over the Swahili coast over several centuries, seems to indicate that it was in fact not a singular romantic event tying the Swahili elite of the East African coast to the noble families of Persia, but instead a sustained effort at miscegenation to promote blood ties to the Middle East.

Kusimba noted that more remains must be studied for an accurate understanding of Swahili society. He commented, “Nearly all the bones and teeth came from ornamental tombs that were located near grand mosques, sites where only the upper class would have been laid to rest” (Dolgin, 2023). These remains, and thus the findings of the study, are not representative of the general population of the Swahili corridor, but provide only a glimpse into the genetic makeup of the Islamic economic elites who came to control the political landscape of the coast.

What Story Are They Alluding To? Swahili Oral History

Several major media outlets ran stories on the publication of the genetic study. Many gravitated toward sensationalist headlines, such as these:

• DNA Shows “Persian Princes” Helped Found Medieval African Trading Culture (Curry, 2023)

• Largest Ever Analysis of Ancient African DNA Reveals Origin Myth Was True All Along (Spalding, 2023)

• DNA Confirms Oral History of Swahili People (Dolgin, 2023)

These headlines play into romanticized Asia-centric notions that, intentionally or unintentionally, alienate the indigenous people and culture of the coast from the development of coastal society.

It is worth noting that Kusimba commented that the team’s findings don’t support the notion that Swahili civilization was developed by foreign intervention, as by the tenth century, when the earliest Persian DNA was introduced to the coastal communities, those communities had already existed for some time (Delamarter, 2023).

The folkloric tradition that seems to have enamored the media can be found in the Kitāb al-Sulwa, also known as the Kilwa Chronicle. The Kilwa Chronicle represents the folk history of a particular Swahili city-state. There exists several chronicles of this type, which often outline the origin of their respective cities and ruling dynasties. Swahili history for the past several centuries has been preserved in both the oral tradition and the written ajami tradition. In the Swahili ajami tradition, oral traditions are often recorded and preserved in Arabic script by Islamic scholars. Several important sources of Swahili history exist in this literature, including the semi-legendary Kitāb al-Zunūj and the Kitāb al-Sulwa.

According to the Kilwa Chronicle, the city of Kilwa was established in the late tenth century as a major commercial port and eventual center of the Kilwa sultanate by a Persian prince known as Ali ibn al-Hassan Shirazi. Al-Hassan was one of seven sons of a Persian ruler of Shiraz. His mother is said to have been an enslaved Ethiopian woman from Abyssinia. Upon his father’s death, he and his sons and followers were banished from Persia. They were turned away from the Somali–Swahili city of Mogadishu before eventually arriving at the island that would become Kilwa, off the coast of Tanzania. Here, Al-Hassan struck an agreement with the indigenous Bantu king Almuli. As part of it, Almuli’s daughters were married to al-Hassan’s sons in exchange for a large quantity of fine fabric. Almuli feared al-Hassan’s influence and ambition and attempted to reclaim Kilwa, but al-Hassan and his sons destroyed the land bridge connecting Kilwa to the mainland, turning their territory into an island.

Swahili Ancestry Explored through Folklore

There are many versions of this story, several of which are preserved in the traditions of the Shirazi of Zanzibar, who see themselves as the progeny of al-Hassan and his people. In one, the Bantu king is named Mrimba. In this tradition, Sultan Ali al-Hassan has a son with Mrimba’s daughter. This son, Sultan Mohamed, is a central figure in this version of the story and is responsible for wresting power away from traditional African sources. As summarized by Thomas Spears and Derek Nurse (1985),

Sultan Ali had a child by Mrimba’s daughter, a son, who was called Sultan Mohamed bin Sultan Ali. He lived at home [at Kisiwani] until he reached manhood, and then set off and went to the Ruvumba 1 to see his grandfather, the elder Mrimba. When he arrived, his grandfather handed over his power to him, his grandson. So Sultan Mahomed ruled. (p. 71)

In this way, the Persian dynasty became the dominating power not by conquest of armies but by manipulation of the African family unit. After gaining access to Mrimba’s power and resources, Sultan Mohamed used them to extend his influence into the mainland. After Sultan Ali al-Hassan died, Sultan Mohamed consolidated the power he inherited from his African and Persian parents for the benefit of non-African political powers. The grandson of Mrimba, despite his African heritage, did not present himself as an African king mfalme, but instead as a sultan like the foreign powers of Arabia and Persia.

Reflection on the Kilwa Chronicle and the results of this recent study presents a new set of questions removed from the abstractions of romanticized histories. Kusimba further comments,

Despite their intermarrying, the descendants spoke an African language, not an Asian one. This led researchers to conclude that African women had great influence on the formation of the culture. So much so, the villages were established prior to the colonialism from Asia, making women the primary holders of economic and social power. (Delamarter, 2023).

This power, like mitochondrial DNA, was passed to their offspring. Therefore, rather than debating who were the progenitors of power on the eastern coast, we should be concerned with the question of how power was transmitted and accessed. But we are then confronted by an impasse of cultural paradigms. The African matrilineal inheritance, in both the folkloric tradition and the historical record, gave these Africans of mixed heritage an indigenous claim to the land and culture, while the Arab and the Shirazi claims simultaneously provided access to their Asiatic patrilineal identity for political purposes, reinforcing their ontological proximity to the Middle East, the political-cultural-economic center of the Islamic world. These stories tell us as much about a people’s history as about what a people think of themselves.

This recent study reinvigorated the discussion of power, identity, and inheritance on the African continent. Kusimba and his colleagues have done tremendous work that deserves to be analyzed properly. What Kusimba has planned for his future endeavors, the analysis of noncoastal-elite burial sites, is a promising step to uncovering more of this subject.

1 Ruvumba is the area inhabited by the Vumba people, speakers of the Kivumba dialect of Kiswahili. This is the same area associated with the land and coast of Mrima. This gives credence to the idea that the term mrima is associated with the historical king of the area Mrimba.

References

Brielle, E. S., Fleisher, J., Wynne-Jones, S. et al. (2023). Entwined African and Asian genetic roots of medieval peoples of the Swahili coast. Nature, 615, 866–73.

Curry, A. (n.d.). DNA shows “Persian Princes” helped found medieval African trading culture. Science https://www.science.org/content/article/dna-shows-persian-princes-helpedfound-medieval-african-trading-culture

Delamarter, C., & Innovation, R. (2023, March 29). USF researcher’s life work uncovers the first ancient DNA from the Swahili civilization. University of South Florida. https://www.usf.edu/news/2023/usf-researchers-life-work-uncovers-the-first-ancient-dnafrom-the-swahili-civilization.aspx

Dolgin, E. (2023, March 29). DNA confirms oral history of Swahili people. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/science/ancient-swahili-dna.html

IFLScience. (2023, March 31). Largest ever analysis of ancient African DNA reveals origin myth was true all along. https://www.iflscience.com/largest-ever-analysis-of-ancient-africandna-reveals-origin-myth-was-true-all-along-68246

IFLScience. (2023, March 30). Persian princes fleeing to Africa may have helped found ancient trading empire. https://www.iflscience.com/persian-princes-fleeing-to-africa-may-havehelped-found-ancient-trading-empire-68237

Rice News. (2023). Ancient DNA reveals entwined African and Asian ancestry along the Swahili Coast of eastern Africa. News and Media Relations, Rice University. https://news.rice.edu/news/2023/ancient-dna-reveals-entwined-african-and-asianancestry-along-swahili-coast-eastern.

Spears, T., & Nurse, D. (1985). The Swahili: Reconstructing the history and language of an African society, 800–1500. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Further Reading

Allen, J. (1993). Swahili origins: Swahili culture & the Shungwaya phenomenon. Ohio University Press.

Horton, M. (2004). Islam, archeology, and Swahili identity. In Donald Whitcomb (ed.), Changing Social Identity with the Spread of Islam: Archaeological Perspectives, vol 1. Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Mazrui, A., & Shariff, I. N. (1994). The Swahili: Idiom and identity of an African people. World Press.

Mugane, J. M. (2015). The story of Swahili. Ohio University Press.

Nurse, D. (1983). History from linguistics: The case of the Tana river. In History in Africa, vol. 10.

Spears, T., & Nurse, D. (1985). The Swahili: Reconstructing the history and language of an African society, 800–1500. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Spears, T. (1984). The Shirazi in Swahili traditions, culture, and history. In History in Africa. African Studies Association.