Abstract
The Swahili Coast and the Persian Gulf are only a monsoon apart, and the dhow provided a dependable vehicle for perennial two-way economic and sociocultural interaction across the Indian Ocean for hundreds of years, creating the “largest cultural continuum in the world.”2 Whatever colors one may use to paint the various continents around the Indian Ocean, only a multicolored ribbon can begin to characterize the historical and cultural complexity of its long littoral. On the one hand it represents an interface between the continental and marine environments; and on the other, for hundreds of years the littoral people have been interacting with each other across the ocean economically, socially, and culturally. These littoral peoples are strategically located at the confluence of continental and maritime environments, able to exploit both economically, and to be fashioned by them socially and culturally. In this chapter, I propose to review social interaction in the two littoral societies over the longue durée to highlight the social processes that produced cosmopolitan maritime communities.
The sea is not the end of the world. It is the beginning of a whole new world of resources and opportunities.1
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Notes
A. Sheriff, “Between Two Worlds: The Littoral Peoples of the Indian Ocean,” in The Global Worlds of the Swahili: Interfaces of Islam, Identity and Space in 19th and 20th Century East Africa, ed. Roman Loimeier and Rudiger Seesemann (Berlin, Germany: Lit, 2006), 15.
As described by Chittick in H. Gerbeau, “The Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean,” in The General History of Africa: Studies & Documents 2: The African Slave Trade (Paris: UNESCO, 1979).
L. Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraeai (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 61.
Thomas M. Ricks, “Persian Gulf Seafaring and East Africa: Ninth–Twelfth Centuries,” African Historical Studies 3 (1970): 342–43;
J. J. L. Duyvendak, China’s Discovery of Africa (London: Probsthain, 1949), 12–14.
A. T. Wilson, The Persian Gulf (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1928), 94. Wilson mentions Zanzibar, but the Arabic original says Bilad al-Zanj, Lands of the Zanj.
See Abu Ishaq al-Istakhri, Kitab Masalik waʾl-Mamalik, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1870), 127.
G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville, East African Coast: Select Documents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 14;
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H. Hasan, A History of Persian Navigation (London: Methuen, 1928), 126n; Ricks, “Persian Gulf seafaring and East Africa,” 339–57.
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G. H. Talhami, “The Zanj Rebellion Reconsidered,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 10 (1977): 451; G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville, “Mtambwe Mkuu,” Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 7, 249;
C. Pellat, The Life and Works of Jahiz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 195–96.
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Alan Villiers, Sons of Sinbad (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940; reprint, London: Arabian Publishing, 2006). Much of the description of travel on a dhow in the following pages, unless otherwise indicated, comes from this important source.
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Behnaz A. Mirzai, “African Presence in Iran,” in Traites et Esclavages: Vieux Problemes, Nouvelles Perspectives?, ed. O. Petre-Grenouilleau (Paris: Société française d’Histoire d’Outre-mer, 2002), 233.
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See also Hikoichi Yajima, The Arab Dhow Trade in the Indian Ocean (Tokyo, Japan: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1976).
Wilson, The Persian Gulf, 10. A. Sheriff, Slaves, Spices & Ivory in Zanzibar (London: Currey, 1987), 39.
Ibid., 165. Ibn Battuta, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, vol. 2, trans. H. A. R. Gibb (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1962).
Political Agent, Muscat to Resident, Persian Gulf, 3.5.1897, in the Case on behalf of His Majesty’s Government. British Library: India Office Records: R/15/1/406.
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J. de V. Allen, “The ‘Shirazi’ Problem in East African Coastal History,” Paideuma 28 (1982): 9, quoting James Kirkman approvingly as an authority.
Hasan, History of Persian Navigation, 123–25; K. Yajima, “Yemen and the Indian Ocean: On the Sirafi Migrants in South Arabia,” Journal of Asian and African Studies (Tokyo), 5 (1972): 144.
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Ibn Battuta, Travels, passim. F. Viviano, “China’s Great Armada,” National Geographic (July 2005): 41.
S. A. Rizvi, “Some Evidence of Shi’ite Connection with Early History of East Africa,” The Light 6 (1972): 3–6, 23–27. Rizvi also refers to the Swahili epic poem Utenzi wa Seyyidna Huseni Bin Ali by the nineteenth century Swahili poet Shaikh Hemed Abd-Allah al-Buhri, narrating events following the death of the Prophet’s grandson Husain. It led to the formation of the Kaisaniyya sect that withered away before the middle of the eighth century. The tradition may have reached the coast before then. (Wilkinson, “Oman and East Africa,” 295.)
G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville, The French at Kilva Island (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 29, 42, 164, 182. Freeman-Grenville, East African Coast: Select Documents, 221.
For a fuller discussion see A. Sheriff, “The Historicity of the Shirazi Tradition along the East African Coast,” in Historical Role of Iranians (Shirazis) in the East African Coast (Nairobi, Kenya: Cultural Council of the Embassy of I. R. Iran, 2001).
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See H. N. Chittick, “The ‘Shirazi’ Colonization of East Africa,” Journal of African History 6 (1965): 288. Freeman-Grenville, Medieval History of the Coast of Tanganyika, 40n44 and Captain Buzurg Ibn Shahriyar of Ramhormuz, 68.
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Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, 10, 589. He refers to only ten families of servile origin at Gwadar and the Makran coast, “some with Baluchi blood.” G. N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question (London: Longmans, Green, 1892; repr. London: Cass, 1966), 259.
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© 2009 Lawrence G. Potter
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Sheriff, A. (2009). The Persian Gulf and the Swahili Coast: A History of Acculturation over the Longue Durée. In: Potter, L.G. (eds) The Persian Gulf in History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230618459_10
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