Horn and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast, 800–1900

by Randall L. Pouwels

• ISBN13: 9780521523097
• ISBN10: 0521523095
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-06-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In this first major historical study of Islam among the Swahili, Randall Pouwels shows how Islam and other aspects of coastal civilization have evolved since about AD 1000 as an organic whole. Coastal Africans, he argues, simply adopted Islam as the spiritual vehicle best suited to their expanding intellectual needs and to meeting the opportunities presented by their physical and cultural environment. The culture and religion that developed were strong, rich, supple, self-assured. yet capable of accommodating change where it was unavoidable or preferable. All these characteristics were put to the test in the nineteenth century, when coastal peoples were subjected to intense Arabizing and Westernizing influences. Pouwels demonstrates how local people went on asserting their own traditions while assimilating what they chose from both worlds. East African Muslims, therefore faced the twentieth century divided on issues of local cultural autonomy and the need to conform to external cultural pressures.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations and maps	vi
Preface	vii
List of abbreviations	viii
Introduction	1	(5)
The roots of a tradition, 800--1500	6	(11)
The emergence of a tradition, 900--1500	17	(15)
A northern metamorphosis, 1500--1800	32	(31)
Appendix	55	(8)
Town Islam and the umma ideal	63	(12)
Wealth, piety, justice, and learning	75	(22)
The Zanzibar Sultanate, 1812--88	97	(28)
New secularism and bureaucratic centralization	125	(20)
A new literacy	145	(18)
The early colonial era, 1885--1914	163	(28)
Currents of popularism and eddies of reform	191	(18)
Notes	209	(44)
Glossary	253	(3)
Bibliography	256	(13)
Index	269