Swahili culture

Swahili culture is the culture of the Swahili people inhabiting the Swahili Coast. This littoral area encompasses Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique, as well as the adjacent islands of Zanzibar and Comoros and some parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi. They speak Swahili as their native language, which belongs to the Niger-Congo family.

Swahili culture is the product of the history of the coastal part of the African Great Lakes region, an area that has been influenced by Middle Eastern, Indian, Persian and Portuguese cultures. As with the Swahili language, Swahili culture has a Bantu core that has been modified by those foreign influences.

History

The Swahili culture and language began to take form around the 2nd-3rd century AD, as a consequence of the highly successful Persians and Arab merchants and explorers creating trading settlements on the Swahili Coast and nearby islands and mixing with the local Bantu people. The period from the 10th to the 15th century in the eastern African Great Lakes region is often referred to as the "Shirazi Era", as many trading settlements were created by Shirazi people. There is controversy among academia as to whether the Shirazi peoples were ethnically Persian or native Swahili people's culturally Persianized. The culture that formed from the interaction between Arabic, Persian and Bantu traditions and habits was further enriched with influences from the Far East as a consequence of long-distance trading routes crossing the Indian Ocean. Beginning in Kenya and Tanzania, the Swahili culture eventually spread to Mozambique.