This resources page contains three sections: a selected series of links to online exhibitions, collections, and articles; a select bibliography organised by themes; and audio files which include poetry and music from Oman and the Swahili coast (including versions in Swahili and Arabic).
Alpers, Edward and Himanshu Prabha Ray. Cross Currents and Community Networks, the History of the Indian Ocean World, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007
Fair, Laura. Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890-1945. James Currey, Oxford, 2001
Glassman, Jonathon. Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856-1888, Heinemann, Portsmouth, 1995
Myers, Garth. “The Early History of the Other Side of Zanzibar Town,” in History and Conservation of Zanzibar Stone Town, ed. A. Sheriff. Ohio University Press, Athens, pp. 30-45, 1995
Prestholdt, Jeremy. Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2008
Sherrif, Abdul. Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism, Commerce and Islam. Columbia University Press, New York, 2010
Collections of the Mathatma Gandhi Institute and Rabindranath Tagore Institute Museum and Archives here
Clarence-Smith, William Gervase, et al. “The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century”, special issue of Slavery and Abolition, 9, 3, 1988
Fair, Laura. “Remaking Fashion in the Paris of the Indian Ocean: Dress, Performance, and the Cultural Construction of a Cosmopolitan Zanzibari Identity,” in Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress, ed. Jean Allman, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2004
McCurdy, Sheryl. “Fashioning Sexuality: Desire, Manyema Ethnicity, and the Creation of the ‘Kanga,’ ca. 1880-1900.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 39, 3 (2006) pp 441-69
Salme, Sayyide (Ruete, Emily). An Arabian Princess Between Two Worlds: Memoirs, Letters Home, Sequels to the Memoirs, Syrian Customs and Usages. E. Van Donzel, eds. E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1992.
The 1886 autobiography of a daughter of Sa’id ibn Sultan, the Sultan of Oman and Zanzibar, offers glimpses of Zanzibar life between 1850 and 1865
Barthes, Christine. Camera obscura : premiers portraits au Daguerréotype, 1841-1851, Musée du quai Branly, Paris, 2007
Haney, Erin. Photography and Africa. Reaktion, London, 2010
Collections of l’Iconothèque Historique de l’Océan Indien www.ihoi.org
Killingray, David and Andrew Roberts. “An Outline History of Photography in Africa to ca. 1940,” in History of Africa: A Journal of Method. 16, 1, (1989), pp. 197-208
Meier, Sandy Prita. “At Home in the World: Portrait Photography and Swahili Mercantile Aesthetics.” A Companion to Modern African Art, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013
Nippa Annagret and Peter Herbstreuth. Along the Gulf, From Basra to Muscat, Photographs by Hermann Burchardt, Schiler, Berlin, 2006
Perez, Nissan N. Focus East: Early Photography in the Near East 1839-1885, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1988
Revue Noire. Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography, Paris, 1999
Collections of Frank and Francis Carpenter Collection, Library of Congress on the World Digital Library
East African collections, The National Archives, United Kingdom, on flickr
The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World, New York Public Library http://exhibitions.nypl.org
Re-examining Charles Guillain’s folio-atlas, by Xavier Courouble blog.library.si.edu
Full text, Documents sur l’histoire, la geographie et le commerce de l’afrique Orientale, by Charles Guillain, 1856; tome 1, archive.org
Full text, Documents sur l’histoire, la geographie et le commerce de l’afrique Orientale, by Charles Guillain, 1856; tome tome 2, part 1, archive.org
Full text, Documents sur l’histoire, la geographie et le commerce de l’afrique Orientale, by Charles Guillain, 1856; tome 2, part 2, archive.org
Illustrations, Voyage à la Côte Orientale d’Afrique, by Charles Guillain, 1856; folio atlas, archive.org
Charles Guillain’s daguerreotypes taken along the east coast of Africa in 1847 and 1848, scalarchives.com
Photographs of Oman from the Estate of Hermann Burchardt, Ethnologisches Museum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz www.smb-digital.de
Gifts Made by the Imam of Muscat, to the Government of the United States, in 1840, transferred from U.S. Patent Office in 1858 to the Anthropology Department at the National Museum of Natural History collections.si.edu
Photographic portraiture and the royal family of Qajar Iran, from the collections of the Freer|Sackler Museums of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, by Xavier Courouble, Smithsonian Collections Blog
Photos of Africans in Persia from the Myron Bement Smith Collection of Sevruguin Photographs and the Stephen Arpee Collection of Sevruguin Photographs, Freer|Sackler Archives, Smithsonian Institution, collections.si.edu
Architectural Family Ties: Zanzibar and Oman in the 19th century, Antoni Folkers and Frank Koopman here
Zanzibar Stone Town Projects: A Plan for the Historic Stone Town, Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Historic Cities Support Programme, the Aga Khan Development Network www.akdn.org
Swahili, Historic Urban Landscapes. Report on the Historic Urban Landscape Workshops and Field Activities on the Swahili Coast in East Africa, 2011-2012. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2013, accessible here
Ost-Afrika, Dr. Oscar Baumann, Winterton Collection of East African Photographs, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, accessible here and here
Collections of Zanzibari families here
Winterton Collection of East African Photographs, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL here
Postcards, Swahili coast, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of African Art, collections.si.edu
Esclaves Libérés aux Seychelles, 1861-1872, Iconothèque Historique de l’Océan Indien; online exhibit www.ihoi.org
Slave register from the H.M. Ship ‘Columbine,’ 1872. Historical Papers, The Library, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa here
Photographs, Winterton Collection of East African Photographs, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL here
Postcards, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of African Art, accessible here on collections.si.edu
1. A Dance with the Oboe: a song of the Lewa genre. This accompanies a traditional dance with African origins, performed in communities of people descended from the Swahili coast in eastern Arabia
2. A Dance of the Sailor comes from the A’Shuwabani genre
3. Mowashah Ya Gareed Aldar, composed by Fuad Abdul Magid and performed by the Oud Hobbyists Association
4. Ahasees, composed by Abadi Algawhar, performed by the Oud Hobbyists Association
The Oud is a traditional cord instrument of Arabic origin made out of wood and played throughout the western Indian Ocean
Historical Swahili poetry, an oral form which was transmitted into Arabic script, borrows from both Arabic and east African writing traditions; it often explores the themes of love, history and family. Arabic poetry from the Western Indian Ocean addresses the themes of travel and diaspora along the Arabian and Swahili coasts. Both traditions of poetry are primarily composed in the form of nostalgic epics.
Utendi Wa Hati – Poem of the Written Homily, by Shaaban Robert
1. recited in Swahili by Anna Mwalagho
2. recited in Arabic by Muzna AlMusafer
3. recited in English by Nicole Shivers and Cedric Muhammad
Mazoea Ya Ghafula – Sudden Moods from the Anthology of Ali A. Jahadhmy
4. recited in Swahili by Anna Mwalagho
5. recited in Arabic by Muzna AlMusafer
6. recited in English by Nicole Shivers and Cedric Muhammad
Transferring Seasons by the Omani navigator Ahmad Ibn Majid
7. recited in Arabic by Muzna AlMusafer
Ahmad Ibn Majid (c. 1432-1498) was a pioneering navigator, writer, humanist and chronicler from the coast of Oman.
Shaaban Robert (1909-1962) was a Tanzanian poet and writer, celebrated as one of the greatest Swahili thinkers.