The Swahili language Posted on EA Circle by: "Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi" Abdulaziz Y.

Lodhi Date: Mon Dec 20, 2010 5:00 am ((PST)) Extracted from Abdulaziz. Y. Lodhi: Oriental Influences in Swahili a study in language and culture contacts. 2000, Gothenbutg University, Sweden. Chapter 2. The Swahili language and literature, Section 2.1 pp. 25-28 The Swahili Language Swahili is the traditional mother tongue of many coastal peoples in East Africa from Mogadishu in the north in Somalia, southwards through Kenya and Tanzania to the northern shores of Mozambique, including all the islands (the Bajuni group in southern Somalia, the Lamu Archipelago in northern Kenya, the autonomous state of Zanzibar/Unguja and Pemba group, Mafia Island in Tanzania, and the Kerimba group in Mozambique). Fourteen dialects and several subdialects of Swahili are identified on the coast, and one inland dialect (Kingwana) in Eastern Congo, Burundi and Rwanda. Four closely related dialects of Comorian are spoken on the different islands of the Comoro group (Nurse and Hinnebusch 1993). Swahili belongs to the Sabaki cluster of the North-Eastern branch of the Bantu sub-group of the Niger-Congo language family (Nurse and Spear 1985, Nurse and Hinnebusch 1993). It is now generally accepted by both linguists and historians (Mazrui and Shariff 1994, Allen 1993, Middleton 1992) that Swahili developed as an urban language during the middle of the first millenium AD and its position was strengthened by the early introduction of Islam along the coast. The Swahili civilization developed as an Afro-Muslim, mercantile culture with a string of agricultural and fishing communities, enriching its material culture and its biological stock with contributions from all around the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the southern parts of the Red Sea. This is conspicuously evidenced in various degrees by the deeply rooted Islamic faith of the Sunni Shafiite school, literature, music, architecture, dress, cuisine, customs and traditions along the coasts of East Africa (Lodhi 1980b, 1982b, Lodhi and Westerlund 1994 and 1999). Swahili appears to have been primarily a spoken language until well into this millenium since Arabic was the liturgical and literary language of the Muslim societies of the Indian Ocean. The earliest surviving Swahili document, which is in the Arabic script, is the 480 couplets long poem Hamziyah dated AD 1652, by Sheikh Aidarus bin Uthaima of Pate in Kenya, about the life of the Prophet Muhammad (Knappert 1979:22 and 102). During the second half of the 18th century, Swahili slowly but

2 surely penetrated into the interior of Eastern Africa to the great lakes, especially with the expansion of the caravan trade and traffic in slaves, with increased demand for ivory in the West and the demand for agricultural and domestic slaves due to the growth of plantations along the coast (Whiteley 1969). The growth of urban areas, ports and trade, plantation agriculture and the feudal lifestyle connected with it, all required increased and cheap labour. In the 19th century, Arab, Swahili and local Bantu traders introduced and used Swahili further into Central Africa and in the Congo region. European Colonization, Christian missionary activity and increased Commerce (the 3 Cs advocated by the missionary explorer Dr. David Livingstone) further spread Swahili beyond the lakes as the lingua franca of east-central Africa, and numerous pidgin forms developed in different parts of this vast region. After World War I, the British felt the need for a standard variant of the language to be used in administration and education in their East African territories. Standardization of the written language was effectively carried out with the replacement of the traditional classical Arabic and Swahili-Arabic scripts by the Roman alphabet as the initial step. This was a process started in the 1850s by the first (German) missionary Ludwig Krapf in the service of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), who reduced the Kimvita dialect of Mombasa to a Roman orthographic system. By the turn of the century, more than a dozen grammars and dictionaries had been produced and the Bible translated into Swahili, one version of it being both in the Roman and Arabic script facing one another. Following World War I, political mobilization gained momentum with the spread of education and further growth of urban areas. Swahili became the vehicle of mass communication in Zanzibar, Tanganyika and Kenya where it was ultimately given the legal status of the National Language, competing with English as the second language and the language of higher learning, business and international communication. The leaders of all political parties were instrumental in bringing about this development (Whiteley 1969, Mbaabu 1985). The standardization of Swahili was carried out by the British colonial Inter-Territorial Language Committee, later renamed the East African Swahili Committee, which ceased to exist in 1964 when it was transformed into the Institute of Kiswahili Research/IKR (Taasisi ya Uchunguzi wa Kiswahili/TUKI) at the University College of Daressalaam, University of East Africa. The dissolution of the East African Community in the early 1970s created separate universities for the three member states of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. TUKI thus became a Tanzanian institution at the University of Daressalaam. Similar academic insititutions have since developed in Zanzibar City, Nairobi and Kampala. However, the work of coordinating the development of Swahili as a language of mass communication was taken over in Mainland Tanzania by the National Swahili Council (Baraza la Kiswahili la Taifa/BAKITA) which has sister organizations in Zanzibar (BAKIZA),

3 Kenya (BAKIKE) and Uganda (BAKIU). There are similar Swahili Language Committees in the republics of Comoro, Congo/Kinshasa, Burundi and Rwanda. The basis of Standard Swahili (Kiswahili Sanifu) is the dialect of Kiunguja of Zanzibar City and western Unguja/Zanzibar island with features both from the Dar es salaam area on the mainland opposite, and Mombasa on the southern coast of Kenya. But the ideological, social, economic and cultural differences between Kenya and Tanzania have determined a somewhat different development in the two countries even in the case of neologisms. A similar situation has developed in the Swahili dialect Kingwana, or Congo Swahili, which has borrowed much from French but little from Arabic and English (Polom 1967:27-27, 166-176 and Whiteley 1973:5, 72-76). In the current Kenyan usage one finds banki (bank), ledi (lead) and matatu (city/town bus) vis vis the Tanzanian forms benki, risasi and daladala respectively. With the spread of Swahili, many urban centres up-country have developed several inland social dialects among non-native speakers of Swahili in their inter-ethnic environment in and around the urban centres. The Swahili used here by the non-native speakers is to various degrees mixed with the local languages. This phenomenon is not borrowing since primary speakers of Swahili are not actively involved here, and almost no grammatical or lexical loans are added to the basic language of the native speakers of Swahili; the phenomenon is strictly that of code mixing, or code/language switching, which in the words of Rodolfo Jacobson (1998:51) is simply conveying a broader message through bilingual intercourse. Code or language mixing/switching and code alternation with regard to Swahili is found in all parts of Eastern Africa, but to a lesser extent in Tanzania where Swahili has been the medium of instruction in the primary schools since 1960 and where the centre of the political culture, Dar es salaam, was during the colonial period, and still is, in native Swahililand greatly influenced by its proximity to Zanzibar, the centre of political culture in the pre-colonial era. Language planning and development in Tanzania has enjoyed full participation of the state and party apparatus, regional and local authorities, and the native speakers, both experts and laymen, a situation not fully developed in Kenya where too Swahili is the national language, but where the political centre Nairobi lies in the heart of Kikuyuland, several hundred kilometers from the coast, and where during the colonial period English, the language of a sizeable European settler population, was present as a formidable rival to the spread of Swahili. This has probably been the major obstacle to efficient nationalization of Swahili in Kenya. Discussing at length the question of the nationalization of Swahili in Kenya, Harries (1984:122) concludes: The standard of competence (in Swahili) is only as high as the limited contact with first speakers of the language allows. On the other hand, the role and status of East African languages

4 other than Swahili (and English) is not either properly investigated or defined. Mkude (1979:11) justly states While accepting that local languages are part of our cultural heritage, we have also to admit, very painfully, that there is simply no comfortable place for them in our vision of society. Msanjila (1990:46-54) addresses this issue at some length taking as his point of departure the centre-periphery hypothesis of socio-politico-economic development framework advanced by Khubchandani (1983:99). The present situation of Swahili in East Africa may best be described in the words of Khamis: Swahili has since Independence made significant strides towards its being fully national and official language, but certainly a much more unfaltering language policy is needed to ensure its rightful development towards the realization of that goal. No such policy seems to be forthcoming, and regarding what has already been attained (that greatly contradicts with the present attitude, especially the contradiction between English and Swahili in Tanzania), one would hope that a proper language policy, and the one that will be favourable to Swahili, will be taken in the near future. Only when such an action has been taken, can we expect a brighter future for Swahili; not only in East Africa, but perhaps the whole world (Khamis 1993:278-9). ----------------------------------------------1. For a synopsis of Swahili grammar, see International Encyclopedia of Linguistics 2:99-106. 2. For a history of Bible translations in Swahili see Knappert (1990) and Lindfors (1999); for the Swahili translations of the Koran see Lacunza-Balda (1997), and for Swahili translations of English fiction see Olsson (1998). 3. The Kenya Association of the Blinds uses the term wasioona (lit. those who do not see) for the blinds, whereas the Tanzanian Association of the Blinds uses wapofu (class 2 noun denoting humans in plural), and its sister association in Zanzibar initially correctly used the term vipofu (class 8 plural noun which has the nuance of being disabled), but now uses the term wasioona (those who cannot see). 4. This present study is not concerned with the phenomenon of mixing of any Eastern African language or colonial/metropolitan language with Swahili by second or third language speakers of Swahili, or mixing of another langauge by first speakers of Swahili; the stated concern is only with genuine or defacto borrowing by primary/first/native speakers of Swahili. 5. See Lodhi (1992) for language maintenance in the case of Swahili in Zanzibar in particular. Postscript: Linguistic Imperialism of the English Language. Recently, politicians in Tanzania have adopted a language policy detrimental to the development and spread of Swahili by advocating

5 English as the medium of instruction in the primary schools, and discouraging the use of Swahili in the secondary schools. Through the influence of the British Council, the Zanzibar educational authorities have now officially adopted English as the medium of instruction at the primary level from January 2011. About 500 teachers have been trained in Zanzibar this year to teach various subjects using the English medium from Standard 5 in the primary school. To my knowledge, there are at least 4 different studies, one Tanzanian, one Norwegian and two Swedish, which conclude that English is strongly favoured as a medium of instruction both at the primary and secondary levels by the newly rich urban minorities in general, mostly male adults with a good command of English, whereas Swahili is favoured by the vast majority, mostly rural, both male and female adults and youth. The argument forwarded by the anglophiles in support of English is globalization and tourism which in reality involves only a small fraction of the population! Most East Africans will never learn enough English to be able to properly use it as their working language they would not even be employed in economic activities which would demand the use of English. Their working language in most cases would remain Swahili or some major local language! English should be taught as a compulsory school subject, as a second language in Tanzania and other Anglophone countries, like in most countries in the world. Economic, social and political progress has been achieved in all developed countries using their own respective languages, not English whether as a foreign language or their second language! Mwalimu Nyerere emphasized this during the language debate in Tanzania in 1984. More than 90% of the Chinese, Indians, Indonesians etc in the dynamic developing economies dont use English but their own national/local/ethnic languages as their mediums of instruction and working languages, and so do all the countries of the world (except of course for the English-speaking UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc which have English as their national/official/majority/primary language). English is not the language of angels! (Statement made by Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi during a discussion with representatives of the British Council at the International Conference on the History and Culture of Zanzibar, December 1992, Peoples Palace, Zanzibar.)

6 Swahili Literature Posted on EA Circle by: "Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi" Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi Date: Mon Dec 20, 2010 5:00 am ((PST)) Extracted from Abdulaziz. Y. Lodhi: Oriental Influences in Swahili a study in language and culture contacts. 2000, Gothenbutg University, Sweden. Chapter 2. The Swahili language and literature, Section 2.2 pp. 28-31 Swahili Literature Modern Swahili literature, both prose, poetry and drama, is written in Standard Swahili based on the Kiunguja dialect of Zanzibar which has the largest number of native speakers. Classical literature in Swahili was written in the northern dialects of Lamu (Kiamu), Pate (Kipate) and Mombasa (Kimvita) in Kenya (Allen 1961, Harries 1962, Knappert 1971 and 1967, Lodhi et al. 1974, Lodhi and Ahrenberg 1985, Mulokozi and Sengo 1995). In his review article on Abdulaziz (1974) and Knappert (1979), James Allen (1982) discusses at length the question of East African history and Swahili literature. Most of the literary works of the period before 1890, when East Africa was finally colonised by the European powers, is poetry in bound and balanced verse (mashairi ya vina). This form is dominant even today. The Swahili metric forms are based on the number of syllables (mizani) in a stanza (ubeti/baiti) which may have 2, 3, 4, or 5 rhyming lines (mistari/vipande), with a caesura (kituo/mkato) usually in the long measure of 16 syllables per line. Many old poems, generally known as tendi/tenzi, are quite long, some epics having several thousand stanzas, such as Utenzi wa Rasi lghuli of Mgeni bin Faqihi (1979) which has 4584 quartrains; another famous work is Chuo cha Herkali (The Epic of Heraklios) which has 1728 quatrains. These poems are religious, didactic, narrative, historical and secular. The modern long poems deal with themes such as the German occupation of the Tanganyika coast, World War II, the Zanzibar Revolution and the Liberation of Mozambique. Ngonjera are educational poems of rhyming verses, used as dramatic poetry, sometimes called the poetry of the Arusha Declaration as it was used much in political campaigns during the 1960s and 70s. To sing ngonjera is to teach through poetry as Sheikh Mathiasi E. Mnyampala describes it in his poem Ngonjera ni kitu gani? (Mnyampala 1970:1). Mashairi are topical poems in response to current events and are published in the Swahili dailies of Tanzania and Kenya. The Tanzanian morning paper UHURU as a rule has at least one full page of such poems, often composed as letters to the Editor. These poems may still be written in the Swahili-Arabic script if their contents are Islamic, and they may be circulated privately by the poet or her/his relatives

7 and friends, though seldom published in the Swahili-Arabic script. Mashairi usually have stanzas of 4 lines of 12-16 syllables with the fourth line, or part of it, reappearing as the refrain (Lodhi et al. 1974:1-10, Knappert 1979:51-59). The oldest surviving prose documents in Swahili are a correspondence dated 1710-1711 in Kilwa, southern Tanzania, sent to the Portuguese governor in Goa in India, and preserved today in the State Archives in Panjim in Goa. The Kilwa letters are in the Kimvita dialect, infused much with Arabisms, as was the literary norm of the period. Almost all the chronicles found along the East African littoral are in the Kiamu or Kimvita dialects. Today, the plain and poor lyrics of much pop music and TV shows, mostly written by non-native speakers of Swahili, are a major threat to (traditional) Swahili poetry which is increasingly becoming an academic subject instead of maintaining its cultural and artistic importance and its functions in entertainment and education of the young. Zhukov (1997) also stresses the importance of classical works in Swahili for a better understanding of the literary history of Swahili and the East African coast. Almost all prose in Swahili of the last 120 years is in the Kiunguja dialect of Zanzibar. Western literature has had much influence on the development of Swahili prose beginning with the translation of the Bible into Swahili and the production of textbooks for use in the mission and government schools (Knappert 1990, Olsson 1998, Lindfors 1999). During the post-Independence period, the late Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, the first President of Tanzania for a quarter of a century, was instrumental in the process of the rise of Swahili as a national language, as an educational language, as a political language and also as a literary language, through his many political publications and Swahili translations of Shakespeare (Lodhi 1974). The production of short stories, novels and plays in Swahili is rather low, and several writers in East Africa prefer to write in English, primarily because they do not master Swahili that well. However, during the 1970s, in the spirit of socialism, a number of historical and political plays were produced by Ebrahim Hussein and Penina Mhando Mlama, both of the University of Daressalaam. The most widely read fiction prose works in Swahili, and which are in the standard variant, are those of Shaaban Robert, e.g. his two utopias Kufikirika and Kusadikika (written in 1946-7 and 1948 respectively and first published by Thomas Nelson in 1951), and the first modern novel Utubora Mkulima (1968), published posthumously, which all have traces of the didactic and narrative elements of Swahili poetry (Gibbe 1980:2). In the prose of the modern period, i.e. after 1960, one finds themes such as the confrontation between the old and the new, traditional culture versus Western culture, colonial

8 oppression and the struggle against it, etc. The post-Independence situation with corruption and alienated bureaucracy, etc. is described well especially by E. Kezilahabi (of Ukerewe island, Lake Victoria) in his novels, and Mohamed Said Abdulla (Zanzibar) has produced several detective novels with his Zanzibari counterparts of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (Ohly 1981). The other Swahili writers from Zanzibar, Mohamed Suleiman Mohamed, Adam Shafi Adam and Said Ahmed Mohamed (Khamis), need particular mention as narrators of conditions in Zanzibar dealing with political mobilization, feudalism, liberation, moral decay of the city, trade union activities and the urban proletariat; in very rich language they document part of the history of East Africa of the crucial years just before and after Independence (Lodhi 1982c:91-2, 1984b:105-8). The recent works of S. A. M. Khamis and M. S. Mohamed are psychological novels dealing with relations within the family, the plight of the woman, etc. The Bible needs particular mention in any description of modern Swahili literature since the history of modern Swahili prose literature starts with the translation of the Bible into Swahili. Up to 1950, approximately 400 titles of prose were produced in Swahili, almost all of them translated or written by Europeans, including a translation of the Koran. None of these publications were more pervasive and had more effect than the Bible. The few non-European writings in Swahili of this period exhibit striking parallels to the biblical narrative style, e.g. Samuel Sehozas Mwaka katika Minyororo (A Year in Chains, 1921) which has been suggested by Rollins (1985:9) as the progenitor of the Swahili novel. Native Swahili speakers have lost much control over the development of their mother tongue and they have been politically marginalised, particularly in Kenya. Their language has gained the status and prestige that other languages in East Africa with larger numbers of first speakers would like to enjoy for their own language. The very people who, like the colonialists before them, had once wanted to dismiss Swahili as a dialect of Arabic or a bastard language, today take pride in learning and using it and call it their National Language. They claim Swahili does not belong to any ethnic group, and it belongs to all, a misconception upon which the dramatic and unexpected development and spread of modern Swahili is based. ------------------------------------6. This opinion was expressed by Ngugi Wa Thiongo, who himself has now gone over to writing in his mother tongue Kikuyu, and is having his works translated first in Swahili then in English. Personal communication with Ngugi about 10 years ago and also on 20.4.1999, in Uppsala. 7. For deeper discussions on this see Mazrui and Shariff (1993), Allen (1993:240-262), and for Zanzibar see Lodhi (1992b).

POSTSCRIPT: Today, the authorities in Kenya invest much more in the development and spread of Swahili than is the case in Tanzania. More Swahili books are being produced in Kenya than in Tanzania. A major development in this field is the founding of the Research Institute for Swahili Studies in Eastern Africa (RISSEA) and the Swahili Museum in Mombasa which closely cooperate with the National Museums of Kenya, Fort Jesus and also the recently founded Phwani University at Kilifi northe of Mombasa, which has a thriving Swahili Department. Swahili is also a popular discipline at the universities of Nairobi & Eldoret. During November 17-20, RISSEA oganised its first international conference celebrating also a century of heritage work in Kenya, and this week it has organised the first Swahili Cultural Festival in Mombasa with a poetry competetion on Friday 17 December. Mr. Khalid Kitito of Mombasa will recite a couple of my Swahili poems at this competetion while I am faraway in Uppsala/Sweden. At the RISSEA conference I presented a paper on 'Varieties of the (precolonial) Writing Systems in East Africa' and 'Swahili and Arabic Manuscripts in the Archives of the University of Daressalaam' which is expected to be published next year in the proceedings of that conference.

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Swahili time telling, calendars, Mwaka Kogwa/Nawroz etc Posted on EA Circle by: "Abdulaziz Lodhi" Date: Mon Dec 20, 2010 5:05 am ((PST)) On point of information to the list members: What we call Swahili Time is in fact Solar Time, known in Europe also as Biblical Time - it is the original system of time telling with the new 24 hrs day starting with sunset, night-time preceding daylight. (Remember, in the Beginning there was Darkness, then God shed Light on everything! In Islamic cosmology/cosmogony, Nuru/Light is God himself!) In the mosque, the change of date is marked in the evening, not in the morning. This system of time telling is age old and was practiced already 8000 yrs ago in Assyria/Babylon (in modern Iraq where the very first calendar was also founded, and it is more than 7500 years old!) and was spread around the world. It was changed only very recently after the more internationally practical GMT system was developed and adopted universally. The British replaced Solar time in their 'empire' and gradually South Asians started using it in East Africa. Until mid-60s solar time was used by Wahindis in Zanzibar. In Ethiopia it is called 'Ethiopian Time'. In most countries of sub-Saharan Africa it was used until the 40s when most cultures/languages stopped using solar time. East Africa and Ethiopia are the only region in the world, I think, where solar time is expressed in the local languages. The international solar calendar we use today is originally from Pharaonic Egypt, developed by Ptolemy almost 5000 years ago, having 12 months of 30 days each and a 13th month of 5 days, or 6 days during the leap year. Therefore Ethiopia has '13 months of sunshine' as claimed in tourist propaganda. During the Greek/Hellenic period in Egypt and the Mediterranean, Ptolemy's calendar was adjusted & called the Greek/Alexandrian Calendar with the new year starting on the Spring Equinox (todays 21/22 March). After the Greeks came the Romans and changed the calendar giving it the name the Julian Calendar after the emperor Julius Caesar. The Julian Calendar later also became the official Christian calendar, a mixture with some Jewish holidays and Greek remnants such as March being the first month and Februery the last month with 37 days! In the original Roman calendar October, November and December were the

11 8th, 9th and 10th month respectively as can be seen from their names, but in the Julian they became the 10th, 11th and 12th respectively. In 1580s the Pope Gregor, who was also a mathematician, reformed the Julian calendar and we got our modern Gregorian Calendar of today. In Russia, what we call the Bolshevic/October Revolution, infact took place in November according to the Russian Orthodox calendar used then. Pope Gregor took days from the long month of February and included them here and there, also inventing the 'knuckle' system of counting the number of days in each month of the calendar, and giving February 29 days during the leap year. Pope Gregor even added some years to his reformed calendar, that's why the Julian calendar is 8 yrs and about 2 weeks behind the Gregorian calendar - it is the year 2002 in Ethiopia and they will celebrate New Year about 2 weeks after us. (I don't have my papers here at home to give you the exact figures and dates.) The Ethiopian, Coptic, Armenian, and the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches all follow the Julian calendar, that's why As far as I know, there is no culture which has ever counted a week having more than 7 days, though after the French Revolution some people advocated decimalising the week by making it 10 days long that would have killed most people in France to start with! In all the civilizations in antiquity, the week started on Saturday. Friday was the end of the week and the holy day of the Jahiliya time (period of tribal religions). When Judaism came, the Jews made Saturday its holy day to pray for the new coming week, the sabbath or seventh day of the week. Christianity in turn made Sunday its holy day the Sabbath. Those following the Jahiliya tribal religions (called 'pagan' by the Jews) continued having Friday as their holy day, and with the advent of Islam Friday became the holy day of Muslims. In Judaeo-Christian Europe, Saturday and Sunday thus gradually became the standard week-end but in the calendars but the week always started with Sunday which was marked red. In 1970 Unesco decided to change that and we got the week starting Monday. In Swahili, the week starts on Saturday - Jumamosi, the first day of the week. The Swahili week is the original as it was in old Persia and India, and it is so even today in the Indian calendars. In Gujarati flr examples we say "Shani, Ravi, Som, Bhom etc = Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday etc. Whereas in Arabic we start the week with Sunday as the first day; Wednesday for example will thus be Youm ul arba = the 4th day and Alkhamis the 5th day. Now in Swahili, because of the intrusion of Arabic, we have both Jumatano/Wednesday and Alhamisi/Thursday - two 5th days in the week! But a Swahili/Bantu speaker does not perceive

12 Alhamisi as a 5th day of the week, but an Arabic speaker does. There are 2 more points of interest in the Swahili calendar: 1. The Arabic/Muslim/Islamic 9th lunar month Ramadhan is in fact the 12th month in the Swahili lunar calendar, making the Sikikuu ya Idi/Id el fitr the New Year, though the Islamic New Year is the first of Muharram which is the 4th month in the Swahili calendar. (I'll mail a paper on this later tomorrow from my office.) 2. The old Indo-Iranian and Indo-European new year Nawroz (New Day), the spring equinox marking the day becoming longer than the night, is called Mwaka or Mwaka Kogwa, or Nairuzi (also a male first name). This celebration must have come with the Shirazi arrivals in AD 950 and later rejuvinated in 1840s with the arrival in Zanzibar of Princess Shehrazadeh, one of the queens of Seyyid Said bin Sultan, the first Omani ruler of Znz. Through a collision of the traditional Swahili lunar calendar and the Persian solar calendar, the Mwaka/Nairuzi holiday moves backwards in the Gregorian calendar, 11 days every year for 3 years and then 12 days during the leap year. (Professor Abdul Sherif has written about the Shirazi and Maalim Iddi Farhan has written about the dates of Nairuzi.) I apologize for typographical errors - it's half past midnight! Wasalaam! Author: Prof Maalim Abdulaziz Lodhi