Do mosques define maritimity on the Swahili coast?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Mosques are the outward expression of Islam in Swahili coastal communities. They were often the first building constructed of stone, and in many towns the only stone-built architecture, representing permanence and identify. In trading communities, mosques also had a role as places of safety for fellow muslim travellers, and where they could practice Salah (the daily ritual of prayer). This being the case, it might be expected that mosques were constructed close to the shore, where they would be clearly visible from the sea, providing assurance for monsoon-seafarers that they were arriving at a secure settlement. However in Swahili town planning, the earliest mosques tend to be set back from the shoreline, often hidden by dunes. The paper will examine when mosques began to be constructed on the shore and visible from the sea. It will be argued that this shift represented a conscious shift towards maritimity, where the sea and its connections to the land became increasingly important in Swahili culture. This change in world view took place at different times along the coast, and I will present a conspectus from the northern Kenyan coast, to the Comoros and Madagascar.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51705