The East African coast, also known as the Swahili coast, is well known for its picturesque ruins of stone houses, mosques, tombs, and town walls, which dotted the 2000-mile coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique and Madagascar.
Fascinating as I am just 2 weeks back from a tour of archaelogical/historical sites in Ireland covering at least some of the same periods - but also including early medieval religious ruins reflecting both the Irish church and the Roman church which came to dominate; as well as neolithic sites - passage graves, ring forts, etc. Changing subjects, the term Swahili clearly now captures much more than just a language in Africa, is there a definition of "Swahili" that would reflect your usage here?
The archaeologists and historians typically use it as a catch-all term for the diverse societies of the precolonial East African coast. Its use depends heavily on context and the given period (since the term isn't endogenous to the region and also wasn't really used by the people it describes), but Swahili generally refers to the east african muslims who lived in the coastal urban settlements and spoke various dialects of the Swahili language. Like all ethnic identities and social constructs, it's defined in opposition to an 'other', in this case mostly "newcomer" muslims like the Omanis and Hadramis that mostly arrived in the 18th and 19th centuries, and non-muslim mainland groups like the Mijikenda and Nyamwezi. Randall Pouwels does a great job breaking this complex identity down in his book 'Horn and Crescent,' but it would take entire libraries to deconstruct Swahili identity.
Fascinating as I am just 2 weeks back from a tour of archaelogical/historical sites in Ireland covering at least some of the same periods - but also including early medieval religious ruins reflecting both the Irish church and the Roman church which came to dominate; as well as neolithic sites - passage graves, ring forts, etc. Changing subjects, the term Swahili clearly now captures much more than just a language in Africa, is there a definition of "Swahili" that would reflect your usage here?
The archaeologists and historians typically use it as a catch-all term for the diverse societies of the precolonial East African coast. Its use depends heavily on context and the given period (since the term isn't endogenous to the region and also wasn't really used by the people it describes), but Swahili generally refers to the east african muslims who lived in the coastal urban settlements and spoke various dialects of the Swahili language. Like all ethnic identities and social constructs, it's defined in opposition to an 'other', in this case mostly "newcomer" muslims like the Omanis and Hadramis that mostly arrived in the 18th and 19th centuries, and non-muslim mainland groups like the Mijikenda and Nyamwezi. Randall Pouwels does a great job breaking this complex identity down in his book 'Horn and Crescent,' but it would take entire libraries to deconstruct Swahili identity.