ABSTRACT
Though Arab travellers first mentioned the ‘land of the Sawāhil’ in the thirteenth century, communities living on the coasts and islands of eastern Africa did not begin identifying as Swahili until the nineteenth century. Now an ethnic group of around one million people, the Swahili and their ancestors have exploited coastal ecologies, worshipped as Muslims, and spoken local dialects of Kiswahili for centuries. 1 They also claim the impressive stonetowns built in eastern Africa since the twelfth century ce as the homes of their ancestors. Archaeologists and linguists confirmed that these settlements formed part of a local culture that emerged at the end of the first millennium ce and often refer to this culture as Swahili. Though efficient as a geographic referent, this convention can be misleading. For, although the Swahili and their ancestors share a similar language and culture, the former identify themselves as a single ethnic group, while earlier generations organised themselves into a more diverse set of communities, each centred on one of the principal towns along the coast.
