Swahili Worlds in Globalism (Elements in the Global Middle Ages) - Softcover

Kusimba, Chapurukha M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1009074059 ISBN 13: 9781009074056

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2024

Synopsis

This Element discusses a medieval African urban society as a product of interactions among African communities who inhabited the region between 100 BCE and 500 CE. It deviates from standard approaches that credit urbanism and state in Africa to non-African agents. East Africa, then and now, was part of the broader world of the Indian Ocean. Globalism coincided with the political and economic transformations that occurred during the Tang-Sung-Yuan-Ming and Islamic Dynastic times, 600-1500 CE. Positioned as the gateway into and out of eastern Africa, the Swahili coast became a site through which people, inventions, and innovations bi-directionally migrated, were adopted, and evolved. Swahili peoples' agency and unique characteristics cannot be seen only through Islam's prism. Instead, their unique character is a consequence of social and economic interactions of actors along the coast, inland, and beyond the Indian Ocean.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009074059
• ISBN 13: 9781009074056
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 106