Status in Clothing
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Taken from: The Social Fabric of Material Consumption in the Swahili World, circa 1450 to 1600; 1998 Jeremy G. Prestholdt.
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Clothing material warrants further investigation since fabrics often reflected social position or aspiration. Velho (João Velho, feitor of Sofala) observed that on Mozambique Island “clothing is made of cloth of linen or of cotton, very finely woven with many colored stripes, rich and embroidered, and they all wear toucas nas cabeças [similar to modern kofia] with silk ornaments and embroidered with gold thread.”(1) Silk and gold thread, above all else, signified a person’s buying power, and it seems that only the most wealthy could afford silk, and only rarely did they purchase entire garments of the material. Indeed, throughout the Indian Ocean world, silk produced in India, China, and southeast Asia was the property of the elite alone.(2) The immensely wealthy patrician men of Sofala wore silk and a variety of other cloths around their waist and “thrown over [their shoulders] in the manner of overcoat . . . and some of them wear little skull-caps of a
(1) “Descrição da viagem de Vasco da Gama pela costa de Moçambique, 1497,” DPMAC. 1:18.
(2) On silk in the wider Indian Ocean zone, see Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe. 184-90; S. Sangar, “Silk Cloth in the 17th Century,” in Proceedings—Indian History Congress. New Delhi, 1969. 233-40; and S. Gopal, Commerce and Crafts in Gujarat.
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quarter of a length a cloth, others narrow woolen cloths of many colors, and of camlets [chamalotes], and other silks.”(1) Mombasa boasted a “large quantity of rich silk and gold embroidered clothes” as well as imported carpets. (2) Royal attendants at the court of the Maore sultan, much like elsewhere in the Swahili world, were “richly appareled . . . with long silk garments embroidered, after the Turkish manner.”(3) Silk cloth was produced on the coast, but the importation of the raw material necessary to produce it drove up its price. However, enough Swahili were able to afford it that the silk industry of Pate thrived until the late 1600s. Small amounts of silk were used to weave turban cloth, and imported cloth in general—if not destined for interior markets—was fashioned into locally usable garments. When Kilwa was plundered in the early sixteenth century, de Almeida’s soldiers went to great lengths to carry away “beautiful garments” as well as gold and silver.(4) Malindian ungwana (Swahili patricians) wore “rich turbans of silk cloth,”(5) and many observers immediately understood the significance of headwear and the prestige-value of silk in the social stratification of Swahili society. The skull-cap, kofia, and turban were exclusive to coastal society and marked Swahili identity. The style and use of cloth in men’s headwear, however, reflected distinct social categories. De Monclaro (Padre Francisco de Monclaro, da Companhia de Jesus) keenly observed the stratification of Swahili society and understood it, roughly like the Swahili themselves, through the idiom of men’s headwear. He recorded that three social groups in Swahili society could be discerned by their personal adornment, the first group being “those of the carapuça” or skull-cap. This classification probably denotes the non-ungwana, or those generally lacking the capital to invest in the richly worked kofia. He continued that there were “others of the barretinho,” probably referring to the kofia, the embroidered circular cap which, as described earlier, was the preserve of the ungwana. Finally, speaking of the political elite, Monclaro recognized that “others wear a toque,” or highly ornate turban. The term “mouros de touca” is commonly found in early Portuguese narratives and consistently refers to the most wealthy and politically powerful in Swahili cities—wealthy landowners, merchants,
(1)“Descrição da situação, costumes e produtos de alguns lugares de África, ca. 1518,” DPMAC. 5:358.
(2) “Descrição da Viagem,” 110.
(3) “The Voyage of Captaine John Davis to the Easterne India, Pilot in a Dutch Ship; Written by himselfe [1599],” in The Voyages and Works of John Davis the Navigator. Ed. A. Markham. London, 1930. 137-8.
(4) A. Vespuccius, The Voyage from Lisbon to India, 1505-6, being an account of the journal by Albericus Vespuccius. Ed. C. Coote. London, 1894. 26.
(5) “Descrição da Situação, Costumes e Produtos de alguns lugares de África, ca. 1518,” DPMAC. 5:368.
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and royalties.(1) The “turbaned mouros,” according to da Couto, were “men of position and rich.”(2)
Ungwana women’s clothing was even more luxurious than men’s, though references to women’s styles are much more rare. (3) Women’s silk clothing and beads seem to have been pervasively consumed.(4) Ungwana women generally wore multiple ankle-length silk cloths over their shoulders and around their waist but did not necessarily cover their head.(5) In many of the smaller towns, particularly where there were few extremely wealthy ungwana women, nothing was worn on the head. It also seems that very wealthy ungwana women at Kilwa and elsewhere used kohl, as evidenced by the discovery of locally designed copper and silver kohl sticks at multiple excavation sites.(6) In city-states such as Kilwa, ungwana women followed purdah (a curtain or other to separate women from man), which dictated clothing styles in general and the degree of concealment of the body in particular. (7) Purdah was one of the most significant signs of prestige in Swahili city-states, implying a woman’s ability to forego work outside the home and own servants or slaves to aid in public and private activities. Lopez wrote that “out of doors,” Malindian women “are
(1) “Relação (cópia), feita pelo padre Francisco de Monclaro, da Companhia de Jesus, da expedição ao Monomotapa, comandada por Francisco Barreto (1573),” DPMAC. 8:348. An eighteenth-century account of Nzwani also described “common people” as wearing a coarse wrapper and a “skull-cap, of any sort of stuff,” while only those of “great distinction” wore tubans. M. Grose, A Voyage to the East Indies, Vol. 1. London, 1772. 22-3.
(2) “Relação da viagem q fizerão os pes da Companha de Jesus com Francisco Barreto na conquista de Monomotapa no anno de 1569,” in Records. 3:235. This version is similar to the copy noted above but varies in limited ways. El Zein reported that the turban continued to be in use until fairly recently in Lamu wedding ceremonies (Sacred Meadows. 67) as was the case in the Comoros. M. Ottenheimer, Marriage in Domoni: Husbands and Wives in an Indian Ocean Community. Salem, 1995. 59-79.
(3) I have yet to uncover a detailed description of non-ungwana dress for women. Generally it seems they wore either one or two kaniki, or the blue cotton cloths still considered the clothing of low status. Trillo, “Fashion and Fabrics,” 36-7. P. Caplan reports that the kaniki is used for working in the fields. Choice and Constraint in a Swahili Community. New York, 1975. 31.
(4) European and Swahili sources do not generally discuss beads worn by women of both higher and lower socioeconomic status, yet the high concentrations of beads in archeological investigations implies both locallymade and imported beads of various material were in wide use. See, for example, Chittick, Kilwa. I. For an
ethnography of beads, see L. Donley-Reid, “The Power of Swahili Porcelain, Beads and Pottery,” in Powers of Observation: Alternative Views in Archeology. Washington, D.C., 1990. 51-3.
(5) “Descrição da Situação, Costumes e Produtos de alguns lugares de África, ca. 1518,” DPMAC. 5:366.
(6) Chittick, Kilwa. II: 450-1. Kusimba has recently excavated copper-alloy kohl sticks at Mtwapa near Mombasa. “Indigenous and Imported Metals at Swahili Sites on the Kenya Coast,” MASCA Research Papers in Science and Archaeology. Ed. T. Childs. Philadelphia, 1994. 66.
(7) Correa, in SD, 71.
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covered with a thin silk veil.”(1) In seclusion, Malindian women dressed “with great display, wearing silk robes, and on their neck, arms, and feet, chains of gold and silver.”(2) While it is clear that the seclusion of women was common, it is unclear whether or not politically powerful women followed purdah. Sultanas may have been subjected to seclusion near the end of the sixteenth century, as an English report of 1599 recorded that the Sultana of Domoni “would not be seene.”(3)
(1) F. Pigafetta, A Report of the Kingdom of Congo and of the Surrounding Countries drawn out of the Writings and Discourses of the Portuguese Duarte Lopez. London, 1881. 123.
(2) Ibid.
(3) “The Voyage of Captaine John Davis to the Easterne India, Pilot in a Dutch Ship; Written by himselfe, [1599]” in The Voyages and Works of John Davis the Navigator. Ed. A. Markham. London, 1930. 137-8.
Taken from: G. Theal, ed., Records of South-Eastern Africa 1964. Vol 5.
Descobrimentos e Conquista de India pelos Portuguezes. F. Lopes de Castanheda (d1559).
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(In 1498) And thus he (the ruler of Mozambique) arrived there, surrounded by many people all adorned with silk cloths and carrying many ivory trumpets and other instruments.
He was a man with a good body, thin, dressed in white cotton cloth, with clothes that were tight on his body, long up to his toes, and on top of this another one made of Meccan velvet, on his head was a sheet of silk velvet of many colors and gold, and girded with rich fabric and a dagger; on his feet were silk espadrilles.
How Pedro d'Anhaya set out with a fleet fur Sofala, and of what befell him on the passage.
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(In 1505) When the chief captain reached the king's dwelling, he entered with several noblemen, the factor, and officials of the factory, the armed men waiting outside, and after passing through a large court-yard, they entered a long and narrow apartment, where quite a hundred Moors were seated, dark-skinned men, all merchants, with silk turbans on their heads, naked from the waist upwards, and girt below with cotton and silk cloths, and similar cloths over their shoulders and under the arms ; in their belts they wore naked scimitars with handles of ivory ornamented with gold, which they called quifios; in their hands they had branches of amber fastened in the middle with silken tassels of many colours. They were seated on both sides of the room on low triangular three-legged stools, the seats of which were of undressed hides.
On the entrance of the chief captain these Moors rose and did him great courtesy, and passing through them, he went to the end of the room where the king was in a small apartment hung with silk cloths, which was only large enough to contain an Indian litter, on which the king lay upon a silk cloth. He was a man of great stature, well built, and black; he was dressed in the same fashion as the Moors, except that the cloths he wore were more valuable; and near him he had a large bundle of assagais.