“Hale!” “Halele!”
In those days, the region of Mbude, in north-east Ngazidja, was led by a wise and curious man called Mtswa Mwindza. He loved listening to the sailors who landed on the coast, for they brought news of distant lands.
One day, Arab merchants whose ship had been driven off course by a storm were welcomed at Ntsaweni. They told how, in Arabia, a man named Muhammad was proclaiming the word of a single God, and how peoples were gathering around him.
Mtswa Mwindza wanted to know more. He left his family, boarded the merchants' ship and crossed the ocean. The voyage was long, but at last he reached the holy city of Medina. There he learned the prayer, the recitation of the Koran and the rules of the new religion.
When he returned to Ntsaweni, people came running from all over the land. Mtswa Mwindza taught them and had a mosque built, the first on the island. Some versions add that a companion from Arabia came with him, and that both are buried at Ntsaweni. The tomb attributed to the founder is still shown there today.
What we know about it
This tale makes Ntsaweni the cradle of Islam in the Comoros and places the conversion of the archipelago in the 7th century, during the Prophet's lifetime. It is told in local chronicles, such as that of Prince Saïd Hussein (1934).
Archaeologists place the arrival of Islam later: the oldest excavated mosques in the archipelago date from the 11th–12th centuries, and a test excavation carried out in 2010 in the Ntsaweni mosque gave dates from the same period. The tale expresses how old and how deep the faith of Comorians is; archaeology dates the buildings: the two do not contradict each other. Read: Writing the history of the Comoros.
Further reading
- 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.
- Voices of the archipelago Damir Ben Ali, Histoire de la pratique de l'islam aux Comores. the author's online text.
- Outside view Henry T. Wright et al., Early Seafarers of the Comoro Islands: the Dembeni Phase of the IXth – Xth Centuries AD, 1984. Azania, no. 19, pp. 13–59.