The Swahili Tribe
History and origin of Swahili tribe
The Swahili people are a coastal tribe who have a very rich historical and cultural heritage. Some of the earliest inhabitants of the East African coast were the Cushitic herdsmen.
These were then joined by Bantu speaking tribes including the Mijikenda, with whom they freely inter-married.
Other people groups later migrated to this coastline including Arab, Hindi, Portuguese, and Indonesian traders. They too intermarried with the indigenous people, giving rise to a new culture, people and language, the Swahili tribe.
With time, groups of the Swahili people spread along the entire East African Coast, forming different cultural variations and dialects of the Swahili language. Today, the Swahili people reside in most of the coastal towns in Kenya and Tanzania, including Mombasa, Malindi, the Indian Ocean islands of Lamu, Pemba and Zanzibar.
Culture & Religion
The Arabic culture has had the greatest influence in shaping Swahili traditions. One major legacy of this Arab culture is the dominance of Islamic religion among the Swahili people. Islamic traditions govern almost every cultural aspect of the Swahili tribe including food, way of dressing and lifestyle. Swahili children for example, must attend Madrassa, religious classes in which they study the Koran and learn the Arabic language from an early age. Unlike other Kenya tribes, there are no specific rites of passage for young swahili men and women.
Marriage marks the transition to adulthood. Swahili marriages are usually arranged by parents. The parents normally find a groom for their daughter, but she has a right to refuse her parents choice and pick her own. Swahili weddings last several days and involve elaborate preparations, ceremonies and activities for both men and women. Only men are allowed in the mosque for the official marriage vows.
Swahili clothing & dress code
The traditional attire of a Swahili man is a long white (or beige) robe (or kaftans) known in Swahili as a kanzu and a small white rounded hat with elaborate embroidery. Swahili women dress in long black dresses, buibui, and cover their heads with a black cloth, hijabu. It is also common to find Swahili women wearing a veil to cover their faces. Outside their traditional clothing, most Swahili men wear western-style pants and shirts, but revert to the traditional attire on Fridays, the official prayer day for Muslims and during other important or religious occasions.
Swahili art & crafts
Swahili art is magnificently expressed in the design of carpets, rugs, porcelain, and jewelry all of which portray some Asian influence. The Swahili also have unique architecture in their homes and mosques. Lamu town in Kenya is perhaps the best place to see the finest Swahili architecture, art and crafts.
Swahili poetry & music
Poetic and musical expression is an important feature of the Swahili culture. Poets, the greatest of which are called malenga, are held in great esteem. Swahili music, Taarab, is poetically very rich. The traditional Taarab rhythm is a slow beat that borrows heavily from Indian and Arabic melody. Chakacha is another authentic Swahili music genre with a faster tempo than Taarab.
Language of the Swahili people
The Swahili people speak Swahili language (or Kiswahili), a language adapted from the Bantu language and enriched with some vocabulary from Arabic, Portuguese and Hindi. Among the native Swahili speakers, there exist several Swahili dialects. The most well known Swahili dialects include Amu spoken by the Lamu people, Mvita, a dialect of Mombasa Swahili's, Pemba dialect spoken in Pemba and Unguja dialect spoken in Zanzibar. However, the standard version of Swahili language is what is spoken in Kenya and Tanzania as a national language and is also spoken widely across Eastern and Central Africa countries.
The Swahili daily life
From their earliest days, the Swahili people depended on trade for survival. They played a central role as middlemen between the tribes from the inland of East and Central Africa, and the Indian Ocean traders (Arabs, Indians, and Portuguese).
Today, many Swahili people still engage in business enterprise of some kind. They are mainly traders running shops across the coastal cities of Mombasa, Malindi, Lamu and other towns where they live. They also engage in domestic and commercial fishing along the Indian coast.
Swahili food
By religion, Swahilis who are Muslims are prohibited from eating pork or drinking alcohol. Swahili staple food has a lot of Indian influence in taste, thus most of their cooking is rich in spices. Popular Swahili cuisine includes pilau and wali that is, rice cooked in coconut milk, and served with a thick meat stew or fish. Swahili tribe eat lots of different grains, vegetables and fruits including beans, peas, tomatoes, potatoes, okra, kale, spinach, mangoes, coconut and bananas. Goat meat and chicken are traditionally their popular meal during special occasions.
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