The world of the Swahili : an African mercantile civilization / John Middleton.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: New Haven : Yale University Press, ©1992.Description: xii, 254 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0300052197
  • 9780300052190
  • 0300060807
  • 9780300060805
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 306/.089/96392 20
LOC classification:
  • DT429.5.S94 M54 1992
Other classification:
  • 73.06
Contents:
The Swahili people and their coast -- The merchants and the predators -- Towns -- Kinship, descent, and family -- Perpetuation and alliance -- Transformation of the person -- Power, ritual, and knowledge -- Civilization and identity.
Review: "The Swahili of East Africa have a long and distinctive history as a literate, Muslim, urban, and mercantile society. In this book a leading Africanist presents the first full-length anthropological account of the Swahili and offers an original analysis of their little-understood and unusual culture." "Swahili towns, some urban with elegant stone buildings and others more rural with palm-leaf-matting houses, are spread along the thousand-mile East African coast. Because each local community is culturally different from its neighbors, previous historians and anthropologists have viewed the Swahili as a series of isolated and "detribalized" groups. John Middleton argues, on the contrary, that beneath the cultural variation is a single structure, that of a well-defined and complex trading society that has shown little change through the ages. Drawing on his own field research and on earlier writings on the Swahili, Middleton describes this centuries-old mercantile culture--its local and descent groupings, marriage patterns, religion, and values. He traces the history of their colonized past as subjects to Arabs, portuguese, British, and others and shows that, although their economic and political role has continually been a subordinate one, their sense of unique identity enables then to persist as an ongoing civilization."--Jacket.
Item type: BOOK
Tags from this library: No tags from this library for this title. Log in to add tags.
Star ratings
    Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)
Holdings
Current library Call number Vol info Copy number Status Date due Barcode
Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center Library STACKS DT429.5.S94 M54 1992 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) V. Copy 1 Available 197010105

Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-247) and index.

The Swahili people and their coast -- The merchants and the predators -- Towns -- Kinship, descent, and family -- Perpetuation and alliance -- Transformation of the person -- Power, ritual, and knowledge -- Civilization and identity.

"The Swahili of East Africa have a long and distinctive history as a literate, Muslim, urban, and mercantile society. In this book a leading Africanist presents the first full-length anthropological account of the Swahili and offers an original analysis of their little-understood and unusual culture." "Swahili towns, some urban with elegant stone buildings and others more rural with palm-leaf-matting houses, are spread along the thousand-mile East African coast. Because each local community is culturally different from its neighbors, previous historians and anthropologists have viewed the Swahili as a series of isolated and "detribalized" groups. John Middleton argues, on the contrary, that beneath the cultural variation is a single structure, that of a well-defined and complex trading society that has shown little change through the ages. Drawing on his own field research and on earlier writings on the Swahili, Middleton describes this centuries-old mercantile culture--its local and descent groupings, marriage patterns, religion, and values. He traces the history of their colonized past as subjects to Arabs, portuguese, British, and others and shows that, although their economic and political role has continually been a subordinate one, their sense of unique identity enables then to persist as an ongoing civilization."--Jacket.