Meet the Swahili

Swahili people are an ethnic group living chiefly on the Swahili Coast of East Africa, mainly the coastal regions and the islands of Kenya and Tanzania, and north Mozambique. The name Swahili is derived from the Arabic word Sawahil, meaning "coastal dwellers". They speak Swahili, a Bantu language and the official language of Kenya.

Islam established its presence in the East African coast around 1012 AD, when the traders from the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula continued to journey to these parts during monsoon seasons and to interact with the local people through trade, intermarriage, and an exchange of ideas. Because of this interaction, most of the Swahili today are Muslim. The unifying force of Islam consolidated into an amalgam of otherwise different ethnicities and provided an enduring common identity for many of the people in coastal East Africa. The Swahili follow a very strict and orthodox form of Islam.

For centuries the Swahili depended greatly on trade from the Indian Ocean. The Swahili have played a vital role as middle man between east, central and south Africa, and the outside world. Trade contacts have been noted as early as 100 AD by early Roman writers who visited the East African coast in the first century. Trade routes extended across Tanzania into modern day Democratic Republic of the Congo, along which goods were brought to the coasts and were sold to Arab, Indian, and Portuguese traders and even reached as far as China and India. Materials attributed to this network of trade were also found at Great Zimbabwe. During the apogee of the middle ages, ivory and slaves became a substantial source of revenue. Many slaves sold in Zanzibar ended up in Brazil, which was then a Portuguese colony. Swahili fishermen of today still rely on the ocean to supply their primary source of income. Fish is sold to their inland neighbors in exchange for products of the interior.

Photo credit: Solarstones