Remaking the Swahili Coast in the Interior: Rashid bin Masud and the Creation of Kikole

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Slave and ivory trader Rashid bin Masud created the caravan trading post Kikole in southwestern Tanzania in the 1890s. Like Dutch colonists in South Africa, Masud appears to have sought to tame this foreign landscape and to cultivate a resemblance to his home region (in his case, the Swahili Coast). For example, he planted coastal trees, date palms and mangos, some of which are still extant today. He also built structures in a rectilinear formation that followed Swahili conventions rather than the round structures common in the interior at the time. Indeed, the very name Kikole apparently refers to a settlement on the outskirts of Kilwa, the coastal city where Masud was born. Masud’s worldview and ideology shaped Kikole as a distinctly coastal place deep in the Eastern African interior.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2022 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology