The World of the Swahili: An African Mercantile Civilization

by John Middleton

Book Overview

The Swahili of East Africa have a long and distinctive history as a literate, Muslim, urban, and mercantile society. In this book a leading Africanist presents the first full-length anthropological account of the Swahili and offers an original analysis of their little-understood and unusual culture. Swahili towns, some urban with elegant stone buildings and others more rural with palm-leaf-matting houses, are spread along the thousand-mile East African...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300060807
• ISBN13: 9780300060805
• Release Date: September 1994
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 266 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Detailed documentation of Swahili culture

"The World of the Swahili" by anthropology professor John Middleton is a very detailed description of Swahili culture. The book covers the basic anthropology subjects: courtship and marriage, family, politics, land tenure, home ownership, and so on. The Swahili culture is complex and somewhat difficult to define; there has never really been a Swahili nation-state, and many of the people who live in Swahili cities are not recognized as Swahili. Middleton writes from his own long experience of East Africa (he is the author of several books) as well as bibliographic research. This text is aimed at the reader with some experience in anthropology or East Africa.