In the Name of Shirāz: The stone mosques of the East African coast reconsidered

Available scholarship on the so-called Shirāzi mosques of the East African coast, from early interpretations of them as the products of Arab/Persian colonisation to the recent understanding of their indigenous nature, has largely taken an empirical approach. This article shifts attention to the maki...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Postmedieval a journal of medieval cultural studies 2022-12, Vol.13 (3-4), p.497-515
Main Author: Wu, Sylvia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Centuries
Cultural and Media Studies
Digital Humanities
History of Medieval Europe
Literature
Medieval Literature
Mosques & temples
Original Article
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Summary:Available scholarship on the so-called Shirāzi mosques of the East African coast, from early interpretations of them as the products of Arab/Persian colonisation to the recent understanding of their indigenous nature, has largely taken an empirical approach. This article shifts attention to the making of historical discourses which were entangled with the creation and legacy of the mosques. Unfolding the conflated historical layers between the tenth and sixteenth centuries, it highlights the fictionality of written, oral, and material sources produced between East Africa and southern Iran. The article first addresses the tenth and eleventh centuries, when strengthened trade relations between the two seabound societies contributed to a contemporary architectural landscape of stone mosques along the East African coast and in southern Iran. It then discusses the myth-making period between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a time of Shirāz’s heightened religious and literary prestige that gave rise to the retrospectively assigned label ‘Shirāzi’ to the East African mosques and the sixteenth-century chronicles that put this anachronic identification into words.
ISSN:2040-5960
2040-5979
DOI:10.1057/s41280-022-00252-0