Page 43 - 2020 SoMJ Vol 73 No 2_Neat

34 The Society of Malaŵi Journal

The Establishment of Islam in Malawi

David Bone

Islam came to Malawi as part of the two-way traffic between the Muslim
Swahili coast and the interior of East Central Africa. The first Muslims set foot in
what is now Malawi probably around 1530, when Swahili Arab traders established
a trading post at nearby Tete on the Zambezi. Though the coming of the
Portuguese meant that the traders were expelled, up to the present day there are
clans, known in Malawi as the Amwenye and in Zimbabwe as the Varemba, who
still show signs of their ancient contact with Islam through their practice of
circumcision, their refusal to eat pork and their Islamic sounding names. By the
th
17 century the area round lake Malawi had links to the coast through two major
trade routes, one terminating in Kilwa in present day Tanzania and the other in
Angoche in present day Mozambique. One of the main tribes to work these routes
from their homeland, at that time in northern Mozambique, were the Yao.
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Two series of events in the first part of the 19 century were important
for the eventual establishment of Islam in Malawi. The first was from around 1830
when there were movements of Yao groups into the area round the southern end
of Lake Malawi. The second, about the same time, was the increased number of
traders from the coast who, encouraged by the opportunities for trade that were
expanding under Sayyid Sa’id’s rule in Zanzibar, started to travel into the interior
of East Africa, and even set up trading stations there.
In around 1860, or perhaps earlier, one of these Swahili traders, Salim
bin Abdullah arrived in Nkhotakota, on the lake shore in central Malawi. Having
asked the local Chewa chief, Malenga for land for the purpose, he established a
trading station there with several villages for his personal followers. He was well
armed and made a success of trading, mainly in the import of guns, gunpowder
and cloth and the export of ivory and then slaves. Through trade and diplomacy,
he eventually became rich and powerful enough, following the death of Chief
Malenga, to overthrow the paramount Chief Kanyenda and to get his sub-chiefs
to acknowledge him as Jumbe, or Sultan. He and his three successors, known to
history as the Jumbes of Nkhotakota, and claiming to represent the Sultan of
Zanzibar, were able to set up a major entrepot and to build a fleet of dhows to
cross the lake. This attracted much trade and many traders from the coast and from
all over the region.
The Jumbes were Muslims as were their personal followers, and though
they do not seem to have made direct efforts to convert the local Chewa people
they did persuade their chiefs to send sons and nephews to the coast to be
educated. Many of these young men were converted to Islam there and, when
some in turn became chiefs, they were influential in persuading their own people
to become Muslims. Even though the fourth Jumbe was deposed by the British in