“Hale!” “Halele!”
Long ago in Shiraz, in Persia, there lived a sultan named Hassan. One night, he had a strange dream: a rat with an iron snout was gnawing at the walls of his city. In the morning, he summoned the wise men, who told him: “This dream foretells the ruin of your land.”
Hassan did not take the warning lightly. He had seven ships made ready, put his family, his followers and his riches on board, and left Shiraz with his six sons. The ships crossed the ocean and, driven by the monsoon winds, sailed down the coast of Africa.
Each ship found its land. One landed at Mombasa, another at the Green Island, which is called Pemba, yet another at Kilwa, where the son Ali founded a city destined for great fortune. The others stopped at other ports along the coast. The seventh ship, the father's, continued its journey south and landed at Hanzuan: this is what the Arabs called Anjouan.
On all these shores, the travellers married into the families of the land. From these alliances, says tradition, were born the great lineages that governed the cities of the Swahili coast and of the Comoros.
What we know about it
This tale comes from the Kilwa Chronicle, written in the 16th century in the Swahili city of Kilwa (in present-day Tanzania). It lists the ports of call of the seven ships, the last of which is “Hanzuan”. In the Comoros, many noble families claim this Shirazi origin.
Historians see it above all as a prestigious origin myth, linking merchant elites who were largely African to the Persian and Muslim world, rather than the memory of a real migration. It does, however, bear witness to long-standing links with the Persian Gulf. Read: Islam and the Swahili world.
Further reading
- Outside view Anonyme, Chronique de Kilwa (Kitab al-Sulwa), XVIe siècle.
- Voices of the archipelago Saïd Ahmed Zaki, Chronique d'Anjouan (manuscrit de 1927). published with commentary by Claude Allibert, Études Océan Indien, no. 29, Inalco.
- Outside view Iain Walker, Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros, 2019. Hurst (London); Oxford University Press (New York).