A Poem from Siu from the Swahili-Arabic text

Extract

Among the ancient towns of the Swahili coast Siu is reputed to be one of the oldest. Stigand wrote: “The people of Siu claim that their town is older than that of Pate.” The poem that follows was written by Sayyid ‘Umar bin Amin bin ‘Umar bin Amin bin Nadhir al-Ahdal, who lived at Siu as Kadhi during the time of Mohammad bin Mataka and when Sayyid Majid, the Sultan of Zanzibar, attacked Siu in A.h. 1273 (A.d. 1856). The composer left a number of other poems, including some written in praise of the Prophet which are still recited in East African mosques on the Birth Day of the Prophet.

The present work is of the type formerly known as Waji-waji, an archaic Swahili word for a didactic poem. It is written in the well-known Arabic method of five lines to a verse. Generally this method was employed in composite work, one man composing two or three lines of each verse and another adding the rest but following the style and the meaning. In Sayyid Amin's poem the first three lines in a verse are complete in themselves, while the last two lines are added only to expand the meaning or to give a taste to the verse. Even so, a special feature of this poem indicates that it is the work of one man. Each fourth line begins with a letter of the Swahili-Arabic alphabet. He excludes the letters pei and vei, which are not used with much frequency by most Swahili scribes, the letters bei and fei being preferred.