“Hale!” “Halele!”
In those days, there were not yet any sultans on Ngazidja. The land was divided between chiefs known as bedja. Each ruled over his villages, his fields and his herds, and all of them mistrusted one another.
One day, a ship from the coast of Africa, from the cities ruled by the so-called Shirazi families, dropped anchor off the island. Two young women came ashore with their retinue: two princesses, dressed in silk and adorned with gold, who spoke Arabic and recited the Koran.
A bedja named Fe Pirusa, whom others call Fe Ubayya, welcomed them with honour. He offered them hospitality, then married them. From these marriages were born children who united the blood of the land's old chiefs with that of the travellers from the sea.
Their descendants formed the great royal lineage known as the Inya Fwambaya. From it came, over the generations, the sultans who vied for power in the island's sultanates. And because on Ngazidja rank passes down through women, it was never forgotten that it had all begun with two princesses from the sea.
What we know about it
This story belongs to the dynastic traditions of Grande Comore. It tells of the union between local chiefs, the bedja, and newcomers known as “Shirazi”, which gave rise to the lineages of sultans. The traditions of the royal lineage of the Inya Fwambaya were collected and studied by Damir Ben Ali, Georges Boulinier and Paul Ottino (1985). Other traditions add the later arrival of a certain Mohamed ben Haïssa, who is said to have married a descendant of the first princesses.
The names vary from source to source and the dates remain uncertain: the traditions place these events around the 13th–14th centuries. Above all, the story illustrates the importance of women in the transmission of rank on Ngazidja. Read: The time of the sultans and The seven ships of Shiraz.
Further reading
- Voices of the archipelago Damir Ben Ali, Georges Boulinier et Paul Ottino, Traditions d'une lignée royale des Comores : l'Inya Fwambaya de Ngazidja, 1985. L'Harmattan.
- Voices of the archipelago Prince Saïd Hussein (Saïd Housseini), Histoire et sociologie de Ngazidja (manuscrit de 1934). introduction, translation and notes by Damir Ben Ali, Études Océan Indien, Inalco.
- Outside view Iain Walker, Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros, 2019. Hurst (London); Oxford University Press (New York).