The Swahili Community of Mombasa, 1500–1900

Abstract

The Swahili community of modern Mombasa is composed of an amalgam of the descendants of the city's early ‘Shirazi’ settlers and more recent immigrant Swahili groups, most of which migrated south to Mombasa Island during or after the sixteenth century. It appears likely that the ‘Shirazi’. dynasty and its retainers were themselves derived from older Swahili settlements along the southern Somali coast.After the ‘Shirazi’ polity was destroyed by. the Portuguese and their local allies in 1591–93, Mombasa's accretions of foreign Swahili gradually reorganized themselves into twelvemataifaor ‘tribes’. These twelvemataifagrouped themselves into two separate and sometimes hostile confederations, theThelatha Taifa(The Three) and theTisa Taifa(The Nine). Political unity was maintained by means of a loosely structured state system in which foreign dynasties of Omani Arabs, first the Mazrui and later the Busaidi, bridged the gap between the two confederations.During the Mazrui period (approximately 1735–1837), Mombasa was an independent city-state which enjoyed political hegemony over much of the Kenya and north Tanzania coasts. Under Busaidi rule (1837–95) the city lost its independence and was incorporated in the Zanzibar Sultanate. Differences between theThelatha Taifaand theTisa Taifaslowly faded during the Busaidi period and have almost disappeared since 1900. Though precolonial social and political structure is still perceptible in the modern Swahili community of Mombasa, it has for the most part become vestigial.