Page 45 - 2020 SoMJ Vol 73 No 2_Neat

36 The Society of Malaŵi Journal

war over trade broke out in 1887 between Mlozi and a Scottish trading company,
the African Lakes Company.
When the British missionaries and their allies in Parliament helped to
persuade the British Government in1891 to declare Nyasaland a Protectorate, the
administration set up there, under Sir Harry Johnston, used their military power
to support the Scots and defeat Mlozi. Johnston also set about imposing British
authority, by force, over the Yao chiefs whom he saw as responsible for the slave
trade. Many of them, including Makanjila, Kawinga, Mponda and Jalasi resisted.
It took a series of military campaigns which lasted till 1895 before they were
finally subjugated.
The military defeat of the Yao who had resisted colonial rule, the flight
or detention of the leading chiefs, and the withdrawal of the majority of the
Swahili traders back to the coast, did not however result in a weakening of Islam
among many of the Yao groups. On the contrary in the period that followed
conversion to Islam became much more common. One explanation for this is that,
in order to tie their subjects more closely to them, Muslim Yao chiefs added
Islamic elements, like full circumcision and some instruction in Islam, to the
traditional lupanda initiation ceremony, creating a revised version known as
jando. This meant that for those who underwent the ceremony, becoming an adult
Yao was accompanied by identification as a Muslim. This has contributed to the
close association between being Yao and being Muslim that has long been
characteristic in Malawi, though of course not all Yao are Muslims.
While jando might have been the doorway for many Yao people into
identifying themselves as Muslims, the people who were responsible for building
up the practice of the religion were the religious leaders known as the shaykhs and
amwalimu (from Arabic mu’alim, teacher). The earliest of these Muslim
missionaries may have included Swahili but the most famous of them were
certainly Malawians, mostly Yao, but sometimes Chewa. Among the most
prominent were Abdullah bin Haji Mkwanda (1860-1930) and his pupil Thabit
bin Muhammad Ngaunje (1880-1930). These men and others, some of whom had
a high level of Islamic education from the Coast, travelled through or settled in
areas where there were Muslims. They gave instruction about Islamic practice and
belief, taught how to transliterate Arabic in order to recite the Qur’an, established
mosques and gave certificates or ijazas to young men whom they trained up as
shaykhs and amwalimu The religious teachers cooperated with, and were
enthusiastically supported by, the chiefs and it was often the chiefs’ sons and
nephews who were taken on for special training by the shaykh or sent to the Coast
for further studies. The chief was regarded as the father of the village the shaykh
as the head of the mosque.
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By the end of the first decade of the 20 century, Islam was becoming
established in many of the areas ruled by Yao chiefs particularly in the present
day Mangochi and Machinga districts, as well as in parts of Nkhotakota. In these