Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 7 views

    The Poem About The Prophets Death in Moz005

    Uploaded by

    Emad Abd Elnor

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    The Poem About The Prophets Death in Moz005

    Uploaded by

    Emad Abd Elnor
    7 views1 page

    Original Title

    The_Poem_about_the_Prophets_Death_in_Moz005

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    7 views1 page

    The Poem About The Prophets Death in Moz005

    Uploaded by

    Emad Abd Elnor

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 1

    48 The Poem about the Prophet’s Death in Mozambique

    role in their endeavour to reform. They created a vast network of


    Arabic texts that spread far and wide, following trade routes across
    the Indian Ocean, as Anne Bang shows in her study.10 Following a
    preconceived form of da‘wa, their programme of spreading Islam, in
    which texts and textual practices played an important role, involved
    the idea of reaching out to widely different locations along the coast.
    First it was the Lamu archipelago, already an established centre of
    textual production, and later, Zanzibar, a centre of learning under
    Omani rule, that attracted the most erudite Hadrami scholars in the
    nineteenth century. Then, the Hadrami scholars made their entry into
    northern Mozambique, where entire population groups converted to
    Islam in the nineteenth century.
    These scholars did not only produce Arabic texts, but also a growing
    body of written Swahili texts, mostly poetry, adapted from Arabic
    traditions.11 While oral practices of translating and commenting on
    Arabic texts to a Swahili-speaking audience in the context of teaching
    are older, these highly educated scholars with their reform agenda
    systematically explored Swahili written poetry, in particular, as a
    vehicle to popularize moral guidelines but also Islamic historiography,
    partly “supplementing earlier orally rendered forms.”12 The manuscript
    culture, whose evidence largely dates back to that time, has had an
    enduring effect on both the local and academic understanding of
    Swahili poetry as such; in other words, Swahili poetry as we think of
    it, came into being at that time. And while Swahili poetry has largely
    grown into a field of literature in its own right, much of the relationship
    between Arabic “sources” and Swahili adaptations still remains to be
    explored. The following article summarises only a few aspects that
    provide a vital context/framework to any discussion on Swahili poetry
    in Mozambique.
    Early on, while they were “leading an Islamic revival and counter-

    10 Bang, Sufi Networks, 9.


    11 Bang, Sufi Networks, 111.
    12 Randall Pouwels, “Swahili Literature and History in the Post-Structuralist Era,”
    The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 25, 2, 1992, 261–283: 270.

    You might also like