Muslim ritual meets Swahili culture at Kenya’s unique annual Maulidi festival

Tom Mboya Olali, University of Nairobi

Lamu is a historic Swahili port town on an island off the northern coast of Kenya. Each year, it hosts the famous Lamu Maulidi Festival, a sacred Muslim celebration, planned this year for 17-18 September.

People come from across the world to attend because in Lamu, maulidi (also known as mawlid) is unique. It’s a blend of cultures, and of pilgrimage, ceremony and carnival. Tom Mboya Olali has spent over 30 years researching the event. We asked him about its fascinating history.

How do you describe the Lamu festival?

In the Lamu archipelago, the mention of Maulidi elicits an aura of happiness. During the festival, a carnival-like atmosphere prevails on Lamu Island. Everyone is in high spirits.

The Lamu Maulidi Festival marks the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. It’s celebrated around the world and has its origins in Egypt in the 8th century. But the East African version is believed to have been developed in Lamu by Muslim scholar al-Habib Swaleh in 1866. There’s no exact historical record.

For this celebration, visitors come from as far away as Europe, America, Tanzania, Somalia and the Saudi Arabian peninsula. As well as from many other towns, villages and islands on the coast of Kenya.

Among the religious themes that increasingly became prominent in Arabic poetry from about the 12th century, the eulogy of the prophet, Sufism and pious admonition stand out. The Swahili people in the Lamu archipelago gain personal and communal satisfaction by venerating the prophet and eulogising him during the festival.

Over time, Swahili culture has influenced the Maulidi festival extensively. This has happened through the inclusion of Swahili music, dances, burial rites, storytelling, poetry, attire, weddings, food, boat-making, processions and ceremonies.

But the birth of the Prophet Muhammad is central. During the festival, there is a reading called the Simt al-Durar in the Riyadha Mosque. It’s a poem praising the prophet. The reading begins with prayers, fatiha, followed immediately by an opening chant.

Traditional Swahili dances are performed in the rectangular social space outside the mosque. These dances draw large crowds and have become an important part of the festival. Just some of the traditional dances are the kirumbizi (performed with sticks), the goma (a slow line dance with men in dark glasses) and the mdurenge (a vigorous dance with young men swaying, clapping hands and singing).

The festival also has an event for memorising the Qur'an, dhow boat races, board games, a swimming gala, a donkey race, a henna body painting competition, a calligraphy writing competition and football matches.

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The festival was not celebrated in early Islam, and its celebratory nature was, and sometimes still is, disputed by some Swahili. Some view it as a bid'a (an innovation) while others see it as bid'a nzuri (a good innovation).

Who was al-Habib Swaleh?

As more and more immigrants arrived in coastal Kenya and trade flourished, the wealthier of them invested their profits in slaves. By 1873, there were about 4,000-5,000 enslaved Africans in Malindi, south of Lamu. In Takaungu to the north, the Mazrui family owned thousands of slaves.

Traders became farmers, and slave traders became slave owners. A slave system gradually emerged in East Africa that defined the social order.

Habib Swaleh Jamal al-Layl came from the Seyyid family Jamal al-Layl, descendants of the family of the Prophet Muhammad. This branch had produced a number of famous scholars who had migrated to many parts of the world. His family moved from the island of Pate to the Comoro Islands, where al-Habib Swaleh was born. He came to Lamu sometime between 1876 and 1885.

We know that when al-Habib Swaleh turned 17, he travelled to Lamu for medical treatment and stayed with his uncle. He studied under his uncle and several other leading teachers. He got to know the local people and was readily accepted by them. A member of his clan convinced his father, Mwenye Ba-Hassan Jamal al-Layl, to allow his son to settle in Lamu.

Al-Habib Swaleh became a significant figure. He introduced an earlier form of today’s maulidi to Lamu. He was a social reformer who strove to open up Islam and Islamic education to the descendants of enslaved people and the underprivileged wagema (coconut-tappers). This helped transform local Islam from an exclusive religion for the privileged to an inclusive one, integrating people from all ethnic and social backgrounds.

So, the maulidi festival became a medium for social reform, a symbol of change. Uta was the first dance introduced during the Maulidi festival by al-Habib Swaleh. It’s associated with the lowly townspeople of Lamu. Dances are performed in all maulidi festivals, along with the reciting of poems, but these Swahili dances are peculiar to the Lamu event.

How has it evolved over the years?

The Maulidi festival has undergone a real metamorphosis. Its carnival aspect may not sound religious. But the festival is now a hybrid one that is part pilgrimage, part carnival and part mystical Islamic ceremony. Even so, the most important element is the veneration of the prophet.

So, Maulidi today is a complex social phenomenon, balancing what some might view as the sacred with the profane. It’s both a ritual event and an entertainment; a demonstration of a particular religious sensibility that combines feelings of wonder with lively sociability.

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Tom Mboya Olali, Associate Professor, Department of Kiswahili, University of Nairobi

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.