BALUCHI COMMUNITY
communities originating in Iran.
The Baluch of East Africa
“Our Story”
The Baluchi Community of Mombasa, Kenya in East Africa. They journeyed in the fabled dhows; white crescent sails blown by ocean winds, three hundred years ago, as soldiers of fortune, to the east coast of Africa; to build an empire for the Sultan Of Oman who had conquered their homeland on south coastal fringes of the Persian empire, and to whom they now owed allegiance. It was a long fateful voyage undertaken by most for monetary gain and thought to be a temporary mission, without quite realizing the impact that undertaking down the Indian Ocean would have on their future. And how lasting it would turn out to be.
The first Baluch to have set foot in eastern Africa were certainly those mercenaries deployed in the Sultan’s army, initially to fight and evict the Portuguese from their strongholds in East Africa, and later to consolidate the Sultan’s control of the region. At a time when there was much anarchy amongst the tribes of Oman for control of the throne, the loyal Baluch soldiers, posing no threat to the rule of the Busaidis earned them lasting trust with the Sultan who then deployed them to guard his palaces and interests in the region. Interests, that included massive land grab and the inhuman slave trade.
There is no existing documentary record of the exact numbers of these early soldiers. As goes with the traditions of eastern nations, there are always remarkable oral legends of how the brave men from the Makran coast laid siege on Fort Jesus in Mombasa, and wrested the Fort from the Portuguese, driving them out of ‘Zenjbar’ for good. That is the legend. The truth of course is that the Portuguese sources of food and water continued to get depleted by the long siege, and they died slowly, from hunger and disease.
SETTLEMENT
The first Baluch settlers were the soldiers, who until the formal establishment of the Sultanate in the 1840s, maintained army posts in the major centers of Mombasa, Dar-es-Salaam, Zanzibar and Pemba. These men inter-married with the local Arabs and Waswahili and were quickly assimilated into their society. They were soon followed by whole families who left Baluchistan in the hope of finding a better life in fertile East Africa, which was at the time the hub of international maritime trade with India and south Asia. Most of the emigrants came from Nikshahr (then known as Geh) and Kaserkand in southern Iran, though they were soon followed by others Sarbaz, Lur and Muscat.
Left: The first Baluchi Mosque, Mombasa, built in 1865
As they moved inland, the Baluch founded cluster communities in Djugu and Bunia in the Congo; Soroti, Arua and Kampala in Uganda; and Iringa, Tabora, Bagamoyo, Mbeya and Rujewa in Tanzania, where today thriving communities exist. In time there was probably a Baluch family in almost every major East African town.
The Mombasa Baluchis developed a more cosmopolitan lifestyle, preferring to engage in small real estate ventures, professions, and trade, or keeping employment with the Omanis and later in the 1900s, the British. Those who settled in the fertile hills of Uganda and Tanzania flourished in the farming and trading industries. Their mercantile skills, business acumen and investments earned them high regard amongst the various communities they settled in. The Baluch in Dar-es-Salaam, very much like their counterparts in Mombasa adopted an urban lifestyle. This can also be said of the small but vibrant Nairobi families.
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IN A SNAPSHOT
The Baluch have always been wanderers. Naseer Dashti’s new research traces our ancestral origins to the historical Balashagan, in the north western Caspian Sea, where we lived close to the Kurdish people, the ethnic group closest in relation to us. Through thousands of years, the Baluch migrated to settle in the present homeland of Baluchistan, in the south western Iranian peninsula, and from there, communities have moved on to found new homes all around the world.
It’s been now three centuries since the mercenaries from Baluchistan sailed on those dhows to Mvita, the island of war, to help the Omanis build their empire. In these three hundred years, we have absorbed the East African coast into ourselves, and given a part of ourselves to this land. Even as we remain proud of our long history and rich heritage, we remain children of a different present, here where the ocean brought those soldiers of old, as the Baluch of East Africa.
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