Stéphane Pradines and Olivier Onezime
The Swahili Coast is a stretch of land extending from Mogadishu in Somalia to the Bay of Sofala in present-day Mozambique. Etymologically speaking, wa-swahili means the people of the sahel, the Arabic word for “shore.” This appellation dates to the colonial period and the nineteenth century. Arab geographers between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, including al-Masudi, Idrisi, Yaqut, Ibn Battuta and Ibn Khaldun, preferred the appellation Zanj, which referred not only to the inhabitants of the East African coasts, but also to people of darker skin in general.[1] This term comes from the Greeks, who used the name Azania to refer to the African coast. However, the Swahilis define themselves according to their region, island, or town of origin. For example, the people from Mombasa refer to themselves as wa-Mvita, or “those of Mombasa.” Besides some overarching similarities, Swahili identity remains multifaceted, incorporating populations from diverse backgrounds like the Nilotic Cushitic, Bantu, and Austronesian. Swahili civilization stands at the geographical borders of the Arab and African worlds, resulting in the development of a unique coastal culture based on Indian Ocean trade. From Somalia to Madagascar, there is a common strain in the material culture of the coast due to contact with maritime travelers and traders from neighboring continents.
In addition to religion (Islam) and language (Kiswahili), the East African coastal populations share related forms of social organization and architecture. Swahili traditional domestic architecture is well represented by eighteenth-century stone houses in the Lamu and Bajuni archipelagos in Northern Kenya and Southern Somalia. These houses have been extensively studied by architects and anthropologists, especially Usam Ghaidan, James de Vere Allen, and Linda Donley-Reid.[2] To the south of the Swahili Coast, similar houses were built in the Comoros Archipelago yet, unfortunately, they have been completely overlooked. Our current work on the architecture of the Comoros aims to support the Comoros to have their old towns (medinas) listed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. As we will see, these old towns show entangled connections and very strong religious, economic, cultural, and kinship ties with the Lamu Archipelago, Ethiopia, Yemen, and India, and so are part of the Indian Ocean maritime heritage already listed by UNESCO.
The Comoros, Jazirat al-Qumr, or “Islands of the Moon,” is an archipelago comprised of the four islands of Grande Comore (Ngazidja), Moheli (Mwali), Anjouan (Nzuwani), and Mayotte (Mawuti) (Fig. 1). The archipelago is like a natural bridge between East Africa and the Great Island of Madagascar. There is no known evidence of settlement in the Comoros before the eighth century. The earliest phase of occupation is closely linked to maritime trade between Bantu-speaking Africans and the Malagasy, which was stimulated by merchants during the early Abbasid period (750–950).
The Comoros Archipelago had three important periods related to trade and migrations in the Western Indian Ocean. The first period (ninth–twelfth century) was connected to Abbasid and Fatimid merchants traveling to Madagascar mainly to collect rock crystal and other precious or semi-precious stones.[3] The second period (late fifteenth–early sixteenth century) was the consequence of the decline of the city of Kilwa on the Swahili coast and the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. Many old families from Kilwa, so-called Shirazi (after the city of Shiraz in southwestern Iran), left their island to settle in the Comoros. Finally, in the eighteenth century, the Comoros experienced a thriving period of trade, driven by European merchants who used Grande Comore and Anjouan as key stopovers in the Indian Ocean. At the same time, regional trade between Lamu and the Comoros Archipelago intensified, further strengthening the islands’ role as a vital commercial hub.
Most of the Comorian stone houses visible today date from the eighteenth century. The stone houses in Anjouan are contemporary with those of Lamu and Pate on the Swahili Coast.[4] Comorian stone houses had a gendered division of space with two reception areas and intimate spaces, one for men and guests and the other for women. The Comorian houses had a front courtyard with trees and a shaded veranda with pillars. This hypostyle courtyard was the social space of the house, accommodating family, guests, and daily-life activities. With the construction of a first floor for extended family during the mid or late eighteenth century, this open-air courtyard and veranda disappeared and was closed by a wooden painted ceiling and large skylights.[5] The courtyard that was once in the front ended up in the center of the house and was renamed Shandza Hari, the central room of the house. At the same time, a new masculine space appeared on the facade overlooking the street, the Ukumbi. This space was originally a simple vestibule, which then became a small reception room open to the street. The second and the third spaces at the back of the house are called the Shandza and the Ndani Bweni, a bedroom for the wife. Sometimes attached to it, a fourth room, the Poro, is a storage space or a spare bedroom for guests. The Ndani was a feminine place for purification and rituals of passage, from births and weddings (Harusi) to funerals. It was the location for an important ritual that happens during the wedding: the groom steps into the Ndani and lifts the veil to see his wife’s face.[6]
Our research in the Comoros focused on the architecture of the Ujumbe of Mutsamudu on Anjouan Island.[7] The term Ujumbe—meaning “palace” in Comorian—reflects its role as the sultan’s residence. Mutsamudu also still preserves numerous stone houses that share the Ujumbe’s distinctive layout and intricate ornamentation, underscoring the prevalence of this architectural tradition. Twelve large stone houses have been identified: Singani, Mpangahari, Said Ahmed Zaki, Barakani, Stambul, Bertal, Dumani, Rochani, Swaaniani, Kastwantwani, Wemani, and Oubweni, plus a few others not listed.[8] Another Ujumbe palace also exists in Domoni, the previous capital of Anjouan, and three large stone houses have been recorded in this city: Pangani, Darini, and Toiyfa.[9] Anjouan Island had three capitals, first Sima, from the eighth to the thirteenth century, then Domoni from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, and finally Mutsamudu from the eighteenth century to the present. According to oral tradition, the city of Mutsamudu was founded by the Sultan Mohamed bin Sultan Hassan in 1482.[10] Between 1492 and 1530, a palace was built as a residence for the wali (governor). The tradition states that the builders were Nabahani people from Pate Island, who also claimed Omani descent.[11] The palace of Mutsamudu became the Sultan of Anjouan’s residence from 1792 to 1909, when he decided to transfer his capital from Domoni to Mutsamudu.[12]
The core of the Ujumbe of Mutsamudu is visible to the northeast of the building (Fig. 2). This phase dates from the sixteenth or seventeenth century. The house was then enlarged at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and a first floor was added in the middle of the century. The building was completed in 1786. The two floors correspond to two family units with distinctive entrances, reception halls, rooms, bathrooms, and toilets. The Ujumbe is a classic and standard Swahili stone house, like those in Lamu and Pate in Kenya, with a series of three narrow, parallel rooms.[13] It has many stucco and molded decorations, mainly niches, located in the reception rooms, the main bedrooms, and the bathrooms.
It is important to note that the eighteenth century marks the apogee of stucco decorations in Swahili architecture.[14] Stucco decorative wall niches called Ziloho are mainly located in the Shandza Hari and the Ndani, but the most impressive example is certainly the large panel of niches on the upper floor of the Ujumbe. The first floor functions as a self-contained house or apartment, accessible via a monumental staircase on the street side, which also leads to a separate room. On this floor, Room 16 is distinguished by a panel of niches adorning its north wall (Fig. 3). The arches of the ground-floor niches in Room 4 and the courtyard (Space 8) display greater variation in their types. The niches vary in size, shape, and arch type, featuring intricate molded and chiseled decorations. Some are utilitarian niches with a depth that can accommodate ceramic plates (including Chinese porcelains), bottles, and vases. The lowest ones, which are rectangular and flat, could accommodate Qur’ans and commercial archives[15]. Some blind niches are purely decorative (Fig. 4).
According to Donley-Reid, stucco niche panels and imported goods such as Chinese porcelain plates acted as talismans to attract the eye of the visitor, and to protect from negative thought, the evil eye, and bad spirits (jinn).[16] The niches and imported porcelains displayed acted as charms against witchcraft to protect women against sterility and diseases.[17] As mentioned by Lambourn in relation to micro-architecture in the South Asian context, the aesthetic beauty of Indian Ocean micro architecture, including niches, binds and frames the spaces in which they appear.[18]
But more than space and shared material culture, these niches were used to create an idealistic Indian Ocean identity, between port cities such as Mutsamudu, Lamu, Mocha, Jeddah, Muscat, and Surat. Like those in the Comoros, the interior spaces of the wealthy Swahili houses were also decorated with wall niches displaying Chinese porcelains, both in the masculine and feminine areas.[19] Ceramics and niches had aesthetic and symbolic significance—they represented beauty, Muslim culture, protection, and the cosmopolitan status of the owner.[20] Nice objects and porcelains are called Mapambo ya Niumba, the decoration of the house.[21] Comorian stucco niches show the consumer’s religious affiliation and social mobility, for example by being Muslim from prestigious descent such as Shirazi, Yemeni, and Omani. Staging cosmopolitanism with decorative objects brought to the family a direct connection to overseas social and cultural networks.[22] Layered assemblages of prestige objects have an important role in African coastal identity, and the display of East Asian material culture exhibits the transoceanic identity of Mutsamudu elite.[23]
In addition to the talismanic or protective associations of niches and their contents, the painted Qur’anic inscriptions on the ceilings of the Ukumbi and Shandza Hari served as powerful talismanic protection for the occupants of the Ujumbe Palace (Fig. 5). Similarly, the Qur’anic verses inscribed on the beams of Comorian palaces were not only divine blessings but also protective charms, safeguarding the owner, his family, and visitors.[24] The painted Qur’anic blessings, along with wafaku (magic squares and talismans bearing similar inscriptions), are widely found across the Indian Ocean region, particularly in the Maldives, India, Yemen, as well as in Harar, Ethiopia, and Siyu in the Lamu Archipelago. Stucco wall niches also appear in the ablution areas, reinforcing the spiritual significance of these spaces. Additionally, talismanic calligraphy was a common feature in sacred and domestic architecture, including in Ottoman Cairo.[25] However, it seems that this Qur’anic or Islamic ritual protection was reserved for masculine spaces. The feminine space, Ndani, was not protected by the painted Qur’anic inscriptions nor religious manuscripts but by niches displaying ceramics.
Eighteenth-century coral stone architecture can tell us a lot about the history of the western Indian Ocean world, especially in terms of regional migrations, diasporas, and cultural and religious influences between the Comoros and the port cities of Siyu, Lamu and Pate. As mentioned by Prita Meier, the famous Swahili stuccowork, visible in eighteenth-century Lamu stone houses, was an older fashion already disappearing in the early nineteenth century.[26] The stone town of Zanzibar is always presented as the pearl of Swahili domestic architecture and urbanism, whereas in fact, the mid-nineteenth century marked the revival but also the end of Swahili traditional architecture.[27] Comorian architecture: city walls, mausoleums, mosques, and houses are an integral part of this eighteenth century Swahili architecture, even if they have not received the attention that they deserve.
Stéphane Pradines is field archaeologist and Professor at the Aga Khan University, London
Olivier Onezime is surveyor and archaeologist at the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research
[1] G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville, The East African Coast: Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century (Clarendon Press, 1962): 29.
[2] James de Vere Allen, “The Swahili House: Cultural and Ritual Concepts Underlying its Plan and Structure,” Art and Archaeology Research Papers 10 (1979): 1-32; Usam Ghaidan, “Swahili plasterwork,” African Arts 6, no. 2 (1973): 51-60; Ghaidan, Lamu: A Study in Conservation (East African Literature Bureau, 1976): 14-19.
[3] Stéphane Pradines, ed., Mayotte au temps des Califes (IXe–XIIe siècle) (BAR Archaeopress, 2024).
[4] Francesco Siravo and Anne Pulver, Planning Lamu: Conservation of an East African Seaport (National Museums of Kenya, 1986).
[5] Sophie Blanchy, “La maison urbaine, cadre de production du statut et du genre à Anjouan (Comores), XVIIe–XIXe siècles,” Afriques 13 (2022): 7–10.
[6] Blanchy, “La maison urbaine,” 31–38.
[7] We would like to thank Mrs. Fatima Boyer, President of the Collective Association of the Heritage of the Comoros (CPC), the Director of the CNDRS, Dr. Toiwilou Mze Hamadi, the Government of the Comoros and the Governor of Anjouan, Mr. Anissi Chamssidine, Mr. Musbahoudine ben Ahmed, head of the CNDRS Anjouan, the Mairie of Mutsamudu, the university center of Patsy, as well as the Embassy of France in the Comoros.
[8] Suzanne Hirschi and Chéhrazade Nafa, Sultanats historiques des Comores: Recueil de relevés du patrimoine architectural et urbain (École nationale supérieure d’architecture et du paysage de Lille, 2014), 85–99.
[9] Hirschi and Nafa, Sultanats historiques des Comores, 107–120.
[10] Hachim Ben Said Mohamed, Les Sharifs dans l’histoire des Comores (KomEdit, 2015); Hachim Ben Said Mohamed, “Exposé sur l’histoire de la ville de Mutsamudu,” Unpublished report (2022); and Abderemane Bourhane, “Mutsamudu et Anjouan aux temps des sultans,” TAREHI 14 (2006): 23-34.
[11] Stéphane Pradines, Fortifications et urbanisation en Afrique orientale (BAR Archaeopress, 2004): 318.
[12] Jean-Christophe Hébert, “Documents sur les razzias malgaches aux Iles Comores et sur la côte orientale africaine (1790-1820),” Etudes sur l’Océan Indien 3 (1983): 5-60; Jean Martin, Les Comores: Quatre îles entre pirates et planteurs (L’Harmattan, 1986).
[13] Mark Horton, Shanga: TheAarchaeology of a Muslim Trading Community on the Coast of East Africa (British Institute in Eastern Africa Memoir, 1996); Stéphane Pradines, Gedi, une cité portuaire swahilie: Islam médiéval en Afrique orientale (Insitut français d’archéologie orientale, 2010).
[14] Pradines, Historic Mosques in Sub-Saharan Africa (Brill, 2022): 215–217.
[15] Eng Seng Ho, The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean (University of California Press, 2006).
[16] Linda Donley-Reid, “The Power of Swahili Porcelain, Beads, and Pottery,” in Sarah M. Nelson and Alice B. Kehoe, eds., Power of Observation: Alternative Views in Archeology (American Anthropological Association, 1990): 49-50; Prita Meier, Swahili Port Cities: The Architecture of Elsewhere (Indiana University Press, 2016): 154-155.
[17] Blanchy, “La maison urbaine,” 16–25.
[18] Elizabeth Lambourn, “A Self-Conscious Art? Seeing Micro-Architecture in Sultanate South-Asia,” Muqarnas 27 (2010): 150–152.
[19] Stéphane Pradines, “L’Afrique noire et la Chine: La céramique importée; Symbole du pouvoir des marchands swahili,” in La grande histoire de la porcelaine chinoise (Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2003): 35–41.
[20] Mark Horton and John Middleton, The Swahili (Blackwell, 2000): 112; Meier, Swahili Port Cities, 144–150.
[21] Meier, Swahili Port Cities, 152–153.
[22] Meier, “Objects on the Edge: Swahili Coast Logics of Display,” African Arts 42, no. 4 (2009): 8–10.
[23] Linda Donley-Reid, “Life in the Swahili Town House Reveals the Symbolic Meaning of Spaces and Artefact Assemblages,” African Archaeological Review 5 (1987): 181-192; Meier, “Objects on the Edge,” 11–12.
[24] Linda Donley-Reid, “The Power of Swahili Porcelain, Beads, and Pottery,” in Nelson and Kehoe, Power Observation, 49–50.
[25] Juan E. Campo, “‘This Blessed Place’: The Talismanic Significance of House Inscriptions in Ottoman Cairo,” in Amulets and Talismans of the Middle East and North Africa in Context, ed. Marcela A. Probert and Petra M. Sijpesteijn(Brill, 2022): 132–154.
[26] Meier, Swahili Port Cities, 152–153.
[27] Abdul Sheriff, “Mosques, Merchants and Landowners in Zanzibar Stone Town,” in The History and Conservation of Zanzibar Stone Town, ed. Abdul Sheriff (Eastern African Studies, 1995): 97; Joseph Anene, “The Omani Empire and its Impact on East African Societies,” in Africa in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, ed. Joseph C. Anene and Godrey N. Brown (Ibadan University Press, 1966): 440–457; Colette Le Cour Grandmaison, “Parenté, migrations, alliances. Les réseaux omani en Afrique orientale,” in Les Swahili entre Afrique et Arabie, ed. Françoise Le Guennec-Coppens and Pat Caplan (CREDU-Karthala, 1991): 163–177; Colette Le Cour Grandmaison, L’héritage arabe, XVIIIe et XIXe siècle, in Zanzibar aujourd’hui, ed. Colette Le Cour Grandmaison and Ariel Crozon ( Karthala-IFRA, 1998): 35–71; Daniel Rhodes, Colin Breen, and Wes Forsythe, “Zanzibar: A Nineteenth-Century Landscape of the Omani Elite,” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 19, no. 2 (2015): 334–355.
Cite this article as: Stéphane Pradines and Olivier Onezime, “The Ujumbe of Mutsamudu, an Eighteenth-Century Swahili Stone House in the Comoros,” Journal18, Issue 19 Africa (Spring 2024), https://www.journal18.org/7780.
Licence: CC BY-NCJournal18 is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC International 4.0 license. Use of any content published in Journal18 must be for non-commercial purposes and appropriate credit must be given to the author of the content. Details for appropriate citation appear above.
