Aliyetunga kasiga hii, Sheikh Abgallah al-Husni, alikuwa ni mtu maarufu sana Mombasa .. Kwa muda wa myaka arobaini takriban alikuwa akisomesha elimu za gini, msikiti wa Anisa, Mjuwakale; piya alikuwa akitoa waadhi msikiti huu na mahali pengine .. Antunga kasiga mbili za waadhi, moja katika hizo ndiyo hii tuliyoishereheya katika makala haya .. W akati wa kutungwa waadhi huu - 1368 (mwaka 1948 wa milagi) - Mombasa ilikuwa ikali mji wa kiSawahili, yaani mji wa kilsilamu; lakini kulikuwa kuna mabadiliko makubwa yaanza, mabadiliko ambayo mwisho yanaondowa sura za uSawahili katika Mombasa na pwani nzima ya Afrika ya mashariki.

Deutsch-Swahili Worterbuch is a bilingual German-Swahili Dictionary compiled by Karsten Legere and first published in 1990 Deutsch-Swahili Worterbuch (DSW) is aimed at the German student of Swahili, and to a lesser degree the Swahili speakers, who are advanced learners of German. The former use the dictionary for encoding Swahili and to translate German texts into Swahili The latter use it to decode German.

East Afiica and in particular the coastal region has been attractive for many researchers from the colonial period to the present times. Foreign researchers mostly from Europe and America have come to the Swahili coast with much curiosity on a wide range of subjects. Beginning in the 19th century when Africa was regarded by Europeans as `the dark continent` inquisitive geographers, prospective traders, colonial administrators and Christian missionaries came to satisfy their curiosity. On top of their duties they also embarked on research on various desciplines, in particular geography, linguistics, anthropology, and history. Their findings were then compiled in the form of books and theses which today form the basis of our reference.

For the students of Swahili poetry that predates the twentieth century (e.g. Muyaka, Alinkishafi, Mwana Kupona, Hamzivva and others) there has always been a dire need for a book which could aid in the understanding of this poetry. This need is made acute by two main reasons: Firstly, classical Swahili poetry is written partly in what is known as Kingozi, an archaic form of language believed by many to be some kind of proto-Swahili. Secondly, the language of old Swahili poetry also incorprates a lot of features from the northern dialects of Swahili (e.g. Kiarnu, Kip ate, Kisiu etc) This combination of archaic Swahili and features from the northern dialects of the language renders both the understanding and the explication of the pre-twentieth Swahili poetry rather difficult for many readers.

As a woodcarver since the age of fifteen, I have been a keen observer of carving patterns and motifs practiced by contemporary Swahili wood carvers. In my investigations, I discovered that carvers along the coast of East Africa, do not practice a uniform style of carving, although their heritage was to a great deal influenced by Middle Eastern and Indian patterns. In Lamu, for instance, four styles of carving are applied to decorating doors and furniture. What I found astonishing, is that most contemporary Swahili wood carvers seem to be unaware of the differences in styles, especially with regard to their history and design features. Apparently, most of the patterns used by the contemporary wood carvers of the three prominent Swahili towns under discussion (Zanzibar, Mombasa, Lamu) are directly copied from doors that were made between 1700-1930. Most of these doors are known to have been introduced to the East African littoral by groups who settled in the region at different periods.

Recently we have seen the appearance of an interesting and provocative book on the Swahili. This book, by Ali Amin Mazrui and Ibrahim Noor Shariff (1994), takes a serious look at the question of Swahili identity and origins. This paper has at least two goals. One is to help define the nature of the debate about origins, and in so doing I will explicate and critique the Mazrui and Shariff hypothesis. The second is to reiterate the theme of the study of Swahili by Derek Nurse and the present author (1993), entitled Swahili and Sabaki · A Linguistic History (hereafter N&H). The linking of Swahili and Sabaki in the title was deliberate: the history of Swahili is inextricably intertwined with that of Sabaki and we cannot speak of the former without direct reference to the latter. The paper is divided into several sections. The first reviews the position taken by Mazrui and Shariff, the second discusses the view of N&H, implicit in their work on Sabaki, that Swahili is an integrated development from its Afiican heritage, the Sabaki languages. Finally, a critique of the Mazrui and Shariff hypothesis will conclude the paper.

One of the most striking charactetistics of contemporary drama is its denial of illusion. Modern playwrights do their best to convince the audience that what is presented on the stage is not a tranche de vie (as was the aspiration of naturalist writers), but a performance.

Few East African groups have attracted the attention of academics as much as the Swahili of coastal Kenya and Tanzania. The Swahili town of Lamu has even been described as having more professional researchers than doctors per inhabitant (Mazmi and Shariff 1994:2). Researchers commonly describe the Swahili as having a maritime culture (Middleton 1992:8; Nurse and Spear 1985:97; Prins 1965:263-275) and looking to the sea for their livelihood and identity (Mazmi and Shariff 1994:19; Ylvisaker 1975:74-83). They stress the contact of the `sea-prowling` Swahili with the ocean through seafaring, trading, fishing, and boat building to acquire wealth and social standing (Mazmi and Sharif 1994: 19; Middleton 1992: 8). Futhermore, the origin of the word Swahili is said to stress the proximity of the sea, coming from the Arabic sawahil (coast) or being of local origin, swahili (literally this island), making the Swahili variously the people of the coast (Middleton 1992:1) or the people of this island (Mazmi and Shariff 1994:56).

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.

Euphrase Kezilahabi, outstanding Swahili writer, thinker and scholar who was born on 13 April, 1944, passed away on 9 January, 2020. In this obituary, Roberto Gaudioso pays homage to his path-breaking achievements in Swahili creative literature by highlighting his poetry which Gaudioso has studied in depth. He emphasizes that the late Kezilahabi’s contribution as an intellectual and a poet goes beyond limits of space and time, as is shown by generations of researchers and translators who have been working on him.