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Biography Writing in Swahili

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Farouk Topan
Farouk Topan*
Affiliation:
SOAS, University of London
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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

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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

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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

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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.

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21. Ibid., 10.

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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