Afro-Arabs

Overview

From the 7th century onward Muslim communities were established along the East African coast, subsequently spreading inland. The Arab slave trades, which began in pre-Islamic times but reached their height between 650 AD and 1900 AD, transported millions of African people from the Nile Valley, the Horn of Africa, and the eastern African coast across the Red Sea to Arabia as part of the Red Sea slave trade. Millions more were taken from West Africa and East Africa across the Sahara as part of the trans-Saharan slave trade.

By around the first millennium AD, Persian traders established trading towns on what is now called the Swahili Coast.

The Portuguese conquered these trading centers after the discovery of the Cape Road. From the 1700s to the early 1800s, Muslim forces of the Omani empire re-seized these market towns, mainly on the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar. In these territories, Arabs from Yemen and Oman settled alongside the local "African" populations, thereby spreading Islam and establishing Afro-Arab communities. The Niger-Congo Swahili language and culture largely evolved through these contacts between Arabs and the native Bantu population.

In the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, descendants of people from the Swahili Coast perform traditional Liwa and Fann at-Tanbura music and dance, and the mizmar is also played by Afro-Arabs in the Tihamah and Hejaz.

In addition, Stambali of Tunisia and Gnawa music of Morocco are both ritual music and dances that in part trace their origins to West African musical styles.

Citations

Bibliography

References

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2. (April 2003). "Extensive Female-Mediated Gene Flow from Sub-Saharan Africa into Near Eastern Arab Populations". The American Journal of Human Genetics.
3. (2023). "Entwined African and Asian genetic roots of medieval peoples of the Swahili coast". Nature.
4. (2002). "Indian Ocean Trading Links: The Swahili Experience".
5. (1966). "Tarikh, Volumes 1-2". Longman.
6. (1967). "La Musique Africaine dans le Golfe Persique". Journal of the International Folk Music Council.
7. Jankowsky, Richard C.. (Fall 2006). "Black Spirits, White Saints: Music, Spirit Possession, and Sub-Saharans in Tunisia". The University of Illinois Press/Ethnomusicology.
8. "Gnawa Intangible Cultural Heritage".