Jan Knappert

Social and Moral Concepts in Swahili Islamic Literature

In this paper I shall attempt to set out the ideas of morality and of the structure of society in so far as they can be found reflected in Swahili Islamic literature. This literature is of two kinds. Firstly the didactic literature, mainly in prose, in which rules of conduct are given by Islamic teachers; secondly the narrative, legendary literature, mainly in verse, in which many social and moral concepts may be found, either expressed in a straightforward didactic form, as versified proverbs, or as it were by implication, in which case the underlying ideas can be made explicit by extrapolation.

Swahili songs and music

The author has been collecting Swahili songs since 1959, and has published some of them in a dozen articles. Apart from the oral traditions, there are also many written poems in Swahili which can b...