Randall Pouwels - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Randall Pouwels

History in Africa, 2002

The following bibliography is intended to supplement the excellent one (largely) of secondary sou... more The following bibliography is intended to supplement the excellent one (largely) of secondary sources compiled by Thomas Spear and published in History in Africa 27(2000). Research for a forthcoming monograph on the East African coast in the ‘middle’ period has taken me in recent years into a number of libraries and archives in India, East Africa, and Europe. There I have been able to build an extensive listing of source material and oral informants interviewed in East Africa. While this compilation includes many of the titles in Spear's list, study carried out in Goa and Lisbon afforded me the opportunity of viewing primary sources not included in Spear's collection. Despite the fact that this is still a work in progress, I submit this supplementary list hoping it might prove useful to other scholars interested in East Africa and the western Indian in the pre- and early-modern period.Readers also will note that I have included some secondary listings not included in Spear's bibliography. This is due to the fact that my ideas concerning what is relevant to coastal history appear to be somewhat broader than Spear's. Consequently, this list includes some titles on southern and central Africa, as well as of coastal literature, which I have found to be useful and apposite to coastal studies. Naturally, I have tried not to duplicate titles found in Spear's list.

ʾAbū ʿAbd al-Lāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Lāh l-Lawātī ibn Battuta (hereafter Ibn Battuta) was born i... more ʾAbū ʿAbd al-Lāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Lāh l-Lawātī ibn Battuta (hereafter Ibn Battuta) was born in the Moroccan city of Tangiers in 1304 and died there in 1368 or 1369. He remains the most widely travelled individual to have been born before Ferdinand Magellan. Most scholars and individuals incorrectly attribute that distinction to his better known predecessor, Marco Polo, whose Travels of Marco Polo is a classic of travel literature. Polo trekked from Venice to Yuan (Mongolian) China 1271–1295, yet most of his knowledge of the East was acquired from the seventeen years he resided in China. Ibn Battuta began a hajj (pilgrimage) in 1325, and in the twenty-nine years of his travels, he managed to cover roughly three-and-a-half times as much territory as did Polo. In many respects, the accounts of the two men are complementary. The Italian’s account provides valuable intelligence about late-13th century China. Recent scholarship has cast weighty doubt on Ibn Battuta’s putative travels in East Asia, while the extent and value of his descriptions of the Islamic ecumene and its frontiers of the 14th century essentially remain beyond dispute.

Ohio University Press eBooks, Sep 2, 2016

Ohio University Press eBooks, 2012

... CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE LONDON NEW YORK NEW ROCHELLE MELBOURNE SYDNEY ... Their ... more ... CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE LONDON NEW YORK NEW ROCHELLE MELBOURNE SYDNEY ... Their physical arrangements, institutions like the ngoma 'parties', even local small-scale street battles, combined to help maintain a rough equilibrium between ...

International Journal of African Historical Studies, 2002

... 24 Buzurg ibn Shahriyar in Select Documents, 9; Mas'udi, Prairie... more ... 24 Buzurg ibn Shahriyar in Select Documents, 9; Mas'udi, Prairies d'Or, I, 231-33; Thomas Ricks, "Persian Gulf Seafaring and East Africa: Ninth through Twelfth Centuries ... Much of the trade thatGulf ports had dominated for the previous 500 or more years was lost to the Red ...

History in Africa, 1996

A few years ago I offered an assessment of the Pate "Chronicles" as a tradition-based source for ... more A few years ago I offered an assessment of the Pate "Chronicles" as a tradition-based source for the history of the East African coast. 2 That paper drew on recensions and versions that were readily available at that time to researchers interested in their historiography. 3 Reasons of length and scope, cited at the end of the paper, restricted discussion to Sultan Fumo Madi b. Abu Bakr and his predecessors (Sultan nos. 1-24), that is to say, up to the time of the Battle of Shela, ca. 1807-13. 4 To reiterate, in that paper I established the following points: (1) All recorded versions appear to have been based on an oral tradition that was extant in the mid-to late nineteenth century among Nabahani family members. The existence of a "Book of the Kings of Pate," mentioned by Werner and Prins, is problematic (see 3 below). 5 (2) Despite the number of versions of the Pate "Chronicles," they appear to have actually come from only two informants, Bwana Kitini and Mshamu bin Kombo, who was a relative or possibly, as Tolmacheva claims, Bw. Kitini's brother. 6 (3) Except for minor, though discernible, differences between the lists of the sultans given by both informants, most versions are consistent to a surprising degree. 7 This seems attributable to the fact that there were only two informants, Kitini and Mshamu, who also were related, and who therefore themselves probably shared the same source(s). Given the differences of detail beyond the kinglists, if one of those earlier sources was a written one, such as an actual "Book of the Kings of Pate," that source seems to have afforded the informants little beyond names and regnal dates. (4) The structural features, as well as the actual details, of the available recensions were influenced considerably by their oral bases. This is especially noticeable in the Kitini recensions, which are by far the most detailed. For example, the "hour glass shape" characteristic of oral traditions is discernible. Accounts of the first nine sultans constitute a paradigm or "foundation myth" of

The American Historical Review, Jun 1, 1999

The Journal of African History, Jul 1, 1999

be very risky to rely on linguistic evidence alone to establish the absolute dating of the proces... more be very risky to rely on linguistic evidence alone to establish the absolute dating of the processes it describes. Moreover, linguists can provide only reasonable approximations as to where language-speaking groups ancestral to modern language-speakers might have been located. Because the interpretation of Nurse and Hinnebusch ventures into such terrain, this facet of their work invites critical commentary. Essentially, the language history Nurse and Hinnebusch present adheres closely to one that has evolved among ethnolinguists over the past two decades and which was outlined in far less detail in an earlier volume Nurse co-authored with Thomas Spear.# This model holds that the original core Swahili-speakers, the Proto-Swahili, and their nearby hinterland neighbors stemmed from remote Eastern Bantu-speakers who first had inhabited the region between the Western Rift and Lake Nyanza sometime after  .. Their closest coastal-hinterland ancestors had been the Proto-Northeast-Coastal Bantu, who the authors and other linguists believe had appeared in the interior between the Wami and Rufiji rivers, c. - .. Soon, the Northeast-Coastal grouping split into several divergent language clusters, including the Proto-Sabaki-speakers. Spreading (or migrating, as Nurse and Spear believe), along the coast and coastal hinterland, the Proto-Sabakispeakers were an extremely short-lived, though relatively compact community. According to Nurse and Spear, and Nurse and Hinnebusch, they migrated northwards across the Juba River to a location associated with the legendary Shungwaya, and there began evolving into separate proto-language-speaking communities, namely the Swahili, Mijikenda, Pokomo, Elwana\Malankote and Comorians. By late in the first millennium, this process had reached a very advanced stage. The Swahili then split into two, broad, dialect-speaking groups, Northern and Southern Swahili. This paradigm also suggests that the ancient Swahili and their Sabaki-speaking relations inherited a host of cultural traits from their ancestors that included, among other things, a wetland farming tradition that later, with expansion into drier environments, saw the addition of cereal cropping, livestock breeding, limited fishing and iron-working (pp. -). Some of these practices long before had been passed to their Eastern Bantu ancestors from Southern Cushitic-speakers who inhabited the region between Lake Nyanza and the Eastern Rift. Additionally, Northeast-Coastal-and Sabaki-speakers continued having significant contact with Southern Cushitic groups who dwelt around the headwaters of the Wami River, as well as in the Taita Hills (pp. -). Southern Cushitic terms concerning cereals cultivation and livestock, for example, were borrowed in Northeast-Coastal and Sabaki. Later, Pokomo and Northern Swahili-speakers continued borrowing from Southern and Eastern Cushitic groups found in the Tana River area (p. ). Indian and Persian terms concerning kinship (e.g. bibi and bwana), coconut and mango cultivation, cotton, fishing and spices also found their way into Sabaki and Proto-Swahili, attesting to the adaptations to the coastal environment that occurred in both those stages, as well as to new cultural influences (pp. -, ). As in the earlier Nurse and Spear volume, Nurse and Hinnebusch indicate that most Arabic cultural influences date from this later period (pp. -, -). This book also includes fresh attestations concerning the post-sixteenth-century history of Swahili, for example evidence of a heavy preponderance of northern cultural influences, primarily from the Lamu archipelago, on southern dialects between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries (pp. -). This was followed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the pre-eminence of Kiunguja, the Zanzibar dialect, which of course became the standard form of Swahili.

International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1992

... 2666: 1-3. 23For the most recent discussion of the Shirazi/Arab myth and countermyth, see Pou... more ... 2666: 1-3. 23For the most recent discussion of the Shirazi/Arab myth and countermyth, see Pouwels, "Oral Historiography," and TT Spear, "The Shirazi n Swahili Traditions, Culture, and History, History in Africa, 11 ... Burhan Muhammad Mkelle, "Tarikh Juzur al-Qumr," MS No. ...

International Journal of African Historical Studies, 2000

History in Africa, 1993

The period from 1500 to 1800 was a particularly busy phase in the history of the East African coa... more The period from 1500 to 1800 was a particularly busy phase in the history of the East African coast. It was a time which witnessed massive demographic shifts in the interior regions, as well as heavy southern Arab immigration and external meddling from Portuguese and Umani interlopers. It saw the destruction of the medieval entrepot of Kilwa Kisiwani and a decline, followed by a slow resurgence, in the fortunes of another medieval powerhouse, Mombasa. Throughout this phase, the ancient northern coastal city of Pate enjoyed a pivotal, even at times a paramount, role in the affairs of the coast. Before the middle 1500s the town seems to have been of insufficient consequence to attract much attention. Thereafter, however, the city-state capitalized on mainland alliances with powerful Orma confederations like the “Garzeda” to become a major center for regional trade, as well as a crucial strategic location in the competing religious and political ambitions of Portugal and various Arab states. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Pate clearly was the most important state in the Lamu archipelago. Arguably, too, it was the most powerful Swahili sultanate on the entire coast.Given the significance of Pate in the affairs of the East African coast from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries, scholars long have realized that a history of the sultanate is exigent to an understanding of the entire coast during this time. What would seem to be fortunate to this end is that historians have the Pate chronicles as a research aid. Taken together, these constitute the most detailed indigenous history of any coastal city-state up to the onset of the colonial era. However, as attested by the difficulties Chittick encountered in his attempts to work with them, these documents present the historian with a superabundance of (often confusing) information. Confronted with this, Chittick concluded that the only possible value of these chronicles was as a source of/for children's fables. Thus surmised, a historian of this important Swahili sultanate would seem to be left with very little indeed.

Azania:archaeological Research in Africa, 1974

... in-formation, as outlined on page 66, has been corroborated by archaeological evidence as a .... more ... in-formation, as outlined on page 66, has been corroborated by archaeological evidence as a ... Arabic rendering of 'brothers' (ashiqqu) has the usual connotation of male, sibling relation-ship.5 ... translated as 'brothers', it is known that, in reference to Qarmatian history, the founder ...

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Apr 16, 1987

International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1988

List of illustrations and maps Preface List of abbreviations Introduction 1. The roots of a tradi... more List of illustrations and maps Preface List of abbreviations Introduction 1. The roots of a tradition, 800-1500 2. The emergence of a tradition, 900-1500 3. A northern metamorphosis, 1500-1800 Appendix 4. Town Islam and the umma ideal 5. Wealth, piety, justice, and learning 6. The Zanzibar Sultanate, 1812-88 7. New secularism and bureaucratic centralization 8. A new literacy 9. The early colonial era, 1885-1914 10. Currents of popularism and eddies of reform Notes Glossary Bibliography Index.

The Sixteenth century journal, 2001

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Apr 16, 1987

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Apr 16, 1987

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Apr 16, 1987

History in Africa, 2002

The following bibliography is intended to supplement the excellent one (largely) of secondary sou... more The following bibliography is intended to supplement the excellent one (largely) of secondary sources compiled by Thomas Spear and published in History in Africa 27(2000). Research for a forthcoming monograph on the East African coast in the ‘middle’ period has taken me in recent years into a number of libraries and archives in India, East Africa, and Europe. There I have been able to build an extensive listing of source material and oral informants interviewed in East Africa. While this compilation includes many of the titles in Spear's list, study carried out in Goa and Lisbon afforded me the opportunity of viewing primary sources not included in Spear's collection. Despite the fact that this is still a work in progress, I submit this supplementary list hoping it might prove useful to other scholars interested in East Africa and the western Indian in the pre- and early-modern period.Readers also will note that I have included some secondary listings not included in Spear's bibliography. This is due to the fact that my ideas concerning what is relevant to coastal history appear to be somewhat broader than Spear's. Consequently, this list includes some titles on southern and central Africa, as well as of coastal literature, which I have found to be useful and apposite to coastal studies. Naturally, I have tried not to duplicate titles found in Spear's list.

ʾAbū ʿAbd al-Lāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Lāh l-Lawātī ibn Battuta (hereafter Ibn Battuta) was born i... more ʾAbū ʿAbd al-Lāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Lāh l-Lawātī ibn Battuta (hereafter Ibn Battuta) was born in the Moroccan city of Tangiers in 1304 and died there in 1368 or 1369. He remains the most widely travelled individual to have been born before Ferdinand Magellan. Most scholars and individuals incorrectly attribute that distinction to his better known predecessor, Marco Polo, whose Travels of Marco Polo is a classic of travel literature. Polo trekked from Venice to Yuan (Mongolian) China 1271–1295, yet most of his knowledge of the East was acquired from the seventeen years he resided in China. Ibn Battuta began a hajj (pilgrimage) in 1325, and in the twenty-nine years of his travels, he managed to cover roughly three-and-a-half times as much territory as did Polo. In many respects, the accounts of the two men are complementary. The Italian’s account provides valuable intelligence about late-13th century China. Recent scholarship has cast weighty doubt on Ibn Battuta’s putative travels in East Asia, while the extent and value of his descriptions of the Islamic ecumene and its frontiers of the 14th century essentially remain beyond dispute.

Ohio University Press eBooks, Sep 2, 2016

Ohio University Press eBooks, 2012

... CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE LONDON NEW YORK NEW ROCHELLE MELBOURNE SYDNEY ... Their ... more ... CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE LONDON NEW YORK NEW ROCHELLE MELBOURNE SYDNEY ... Their physical arrangements, institutions like the ngoma 'parties', even local small-scale street battles, combined to help maintain a rough equilibrium between ...

International Journal of African Historical Studies, 2002

... 24 Buzurg ibn Shahriyar in Select Documents, 9; Mas'udi, Prairie... more ... 24 Buzurg ibn Shahriyar in Select Documents, 9; Mas'udi, Prairies d'Or, I, 231-33; Thomas Ricks, "Persian Gulf Seafaring and East Africa: Ninth through Twelfth Centuries ... Much of the trade thatGulf ports had dominated for the previous 500 or more years was lost to the Red ...

History in Africa, 1996

A few years ago I offered an assessment of the Pate "Chronicles" as a tradition-based source for ... more A few years ago I offered an assessment of the Pate "Chronicles" as a tradition-based source for the history of the East African coast. 2 That paper drew on recensions and versions that were readily available at that time to researchers interested in their historiography. 3 Reasons of length and scope, cited at the end of the paper, restricted discussion to Sultan Fumo Madi b. Abu Bakr and his predecessors (Sultan nos. 1-24), that is to say, up to the time of the Battle of Shela, ca. 1807-13. 4 To reiterate, in that paper I established the following points: (1) All recorded versions appear to have been based on an oral tradition that was extant in the mid-to late nineteenth century among Nabahani family members. The existence of a "Book of the Kings of Pate," mentioned by Werner and Prins, is problematic (see 3 below). 5 (2) Despite the number of versions of the Pate "Chronicles," they appear to have actually come from only two informants, Bwana Kitini and Mshamu bin Kombo, who was a relative or possibly, as Tolmacheva claims, Bw. Kitini's brother. 6 (3) Except for minor, though discernible, differences between the lists of the sultans given by both informants, most versions are consistent to a surprising degree. 7 This seems attributable to the fact that there were only two informants, Kitini and Mshamu, who also were related, and who therefore themselves probably shared the same source(s). Given the differences of detail beyond the kinglists, if one of those earlier sources was a written one, such as an actual "Book of the Kings of Pate," that source seems to have afforded the informants little beyond names and regnal dates. (4) The structural features, as well as the actual details, of the available recensions were influenced considerably by their oral bases. This is especially noticeable in the Kitini recensions, which are by far the most detailed. For example, the "hour glass shape" characteristic of oral traditions is discernible. Accounts of the first nine sultans constitute a paradigm or "foundation myth" of

The American Historical Review, Jun 1, 1999

The Journal of African History, Jul 1, 1999

be very risky to rely on linguistic evidence alone to establish the absolute dating of the proces... more be very risky to rely on linguistic evidence alone to establish the absolute dating of the processes it describes. Moreover, linguists can provide only reasonable approximations as to where language-speaking groups ancestral to modern language-speakers might have been located. Because the interpretation of Nurse and Hinnebusch ventures into such terrain, this facet of their work invites critical commentary. Essentially, the language history Nurse and Hinnebusch present adheres closely to one that has evolved among ethnolinguists over the past two decades and which was outlined in far less detail in an earlier volume Nurse co-authored with Thomas Spear.# This model holds that the original core Swahili-speakers, the Proto-Swahili, and their nearby hinterland neighbors stemmed from remote Eastern Bantu-speakers who first had inhabited the region between the Western Rift and Lake Nyanza sometime after  .. Their closest coastal-hinterland ancestors had been the Proto-Northeast-Coastal Bantu, who the authors and other linguists believe had appeared in the interior between the Wami and Rufiji rivers, c. - .. Soon, the Northeast-Coastal grouping split into several divergent language clusters, including the Proto-Sabaki-speakers. Spreading (or migrating, as Nurse and Spear believe), along the coast and coastal hinterland, the Proto-Sabakispeakers were an extremely short-lived, though relatively compact community. According to Nurse and Spear, and Nurse and Hinnebusch, they migrated northwards across the Juba River to a location associated with the legendary Shungwaya, and there began evolving into separate proto-language-speaking communities, namely the Swahili, Mijikenda, Pokomo, Elwana\Malankote and Comorians. By late in the first millennium, this process had reached a very advanced stage. The Swahili then split into two, broad, dialect-speaking groups, Northern and Southern Swahili. This paradigm also suggests that the ancient Swahili and their Sabaki-speaking relations inherited a host of cultural traits from their ancestors that included, among other things, a wetland farming tradition that later, with expansion into drier environments, saw the addition of cereal cropping, livestock breeding, limited fishing and iron-working (pp. -). Some of these practices long before had been passed to their Eastern Bantu ancestors from Southern Cushitic-speakers who inhabited the region between Lake Nyanza and the Eastern Rift. Additionally, Northeast-Coastal-and Sabaki-speakers continued having significant contact with Southern Cushitic groups who dwelt around the headwaters of the Wami River, as well as in the Taita Hills (pp. -). Southern Cushitic terms concerning cereals cultivation and livestock, for example, were borrowed in Northeast-Coastal and Sabaki. Later, Pokomo and Northern Swahili-speakers continued borrowing from Southern and Eastern Cushitic groups found in the Tana River area (p. ). Indian and Persian terms concerning kinship (e.g. bibi and bwana), coconut and mango cultivation, cotton, fishing and spices also found their way into Sabaki and Proto-Swahili, attesting to the adaptations to the coastal environment that occurred in both those stages, as well as to new cultural influences (pp. -, ). As in the earlier Nurse and Spear volume, Nurse and Hinnebusch indicate that most Arabic cultural influences date from this later period (pp. -, -). This book also includes fresh attestations concerning the post-sixteenth-century history of Swahili, for example evidence of a heavy preponderance of northern cultural influences, primarily from the Lamu archipelago, on southern dialects between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries (pp. -). This was followed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the pre-eminence of Kiunguja, the Zanzibar dialect, which of course became the standard form of Swahili.

International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1992

... 2666: 1-3. 23For the most recent discussion of the Shirazi/Arab myth and countermyth, see Pou... more ... 2666: 1-3. 23For the most recent discussion of the Shirazi/Arab myth and countermyth, see Pouwels, "Oral Historiography," and TT Spear, "The Shirazi n Swahili Traditions, Culture, and History, History in Africa, 11 ... Burhan Muhammad Mkelle, "Tarikh Juzur al-Qumr," MS No. ...

International Journal of African Historical Studies, 2000

History in Africa, 1993

The period from 1500 to 1800 was a particularly busy phase in the history of the East African coa... more The period from 1500 to 1800 was a particularly busy phase in the history of the East African coast. It was a time which witnessed massive demographic shifts in the interior regions, as well as heavy southern Arab immigration and external meddling from Portuguese and Umani interlopers. It saw the destruction of the medieval entrepot of Kilwa Kisiwani and a decline, followed by a slow resurgence, in the fortunes of another medieval powerhouse, Mombasa. Throughout this phase, the ancient northern coastal city of Pate enjoyed a pivotal, even at times a paramount, role in the affairs of the coast. Before the middle 1500s the town seems to have been of insufficient consequence to attract much attention. Thereafter, however, the city-state capitalized on mainland alliances with powerful Orma confederations like the “Garzeda” to become a major center for regional trade, as well as a crucial strategic location in the competing religious and political ambitions of Portugal and various Arab states. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Pate clearly was the most important state in the Lamu archipelago. Arguably, too, it was the most powerful Swahili sultanate on the entire coast.Given the significance of Pate in the affairs of the East African coast from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries, scholars long have realized that a history of the sultanate is exigent to an understanding of the entire coast during this time. What would seem to be fortunate to this end is that historians have the Pate chronicles as a research aid. Taken together, these constitute the most detailed indigenous history of any coastal city-state up to the onset of the colonial era. However, as attested by the difficulties Chittick encountered in his attempts to work with them, these documents present the historian with a superabundance of (often confusing) information. Confronted with this, Chittick concluded that the only possible value of these chronicles was as a source of/for children's fables. Thus surmised, a historian of this important Swahili sultanate would seem to be left with very little indeed.

Azania:archaeological Research in Africa, 1974

... in-formation, as outlined on page 66, has been corroborated by archaeological evidence as a .... more ... in-formation, as outlined on page 66, has been corroborated by archaeological evidence as a ... Arabic rendering of 'brothers' (ashiqqu) has the usual connotation of male, sibling relation-ship.5 ... translated as 'brothers', it is known that, in reference to Qarmatian history, the founder ...

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Apr 16, 1987

International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1988

List of illustrations and maps Preface List of abbreviations Introduction 1. The roots of a tradi... more List of illustrations and maps Preface List of abbreviations Introduction 1. The roots of a tradition, 800-1500 2. The emergence of a tradition, 900-1500 3. A northern metamorphosis, 1500-1800 Appendix 4. Town Islam and the umma ideal 5. Wealth, piety, justice, and learning 6. The Zanzibar Sultanate, 1812-88 7. New secularism and bureaucratic centralization 8. A new literacy 9. The early colonial era, 1885-1914 10. Currents of popularism and eddies of reform Notes Glossary Bibliography Index.

The Sixteenth century journal, 2001

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Apr 16, 1987

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Apr 16, 1987

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Apr 16, 1987