Obituary for Andrej Aleksejevic Zhukov

This paper is intended to give a somewhat personal view of the new TUKI English-Swahili Dictionary (hereafter TUKI). This new dictionary is the work of many years and it`s publication is indeed to be heralded and welcomed. Both the TUKI dictionary and the publication of its earlier `companion` the Kamusi ya Kiswahili Sanifu (KKS), which I have consulted in reviewing TUKI, are major publishing events and important contributions to Swahili lexicography. They establish the Institute of Kiswahili Research as an important, credible, and productive African research enterprise, and all of us involved in teaching Swahili owe the Institute our congratulations and support.

Complex predicates (CP) have attracted the attention of a number of linguists, and their syntactic properties have been widely investigated cross-linguistically. This paper describes Swahili “complex predicates”, that is, verbal constructions (V+N) which resemble a typical verb-object relation, but function like a single lexical verb. In particular, we will deal with a specific type of CP, involving body part terms as part of the predicate, such as -fa moyo, lit. die heart, ‘despair’; -kata ini, lit. cut liver, ‘cause suffering’; or -toka damu, lit. go out blood, ‘bleed’. We show how body part nouns differ from other nominal elements typically employed in complex predicates, both in their syntactic properties (e.g. object marking and possessor raising) and in their semantic characteristics (e.g. degree of semantic compositionality). Indeed, body part terms are often employed to conceptualize more abstract entities and ideas which belong to different semantic domains. Unlike other nominal elements, they seem to occupy the slot of regular objects, while they are not syntactic arguments of the verb, but rather define the scope, range, character or extent of the process.

This article is a comparative study of the critiques of developments in Shona and Swahili poetry that began in 1970s Tanzania and 1980s Zimbabwe, after the introduction of regular patterns in Shona poetry (late 1950s) and of free verse in Swahili literature (late 1960s). These verse forms became the object of heated debate about the nature of ‘tradition’ and of ‘colonial’ innovation among scholars, intellectuals and poets. These debates went beyond notions of stylistic canons; rather, they focused on identity, as closely connected with tradition and the need for decolonization. The problem recognized in this paper is that this criticism became prescriptive, implying the risk of limiting verbal-artistic expression in terms of style and content. This article shows a continuity between these different contexts in relation to critical opposition to stylistic innovation and freedom of (expressing) thought. By comparing the poetry and philosophy of the Tanzanian poet Euphrase Kezilahabi and Zimbabwean poet Chirikure Chirukure, this paper problematizes the terms of these debates and proposes an inductive and aesthetic approach to texts that avoids prescriptivism.

Uandishi kuhusu ushahidi wa maingiliano katika Bahari ya Hindi katika karne ya 18 na 19 umechukua sura mpya mara baada ya washairi mashuhuri wa Kiswahili kugusia masuala ya utamaduni wa manukato au tarabizuna katika kazi zao. Washairi hao kama vile Liyongo, Mwanakupona, Sikujua, Himidi, Abdalla na wengineo wamegusia suala la manukato kama sehemu ya utamaduni uliokopwa kutoka Asia-Arabuni au Umangani hadi pwani ya Afrika ya Mashariki. Ni kwa nini suala la manukato linatumika kama kigezo cha kuathiriana kitamaduni baina ya Wahindi, Waarabu na Waswahili? Makala haya yanajenga hoja kuwa motifu ya manukato ni mojawapo ya kielelezo cha maingiliano ya kitamaduni baina ya wadau wa Bahari ya Hindi katika kazi hizo za sanaa. Makala yanatoa fursa ya kuliangalia swala la manukato linavyoibua mfumo wa kijamii na suala zima la usawa wa kijinsia, osmolojia, mahusiano ya ndoa, utambulisho na sanaa ya mapambo. / Writing about the evidence of the Western Indian Ocean connections in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have taken a new turn following manifestation of the perfumery customs in the works of Liyongo, Mwanakupona, Sikujua, Himidi, Abdalla and others who are classical celebratory Swahili poets and yet they have evoked the perfumery trope in their works as part of the adapted oriental customs in the Swahili coastal littoral. Why is the perfumery trope used as an emblematic entity of influence and contact between Asia, Arabs and African Swahili? This article argues that the motif of perfume in those Swahili poems represents the study of cultural hybridity around the Western Indian Ocean rim. This study gives opportunity for scholars to examine how the perfumery trope symbolizes social issues, osmology (power and marginality), marital relations, identity, and ornamentation customs.

At the core of this special issue lies an apparently simple question: What is Swahili Studies? The “critical” perspective entails a question about both epistemological foundations and different versions or notions of “Swahili Studies” – also mirrored in the many institutions teaching Swahili all over the globe. In the same vein, this special issue shows Swahili Studies not as a fixed discipline delimited by geographical, historical, and disciplinary boundaries, and defined canons, but as a subject of an ongoing conversation. The twelve contributions of this special issue deliberately take different perspectives on Swahili Studies: 1. Swahili Studies as mirrored in a variety of different global histories of institutionalization; 2. Critically reflecting upon the notion of “Swahili”, its problematic geographical and linguistic fixations; and 3. Considering the specifically critical role of Uswahili/Mswahili. The aim of this special issue is to hint at the dynamic notions of Swahili – difficult to delimit in clear-cut terms of geography, culture or linguistic parameters. The issue does not give fixed answers or definitions, rather it opens up the multiple possibilities that are of, and from within, Swahili Studies.

This paper is an epistemological and reflexive account of half a century of research on the Waswahili through the medium of Kiswahili. The first section asks who ‘we’ (scholars) think ‘they’ (subjects of research) are, showing how claims to Swahili identity vary according to historical, geographical and political contexts. It also points out the dangers of orientalism and exoticism and advocates the acknowledgement of the potential for local people to be fellow intellectuals. The second section discusses who ‘they’ (subjects of research) consider themselves to be and how the claiming of Swahili identity has shifted, again according to historical and geographical contexts. In the third section there is a consideration of who ‘they’ think ‘we’ scholars are, since the success of research depends a great deal on how local people perceive us, including by race, gender and education. Importantly, such success also depends on a number of credentials including fluent Kiswahili, knowledge of Islam and familiarity through multiple visits. The final section discusses who we researchers think we ourselves are, the purpose of our research and for whom we write about it. This raises questions around the ethics of research – taking and giving back data and acknowledging that the creation of knowledge is very much a joint venture between locals and researchers.

This lively poem, one of several hundred collected in Mombasa at the end of the nineteenth century by W.E T AYLOR thanks to Mwalimu SIKUJUWA bin ABDALLAH ai-BAIAWI (Frankl, 1993), is preserved in Volume Ill of the Taylor Papers, now in the library of the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) in London.. lt consists of two versions - both in Arabic script (SOAS MS 47754); the first (Section X, page 4) is probably in the hand of ABDALLAH bin RASHID and has fifteen stanzas, while the second (Section Z, page 161) is in the hand of Mwalimu SIKUJUWA (one of T AYLOR\'s two Swahili teachers) and has twenty-one stanzas .. The entire text of version X is to be found in Z, although not in the same order. Version Z has thus six additional stanzas, and we have had no hesitation in selecting it as the text for this article (the manuscript having been most probably commissioned by TAYLOR).

Für das Swahili liegt eine Menge zweisprachiger Worterbucher mit der Ausgangssprache Swahili vor, weniger in umgekehrter Richtung. Die ersten bedeutenden lexikographischen Arbeiten wurden von Missionar L. Krapf seit der Mitte des 19 Jahrhunderts vor allem in Mombasa durchgeführt. 1982 erschien sein Dicitonary of the Swahili Language. Inzwischen gibt es Wörterbucher mit den Zielsprachen Englisch, Deutsch, F ranzosisch, Russisch, Schwedisch, ltalienisch, Polnisch, Tschechisch, Gujerati, Japanisch, Arabisch und anderen.

Obituary in memory of Irmi Maral-Hanak and her scientific work