The East African Coast. Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century

Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P.

doi:10.2307/1569907

Cited by 19 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…When a town's stone houses were numerous, they helped make the town prominent in the world of long-distance trade and the people who could build them important. Certain towns and houses were the destinations of mostly Muslim visiting traders, whom Swahili families hosted in guest-oriented spaces in their homes (Allen, 1979;Freeman-Grenville, 1962;Fleisher and LaViolette, 2007). Yet we know that many people of means must also have lived in wattle-and-daub houses, as archaeology reveals the widespread and abundant access people had to imported goods (LaViolette and Fleisher, 2009Fleisher, , 2018Pawlowicz, 2019).…”

Section: Chwaka and Swahili Townsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assembling Islamic practice in a Swahili urban landscape, 11th–16th centuries

LaViolette

Fleisher

Horton

2023

Journal of Social Archaeology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Spanning c. 1050–1500 CE, a burgeoning Swahili community called Chwaka built a sequence of four mortared coral mosques in their town of wattle-and-daub houses on Pemba Island, Tanzania. The mosques’ placement, construction, and use played an active role in creating and strengthening an Islamic community and help us define changes in social practice within the town and the larger polity in which it existed. It is argued that the construction of each mosque was an act of assembling, drawing people, other-than-human things and affective social practices together in ways that help tell an urban story. This research provides insights into the residents’ socioeconomic and cultural priorities and the town’s changing relationship with villagers from the surrounding region, contributing to understandings of Swahili urbanism and urban practice.

show abstract

Section: Chwaka and Swahili Townsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assembling Islamic practice in a Swahili urban landscape, 11th–16th centuries

LaViolette

Fleisher

Horton

2023

Journal of Social Archaeology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The trade networks reached to inland Africa as well as around the rim of the Indian Ocean to the Middle East, India and China. The importance of trade is attested by archaeological evidence and to a lesser extent by the scarce written sources of the precolonial period such as descriptions of the famous traveller Ibn Battuta [17]. Thanks to the seasonality of the monsoons, the towns regularly hosted visiting merchants.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transitory Courtyards as a Feature of Sustainable Urbanism on the East African Coast

Baumanová

2022

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The tropical urbanism of coastal East Africa has a thousand-year-long history, making it a recognized example of sustainable urbanism. Although economically dependent on trade, the precolonial Islamic towns of the so-called Swahili coast did not feature markets or other public buildings dedicated to mercantile activities before the European colonial involvement. In this regard, Swahili urban tradition differed from other tropical Islamic cities, such as in Morocco, Mali, Egypt or the Middle East, where markets fulfilled the role of social and economic hubs and, in terms of movement, major transitory/meeting spaces in the trading towns. Yet, the Swahili urban tradition thrived for centuries as a well-connected cosmopolitan type of tropical urbanism. As research has suggested, the public role of spaces associated with trade might have been fulfilled by houses. Using approaches of space syntax and network analysis, this article studies the morphology of the houses considering whether it could have been the courtyards that simulated the role of markets thanks to their transitory spatial configuration. The results are discussed reflecting on other models of houses with courtyards, especially the modern Swahili house appearing later in the colonial era when markets began to be established, and Islamic houses known from elsewhere.

show abstract

“…Of all the items that shaped the political economy and defined status, metals and beads are the most prominent in the archaeological record because of better preservation factors. These have therefore attracted more attention than the less visible items-such as cloth, animal products (e.g., skins, feathers, horns), slaves, and food (Freeman-Grenville 1975;Gibb 1959)-although these also played an important role in the local political economy. Observers, travelers, and historians of early trade with the African east coast indeed made it clear that cloth, in particular, was highly valued (Barbosa 1866, p. 60;Freeman-Grenville 1975;Theal 1900).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These have therefore attracted more attention than the less visible items-such as cloth, animal products (e.g., skins, feathers, horns), slaves, and food (Freeman-Grenville 1975;Gibb 1959)-although these also played an important role in the local political economy. Observers, travelers, and historians of early trade with the African east coast indeed made it clear that cloth, in particular, was highly valued (Barbosa 1866, p. 60;Freeman-Grenville 1975;Theal 1900). Unfortunately, only a handful of archaeological cloth samples have been recovered, and these post-dated the MIA (e.g., Fagan et al 1969;Huffman 1971).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fiber Spinning During the Mapungubwe Period of Southern Africa: Regional Specialism in the Hinterland

Antonites

2019

Afr Archaeol Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Middle Iron Age (MIA) of southern Africa is a period characterized by increased social complexity centered on the polity of Mapungubwe. This article considers the role that fiber spinning played in the regional political economy of the period. At Mutamba and other sites in the southern hinterland of Mapungubwe, spinning was a significant economic activity. Evidence from 187 spindle whorls from the site suggests that intensive spinning of cotton was practiced by households. This enabled hinterland communities to actively participate in regional trade networks and acquire trade goods, including objects that were often restricted in the Mapungubwe heartland. This casts hinterland communities as active participants, rather than passive bystanders, in the regional economy.

show abstract

The East African Coast. Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century

Cited by 19 publications

References 0 publications

Assembling Islamic practice in a Swahili urban landscape, 11th–16th centuries

Assembling Islamic practice in a Swahili urban landscape, 11th–16th centuries

Transitory Courtyards as a Feature of Sustainable Urbanism on the East African Coast

Fiber Spinning During the Mapungubwe Period of Southern Africa: Regional Specialism in the Hinterland

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About