This collection summarizes the items on society, history and culture from Krapf’s famous dictionary which may be of some interest to today’s audience. The idea of arranging the sometimes idiosyncratic Swahili for modern use came up during preparations for the Krapf Workshop held on 11 September 2007 at Fort Jesus in Mombasa.1 The lemmas found in this first comprehensive Swahili dictionary were checked against Frederick Johnson’s Standard dictionary of 1939. In addition, the dictionary by Charles Sacleux of 1939 and the revised version of Krapf’s dictionary by Harry Kerr Binns (1925) served as sources of information. With the exception of those entries which Krapf had already marked with a question mark, all others were selected, which are not found in Johnson or which are described differently or in less depth than in Krapf\'s work.

Dealing with the bibliographies and publications about and by J. L. Krapf, especially in the archives of the Basle Mission I was astonished and I got the feeling that such an amount and such a variety of work could not have been done by one person only. At fist, Krapf was a missionary by profession. He and Rebmann were called the pioneers of the East-African mission. Beyond this, however, different missionary societies were encouraged by the publications and proposals of Krapf to work in East Africa, e.g. the Church Missionary Society in the service of which Krapf and Rebmann started their work in Rabai Mpya, the Swedish Evangelical mission, the Methodist Mission, the St. Crishona Mission, the Hermannsburg Mission and the Berlin Evangelical Mission. Though all biographers cannot avoid to state that Krapf did not convince more than two (some biographies speak about only one) persons to the Christian belief during all of his missionary life there is no doubt that Krapfs visions influenced missionary work in East Africa. We can say that he was a strategist of Christian mission in East Africa

Dealing with the bibliographies and publications about and by J. L. Krapf, especially in the archives of the Basle Mission I was astonished and I got the feeling that such an amount and such a variety of work could not have been done by one person only. At fist, Krapf was a missionary by profession. He and Rebmann were called the pioneers of the East-African mission. Beyond this, however, different missionary societies were encouraged by the publications and proposals of Krapf to work in East Africa, e.g. the Church Missionary Society in the service of which Krapf and Rebmann started their work in Rabai Mpya, the Swedish Evangelical mission, the Methodist Mission, the St. Crishona Mission, the Hermannsburg Mission and the Berlin Evangelical Mission. Though all biographers cannot avoid to state that Krapf did not convince more than two (some biographies speak about only one) persons to the Christian belief during all of his missionary life there is no doubt that Krapfs visions influenced missionary work in East Africa. We can say that he was a strategist of Christian mission in East Africa

This collection summarizes the items on society, history and culture from Krapf’s famous dictionary which may be of some interest to today’s audience. The idea of arranging the sometimes idiosyncratic Swahili for modern use came up during preparations for the Krapf Workshop held on 11 September 2007 at Fort Jesus in Mombasa.1 The lemmas found in this first comprehensive Swahili dictionary were checked against Frederick Johnson’s Standard dictionary of 1939. In addition, the dictionary by Charles Sacleux of 1939 and the revised version of Krapf’s dictionary by Harry Kerr Binns (1925) served as sources of information. With the exception of those entries which Krapf had already marked with a question mark, all others were selected, which are not found in Johnson or which are described differently or in less depth than in Krapf\''s work.:1. Introduction 1 1.1 Krapf’s spelling conventions 2 2. The inventory 7 2.1 Society, law 8 2.2 References to stories and historical events 37 2.3 Language, pronunciation, etymologies, different use according to sexes 41 2.4 Religion, superstition 44 2.5 Attitudes towards neighbouring peoples 54 2.6 Geographical and ethnic terms 55 2.7 The body (body parts, diseases, body care) 62 2.8 Sickness, handicaps, medical treatment and medicine 67 2.9 Agriculture, food (plants, trees, products) 73 2.10 Animals 97 2.11 Season, times, environment 111 2.12 Material culture 117 2.13 Measures 141 2.14 Comparison of meanings 143 2.15 Critical statements and prejudices 151 3. Proverbs and songs quoted in Johann Ludwig Krapf’s Dictionary 153 3.1 Proverbs 153 3.2 Songs 158 4. Indices 165 4.1 Index Swahili – English 165 4.2 Index English – Swahili 189 Sources 203