[SIZE=4]Excerpt from "Three Swahili Women: Life Histories from Mombasa, Kenya"[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=4]In the 1970s Strobel interviewed three Swahili women of different social classes and ages.
In the introduction they go into who the Mombasa Swahilis were. [/SIZE]
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Mombasa as a Swahili City Located near the equator, Mombasa has existed as a maritime community since at least the eleventh century. 14 Over the centuries immigrants came by land and sea, populating Mombasa Island and the surrounding mainland with racially and ethnically diverse peoples. Coming from the north, the ancestors of the present-day Twelve Tribes formed the core of what might be called the indigenous population, which ancestry Bi Kaje claims. The Twelve Tribes came to be organized into two confederations, the Three Tribes (Kilindini, Changamwe, and Tangana) and the Nine Tribes (Mvita, Kilifi, Mtwapa, Jomvu, Pate, Faza, Shaka, Bajun, and Katwa or Somali).
Mombasa existed as an independent city-state alongside other Swahili towns through the dynasties of Mwana Mkisi (a woman) and Sheik Mvita, who replaced her ca. 1300 and who was associated with the Nine Tribes. The Portuguese controlled Mombasa from 1593 to 1698, during which time the earlier migration continued: Twelve Tribes people, Indian traders, some Hadrami from the southern portion of Arabia, some Omani Arabs from the Persian Gulf area. During the seventeenth century because of the rivalry between the Three Tribes and the Nine Tribes, the Yarubi dynasty ruled from Oman, increasing the migration of soldiers and administrators from that area. During this period some of Mwana Kutani’s ancestors arrived in Mombasa. In 1730 the Yarubi appointed the Mazrui clan to govern Mombasa, which they did until 1837, mediating between the now well established confederations of the Nine Tribes and Three Tribes. When the Busaidi dynasty overthrew the Yarubi in Oman, the Mazrui in Mombasa were unable for several reasons to continue their role as mediators. With the assistance of the Kilindini, one of the Three Tribes, the Busaidi invaded Mombasa and added it to their growing sphere of influence in the Indian Ocean.
Prior to the Busaidi period, the Twelve Tribes had established close ties to the Mijikenda peoples on the immediate hinterland, a relationship identified in Swahili as utani. 15 The Mijikenda were themselves a collection of nine groups (the Digo and Duruma, allied with the Three Tribes; the Giriama, Kauma, Kambe, Ribe, Chonyi, Jibana, and Rabai, allied with various of the Nine Tribes). Derogatorily called the “Nyika” (bush), some Mijikenda converted to Islam and merged with the Swahili on the coast. Others were enslaved or pawned and similarly joined the Swahili community, albeit as subordinates and dependents. As the Busaidi period progressed, the ties between the Mijikenda and the Twelve Tribes came to be based more on individual economic interactions and less on corporate links. Swahili traders moved into Mijikenda territory and bought the latter’s surplus grain; Swahili caravans used Mijikenda porters to carry ivory to the coast. Thus over the centuries, alliances did not follow racial or even ethnic lines. Rather, pursuing their own interests in a fluid fashion, factions of Swahilis or Arabs or Mijikenda allied and split. With intermarriage and concubinage, the racial composition of the coastal population became mixed, so that ethnic identification, racial characteristics, and social status were not completely congruent…
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