Artistry Permits and Custom May Ordain - Northwestern University

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In the early 1500s Pateans were bringing cloth directly to Ngoji, and the southern region
enjoyed sustained contact with Lamu, Barawa, Mogadishu, Malindi, and Mombasa as
well. 95 As late as the seventeenth century, the Portuguese, in an attempt to dominate
Swahili channels of exchange on the Zambezi, discovered that to trade on the river, the
factory first had to send merchants to Pate to purchase both “the cloth required for the
curvas [kurua-tribute 96 ] and presents customarily sent to the neighboring kings.” 97
Pate produced and distributed highly prized cloths on the coast, but it was not
alone in textile production. Artisans in Sofala, Kilwa, Ngoji, and the Kirimba archipelago
wove cotton cloths in the sixteenth century for both local use and long-distance trade. 98
Much like weavers at Pate, Sofalans unraveled foreign textiles and wove imported thread
into cloth for local consumption and trade with the Sofalan hinterland. In 1518, a
Portuguese observer wrote:
95 Carta de Afonso de Albuquerque para el-Rei, Goa, 1514 Outubro 25,” DPMAC. 3:558. cf. “Alfonso de
Albuquerque, Cochim, 10 Dezembro, 1514,” in Records. 3:147. In 1517, Cristóvão de Távora estimated that in
Ngoji “they give their merchandise for less than half of its price in Sofala, and the greater part of these merchants
are Mombaçan.” “Carta de Cristóvão de Távora, Capitão e Governador de Sofala e Moçambique, para el-Rei,
Moçambique, 1517 Setembro 20,” DPMAC. 5:202. Pate sustained direct relations with the Kirimba Archipelago
into the late eighteenth century. See n.a., “Memorias da costa d’Africa Oriental e Algumas reflexoes uteis para
estabelecer melhor, e fazer mais florente o seu commercio, 1762,” in Relaçoes de Moçambique Setecentista. Ed. A.
de Andrade. Lisbon, 1955. 214.
96 On the kurua, or the annual tribute paid to a ruler to trade in his/her kingdom, see Dos Santos, 1:64-7.
97 “Alvará régio sobre o contrato dos resgates dos rios de cuama por Rui de Melo de Sampaio,” DPMAC. 9: 353.
98 Judging by the level of cotton cloth production in the eighteenth century, it is possible that Siyu was also
growing cotton and weaving in this period. See H. Brown, “Siyu: Town of Craftsmen, A Swahili Cultural Centre
in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Azania. (23) 1988. 104-6.
99 “Descrição da situação, costumes e produtos de alguns lugares de África, ca. 1518,” DPMAC. 5:358.
100 “Descrição da situação, costumes e produtos de alguns lugares de África, ca. 1518, Edoard Barbuse,” DPMAC.
5:374.
Now the mouros once more make in this land quantities of cotton, much of which is gathered here,
they spin it and weave it into white cloth and, since they do not know how to dye or because they do
not have the dyes, they take blue dyed cloths from Cambia, unravel them and gather the thread into a
ball and, with their white weave and with the other they make the cloths colored, from which they
obtain a great sum of gold. 99
The same source mentioned that Sofalans, like Pateans, wove both silk and cotton
cloths. 100 The technique of unraveling cloths to get choice threads, as we have seen at
Pate, was common in the Shire valley as well, especially where dyes were unobtainable.
The lack of dye on the coast is surprising, as we shall see, considering the extensive