Shirazi people - Knowledge

533:, the Portuguese explorer, in 1498. A few years later, the Portuguese and Shirazi people entered into disputes regarding trading routes and rights particularly about gold, a conflict that destroyed both Kilwa and Mombasa port towns of Shirazi rulers. The Portuguese military power and direct trading with India in the beginning, followed by other European powers, led to a rapid decline of the Shirazi towns which thrived and depended primarily on the trade. In parallel to European competition, non-Swahili-speaking Bantu groups began attacking Shirazi towns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Thus, the Shirazi sultanates faced war from sea and land, leading to a rapid loss of power and trading facilities. The Omani Arabs re-asserted their military in the seventeenth century, and they defeated the Portuguese in 1698, at Mombasa. The Portuguese agreed to cede this part of Africa, and a fresh migration of Arabs from Oman and Yemen into the Shirazi people settlements followed. 1107:, Quote: "The Shirazi were classified as native, that is, Africans, and this they were of low status. Prior to the colonial era, the Shirazi and Arabs saw themselves, for the most part, as one community. (...) Unlike the previous periods in which African captives were usually taken to Persian Gulf areas to work primarily as domestic laborers, by the nineteenth century, most slaves were being utilized on the vast clove and plantations on the East African coast and offshore islands. (...) Arab rule, from this period until its demise at the hands of the European powers, became virtually synonymous with slavery and slave ownership." (...) "Though Shirazi ownership of slaves was never as extensive as the Arabs, slaves were a major source of their wealth" 2040:

sea with shipowners and captains from Siraf, embarking at Suhar in Oman. The last occasion he voyaged across it, returning from the island of Qanbalu to Oman, was in AD 916/17. He describes the goal of these voyages to have been this island, estimated as around 500 farsakhs (approx. 1,400 nautical miles) from Oman, and the country of Sufala and the Waq-Waq. Buzurg (a contemporary of Mas'udi) states that the place where ships normally went on to in the Zanj country was 800 farsakhs from Qanbalu, but sometimes ships were carried down to the cannibal country 1,500 farsakhs from Qanbalu. This indicates that trade was carried on as far south as the lower Mozambique coast.

302:– islands in the Indian Ocean close to north Kenya, which oral traditions claim were settled by seven brothers from Shiraz in south Iran. The Lamu archipelago descendants then moved south in the 10th and 11th centuries. This is contested and the opposing view states that the Shirazi legend took on new importance in the 19th century, during the period of Omani domination. Claims of Persian Shirazi ancestry were used to distance locals from Arab newcomers. The emphasis that the Shirazi came very long ago and intermarried with indigenous locals is revisionist politics that attempts to fuse the Shirazi origins theory with Swahili heritage according to this view. 518:

World. It was also common for Arab, Persian, and Indian traders to "winter" on the coast for up to six months as the monsoon winds shifted. They would often marry the daughters of Swahili traders, passing on their genealogy through Islam's patrilineal descent system. The archaeological record firmly refutes any supposition of mass migrations or colonization but evidences extensive trade relations with Persia. Trade links with the Persian Gulf were especially prominent from the 10th to 14th centuries, which prompted the development of local mythologies of Persian or Shirazi origin. According to Abdulaziz Lodhi, the Iranians and Arabs called the Swahili coast

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affinity with sub-Saharan East African populations is also evident in the MDS analysis (Figure 4a and b). The remaining 15.3% of the Comoros sample is composed almost exclusively of haplogroups that can either be unambiguously identified as SEA (B4a1a1-PM, F3b, and M7c1c - 10.6%), 25 or fall into the paragroup M(xD,E,M1,M2,M7) (4%) (Figure 3). The latter haplogroups are probably also originally from Southeast Asia, but of the 12 different M* HVS-I sequences on the Comoros, only two match published sequences: two M(xM7) mitochondria found on Madagascar. 8 We found no haplogroups that could be assigned to the Middle East.

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including fishing and sailing, and developed a healthy regional trade network by the 8th century C.E. The upsurge in Indian Ocean trade after the 9th century C.E. brought an increase in Muslim traders and Islamic influence, and beginning in the 12th century, many elites converted. These elites constructed complex, often fictive, genealogies that connected them to the central Islamic lands. Since Persian traders were dominant in the early centuries of the second millennium, many Swahili patricians adopted Persian cultural motifs and claimed a distant common ancestry.

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coconut and other plantations run with slave labor became the mainstay of the trading activity. These African slaves were captured during inland raids. Their presence in Swahili towns is mentioned in fourteenth and fifteenth century memoirs of Islamic travelers such as that of the fourteenth century explorer Ibn Battuta. The Shirazi were a large supplier of these slaves to the colonial era European plantations and various Sultanates. According to August Nimtz, after international slave trading was banned, the Shirazi community was economically crippled.

526:, which literally means "the Black Coast", and the Muslim immigrants from South Asia (modern Pakistan and India) to southern Arabian lands such as Oman and Yemen identified themselves as a Shirazi. The Muslim Shirazi settlements on the Swahili coast maintained a close relationship with those on islands such as Comoros, through marriage and mercantile networks. According to Tor Sellström, the Comorian population profile has a large proportion of Arab and African heritage, particularly on Grande Comore and Anjouan and these were under Shirazi sultanates. 1399:. These foreigners developed the trade of Mogadishu, which rapidly rose to a position of pre-eminence. In particular, they opened up the gold trade with the Sofala country, which until then can only have been on a minor scale. In furtherance of the trade with the south some of these merchants, ancestors of whom came from the Persian Gulf and who were remembered as of 'Shirazi' origin, settled on the islands of Mafia and Kilwa, rapidly, it appears, achieving a position of dominance. By about AD 1200 they had established themselves as rulers. 761:

girls were concubines, who bore them children. The male offspring were considered Muslims, but the female offspring inherited their slavery and their non-Muslim heritage. Even in post-colonial society, the residual dynamics and distinctions of a racial caste system have remained among some Shirazi people. According to the sociologist Jonas Ewald and other scholars, the social stratification is not limited in the Shirazi society to racial lines, but extends to economic status and the region of origin.

2327:, Quote: "Whereas the Malagasy influence is still present in Mayotte – (...) – it is, however, Arab immigrants and African slaves who more than others have contributed to the Comorian population profile, in particular on the main islands of Frande Comore and Anjouan. (...) Shirazi organized themselves into local sultanates but did not seek to bring the archipelago under a common sovereignty. As a result, the Comorian islands housed several sultanates, often within close vicinity." 505:), a likely compilation of mythical oral traditions and memories of settled traders on the Swahili coast. The late 19th-century document claims that Persians and Arabs were sent by governors of the Persian Gulf region to conquer and colonize the trading coast of East Africa. It also mentions the establishment of the Shirazi dynasty by Madagan and Halawani Arab merchants, whose identity and roots are unclear. According to R. F. Morton, a critical assessment of the 295:

on the Swahili Coast, and instead a historic abundance of Sunni Arab-related evidence. The documentary evidence, like the archaeological, "for early Persian settlement is likewise completely lacking." However an important thing to note is the fact that Iran at the time was majority sunni not shia. There are also several different versions of stories about the settlement of Shirazi along the Swahili Coast.

653:(4%)) but no Middle Eastern lineages. According to Msadie et al., given that there are no common Middle Eastern maternal haplogroups on the Comoros, there is "striking evidence for male-biased gene flow from the Middle East to the Comoros", which is "entirely consistent with male-dominated trade and religious proselytisation being the forces that drove the Middle Eastern gene flow to the Comoros". 344:) was born after the arrival of Islam, in the 17th century. Their traditional Bantu lineage names were gradually abandoned and substituted with Arabic family names (e.g. Wapate became Batawiyna), new origin legends and social structures were imagined into folklores, and the societal structures were adopted from Persian and Arab settlers from nearby societies in Asia. 1641:, UNESCO (2011), Quote: "Slave trade was introduced in Malawi by the Swahili-Arab traders in the 19th century following a great demand for ivory and slave in the East African markets namely Zanzibar, Kilwa, Mombasa and Quelimane. The Swahili-Arabs moved further into the interior of Africa including Malawi to obtain slaves and ivory. One of Slave Trade Route was 2752:

the Middle East to the Comoros, even if the unassigned mt-Hg M* and R* are designated as western Asian: 103/381 Y vs 27/577 mitochondria – Fisher's exact test, one-sided, Po10 22. This is entirely consistent with male-dominated trade and religious proselytisation being the forces that drove the Middle Eastern gene flow to the Comoros.

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Mombasa, came under Shirazi control for a time... Before the seventh century, non-Negroid people are thought to have inhabited the coastal areas visited by the early traders. After the seventh century, it is certain that the situation changed, for Negroid Africans were reported as inhabiting the coastal areas.

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The Shirazi rulers established themselves on Mrima coast (Kenya) and the Sultan of Kilwa who identified himself as a Shirazi, overthrew the Omani governor in 1771. A French visitor to this Sultanate, named Morice estimated that about a tenth of the population was Swahili-speaking Arabs and Shirazi, a

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Some contemporary academics reject the authenticity of the primarily Persian origin claim, although recent genetic evidence confirms the existence of Persian admixture. They point to the relative rarity of Persian customs and speech, lack of documentary evidence of Shia Islam in the Muslim literature

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The most common Comorian haplogroups, E1b1-M2 (41%) and E2-M90 (14%), are those that are frequent in sub-Saharan Africa. The Lemba have high frequencies of the Middle Eastern Y chromosome HgJ-12f2a (25%), a potentially SEA Y, Hg-K(xPQR) (32%) and a Bantu Y, E-PN1 (30%) (similar to E-M2), raising the

2039:

Al-Masudi, writing of the first half of the tenth century, refers to voyages on the sea of Zanj from Oman and Siraf; the latter, situated on the eastern side of the Persian Gulf and serving Shiraz and other towns in the interior, was the greatest port of its age. Al-Masudi himself sailed across this

1906:

ancient Arabic geography had quite a fixed pattern in listing the countries from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean: These are al-Misr (Egypt) -- al-Muqurra (or other designations for Nubian kingdoms) -- al-Habasha (Abyssinia) -- Barbara (Berber, i.e. the Somali coast) -- Zanj (Azania, i.e. the country

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According to oral tradition, beginning in the tenth century immigrants from the Shiraz region of Persia (now Iran) settled the islands and mainland ports of coastal East Africa, from Mogadishu, Somalia, in the north to the Sofala coast of Mozambique in the south. Many scholars, however, believe that

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The Shirazi people have primarily been a mercantile community, thriving on trade. Initially, between the 10th and 12th centuries, it was the gold producing regions of Mozambique that brought them to the coast of Africa. Later the trading in African slaves, ivory, spices, silk and produce from clove,

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while the latter were designated "Zanj." In Kilwa, then, Islam was still largely limited to the patrician elite. Battuta also described its ruler as often making slave and booty raids on the African idolators as he described the Zanj country. Of the loot, "a fifth was set aside for the family of the

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There are no mitochondrial lineages on the Comoros that are frequent in the Middle East (Figure 3). We have tested for, but did not find, the R haplogroups, H, J, T, U and V, or N(xR) that represent 80% of the mitochondria in Iran. There is therefore striking evidence for male-biased gene flow from

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settled in the central Mogadishu area. Yaqut and Ibn Said described the city as another important center of Islam, which actively traded with the Swahili-speaking African region to the south of it. The thirteenth century texts also mention mosques and individuals with names such as "al-Shirazi" and

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Swahili elites, many of whom had extensive trade connections with Arabia, Persia, and India fashioned themselves as a quintessential Muslim aristocracy. This demanded fictive or real genealogies that linked them back to early Muslims in Arabia or Persia, something seen in many parts of the Islamic

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According to Michel Ben Arrous and Lazare Ki-Zerbo, the Shirazi society has been "fractured by the caste implications of race and class". As the Arabs who arrived from Persia and Arabian lands became slave owners and traders, they considered their slaves as inferior and unfit for Islam. The slave

720:

The arrival of Islam with the Persians and Arabs affected the Shirazi identity and social structures in many ways. According to Helena Jerman, the word "Sawahil" among the Shirazi people referred to "free but landless" strata of the society who had adopted Islam, then a new social category on the

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Many Africans claimed Shirazi identity to obscure their slave ancestry, to mark their status as landowners, or to gain access to World War II rations distributed by the colonial state along ethnic lines. To complicate matters further, the Shirazi usually regard themselves as primarily of Persian

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is divided into two language groups, a western group composed of Shingazidja and Shimwali, and an eastern group, composed of Shindzwani and Shimaore. Shingazidja is spoken on Ngazidja, and has around 312,000 total speakers. Shindzwani is spoken on Ndzwani, and has roughly 275,000 total speakers.

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proliferated along the East African coast, most involving a named or unnamed Persian prince marrying a Swahili princess. Modern academics reject the authenticity of the primarily Persian origin claim, although recent genetic evidence points towards noticeable Persian admixture. They point to the

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Most scholars, however, believe that the Shirazi actually began their settlement of the East African coast in the twelfth century and that they originated in Somalia. Shirazi established themselves on the following islands: Lamu Kenya, Pemba Zanzibar, Mafia and Kilqa Kiswani all in Tanzania and

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Dismissing the ancestral claims of the native people as fictions, some contemporary scholars assert that both the Swahili and Shirazi people are the descendants of Bantu-speaking farmers who migrated to the East African coast in the first millennium C.E. They adopted maritime tools and systems,

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The northern Y chromosomes on the Comoros, E-V22, E-M123, F*(xF2, GHIJK), G2a, I, J1, J2, L1, Q1a3, R1*, R1a*, R1a1, and R2 (29.7%), make up a diverse group. A possible source of the Northern Y chromosomes is therefore the Shirazi traders from Southern Iran who established trading posts on the

2090:

Ibn Battuta says that al-Hasan ibn Sulaiman III made frequent raids in the Zanj country, presumably the mainland, attacking the people and carrying off booty, of which a fifth was set aside for the family of the Prophet, and all distributed in the manner prescribed by the Koran. These raids he

1295:

About 2,000 years ago Negroid Bantu and Nilotic groups pushed into the area of East Africa from the north and west in successive waves and displaced the Bushmanoid and other non-Negroid inhabitants of the area... The Shirazi, who were Islamized Persians, also arrived, and some towns, including

2695:

the majority of mitochondrial haplogroups on the Comoros, are of African origin. The haplogroups L0, L1, L2 and L3'4(xMN) compose 84.7% of the mitochondria in the Comoros sample, and their relative proportions, are most similar to profiles found in East and South East Africa. 20,54 The higher

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According to G. Thomas Burgess, Ali Sultan Issa and Seif Sharif Hamad, many Africans "claimed Shirazi identity to obscure their slave ancestry, to mark their status as landowners, or to gain access to World War II rations distributed by the colonial state along ethnic lines." Shirazi consider

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in the 14th century, which was at the time ruled by a Yemeni dynasty led by Sultan Hasan bin Sulayman. Battuta described the majority of inhabitants as being "Zanj" and "jet-black" in color, many of whom had facial tattoos. The term "Zanj" was used to distinguish not between Africans and

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Some towns and islands have had a much larger concentration of Shirazi people. For example, in 1948, about 56% of the Zanzibar population reported Shirazi ancestry of Persian origins. In local elections, the Shirazi voted for whichever party was politically expedient, whether the ethnic

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However, East African and other historians dispute this claim. According to Gideon S. Were and Derek A. Wilson, there were Bantu settlements along the East African coast by 500 AD, with some of the settlements taking the form of "highly organised kingdoms governed by ruling classes with

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Brielle, Esther S.; Fleisher, Jeffrey; Wynne-Jones, Stephanie; Sirak, Kendra; Broomandkhoshbacht, Nasreen; Callan, Kim; Curtis, Elizabeth; Iliev, Lora; Lawson, Ann Marie; Oppenheimer, Jonas; Qiu, Lijun; Stewardson, Kristin; Workman, J. Noah; Zalzala, Fatma; Ayodo, George (March 2023).

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Both Shirazi and non-Shirazi sultanates on the coast served as trade centers for ivory, ambergris, slaves, gold, and timber coming from the African interior, and textiles, ceramics, and silver from the Indian Ocean. These slaves were sourced from interior Africa, such as those around

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Arab geographers from the twelfth and later centuries historically divided the eastern coast of Africa into several regions based on each region's respective inhabitants. According to the twelfth century geography of Al-Idrisi, completed in 1154 CE, there were four littoral zones:

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family. However, the dialects of Swahili language is best described as a syncretic language, that blended Sabaki Bantu, Comoro, Pokomo, Iranian, Arabic and Indian words and structure reflecting the syncretic fusion of people from diverse backgrounds that form the Shirazi people.

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s ascription of Arabian origins for the founders of Malindi and other settlements on the Swahili coast is also contradicted by recorded 19th-century clan and town traditions, which instead emphasize that these early Shirazi settlers were of Persian ancestral heritage.

1395:"In the twelfth century more foreigners emigrated from diverse parts of the Persian Gulf and settled in Mogadishu, Brava and elsewhere on the Benadir and the coast of the Shungwaya country, the southern hinterland of Somalia remembered as the homeland of the 1208:, Quote: "As early as the late seventh century, black slaves known as the Zanj, associated with people from the East African coast, were put to agricultural work in a region that encompassed part of western Persia but mainly southern Iraq." 937:

Comoros. (...) Known for their mercantile skills, the Shirazi asserted themselves as ruling elites as early as the twelfth century on the islands that were their base. Trade in gold, ivory and slaves brought prosperity to the Shirazi

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Prophet, and all distributed in the manner prescribed by the Koran". Despite these raids against the inland African populations, a symbiotic relationship also appears to have existed between the Africans and the coastal people.

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ancestry. If it is not always clear what the label represents in a positive sense, its negative claims are more consistent: Shirazi are neither Arabs nor "mainlanders", recent labor migrants from the African mainland.

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in the 1840s. From Nkhota kota where he organized his expeditions to obtain slaves and ship them across the lake to East African markets, Kilwa. About 20,000 slaves were annually shipped by Jumbe to Kilwa from

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The second theory on Shirazi origins posits that they came from Persia, but first settled on the Somalia littoral near Mogadishu. In the twelfth century, as the gold trade with the distant entrepot of

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indicates that much of the document consists of deliberate falsifications by its author Fathili bin Omari, which were intended to invalidate the established oral traditions of local Bantu groups. The

753:, that is father children with low status and slave women. The ritual and sexual purity of the Waungwana women were maintained by confining them to certain premises within these houses, called 2124:

Although we have some evidence concerning raids made against the African populations of the interior, some symbiosis seems to have taken place between the Africans and the coastal people.

1444:. School of Oriental and African Studies. New Africa Press, Afro-Pub (Veröffentlichungen der Institute für Afrikanistik und Ägyptologie der Universität Wien). pp. 279–281. 1032:, Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, Bd. 28, FROM ZINJ TO ZANZIBAR: Studies in History, Trade and Society on the Eastern Coast of Africa (1982), pages 9-27 764:

The Shirazi culture is Islamic in nature, identifying largely with its Persian and Arabic roots. There are also Bantu influences, such as the Swahili language.

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Francois Renault (1988), "The structures of the Slave trade in Central Africa in the 19th century." Slavery and Abolition, volume 9, number 3, pages 146-165

3619: 621:(6%)). The Comorians also predominantly bear mitochondrial haplogroups linked with sub-Saharan East African populations in East and South East Africa ( 768:

themselves as of Persian ancestry primarily, and more consistently regard themselves as neither Arabs nor recent labor migrants from mainland Africa.

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Horton, Mark & Middleton, John. "The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society." (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2000) Pg. 59- 61.

4715: 2710:"Genetic diversity on the Comoros Islands shows early seafaring as major determinant of human biocultural evolution in the Western Indian Ocean" 2654:"Genetic diversity on the Comoros Islands shows early seafaring as major determinant of human biocultural evolution in the Western Indian Ocean" 2599:"Genetic diversity on the Comoros Islands shows early seafaring as major determinant of human biocultural evolution in the Western Indian Ocean" 2543:"Genetic diversity on the Comoros Islands shows early seafaring as major determinant of human biocultural evolution in the Western Indian Ocean" 2487:"Genetic diversity on the Comoros Islands shows early seafaring as major determinant of human biocultural evolution in the Western Indian Ocean" 275:, northern Mozambique and the Indian Ocean islands. By 1200 AD, they had established local sultanates and mercantile networks on the islands of 745:. The social strata of the Shirazi people came with its own strata taboos and privileges. For example, the upper strata Waungwana (also called 244:

migrants were inhabited by Africans. By the time of the Persian settlement in the area, these earlier occupants had been displaced by incoming

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of the "blacks"). Correspondingly almost all these terms (or as I believe: all of them!) also appear in ancient and medieval Chinese geography

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Horton, Mark & Middleton, John. "The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society." (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2000)

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Glassman, Jonathan. "Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, & Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856-1888." Heinemann. 1996.

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directly settled various mainland ports and islands on the eastern Africa seaboard beginning in the tenth century, in an area between

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Meier, Prita. "Swahili Port Cities: The Architecture of Elsewhere." (Bloomington Indiana: Indiana University press, 2016) Pg. 99-101.

184:-related evidence. The documentary evidence, like the archaeological, "for early Persian settlement is likewise completely lacking". 3612: 1240:

the Shirazi actually began their settlement of the East Africa coast in the twelfth century and that they originated in Somalia.

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Swahili coast. Among the Muslims, this was the lowest social strata of free people, just above the slave strata. Along with the

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H.N. Chittick (1965), The Shirazi colonization of East Africa, Journal of African History, Volume 6, Number 3, pages 275-294

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Shirazi did not vote as a bloc; they split over which community -- Arabs or mainlanders -- presented a more natural ally.

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Sheriff, Abdul; Tominaga, Chizuko (1990). "The Ambiguity of Shirazi Ethnicity in the History and Politics of Zanzibar".

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on the Mozambique seaboard grew, the settlers are then said to have moved southwards to various coastal towns in Kenya,

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the Bantu-speaking peoples of East Africa were called the Zanj and blacks from south of the Sahara were called al-Aswad

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Campbell, Gwynn. "Africa and the Indian Ocean World from Early Times to Circa 1900." Cambridge University Press. 2019

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Horton, Mark and Middleton, John. "The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society." Wiley-Blackwell. 2001.

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Between Five Lines: The Development of Ethnicity in Tanzania with Special Reference to the Western Bagamoyo District

401:; "country of the blacks"), located immediately below that up to around Tanga or the southern part of Pemba island; 203:, and their opulent wealth. The East African coastal area and the nearby islands served as their commercial base. 3188:

Challenges for the Democratisation Process in Tanzania: Moving Towards Consolidation 50 Years After Independence?

701:, and has an estimated 136,500 total speakers. Shimwali is spoken on Mwali, and has about 28,700 total speakers. 545:

Genetic analysis by Msadie et al. (2010) indicates that the most common paternal lineages among the contemporary

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Ivory and Slaves: Changing Pattern of International Trade in East Central Africa to the Later Nineteenth Century

2117: 1381: 1354: 1322: 1131: 557:(14%)). The samples also contain some northern Y chromosomes, indicating possible paternal ancestry from South 3460: 2077:

The medieval history of the coast of Tanganyika, with special reference to recent archaeological discoveries

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In the traditional centers of Swahili culture most Muslims adhere to the Shafi madhab, within Sunni Islam.

3566: 3487: 3050:(2004). "Tourist aesthetics in the global flow: Orientalism and "warrior theatre" on the Swahili Coast". 2948: