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Abstract
Contacts between Arabia and the East African Coast, which have marked the history of the western part of the Indian Ocean since ancient times, have often involved the migration of individuals and groups of people who have contributed to the shaping of the Swahili society. However, details of group migrations from Arabia (even comparatively recent) remain to this day largely unexplored as to their causes, the impact the newcomers had on the East African societies, and their material and cultural contribution to the Swahili coastal centres. It has also never been assessed how long it took an Arab migrant group to become fully integrated into their new socio-economic environment. This paper tries to answer some of these questions by illustrating a migration that took place in the late nineteenth century and involved almost the entire South-Arabian qabila of the ʿUmar Bā ʿUmar, originally settled in and around Ghayl Bā Wazīr, some 30 km inland from the ports of Mukalla and Shihr. This group left the Hadhramaut in the 1880s and eventually settled in Brava, a coastal city of Southern Somalia, c. 1890. The first mention of their presence in East Africa is found in the judicial records of Brava, which have been preserved for the period 1893–1900. The events that marked the subsequent period, up to the present, have been reconstructed through personal observations by the author and oral information collected mainly in Brava, which the ʿUmar Bā ʿUmar left when the outbreak of the civil war in Somalia forced them to return to their original home town in the Hadhramaut.
Notes
1. The old view is exemplified by Reginald Coupland's East Africa and its Invaders, which mentions an “Arab and Persian colonisation of the Coast” and “a chain of Arab colonies” (Coupland, East Africa and its Invaders, 24, 28). This view has been rejected by Allen, “Swahili Culture Reconsidered”; Pouwels, “Medieval Foundations of East African Islam”; Nurse and Spear, The Swahili.
2. Pouwels, “Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean”. Farsy's biography of Ahmad b. Sumayt (Farsy, The Shafi'i Ulama of East Africa, 148) mentions that his father, Sayyid Abū Bakr b. ʿAbdallah (born in Shibam, Hadhramaut – died at Itsandaa, Comoro Islands, in 1874), had migrated to East Africa because of business (he was the owner of several dhows).
3. Pouwels, “Medieval Foundations of East African Islam”, 201. Pouwels’ italics.
4. See, for example, the biography of Ahmad b. Sumayt (I) in Farsy, The Shafi'i Ulama of East Africa, 148 ff. Martin, “Arab Migrations to East Africa”, 380 ff., provides details of the migrations of several sharifs (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima, also called sada in Yemen, washarifu in Swahili, and mashariifu in Brava): the sons of Abu Bakr b. Salim and Ahmad b. Harun Jamal al-Layl to Pate and Lamu, and the descendants of Ahmar al-Uyun to Mogadishu.
5. Both quotations are from Martin, “Arab Migrations to East Africa”, 371, 367.
6. Martin, in “Notes on Some Members of the Learned Classes”, 527, mentions “another wave coming at the end of the nineteenth century”, but adds that “[t]o decide how and when these Hadramis or Washihiri came to East Africa is a matter for future research.”
7. Pouwels, “Tenth Century Settlement of the East African Coast”. According to Pouwels, the journey to East Africa of the “Seven Brothers of Al-Ahsa”, recorded in the Chronicle of Kilwa, provides several clues that suggest the possibility of a Qarmatian migration.
8. Martin, “Notes on Some Members of the Learned Classes”, 527. “Some information is already at hand which suggests that the period from the 14th to the early 17th century was an epoch of migration from the Hadramawt.”
9. Tolmacheva, “‘They Came From Damascus in Syria’”.
10. This is the case of the Hatimis’ claim to have come to East Africa from Andalusia, which is also mentioned in the “History of Pate” (Freeman-Grenville, The East African Coast, 258).
11. Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia.
12. Arai (Arabs Who Traversed the Indian Ocean, 16, 17) with further bibliographic references.
13. Interview with Abū Bakr Musāʿad ʿAbūd, Shihr, 15 November 2007.
14. For details of this struggle, see Hartwig, “Expansion, State Foundation and Reform.”
15. I am indebted to Musāʿad ʿAbdallah ʿAbūd, who made available to me his unpublished research (2004), for the details of this agreement and for the account of the subsequent battle at Ghayl Bā Wazīr.
16. They were ʿAbūd Sālim Mardūf, Abū Bakr b. A[hdot]mad b. ʿUmar b. Musāʿad, ʿAli b. Mu[hdot]ammad b. ʿAli b. Shiddād, Saʿīd b. ʿAbdallah b. Mu[hdot]ammad b. Shiddād al-Baʿūd, ʿUmar b. A[hdot]mad b. [Hdot]isni, Mu[hdot]ammad b. ʿAbdallah b. ʿUmar Bā Bakar, ʿAbdallah b. Saʿīd b. ʿUmar Shiddād, A[hdot]mad b. Sālim b. Saʿīd b. Mu[hdot]ammad Shiddād, and Sālim b. ʿAbdallah b. Saʿīd b. Mu[hdot]ammad Shiddād.
17. This status involved the obligations already included in the agreement of 1869, i.e. the transfer of land property to the Sultan, the prohibition for the ʿUmar Bā ʿUmar to follow policies and contract alliances that were contrary to the Sultan's interests, and the payment of taxes.
18. Some descendants of these migrants went to Shihr in the early 1980s to enquire whether any of their kinfolks were still living in the area (interview with ʿAttās Sālim ʿAbūd, Shihr, 18 December 1998).
19. Martin, “Muslim Politics and Resistance to Colonial Rule”, 482.
20. The judicial records of Brava mention several times a ʿUmar b. Mu[hdot]ammad ʿUmar Bā ʿUmar who was serving as shawush of the local Zanzibari garrison (Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 1091, case QR 500.1, and passim). It is almost certain that he started his military career in Zanzibar.
21. Révoil, Voyage au Cap des Aromates, 55; Robecchi Bricchetti, Somalia e Benadir, 78.
22. According to family tradition, ʿAbūd b. Musāʿad and his brother A[hdot]mad spent some years in Zanzibar before moving to Brava (interviews with Mu[hdot]ammad ʿAbūd Musāʿad, Shihr, October 2004).
23. The judicial records mention as living in Brava some 10 individuals of the Al-Burayk clan, a couple of Kathiri, one Kasadi, two Bā Wazīr, over ten [Hdot]amūmi (a qabila settled just north of Ghayl Bā Wazīr), and a number of individuals belonging to several smaller Hadhrami clans. See Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 2129–2185 (Index of Names).
24. The first reliable estimate of the population of Brava was made in 1907 by the then Italian Resident Giovanni Piazza, who assessed it at 5062 (Piazza, “La Regione di Brava nel Benadir”, 20). Slavery was not officially abolished in the Benadir until 1904.
25. For details of the economy of Brava at the turn of the twentieth century, see Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 45–49, with bibliographic references.
26. One of the oldest must have been Yislam b. [Hdot]amad, whose death was recorded on 21 Safar 1317/30 June 1899 (Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 1245). Cases QR 74.1 and 75.1 concern ʿAbūd and ʿUmar, the sons of the late Saʿīd b. ʿAbūd, who were still minors in 1893 (Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 217, 219).
27. See, for example, Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 827, case QR 371.1. The qadis of Brava acted also as registrars and notary public and, in addition to civil suits, recorded also marriages, divorces and deaths, as well as contracts, acknowledgments of debts, donations, etc.
28. Records of Brava civil court covering the period 1900–1905 were extant until 1990, but were subsequently lost (probably destroyed) during the civil war. The author had access to them in the 1980s.
29. For instance, A[hdot]mad bin Sālim had migrated to Brava with his wife, mother, and two sisters (Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 1233, case QR 568.2). ʿAbūd b. Musāʿad was in Brava with his mother ʿAliya (not mentioned in the judicial records), his brother A[hdot]mad, and two uncles, Yisir and Man⋅ūr, with their respective families. Another uncle, Saʿīd, died in Brava leaving two underage sons.
30. Révoil, Voyage au Cap des Aromates, 21.
31. The Bravanese used to make fun of them, as evidenced by the ditty “Marabu Benga Benga – ka chishaali ka chileemba”.
32. In the 1970s some old ʿUmar Bā ʿUmar women could still be seen wearing the tafgora in Brava.
33. Révoil, Voyage au Cap des Aromates, 56. Also all Italian travellers and officials remarked upon the peace reigning in Brava at the turn of the twentieth century.
34. Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 217.
35. Piazza, “La Regione di Brava nel Benadir”, 23.
36. Although Chimiini has been classified among the Northern Swahili Dialects (Nurse, “A Linguistic Reconsideration of Swahili Origins”), lexical and morphological borrowings from Somali, as well as some archaic Bantu features still present in the language set it apart from all other Swahili dialects.
37. Guillain did not include this mosque in his list of the 14 mosques existing In Brava in 1846 (Guillain, Documents sur l'histoire, 167–168), therefore it must have been quite recent. According to popular tradition, its name originates from a young sharifa called ʿAlwīya, who died at sea while travelling from Hadhramaut to East Africa and was buried in Brava (interview with Sharif Mardadi, London, 23 August 2008).
38. Vianello, “The Poetic Heritage of Brava”, 5–10, with further bibliography.
39. Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ra[hdot]man b. Mu[hdot]ammad b. ʿUmar b. Yusuf b. ʿAli al-Daybaʿi (866–944 H.) was an Islamic scholar of Zabid, Yemen. The maulid composed by Jaʿfar b. [Hdot]asan b.ʿAbd al-Karīm b. al-Sayyid Mu[hdot]ammad b. ʿAbd al- Rasūl al-Barzanjī (born in Medina in 1128 H.) was the best known in Brava and in East Africa in general.
40. Saʿīd b. Mu[hdot]ammad Bin Shayba, Sālim b. ʿUmar, and Musāʿad b. Sālim b. A[hdot]mad married Bravanese women, while Sālim b. ʿAli, Sālim b. Mardūf, A[hdot]mad b. Sālim, Mu[hdot]ammad b. Sālim, A[hdot]mad b. Mu[hdot]ammad Bā Bakar, and Man⋅ūr b. Jaʿfar had Arab wives. In 1900 many of the young ʿUmar Bā ʿUmar were still unmarried.
41. The Shafi'ite principle that a woman should not be given in marriage to a man of lower status created in Brava a social hierarchy, which was based on each group's self-assessment of its social prestige and not on its actual power, influence, or economic conditions. This hierarchy was reflected in the refusal by certain groups to give their women in marriage to men of other groups they considered as inferior.
42. It was apparently common for such small shops to be set up in huts, even by affluent merchants. Other Arab shopkeepers’ huts are recorded, see Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, cases 258.1 and 296.1.
43. The most detailed description of the contents of a shop kept by an Arab is found in QR 391.1 (Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 867). Other records show that the ʿUmar Bā ʿUmar dealt in marekani cloth (QR 411.2), sesame (QR 45.1), butter (QR 291.1), ambergris (QR 76.1), teak wood (QR 411.1) and goats (QR 577.1).
44. Vianello ad Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 579, case QR 252.1.
45. Robecchi Bricchetti, Lettere Illustrate alla Societa' Antischiavistica d'Italia, 193, 194. These were Mu[hdot]ammad b. Sālim, Shiddād b. ʿAbdallah, and ʿAbdallah b. Saʿīd al-Baʿū[ddot].
46. The plans and architectural features of some of these buildings are given in Molon and Vianello, “Architettura Domestica a Brava”. For a comparison with traditional Hadhrami buildings, see Damluji, A Yemen Reality.
47. Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 101 (QR 16.1).
48. Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 217 (QR 74.1).
49. Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 219 (QR 75.1).
50. The builders and original owners of this villa were Messrs. Bricchi and Zoni, who had been granted a large farmland concession near the Shebelle river where they had tried to grow caoutchouc. This house, known in Brava as “Daar Zoni”, is already mentioned in Piazza, “La Regione di Brava nel Benadir”, 19. It was demolished in the late 1970s and Brava Town Hall now stands on its site.
51. See Museo della Garesa – Catalogo, passim.
52. Interviews with A[hdot]mad ʿUmar Man⋅ūr and ʿAbūd Musāʿad ʿAbūd, London, May 2007.
53. Their parents, the second generation ʿUmar Bā ʿUmar, still used to speak their Hadhrami dialect among themselves. They had, however, acquired a good knowledge of both Chimiini and Somali, although few of them had received a regular education.
54. Until 1968, Italian was the language of learning in state schools in Southern Somalia at all levels of education.
55. In particular Mu[hdot]ammad b.ʿAbdallah b. Mu[hdot]ammad Shiddād and his son [Hdot]asan.
56. Later they offered some of their agricultural land just outside Mombasa, where a permanent refugee camp for Bravanese was set up. The former St. Anne's school and the later Bravanese refugee camp are also mentioned in Pérouse de Montclos 1999.
57. Interview with ʿAttās Sālim ʿAbūd, Shihr, 18 December 1998. ʿAttās was directly involved in listing the ʿUmar Bā ʿUmar present in Mombasa who later boarded the flights to Yemen.
58. The few ʿUmar Bā ʿUmar families who found themselves stranded in Mogadishu and Merka reached Yemen later and by other routes.
59. Interview with ʿAbdallah b. Sālim ʿUmar Bā ʿUmar, Ta'izz, 23 November 1998.
60. The port of Mukalla faces directly the Somali port of Boosaaso across the sea and the crossing by dhow lasts approximately 24 hours. Dhows used to ply regularly this route before its recent disruption by Somali pirates.
61. This is the case also in the Bravanese communities in Europe and the United States. Chimiini is now considered an endangered language.
62. Food rations were, however, distributed for some time by Islamic relief agencies.
63. Unlike other coastal cities, where eventually sultans replaced the councils of elders, Brava was always ruled by a local council.