Shungwaya

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Shungwaya or Singwaya is the name of a mythical place that the Mijikenda who live today on the coast of Kenya and northern Tanzania , in oral tradition, call it their place of origin. It was generally believed to be in the south of what is now Somalia on the Juba River or between the Juba and Tana . The truth of the respective traditions is disputed.

Research History and Controversies

At times it was assumed that a larger state existed under this name, from which, in addition to the Mijikenda, other Bantu-speaking ethnic groups in today's Kenya, including the Pokomo , Kikuyu , Meru , Embu , Taita , Kamba and Swahili , had migrated south. This draws alongside traditions mainly due to the late 19th century written down Arabic Kitab al-Zanj ( "Book of Zanj "), which states at one point that Kashur or Mijikenda had once lived at Juba and centralized state Shungwaya heard.

However, according to Morton (1972) and Turton (1975), the evidence for this is poor. There are no clear archaeological or linguistic indications, so that, according to current knowledge, it remains unclear how far north the expansion of the Bantu in the area of ​​Kenya and southern Somalia extended. From the Mijikenda, traditions referring to "Shungwaya" are only known since the end of the 19th century, while statements by the Mijikenda documented before 1890 always claimed an origin from Mount Mangea west of Malindi and, in the case of the Rabai subgroup, from Kilimanjaro . The passage in Kitab al-Zanj casts Turton into doubt, as did several other Arabic mentions of Zanj am Jubb , which were interpreted as "Bantu on the Juba River"; equating the term Zanj with Bantu-speaking ethnic groups is just as questionable as equating Jubb with Juba, which is otherwise referred to in Arabic as Jub ( Djoub ). The linguist Hinnebusch (1976), who created a classification of East African Bantu languages, summarized the languages ​​Pokomo, Mijikenda and Swahili as a Sabaki group (named after the Sabaki River ), whose area of ​​origin he lies between Kilimanjaro, the Pare Highlands and the Taita Hills suspected. Thomas Spear, however, defended the existence of Shungwaya against these arguments.

literature

  • James de Vere Allen: Shungwaya, the Mijikenda, and the Traditions . In: The International Journal of African Historical Studies , 1983
  • RF Morton: The Shungwaya Myth of Miji Kenda Origins: A Problem of Late Nineteenth-Century Kenya Coastal History . In: The International Journal of African Historical Studies , Vol. 5, No. 3, 1972, pp. 397-423
  • RF Morton: New Evidence regarding the Shungwaya Myth of Miji Kenda Origins , in: The International Journal of African Historical Studies , Vol. 10, No. 4, 1977, pp. 628-643
  • Thomas T. Spear: Traditional Myths and Linguistic Analysis: Singwaya Revisited. In: History in Africa, Vol. 4, 1977, pp. 229-246
  • ER Turton: Bantu, Galla and Somali Migrations in the Horn of Africa: A Reassessment of the Juba / Tana Area . In: Journal of African History , 1975
  • Abdi Kusow: The Somali Origin: Myth or Reality? In: Ali Jimale Ahmed (Ed.): The Invention of Somalia . Red Sea Press 1995, ISBN 978-0-932415-99-8