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Reflections on Historiography and Pre-Nineteenth-Century History from the Pate “Chronicles”1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Randall L. Pouwels*
Affiliation:
University of Central Arkansas

Extract

The period from 1500 to 1800 was a particularly busy phase in the history of the East African coast. It was a time which witnessed massive demographic shifts in the interior regions, as well as heavy southern Arab immigration and external meddling from Portuguese and Umani interlopers. It saw the destruction of the medieval entrepot of Kilwa Kisiwani and a decline, followed by a slow resurgence, in the fortunes of another medieval powerhouse, Mombasa. Throughout this phase, the ancient northern coastal city of Pate enjoyed a pivotal, even at times a paramount, role in the affairs of the coast. Before the middle 1500s the town seems to have been of insufficient consequence to attract much attention. Thereafter, however, the city-state capitalized on mainland alliances with powerful Orma confederations like the “Garzeda” to become a major center for regional trade, as well as a crucial strategic location in the competing religious and political ambitions of Portugal and various Arab states. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Pate clearly was the most important state in the Lamu archipelago. Arguably, too, it was the most powerful Swahili sultanate on the entire coast.

Given the significance of Pate in the affairs of the East African coast from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries, scholars long have realized that a history of the sultanate is exigent to an understanding of the entire coast during this time. What would seem to be fortunate to this end is that historians have the Pate chronicles as a research aid. Taken together, these constitute the most detailed indigenous history of any coastal city-state up to the onset of the colonial era. However, as attested by the difficulties Chittick encountered in his attempts to work with them, these documents present the historian with a superabundance of (often confusing) information. Confronted with this, Chittick concluded that the only possible value of these chronicles was as a source of/for children's fables. Thus surmised, a historian of this important Swahili sultanate would seem to be left with very little indeed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1993

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Footnotes

1.

I wish to thank the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Research Council of the University of Central Arkansas, and the Social Science Research Council for assistance given at various times which contributed to this paper.

References

Notes

2. The town receives only a brief reference in Idrisi (as “Batta”), and none in other major Arab sources of the pre-Portuguese era, a period when it appears to have been overshadowed locally by Shanga and Manda, and regionally by Muqdishu, Malindi, Mombasa, Kilwa, and possibly the Ozi confederation. Even in the sixteenth century, it is barely mentioned in the accounts of early Portuguese conquests given in Barros, Castanheda, Correia, or Faria e Sousa. See de Barros, João, Asia: Dos feitos que os Portugueses fizeram no descobrimento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente. (4 vols.: Lisbon, 1945)Google Scholar; de Castanheda, Fernâo Lopez, Historia do descobrimento e conquista da India pelos Portugueses (8 vols.: Coimbra, 19241933)Google Scholar; Correia, Gaspar, Lendas da India (4 vols.: Porto, 1975)Google Scholar; e Sousa, Manuel Faria, The Portuguese Asia (3 vols.: Westmead, Farnborough, Hants, 1971).Google Scholar Pate does not seem to have become sufficiently important regionally to be given more than passing attention in Portuguese sources until 1569 and afterwards, as in for example, P. Monclaro, “Relação de viagem que fizerão os padres da Compania de Jesus com Francisco Barreto na conquista da Monomatapa na anno de 1569,” Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, Manuscripts Portugais (hereafter B.N.P.) no. 8, ff. 247; dos Santos, João, Etiopia Orientale (Lisbon, 1891), 1: 391, 420-21, 424Google Scholar; King to Viceroy, 14 March 1588, in de Cunha-Rivara, Joaquim H., ed., Archivo Portuguez Oriental, (6 vols.: Nova Goa, 1857), Fasc, 3, Doc. 43: 141, 146Google Scholar; do Couto, Diogo, Décodas da Asia (Lisbon, 17781788), 11:4546Google Scholar; King to Viceroy, 22 January 24, August, and 22 December 1598, in Archivos Naçionales de Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (hereafter T.T.), Misc. MSS de Nossa Senhora de Graca, Tome 3, ff. 213-14, 217-19, 333-34.

3. For Pate's relations to the Orma see the description given of the 1622-24 voyages of João de Velasco and Jerónimo Lobo in Beccari, C., ed., Rerum Aethiopicarum scriptores occidentales, Inediti, a Saeculo XVI ad XIX, (Roma, 19101913), 12:76Google Scholar; and details of the 1637 treaty, no. 7, in the T.T. Livros das Monçães,” Vol. 40, ff. 267–68.Google Scholar On its strategic importance by the late sixteenth century see “Os Ordens de Dom Francisco da Gama” to Rui Soares de Mello in the Biblioteca Nacional de Lisbon (hereafter B.N.L.) MS. 1897 (Fundo Geral), ff. 69-72v; and B.N.L. MS. 29 (“Relação das plantas, e descripçães de todas as fortelezas, cidades e povoaçães dos Portugueses na India”), ff. 10-10v. The best testimony of its religious importance is given in Thomas, P.Sancto, de S. Domingos Espirito, Breve relação das Christandades que os religioses de nosso Padre Sancto Agostinho teem a sua conta nos partes do Oriente e do fruyto que nellas sefaz (Lisbon, 1630), 13.Google Scholar Also see note 61.

4. Pate's supremacy in the Lamu Archipelago by the seventeenth century is mentioned in B.N.L. MS. 29, ff. 10-10v. This partly seems to have been the result both of the destruction of the larger and wealthier Faza in 1589, as well as continued wars of aggression waged by Pate against her neighbors at various times. See Santos, , Etiopia Orientale, 1:391–97Google Scholar; Couto, , Asia, 11:30Google Scholar; and T.T. “Livros das Monçães,” vol. 40, ff. 267v. The supreme importance of the Pate sultanate as the strategic “key” to the entire northern coast was attested by two important eighteenth-century Portuguese sources, B.N.L. MS. 465 (“Noticias da India desde o fim do governo de Vice Rey Vasco Fernandes de Meneses atte o fim do anno de 1738”), ff. 31v-32/129; Jose J. G. da Silveira, “Relação da restauração de Mombaça, da noça conquista de Patte, e mais Reynos daquella costa desde o Cabo Delgado the ao de Guardafui offerecida ao muito Alto, e muito Poderoso Senhor Dom Joäo o V Rey de Portugal” (Goa, 1728), Biblioteca e Arquivo Distrital de Evora MS., 41. Chittick's discovery of large amounts of blue-and-white porcelain at Pate revealed that the site experienced a peak in occupation and wealth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Chittick, H.N., “A New Look at the History of Pate,” JAH 10 (1969), 378–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Ibid., 375-91.

6. Guillain, Charles, Documents sur l'histoire, le géographie et le commerce de l'Afrique Orientale (3 vols.: Paris, 1856), 3: 530ff.Google Scholar

7. Chittick, , “History of Pate,” 375–76.Google Scholar

8. Heepe, M., “Suaheli-Chronik von Pate. Ubersetzt und bearbeitet von M. Heepe,” Mitteilungen des Seminars fur Orientalische Sprachen, 31 (1928), 145–92Google Scholar; Stigand, C.H., The Land of Zinj (2d ed.: New York, 1966), 27102Google Scholar; Werner, A., “A Swahili History of Pate,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 14 (1915), 148-61, 278-97, 392413.Google Scholar

9. J. Cusack “A History of die Nabahan Sultans of Pate,” K.N.A. DC/LAM/3/1. MS 177 was obtained by John Allen in 1964. I wish to thank Marina Tolmacheva for allowing me to see her transcribed copy of MS 177, entitled “Aklibar Pate.”

10. The original narrative was composed in 1921 by L. Talbot-Smith, “Historical Record of Tanaland,” and was summarized in 1933 in J. Clive's “Short History of Lamu.” Both are found in K.N.A. DC/LAM/3/1.

11. The date of his death is given in Chittick, “History of Pate,” 376.

12. Without doubt the best discussion of diese motifs in coastal tradition is found in Middleton, J., The World of the Swahili, An African Mercantile Civilization (New Haven, 1992), 2835.Google Scholar

13. Furthermore, the “WaPatte” are listed, along with the Nabahani, as one of the “clans” of Pate in the K.N.A. LMU/PRB III, 196.

14. Evidence from correspondence from Hardinge to Kimberley, 9 February 1895, in K.N.A. DC/LAM/3/2, 120.

15. See, for example, Prins, A.H.J.On Swahili Historiography,” Journal of the East African Swahili Committee 28 (1958), 2640Google Scholar, and Freeman-Grenville, G.S.P.The Swahili Coast, Second to Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1988), 114.Google Scholar

16. Werner, , “Swahili History,” 149Google Scholar, states emphatically that “[o]f this I was assured by the Sultan of Witu and others; there are no copies remaining.” See also Heepe, , “Suaheli-Chronik,” 146.Google Scholar It is not clear whether Bwana Kitini himself actually claimed to have used a written source. Stigand, the only recorder of any of his versions who actually wrote directly from his dictation, does not mention any written copy from which Bwana Kitini took his information, much less one from which he dictated. Freeman-Grenville, , Swahili Coast, 10Google Scholar, has concluded that MS 177 is, in fact, the “oldest” extant version we have. However, this and other conclusions he makes, ibid., 10-13, are based on his larger historiography of MS 177 and other sources that are more eccentrically personal than factual in nature. For example, he merely assumes that there was a written original from which Kitini worked. He assumes, moreover, that one of these originals was written by Bwana Ahmad Simba, Kitini's grandfather. He assumes unreasonably (i.e., he provides no explanation for what apparently are personal prejudices) that the author of the “Kawkab al-Duriyya” was “no competent Swahili scholar.” Guillain's scholarship is cashiered in similar fashion as “muddled (and muddied).” Nowhere does Freeman-Grenville base any of his views on a systematic comparison of the available versions.

17. Ibid., 148; Heepe, , “Suaheli-Chronik,” 147Google Scholar; On MS 177 I am indebted to Marina Tolmacheva for information provided by her in personal correspondence, based on her own researches into this subject.

18. Stigand, , Land of Zinj, 2829.Google Scholar

19. Cusack, , “History,” f. 17.Google Scholar

20. Werner, , “Swahili History,” 148.Google Scholar

21. These shajara were quite fashionable in Swahili towns by the late nineteenthth century. One might imagine, for instance, that if there really had been a “Book of the Kings of Pate,” it might have more closely resembled a shajara than an actual chronicle. See Baxter, H.C., “Pangani: The Trade Center of East Africa,” Tanganyika Notes and Records 17(1946), 15.Google Scholar The shajara were meant to resemble chronicles, of course, in a society which had seen the emergence of a literate tradition which competed with a largely oral tradition only within the past century or two.

22. Jambeni Muhammad, whom Chittick interviewed and who knew Bwana Kitini, disputed his versions. See Chittick, , “History of Pate,” 376Google Scholar, and a another likely reference to him in Krumm, B., Words of Oriental Origin in Swahili (London, 1940), 9.Google Scholar On the other hand, Stigand does state that in his time Kitini was “looked on locally as the authority in historical matters.” See Land of Zinj, 29.

23. Ibid., 29.

24. Ibid., 95n1.

25. Krumm, , Words, 9.Google Scholar

26. Most of these points are reviewed in Chittick, , “History of Pate,” 379–80.Google Scholar

27. For a discussion of the effects of rising literacy in East Africa during the seventeenth through the late nineteenth centuries see, Pouwels, R., “Swahili Literature and History in the Post-Structuralist Era,” IJAHS 25(1992), 261–83.Google Scholar

28. The numbering used in this table has been made to conform to that used in Table 3.

29. Werner, , “Swahili History,” 149.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., 297, fn “erratum.” Later it appears that it was Mshamu b. Kombo, in the name of the elders of Pate, who claimed die ivory siwa, the ceremonial horn, from the liwali of Lamu. See C.S. Reddie and F.W. Isaac, “History of the Ivory Horn of Pate,” K.N.A. LMU/7, 15-16.

31. A sultan is numbered in Table 3 if he is listed in at least one Mshamu b. Kombo version and at least one Bwana Kitini version. Parentheses indicate minor variations among WHC 177. In such cases, for the sake of convenience the name or date most commonly found among them is indicated. Where no “common” date exists, a question mark is used. The spelling employed for the combined WHC 177 is based on the essentially Arabic orthography found in MS 177.

32. A cursory excavation revealed that Pate was occupied by the late first millennium, C.E. However, the scant archeological information available on Pate does not indicate whether the site was occupied continuously after that. See Wilson, T.H., “Spatial Analysis and Settlement on the East African Coast,” Paideuma 28 (1982), 214Google Scholar; and Horton, M., “Early Muslim Trading Settlements on the East African Coast: New Evidence from Shanga,” Antiquaries Journal 68(1986), 299.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., 312ff., and Horton, M., “The Swahili Corridor,” Scientific American 257/3(1987), 8693.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also the arguments presented in Nurse, D., “A Linguistic Reconsideration of Swahili Origins,” Azania 18(1983), 127–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pouwels, R.L., Horn and Crescent, Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast, 800-1900 A.D. (Cambridge, 1987), 624.Google Scholar

34. Chittick, H.N., Manda: Excavations at an Island Port on the Kenya Coast (Nairobi, 1984)Google Scholar; Horton, M., “The Early Settlement of the Northern Swahili Coast,” (PhD., Cambridge University, 1984).Google Scholar Various Portuguese authorities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries commented on the importance and size of Faza, as well as its rivalry with Pate. See for example, remarks by Santos, , Etiopia Orientale, 1: 391–93Google Scholar; and Lobo, Jerónimo, Relation historique d'Abissinie. Traduite du portugais, continuée at augmentée de plusiers dissertations, lettres et memoirs par M. Le Grand. (Paris, 1728), 18.Google Scholar For Manda see Couto, , Asia, 11: 5556.Google Scholar

35. See discussions in Pouwels, R.L., “Oral Historiography and the Problem of the Shirazi on the East African Coast,” HA 11(1984), 244–53Google Scholar; idem., Horn and Crescent, 33-34; and Middleton, World of the Swahili, 60, 80-82.

36. See, for example, the stories of seventeenth-century Sultan Bwana Mkuu b. Abu Bakr in WHC 177 (no. 16a), who married and chose to reside at Lamu. The “Lamu chronicle,” mentions the kinship ties between Lamu's Zena faction members and Pate clans. See Faraji b, Shaibu. al-Bakari al-Lamuy, Muhammad, “Kliabarul-Lamu,” Bantu Studies 12(1938), 26Google Scholar; also Stigand, , Land of Zinj, 73.Google Scholar Likewise, in one account of the “restauração” of Pate to Portuguese control in 1728, the kinship relations that existed between Pate and Faza and Siu are very apparent. See B.N.L. MS. 465, ff. 33/130; Silveira, “Relação,” f. 41; B.N.L. MS. 485 (Antonio do Brito Freire, “Asentos de todas as viagens principiadas no prezente anno 1727,”) ff. 3v-4.

37. An obvious case involved the 1587-89 Portuguese destruction of Manda and Faza: Santos, , Etiopia Orientale, 1: 391-93, 395-97, 420–21Google Scholar; Couto, , Asia, 11:30.Google Scholar The case of the 1728 joint Pate-Portuguese expedition to retake Mombasa also comes to mind. Contemporary accounts make it apparent that Pate's help was crucial, but that it was the Portuguese who overcame local resistance, made treaties, and who stayed on to govern in Mombasa very much as the “senior partner” in possession of Ft. Jesus. See Silveira, “Relação,” ff. 17/49; B.N.L. MS. 465, ff. 34/131ff.; B.N.L. MS. 485, ff. 5-5v.

38. For the south coast slave trade see Correia, , Lendas da India, 1: 665Google Scholar; Santos, , Etiopia Orientale, 1: 332–33Google Scholar; e Sousa, Faria, Portuguese Asia, 266Google Scholar; T.T. “Livros das Monçães,” Vol. 17, ff. 10; Pedro Ferreira Fogaça to King, 31 August 1506 in T.T. Gaveta 20, Maço 4, f. 15.

39. Santos, , Etiopia Orientale, 1: 380Google Scholar; Monclaro, “Relação,” B.N.P. MS. 8, ff. 247.

40. Strandes, Justus, The Portuguese Period in East Africa (2d ed.: (Nairobi, 1961), 81.Google Scholar General information on fifteenth-century western Indian Ocean trade is provided by Stanley, H.E.J., Duarte Barbosa, A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar in the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century (London, 1866), 1617Google Scholar; and e Sousa, Faria, The Portuguese Asia, 1: 8283.Google Scholar

41. Nasir, Abdallah Ali, Al Inkishafi, The Soul's Awakening (Nairobi, 1972), 6977.Google Scholar

42. Correia, , Lendas da India, 1:676Google Scholar; Stanley, , Duarte Barbosa, 1617Google Scholar; B.N.L. MS Illuminado no. 154 (Description of die voyage of Francisco d'Almeida, 1505); and Pedro Ferreira Fogaça to King, 31 August 1506, in T.T. Gaveta 20, maço 4, f. 15.

43. See Castanheda quoted in Theal, G., Records of South-Eastem Africa: Collected in Various Libraries and Archive Departments in Europe (9 vols.: London, 18981903), 5:364.Google Scholar

44. Naturally much of this was information he received from his own informant(s). See note 24.

45. Lobo, , Relation historique, 17Google Scholar; B.N.L. MS. 29 (“Relação das plantas, e descripçães de todas as fortelezas, cidades e povoaçães dos Portugueses na India”), ff. 10-10v; and B.N.L. MS. 9163 (an apocryphal “Descripção das terras da India Oriental e dos seos uzos, costumes, ritos e leys, 1498, escrito por Vasco da Gama, descubridor da India”).

46. Dapper, , Description de l'Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686), 401.Google Scholar

47. B.N.L. MS. 29, f. 10v; and Lobo, , Relation historique, 18.Google Scholar At least one exception to the apparent compliance of Pate sultans to Portuguese exactions and demands, however, was the sultan mentioned by Santo Bernadino as having been beheaded in 1603. See Freeman-Grenville, G.S.P., The East African Coast: Select Documents (London, 1962), 158.Google Scholar

48. Principe Bwana Mtiti of Pate to Viceroy, August, 1598, in T.T. Misc. Mss. de N. Sra. de Graça, tome III, ff 217-19. The letter is also reproduced in Carlos Alonso, O.S.A., ed., “Nuevos documentos sobre los Agustinos en la costa suahili y sobre los martires de Mombasa en 1631,” Analecta Augustiniana 50 (1985), 176–78.Google Scholar

49. B.N.L. MS. 8470, f. 72v; “Livros das Monçães,” vol. 24, Archivo Histórico da India, 105-106/1-3-5, f. 353, referred to in Boletim da Filmoteca Ultramarina Portuguesa 24 (1963), 321.Google Scholar On the privileges designated by the special patentes de irmandade see King to Viceroy, 7 March 598, “Livros das Monçães,” vol. 2B, Archivo Histórico da India, 38/3-4, referred to in Boletim da Filmoteca Ultramarina Portuguesa 2 (1955), 244.Google Scholar

50. Actually, at least several treaties were negotiated, q.v. T.T. Livros das Monções,” vol. 40, ff. 267-69, 271Google Scholar; Biker, J.F.J., Colleçcão de Tratados e Concertos de Paies que o Estado da India Portugueza com os Reis e Senhores com quern Teve Relações nos Partes da Asia e Africa Oriental desde o Principio da Conquista ate ao Fim do Seculo XVIII (14 vols.: Lisbon, 18821885), 6:219–24Google Scholar; and B.N.L. MS. 7640 (Fundo Geral), ff. 96-97.

51. See, for example, King to Viceroy, 14 March 1588, in Cunha-Rivara, J.H., Archivo Portuguez Oriental (Nova Goa, 1857)Google Scholar, Fascicle 3, Document 43, p. 146; Viceroy to Rui Soares de Mello, B.N.L. MS. 8470, f. 70v; and King to Viceroy, 3 December 1645, in T.T. “Livros das Monções,” vol. 55, f. 248.

52. Local fears over conversions of women and slaves, for example, were expressed in the letter of Prince Mtiti b. Muhammad to die Viceroy, 24 August 1598, in T.T. Misc. MS, de N. Sra. de Graça, tome III, ff. 217-19. Cohabitation with local women, too, was a problem from the beginning, as related, for example, in H.E.J. Stanley, The Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama and His Viceroyalty from the Lendas da India by Gaspar Correa (London, 1869), 299-302.

53. On the Dominicans see Santos, , Etiopia e Orientale, 2:128–30.Google Scholar The best work on the Augustinians in East Africa is Carlos Alonso, Los Agustinos en la costa Suahili (1598-1698) (Valladolid, 1988). See also Hartmann, Arnulf, “The Augustinians in the Land of the Swahili,” Analecta Augustiniana 25 (1962), 326–39Google Scholar, and Gray, John, Early Portuguese Missionaries in East Africa (London, 1958).Google Scholar

54. de Ave-Maria, M., ““Manuel eremetico da congregação de India Oriental dos eremitas de N.P.S. Agostinho,” in Rego, A. de Silva, Documentação para a historia das misães do padroado Português do Oriente (12 vols.: Lisbon, 1948), 12:172–73Google Scholar; and Thomas de S. Domingos Espirito Sancto, Breve relação, 13.

55. On the first attempts to build a church in Pate see the letters of Bwana Mtiti to Viceroy in T.T. Misc. MS. de N. Sra. de Graa, tome III, ff. 213-14, 217-19, 333-34, and Alonso, , Agustinos, 3035.Google Scholar

56. For example, diere was the institution of the “pai dos christäos” in every coastal fortress to look after die spiritual welfare of Christians and to enforce a strict orthodoxy. See Regimento, King to Viceroy, 27 February 1585, in “Livros das Monções,” vol. 1, Archivo Histórico da India, in Boletim de Filmoteca Ultramarina Portuguesa 1(1954) 173–74.Google Scholar Some friars were especially “devout” in enforcing such ordiodoxy and in winning converts, as for example, P. Bonaventura: see Sancto, Espirito, Breve relação, 13Google Scholar; Ave-Maria, , “Manuel eremetico,” 388–89Google Scholar; and Santos, , Etiopia Orientale, 2:130, 215-18, 242ff.Google Scholar There is evidence, too, that the Inquisition was active in East Africa: see the treaty of 1727, B.N.L. 7640, nos. 12 and 13.

57. B.N.L. MS. 177 (“Memorias da Congregção Augustiniana de India Oriental”) f. 268; B.N.L. MS. 29 mentions that the “kings” of Pate “never” wanted to give consent for a church.

58. B.N.L. MS. 177, f. 268; Hartmann, A., “The Augustinians in Golden Goa, According to a Manuscript by Felix of Jesus, O.S. A.Analecta Augustiniana 30(1967), 80.Google Scholar

59. On the sharifs see Martin, B.G., “Arab Migrations to East Africa in Medieval Times,” IJAHS 7(1974): 367–90.Google Scholar On the importance of Pate's Banadir and Red Sea connections, see Pouwels, R.L., “Islam and Islamic Leadership in the Coastal Communities of Eastern Africa, 1700 to 1914” (Ph.D., UCLA, 1979), 5157.Google Scholar For a discussion of the religious role of the Banu Amrani in coastal affairs, see Pouwels, R.L., “The Medieval Foundations of East African Islam,” IJAHS 11 (1978), 201-26, 393409.Google Scholar The Banadir connections of northern coastal clans is evinced in Prins, A.H.J., The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (London, 1967), 8284.Google Scholar

60. Theal, G.M., Records, 3:216.Google Scholar

61. “Index parochiarum,” in Alonso, C., ed., “Agustinhos en la India, Relaciones y listas de religiosos ineditas (1624-1642),” Analecta Augustiniana 37(1974), 245Google Scholar; also in 1678, Ave-Maria, , “Manual eremetico,” 172Google Scholar, reported that the church at Pate had been destroyed by local “Moors” and their “Arab supporters.” On Muslim counterproselytization, Domingos, P. Thomas de S., Breve relação, 13Google Scholar, states that “[a] esta ilha de Patte vem ter embarcaçães, que de Meca vam a Ilha de Sam Laurenco com Xarifos que sam os seus Cassizes [qadis], que la vam semear sua feita, e trazer muytos Bugues [Dajun?] minimos Gentios, pera os levarem a Meca, e fazerem Mouros…”

62. Hartmann, , “Felix of Jesus,” 60.Google Scholar On the beheading of the sultan see “Gaspar de Santo Bernadino,” 158.

63. Nasii, Al-Inkishafi, 91.

64. Chittick, , “History of Pate,” esp. 382ff.Google Scholar

65. Many of die relevant references are given in Table 4. “Piqueno” means “little.” In Swahili, this might have been rendered as Mdogo or Mtoto. This name was given to distinguish him from another Bwana Mkuu, a supporter of the Sultan, called “Grande” Bwana Mkuu.

66. B.N.L. MS. 465, ff. 31v/129.

67. Details given in Silveira, “Relação,” ff. 1-2; B.N.L. MS. 465, ff. 31-31v/129; and B.N.L. MS. 485, f. 1.

68. The “Kitab az-Zanuj” records that the last Shirazi sultan of Mombasa, for example, was kidnapped to Goa. See Cerulli, E., Somalia, Scritti vari editi ed inediti (2 vols.: Rome, 1957), 1:240, 270–71.Google Scholar Various similar incidents, such as the kidnapping of forty Baud elders by the Nabahani, or the forty Lamu elders drowned while stealing the brass siwa from Luziwa/Manda are found in K.N.A. DC/LAM/3/1, 197 and elsewhere.

69. For Smee and Hardy see Burton, R.F., Zanzibar; City, Island, and Coast (2 vols.: London, 1872), 2:475–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This account, however, covers only observations made during Smee's and Hardy's visit, and offers nothing on preceding events.

70. See Table 4 and Guillain, , Documents, 1:547ff.Google Scholar

71. For a recent discussion of this war, see Pouwels, R. L., “The Battle of Shela: The Climax of an Era and a Point of Departure in the Modern History of the Kenya Coast,” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 31 (1991), 363–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Some eyewitness information of the rivalry between Sultan Ahmad (“Hammed”) and his cousin, Fumo Luti Kipunga, as it stood in 1811, is given in the account of Smee's and Hardy's visit: Burton, , Zanzibar, 2:475–77.Google Scholar

72. The laments in Nasir's late eighteenthdi-century poem, Al-Inkishafi, are of a Pate ruined during this period, too.

73. Strandes, , Portuguese Period, 120.Google Scholar

74. Ibid., 129.

75. Ibid., 138; Santos, , Etiopia Orientale, 1:420–21.Google Scholar

76. Strandes, , Portuguese Period, 131, 133Google Scholar; Santos, , Etiopia Orientale, 1:391.Google Scholar

77. Couto, Asia, 11:30.

78. Ibid., 11:30, 58; Santas, , Etiopia Orientale, 1:405–06.Google Scholar

79. Ibid., 1:424.

80. Couto, , Asia, 11:4546.Google Scholar

81. T.T. Misc. Mss. de N. Sra. de Graça, tome III, ff. 213-14, 217-18.

82. Freeman-Grenville, , Select Documents, 160.Google Scholar

83. Strandes, , Portuguese Period, 152.Google Scholar

84. Stigand, , Land of Zinj, 163.Google Scholar

85. B.N.L. MS. 939 (“Diario do Miguel de Noronha, Conde de Linhares, 1634-35”) entries for 8 and 9 October 1631.

86. Strandes, , Portuguese Period, 191.Google Scholar

87. Viceroy to King, 18 December, 1631, T.T. “Livros,” 29, ff. 143v.

88. Strandes, , Portuguese Period, 183.Google Scholar

89. Fleet commander Velho to Viceroy, entry for 10 June 1634, B.N.L. Ms. 939.

90. T.T. “Livros das Monções,” 40, ff 260, 267, 272, 272v.

91. T.T. “Livros,” 40, f. 267.

92. Ibid., 280.

93. “Livros das Monções,” 51A in Archive Histórico da India, 46-47/4-1, f. 210; Strandes, , Portuguese Period, 202–03.Google Scholar

94. Ibid., Portuguese Period, 206-08.

95. Biker, , Collecção de Tratados, 6:224–25.Google Scholar

96. Boxer, C.R. and de Azevedo, C., Ft. Jesus and the Portuguese in Mombasa (London, 1960), 52.Google Scholar

97. B.N.L. Ms. 8538 (“Interrogatorios para se preguntarem testemunhas na Divaça da perda da cidade de Patte”) f. 151.

98. “Livros das Monções,” 55A, in Archivo Histórico da India, 51-52/5-2, Document 82.

99. 1840s tradition cited in Guillain, , Documents, 3: 534.Google Scholar

100. Geschlechtstafel, cited in Chittick, “History,” 389.

101. B.N.L.Cod. 465, ff. 31v/129.

102. B.N.L. Ms. 465 (“Noticias da India desde o fim do governo de Vice Rey Vasco Fernandes de Meneses atte o fim do anno de 1738”), ff. 31v/129.

103. Silveira, “Relação da restauração de Mombaça,” 33-55.

104. Ibid., 41; B.N.L. Ms. 465, ff. 31/129.

105. B.N.L. Ms. 465, ff. 32/130.

106. B.N.L. Ms. 465, ff. 30-31/128-129; B.N.L. Ms. 485, f. 1; On Bwana Dau and his assistance to the Portuguese cause in the 1696-98 seige of Ft. Jesus see B.N.L. Ms. 584 (“Historia de Mombasa”), ff. 4ff.

107. B.N.L. Ms. 465, ff.33-34/130-31; B.N.L. Ms. 485, ff. 3v-4.

108. Guillain, , Documents, 3:534.Google Scholar

109. B.N.L. Ms. 7640; Biker, , Tratados, 4:32, 55.Google Scholar

110. Silveira, , “Restauração,” 4344Google Scholar; B.N.L. Ms. 485, ff. 3v-4.

111. B.N.L. Ms. 465, ff. 35/132; Silveira, “Restauração,” 49.

112. Ibid., 49.

113. Guillain, , Documenta, 3:547.Google Scholar

114. Ibid., 1:534.

115. Biker, , Tratados, 4:32.Google Scholar

116. Guillain, , Documents, 3:547.Google Scholar

117. Ibid., 1:551.

118. Ibid., 1:552.

119. Ibid.

120. Ibid., 1:558.

121. Ibid., 1:567.

122. Ibid.