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Ajami Literacy, class, and Portuguese pre-colonial administration in Northern Mozambique
No full textIncludes bibliographical references.This thesis, based on archival and fieldwork research, provides an historical analysis of the northern Mozambique ajami manuscripts held in the Mozambique Historical Archives (AHM). The main focus is on the role played by ajami literacy in the creation of a local Muslim intellectual class that played a significant role in the establishment of a Portuguese pre-colonial administration in northern Mozambique. The history of Islam in northern Mozambique is viewed as a constant struggle against the Portuguese establishment in the region. Through an examination of ajami correspondence held in the AHM and focusing on two of the main northern Mozambique Swahili centres of the nineteenth century (Quissanga and Sancul), this thesis offers a more nuanced interpretation of the relations between the Portuguese and the Swahili Muslim rulers of the region. On the one hand, it views Quissanga-Ibo Island relations based on systematic and relatively loyal collaboration expressed in more than two hundred letters found in the collection of AHM. On the other hand, it presents Sancul-Mozambique Island relations based on ambiguous collaboration and constant betrayals, expressed in forty letters of the collection. The AHM ajami manuscripts collection numbers a total of 665 letters which were first revealed in the context of the pilot study of northern Mozambique Arabic Manuscripts, held in the Mozambique Historical Archives, under the leadership of Professors Liazzat Bonate and Joel Tembe. The pilot study ended with the selection, translation and transliteration of sixty letters from this collection. For the present study I have read, summarized and translated the whole collection (excluding the 60 letters mentioned above). However, only 266 letters which are more relevant for the analysis and argument of my thesis, I have listed in the appendix of this dissertation; and nine of them I have closely examined and cited as the main sources for the construction of local history and as documentary witness of the historical facts I discuss. The use of ajami literacy in northern Mozambique is analysed in the context of global and regional phenomena. In this sense, it is viewed as a result of a longue duré process which integrated the region into the western Indian Ocean’s cultural, political and economic dynamics. It is argued that the spread of ajami literacy in the region was framed in the context of regional Islamic education and an intellectual network. Both were also part of the process of expansion of Islam in East Africa. xiQuissanga (in Cabo Delgado) and Sancul (in Nampula) represent the two main regional settlements from which most of the manuscripts originated. The ruling elites of both regions represent suitable examples of the integration of northern Mozambique into the Swahili political, economic and intellectual networks. They also offer examples of two different dynamics of the process of integration of northern Mozambique rulers into the Portuguese pre-colonial administration. Through an analysis of the spread of Islamic education and the use of Arabic script in the above-mentioned region, this thesis sought to establish the connection of coastal societies in northern Mozambique to the Swahili world (most specifically to Comoros Islands, Zanzibar and western Madagascar). It was through this connection that the Muslim intellectual class was created in northern Mozambique and played an important intermediary role in the process of the establishment of the Portuguese administration in the second half of the nineteenth century. Through their correspondence and reports, this local intellectual elite produced a body of manuscripts in Kiswahili and other local languages (in the Arabic script), which are now an important source for the history of the region
A RELIGIÃO NO CONTEXTO DA PANDEMIA DE CORONAVÍRUS EM MOÇAMBIQUE: desafios e oportunidades
No full textThe present paper analyses the role of religion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic situation in Mozambique by mapping the challenges and opportunities it creates in the society. Through the review of literature and observations made by key-informants, we argue that the COVID-19 pandemic, on the one side, created important limitations on the religious activities due to the closing of the places of worships. By doing this (closing the sites of collective cults) it created to the religious institution financial problems due to the interruption of collecting the tithe. On the other side, the pandemic situation opened opportunities for the involvement of the religious institutions in campaigns of solidarity that aim to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 in the Mozambican society. We conclude that, on the one side, the great challenges that religion can impose on the society during this pandemic era are situated on the primacy of material prosperity that is based on “false prophecies” preached by some Pentecostal churches; and, on the possibility of generating attitudes and behaviours of religious fanatism as the consequence of the religious discourses that attach the causes of coronavirus on the idea of sin. And on the other hand, the challenges may be situated on the fact that most of the rituals performed in the places of worship in Mozambique and in many other countries of the world (such as trance, sermon, chanting, wafer, and holy communion, the loud recitations), as well as the environmental conditions of the places of worship situate the religious institutions in the top list of the super-spreaders of COVID-19.O presente artigo analisa o papel da religião no contexto da pandemia de COVID-19 em Moçambique, procurando mapear seus desafios e oportunidades. Com recurso à revisão de literatura e observações no terreno realizadas por informantes, argumenta-se que a pandemia de COVID-19, por um lado, criou limitações importantes no exercício das actividades religiosas devido ao encerramento dos espaços de cultos colectivos gerando, para algumas instituições religiosas, problemas de ordem financeira devido a interrupção da colecta de dízimos, e, por outro, abriu oportunidades para o seu envolvimento em acções de solidariedade na procura de minimizar o impacto de COVID-19 na sociedade moçambicana. Conclui-se que, por um lado, os grandes desafios que a religião pode impor à sociedade neste período de pandemia se situam na primazia da prosperidade, material baseada em “falsas profecias” pregadas por algumas igrejas pentecostais e na possibilidade de se gerar atitudes e comportamentos de fanatismo religioso através de discursos religiosos que colam a causa da pandemia ao pecado; e, por outro, que maior parte dos rituais praticados nos locais de cultos em Moçambique e em várias partes do mundo, tais como a transe, o sermão, o canto, a hóstia e comunhão, as recitações em voz alta assim como as condições dos edifícios onde ocorrem os cultos tornam as instituições religiosas um dos grandes propagadores do vírus causador de COVID-19
The Poem about the Prophet’s Death in Mozambique – Swahili as a Transregional Language of Islamic Poetry
No full textThis article throws light on the hitherto neglected Swahili Islamic poetry from Mozambique. By concentrating on the Poem about the Prophet’s Death, locally called Nazajina, our contribution shows specific adaptations to local language and recitation practices while at the same time reflecting on Swahili as a transregional language of Islamic poetry that links places on the Swahili coast that are distant from each other. Manuscripts of the poem can be found all along the East African Swahili coast. We will follow its distribution from the Lamu archipelago in the north to Mozambique, in the trail of the Sufi reform movements of the nineteenth century
The Poem about the Prophet’s Death in Mozambique – Swahili as a Transregional Language of Islamic Poetry
No full textThis article throws light on the hitherto neglected Swahili Islamic poetry from Mozambique. By concentrating on the Poem about the Prophet’s Death, locally called Nazajina, our contribution shows specific adaptations to local language and recitation practices while at the same time reflecting on Swahili as a transregional language of Islamic poetry that links places on the Swahili coast that are distant from each other. Manuscripts of the poem can be found all along the East African Swahili coast. We will follow its distribution from the Lamu archipelago in the north to Mozambique, in the trail of the Sufi reform movements of the nineteenth century
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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