Religious Conversion and Ritual Practice in the Horn of Africa: A Case Study from Islamic-Period Djibouti (ca. AD 800–1200)

Summary

The Somali Coast has long been a center of global commerce. At the confluence of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, port cities like Zeila and Berbera witnessed the arrival of Greek and Roman traders (ca. AD200) and Chinese merchants (ca. AD1300). Contacts with Muslim merchants from the Arabian Peninsula (ca. AD800) were particularly transformative, and by the tenth century, communities across Djibouti and Somaliland were converts. Scholars have hypothesized that pre-Islamic "monument sites" across the region—specifically, ancestor shrines and cairns—remained centers of ritual practice long after communities converted to Islam. This study seeks to test this hypothesis by identifying evidence of changes/continuities in ritual practice at a complex of monument sites along the Wadi Buleh in eastern Djibouti. Results of pilot research (2015, 2016) suggest that several monuments (cairns) remained loci of activity throughout the Islamic Period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22565