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The Swahili people (Swahili: Waswahili, وَسوَحِيلِ) comprise mainly Bantu, Afro-Arab, and Comorian ethnic groups inhabiting the Swahili coast, an area encompassing the East African coast across southern Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and northern Mozambique, and various archipelagos off the coast, such as Zanzibar, Lamu, and the Comoro Islands.
Swahili people speak Swahili as their native language, which belongs to the Bantu language family. Graham Connah described Swahili culture as at least partially urban, mercantile, and literate. [1] Swahili culture is the product of the history of the coastal part of the African Great Lakes region.
They were written in old Swahili script (Swahili-Arabic alphabet) based on Arabic letters. This is the script found on the earliest gravestones. [46] One of the most travelled people of the ancient world, Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta, visited Mombasa on his way to Kilwa in 1331. He describes Mombasa as a large island with banana, lemon and ...
The ancient history of the Kongo people has been difficult to ascertain. The region is close to East Africa, considered to be a key to the prehistoric human migrations. This geographical proximity, states Jan Vansina , suggests that the Congo River region, home of the Kongo people, was populated thousands of years ago. [ 19 ]
The term Nyamwezi is of Swahili origin, and translates as "people of the moon" or "people of the west", the latter being more meaningful to the context. Historically, there have been five ethnic groups, all of which referring to themselves as Wanyamwezi to outsiders: Kimbu , Konongo , Nyamwezi, Sukuma , and Sumbwa , who were never united.
The Arusha (Waarusha, in Swahili) people are a Bantu ethnic and indigenous group based in the western slopes of mount Meru in Arusha District of Arusha Region in Tanzania.The Maasai regard the Arusha people as related as they were once a part of the immigrant Maasai whom arrived in Arusha in the late 18th century from Kenya. [1]
The "Shirazi era" refers to a mythic origin in the history of Southeast Africa (and especially Tanzania), between the 13th century and 15th century, as recorded in the 15th century Kilwa Chronicle. [1] Many Swahili in the central coastal region claim that their towns were founded by Persians from the Shiraz region in the 13th century. [citation ...
The Kilwa Chronicle is a text, believed to be based on oral tradition, that describes the origins of the Swahili city-state of Kilwa, located on an Indian Ocean island near the East African coast. It recounts the genealogy of the rulers of the Kilwa Sultanate , following the foundation of the city by Persians from Shiraz and Hormuz in the tenth ...