Between the railway and the minaret: transregional Swahili Muslim booklets and transition in East African print culture, 1930–1960

This chapter by Annachiara Raia explores an early transitional and transnational phase of Swahili Muslim print culture in British East Africa (1930s–1950s)  with roots in Punjab, that was then followed by an increasing localisation of forms and genres (1950s onwards) that saw Mombasa as an important print and literary centre dispensing literary pieces of cultural and spiritual advice. As the title suggests, the establishment of welfare foundations linked to new mosques coincided with the construction of the Uganda Railway, connecting Kenya with Uganda in British East Africa. From the very beginning of the railway’s construction, Indians – almost all from Punjab and almost all Muslim – played a crucial role in promoting a multilingual Muslim agenda to readers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika by supporting translations of works into Arabic, Gikuyu, Luganda, Swahili and Urdu. Book production in the above-mentioned languages went hand in hand with the different mosques the workers constructed along the railway in mainland Kenya and Uganda. As Raia shows, after the 1940s, a period of increasing standardisation of the Swahili language started, local welfare associations adjusted their scope, and the overall print landscape changed. Missionaries and the colonial school system made the superimposed Roman script and Swahili become linked in print.

This chapter appeared in the book Print Cultures and African Literature, 1860–1960, published by Cambridge University Press, 2025.