Swahili in the Arabic script: part 5, the Script

         Traditional Swahili script has developed an unmistakable ductus (shape) of its own. It is usually marked by a well-rounded f, q, and w. It has neither the reduced scribbly shapes of modern Arabic writing, nor the oblique angularity of Persian. It resembles most the old-fashioned Indian and Malay forms of Arabic script, and is quite distinct from Urdu writing, except that during the last half century some attempts have been made to introduce Urdu conventions for aspiratives and retroflex phonemes which curiously fit the Swahili phonemic system. This will be discussed further below. One thing sets Swahili writing apart quite conspicuously from all other forms of Arabic script: the vowels have to be marked.

            There are about half a dozen different conventions for writing Swahili as it developed over the centuries showing how they have struggled for the perfection of their writing system.

1.     The 17^th century: the Hamziya

2.     The 18^th century: the Epic

3.     The 19^th century: the introduction of ch and p.

4.     The 20^th century

a.     The representation of e and o

b.     The representation of homorganic nasals.

c.      The representation of g, ng, and v.

d.     The representation of alveolars.

e.     The representation of aspirates.

From the first period only one text survives, the Hamziya., which I have described in an article in African Language Studies (see note 23). In the middle of the 17^th century the Swahili language was still in an older period of its evolution and so was as different from modern Swahili as 16^th-century Portuguese is from the modern language. We may therefore omit a discussion of its orthography, since no continuous tradition can be traced from that time to the present, except in the metre of the poem[1].

It is the 18^th-century epic that stands clearly at the inception of the continuous tradition of Swahili poetry. The spelling in these epics suggests that those MSS were used only as aide-memoires for the reciters; they were not intended for solitary reading and enjoyment. The principle of the orthography could be called ‘herufian’, i.e. syllabic, in the sense that every herufi, i.e. consonant-character, represents a syllable, never more nor less, so that every line has exactly eight herufis. It is possible that the system was invented by Mwengo bin Asumani himself in the great MS that is now in Hamburg, and which I have always suspected was written by his own hand, since it seems to be contemporary and is completely consistent, in spelling, orthography, dialect and other aspects of presentation. His system works well provided the reader knows the language and the writer makes no mistakes in spelling or in prosody. The basic principle is the syllabic system of the Swahili morphophonemic structure, on which the grid of the Semitic consonant system is superimposed.

The result is that a number of letters are given more than one phonetic value. There are only three vowels in Arabic which serve for the five Swahili vowels. F has to represent f and v, d has to represent both dental and alveolar d, as well as nd, i.e. d with preceding homorganic nasal. B represents b, mb, p and aspirated p, as well as bw and mbw[2]. Ghain represents gh in Arabid words, and in Swahili words g, ng, and ngw. K represents k and aspirated k’ as well as kw. M and n can represent labialized mw and nw, but unsyllabic prenasalisation is not shown. Y reads as y or ny or yw. T represents alveolar and dental t, both of which can be aspirated.

However, in practice the options are severely restricted by actual occurrence. To give a few illustrations: a word spelled bibi can be read as bibi, ‘grandparent’, or pembe, ‘horn(s)’. None of the other potential permutations could normally be met with in this language. Mutu normally reads moto, ‘fire’. Muyu normally reads moya, ‘one’. Bini normally reads mbwene, “I have seen”. Biti normally reads p’ete, “I have received.”

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Swahili in the Arabic Script part 4: the book

The book

            To make a book the sheets may be glued together on one side, but in the tropics there are insects that eat this glue and the paper with it, so it is better to sew the sheets together.  However, the sheets are often placed loosely together in a leather case or wrapper, called chuo as distinct from kitabu, which refers to the written text. Waraka, pl. nyaraka, is a sheet of paper[i]. Jilidi is also sometimes used for the leather binding. The binding is sometimes made of cloth, on which the scribe may write the title, the author’s name, the date and the town, followed by praises to God and the Holy Prophet. This cloth is called dibaji, and is often beautifully decorated with a gate-motif, for a book is regarded symbolically as a house of wisdom, and each chapter is a babu or mlango, a gate or door through which the avid reader may enter another store-room of wisdom. Later the word was used simply for ‘preface’[ii].

            Not every work was considered worthy of immortality; on the contrary, fables and fairy tales, songs and riddles were not written down by the Swahili scribes until European scholars such as Edward Steere and Carl Velten, came along in the 1890s and persuaded them that it was worth preserving their national heritage[iii]. Traditionally, as we have seen, the art of writing was associated with religion. The result is that almost all the Swahili writings from before that period are of a religious kind. There are histories of the life of the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions and of the Koranic prophets of the past (‘Biblical history’); many of these legends are in verse. There are liturgies, prayers and recitations, hymns and litanies. There are contracts of marriage and deeds of property[iv].

            As the vehicle of the Koran, that is, the miraculous characters in which the sacred word of God’s own book are fixed, visible for human eyes, the Arabic script has travelled with the Arab conquerors and the traders, the merchant captains and the wandering scholars, to the ends of the old world. It is taught from Dakar in West Africa to the Sulu Islands in the Philippines, from Afghanistan to Zanzibar[v]. As a result it links all the peoples who live in between those places by a common form of expression and communication. It must be appreciated that the teaching of reading and writing in all Islamic countries is done by means of and with the purpose of reading and reciting the Koran. Young boys memorize whole chapters and learn to write these down on pieces of paper for the personal use of others. For this activity is in itself God-pleasing and the product can be sold: in many countries the text of certain chapters is used as a talisman for the protection of its wearer against diseases and disasters. God’s word protects those who have faith in it against all afflictions.

            Not only letters, but entire words were adopted from the Koranic text into the languages whose speakers were drawn into the circle of Islamic culture. The result is that languages as far apart (7,000 km) as Swahili and Malay have almost four thousand Arabic (and a few hundred Persian) words in common. Not all these words are Koranic expressions, some are taken from the colloquial Arabic of the sailors. The result is that Malay and Swahili travellers, if they meet, can converse in limited Arabic[vi]. If they are both scholars, they will, of course, converse in the classical Arabic of the Koranic text, and correspond in it. This communicability is, of course, a strong incentive to retain the use of Arabic script. Many literate Muslims nowadays, in countries where the Roman alphabet has become predominant, such as North Nigeria, Turkey and Indonesia, can read and write their language in two alphabets, like Yugoslavs or Indians[vii]. They will use on alphabet(the Roman) for official business and the Arabic script for religious writing, for decorative purposes and their personal correspondence[viii]. The modernists in such countries, especially in Turkey, condemn the Arabic script as old-fashioned and a symbol of inflexible isolationism.

            However, for millions of Muslims, the Arabic script is still the most noble and beautiful representation for human words in visible form. Even though it is often called unsuitable for most languages, it has been shown to possess a remarkable capacity for adaptation. It is or has been used for the following languages (apart from Arabic): Afrikaans, Achenese, Beluch, Bengali, Berber, Dinka, Dyula, Fulani, Gujerati, Hausa, Harari, Javanese, Kituba (Congo), Makua, Malagasy, Malay, Malayalam, Manding, Nubian, Panjabi, Pashto, Persian, Somali, Sudanese, Swahili, Tamil, Tartar, Turkish, Urdu, Uzbek, Yao, and Yoruba. Fifteen of these thirty-two language are spoken in Africa, sixteen if we count Malagasy, which makes it half of the total. This shows how Islamic culture spread to the far corners of Africa. Writings in these languages range from a few letters or contracts in some language to extensive literatures of poetry, literary and historical works in others, notably Hausa and Swahili[ix].

            Those Islamicized peoples for whom Arabic script became a major aspect of their culture developed a style of their own, so that, e.g. Swahili Arabic characters can be recognized at a glance. The scribes usually take great pride and pleasure in writing flowing, well-shaped characters, drawing each letter with great skill and care. In a culture where the visible arts such as painting and sculpture are not developed in a European sense, the art of calligraphy takes their place so that every known artists of the Swahili tradition of decorative arabesques was also a calligrapher.

            Two Persian letters, the ch and the p, were adopted by the Indians, the Turks and the Swahili. The formidable cultural and literary influence of Iran merits a separate chapter in the history of Islamic culture. Although many Swahili families claim descent from Iran (the Shirazis), the culture of Iran has left only sporadic traces in the Swahili language (some three hundred Persian words), the culture (the calendar) and the literature (some Persian epic tales)[x].

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Swahili in Arabic Script part 3: the ink

 The ink

            Ink was prepared from scorched rice which was pounded into powder and then mixed with water and Arabic gum to make it sticky, otherwise it would run too quickly and make stains. Red ink, which was commonly used by Islamic scribes to insert passages from the Koran into their Swahili works, and also for ornamental flowers and arabesques, was prepared by means of zingifuri, cinnabar or red mercuric sulfide, known already to the ancient Greeks. The Swahili poet often begins his invocation by addressing his assistant thus:

            “Brother bring me a good black ink, and red ink too, the best, from Egypt[i].”

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Swahili in Arabic Script, part 2, the pen

The pen

            The Swahili writers of the Islamic tradition often mention the pens with which they write their works. These pens are said to have been imported from as far away as Syria, and some are made of gold, or so we are led to believe by one anonymous poet, who begins his work addressing his scribe thus:

            “Ahi, patie kasabu kwa kalamu ya dhahabu”

            My brother, find me a reed for a golden pen.”

            Here kalamu is obviously intended to mean ‘penholder’ a metal cylinder in which a reed writing-piece fit. The Swahili kalamu comes ultimately from the Latin calamus, which itself means a read (botanically unrelated to modern calamus, which is a rattan palm). The reed writing-piece was at one end sliced obliquely or slightly concavely, after which the resulting point was slit vertically through the middle, a fifth of an inch or a little more, to permit the ink to run down slowly and evenly. Cutting the nib (jilifa) was a great art in which one had to be a specialist. The left side (insi, i.e. the side held toward the writer, for no one was allowed to write with the left hand) was cut half a millimeter shorter than the right side (wasihi), and slightly softer. The best reeds for writing were found near Basra and in the Nile Delta, from where they were dispatched directly to the cities for use, since the reeds must not be dry, for that would make them stiff and brittle. Reeds found at the seashore (bahari) could also be used. Cutting a good pen was considered so important that Islamic scholars used to say: “Good cutting is half of good writing.” Every type of writing required its own special method of cutting the pen. Every Islamic nation has developed its own typical variant of Arabic script, so that connoisseurs can see at a glance whether a page of writing is in Persian, Hausa, Malay, Urdu, or Swahili, without knowing those languages, simply by recognizing the shape of the letters. Pens are so precious that they have to be kept in a special container (mkilama) a long flat, wooden box often beautifully ornamented with inscriptions of proverbs like ‘allama bi’l-kalami[i] “He taught mankind by means of the Pen”. Attached to it one often finds an inkwell (dawati or dawaya, sometimes used for the ink itself). The word kalamu is often used in the meaning of “Man’s destiny”, since God created a gigantic pen to write down the future events until Judgement Day[ii].

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