The Word for "God" in Swahili

Abstract

The Swahili language originates in Africa; the religion of the Swahili people derives from Arabia. Such a marriage between an African language and a Semitic religion must be of interest to both the Africanist and the student of Islam. This paper attempts to examine the Swahili word for God, showing how the inhabitants of Swahili-land, without in any way compromising their religious orthodoxy, have preferred to retain the indigenous African word, albeit adapted to accord with their Islamic belief, rather than to adopt a word of non-African, Semitic, origin. Possibly the oldest recorded instance of the word for God in Swahili (an African tongue belonging to the Bantu family of languages) is to be found in an 18th century manuscript, 1 where the word appears as Mulungu. This form of the word no longer survives in Swahili itself (for the /1/ has been effaced long since), but it may still be heard, for example, in the neighbouring Mijikenda languages (e.g. in Giryama); variations on Mulungu (e.g. Murungu, Mluku, Mulunguo, Muunguo) are to be found in a host of other Bantu languages and dialects. For many centuries the religion of the Swahili has been the religion of Islam. On the other hand, only a handful of the Mijikenda peoples (who inhabit the country north and south of Mombasa) had embraced Islam by the middle of the 19th century-even though they had been in contact with Muslims since the 17th century.2 It follows that any 19th century definition of the word Mulungu as understood by the Mijikenda may well contain nuggets for the semantically minded prospector. Three passages have been selected in the hope that they will enrich, in varying