Abstract
Baluchi diasporic presence in the Gulf region is well documented, but little is known about Baluchi settlements in East Africa. The Baluchis—in Swahili called Wabulushi (singular: Mbulushi)—who settled in Kenya and Tanzania in the 1820s are heterogeneous Baluchi-cum-Swahili-speaking Sunni Muslim communities originating in Iran. They came to Zanzibar as mercenaries with the Omani forces, and after 1890, they joined the German and British colonial forces in East Africa. Since the 1960s, when the East African countries became independent, the Baluchis have been engaged in trade, mechanized agriculture, transportation, and skilled professions. Though many of the Baluchis of East Africa emigrated to Europe, North America, and various Gulf countries in the 1960s, new waves of Baluchis have arrived in East Africa at irregular intervals. The latest immigration was in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In Rujewa District alone, in the Iringa region of Tanzania, a settlement was established of about seventy Baluchi families who were soon engaged in modern farming.
Read more: https://doi.org/10.1080/21520844.2013.831726
Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi
ABDULAZIZ Y. LODHI is a professor emeritus of Swahili and East African languages in the Department of Linguistics and Philology at Uppsala University in Sweden. He is also a guest professor of Swahili and Bantu linguistics at the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) in Tanzania. Since 1974, he has worked with the programs of African linguistics and cultural anthropology at several universities in Nordic countries. He is the author of The Institution of Slavery in Zanzibar (Uppsala, 1973), Oriental Influences in Swahili: A Study in Language and Culture Contacts (Gothenburg, 2000), and Kamusi ya Kiswahili ya Shule (Oxford, 2007).
