Artistry Permits and Custom May Ordain - Northwestern University

in Economic Anthropology. 4 (1981): 3-12.
257 De Barros, Da Asia, 1:liv. 7, cap. 4.
258 Pate Chronicle, Heepe and Stigand versions.
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threats to official power. Ungwana could still ascend to the office of sultan by virtue of
their access to and trade in cloth and other prestige-value materials. The History of Kilwa
records various incipient disputes over authority in the fifteenth century, and it is clear
that sultan(a)s were generally unable to hold power for more than a few years. Kilwa
accumulated immense wealth, in de Barros’s words, “after becoming the sovereign of the
mine of Sofala;” but such wealth circulation, even when restricted, pluralized access to
accumulation and resulted in the “divisions” which, de Barros noted, “arose upon the
death of some of its kings.” 257
One of the best examples of material manipulation serving as a means to power is
the case of the sultan’s poor treatment of Mwana Darini of Pate, the wife of a wealthy
merchant. The Pate Chronicle records that the use of the siwa—a symbol essential to
sustain any credible aspiration to political power—was disallowed at the circumcision of
Mwana Darini’s son. As a result, she and her followers invested considerable wealth to
construct a new horn. This new and more aesthetically pleasing siwa was played for the
town on a festival day, embarrassing the sultan and diverting local power to Mwana
Darini’s son and to those who funded the creation of the horn. Thus the son of a
deported merchant-elite gained office because his mother, fully aware of the metaphorical
power of the siwa, skillfully manipulated a prestige-value material. 258
The elite and the state struggled over power and its requisite access to stores of
cloth and other valuables. The elites’s capacity for high consumption diluted the sultan’s
power. Indeed, a figurehead was in deep political jeopardy if channels of material access
and exchange were closed. Moreover, those who profited by evading state taxes and
customs could set themselves up as “new” rulers elsewhere. Such subversive behavior
expanded apace well into the period of Portuguese intrusion into the Indian Ocean
region. 259 Contraband trade to the Zambezi region, channeled through Ngoji and
Kilimani, could make the fortune of any merchant with just enough capital or
creditworthiness to outfit a zambuku.
The extent of Swahili trade bypassing the custom houses on the central and
southern coast was so great that a Portuguese observer in the Zambezi region exclaimed,
259 Newitt’s “The Southern Swahili Coast,” covers the Portuguese “contraband” trade and develops a model of
Swahili reorientation of commerce following Portuguese restrictions in the mid-sixteenth century. cf. E. Alpers’s
seminal work, Ivory and Slaves in East Africa: Changing Patterns of International Trade to the Nineteenth Century.
London, 1975. 39-49.