Swahili Culture
Вставка
- Опубліковано 28 бер 2021
- Swahili Culture with Latifa Shihabuddin Chiraghdin. A renowned Swahili Heritage Activist and author of LIFE JOURNEY OF A SWAHILI SCHOLAR Shihabuddin Chiraghdin (1934 - 1976)
A brief history of the Swahili:
The Swahili were initially called Wangozi. They are believed to have migrated from Shungwaya to the coast, where they intermarried with the Arabs.
Traditional Swahili society is matrilineal. Women would own houses, which were built as soon as a girl is born, and men would make major decisions for the family and provided security to the community.
The Swahili are found along the east African coast, with some living in Mombasa, Kwale, Tana River, Lamu and Kilifi counties. They speak Swahili (Kiswahili).
The Swahili were an urban, maritime community, who interacted with foreigners from various parts of the world during the extensive Indian Ocean trade. They became middlemen and used dhows to move goods from various parts of the African coast, to the middle East and India. Their economy relied on trade, agriculture and fishing. Before the introduction of numismatic currency, payment for goods and services was done in cowrie shells. Items of trade were ivory, timber and slaves among others. Swahili obtained spices and clothes from the Arabs. Apart from trade, the Swahili were renowned fishermen and kept small herds of livestock. They also grew spices, coconut palms and fruit trees like mangoes.
Source: Google Arts & Culture
So why is there a lot of argument on the origin of the Swahili? I learnt in my history lesson in primary school that the Swahili are a product of the Mijikenda and other foreign tribes. Where did the misconception arise from? If the Swahili exist as a people and not just as a language what are the cultures, traditions and heritages that are the identity of a Swahili? Why do the new generations refuse to be called Swahili?
Let’s chat with Ms Chiradhgin
Btw there's indigenous name for Swahili people in the Somali language especially in the southern dialect and it's Maanyo (written as Mayo in English meaning people of the Ocean in Somali) because they were formidable seafarers and alot of ethnic Somalis married to the islandic Swahili tribe Baajuun from the islands near Kismayo such as Gudhaa. Salama from Mogadishu.
Hukuna identity crisis,the fact of the matter is Swahili are bantus and always have been,we've had some intermarriage s especially with mijikenda on the kenyan coast and some Arabs.tatizo waswahili wengi twa penda sana uarabu kuliko uafrika wetu.
That is your part of your heritage speak for yourself ..they are Swahili who are purely indeginous meaning they are purely Africans from the coast while others are mixed and have intermarried with the Arabs and other foreigners so basically u have a point you can either be a Swahili from pure African blood who are fro the coastline n also a mixed afro Arabian like many seen in Zanzibar, Tanga, malindi , lamu , kismayu, barawa, Frere town and in Mombasa therefore lazima kuwe na identity crisis kwa wale walio mix sisemi kuhusu wadigo na wagiriama nasema kuhusu machotara wakiswahili wanaoishi coast
@@khadijamohamed7002 sawa sawa,hao unao sema wakuchanganyika ni maharaja sasa.waswahili wana maharaja matatu.Muasili,Mzawa na Mswahili ridhia.
👍🏽
@@khadijamohamed7002 Je waswahili asili ethnicity yao ni moja, na je kama ethnicity yao ni moja je wana asili ya bantu, cushit ama semites ?
@@eastzooadmin6416 kwa kutumia maharaja na vitabu mbali mbali mswahili ni WA aina tatu
1)kiasili (huyu ni mbantu)
2) machotara (waliochanganya na kabila mbali mbali)
3) wanaotoka pwani 'sahel' kwa kiarabu Hawa ni wakaazi wa pwani hata wadigo wanajiita waswahili siku hizi na pia kuna watu mbali mbali waliokuja pwani pia wamechukuwa Mila na desturi za kiswahili
That's y kuna identify crisis kwa waswahili cos even other coastal tribe like the giriama ,digo claim to be swahilis
May Allah bless you further for your education Ameen!
I love this
Nice conversation
Very insightful MashaAllah. ❤️
Good information.Thanks
Very informative thanks for this
Wonderful conversation, thank you for letting us listen in.
Scholarly conversation 🙏
Inapendeza
Vizuri sana
Maasha’Allah that’s my old time friend/sister and still is👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Mashaallah nice topic
Mabrouk sister
I agree with you some what
Salam alaykum. I am halfway through this fascinating conversation and I must say that it’s wonderful to listen and to learn about this amazing and incredible people and language. Though it’s my language I am constantly learning and here I am learning still at the age of 62. Incidentally enslaved people from America also survived by communicating in riddles for example to speak so Europeans didn’t understand arrangement of rebellion they planned for escape, they would greet each other by saying Salam alaykum. Thank you for this learned conversation of who we are and we are still evolving.
Awesome
Ancient Swahili from Kismayo to Sofala. Ancient Swahili Coast traded upto China. The Swahili is an ancient tribe on its own without recent mixtures with Mijikenda, Arabs etc. They are a Sabaki tribe. See the Gazija of Comoros those are Swahili too. See wangwana of the Congo. Those in Kismayo etc. The mistake was from the British who categorised them as a mixture of Arabs and Bantus which is very recent. They are an ancient tribe in their own. They lived in towns, cities were traders. Read the Swahili civilisation from Sofala to Kilwa, pemba, Zanzibar, Tanga, Mombasa , Lamu, Kismayo. Comoros etc and also Congo Wangwana
nice video
hujambo kaka
Goodness me I love to talk the sister for hours. Thank you and yes we are superb learners and we have never been lazy
Kweli Waswahili ni watu wakarimu.very hospitable people i had the opportuenity working In Lamu, kilifi & Mombasa . Before i was transfered to Rift valley Province .
She was trying to make it sound so complicated than it actually is , I'm a Coastal person , Mijikenda , The Swahili are predominantly people of Arab and Bantu Ancestry with a few additives in the mix , she only starts with them being Muslims , doesn't tell us who they were before Islam came , Am a Muslim Mijikenda and what I have grown up seeing is that the Swahili love their Arab lineage so much and they exclusively identify with it , they despise the Bantu side , she is so delusional .
Not really they have gained the Arab culture of claiming there paternal side clan rather than martenal side that's y many of them claim to b Arabs based on Arabic norms ..sio ati wanahate there African side it's just that they have adopted every aspect of Arabic culture based on there forefathers
@@khadijamohamed7002 I've never seen a Swahili accepting that they have bantu blood on them, especially in Kenya 😂
@@eastzooadmin6416 how is that possible kwani do they typically look like pure Arabs? They are mixed that's y some are dark in colour and yes most of them refused to be identified by there maternal side which mostly are bantus but culturally and Islamically the child takes after there paternal tribe rather than there maternal hence there rejection of the bantu ethnicity
@@khadijamohamed7002 You're contradicting yourself a lot my sister. Uislam upo wazi kabisa, mtoto wa halali anachukua kabila ya upande wa kwa babake, mwanaharamu ndo anachukua kabila kwa mamake. Again, you've just admitted that they don't want to associate themselves in any way with their bantu side. I don't know if you can listen to yourself by reading what you just wrote.
When you tell them (waswahili) that they clearly don't look like pure Arabs, that they might be mixed, "might be mixed" underline that sentence.
They would argue " kwani how does a mwarabu look like, ama muarabu uwa anachapa hapa usoni, kuna waarabu weusi kama Wajaluo". Then when it gets there, I always rest my case and walk away coz I find it very funny, if I were to continue arguing with them that time, I may end up hurting their feelings and they are our brothers and sisters, they don't deserve that . 💯
WaSwahili wapo takriban miaka 2000 ama zaidi na 2:23 wapatikana kwenye mfuo wa bahari kutoka Mogadishu aka “Mui wa Mwisho”, hadi kaskazini Mozambique na visiwa vya bahari Hindi vilokaribu na mfuo.
Mijikenda walishuka pwani ya Kenya kama miaka 200.
Huko miji mengine ya WaSwahili walikuwepo pia?
Very good engagement on a very important topic. Ni muhimu tuendelee na mjadala huu na pia tujitukuze umaarufu, lugha na desturi zetu za kiswahili. If not our culture and identity will be totally wiped out.
My suggestion is to collect and catalogue some of the artifacts, audio ( songs / poems) etc and teach them or adapt them during weddings. Lele mama , chakacha, twari la ndia na diriji ni ngoma ambazo hazichezwi tena. We need to revive these traditions.
Lelemama is danced in the Comoros. But I noticed the Comoros kept all the Swahili customs to date. Nowadays the Coastal Swahili are becoming more religious, which fair enough but that is leading in regression of cultural practices, including the ones that does not necessarily goes against Islam, just because they follow a globalist Islam which doesn't take in count non blasphemous cultural practices and consider all of them non Islamic.
Having lived in Tanganyika for 15 years I grew to love not only the country but also it's people, so I would appreciate knowing where I can find the written references of the points that the charming lady is making in this presentation, having read others that maybe are not correct. May I also make a suggestion, which is that DNA tests could be made to determine the real origin of the coastal group, which I believe is not of Bantu origin that migrated from Cameroun around 1500.
I’m half Swahili and half msomali 😊
Abaayo what does that mean ?
Aabahaa amo hooyadaada maa soomaali ah
I like the word by nusrat incorporate rather than corrupted
I need her book,where can I find one?
I may sound biased now, but Kiunguja is the purest form of Kiswahili.
You are not biased ...in fact the Kiunguja dialect was the one chosen and standardized to present day standard Swahili
Just a standard dialect, go educate yourself
@@eastzooadmin6416 Hujambo ndugu
@@KiswahiliWithAbdulkarim Nashkuru alhamdulillah, hofu kwako
@@eastzooadmin6416 Niko salama sana, Nashukuru
Pemba oyee
WAKILINDINI WATANGANA NA WACHANGMWE tupo . wamambasa
Amani,
If Swahili are true to the truth and themselves then it plain, they are Bantu and as the language shows the only thing that separates them from their Kikongo neighbors is that they live on the coast and intermarried with naturalized arabs. Who corrupted the language for studying more traditional dialects particularly on coastal islands shows original the language is just a slight different dialect from Kikongo and other Bantu languages.
Thanks I am Swahili but I don't know anything about my culture
We are genius in our own unique ways, first : we are faster in learning languages, and blending that language into something educational and entertaining. Glad being the minority.
I'm from central Kenya...I'm 29 years old and I'm moving to one of the coastal towns in Kenya to search for a wife when the right time comes...I believe God's time is the best.
Wewe mkora, tutaenda pamoja, nistue..mimi sitao ukikuyuni....
wee mwanake
😂😂😂🤣
Not content with your own
She is explaining some things in swahili which i dont understand i think its unfaire not to become a translation i came to understand but i got Swahili not English
Take me i want to study.
I’m Swahili but when you look at my genetic makeup I have Bantu, Ethiopian/Eritrean, Nilotic, Somali, Egypt, Arabian, Levantine, South Central Asian, North Indian, North Philippines and Persian…This is from Ancestry DNA though . You definitely see the affects of colonization, and the spice trade in our genetics though. I’m only one example of the many Swahilis out there.
@@daudiomufwokoochami2563 if we want to be proud of what we are we must know exactly what we are... and that not an easy question at all to answer.
We must Gather information from dna studies AND oral transmission, thats not 2 separates thing but complementary things that helped us to know how our ancestors in their particular context shaped à certain identity and how we can use this identity in our own context (increase in crime, national crisis terrorism etc.)
Shirazi people are originally Persians. Genetic research confirms the oral tradition. Dont let people take away from your Heritage and call it myth or lies.
The samples also contain some northern Y chromosomes, indicating possible paternal ancestry from South Iran (E1b1b-V22, E1b1b-M123, F*(xF2, GHIJK), G2a, I, J1, J2, L1, Q1a3, R1*, R1a*, R1a1 and R2 (29.7%)),[67] and Southeast Asia (O1 (6%)).
According to Msadie et al., given that there are no common Middle Eastern maternal haplogroups on the Comoros, there is "striking evidence for male-biased gene flow from the Middle East to the Comoros", which is "entirely consistent with male-dominated trade and religious proselytisation being the forces that drove the Middle Eastern gene flow to the Comoros"
I am from Comoros and it's absolutely true. Some family still keep traditions back from persian time even if nowadays it tends to disappear and almost fogotten like nowrooz, the fact we mourn for 40 days. I've shown to my father pictures from Iran of women in black chador and cleric garments and he said that's exactly how old generation were clothing back in the days.
Waswahili ni wabantu. Wamijikenda, Tanzania ni wazaramo, wangindo,wakwere, wamatumbi, wamakonde, wayao. Na hizi kabisa ni wabantu
Huku kwetu Kenya wenzetu waliochanganyiwa damu hawataki kukubali kabisa 😂
Watu wote wa pwani ni wabantu Wana lugha zao. Pwani yote Hadi Mozambique
umesahau waluguru wakaguru na wapogoro my dear
But there’s a difference between Swahili and Arabs, there is a high tendency to mix Swahili with Arabs because they all speak Swahili
Did u have Swahili people in any arabu country or any Swahili couture in any Arab countries?the answer no Swahili is a Bantu.
Swahili are originally ancient Egyptians descendants along with great Zimbabwe. Mtepe (boat) is identical to ancient Egyptian Dpt/Tpt (boat).
im swahili thats interesting
Who came first? Zimbabwe? or Egypt? Remember, these locations are over 3500km apart.
No, please stop spreading misinformation. Swahili is an ethnicity and a culture. AND a "tribe", if you like. It refers to the people from the coastal regions/islands of East Africa (Tanzania/Kenya) whose descendants are from East India, The Arabian Peninsula or Shiraz (modern day Iran). They're either mixed with one another, the locals or just nonracial.
@@parisz ethnicity, what do you mean, mayooo 😂
You have no definitive sources. Stop spending misinformation.
Waswahili ni makabila yote ya coast ya indegineous excluding Wapokomo,Mijikenda,,wasanye.. yanaanza Kwa Wa.....Wajomvu,wapate,waswahili,wazanzibar, Wapemba,Wakilindini etc...
Hakuna kabila la wazanzibari wala Wapemba, tushawazoea wakenya nyie. Hamtaki kukubali kua nyie ni mix ya mijikenda na waarabu. Tanzania na Zanzibar wala hawana matatizo haya. They know they are a mix of local tribes like wakojani, wawete, wazaramo and etc with arabs.
@@eastzooadmin6416 wacheni zenu,wataja washamba
@@eastzooadmin6416 Ati Tanzania na Zanzibar!!! sema Tanganyika na Zanzibar.,...Pwani ya Kenya yote hii kabla ya Uhuru ilikuwa ni nchi moja nayo ni ufalme wa Zanzibar Hadi misumbiji
Is this of Muslim origin purely?
What do you mean?
No.
The Traditional Somali🇸🇴 Clothes (Derac) or how you bantus call it Dera is NOT part of Swahili Culture.Swahili Dont Claim our Tradition.Back in the Dark days When We Somalis🇸🇴 Bought Slaves.Since they were buttnaked Primitive.We dressed them with Clothes (Derac) So that they may be presentable in Muqdisho🇸🇴marked for Auction to be bought.How dare the Slaves Claim our Clothes
Somali were one of the first Africans to be caught up in slavery before most africans.Somalis were never always Muslims if you know your history.
Swahili were not slaves ...infact Somalis are considered to be slaves since you are pure African jerers who have no nationality to claim ...infact Some swahilis are partially africans while the somalis are typical africans with no heritage
Mogadishu belongs to the barawas and Bajunis who are also Bantus 😂
At least they speak a bantu language
@@eastzooadmin6416 The Bajuni and Barawa do not belong to Muqdisho.Muqdisho is the Origin of the Somalis.It is of Ajuraan clan that founded it.The Bajuni and Barawa are a product of our Bantu slaves who got mixed with Arabs.How can our Slaves rule us.So Shut up and Embrace you history Stop claiming Muqdisha as yours.Even the name Muqdisho is Somali."Muq"meaning Dark hallow and "Disho" Meaning death.Hence the name Muqdisho meaning "The hallow of Death".
@@newstar4452 Naah you beat them and took their land, ask the barawas and the bajunis, the will tell you. There's plenty of them here on UA-cam talking about it.
kuna umuhimu wa kufafanua uswahili kwa kina na zaidi.