Shungwaya

Shungwaya or Singwaya is the name of a mythical place, which the now living on the coast of Kenya and Northern Tanzania Mijikenda call their place of origin in oral traditions. It was commonly believed in the south of present-day Somalia on the river Juba or between the Juba and the Tana. The veracity of the respective traditions is controversial.

Research History and controversies

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

According to Morton (1972) and Turton (1975 ), however, is the evidence for this poor. There is no clear archaeological or linguistic evidence, so that according to current knowledge remains unclear how far north handed the expansion of the Bantu in the area of Kenya and southern Somalia. Among the Mijikenda were traditions that refer to " Shungwaya " only since the end of the 19th century known as before 1890 documented statements of the Mijikenda always claimed an origin from the mountain Mangea west of Malindi and in the case of the subgroup of Rabai from Kilimanjaro. The passage in the Kitab al - Zanj pulls Turton in doubt, as well as some other Arab mentions of Zanj at Jubb, which were interpreted as " Bantu on the river Juba "; equating the term Zanj with Bantu-speaking ethnic groups is just as questionable as the equating of Jubb with the Juba, which would otherwise referred to in Arabic with Jub ( Djoub ). The linguist Hinnebusch (1976 ), which created a classification of East African Bantu languages ​​, summarized the languages ​​Pokomo, Mijikenda and Swahili as Sabaki group together ( named after the River Sabaki ), whose original territory it between the Kilimanjaro, the Pare highlands and the Taita Hills suspected. Thomas Spear, however, defended the existence of Shungwaya against these arguments.

Swell

  • James de Vere Allen: Shungwaya, the Mijikenda, and the Traditions, in: The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1983
  • RF Morton: The Myth of Shungwaya Miji Kenda Origins: A Problem of Late Nineteenth - Century Kenya Coastal History, in: The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1972
  • RF Morton: New Evidence Regarding the Shungwaya Myth of Miji Kenda Origins, in: The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1977
  • 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
  • Nomination dossier for the sanctuaries of the Mijikenda Kaya at unesco.org
  • History ( Somalia)
  • History ( Kenya)
  • Mythological place
Mijikenda peoples Tana River (Kenya) Pokomo people Meru people Embu das Artes Taita people Kaya (Mijikenda)
728265
de