[Music] [Applause] once hundreds of sili settlements dotted this [Music] Coast many are now in Ruins but some with their distinctive Muslim culture have survived to this [Music] dayum I begin my journey on the island of lamu just off Northern Kenya [Music] I'll travel South along the sili coast stopping off at the Old Ocean Port of mambasa finally I'm sailing to the island of Zanzibar as I try to untangle the roots of the sili people [Music] lamu is the most traditional of all the sili [Music] towns for 2,000 years Arab Merchants have settled on this Coast you can see their influence everywhere [Music] there seems to be a mosque on every street corner and most children here are educated in quranic schools [Music] it feels more like the Middle East than Kenya yet I'm in the heart of black [Music] [Music] Africa I'm going to see shik badawi one of lamu's most venerable Islamic scholars I want to understand the history of lamu how lamu was founded is it an Arab civilization or is it an African civilization AMU in effect was Arab civilization uh since more than 1,000 yes shik badawi is proud of his Arabic Roots he tells me he can trace his family back to the prophet Muhammad you have a noble ancestry do do you have African ancestors as well all his ancestors are coming from from Arab people and in the past there was a system of making concubines concubines yeah yeah Maring those women yes so it resulted people to to be considered as inferior and the concubines are African women yeah concubines yeah I see why did Arab men take African women as concubines maybe people could not afford to marry many Arabs Arab people so the Africans were the local people were cheap and other reasons best known to them [Music] whatever shik badawi says that supposedly pure Arabic blood has long been mixed with the blood of black Africans historians say that sili culture was shaped by the Monson Trade Winds Arabs came here to trade with Africans [Music] they had to wait 6 months for the winds to change before they could sail [Music] home they took concubines wives and had [Music] children one Village still specializes in building Dows the boat sailed for Centuries by sili merchants [Music] today everyone's on the beach helping launch a new DA [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] traditionally it's the captain not the boat who's launched into the water first them [Applause] yeah that was great Lu is yeah it isia okay you okay yeah you're okay yeah you the Indian Ocean trade has longed to find sili life Africans and Arabs traded riches from the interior for the luxuries of the East [Music] Ahmad sagf is an architect whose family has lived in lamu for Generations like shik badawi he traces his ancestry back to Arabia yeah now when your ancestors came here in the 13th century did they mix with the Africans yeah because they can't live by themselves they have to mix with the people so as to harmonize their St and IND the in Kya so African men could marry Arab women very rare in a very rare case but an Arab man can easily marry an African woman so the Arab men intermarried with African women and they created theil people yeah this is how the the bath of the soili uh language and culture came about so you can trace your ancestry back to the 13 yeah I have um a TR structure of our families a family tree yeah from Prophet Muhammad up to my my sons now you do yes wow that's great that one huh but can Africans Trace their ancestry back there far not mostly because most of them were illiterate so they they don't know how to keep the records this was the main problem with those people if you lived in the States you would be called a black man you're not black here yeah I'm not black because most of the people recognize me as a a local Arab a local Arab yeah a local Arab does that give you greater social standing here yes very much yes because I can now identify myself as somebody else from other Clan or from other families other clans other families other families that is the the most important of all keeping up all this records of the family Tre structure and you know what it's exactly the same in my country everybody wants to be from elsewhere [Music] my conversation with Ahmed reminds me how black Americans used to claim descent from some distant Cherokee or Sue ancestor anything but pure negro so far all I've heard about here is their Arab ancestry and not a lot about the suil African [Music] side I'm on my way to the ruins of shanga the oldest city yet discovered on the east coast of Africa changa holds important clues about the origins of the suiling Muhammad B and abash shakuna took part in the original excavations that is the Friday mosque and it's one of the most funniest features we found on this settlement let's go near it tell it's huge it is one of the biggest most this is said to be 14th century now this is facing the Caba in Mecca so there is this mosque you see on the top right and then there's another mosque how old is below this one how old is the one that one was said to be about 11th century 11th century and then we dug further down mhm that means this is the first strut of the Town below it there's the second town and we went down under that second uh town we found the original settlement which was composed of mud and water Huts the mud and Wadd Huts they found were laid out like other African villages further Inland this was a major Discovery it proves that Africans were already living here before the Arabs first landed so then in come the Arabs the Arabs 2,000 years ago 2,000 years ago okay and they mix intermarried with the local people but did they conquer the local people or did they were they equals they they did it in this way for example you come in as an Arab you meet me a black man you mix blood with me mhm so now there's more no more war between me and you I accept you as my brother so you [Music] eventually you become the boss of that area as Arabs mhm event so the Arabs came to dominate dominate the local people M so while the Arabs came to dominate The Coast shanga shows that the suil roots are African and what's more their language sili is a banto African language with some words borrowed from [Music] Arabic today it's the most widely used language in East Africa zungu it is smoke ah where here there there abas my guide from shanga is typical of this sili mix to me he looks like an African but he also has distant Arab ancestry abas yeah what do you think when the old Arab families here say that lamu is Arab civilization it's not African civilization my I can say my grandfathers come from Arabic your grandfather's yeah but my my my my mothers is Africa Come From Here by Junia but everything's changing first it was Arabic and then British come then now we are independent you know so everything's changing so we still in Africa now two great cultures African and Arab met and mixed on this Coast but in lamu it doesn't exactly feel like a marriage of equals the Arabs weren't the only ones who came to exploit the coast the British were here from the late 19th century up to 1960 they gave special privileges to those who claimed Arab descent deepening racial divisions in lamu these old prejudices live on even though the island is now part of modern [Music] Kenya mambasa was once one of the richest sili city states today it's Kenya's Second City and a major Indian Ocean Port over the centuries mambasa was occupied by Arabs from Oman by Portuguese adventurers and by the colonial armies of Britain now the soili are actually the original people of the coast and uh basically here at Mombasa we have uh three groups of soili people there is first of all the soili h actually who came about as a result of you know being born from an original soili family whereby the father and the mother are original soili people and then we have the soili or a soili who was born in a family where by when the Arabs came to the coast of Mombasa they intermarried with the soili people here now another group of the sili people are people who came from other parts of Kenya and uh they copied the culture religion and that became I have expected to be irritated but actually I like the guy's definition of the S healing it's much more generous and inclusive than anything I heard in [Music] lamu he told us that the sili are the original African inhabitants of the coast as well as the result of intermarriage with the Arabs north of mambasa Lies the most spectacular of all the ruins for heal the cities [Music] gyd tour begins in the remains of the grand 15th century [Music] musk so with the help of the echo as you realized the message would be conveyed and received very simultaneously and for that those women at that time had no complaints at all right they could hear him very vividly they couldn't see him as well they couldn't see him but they could hear him the front part of it was and entirely meant for men and the Hand part was specifically kept for the ladies the curator abdalah Ali shows me around town this big house which is known as House of The Da and the house of The Da the house of The Da it shows that the own of this house was a very rich man and he decided to abdala says that in the late 14th century the sili built a remarkable Stone City more than 2,000 people once lived here and it flourished for 300 years the when the British archaeologists uncovered these ruins in the 1950s they saw Getty as an Arab settlement so this is the Sultan's Palace yeah here have a big Palace when's it date from well it should be in the 15th century this town was at its Peck in the 15th century right mhm yeah we are now in the main court or audience court and it was here where they used to discuss all their Town Affairs this bench on our left was meant for the sultan and this one here was meant for his ministers and of course the Sunan Court was meant for the public abdalah says that this Courtyard would once have been crowded with citizens petitioning their ruler the Sultan's Palace was the center of a sophisticated Urban society and people here put a high priority on the Comforts of life including the most important of all to me good Plumbing normally when so visit the toilet they don't St but they Squat and this is what we normally do after finishing all the official business here as far as number one is concerned somebody get hold of the mag and leave that in the water and then he would wash up himself and then he' call it a day he' walk out of the toilet and there we have a hole again that was for number two uhhuh right so squatting again would be done here and all official business would be done here and it it's not I mean a long distance from there to here so somebody just get hold of the mug di that in the water and then he would wash up himself and then he would call it a day I've seen toilets in Europe not this good who built this civilization the indigenous of this place were soilis and later on they were joined by the passions so you mean in 1399 yep the people who built this were African people typical Africans typical AF do they look like you of course why not are you a soili I'm typical soili so these were black people these were black people very like you and I unlike the British archaeology s abdalah says Getty was an African City built by Africans this grand city was built by the sili and here on the mainland of Kenya the sili are seen as Africans from mambasa I fly south to Dar Salam the cap Tanzania from there I take the ferry to Zanzibar [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the fabled island of Zanzibar is the last and perhaps the greatest of the sili city states in the 18th and 19th centuries Zanzibar was a major trading Nation it grew Rich by exporting spices and slaves [Music] I first came here in 1970 6 years after a violent revolution 5,000 people had been killed when Africans rose up against the Arabs and the Indians I was 20 years old we got into Zanzibar and um shik karum was the president at the time he ran something called the revolutionary group and he had just passed a law giving him and the 13 or 14 other members of the ruling Council the right to not only sleep with but marry any 14y year or older virgin particularly Indian virgins it's the most bizarre thing I've ever encountered at it's like um it's like once the Africans took over they reinstituted slavery in Reverse able to enslave the uh the daughters of the Arab merchants or the daughters of the Indian Merchants an air of repression hung all over the island as strong as the scent of cloves all of the sidewalks were covered with cloves that had just been harvested and they would let them dry out in the sun I'm not sure that those clothes are still there but I hope they are my first stop is a fishing Village South of the capital I've heard that most people in kism Kazi claim to be Persian you both were born in kisum Kazi yes so where did your ancestors come from our ancors came from Persia from Persia yes when uh really I I I cannot tell you when but I mean they came here for many centuries ago my historical teacher in the school there he taught me about a 500 years they came here so your family came from Persia and been here for 500 years yes are there Africans in the village or just Persians H the most of villages here are Persians I think there are some African but I don't know if we are still here until now this within the village is it better to be Persian than African Persian Persian so you have more status why because our ancestors comes from Persia so why is that better than coming from the interior yeah we we feel so because you see it is a place which our parents came from According to the historical so just we have to explaining us about the light where our parents came from would you be surprised to know that if you came with me back home to Boston Americans would say you just look African to them no difference between Persians and Africans do you know that yes of course yeah I do to me the people here look about as Persian as Mike Tyson just yards from the beach however are the remains of a 12th century mosque the oldest in zanar it is a Kik readings she readings what the brown thing yeah yeah that is written the time which this MOS finished to build 11 nobody in the village can read these ancient kfic inscriptions but sure enough they really do show that this mosque was built by people from the Persian Gulf over 800 years ago before heading back to town my new Persian Brothers invite me out on their boat Abu runs a business taking tourists to see the dolphins I can't resist oh I see them I see them [Music] oh it's right under right under it's right under the boat yes hey Abu are they Arab or the African the African they Afric they speak for healing keep calling my so it's true that the pers Ians really did settle in Zanzibar just as the Arabs and later the Indians did but why do so many people here claim to be the descendants of a handful of medieval Persian Mariners it's a bit like me claiming to be white because my great great grandfather father was an Irishman named [Music] Brady I think the answer lies in the shadows of zanzibar's history as the center of the East African slave trade on this island to call oneself African is to admit to being the descendant of a [Music] slave the Anglican cathedral of Zanzibar sits on the site of the old slave market build here they say to atone for the sins of the [Music] past Canon Gada takes me to the high altar where the old whipping post once stood that weeping post was uh a place where these slaves coming one by one uh with chains they are taken there and if they he was a woman she was a woman the she would be put half naked and she would be told to turn around to show the morphology and all that you see so that the buyers would see the morphology and place the price now before buying those people wanted to know how strong that man was and how strong that woman was they would whip bully and do all sort of things those who cried and fell down they couldn't get price so the one who brought that slave would just drag and kill [Music] this place gives me the creeps like most African-Americans I'm the descendant of slaves and since I broke my hip when I was 14 I probably wouldn't have survived my ancestors were slaves yes so how do you feel about it it's very sad for me to be here now I think you have forgiven them I don't know how good a Christian I am father well you have to you have to forgive them how could the Jews forgive the Germans of the Holocaust how could you forgive it is only when you know the love of God it is very difficult in human speaking because really somebody who really killed your your an sests you can't forgive but I'm a handicapped I could I would have been killed I would have been killed yes yes but lucky enough you are still alive yeah thank God and you are now one of the those who were born away from their from home a long way long way [Applause] [Music] yeah as far as I'm concerned you need an ocean of baptism of water to wash away all the sins committed on this sight [Music] tens of thousands of slaves were bought and sold here every year many were sent to the Middle [Music] East others worked the clove plantations here on the island and a few even went to the new world [Music] Zanzibar became so rich that in 1840 the Sultan of Oman moved his Capital here along with his court and his 99 concubines [Music] the most famous and Wealthy of all the sultan subjects was the notorious sili slave trader tipu tip look at that door that's nicer than any of the doors I've seen in Stonetown maybe you've not seen many no I've seen a lot his great great granddaughter Umi hammed a journalist takes me to his house yeah they but they theyed it's rumored that tipu tip buried 40 slaves in the foundations of this Mansion to strengthen its walls was in sh how do how do you feel about your great great grandfather I feel that it was the trend of the time M that was business purely you either be a slave or a slaver you choose the lesser of the two and if you're in a position to be a slaver why should you be a slave the slavery was different from the slavery of American the Arabs took their slaves and married them and they intermingled with them it was quite different with the slaves in the West in the America where they were mostly used for Plantation and they never there was racism yes with Arabs they they married their slaves so this is the difference Arab married African women but not the not vice versa but at least they married them and they had children with them we are the product no that's [Music] true I your great great grandfather was a slave Traer my great great great great grandfather was a slave it's possible that someone in your family many many hundreds of years ago purchased and sold someone in my family quite possible I think we should treat that as a sory part of the history and that chapter is closed and we shake hands thank you I never thought I'd ever meet a black slave trader descendant I mean it never occurred to me you know in America when you think of slavery you think of white people you don't even think of Arabs that much though Arabs were fundamental to the slave trade of course but it's everything in America is so black and white and then when actually you meet someone and then you think wow you know black people you would be black in America they wouldn't be interested in all this Persian Arab stuff you would be a black person zanzibar's Bloody history did not end with slavery in the 1964 Revolution the descendants of African slaves rose up and slaughtered Arabs and Indians in a night of terrible violence the Revolution was just weeks after Zanzibar gained independence from Britain II was a small girl at the time caught in the midst of a violent Witch Hunt it was frightening because we are of a mixed dress some of half of my family are very very fair half of them them are black but we are known that we are descendants of Arabs and we had affiliations to them at that time so it was really scary to think of what might happen knowing that it was a war between Arabs and yes things like that the change came so abruptly unexpectedly when uh people capitalized on that it wasn't only politics by then it could have been GES and other [Music] reasons After the Revolution zanzibar's new regime turned out to be as brutal and as repressive as the old one it's only in the past few years that the island is once again opening up to the outside world that was a pH which we head to go through and thinking of it this island can't be Arab where is Arabia where is Middle East and where is Zanzibar it's two different things Zanzibar is here beside the African continent we are influenced by the Arabs but we can't say that this is an Arabic place even the name means land of the blacks yes [Applause] [Music] [Applause] today most zanaris are the descendants of slaves but it's a fact that few want to be reminded [Music] of no wonder so many of the sili claim to be Persian or Arab anything but Africa [Applause] [Music] [Music] it's been so easy to say that everything of value in sili culture belongs to the Arabs or the Persians or anyone else passing by [Applause] [Music] when I was growing up we used to say if you're light you're all right if you're Brown get down if you're black get back it's taken my people 50 years to move from negro to Black to African-American I wonder how long it will take this sili to call themselves African